Lol, what a bunch of crybabies.

Sunny,

Welcome back. Missed the pointlessly partisan posts.

I would have expected someone to challenge Vince Cable myself though. As in being fair?

Still, most interesting thing about the article was the detached paragraph at the bottom. Alistair Darling showing himself in a good light again – anyone know the odds on him as next leader of Labour?

2 – I also noticed that in Sunny’s absence the Tory-bashing was much less obvious.

“Tories whined Cable got too much TV applause”

That about characterises the Conservatives.

It matters not what was said and the respective substantive policy proposals, but how many seconds of applause each speaker attracted.

pointlesstly partisan? I think it explains the Tories quite well.

I especially liked this apposite cartoon comment of Peter Brookes on the TV debate:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/photo_galleries/article5845863.ece?slideshowPopup=true&articleId=5845863&nSlide=2&sectionName=PhotoGalleries

And remember that the Murdoch press has a policy of being friendly to the Conservatives and advocating a change of government.

Sunny,

Fair enough – they have a tendency to complain about things they see as unfair. Now please explain why this is a problem?

And the complaints were not about the applause, but about the lack of challenge to Mr Cable’s comments remember – the complainants (possibly wrongly) felt that this was allowing the audience to percieve Mr Cable as correct.

If Osborne wanted Cable challenged he should have done it himself?

And if you’re going to whine about how much applause your opponents get – then frankly it says a lot about a politician’s character.

I’m merely pointing it out. People can make up their own minds from it.

The people have spoken. The bastards.

Sums up the Tory attitude to the debate quite nicely methinks.

I do sort of agree about the referee thing, actually. It’s stupid to blame it on the programme though, it’s just the result of being the third party candidate. The other two will spend their time attacking their main rival, while he gets to do his ‘plague on both your houses’ skit.

Cable got the most applause because

1 – He has convinced a lot of people that he knows what he’s talking about. Economics is complicated and most people are stupid; Cable does ‘economics lite for morons’ very well.

2 – Cable is a populist through and through. He went there purely for the loudest applause. He is a wonderful self publicist.

3 – Cable came from an ‘insurgency’ perspective (except when, slightly bizarrely, he got all chummy with Darling) and people root for the outsider.

4 – Most people dislike Osborne (the person, rather than what he actually said or stands for), and they are apathetic or unenthused by Darling. In that company, Cable can hardly fail to do well, can he?

@11: “Most people dislike Osborne (the person, rather than what he actually said or stands for), and they are apathetic or unenthused by Darling. In that company, Cable can hardly fail to do well, can he?”

But in reports of various polls, the pecking order almost invariably is: Cable (by a comfortable margin), Darling, Osborne.

The consensus among economists hereabouts – and probably elsewhere according to most signs – is that Osborne repeatedly demonstrates that he doesn’t really understand what he is on about. What he does is to regurgitate briefs and Conservative blogging, much of which is also a slice short of a sandwich.

Recall that Cable was a highly Cambridge educated economist before becoming chief economist at Shell so it’s not surprising that he knows his professional stuff, can make polished professional presentations and can respond to hostile questioning – I’ve had some experience with ex-Shell corporate think-tankers and you wouldn’t want to mess with them.

If Conservatives had any sense, they would ditch Osborne as he’s an electoral liability.

Well, what do you think how does the election affect the debate between politicians? Twitter seems to be aflame after any new campaigns are launched. We created Politwecal for comparing party opinions side by side from Twitter – take a look at it at http://www.politwecal.com

Vince Cable makes it up as he goes – do not believe he quoted Liberal Party policy (maybe he’s still in the SDP).

Given the Liberals are not going to be in office, he may as well get cheered – he’s got his own column in the Mail -so why not go for his own TV programme on Sky or ITV and make some real money to add to his Shell pension and his parliamentary pension.

The debate was quiet about the prospect of the Conservatives in government raising VAT to 20% from 17.5% to avoid the proposed increase in National Insurance charges from April 2011 for those earning more than £20,000 a year.

Could it be that Cable looks the most talented.