My first impression of Cameron’s Q and A session is that it wasn’t quite the exercise in open democracy I was hoping for. He was certainly professional, reasonably well-prepared, although too many of the questions (eg health) were concerned with matters that he has no control over. It, however, had a feeling of a genteel Home Counties Question-Time with the really tricky questions being...perhaps "suppressed" is too hard a word, let’s say "conveniently not asked". I asked folk there a couple of times about composition of the audience, but having experienced a few Belfast rough'n'tumble open "debating" forums in my time, I can safely say that it wasn’t a true cross-section of the local politically aware.
However, he has apparently agreed to answer some slightly more testing questions later posed by Slugger readers; if and when that’s broadcast, I’ll put it up.
Bit disappointed I’ve got to say, maybe my expectations were too high.
I’ll be covering both his and Reg Empey’s speech later to the UUP Confernce, in the meantime you can follow the direct live-blogging from the event from Ignited and Chekov.
2 comments:
Did I see you say that you felt the audience was too Conservative heavy?
We had the best part of 100 members at the UUP Conference but only a dozen or so folk - mainly helpers at Cameron Direct.
The rest were members of the public
Bob Wilson
Bob,
It wasn't me direct who said that, but another blogger who was at the event. As I indicated in my posting, watching it live I got the impression of state-management, in that there were no real contentious questions asked.
Also with the exception of one lady from West Belfast, it felt that everyone asking questions was from the conservative (small c) part of society.
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