Every politician or expert starts their response with “That’s great question…. so here is some irrelevant twaddle to placate you”. It’s obviously a technique but its so patronising. Bojo was so condescending when he went straight to Walter of West Wallop last/every night as though he was going to say “come with me to the pub when I open them up”. I’m desperate for a pint but there are limits! ……. I’ve got my breathing under control again – just.

Anyway suggestions for scrap question I can send in please.

there must be a forum for this already somewhere. Some of the rubbish even respected journalists have come up with over the last year has been staggering.

there must be a forum for this already somewhere.

Think we’re already on it, if you check my posting history for the last 17 years….

I can see the trouble being that if, as a journalist, you comment that the PM is talking utter bullshit, you’ll never get invited back to a press conference. You need _every_ journalist to stop putting up with the bullshit and bluster and to start calling out the lies and mistruths.

That will never happen because some journalists are eep in the pockets of the current government and, to some extent, all media sources have agendas.

Anyone that actually asks a proper question never gets it aired as they don’t want to answer it in public

I just long for someone to ask a crap question

How many beans make 5?

I can see the trouble being that if, as a journalist, you comment that the PM is talking utter bullshit, you’ll never get invited back to a press conference. You need _every_ journalist to stop putting up with the bullshit and bluster and to start calling out the lies and mistruths.

This. A journalist friend has said before that it’s virtually impossible to ask the questions that we all want asking as if she did there’s no way she would get a Press Pass again for that person/party. The only journalists who can get away with asking the difficult questions are the Pacman’s etc with their own show that can get away with it. All of the others have to tread carefully, most just pretend to ask the awkward questions but usually tow the line. It is their job in the line after all.

Any question we like, because the answer will be: So, going forward, you know, road map, traffic lights, blah, £***** blah you blathering c***** get your own life sorted before you start organising mine you jumped up f#*#*#* fat necked busy bodies.
Sorry op I have nothing constructive to add.

I love ” we will learn lessons from this moving forward ” Which means there has been a massive balls up but nobody is accountable

Here is Christopher Hitches to give you a refreshing fix

Think of a press conference as a job interview. Politicians take a job interview every time they talk to anybody publicly. In job interviews, you do not want to be caught lying and you must always appear polite and respectful, but you aim to steer the conversation towards the points that you want to emphasize. The job of an interviewer isn’t to ask trick questions and to trap people in lies, but to try to steer the discussion onto substantive issues to see whether the candidate is suitable for the position. An interviewer who is rude or hostile is not acting in a professional manner. Interviewing is much more difficult than most people realize, and most people are actually very poor at doing it, people tend to hire their “reflection” – candidates who can portray themselves as holding the same values and opinions as the interviewer. This is why companies end up with so many useless employees.

So, politicians are basically professional job applicants with years of experience (and deliberate practice) at politely deflecting awkward questions and steering the discussion to their own talking points. They also have professional staff who research important issues and prepare stock answers for obvious questions. Any politician who doesn’t master this process is very quickly not a politician (Sarah Palin, for example). Interviewers are mostly much less skilled and less well prepared because they have to interview a wide range of different people and don’t have time and resources to exhaustively research for each interview (unless they’re a superstar working for a large news organization that has teams of researchers).

Politicians therefore give vague answers to questions because they know that’s how to keep their jobs, just like any intelligent job applicant knows to give the vaguest answer possible that isn’t an obvious dodge. It works, that’s what voters reward, that’s why politicians do it.

Donald Trump broke this process because he recognized that he had a solid core of supporters who responded positively to bad behaviour. It worked in the short term, but in the long term, it turned moderate voters against him and he will go down in the record books as the most unpopular and least successful president in modern history. Problem is, it took several years for journalists to adapt to his behaviour and learn how to deal with him.

You need _every_ journalist to stop putting up with the bullshit and bluster and to start calling out the lies and mistruths.

Yep. And when questions are not answered at all.

It needs to be unacceptable for politicians to dodge questions, let alone lie. Though I accept that statistics can be interpreted in different ways. But fact checking answers needs to become the default response to politicians bollocks.

Go for the De La Soul approach from 3 feet high and rising.

How many fibres are intertwined in a shredded wheat biscuit?

So, politicians are basically professional job applicants with years of experience (and deliberate practice) at politely deflecting awkward questions and steering the discussion to their own talking points.

That’s generous. many of the current crop – “Johnson” Johnson being the obvious example – simply tell lies in response to questions.

That’s generous. many of the current crop – “Johnson” Johnson being the obvious example – simply tell lies in response to questions.

They are generally extremely careful to not tell outright lies. They trot out very carefully worded statements that sound like a bold factual claim, but actually avoid the issue. For example, “I have never paid for sex” actually means, “I gave gifts, free travel, and paid for expensive hotels for the women I had sex with, but I didn’t ever give them money directly.” It’s deliberately misleading but gives plausible deniability the that speaker wasn’t telling the truth.

Dogs love to stick their heads out of car windows, so why do they hate it when you blow at their noses?

Whys orange jam called marmalade?

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/sep/10/kay-burley-a-bit-dim-labour-chris-bryant

Interviewers used to flatter people and then let then talk. But politicians learnt a lot from this interview

Summed up at about 7:00 in.

Interviewers used to flatter people and then let then talk. But politicians learnt a lot from this interview

Yep, that is a masterpiece.