Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Live Blogging Election Night

Just thought I would give advance notice that I will be live blogging election night from midnight, should any of you wish to make a date with me!

Perhaps any other bloggers who are doing the same might let me know and I will publish a list of all the live blogging that will happen that night. So far I know ConservativeHome, Arsembly, Ordovicius and Wales Elects 2007 will be doing it.

Can it really be true that the BBC are not having any election coverage on Friday on BBC1 or BBC2? Presumably they are doing something on News 24 - can anyone enlighten me? If not, I might hastily arrange an 18 Doughty Street live election coverage programme on Friday from 11am!

49 comments:

Chris Paul said...

Am considering doing it. Manchester Town Hall mainly. Susan Press (Grim Up North) is doing the gig from there for PA. In 2005 I made them give me a press pass with SNWDWVF (So Now Who Do We Vote For) on it and it features now as the sample on all the paperwork!

Anonymous said...

Well t least we won't have to put up with tea ladies like on Blogger TV 30-4-07.

Anonymous said...

Why would the BBC want to cover the obliteration of Labour in Local government? Go for it 18DS

Anonymous said...

Sounds like a good idea. You get a better class of person here.

Anonymous said...

I was rather looking forward to the BBC's coverage, with the occasional shout of "We're in!" when a Labour candidate is elected. I believe that's the usual form.

jailhouselawyer said...

I think the LibDems are going to take Hull.

Is it worth reporting?

Anonymous said...

OK Iain, I'm up for the date but no tongues, right!

Anonymous said...

Iain. Dear old Aunty is running the usual Election night programme from 11.35pm 'till 6am. One of the Dimblebores at the helm as usual. I still think it would be splendid if 18DS were to run an election programme as well. Treat it as a dry run for the snap election Brooooon will no doubt be calling in a couple of weeks time.

Jonathan Sheppard said...

I shall not be live blogging - can think of nothing worse - though I will be going to the count in Bassetlaw on Friday! Local Tories have managed to get three leaflets out in areas - funny no Lib Dem activity to speak of at all!!

David Anthony said...

What exactly is a live blogging event?

How about a 18DS chatroom as well in the future?

Man in a Shed said...

Looks like they are see here - still don't know how late they'll be running.

Mr Eugenides said...

I plan to liveblog the Scottish elections in my, er, inimitable style.

I'll post further details chez moi in the next day or so.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps the BBC know something we dont!!

If there is the levels of corruption that are being predicted, its possible that the elections could be called null and void.

see David Henke's take in the Guardian.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/david_hencke/2007/05/vote_early_vote_often.html

Anonymous said...

At http://www.scotlandvotes.com we will be blogging live through the night and also commenting on talk107 FM in the lothians or on www.talk107.co.uk.

The Military Wing Of The BBC said...

Four years ago the BBC's election night coverage consisted of "experts" led by that Canadian twat who can only say "that's another great result for the lib dems" or variations on that theme.

Anyway at about 2.30 I went to bed with the words "another disastrous night for the Tories" and "surely now IDS must go" ringing in my ear.

It was only on the following Saturday morning that I found from The Telegraph that IDS had actually won 550 seats. The BBC never mentioned that on the Friday morning or indeed ever. We were just given the impresion of a "disaster" for the Tories.

ps special prize for anyone who correctly forecasts how many times the Canadian twat will use the words "another great result for the lib dems" this coming Thursday.

+ an even bigger one for anyone who can remember his name.

Anonymous said...

I'll be there...unless I collapse at my pc from 5 hours telling after work.

Auntie Flo'

Jeremy Jacobs said...

But will Arthur Negus hold Bristols?

(Monty Python c. 1974)

Anonymous said...

Tone made me do it..

Hasn't it always been Peter Snow doing the stats on BBC?

Cannot remember the name of the Canadian you speak of, but can see him in my minds eye. Thought he had passed away though.

jailhouselawyer said...

Jonathan Sheppard: How you can say that there has been no LibDem activity! There has been plenty, allegedly, as reported on Bob Piper's blog.http://www.bobpiper.co.uk/2007/05/lib_dem_wife_in_vote_fraud_arr.php

jeremy jacobs: LOL. The old one's are the best!

Iain: You don't allow the c word and yet allow a photo of a vagina on the inamicus post? LOL!

Anonymous said...

re: "Canadian twat" - do you mean Tony King? If not apologies Tony King....

Tartan Hero said...

I'll be blogging from the Glasgow count for Scottish Parliament through the night and during the day at the local government count - hopefully with text comments coming in from Aberdeen and Dundee too!

Machiavelli's Understudy said...

So, err... This 'live blogging' effort... it's going to carry on in to Friday for the day-time counts, is it?

I look forward to seeing that one ... :)

Anonymous said...

I'll be live blogging in my own way from 10pm through.

I'll be providing "Channel 4" - articles and suggestions every hour on the hour to amuse bloggers between all the tedious political stuff, including things you can do to improve/raise the profile of your political blog while following the election.

There will also be a competition with a real prize (not a peerage though).

Follow the link on my name for info from 9am Wednesday.

Matt Wardman

BJ said...

"Election Night" begins on BBC1 at 1135 pm, after Question Time. Dimbleby in the chair, Jeremy Vine as the new Peter Snow (although he was the new Peter Snow last year as well).

Why do you float such totally ridiculous notions on your blog, Iain? Is it to allow you to have a cheap pop at the BBC, per chance?

Anonymous said...

Over 20,000 people have dropped off the postal vote register in Birmingham wards of Aston and Bordesley Green since the introduction of more stringent checks on postal votes following fraud allegations three years ago. The number of postal voters is down by 80%.

A High Court judge said the widespread vote-rigging which took place in the city's 2004 council elections would have "shamed a banana republic".

Judge Mawrey, the Election Commissioner, found evidence of "massive, systematic and organised fraud" in the campaign which made a mockery of the election and ruled that not less than 1,500 votes had been cast fraudulently in the city. Five councillors had to stand down.

Given that 20,000 people have dropped off the postal vote register since police began using an audit system and a new pc system was introduced, this must surely suggest that the extent of the fraud in these wards was substantially worse than that found by Judge Mawrey?

What a shocking state of affairs and what an appalling condemnation of the postal vote system introduced by nulab. Is this new system of postal vote checks being introduced across the country? If not, why not?

How confident can we be that this system will eliminate postal vote fraud and corruption from our political system?

Auntie Flo'

Anonymous said...

Tone Made Me Do It. Do you mean Robert McKenzie who died in 1981?
If so, I predict nil. Do I win a T-shirt?

Anonymous said...

I remember, too, the dismally biased coverage a few years ago when they desperately wanted the Tories to do badly while the screen kept flashing up CON GAIN. The BBC is even more biased than the electoral system in this country, and that's saying a lot.

Anonymous said...

Blamerbell has an "I'm blogging live on election night" jpeg

Neil Reddin said...

Four years ago the BBC's election night coverage consisted of "experts" led by that Canadian twat...

I think the Canadian is/was Anthony King from Essex university.

I too remember the 2003 coverage. Michael Howard was one of the guests and was clearly extremly frustrated at the inability of the rest of the panel/studio/BBC to use their primary school-level arithmetic to see that the Conservatives were heading for a very good night's results.

IIRC the coverage stopped at around 2 or 3am, before the news got too encouraging for the Tories and words would have to be eaten.

I think it was about that time I started reading the Biased-BBC blog regularly.

Neil Reddin said...

Anthony King - here he is:

http://www.essex.ac.uk/government/staff/academic/kinga.shtm

Anonymous said...

Iain,

Please, please *DO* "do" a programme.

BBC aren't doing one on Friday, neither are Sky. Shame on them.

Presumably, they feel the "story" will have past by 6am Friday morning as the Jock/Taff debating societies will have chosen their jokers by then and half the English councils will be in.

This is a gaping void in political broadcasting of the sort which 18 doughty street was designed to fill.

Do it!!

(PS. Make sure you get some good commentators mind - not some parish councillor for Medway and some crusty buffoon from the backbenches)

Iain Dale said...

BJ, what on earth are you on about? I said no such thing. Perhaps as a BBC employee you could explain why they have no election coverage on Friday?

Anonymous said...

Anthony King, guaranteed to put an anti Tory spin on any poll, even in the Telegraph.

Anonymous said...

Take no notice of him Iain. Anyone who wants to defend the pro-terrorist leftoid shit that is the beeb has to be crazy.

Jonathan Sheppard said...

JHL - I was talking about Bassetlaw!!!! Didnt know Bob Piper knew what was happening there!

Anonymous said...

Being a regular listener to "Today" on R4 (it's on when I'm getting ready for work and can't stand music too early)I was quite pleased to discover from the newspapers and blogs that there actually are elections in England and Wales. Being English, I was greatly relieved to get my poll card.

From Today's coverage you would think only Scotland were voting, and all they can cover about that is how disastrous it will be if Labour don't get in. There's been non-stop gloom for weeks about it, and this morning Jim Naughtie was practically euphoric at polls suggesting Labour might be neck-and-neck with the SNP!

Think this is what passes for impartial coverage these days.......

Anonymous said...

fr - glad it's not just me who finds Anthony King's anti-toryism unnerving in the DT's poll comment column. I'm truly not looking for pro-conservative bias, neutrality would be nice tho'.

Anonymous said...

I've updated my Live Blogging page with my programme:

1. Reports of my local results (Midlands).
2. Articles every hour on the hour to amuse and challenge bloggers between all the tedious political stuff
3. “Homework” that you can do to improve/raise the profile of your political blog while following the election.
4. A competition with a real prize (not a peerage though).

I'm planning to provide a live chatroom throughout, but that is subject to final testing.

Matt

The Remittance Man said...

Well, the BBC wouldn't want to interrupt important things like Tricia and Eastenders with something as inconsequential as elections. You can't upset the chav set, can you?

I wonder if this was a factor in the decision to hold a lot of the counts on Friday instead of overnight. To limit the embarrasment of the Friday morning headlines and news shows given that NuLab is predicted to be about to get royally shafted.

Or am I just engaging in excessive tinfoil hattery again? Sadly with this government it often pays to think the worst.

Blamerbell said...

I see some of you have already adopted the badge which you can get from my blog HERE.

Hopefully, Iain will do a post on it when or if he compiles a full list of live bloggers later on.

hatfield girl said...

CC@7.12, Robert McKenzie's writing on working class conservatism:

Angels in Marble: Working Class Conservatives in Urban England

should be required reading for today's party as bedrock sectors of their vote has been lost.


he never bored on about LibDems

Anonymous said...

I agree with Iain, David Dimbleby can stay up all night on Thursday if he wants, but a whole load of results won't be in til Frida.

They will just spend 6 hours speculating and going back and forth to people standing in town halls and leisure centres pushing their earpieces into their brains, and thinking up 40 different ways of saying "the counting hasn't finished yet" while Tony King and Anthony Howard discuss local elections in the 1950s.

Who will do the swinging on 18DS?

Anonymous said...

I'm suggesting that any bloggers covering the elections as they happen use the following technorati tags for their posts:

local-election-2007
local-election-2007-scotland
local-election-2007-england
local-election-2007-wales
local-election-2007-n-ireland

That way we can pick up standard RSS feeds from Technorati, and track posts, overall or for the different countries.

Anonymous said...

The BBC not covering a Labour disaster. How odd, I cannot imagine why they would not give it wall to wall coverage. Maybe for the same reason that they repeated the footage of John Redwood not singing along to Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau but have not yet shown the footage of Gordon Brown picking his nose in the Commons chamber. If it doesn't fit the narrative it won't be shown.

Anonymous said...

Update:

I have received a complaint that Wales is not “local”, and that local elections there are next year, so I have made the changes below:

uk-election-2007
uk-election-2007-scotland
uk-election-2007-england
uk-election-2007-wales
uk-election-2007-n-ireland

I have kept “uk” to distinguish UK elections from other countries, e.g., Canada.

Further comments?

Anonymous said...

Kirklees in West Yorkshire is not doing the count until 10am Friday, so no midnight oil for us.

Anonymous said...

Adam Boulton on Sky was very good during the last election. It was all much more good natured amd humerous than the Beeb and didn't suffer from the equivalent Jeremy Paxman souring the atmosphere. I prefered Sky graphics that were designed to inform, to the Beeb show-off graphix extravaganza that was designed to provide a platform for Peter Snow every 5 minutes - or was it Jeremy Vine. I'm already fed up to the back teeth with the Beeb's coverage. They are hellbent on spoiling all the fun as usual and telling us the result before anyone's even voted.

Anonymous said...

Yes, I'll be live blogging, and a couple of friends of mine will be round the corner at the Arfon count to have their now traditional
laugh at Martin Eaglestone, bless 'im.

BJ said...

Yes all right -- didn't read your original post properly, Iain. Sorry. My guess is the official BBC response would be that most ordinary people would rather watch Cash in the Attic on Friday than Wansbeck going to NOC, or whatever.

None of the other terrestrial channels is doing election programmes on Friday: I suppose the tin hat brigade will argue back that the BBC's duty is to broadcast EXACTLY what they want, ALL the time. Because after all, they pay their licence fee.

There will of course be coverage on the main BBC1 news bulletins. And News 24. And Five Live. And the excellent News website. So never fret, you'll be getting full value for money.