More trouble with polls

One more thing about this morning's Sunday Morning Live....

The one  regularly enjoyable thing about previous series of the programme was the weekly poll - which almost always 'went the wrong way' for the BBC, very amusingly. 

Just one example from last year. Sunday Morning Live asked the question, "Is immigration good for Britain?" The result , announced at the end of the show, was 11% saying 'yes' and 89% saying 'no'. One of the guests nearly fainted.

And it kept on happening: 

• "Does the English Defence League represent a view that needs to be heard?", asked SML. 95% replied 'Yes', 5% replied 'No'.
•  "Do Muslim veils deepen divisions?", asked SML. 95% replied 'Yes', 5% replied 'No'.
• "Should Britain take in Syrian refugees?", asked SML. 13%  said 'Yes', 87% said 'No'.

No wonder they've dropped this feature now!

They've replaced it instead with a man showing us a selection of email, Twitter and Facebook comments after every main section.

On the "Should we be ashamed of British history?" question, Tommy Sandhu (the man in question) read out four of them:

• Certainly proud of English history. Magna Carta for instance.
• We should be proud of what this little island has done. We didn't get everything right, but no country ever does.
• It's hard to be proud of our British history when the media focuses on our war victories rather than science and technology breakthroughs. 
• Let's try being proud of our country for a change. Mistakes have been made but we cannot apologise for the sins of our fathers.

This was how those comments were framed; 

Sian Williams: Let's get an update from Tommy about being British and British history. Tommy?

Tommy Sandhu: Thanks Sian, yes, there is a real sense that people want to feel proud but maybe they're struggling to feel that way.