Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Labour, Tories and Lib Dems try to rig Westminster General Election by excluding the Scottish National Party from TV debates, fairness is dead




















Dear All

It seems that the three ‘mainstream’ London based political parties have decided to pull together to try and rig the Westminster General Election.

They claim they are parties who believe in democracy.

In Scotland the Scottish National Party are the Party of Government that is a fact.

In trying to rig the debates called Prime Ministerial debates to exclude other parties the mainstream media has broken their charters of being politically neutral.

It is completely wrong that the SNP as the Government of Scotland is not represented.

After all there is no way on God’s earth that Nick Clegg will be the next Prime Minister of Great Britain.

So, why is he on the platform?

The media effectively is declaring that there is a three party state for Westminster when polls show that there could be a hung Parliament.

The SNP could win enough seats to decide who will be the next Prime Minister of Great Britain in the House of Commons.

But they are barred from speaking in the debates?

How can such a thing be right?

At present the British Labour Party in Scotland is trying to talk up the Tories in Scotland as a threat.

The Tories have one seat, the SNP have seven.

The SNP should take legal action to block these debates from being shown in Scotland.

What is despicable is that the BBC, ITV and Sky and the three main UK political parties have now agreed the rules for the live debates in secret.

As a sop the BBC will hold separate party leader election debates in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

This is unacceptable as it treats the SNP, the Government of Scotland as unfit to sit at the adults table.

They will get to respond to the debates during subsequent news programmes.

SNP Westminster leader Angus Robertson said;

"This is a matter of basic fairness in the run up to a general election and the BBC has decided to give an hour-and-a-half of exposure to the leaders of the three UK political parties each in the run up to the election - and has made not a single proposal to give balance to the SNP in the run-up to polling day”.


It is time that the SNP made a stand and fought this matter in the Courts.

It is time to take the fight to them and also submit a formal complaint to the Electoral Commission.

As a mark of how petty the Labour Party is, former Scotland office minister David Cairns said;

"I can't think of a single election anywhere in the world at any time where somebody who wasn't even a candidate in that election actually wanted to take part in a live televised debate - Alex Salmond is not standing for this election in Westminster."

The representative is not the important issue, fairness and equality is; something that Cairns has missed out and doesn’t think important enough in a democracy.

The SNP should file legal papers immediately to block transmission in Scotland.

The main challengers to most Labour Party held seats in Scotland are the Scottish National Party Candidates, not Tories and certainly not Lib Dems.

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

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