{"id":544727,"date":"2010-04-27T11:45:23","date_gmt":"2010-04-27T15:45:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oxfam.org.uk\/applications\/blogs\/pressoffice\/?p=12440"},"modified":"2010-04-27T11:45:23","modified_gmt":"2010-04-27T15:45:23","slug":"the-leaders%e2%80%99-international-debate-not-very-international","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/544727","title":{"rendered":"The leaders\u2019 international debate: Not very international!"},"content":{"rendered":"

With one debate remaining for our potential Prime Ministers, Katy Wright looks at last week’s questions and what’s on the bill for Thursday night.<\/em><\/p>\n

The next leaders’ debate on Sky takes place in two days. I find the entertainment factor of the debates is significantly increased by following the Twitter comments at the same time. While the tweets are no analytical commentary they are eagle-eyed in their appraisal of style! Last week, surges would occur any time there was a bit of drama or comedy in the debate – Gordon Brown’s “get real Nick” over Trident, Nick Clegg’s flattery of a female audience member, or another anecdote from David Cameron about who he’d met.<\/p>\n

My feeling about the international debate as a whole was that it did not really focus on the international very much! We heard about Afghanistan but nothing about the people there; we heard about the banks, but nothing about the potential of a Robin Hood Tax; and we heard nothing about international development or aid. Then the debate very quickly moved on to expenses, pensions and immigration. Our parliamentary officer Jonathan Tench (@jonnytench) was busy tweeting for Oxfam – he summed it up well with his tweet, “‘uffffff’ on behalf of all our Oxfam followers who wanted to see the parties grilled on global poverty”.<\/p>\n

We did however get a question on climate, which was great news. The leaders were asked what action they had taken in their own lives to reduce their emissions – a fair question, but to my mind it doesn’t acknowledge that these men are vying to become a world leader. Of course we should expect a personal lifestyle commitment from them – that goes without saying. But what we really need to know is what necessary domestic and international decisions they are going to make to tackle climate change. When you’re Prime Minister you can do more than insulate your loft – you can insulate everyone’s loft, provide money to help shield the world’s poorest people from the effects of climate change, lead negotiations for a global climate deal, and invest in a domestic green economy.<\/p>\n

So, one debate left! And it’s going to be on the economy. I think it’s a pretty safe bet that a question on the banks will come up – and when it does, I’ll be waiting for an answer on the Robin Hood Tax. That will really be something to tweet.<\/p>\n

Oxfam and the 2010 General Election<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With one debate remaining for our potential Prime Ministers, Katy Wright looks at last week’s questions and what’s on the bill for Thursday night. The next leaders’ debate on Sky takes place in two days. I find the entertainment factor of the debates is significantly increased by following the Twitter comments at the same time. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4543,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-544727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4543"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544727\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}