Question Time 4th March 2021
Panel:
Kwasi Kwarteng (Conservative)
Lisa Nandy (Labour)
Andy Palmer (Car industry executive)
Theo Paphitis (Businessman)
Miatta Fahnbulleh (Economist)
Venue: London
Puffin, as your humble author begins his modest review, you find him clutching his lucky onions while thinking of Princess Michael of Kent. All will become clear.
Your reviewer is over-excited in anticipation of this coming weekend’s contentious Oprah meets Meghan TV special, as are the BBC and the rest of the (soon to be labelled as institutionally racist) London media bubble. I have come out in a rash. I cannot sleep. If I were a cartoon character, a little Meghan would be sitting on one of my shoulders whispering into one ear, while a little Queen sat on the opposite, whispering into the other, contradicting everything Meghan was saying.
The BBC are also afflicted. By a remarkable coincidence, just days before they are hit by Meghan’s institutional, unconscious, structural racism terror weapon (the ‘M’ bomb?) BBC QT have chosen a representative cross section of foreign panellists. Four are tinged. A Mr Palmer creeps on because he accidentally opened the invitation meant for his Japanese wife. Chair, Ms Bruce, hangs on to her position by a whisker as she was born in Singapore.
Speaking of abroad, I trust Meghan will mention Princess Michael of Kent’s blackamoor brooch during Sunday’s California race card bloodbath. If so, I’ll be excused to tell Puffins about the Princess’s father, SS cavalry officer Gunther Von Reibnitz, whose Berlin Document Centre file is reputed to be four and a half inches thick. No racism in there!
And that interview better had be controversial. I’m sitting up until four o’clock in the morning to watch it. If La Markle and La Winfrey enjoy the Santa Barbara terrace sunshine while talking about handbags and shoes for two hours, those lucky onions are going on the compost heap.
***
Government delay has meant that we’ve had to borrow more money than necessary, was the jist of the first question. Kwasi Kwarteng (Conservative) said that the vaccine campaign was a great success. Bruce tried to change the subject back to the subject by telling us that the economy in South Korea had shrunk less than ours had. “So what?” Kwasi might as well have said. “Cultural differences,” was what he actually said.
Alfred Akwasi Addo ‘Kwasi’ Kwarteng is one of the Waltham Forest Kwarteng’s and MP for Spelthorne in Surrey. If you’ve read in the newspapers of gangs of young black men capable of being brain surgeons, architects or nuclear physicists, one of them might just be Kwasi. Privately educated at £42,000 a year Eton College, he not only attended Trinity College, Cambridge, but represented them on University Challenge. Mr Kwarteng has been a Daily Telegraph columnist, a JPMorgan Chase financial analyst and is the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. In a rare victory for the QT panellist’s book club, Kwasi’s work ‘Ghosts of Empire’ is the impressive 25,130th most popular book on Amazon.
A friend tells me that Ethnically Ghanaian Mr Kwarteng was previously in a relationship with Amber Rudd *long silence* but is now happily married to city solicitor Harriet Edwards. In the interest of equality, Ms Edwards attended the £38,000 a year Cheltenham Ladies College before graduating in French and Spanish, History and Modern Languages from Trinity College, Dublin. She is an accountant at KPMG having previously being with UBS and PwC.
Theo Papitis (Businessman), expressed sympathy for the politicians. They’d done the best they could on the hoof. Except for track and trace, that had been poor. Cyprus born Theo Paphitis is in retail and mobile phone contract re-selling. A QT Review biography of Theo can be found here.
Liza Nady (Labour) spoke via Zoom from beneath the healing pyramid in her attic in Wigan. The signal was very poor and her audio kept on breaking up. Had she covered the roof in tinfoil in anticipation of QAnon’s Donald Trump is Risen Day? The QT50 panel expressed their views, disparate and contradictory. They sounded a bit more rehearsed this week, are they getting the hang of this soundbite fakery thing? Andy Palmer (Car industry executive), gets his jab on Sunday. What’s happened to ‘vaccinations’ and ‘injections’ and ‘inoculations’? Have they been cancel cultured? Miatta Fahnbulleh (Economist) took the opportunity to play party politics and criticize the Government.
The second question was from Nicola. Are income tax increases inevitable in the future? Somebody in the BBC question writing department had been horribly disappointed by their being no increase in income tax in this week’s budget.
Lisa Nandy told us that this is the worst economic situation for hundred of years. No, it isn’t. Silly tart. She chanted her briefing notes. She wore a red top, her long black hair cascading over her shoulders. Layla Moron is dead to me. “What would Labour do then?” Asked Bruce. Some had done well out of the pandemic, replied Lisa, but not everybody has Matt Hancock’s mobile number (cringe). She seemed to suggest that online businesses should be the ones taxed more, rather than ‘bricks and mortar’ businesses.
Ms Nandy is the Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and represents Wigan in the House of Commons. Lisa’s father is a retired race relations expert, Dipak Nandy. Dipak was privately educated in his native Calcutta at St Xavier’s Collegiate School, Mother Theresa Sarani. In the way in which these things tend to be done in India, calculating the school fees is somewhat complex. Not made easier by the Honourable High Court at Calcutta instructing School to cut the fees because of Covid, but then allowing them to add a Covid surcharge. At a guess, I would say the annual fees are ((6700 + (3300*9))*0.8) + 500. Ask Matron what currency they’re in before you write your cheque, payable to The Reverend Doctor M. Thamcin Arulappan, Society of Jesus.
Lisa has never had a job and sits at the loonier end of the Labour Party. Recently she advocated the military be replaced by a ‘gender balanced help force’, or some such. A QT Review biography of Lisa can be found here. Ms Nandy’s husband is a public relations consultant, a career that no doubt benefits from a wife in parliament.
More people are paying the higher rate of income tax, said Bruce, as if this was a bad sign. Suggests were getting better paid, Fiona, surely? Andy Palmer said higher taxes were happening, although tapered across a period of time. He expected income tax would have to increase at some point.
Thinking of questioner Nicola. She looked a bit familiar. QT Review’s favourite audience member ‘island of Ireland’ contributor Linda hasn’t been on for a couple of weeks. Has she changed her name from Long Kesh Linda to Nicola to avoid being banned from Pontins? You never know.
Miatta wants uncontrolled higher public spending. She wanted an ‘honest debate’ but didn’t say where all the extra money was going to come from. She invented a new economic theory where interest rates are low forever and printing and burning money is ‘austerity’. We’ll call it Miattacomics.
Kwasi came over all serious, and asked people to forgive him for being interrupted by Miatta. Corporation tax is creeping up to 25%. We’ll see what happens to income tax when we see what happens to the economy over the next few years.
Theo is convert to Miattacomics, except that it doesn’t go far enough. Let’s fix interest rates at zero and keep them there forever, announced Theo. Don’t put taxes up, but start collecting it from people who don’t pay any now. Presumably, poor people on very low incomes. Good of him. We shall call this ‘Comic Miattacomics’.
Poverty, austerity, millions of children, hunger, said Lisa. She was back in Calcutta (in the 1750s). Kwasi told her she was wrong and that the Tories kept on upping the minimum wage and spending more on public services and benefits.
The next question was about Harry and Meghan. My hand hovered over copy and paste and ‘Freiherr Günther Hubertus von Reibnitz’. Was it a mistake for Buckingham Palace to investigate allegations of Meghan’s bullying? Bruce prompted him to mention things like media circuses. Not a good look, concluded Bruce, answering her own supplementary.
“Not a good look,” repeated Miatta. Harry and Meghan had had a rough ride. “Out of order,” said Miatta, rather than, “weapons grade racism literally worse than anything ever,” which is what Meghan’s going to say on Sunday. “Mental health issues,” was as far as Miatta would up the dial.
Theo told us there is a workplace process regarding bullying that has to be gone through. It was suspicious that these allegations had cropped up just before the revelationary Oprah interview. Theo didn’t think the Meghan and Oprah thing important, compared with many other things happening in the world. The QT50 panel were suspiciously unanimous in preferring Meghan and Harry to go away and shut up. What does that prove, other than the BBC does not have the bottle for this?
Lisa wanted to dial down the debate. Lisa could recall Princess Dianna when she was much younger. She played the Covid card, saying thousands of families had lost their loved ones. That is the point scoring territory that Labour wants the political debate to be in. Andy Palmer thought that all of this was unseemly and should be sorted out in private. This is the thanks I’m getting for sitting up until four o’clock in the morning (and spending all that money on VPNs and Paramount+).
Next question, how come the Brexit deal has gone wrong so soon and even before it’s been ratified?
Theo said the pettiness of the EU was unbelievable. He mentioned the Article 16 Irish border vaccines fiasco. Theo is a Brexiteer, the deal had been a bit forced, neither side was happy with it. Andy thought this was traumatic and wanted the UK to be a good neighbour. We need to get on with them. “What’s the risk to the auto industry?” was Bruce’s leading question. Rules of origin, replied Andy, which lead to tariffs on things made elsewhere. Local content should be 70%, an issue with batteries as we move towards electric vehicles. Good, suggests this reviewer, make the batteries here.
Fortunately, Andy Palmer is married to a Japanese wife and is therefore allowed on tonight’s Question Time – just. Mr Palmer had a distinguished career in engineering and the car industry and is a graduate of the Cranfield University, Warwick University and The London Business School, amongst others. Group Captain Palmer is an Honorary Group Captain in the RAF having been involved with the RAF through their benevolent fund and also when CEO of Aston Martin. Other Honorary Group Captains include Carol Vorderman and Iron Maiden lead singer, and commercial pilot, Bruce Dickinson. The high point of Mr Palmer’s career was a year as number three at Nissan between 2013 and 2014. The number one at the time being the interesting Carlos Goshen, a fraudster who escaped Japanese justice in a suitcase, resurfacing in Beirut (via Istanbul) a free man.
The EU are our closest neighbours said Lisa. So what? Our biggest trading partners are China and the USA, Lisa. We do far more trade with places like Taiwan and Hong Kong than with many EU countries. She mentioned hurty feelings in the Irish Republic. Likewise, so what? She wanted to talk about the Salisbury poisoning. We need allies, she said. Somebody tell Lisa that the EU are not and never have been our allies. They hate our guts but want access to 70 million consumers and the City of London.
Kwasi, rightly, said that this was vaccine-anger. The EU are making a mess of their vaccine rollout while ours goes much better. There is a domestic issue over there with French and German elections. This is less to do with Brexit and more to do with domestic posturing within the failing EU. Bruce wasn’t happy. Michael Grove has conceded it’s about more than that, she announced from nowhere and as if it mattered.
Miatta talked a load of crap. She is not an economist. She is a globalist shrill. A brief QT Review biography of Dr Miatta Nema Fahnbulleh can be found here. Although Liberian born and part Sierra Leonian, Ms Fahnbulleh claims to be from South East London. Further investigation shows this be the extreme south east of London, a full 30 miles from Charing Cross as the African pied crow files. A part of south east London more usually referred to as Royal Tunbridge Wells. In reality one of the Garden of England Fahnbulleh’s, Dr Miatta is an old girl of the £30,000 a year Beechwood Sacred Heart School, Royal Tunbridge Wells and is a graduate in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from Lincoln College, Oxford.
Miatta completed her PhD in Economic Development at the London School of Economics before embarking upon a career of never having a proper job. For a couple of years she was a consultant in her own company, Poleis Ltd, before joining the Institute for Public Policy Research. The IPPR is a progressive think tank, part funded by the European Union, climate crackpots and last week’s QT panellist Tony Danker’s ‘Be the Business’.
During her time with the IPPR Ms Fahnbulah worked for three prime ministers and the Labour Party. She is now at the New Economics Foundation, who are loony left globalist lobbyists funded by George Soros. Unsurprisingly, NEF’s Blue New Deal roadmap to improve coastal communities, is nothing to do with coastal communities and all to do with local economy destroying globalist environmentalist claptrap.
Amanda, from the QT audience, said that she didn’t trust the EU anymore. At last. No more needs to be said. Fiona agreed. Time was up until next Thursday for part-timers like La Bruce, and until 1am on Monday morning for Meghan and Oprah obsessives and their lucky onions.
© Always Worth Saying 2021
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