People losing their damn minds #26

This could go to anyone involved in this horrible idea to have a US style pre-election TV debate amongst the UK party leaders. Why Brown would agree to such nonsense is beyond me. My objection to these are two-fold:

1) We don't live in a goddamn presidential system. When I cast my vote, I'm not voting for a Prime Minister but an MP. Parliament elects the Prime Minister.

2) Even in a presidential system, they're pretty awful. I can't remember seeing an American one that didn't make me feel like retching. There was Clinton feeling people's pain, which was fairly nauseating. But the outstanding one for me was the Bush vs Gore one. Hanging chads and accusations of corruption in Florida notwithstanding, I think I could make a case for this losing Gore the election. I read somewhere that Naomi Wolf advised him to get in touch with his 'inner sexual panther' or something equally bizarre. Dunno if this is true but the net result of whatever advice he received was that he looked completely barking. Democracy is not well served by these puke-fests, in my view.

Anyway, the damn mind certificate in this case is to be awarded to Alex Salmond. Given that he spends most of his time looking like a malevolent host on some really fucked up colosseum TV game show, I find it completely unsurprising that he's apparently miffed about being left out of this latest televisual foray into the darker regions of plebian populism:

"[T]he SNP has threatened to seek to block the screening in Scotland of any debate which did not include Scottish First Minister Mr Salmond.

Mr Swinney told BBC Scotland's Politics show the SNP was the party of government at Holyrood, adding that the UK debates would discuss issues of importance to Scotland, such as the future of nuclear submarines on the Clyde.

Mr Swinney said the SNP was prepared to be flexible, saying of the current arrangements: "It deprives the voters in Scotland of hearing the breadth of political choice that quite clearly exists here in Scotland about the input of Scotland into the UK General Election."

Um, Alex Salmond doesn't lead a British party and doesn't aspire to be the Prime Minister of Britain so the basis on which he should be invited on this frightening 'debate' would be fairly non-existent, I would have thought. Yet we are told the SNP are seriously considering legal action? Lunatics. The notion that we are here in Scotland deprived of some information we didn't already know is absurd. The SNP's preferred choice for Prime Minister is David Cameron. Everyone knows this. Actually, scrub the previous objection: if this horrible debate has to go ahead, I'd quite like to watch Salmond come on and try to pretend this isn't so.