Looks like that troop of earnest, twittering Tory ladies from the shires who visited their Republican counterparts at Concerned Women For America last year learnt something about using ‘process’:
Row as ‘Today’ programme’s poll is won by fox-hunting alliance
By Ben Russell, Political Correspondent
Published: 02 January 2007
It should have been a bit of festive fun with a slightly serious political edge. But the Radio 4 Today programme’s annual Christmas survey instead led to a row after listeners voted to repeal the ban on fox-hunting.
The poll, which has a long history of producing questionable results, caused more controversy this year, with claims that the Countryside Alliance had orchestrated calls to abolish the 2004 Hunting Act.
The Alliance dismissed the claims as “sour grapes”.
[…]
Anti-hunt Tory MP Ann Widdecombe, a member of the panel which chose the shortlist of Acts for the “Christmas Repeal”, also suggested organised forces may have been at work. “We did hesitate on the panel to put this one forward because there was already evidence of links from the Countryside Alliance – encouragement etc – and of course we had the Boxing Day meets, when just about everybody who actively supports hunting would have been out and could have been reminded.”
The League Against Cruel Sports even urged its members to write to the BBC to complain and accused the Alliance of running a “strategic campaign” to get the Act top of the BBC poll. A spokesman for the league said: “This continues the Today tradition of orchestrated polls.”[…]
In 1996 the programme’s vote for a man or woman of the year voting had to be stopped early after it emerged that Labour was trying to organise a mass vote for Tony Blair.
Let’s hope this means no more dumbassed novelty phone-ins on the Today programme: using something so easily subverted as a phone poll to divine the will of the listeners is a completely pointless exercise. And while we’re at it, can we get rid of Today’s bloody annoying guest editors as well? I really do not give a rat’s ass about what Yoko Ono or some bloody bishop thinks newsworthy. Enough.
Read more: UK Media,Radio BBC, Radio 4, News, Today, Polls, Guest Editors
