Â鶹Éç

I presume Gordon Brown could say he is NOT going to resign that he will put forward a Queens speech that he hopes would be acceptable to the Liberal Dems including PR
It also nearly all the minor party’s who desire PR or Electoral reform then I presume the Brown Government can easily get the reform through in THIS next Queens speech

. The Tories would find it hard to get a vote of no confidence for a long time with ER on the agenda.

Is that another scene that should be considered

B Warwick

Fascinating. While I feel that the coverage of the election, and politics in general, is a bit overwhelming, it shows that you are clearly meeting interest. Well done!

Well it is the best site for it.

HUH@B Warwick?!

Your coverage both online and on TV has been second to none. Thanks for all your work.

Fourteen Local councils in UK have turned to Labour, throwing Lib/Cons packs out. That should tell the leaders what the voters actually think.
Many Lib/Dem voters, didn't vote for a Tory government, they voted to keep the TORIES OUT!!.
Many Lib/Dems I have spoken to say they will take to the streets if their votes have been used to put Tories in power. They are very angry that Clegg is betraying them, selling them down the river to get his moment of glory. They feel that he is not interested in the views of the Country only in getting the Lib/Dems power.

The figures show how much use is now made of Â鶹Éç services other than "straight" tv or radio. Here's hoping the Â鶹Éç Trust and politicians contine to support the online provision in light of obvious financial restraints.Many thanks to those at the Beeb who keep the complex website working.

Great on line coverage. Watching from Seattle the polls closed at 2pm local time, so an earlier night was expected. The whole family glued to the PC at midnight. So refreshing to the whole dull covergae of the US election here, Paxman a legend he leaves no prisoners

The coverage of the Election was excellent as I watched all day in Malaysia on-line.Especially the live Â鶹Éç video of the Television broadcasts in the UK

Why cant you do this all of the time instead of just the 1 minute news as it made me feel at home watching the live news and interviews.

I watch Â鶹Éç world on our TV here but it does not feel like the UK news

Thank you for all the effort by everyone at the Â鶹Éç

I think the Â鶹Éç coverage has been excellent, and hopefully these figures will show some people (such as those who carried out the last strategic review) that the Â鶹Éç website is important and highly popular, and should continue to be a pillar of their public service.

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

Not surprised, you've built a great website for it. Your TV coverage has been second to none, absolutely loving that election studio, would be amazing if Â鶹Éç News used it every now and again!!!!

I just think the Â鶹Éç is fantastic, TV, radio (which I used to be able to hear, I am now Deaf) Websites, makes me proud to be British. DB Glasgow East

One thing that bugs me about all media coverage, and the consequent Lib-Dem outrage, is that Nick Clegg did not say that the Tories should form a government as the highest polling party, although without a conclusive mandate, but that they should be the first to see whether they were 'capable' of forming a government.

The way I see it, as a Lib-Dem supporter (Go David Heath!), is that Nick Clegg has sufficient clout at the moment to choose whatever alliance gives as much to his policy position as is possible, given that compromise will inevitably be necessary on all sides. I wouldn't expect him to shift on his demand for fundamental election reform however.

A new government by Monday? I doubt it.

As someone obliged to work overseas for the week of the election I'd like to say thanks to everyone who worked so hard keeping the Â鶹Éç election site up and running. It was a triumph and was gratefully appreciated!

I would love to see some statistics based on this: what was the most popular constituency to be searched for? How many times did people refresh the Election Live despite the notice in the corner? How often was the site visited outside the UK? What percentage of the users typed their constituency name instead of their postcode, allowing us to see how many people actually knew what their constituency was?

Thanks.

Those stats are great and it's also great that you actually produce them - however it is not all rosy in the garden. We find the iPlayer aggravatingly difficult to use to call up the news.

Often the news just isn't available and we spend minutes searching for it only to give up. Often we find the link, but it's 'not available' and sometimes, the only option is to watch the live news feed even if there's only 5 mins left, especially at 10 o'clock. So you really have to work on that iPlayer interface.

Thanks

The Lib Dems should only deal with the Tories if they get a cast iron guarantee on electoral reform. Otherwise they should deal with Labour if Gordon Brown deigns to leave No.10. Milliband or Johnson could work easily with Clegg to acheive AV+ which came out of the Commission set up by Tony Blair under Roy Jenkins but squashed by Prescott and Brown.
Gordon Brown is beginning to look like Robert Mugabe in denial about the election results.

First many thanks for the website and reporting. Second, I for one will be watching for any attempt to curb the Â鶹Éç's web presence by the new government. There are forces at work (you all know who I mean)who wish to cripple the Beeb so their own for profit stations and sites will succeed.

I think Â鶹Éç is one of the popular site this time.I was almost on online with Â鶹Éç website during the election result declated.Every updates I got within a moment. Its fantastic to keep on Â鶹Éç site to get the world's most recent and vital news.I hope it will flourish day by day.

Thanks to the Â鶹Éç for excellent coverage. I did worry about when David Dimbleby was going to get some sleep though! Why not continue a live news feed at all time via your website? After living in the US for 10 years it was bliss to be able to watch some real news coverage from home.

Thank you so much for your amazing coverage. The best site ever!!!
I was especially impressed with the constant rolling updates, without needing to refresh the page. And congrats to everyone, especially David Dimbleby; how did he manage to anchor a program, with no obvious fatigue, for 12+ hours?? High quality, impartial coverage, synonymous with the Â鶹Éç. A breath of fresh air, here in Ukraine!!

I watched the UK election back home from my office in Kuala Lumpur. it was an exemplary public service and combine with the streamed live UK tv coverage brought the whole night (in the UK) alive.
Whilst the bargaining continues at home and the Party Leaders work out what is happening, it is worth commenting that the way do things in these circumstances, does bring out the best in our Constitution, our political process and politicians. We should all, as Brits, be proud that we can run a general election without systemic fraud, political intimidation, or with the intervention of the military. There are few countries who can say that and we should rejoice and be truly proud that we can and do...whatever the political colour of the next Government

Well done, Â鶹Éç, David Dimbleby, Jeremy Vine, and everyone on the election coverage drama! I logged on all day for video, which was reliable, with only occasional buffering. Your graphics and detailed analysis was splendid and you kept repetition to a minimum. Top notch. This should keep the critics at bay.

The live video coverage of Election Night was an absolute lifeline for me, as I'm in New York and my cable package doesn't include any Â鶹Éç services. The coverage was excellent and the picture quality wasn't bad.

It was a shining exception. Normally, the Â鶹Éç refuses to let IP addresses in the USA watch any video from the iPlayer, or to stream the news channel or Â鶹Éç World, either directly or through Livestation, although more and more people here are dumping cable services and using the net instead. True, only expats would have watched the election coverage, but world news is different. The Â鶹Éç argues copyright restrictions, but this can't apply to rolling news, and it is leaving a huge audience to rivals like France 24 and Al-Jazeera. I think Â鶹Éç management are being very shortsighted about this.

I just want to say how absolutely brilliant your coverage on this election has been - I am currently located in US and was glued to the computer monitor, and sharing the same information as my friends back in UK without a glitch! The quality was fantastic as well - I even got used to Jeremy's Vine make believe world, has he been able to cope with real environments again since then? :-)
Basically this coverage and the the excellent accessibility of it both on tv (in UK) and web deserve awards - let me know where to sign up!

the Â鶹Éç traditionally has the best coverage of the election, David Dimbleby + Jeremy Paxman are definitely a high-power front duo;

It's nice to escape the press spin for a more balanced environment, the streaming video is a particularly nice touch for people living abroad, the website itself is very smart, congratulations Â鶹Éç!

it was a shame that your servers couldnt cope with the traffic levels, especially in the morning between 6 and 9am on 7th may

i hope that for the next big event, you put an extra shilling in the meter! we rely in the bbc website not to crash at times like these

otherwise the site was brill!

It was great to be able to watch the election over the internet from Colorado. I'm an expat and miss having the Â鶹Éç tv channels; Â鶹Éç America just doesn't cut it! Please stream more telly from your website, it is fab!

Absolutely superb stuff. The best coverage of a UK Election by internet - ever.

I think the coverage of the election by the Beeb has been poor. There seems to be a worrying political bias on the part of the Â鶹Éç towards those more left of the political spectrum. Whilst I agree that the 'right wing' press can irritate and annoy, there is no excuse for the Â鶹Éç to be anything than completely impartial and constructive with regards to the political debate that is unfolding. It should not become the political home of the left which seems to be the current ambition of senior Â鶹Éç execs. If it does then it is not fit for purpose.

The numbers would have been even better if certian streaming had been available overseas - oh yes I forgot - you don't allow UK citizens overseas or other citizens out of the UK to have access to Â鶹Éç UK do you - we no longer have that chance thanks to you.

No doubt the criticism you had from thousands complaining about the UK/Overseas choice button did not affect your acceptence of the recent Webby awards or for your commenting about the plaudits here too! You are so brave!

As an ex-pat - and former Â鶹Éç employee (I once directed films for 'Blue Peter')- now living in Serbia, I am very grateful to the Â鶹Éç for making the election coverage available here. The programme, which I followed for most of Thursday night and Friday morning was superb, and thank you also for making the follow-up programmes available as well. Although I hope that Britain soon has a stable government, I shall be very sorry when it is all over as presumably I shall have to be satisfied with the short news bulletins. I shall miss David Dimbleby and the other presenters. Full marks to all of them.

Steve, thanks for some excellent coverage. With the exception of the search feature on the Â鶹Éç website crashing a few times it's been great.

Impressive figures.

One thing I'd like to know: Is there anyway you can see all the live texts from the past months? The Sport site has 'As it happened: XYZ' for past events, but there doesn't seem to be any kind of archive for the live-texts on the election site. Why is this? (would be nice in a year or so for instance to look back to this, or easy to refer to if we have another election in 6 months!)

Thank you for your EXCELLENT work. I started watching at 23:00 Spanish time, went to sleep while listening on my wireless headphones at 02:30, and continued throughout the following morning. It was just like being there...

I hope someone is reading all the messages from expats. I understand that you don't 'netcast' abroad programmes with copyright restrictions, but... Question Time, for example?? If I had a fee-paying alternative I would take it, but if you don't live in the UK, you simply don't have it (as others have said, Â鶹Éç World is great for... 'the World', but we need the more focused, impartial and excellent UK coverage that we don't get elsewhere). Several years ago I even email the Â鶹Éç to ask if I could make a donation --feeling guilty for listening to so much Â鶹Éç Radio and not paying my licence-- and was told that unfortunately the Â鶹Éç is not able to accept it! (lest they're criticised for being biased by foreign money... unlike the Murdoch press, I guess. Come back Dennis Potter!).

Again, thank you to all the professionals who put in the hard work to get this going: bot the Dimblebys and Paxmans (Paxmen?), and all the technical people behind the scenes. THANKS!

OK, I've found them - after a bit of searching, but the layout looks a bit bad on them:

I stayed up all night here in Istanbul, watching the results roll in. It was just like being back in Blighty, except for the rude interruption by the local imam blasting his morning call to prayer through the window!

The video wouldn't stream properly for the first half hour or so, but either the server bandwidth was increased - or enough other people gave up on it - for it to run perfectly after a while.

Anyway, great show by all involved. And I was amazed when I got up yesterday afternoon to see Dimbleby and co still presenting! Did they carry on all the way through the morning too?!

My only gripe now is that I couldn't vote at the Consulate - Why not?

Still, it wouldn't have counted for anything in my old constituency, and hopefully the LibDems will push through PR for next time, then everyone's votes will matter...

It was brilliant thanks - I wasnt up for doing much work yesterday as i was up til 4.30 am, so it was great to be able to keep up with the story on my computer at work - once I'd got there!

I would also like to say many thanks for the brilliant coverage Friday via the website and for letting all us expats feel as if we were there too!

And the newspapers wonder why readership is going down?
News Corp wants to charge for content?
The public only decided at the last moment who to vote for?

I bet the press will blame the Â鶹Éç for this as well along with the financial crisis, scotland not getting to the world cup and the death of Dinah.

Overall a update to the voting system, both a form of PR and how to vote. This is the 21st century after all and a system that gets around fraud but is simple should be found, I do have time on my hands due to the recession so I could help out if needed

Excellent work with the live video webcast, which several friends and I watched in Oz. This is clearly the future of broadcasting and I look forward to seeing more of it.

I would like to thank the Â鶹Éç for doing such a wonderful job on Election day.
I am a Brit living in the USA, but because of the up to the second feed - it was just as if I was at home.

Thanks Â鶹Éç

:-)

Please can you allow the Â鶹Éç iplayer to be accessible from outside the UK. Its really irritating and confusing that I could watch the Politics show during the election but now thingsare back to normal I can't anymore.

I love this website and particularly enjoyed watching the election results. I'm eight time zones away, PST (Pacific Standare Time), so I could see late results while I was still wide awake. In addition, this site has much better worldwide coverage than any site in the U.S. In short, I'm a fan.

Mr Clegg should let all the Lib Dem party members have a vote on who to make a deal with, if anyone. Their first choice was clearly their own party but there will be very strong views as to whom they want to see as PM.
Cameron said before the election he wasn't interested in dealing with the Lib Dems, so, at the very least the price for his getting into no 10 should be PR, no compromise on that at all.

PR would remove 'tactical' voting which is something that many people feel they have no choice in doing when faced with an incumbant 'safe' seat. A parliament of national MPs would remove the fear of having the party whip removed over contentious local issues, and might speed up decision making. Party offices could feed local information/concerns to and from parliament.

Since it's only a few short weeks since the Â鶹Éç powers that be said that they were intending to scale down the website, perhaps they should now reconsider ?

There have been lots of positive comment on the Â鶹Éç election coverage, much of which I would agree with, but two negative points need a mention also:
The delays in digital communication has always been a problem, but it seemed so much worse on Thursday. This was particularly evident when Jeremy Paxman was trying to carry out remote interviews and we often ended up with the interviewer and guest speaking over each other or with neither party talking at all.
Then there's the graphics presented by Jeremy Vine. It seems that the more clever they get, the less clear they are in presenting information. Why for example show an electoral map in bird's eye with Jeremy Vine walking around it (or rather crouching around it), so that it uses only about a third of the screen and is therefore almost impossible to see.

The Election graphics get better every time. Really enjoyed watching the whole thing in Australia (while losing no sleep). Well done to David Dimbleby who managed to stay awake through the whole thing. I did not realise how much I've missed all the news team. Please let us have more live broadcasts of Â鶹Éç News online.

Look at the Election facts again.

Con LibDem Lab

Scotland 2% 19% 69%

Wales 28% 8% 65%

North England 23% 7% 69%

London 38% 10% 52%



Midlands 61% 2% 37%

South South E West 76% 16% 6%




In a modern democracy how could Cameron become British Prime minister when he is not wanted in Scotland, Wales, North England and London ? Is this democratic? not bodering on tribal politics?

Since PR was only offered by the LibDems at this election,neither the Conservatives or Labour had this in their manifesto ,but the LibDems polled fewer seats than 2005 election it appears that people have not voted for PR,if they had voted for it then the LibDems would have had a lot more seats.
I dont think that Nick Clegg is in a strong position on this.
Magic70

Great coverage, though Mr Dimbleby did sound a bit worse for wear come the following morning!

One thing on the website - did anynone else get this? Go to the Results page at in IE8 and click on the "Latest Declarations" button on the left. The big grey Â鶹Éç footer bar on the page jumps up to just below the latest results window. Seems OK in other browsers though.

#30

Feel free to cite some examples to back up your claim of bias. I watched from 10pm - 6am and saw nothing but impartial reporting.

Dear Sir/Madam
Goodafternoon.I have only one query. Listening to the Â鶹Éç news journalists,They keep referring to Mr Gordon Brown as unelected
Prime Minister.Surely he was elected by the labour party.Going
back in history are we going to say Mr Stanley Baldwin Mr Winston
Churchill Mr Macmillan and Mr John Major when they took the office
of Prime Ministers were not elected.They were elected by their
different parties origially but still before general elections
were considered to have been elected.to Primeministership.
Please believe me I think the news from the Â鶹Éç is excellent.
Being 78years of age is it my recollection of history which is wrong?
Thank you

I would like to know why the Â鶹Éç News is so biased in favour of the Labour Party and against the Conservatives, isn't it the job of a News Channel to give both sides. Why weren't there any conversatives to speak about the possibilty of the Lib/Lab talks. We had Lord Adonis (Labour), Lord Steele (Lib Dem) and Alistair Campbell (Labour). Why wasn't the question asked that the people of England voted overwhemingly for Tory why would we now want to be governed by SNP, Plaid Cymru & DUP.

I agree with Magic70 if we had all wanted PR we would have voted Lib Dem which obviously didn't happen as they polled less seats this time than the last General Election.

We may have a voice on the Â鶹Éç website, but the nation has had its democracy stripped by the politicians. We are being held to ransom by a party that lost seats in the election. PR should only come as a result of a referendum or do we let minorirty parties manipulate the rules to suit their ends?
If this is what a hung parliament has to offer then I say let us back to the polls as soon as possible.

Fascinating Elections:

We get a chance to see how each leader react in a crisis situation, who grab the best opportunity and who fight for the people. All are saying - "The people will choose". Are we really?
There were so many people who could not vote. Most countries runs after their voters and here we ended up with people who could not vote, they wanted! but couldn't....

New times, new rules so why not to call for re elections? Why not to allow the people to vote again? and for those who really wanted to vote and couldn't, allow them to take part. Let the people choose.

i think it one big con voting should all be taken again as there were loads of people out there that didnt vote because polling station closed due to the long queues so why should gordon brown step downwhen it not been a fair vote

Too many correspondents and comentators still represent the situation in terms more akin to the X Factor than politics. The point is we elect individuals in our system, they are identified with parties if theywish to be but are free to change parties any time they feel like it.

What we dont have is a Presidential system or a Prime Minister system, we simply dont elect our Prime Ministers as such. In their eagerness to see Gordon Brown go, he is depicted as hanging on or being a loser. Well his Party lost its majority but more than 50% of the electorate voted Labour or Liberal so he is perfectly entitled to hold talks on a possible coalition. The fact that he is resigning as leader of the party is a reflection of his acceptance that he did not lead the party to victory.

Don't forget that Labour got 356 seats with only 35% of the vote in 2005. The voting system is known to favour Labour, in particular because the Scots have too many seats. The West Lothian question has to be addressed. It would be morally unacceptable to form a government which complete ignores the wishes of the English. There is no reason the LibDems cannot win on the current system - they don't get more seats because they are the second choice of most electors. I live in a LibDem held seat and we have proved that the current system works. But we have to have fairer boundaries, so that all the parties need the same percentage to win as Labour! This is obviously not the case currently.

First of all, congratulations on getting a record-breaking traffic figures. Secondly, I completely agree with comment number 57 above. The Â鶹Éç News team and Political journalists are very much biased in favouring a coalition/agreement between Conservatives and LibDem. I wouldn't be surprised if there will be increasing number of complaints to Ofcom and other Broadcasting regulators regarding this issue.

A years wages for doing a Day's work

Superlative coverage by the Â鶹Éç. Well done! But my daily schedule is in chaos...............PLEASE let it come to an end. I'm exhausted.Never, since Cromwell, has politics in this country been so exciting.

William

Some very nice coverage. But now the Tories are in power, to redress the balance of having had Nick Robinson (an ex head of the young Conservatives) as chief political correspondent, will you be having a politician equally biased toward Labour as correspondent?

How many guesses do I need. Bullingdon Boys rule.

i am glad to have my say on your site? but do feel you you were biased against labour on your sites and news? i think if you added up your views? you would find an unfair advantage towards the tories? i said a few uncomplementory thins about the tories? which were not allowed (no swearing or anything like that) but some of the vitrol of the tories against mr brown were allowed? its bad enough with murdock media? the papers? retailers? etc against labour? but we exspect better from bbc? but i think over the year's the bbc as always been inclined to support the tories? though they would not admit it? understandable if you look at the hierachy that run it? dissapionted pensioner? you should be none political?

re comment no. 48
Now that the Con-Dem coalition is in power, thanks in great part to Mr. Murdoch the Australian-born, American media czar and his far right press, of course the Â鶹Éç will be forced to scale down the website. It doesn't fit in with Murdoch's business plan of media domination. Strings will be pulled and favours called in.

I am a new user!!! I have a question: 'What happens to events if Something dreadful happens to Dave? Will nick take over? If yes for how long will the Tories accept it?

30. BobbyBlue5 wrote:

I think the coverage of the election by the Beeb has been poor. There seems to be a worrying political bias on the part of the Â鶹Éç towards those more left of the political spectrum.

There's no doubt about that. The Â鶹Éç has consistently favoured Labour over Conservatives in the past, but a curious thing happened this time around. I think the Â鶹Éç finally began to realise, shortly before the election, that labour was definitely going to get hammered and therefore started to put its considerable weight behind the Lib Dems, as a lefty alternative, in contravention, of course, of its obligation to produce impartial election coverage. It was enthusiastically promoting the Lib Dems as possibly coming second, or even first.

The Â鶹Éç probably always was predominantly left wing and probably always will be. It has no right whatsoever to take a license fee from people who don't share its bias.

There's no doubt that the election coverage on the Â鶹Éç News has been outstanding - congratulations to all concerned. Now some requests to make it even better - and to continue this excellent coverage through into everyday news:
- Please could you continue the 'Latest' feed about particular subjects, as you had on the Election 2010 page - i.e. not the normal 'ticker' you have on the News home page, but a column within which timed updates can be seen - potentially with links to full stories. This was very useful, particularly when the Cabinet was being announced to see where we were - I'm missing it now that only more junior ministerial posts are being announced.
- Please could you provide the full clips of things like statements and press conferences. For instance, I missed the William Hague statement about the offer made to the LibDems regarding voting reform and your clip only covered the statement and appeared to miss out the questions and answers which followed.
- Please could you also have a link on, say, your Politics home page to a list of your political correspondents including perhaps their biographies and, more importantly, further links to their blogs or Twitter pages. For instance, I've been very interested during the post election period following Laura Keunsberg's (spelling?) contributions on Â鶹Éç News and would like to be able to follow this when she's not on screen.
- Please could you also give access to the data underlying the wonderful goegraphic information and charts. For example, a simple download of the current and previous constituency results so that those of us who want to can perform our own analysis on this data. I appreciate this will have taken a lot of work to collate and that you will have considerable IPR in the charts themselves. However, the underlying data should be something that we (as the electorate) all own and surely comes under your public service charter.
Thanks and regards,