Always Worth Saying’s Question Time Review

"You have entertained me," Dominic Lawson - BBC 'Across the Board' presenter.

Question Time 29th October 2020

Panel:

Chris Philp (Conservative)
Nick Thomas-Symonds (Labour)
Marie van der Zyl (Board of Deputies of British Jews)
Anthony Scaramucci (Former Trump Advisor)
Bonnie Greer OBE (Writer)

Venue: Lincoln

This week, Question Time bids farewell to black history month, during which only two of the 26 panellists have been black (Donna Kinnaird and tonight’s Bonnie Greer). A timely reminder of how two-faced and hypocritical the BBC are, particularly on the issue of race.

Last week, in another example of the failings of the BBC, Bruce announced that one of tonight’s panellists would be uber establishment figure and grandson of Churchill, Rupert Soames, CEO of public service company Serco. Fake news, he’s not on.

The first question was about the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s excoriating report into antisemitism in the Labour Party. Chris Phelps (Conservative) blamed Kier Sarmer who served under Corbyn for four years. Chris had a plan. Kier Starmer must apologise and kick comrade Corbyn out of the party.

Grammar school boy Chris is Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Goldman Sachs old boy Rishi Sunak). As usual, Chris graduated from Oxford. A management consultant and businessman, Philp was Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2003. In 2015, he was elected MP for Croydonistan South.

Nick Thomas-Symonds (Labour) acknowledged a day of shame for the Labour Party, the subtext being a useful day of shame administered to his far-left opponents in Labour’s never-ending civil war. Nick was talking from his local library, rows and rows of books behind him. Bruce tried to catch him out. There was an antisemitism definition that Nick had spoken against, having not accepted the attached examples. Subsequently, it had been adopted. Mr Thomas-Symonds took this as a misrepresentation and it had been up to the NEC anyway, not himself.

Nicklaus Symons-Thomas is Shadow Home Secretary. Previously he was a barrister, tutor and lecturer at Oxford colleges. He himself graduated from Oxford in Politics, Philosophy and Economics alongside Chancellor (and Goldman Sachs old boy) Rishi Sunak and LibDem MP Anneliese Dodds (who appears on Spitting Image as herself). Before Puffins sneer at the self-referencing worldwide globalist conspiracist bubble that these elitists live in, bear the following in mind. At Oxford, one of Nick’s students was Puffin pinup girl Kayley McEnany who spent a year at St Edmund’s Hall while studying with Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. Being a shape-shifting lizard has its perks.

Bonnie Greer (Writer) wanted to talk about trauma. She’d been so traumatised that, of all the panellists, she was the one who’d forgotten her poppy. She wanted to talk about slavery, the trauma of which had been handed down through the generations. Jewish people were holding trauma too. Bonnie said that the Holocaust was the greatest crime of the 20th century, leaving a nice little gap in the 19th century to be filled with something else. I wonder what?

According to her memoir, Bonnie Greer (Officer of the Order of the British Empire), grew up on the South Side of Chicago, having been born in Chicago, Illinois, in November 1948. She is two days younger than Prince Charles. Her mother, fascinated by the British Royal Family and the fairy tale romance between Princess Elizabeth and Prince Phillip, noted the ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ headlines in the American newspapers and named her firstborn, ‘Bonnie’.

Ms Greer is obsessed with race. Her memoir begins 80,000 years ago with a lengthy exploration of her maternal mitochondrial DNA haplogroup L*3 which she follows around Africa. It is as interesting as it sounds.

Elsewhere in Illinois, is a township called after your humble author’s unusual Debatable Lands family name. Regular readers will recall that my ancestors were pioneers in the fledgeling United States, at the end of the 17th century, where they created employment opportunities for black people in the tobacco industry. Could myself and Bonnie be related? Might we share a few haplogroups? In keeping with the values of the brand, in the November 2016 presidential election, the good people of my namesake voted 75% Trump. Meanwhile those tenderfoots out east, in another such named place in Kentucky, managed only a 70% Trump vote. They have an opportunity to redeem themselves next Tuesday.

As a good omen, one of Bonnie’s previous appearances on Question Time, also from Lincolnshire, was in late September 2016. The rest is history.

In that memoir, Bonnie confesses that she experiences ‘synaesthesia’,

“that gift/curse – part of the so-called ‘primitive brain’, in the utero state – that can cause an individual to see sound”

Maybe we aren’t related after all. A young Bonnie studied theatre in Chicago and New York, visiting Britain for the Edinburgh Festival in 1986 and deciding to stay. Her father had previously been over here as a US serviceman en route to D-Day. Bonnie became a British citizen in 1997. Although not a member of the Labour Party, she has tweeted that she became a British citizen in order to be able to vote Labour.

Ms Greer is four foot eleven tall and married to David Hutchins, a solicitor, legal translator and Remain fanatic. They live in a London Soho street where the average flat is priced at £1.1 million. Ms Greer is employed as a board meeting attendee. Her appointments include the British Museum, Royal Opera House, London Film School and the Shaw society. She is the chancellor of Kingston University.

Marie van der Zyl thought it a dreadful day. “Not imaginable in this day and age.” She blamed the leadership of the Labour Party and “the office”. Sat in the library, Nick looked crestfallen as, in the interests of tolerance, the rest of them took it in turns to give him a good kicking. There was a cultural problem in the Labour Party. Does it begin with the letter “I”? Marie didn’t say, just “a culture”.

Ms van der Zyl is an employment lawyer and the President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. In 2018 the Jerusalem Post ranked Marie the 40th most influential Jew. One supposes that places her about the middle of the Jewish Championship. Bear in mind, dear Puffins, that this weekend when all eyes are on George Soros and the Rothchilds, the unfortunate Ms van Der Zyl may well be away at Lionel Blair on a cold, wet late October afternoon.

Her sister in law, Nikki van der Zyl, dubs James Bond films into German. One hesitates to intervene in a catfight, but it appears that the artistes all fell out with each other over who should sound like what and Ms van Der Zyl has been banned from OO7 events. Best of order please, ladies.

Jane the audience member was in her own office, bothered by squeaky feedback, she seemed to want more than an expulsion. The next audience member said the Tories had been accused of racism against the Muslim faith. Sighs of relief all round. Bruce turned on the Tories. Where’s the ‘Islamophobia ‘ report? Chris has appointed lots of ethnic minorities. Bonnie said that Chris sounded like the folks that were de-segregating the neighbourhood (like she’d de-poppied her jacket). It wasn’t really good enough, she wailed.

Marie jumped to the defence of the Tories by distracting attention away from them, talking about the bullying that people like Lousie Elleman and Luciana Burger had suffered within the Labour Party.

Anthony Scaramucci (Former Trump advisor), also known as “The Mouch”, grasped on the idea of ‘tokenism’. If they think you’re a racist then you’re a racist, he stated. No need for evidence, obviously. But the cabinet appointments weren’t tokenistic, said Chris. The wrong thing to say. “It doesn’t matter that you got a black and brown cabinet, it doesn’t matter, it’s what you do, it don’t matter, that’s what I’m trying to say to you,” retorted Bonnie, as if monologuing while giving Chris a flogging in the woodshed.

“Find a poppy, show your poppy, get your poppy on your bosom, girl. Show some respect to us, sister,” that’s what I’m saying to Bonnie Greer.

Question two was about The Donald. In next Tuesday’s election, are the Americans voting for the least worst candidate?

The Mouch said that in America you get two choices. This time was different, one candidate was trying to destroy the system. He was slow to tell us who. He quoted Mayor Koch. I still wasn’t sure whose side he was on. He said he was a Republican and then mentioned Joe Biden. He listed lots of things that Obama had done, such as separating illegal immigrant families at the border. Anthony told us that he has Liberal friends. So did Cyril Smith, Clement Freud and Jeremy Thorpe, careful where you go with this Mouch. Mouch said he was working-class. Aspirational working class in the middle class, he said. He struggled to define his class as well as who he was going to vote for.

Anthony Scaramucci was born into a middle-class family in New York state, only about 20 miles from Wall Street. After high school, he attended Tufts University (Economics) and then Harvard Law School (Jurisprudence) before joining Goldman Sachs. After seven years off and on with Goldman’s, he zigzagged his way around the investment houses (including Leman Brothers), and even set some up by himself. In 2011 he was Ernst and Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year.

The ‘Mouch’ came to broader prominence as Donald Trump’s White House communications director, albeit for just eleven days. An unwise New Yorker magazine interview, in which he criticised colleagues, saw him sacked. The following Presidential twittermagedon promoted Scaramucci to the mainstream media’s Trump Derangement Syndrome ‘go-to’.

Bonnie kept on saying, ‘we’. As a British citizen, shouldn’t she be saying ‘them’? She gave Anthony some respect but then blamed him for legitimizing The Donald. Bonnie thanked God for getting Joe elected. That’ll be corrupt, sleepy, creepy Joe Biden, if not anointed by God at least anointed by Bonnie Greer. Mouch and Bonnie had a psychobabble love-in. If it had been a synaesthesian sound that could be seen, it would have been a pile of vomit.

Marie was concerned. In terms of the Jewish community, 75% would vote Democrat. That’s what you get for moving the embassy to Jerusalem and normalising relations between Israel and many Arab countries. Marie wouldn’t commit, she wanted to say “Trump!” but didn’t. In the interests of equality, Bonnie said lots of things that the rest of us can’t. In a confrontation worthy of a bad-tempered Bond premiere in Baden-Baden after a bad week in the sound booth, Bonnie expressed her displeasure. These peace deals ignored Palestine. Oh dear. You could hear a pin drop. “To leave the Palestinians out of this is a con” (Are you listening Jeremy Corbyn?). She asked Marie to explain it. Trying to get her to condemn Trump, Bonnie mentioned Qanon and Charlottesville’s “Jews will not replace us” chant. “Err Err Err,” replied Marie.

Bruce came to the rescue. Biden was going to stop Brexit via the Good Friday agreement. Bonnie agreed with her. Joe Biden is Irish, she said.

The next question was about covid.

There is already a lockdown in Wales. When it was announced, Nick had been getting a book out, which explains why he was broadcasting from the library. Bruce interrupted, she could hear Nick but not see him. The town council’s library service computer was “having a circuit breaker”, she sneered from the studio in London. Bruce wanted the exact opposite of what the Tories did, no matter what. This week she wanted a German-style lockdown. Chris disagreed. A lady in the audience had been shielding for 8 months because of kidney dialysis. Routine operations were being stopped, depending upon which tier you were in. Her argument was confused. Having complained about being locked down she wanted a full lockdown.

The next speaker wanted the opposite, a Swedish style, more open arrangement. Bonnie sympathised, she has been separated from her husband for many months (every cloud, Mr Greer), but concluded that Sweden was not better off. Bonnie set off about America again. Why does she stay here? The Mouch wanted to not lock down the economy. He waved his magic wand and turned the USA and UK into South Korea. “What’s driving the Donald?” asked Bruce. “His personality,” replied the Mouch. The Donald is insecure and does the exact opposite of what he’s told.

Marie mentioned that the Jewish community had suffered heavily. She quoted Lady Doreen Lawrence’s report and that of Public Health England. Effective, quick testing, track and trace. She stuck up for the US, there’s a big population there, that’s why there’s a lot of cases. At least the whole world is cooperating on a vaccine, she reminded us.

La Bruce forwarned us of one of next week’s panellists, Rose McGowan.

Hahahahahhahahahaha, deep breath, hahahahahahahahaha. And Bruce thinks the drug-addled nut is a “Holywood actress”, hahahahahahahahha. Oh my. On a more serious note, where was the question about today’s letter “I” terrorist murders in France? Shhhhhhhh, listen to what Rose McGowan has to say instead.
 

© Always Worth Saying 2020
 

The Goodnight Vienna Audio file