Bird’s technique

I have just witnessed the second “live” interview on BBC Scotland with Alistair Darling following the previous evening’s interview with Alex Salmond.

Sally Magnusson conducted a respectful and fairly incisive interview with Alistair Darling although, personally, I feel she could have delved more deeply. In contrast, on the previous evening Jackie Bird conducted an interview with the First Minister in which she appeared to show utter contempt towards the person and the office by her whole, sloppy body language which at times veered towards the utterly insulting.

She appeared to seek to look down on the First Minister and his responses.

I am sure the First Minister is well used to such treatment in the hurly-burly of politics, but for a public servant of an information body to appear to sink to trying to demean the elected leader of a country suggests someone who should not 
be ­engaged in carrying out 
reporting.

Advice I received many years ago from an old Cambridge headmaster in a British protectorate remains with me: “No matter how much you may despise/dislike the local person in authority he/she should always be accorded Sir/Madam by virtue of their position and post.”

Jackie Bird would be well minded to follow that advice of an elderly Englishman.

Beryl Mowat

Laurencekirk

Kincardineshire