Tag Archives: evan davis

NewsHound

LibLink: Kavya Kaushik: Britain’s immigration debate has taken a turn for the toxic

By NewsHound | Wed 22nd April 2015 - 1:33 pm

Ealing Southall Liberal Democrat candidate Kavya Kaushik has been writing for the New Statesman about the effect of the sort of rhetoric we’re hearing in the immigration debate.

She was annoyed by Evan Davis’ comments about Nick Clegg’s family background during his leader’s interview last week and recognised Nick’s obvious irritation:

The choice to fixate upon Clegg’s multicultural upbringing, suggesting it to be out of touch with “British” people, made for uncomfortable viewing. For centuries immigrants have been an integral part of the British working class. Within the context of the current immigration climate, it feels like further demonisation of BME people.

Davis’s intention was unlikely to be intentional racial discomfort, but Clegg’s furious reaction mirrored that of many children of migrants. Our Britishness is consistently questioned despite having lived in the UK for our entire lives. Casual racism is on the rise, particularly within politics. On the doorstep a BME canvasser is increasingly likely to hear “I don’t want your people here”, and worse. These experiences lead to racial sensitivity and passing comments questioning multiculturalism vs Britishness can be interpreted as a personal attack when coupled with modern attitudes to race in Britain.

Hang on! What was that?

On the doorstep a BME canvasser is increasingly likely to hear “I don’t want your people here”, and worse. 

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Posted in LibLink | Also tagged , , and | 16 Comments
Caron Lindsay

Nick Clegg’s BBC1 interview – Evan Davis disappoints with constant references to Clegg’s multi-national background

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 13th April 2015 - 11:23 pm

I’m normally a big fan of the BBC’s Evan Davis. He knows how to make people squirm and we knew that he would do a thorough job on Nick Clegg tonight. And he did. All the difficult questions were in there, on tuition fees. that broken promises broadcast, was the coalition worth it when we’ve lost so much support. In fact, the tone was set right from the word go with “How does it feel to have gone from hero to zero?” which Nick took with his customary good grace.

No complaints about those tough policy questions. There was something else, though, which disappointed me. Davis showed a clip of Clegg speaking Dutch during the 2012 elections. Then he started to ask a series of questions around his family background,  whether it was the fact that his mother was Dutch and his father from Russian heritage that made him look to other countries for different ways of doing things. He’d found a quote from pre 2010 where Nick had talked about how, as a child in the 70s, he felt that the Netherlands were doing things much better than we were. Surely everybody looks to other countries to see what we could learn from them? Just look at the most popular dishes on every menu in the country for evidence of that. I’ve always admired many Scandinavian ways of managing their public services and the way they’ve enforced the International Code on the Marketing of Breast Milk Substitutes for a start.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 50 Comments
Sara Bedford

Conservatives’ use of crime statistics ‘selective and mendacious’

By Sara Bedford | Wed 3rd February 2010 - 12:10 pm

This morning’s Today programme provided another of those ‘mustn’t miss’ moments, as presenter Evan Davis  took the Conservatives’ Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling to task over the party’s misleading use of crime statistics.

Last week Mark Easton, the BBC’s Home Affairs editor, had asked ‘Are the Tories being honest with their claims on violent crime’:

Last week, David Cameron told me that one reason he could justify the phrase “broken society” was because of “significant” increases in violent crime, notably gun and knife crime in Britain.  When I challenged him to produce the evidence, his party press office sent the BBC a list of statistics. It emerges that the only way the Conservative leader can back up his claims is to ignore the klaxon warning attached to the statistics following changes in the way police record violent incidents in England and Wales.

Tory Central Office e-mailed this claim to me: ‘Violent crime has increased from 615,985 offences in 1998-9 to 1,034,972 in 2008-9, an increase of 68 per cent’. The document cited, however, includes this massive caveat: ‘The National Crime Recording standard was introduced in April 2002. Figures before and after that date are not directly comparable’. And yet, that is exactly what Mr Cameron appears to do.

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Posted in News | Also tagged , , , , , , and | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

Causes of the credit crunch: if you’re going to try to blame David Bowie, you really should also blame fifteenth century knights

By Mark Pack | Wed 14th January 2009 - 11:31 pm

David Bowie: the case for the prosecution

The idea that the credit crunch can in part be blamed on David Bowie is the, um…, slightly unusual thought thrown in the air by Evan Davis ahead of the broadcast of his TV documentary on the City. As Evan Davis put it in The Mirror:

Even when it comes to finances Bowie leads the way – and back in 1997 he did something called “securitisation”.

He thought, “I have a lot of money coming in over the next 10 years from my back catalogue, but I’d rather have the cash now and not have

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged , , and | 5 Comments
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