Sitting in silence

There are times you run across stories and wonder if they've been made up, or if it's just the editorial slant, bit like the BBC never bigging the Tories up. However, whichever way I look at this I have to wonder if the political leaders have lost their marbles or their balls.

News of the World.

GORDON Brown's live TV showdown with David Cameron could go ahead with the studio audience sitting in SILENCE.

The two leaders are demanding a BAN on questions from the floor for fear of being ambushed by rival party members.

And fed-up telly chiefs may be forced to agree to the dumb idea - after weeks of wrangling over which voters will be let in to watch the historic General Elect-sh-h-h-ion face-off.

It would mean the audience being denied the chance to quiz the men who are running for power. Or even applaud when they make a good point.

The PM wants the audience packed with almost twice as many Labour supporters as Tories, to reflect his Commons majority.

But furious Mr Cameron is insisting there should be more of his followers as he is well ahead in the polls.

Broadcasters fear the wrangling could derail Britain's first TV leaders' debate.

Now setting aside the NotW tendency for aggravated molehill aggrandising, this story does not reflect well on either of the two leaders, they come across as a pair of prima donnas , I mean afraid that a plant in the audience might throw an awkward question? Wanting more of your supporters in the audience because it reflects the commons? No applause for making a good point?
The whole point of this "debate" was to allow the leaders to have their say and face questions from their employers (that would be you and I in theory) instead what we have is a set of calculated fear driven motivations to avoid looking bad whilst making your opponent look bad/unrepresentative. They seem to forget that this is a PUBLIC debate, not a Parliamentary point scoring exercise like Prime Ministers questions. The public want to be involved, that was the whole point, we can ask awkward questions, we don't tolerate waffle, we can come out with get to the point and stop avoiding the issue. We can even call them a liar to their face and force them to defend themselves unprotected by parliamentary protocol.

I honestly don't know why they agreed to this, bearing in mind that they don't like giving a straight answer to any question, it's not like they ever wanted to face us just in case we show them up for the petty scheming liars they most assuredly are.