Reid ducks questions on released foreign prisoners

I've just been watching ITV1's new Sunday Edition programme.  The programme format appeared pretty conventional overall but it was worth watching for a very suspicious moment involving Home Secretary John Reid.

Reid was being quizzed by presenter Andrew Rawnsley on a Sunday Telegraph report that the team of police officers charged with tracking down the non-deported foreign prisoners had been disbanded.  Mr Rawnsley was pressing Mr Reid on whether the most serious presenters had been locked up.  Just as the question was being put to Mr Reid in the most direct of ways Mr Reid looked like he was going to answer and then said 'I think we've just been cut off'.  Andrew Rawnsley and viewers could clearly still hear Mr Reid and Mr Reid stroked his nose twice - often a tell-tale sign of deceit.  I've just spoken to Iain Dale about this and he says that Lord Falconer and Geoff Hoon recently suggested that the line had broken up during difficult interviews.

What's your guess?  Is the reliability of technology deteriorating or are we led by the most evasive, deceitful government in history?

I wish I knew how to put the clip on YouTube...

Comments

[michael]

If you recorded the clip then it would be quite easy to put it on youtube....

[Monty]

He probably thought that locking up serious presenters was a Godsend :) Joking aside, you could see immediately that he was going to avoid the issue. It is just very sad that these Labour interviewees do not even have the wit to duck questions in a more imaginative way.

[Jack Stone]

It was obvious that the Home Secretary was trying to pull a fast one.His inability to even not answer the question in a more imaginative way shows why the man is not fit to be in the cabinet let alone be Prime Minister which many say is his ambition.

[Denis Cooper]

Why am I totally unsurprised by this revelation?

[TomTom]

Does it really matter ?

God loves the English ! Otherwise it would not have survived the incompetents that have run it over the years

[Paul Kennedy]

Haven't we all pretended we couldn't hear somebody on the other end of the phone line when we wanted to get rid of them........"hello, hello, you might be able to hear me but I can't hear you, hello, hello,I still can't hear you, I'm going to put the phone down now". ;)

[Tony Hannon]

Your article is very misleading I'm afraid. After a break - John Reid then went on to answer the question twice. Of the 70 serious offenders - 63 have been captured. 7 (Police believe) are either missing, left the country or are dead.

No matter, thinks you - you've appealed to people's suspicions.

I understand the obvious bias on the site but if the depth of that bias is either as ill informed or as petty as this article, I advise you re-examine what are you trying to prove and, moreover, who you are trying to prove it to? If the point was to reassure Monty, Jack, Dennis et al that the Government is deceitful, congratulations, mission accomplished.

If you're happy to be misleading in the way you do it, with due respect, I have to say - I find that pretty deceitful.

[Editor]

I do not think I was in any way misleading. His little trick - if that is what it was - bought time, Tony, to give answers that may not yet withstand scrutiny.

[Denis Cooper]

My comment related to the Sunday Telegraph article, not the TV interview.

[Bishop Hill]

What the interviewer should have done is called Reid an incompetent half-wit and a sheep worrier. If he got a reaction he would have known for sure that Reid was faking it.

[Editor]

That would have been hilarious Bishop Hill. I hope some TV interviewer reads your comment and tries it out on an unsuspecting Labourlite.

[malcolm]

Tony Hannon you're surely not trying to suggest that the Government isn't deceitful are you?

[Tony Hannon]

To follow up, editor, even if one accepts that he played a trick to gain time, you never mentioned in your article that he did answer. You’ve accused someone of not being forthcoming while withholding a point because it mitigated your argument.

I have a very healthy scepticism about media interviews but even I doubt as blatant a trick as the one you speculate on. Even if he did rifle through papers or speak to an adviser – the crew with the camera would’ve reported it like a shot.

Whether he did or didn’t – you’ve guessed at something on (admittedly what in my opinion is pretty thin ground) and others have seized on it as if it were something solid, the majority of whom, I suspect, have negative feelings towards the Government anyway.

Malcolm, this is a wider point and I’m not trying to be offensive but it’s hard to say what’s more foolish, believing that this (or any) Government (or any organisation with responsibility) is 100% purely, bluntly honest compared with the belief that they really should be. Such honesty (in my view) is a little like the chicken and egg. How can we expect politicians of any persuasion and those with responsibility to be more forthcoming when they are dealing with scepticism like mine and distortion like the editor’s? People will be more honest if the public and the media are only interested in the facts, grounded in realistic expectation at a higher level of debate without the spin. I think the editor here spun something which is clearly only speculation to attack the Government spokesman. I say, by all means question, argue and criticise EVERYONE with responsibility - but do it based on rational fact.

[Editor]

Fair comment Tony: I probably should have mentioned that after a three minutes commercial break Mr Reid did attempt to answer but that is hardly the point. My main observation was the way Labour politicians keep benefiting from very convenient technical glitches. Or perhaps I'm getting too cynical...

[Rick Currie]

http://www.itv.com/page.asp?partid=6478

Maybe it will appear on the programme's website, on their video section.

[Jack Bauer]

"Mr Rawnsley was pressing Mr Reid on whether the most serious presenters had been locked up."

If the home secretary is going to start locking up presenters, can we start with leftoid shills like Paxman and the entire Radio 4 Today staff?