Monday, April 19, 2010

SNP and Plaid Cymru take their appeal to BBC Trust of being excluded from leaders debates, I don't expect the BBC to honour their Charter












Dear All

One of the Human Rights most people know is the right to free speech but there is also a right to participate in a free and fair election.

The BBC is charged under its charter to be politically neutral in elections.

The truth is, they are not as demonstrated by the discrimination of the SNP and Plaid Cymru.

Both of these parties are in government in Scotland and Wales.

In order to attempt to rig the election in favour of three parties, Tories, Labour and Lib Dems, the BBC has excluded the SNP and Plaid Cymru from television debates.

Originally entitled ‘Leaders debates’, the name was changed to exclude the SNP and Plaid Cymru this was to ensure they were barred.

Now the SNP and Plaid Cymru are preparing for a potential appeal against the BBC's decision.

The BBC Trust in response has written to both parties asking them to prepare for a possible oral hearing between 22 and 27 April.

In order to stall and draw out the process, the trust says it will first consider whether the appeal is admissible.

What has happened is clearly a breach of the BBC Charter, it is admissible.

As well as discrimination against the SNP and Plaid Cymru, most of the issues involved are devolved matters that don’t affect the people of Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.

These debates exclude three of the four countries which make up the UK.

The events are staged in England and the audiences are English.

SNP chief executive Peter Murrell said;

"We also believe that the BBC executive has failed in its duties by excluding the SNP and Plaid Cymru from the negotiations which were held with the other parties over what was clearly a prolonged period. Those discussions effectively allowed the UK parties to dictate the format of the leaders' debates to the broadcasters."

As I previously blogged before Britain is a corrupt country, if it wasn’t this situation would have occurred.

The BBC says they have taken steps to ensure fairness; this involves allowing the excluded parties to comment after the debates.

This is very much like being invited to a party when it finished and everyone is leaving.

And being called ungrateful when you turn your nose up at the scraps!

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

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