A quick review of tonights Week in Politics which finished airing half an hour ago – more tomorrow maybe – and check out Irish Election for other comment.

A few of us thought the first Week in Politics special with Frank Luntz was interesting. The second programme was found to be full of political plants. The third one aired tonight.

There is a lot more to the background to this edition of the programme than meets the eye..I laughed at the pictures of the people from Red C productions on the streets of Roscommon or wherever recruiting participants to take part in a focus group. That is not really how it happened for some of those in the audience.

The first thing that struck me was the way in which we were all led to believe that immigration was a problem – in that one might deduce from what we saw that the majority of the audience thought that it was a negative issue because we were shown them raising the hands to the fact the way it was going was wrong. However that was a very misleading question and portrayal of the answer.

The programme’s producers and it’s reviewers allowed an audience member’s urban myth to be again fertilised about how immigrants get hand outs over and above the rest of the population – well maybe it’s useful to see yet again racism in operation but when are we going to hear that immigrants don’t get handouts over and above Irish workers and those working pay tax like the indigenous population. (Amazing how someone owning up to being illegal herself whilst in the US was pointing out she paid tax too like some sort of badge of honour – what does she think the Polish women staffing her local Aldi or the nurse from India in her local hospital are doing with their wages? Sucking them tax free out of the ether??

When are we going to reflect on the Irish backhander/on the sly tax evasion that huge numbers of people participate in? Those who pay someone to do the odd job and hope to avoid the VAT etc.

Anyway I digress….there could have been members of the audience that thought that government policies/society in general was unfair to immigrants and that something needed to be done about that. However the way in which the matter was dealt with on the programme we all now think that immigration and the huge influx of immigrants is big issue in rural Ireland and that politicians should talk about it.

The rest of the programme actually told us nothing new from the previous ones – people like Bertie, lots of them have met him, they find Enda boring, they hate Michael McDowell and they laugh in all the right places at Pat Rabitte because they can understand what he says.

The programme frankly was boring Frank – how much did RTE pay for him to come over again? And where are the Democrat strategists and analysts in the campaign coverage line up?

Luntz has previously described his work involving focus groups as

a direct, sensitive, and interactive method of assessing public opinion, accomplishing what telephone studies cannot. It approaches attitudes and priorities tangentially by allowing respondents to talk freely and to choose descriptive categories significant to them (rather than to the pollster, or even to the client).

He kept putting words into peoples mouths, it was hardly sensitive or interactive. He cued up the FF/Lab option as the final option as if the programme makers had it decided already and told the audience this is what they were saying and like Pavlov’s dogs after 4 and half hours in studio most of them agreed.