To be fair UKIP have confirmed they are not making any complaint about the makeup of the audience - aside from Farage's comments - and the BBC pointed out they did not select the audience.

But even if they had, given the majority of the panel were left-wing it probably made more sense to have a left-wing audience. That is the voters those parties are trying to appeal to?

Given the nature of the panel Miliband did really well. He was always going to be attacked as both the establishment candidate and as being too right wing or too left wing from the fringe parties. He handled himself well. The Labour party will be very happy today.

Edited by OknotOK (17 Apr 2015 11.22am)

To be fair UKIP have confirmed they are not making any complaint about the makeup of the audience - aside from Farage's comments - and the BBC pointed out they did not select the audience.

But even if they had, given the majority of the panel were left-wing it probably made more sense to have a left-wing audience. That is the voters those parties are trying to appeal to?

Given the nature of the panel Miliband did really well. He was always going to be attacked as both the establishment candidate and as being too right wing or too left wing from the fringe parties. He handled himself well. The Labour party will be very happy today.

Edited by OknotOK (17 Apr 2015 11.22am)

You what?

It's a public broadcaster with a statutory duty to be impartial, so the questions should be, er, impartial.

BBC studio audiences are almost always left wing anyway. Every week the audience on 'Any Questions' is like a horde of Gussets. Anything vaguely leftist populist always gets a massive cheer.

I accept the BBC should be impartial. That doesn't mean the audience has to be.

But my point was more that if practically the point of the debates is to help determine people how they should vote,very few people would have been watching those debates who were "right wing" (or if they were then their decision wouldn't have really been altered by the debates among primarily left wing leaders). So maybe the questions should be more left-wing as it will help shape the opinion of those voting more?

The BBC didn't select the audience (although presumably they may have had an influence on it) so there is no reason to suggest they weren't impartial.

Just heard Bennett on the radio. She reckons Britain has a "historic moral duty" to reduce carbon emissions because of the industrial revolution and "most of the carbon already up there came from us."

These people are dangerous.

Fair point. The audience should (if it *should* be anything at all) a reasonable reflection of society. The BBC is doing its job if it just randomly selects from the applicants. What they tend to do is pick a mixture. Often it's the mad lefties who are just louder than the rest (empty vessels make the most noise).

Same applies to the questions they select. I'm often a bit suspicious about the questions they choose (I'm basing all my comments on 'Any Questions') because sometimes they seem deliberately chosen to appeal to lefties. But they're just the ones I notice. The ones which appeal to right-wingers I probably just think are sensible!