Tv - debates in the UK

A general election will take place in the United Kingdom, and the date for the election is expected to be on May 6^th. In this election the British people will elect Members of Parliament (MPs) to sit in the House of Commons, and the number of seats in the house will rise from 646 members to 650 members. This is the first election to be faced by the leader of the Labour Party Gordon Brown as Prime Minister, and it is also the first election for his main opponent; the leader of the Conservative Party David Cameron.

This election is very important because it gives the parties an opportunity to strengthen their position if their party members are elected to the House of Commons. The governing Labour Party and their main opponent, the Conservative Party, will both seek dominance in the House of Commons. While the Labour Party wishes to secure their dominance for another period, the Conservative Party seeks to regain its dominant position. The third biggest Party in the United Kingdom, The Liberal Democrats, has more realistic ambitions than to wish for enough support to be able to form their own government. They want to balance the power in the House of Commons so they are hoping for MPs from several different parties rather than many from one of the two dominant parties. It’s not only the big parties who have ambitions to get a lot of their members elected as MPs. The Scottish National Party have a goal to get at least 20 MPs and they have ambitions to gain more political power. The election mean a great deal to other smaller parties as well because it is an opportunity for them to gain representation in the House of Commons and strengthen their political position.

The election campaign in Britain have to last at least three weeks, and during this general election campaign the media will play a much bigger part than before. The media have always covered political events like general elections before, but during this election there will be three 90-minute debates with the different party leaders on live TV. The first one will be on ITV1, the second on Sky News and the last on BBC One. This give the public an opportunity to ask the party leaders questions about everything they want to know before they make up their mind about who they want to give their vote to.

There are some rules for the debates. The first half of each debate is themed, and subjects like health, education, international matters and economy will be discussed. The last half of the debates will be “free debate”, and the audience can ask questions about whatever they want. People at home can also send in an e-mail with a question they like to get answered. In the opening of the debate each leader will make a one-minute opening statement on the theme of the debate. They get one minute to answer each question and one minute to respond to the answers.

Most people seems positive to the TV-debates and this is the response from the leaders from the three biggest parties:

“I want to set out my vision for the future of this country. I am so optimistic about this country's future that I want to debate the big issues and I want to show that we are best for jobs, for the health service, for the public services as a whole, for tackling anti-social behavior and for dealing with the economy.” (Gordon Brown, Prime Minister and leader of the Labour Party)


“I think people have got a right to look at the people putting themselves forward as our next Prime Minister and to see the choice, then they can make up their own minds.” (David Cameron, leader of the Concervvative Party)



“The debates are a huge opportunity to reconnect people with politics”. (Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats)

In the United States, the media have played a huge role in political elections for several years and the media coverage of an election campaign can have huge influence on the people. The first presidential debates held on TV in USA was during the presidential election in 1960 between Republican Richard Nixon and Democrat John F. Kennedy. The TV-debates attracted great publicity, and many people thought that Kennedy looked better on television than Nixon. This might have influences the election, because Kennedy was elected to be president.

The media played a big part during the last presidential election in USA as well. The party leaders showed up to debates on TV and they used internet and the media to get out to people. News papers and TV-stations wrote a lot about the different candidates, and they commented on everything the candidates said, and of course they had a big influence on their readers and viewers. Many thought that the media was more supportive of Obama than of McCain. Many were angry at the media, and they felt that the media’s representation of the two candidates was biased and unfair. In the documentary “Right America: Feeling Wronged – Some Voices from the Campaign Trial”. Republicans talk about how they felt that the media ruined for McCain and many of them seems angry because they feel like the media influenced a lot of people to vote for Obama rather than for McCain

Question Time - Wednesday 24 February 2010

Question time last for an hour every Monday to Thursday and it is the members of Parliament’s opportunity to ask the Government Ministers questions. The Ministers are obligated to answer. There are different times for the different subjects and issues, questions asked directly to the Prime Minister are asked at Wednesday between 12:00 and 12:30. Wednesday 24 February, I got the opportunity to attend Question Time and to be a part of the circus when the prime minister is answering questions from Parliament.

The tension in the room was tense, but Gordon Brown was very calm. He started by sending condolences to everybody who have lost someone in the war in Afghanistan. The people in the room calmed down and he was ready to start the questions. He talks slowly which is an intentional measure, and the people pay more attention and they are concentrating on what he is saying. There are not at all people yelling, disagreeing or agreeing, this means that he has more respect than the other politicians. Because they are shouting their opinions out whenever they feel like it, but not when Brown is talking. The man questioning him in the start is David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative Party, is not at all as articulate as Brown. Cameron has an arrogant behavior and is criticizing Brown in every question and some of his questions occur to me as irrelevant. It seemed like he did not know enough about the subjects brought up and by avoiding to show that to the people, he made fun of Brown.

All questions considering the Prime Minister was answered, but Cameron had several irrelevant statements, which was not really anything for Brown to answer.

There are very heated debates, people shouted out their opinions on every subject. It is very common to shout out what you think in these debates, which might be rude in other relations. The debates have always been like this and the system is very old fashion, but it works for them. The speaker broke in some times to settle the people, but the Ministers did not show much respect for each other. They are not only interrupting each other, but are mocking their opponent.

The general election must take place before or on 3 June 2010, and different examinations say the Conservative are going to win the election. That is only popularity polls now, and we will continue on following the Labour Party during the nest months.

Charlie Wilson's war

In class today we saw the movie "Charlie Wilson's war" and it was about Charlie Wilson's life and how he fought for Afghanistan in the Cold War.

The movie portray Charlie Wilson(played by Tom Hanks) as a man who drinks a lot of scotch, he is always up for something fun, but he is still very serious when he has to be. He is a Texas congressman and likes his job because the people of Texas doesn't really fight for much, they only wants to lower the taxes and keep their right for guns. Charlie is quite a player, but he is weak for Joanne(played by Julia Roberts). She is very engaged in Afghanistan and knows she has a big influence on Charlie. When Charlie goes to Afghanistan and see their conditions, something changes in him. The Afghanistan people are fighting the US's war, without any ammunition or training what so ever. Charlie knows that he can change this and that's what he is fighting for.

I understood a lot more about the conflict after watching the movie. In fact, I didn't even know the war in Afghanistan was going on at the time, it is very embarrassing to admit. I thought the cold war was just threats going on between the US and the Soviet Union. Now I know that the Afghanistan war that is still going on, started already back then.

I enjoyed the movie because it was entertaining and educational at the same time. Charlie Wilson is a good example on how one person can make a big difference. Charlie m

anaged to raise the amount of money supported from the US to Afghanistan from 5 million to 500 million. Without Charlie Wilson the world history would probably be very different. In the end of the movie we see Charlie Wilson talking to the US secret service and they are complimenting him for his good work. He is proud of what he accomplished, but is aware of the challenges facing Afghanistan. They won't listen to him when he says they have to continue helping Afghanistan, and that is probably the main reason of the conditions in Afghanistan today.

This is the real Charlie Wilson who fought for Afghanistan during the cold war.

Electing a president in the US

The election is divided in the following steps:

Primaries - winner - national convention - nomination - vice president / platform - campaign - election (people) - election (electoral college) - president

Primaries are held in most states and these are state wide elections to choose a state party nominee for president. The winner of each state is guaranteed a delegation in the national convention. The primaries proceed and are reduced to two or three candidates. At the national convention, the final candidate for president is elected. The creation of a party "platform" is the team of candidates running for President and Vice President in the fall election. The serious campaigning starts in September till the first voting day, the first Tuesday in November. The campaigns are huge and a lot of money are spend and a lot of promises are made. The President and Vice President are not elected by the popular vote. Each state has it's own election and the winner takes it all from that state. Depending on how bug the state is and how many citizens there are, they get a number of congressmen in Parliament. The congressmen represent their states in votes. There are 435 congressmen in the US, 100 senators and 3 from the District of Columbia, these people are the 538 electoral voters and a candidate must have a majority of these votes, that's 270 votes to win the election.

The whole class collaborating

In school today, we were working on American politics. We worked in a different way than what we're used to. The class were collaborating and divided into the following groups: Front desk, research group, journalists, teachers and designers. I was in the research group with Karoline and Mikkel, we split the pages in the book by topics and I got the topic "Electing a president." At first I read about it and I searched on the internet to gather more information. I sent the information to the journalists, and they worked on rewriting, but they were not satisfied with our job, so I wrote a summery from the text in the book. I am going to post my summery as an individual blog post.

The front desk's job was to organize people and give deadlines and just talk to the different groups and make sure they didn't have any problems.

The research group's job was to find material and send it to the other groups.

The journalists' job was to write blogs about the material.

The teachers' job was to make a test and criteria for the test.

The designers' job was to make glogs and photostory with the material.

I think this way of working is not the most effective way to work, there are too many people involved and working on the same topics and it is kind of confusing. It has been fun to try out, but I don't think that this is a way that we will learn the most in. We were supposed to work in groups of two, but Ann changed her mind. I think we would learn more if we did work in that way, but it has been interesting and I know very well how they elect their president in the US.

The Road

This semester we are going to read a book in class. We got to choose between two books and most of us chose "The road" written by Cormac McCarthy. So far, I have only read the first 50 pages and I am still waiting for something to happen. It is about a man and his son who are walking through a burned destroyed landscape. We have not been told yet what has happened to the world. They are alone, but still afraid of meeting other desperate survivors. They are walking south, trying not to freeze to death in the snowy winter. All they have is a gun to protect themselves and a cart packed with some of their belongings and food.

The book is written in a difficult language and I did not quite understand the text until I had read a lot. Usually I would probably just have put the book away because it takes a long time to really understand what they are doing and I still don't know why they are walking. A brief explanation on why the landscape surrounding them are destroyed would make the book more interesting, I think.

When they are walking, they come to their old house and the father's home from the childhood. This gives him flashbacks from the earlier days, and these stories helps to keep my interest in the book, because they are something else than two people walking along a road. The names of the two people in the book are unknown and that makes it hard to relate to the people. That is probably an important decision made by the author, but I think the book would be easier to understand and relate to if we knew the names of the characters.

Ann has told us that the book will be more interesting once you get by the first 50 pages, and I am looking forward to read some action! I will probably write more about the book in the next weeks.

Right America: Feeling Wronged

Last Tuesday we watched a documentary called Right America: Feeling Wronged - some voices from the Campaign Trail. Alexandra Polesi followed the McCain campaign and talked to the republicans who have very strong feelings about who runs the country. In the documentary we meet people who truly hate Obama.

The republicans we meet are the most extreme republicans and they are even very Christian or middle class from the country, and many of them are middle class, very Christians who live on the country. They believe that Obama doesn't have enough experience to be a president representing the entire country. They can't relate to him at all, some of them are very old-fashion and are not ready for a black president. The republicans call themselves the real Americans and Obama is not one of them. In the documentary they visited 28 states and I were surprised to see all of the people crying when they talked about Obama, small children certain that America will go under if Obama wins and churches encouraging not to vote for Obama.

Some of them have good arguments for not voting on Obama. The taxes will strike the small businesses and the middle class. Some are very Christian and are against abortion and gay rights and marriage, but most of them seem like they just don't like the person Obama and his politics is irrelevant to them.

The republicans feel like they're not heard and that everything in the media are focusing on Obama. The only channel who is objective is Fox news channel and I can see why this is frustrating. The media is especially slaughtering Sarah Palin, because she makes a lot of comments that makes her seem stupid.

"Nobama" is a slogan that is to see all over the country. I was very surprised when I was watching the documentary, how much the American engage in the election and how much feelings that are related to the subject. I can't even imagine how these people reacted when Obama won, and I don't think that these extreme feelings about politics are possible to find in Norway.