Question Time 5th November 2020
Panel:
Oliver Dowden (Conservative)
David Davis (Conservative)
Lia Nandy (Labour)
Rose McGowan (Cultural Resetter)
Hanna Fry (Mathematician and TV Presenter)
Simon Wolfson (Businessman)
Jan (No idea)
Venue: Lewisham
At the end of last week’s QT Review you may recall your humble reviewer referring to one of this week’s guests, Rose McGowan, as being a ‘drug-addled nut.’ An anxious week followed, sat beside the phone, waiting for her people to sue. Not only did they not call, neither did the drug-addled nuts, possibly furious at being compared to Ms McGowan. *Donald Trump voice*, “A lot of strange things are happening.”
Also in last week’s Question Time, Fiona Bruce made a false claim that David Davis (Conservative) would be on this week’s programme. During Tuesday night’s fractious US Presidential Election engagements General Flynn, Trump’s former national Security Advisor, promoted us all to ‘Digital Soldiers’, ordered us to stand steady and reminded us that ‘MainStream media has done another disservice, so trust your own research and each other.’ At this point, we should take a moment to reflect upon a fallen warrior, David Icke, banned by Twitter on Tuesday night. Since the issue is ‘false claims’ and since it’s always a shame to waste one’s research after La Bruce has lied about the panel, I must tell you this.
David Davis always claims to have been raised in a single-parent family on a South London council estate. As usual with MPs biographies, this is dishonest. By the time he lived in London, his mother had married. His step-father worked at Battersea Power Station. The council estate that they lived on was the Aboyne Estate which is really quite pleasant.
Being close to Wimbledon Park, an Aboyne Estate three-bedroom former council house sells for about £600,000. Davis went to grammar school in nearby Tooting, attended Warwick University and London Business School, subsequently rising to be a senior executive at Tate and Lyle.
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La Bruce welcomed us all to Lewisham in South London. She went to school around the corner, she beamed. She omitted to say that she was at an exclusive public school, Haberdashers Askes, while her parents were making their pennies in the colonies.
The first questioner asked, more votes for Trump, does his message resonate with American people?
Jan interrupted. Who is she? She wasn’t on the list of guests. Trump’s had a wide impact, she said. Yes, we knew that, Jan. Is she a professor of the bleeding obvious at Harvard?
Attention turned to Lisa Nandy (Labour). Her party have a straightforward approach to general elections, they lose them all. No need for re-counts or culture wars, it is 15 years since labour won an election, Litha has never been in government.
Lisa Nandy is MP for Wigan and Shadow Foreign Secretary. Lisa has never had a job outside of politics and political advocacy. She is the daughter of a Marxist intellectual. One of her grandfathers was a Liberal MP and a member of the House of Lords. Her husband, Andrew Collis, is a public relations consultant whose clients include Allianz Global Risks, BT Global and Thomson Reuters.
Over to Rose McGowan (Cultural Resetter), who told us that not thinking bad words and not thinking bad things didn’t mean that you would actually achieve anything. There was an inactivity within the Democrat movement. When she’d been a Democrat, they told her that they always meant to do great things but the Republicans wouldn’t let them. Rose seemed to be pitching for a civil war to resolve what was going on, from her settee in Mexico.
Rosa Arianna McGowan was born in Florence, Italy, in 1973. Her father and mother, an artist and writer respectively, were members of The Children of Christ, a notorious child abuse cult. Adherents were forced into the streets to ‘flirty fish’ for new recruits.
In a 1999 Howard Stern interview, to promote her film ‘Jawbreaker’, a twenty-five year old Ms McGowan spoke of her childhood. At the age of nine, the disappearance of cult children into slavery rings led to her being sent to America to live with her grandmother.
Rose described herself to Stern as being the ugly duckling in a family of beautiful and talented siblings. Bounced between her separated parents, the insecurities mounted. Her father refused to take her photograph after her thirteenth birthday because he thought she was ugly. Aged 15, Rose left home and, in order to be respected and valued as a young woman and find a stable background, went to Hollywood and made films for Harvey Weinstein.
Welcome to planet Rose.
In the early 90s, she developed an eating disorder, was in a relationship with Brett Cantor (until he was murdered) and moved in with Marilyn Manson. In the interview with Stein, she expressed her sadness at the absence from her life of the little things that the rest of us of take for granted.
I don’t know if anyone can relate to this, but it makes you a little sad like when you go to a mall and you see like a mom and a daughter shopping….
She recalled a birthday letter that her father sent her. It included the line, “Just remember Rose, it is better to be chased and alone, than soiled and familiar.” Further estranged from her family, when she became engaged to Manson she didn’t have anyone to tell. In 1997, Rose was seriously sexually assaulted by Harvey Weinstein, eventually receiving a $100,000 financial settlement from him.
In the modern-day, McGowan is a member of her own political party, the People’s Party. Her recent electoral debate response was banned by Facebook. Her tweets are full of hatred for the Democrats and include references to E*stein, the C L I N T O N S and ‘Joe Touch Them All’.
In her pre-presidential election address, she stated that the USA’s two-party system is a cult, like the one she lived in when she was small. She said that her vote was to burn America down. Did the BBC realise all of this when they booked her?
Rose broadcasts from her settee in Mexico. Last year she made $15,000, the proceeds from an appearance on a US cookery show and various $100 a time soundbite interviews. On a brighter note, she has had better luck, and made better choices, with her plastic surgeon. Aged 47, she looks great.
Simon Wolfston (Businessman) didn’t know what people in America were thinking but he was amazed that Trump had done well. He suggested that the political class in the US were disconnected from what the public was thinking. Donald Trump was authentic, whereas the political classes were too hesitant and only gave half-answers.
There was a tour of the audience, they all sounded rather posh. Perhaps they didn’t need to be told that La Bruce went to Haberdashers Askes?
Hannah Fry (Mathematician and Broadcaster) was surprised that people had voted for Trump too. Why? How detached are these media people? I bet Hannah was surprised when we voted for Brexit. Not so brainy after all is she? Hannah blamed the evil white man. Somebody tell her that the Latinos, Hispanics and Blacks are doing it for Trump. Older white people have moved towards Biden. Why are people like Hannah labelled as being clever? They live in a bubble and are clueless.
Ms Fry was state-educated, albeit in Ware in Hertfordshire. She attended University College London, attaining a PhD and becoming an Associate Professor in the Mathematics of Cities, at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis. All of which the Daily Mail translates to “Flame Haired Brain Box.”
Hannah is often on the BBC in science and mathematics programmes such as ‘Climate Change by Numbers’ and ‘The Joy of Data’. She has written books. If you’d like to analyse her yourself, she can be spatially located by contacting the JLA speakers agency where she is a grade B, £5,000 to £10,000, conference speaker.
More posh brainy sounding people talked from the audience.
Lisa told a total lie about the number of presidents who haven’t served a second term. She’s thick.
Oliver Dowden (Conservative) thought all of this was great, it was democracy. Bruce, righty, mentioned fraud and corruption. She could have added folks with machine guns surrounding the count. Marvellous, thought Oliver, Remembrance Day, the constitution.
Oliver is present Culture Secretary and a former Deputy Chief of Staff to David Cameron. Oliver has been the MP for Hertsmere since 2015 (selected ahead of the then unknown Rishi Sunak). At the time of his selection, an unread inferior political website’s overweight proprietor, while tucking into a spad sandwich in Greggs, congratulated Mr Dowden on finally finding a seat and described him thus,
“the ultimate political class lobbyist turned government spinner.”
As Fatty hints, Oliver has never had a job. After leaving Cambridge (Trinity, Law), he joined the Conservative Research Department and did 18 months at PR company Hill & Knowlton before returning to the Conservatives as a special advisor and David Cameron’s Deputy Chief of Staff. Oliver’s wife, Blythe, is a school teacher, mother to two, and seems quite pleasant. Oliver was previously the chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for British Jews.
According to the member’s list of interests, within days of being elected to parliament in 2015, Dowden had found time to take on another two jobs. He became a £1,500 a month (for 8 to 10 hours work) advisor to the Association of Independent Professionals and the Self Employed. He also registered as a £2,500 a month advisor to Caxton Europe Asset Management Ltd, again for 8-10 hours work.
Jan said that Trump had delivered on every promise. The Mexicans haven’t paid for that wall, observed Bruce. Jan had a laugh and ignored her. Who is Jan? I feel like a teller in Altoona getting a giant box of ballots dumped on him the day after the count’s finished (at gunpoint). Help! “Trump knows what he’s doing,” according to Jan. Phew.
Botox? Plastic surgery? Jan looked as though she had been in a fire.
Rose told us America is an oligarchy, run by corporations, not a democracy. She mentioned claims of sexual assault against Jo Biden. “Allegedly” chimed La Bruce.
All these posh people in the audience. One of them mentioned the Anti-Trump. Arriving on horseback, through thunder clouds, from Scranton Pennsylvania, fire pouring from his fingertips? Who needs David Icke?
Jan had had so much lifted that she was thinner than Nancy Regan.
Bruce moved on. All involved seemed baffled that Trump had done so well, as they did with the Brexit vote and with Boris’s 80 majority. Need we say it again? They are elitists living in a bubble, they have no idea. Interestingly, QT seems to be going even further in that direction. More panellists from abroad, the rest in London, no audience as such, a few posh people on Skype. Surprise, surprise QT is disappearing even further up its own, as they say in America, “butt”.
Az asked the next question, it was about lockdown, which he referred to as a pseudo-lockdown.
Mr Howden didn’t want the NHS to be overwhelmed. Hannah thought people were struggling to adhere to the basics. The measures were very authoritarian. She wanted people to be supported through self-isolation.
Simon hoped the lockdown wouldn’t be extended after 2nd December. As a retailer, December is very important, he wanted to be open by then. It would be a dagger in the heart of some non-essential retail if a lockdown continued well into December. He wanted the NHS to be ramped up to prepare for a third wave at the end of the second lockdown. It was a war.
Simon Wolfson is the Chief Executive Officer of clothes retailer Next and a £200,000 Conservative Party donor turned Conservative peer. Properly titled Baron Wolfson of Aspley Guise, in the interests of equality Simon was educarted privately at Radley public school which sits within its own 800 acre country estate, after which he went to Cambridge. He is the son of former Next chairman David Wolfson, Baron Wolfson of Sunningdale, also a Conservative life peer. In the interests of equality of opportunity, within his father’s business Simon enjoyed a meteoric and well deserved rise, becoming a director by the age of 30 and chief executive aged 33.
Simon’s great uncle founded Great Universal Stores, whose brands included Argos, Burberry and various catalogue retailers. His Lordship is sound on Brexit but unhinged on immigration, claiming that we need more immigration not less. According to the FT, in the year to January 2020, Simon ‘earned’ £2.8 million pounds from Next, more than double his previous year’s remuneration.
Simon’s wife is Eleanor Shawcross, a non-executive director at the Department of Work and Pensions. Previously, Eleanor has been a consultant to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Ukrainian businessman Sir Leonard Blavatnik’s business school and covid crisis advisors Boston Consultancy Group.
Eleanor is the granddaughter of Lord Shawcross, a prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. She was educated at St Paul’s and Oxford where she read History. She has been an advisor to George Osborne, when he was chancellor of the exchequer, and Boris Johnson when Mayor of London.
Lisa thought Lockdown Two was an opportunity to ramp up Track and Trace, self-isolation and to improve the communications. She tried to score some silly party political points which might explain why Labour always lose those elections. These people never learn.
Rose thought it was obvious that the hard dates were boxing with a ghost. I understood what she meant. Do I have a problem? Her dog climbed onto the settee and looked out of the window. Looking down on the trees? Does she live in a treehouse? Her dog is usually a yappy nuisance which gets in the way when members of the reviewing community are researching Rose’s YouTube videos. This time, it was on its best behaviour.
The last question was about a no-deal Brexit.
Simon said it was all about ports being able to function properly. Compared to coronavirus, Brexit was a doddle. He saw this as an opportunity to lower tariffs, especially on goods that we have no production of. Next had been ‘Brexit ready’ for a year.
Lisa droned on. She is clueless, knows nothing about business, just repeats somebody else’s political attack lines and isn’t worth listening to. No wonder people vote for Trump.
Dowden wasn’t afraid of no deal. We need the freedom to set our own policies.
“You promised an oven-ready Brexit deal but forgot to put the oven on.” Said Nandy. Groan. Why do they think this kind of crap makes any connection at all with the public? I despair.
Hannah was frustrated but offered no solution.
It looks like a lot of posturing, turn on the oven and check on your food, said Rose. If Simon from Next can do it, why can’t the government? She rightly asked. Rose had broken her wrist yesterday, she held up the cast.
In conclusion, ‘the strange things that are happening’ are, one, Rose doesn’t give an F, and two, drug-addled nuts (and your humble author) can’t help but kinda start to like her.
© Always Worth Saying 2020
The Goodnight Vienna Audio file
