The First Election Debate in the UK. When is our turn?

I’m pleased to have this great opportunity to witness the first election debate in the UK’s political history and also the general election that takes place every 5 years.

The debate was between Labour, Conservative & Liberal Democrat party leaders.

Some screen shots captured from the webcast (all images from http://www.itv.com/electiondebate/):

Alastair Stewart who chaired the first debate

Audiences in the debate

interactive/dynamic ways of the first debate. i.e. facebook, live chat, twitter update, live response from audience on the leader’s performance

Debate between three leaders, from left to right: Nick Clegg (Lib Dem), David Cameron (Conservative) & Gordon Brown (Labour). Noted the line graph. It’s live response from audience, whether they like, dislike or neutral on the leader’s view on a particular issue. This is impressive!

I gave humble opinion on facebook chat session as well. 

Issues arose in the debate were:-

1. Immigration
2. national security
3. credibility of MPs
4. Education
5. Finance, strategies to boost economy, reduce waste, save money
6. Arm forces benefits, nuclear weapon policy
7. health care systems
8. policy for the elderly

From the comments, I found that people prefer an honest leader that voice out people needs. Most British predicted they will be a hung government this time, and more than 50% said they will change their mind (on the party/leader they support) after this debate—(no wonder our leader reluctant to have a debate during election).

The poll showed that Nick Clegg (Lib Dem) outperform another two opponents.

My opinion:The first public debate is a good start to promote good politic, and allow people to know they leaders’ opinion on crucial issues. It’s quite disappointing that climate change/environmental issues as well as science policy were not in their priority in this debate. This might be due to short duration (90 min) for so many issues,

Although the leaders looked a bit nervous in the first 10/20 mins, but overall they are performing well, with good speaking skills and confident. Last but not least, they are ‘quite gentleman’ haha

I hope there will be a debate in our country in the next general election. :-p

By the way, I set up a poll on "Do you favour to have an election debate in Malaysia?". Please vote at

http://limchoonkiat-ck.blogspot.com/p/poll.html

More information about the debate, i.e. programme, format etc can visit the following link:
http://www.itv.com/utils/cached/common/ProgrammeFormat2.pdf

You can watch the closing statement of the debate on youtube (below) or at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAkwsFn-fv0