A Right Grilling

Or not.

I didn’t even realise David Cameron was chatting live on Mumsnet until I saw it on Alpha Mummy, about five minutes after the whole thing had ended.  Still, I thought it might be worth going along to see what had been said.  Surely this time something more interesting than biscuit preference (thank you Gordon Brown) may make the headlines.

As of writing this post there are 86 pages of discussion, that’s 851 messages to make a little more sense of it.  But starting at page 86 is of little use.  Those first questions asked date back two days.  The guidelines were simple:

1. One question per member plus a follow-up question if appropriate, ie once you’ve had a response.
2. Keep your question brief
3. Don’t be disappointed if your specific question doesn’t get answered and do try not to keep posting “What about me?”.
4. Do be civil/polite.

Having read through the first ten or so pages of questions, I could see that Mumsnet members had put a lot of thought into the questions they asked.  Sure, there were a few ‘what type of biscuit do you like’ questions, but mostly serious queries expecting serious answers.  The trouble was, it was clear that many people hadn’t thought to read through the questions that had already been asked and by the time I finally found the point where the discussion actually started, I’d already gone through nearly 30 pages of similar questions.

But my issues did not stop there.

It seemed that once the discussion had started a number of those reading in couldn’t manage to stay serious and stick to the rules.  Jibes about Cameron being late, comments like “You seem like a nice bloke. Why on earth are you a Tory?!” and “leave your hair alone and answer the damn questions”.  Sure, they’re fun to laugh at but hardly in the spirit of what the event was about. 

There was also a distinct lack of answers to the questions posed.  I’m sure much of this came down to having to sift through so many similar questions (which perhaps could have been alleviated by allowing advance questions to be posted to subject-specific threads).  There were quite a few references to typing faster (probably not high on a politician’s list) and Cameron dictating to faster-typing Mumsnet staff which perhaps would have been a good idea.  It may have made it slightly less frustrating sifting through the junk peppered between legitimate questions and their answers. 

It was interesting to see what Cameron had to say about some of the issues parents are concerned about and will be considering when voting in the next election, however it was frustrating to see that none of the answers were comprehensive by any means, not really telling us anything that a brief flick through recent newspapers couldn’t have told us.  It’s a shame really, as the discussion could have had the potential to be a useful tool with a little forward planning but in the absence of that we seem to have lost out.

Edited to add: You can read about the BBC’s take on the chat here.