Curtain call

+Careful film editing of the BBC’s news coverage of the Tory Party conference gave the impression of a full to capacity conference hall, even showing a clip of stewards trying to get people into an already rammed venue. There were no panning shots of the audience as a whole, but only a series of close-ups and low angle shots. But it was clear that there was no balcony filled with supporters—just black spaces where curtains had been drawn. The Labour Party only drew the curtains on one and a bit of the balconies in the Brighton Centre. Hurray! We’re winning!
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+A comment on another BBC programme about Blair and Brown referencing the Clinton victory in 1992 annoyed me—that he had won a ‘landslide’ in the US presidential election. Not quite. He won a landslide in the electoral college, but not in the popular vote. Little attention is given to the fact that third party candidate, millionaire Ross Perot took 19% of the vote—likely most damaging the support for Republican incumbent H.W. Bush. In fairness, Clinton did just manage to win 0.1% more of the vote than his chief rivals in 1996 but without the Perot factor in 1992 there may never have been a President Clinton, and the Democrats’ famous ‘modernising’ influence on New Labour may have been somewhat curtailed.