Mayor’s question time in foggy London town
by Jack Thurston
Each month the Mayor of London faces a grilling from the London Assembly, a kind of Mayor’s Question Time. It lasts up to a few hours and there is a webcast of it. But the image quality is spectacularly bad:
I suppose this is what people mean when they talk about ‘faceless officialdom’. It’s only recognisable as Boris Johnson by his trademark shock of blonde hair. And this is not just a one-off error, ALL the GLA webcasts are like this, with the faces blurred out like they used to do when represenatives of Sinn Fein were on the TV. You wouldn’t know it, but here is my representative on the GLA Val Shawcross chairing the Transport Scrutiny Committee on 9 September 2008:
Compare London’s foggy blur with the very clear feed of Prime Minister’s Questions:
The Mayor’s Question Time ought to be a showcase event for democratically holding to account the man who runs the world’s greatest city. You’d think they could set up a half-decent camera, and give its lens a wipe every now and then, wouldn’t you?
Comments
Deary me - why is the video quality so shocking? It’s as though the recording was made back in ‘98 on an old style webcam.
I wonder if they allow you to take your own gear in and stream live? My MacBook could handle the quality better than this.
It would help if the discussion was actually of anything of interest as well.
Apparently he did say some nice things about cycling, but I can’t find them because the playback is in real time and so takes 3 hours to load the entire session. The session of course finished with a motion calling for more to be done to reduce the risk of lorries to cyclists, especially through fitting the latest mirrors to lorries and all HGVs.