Question Time 11th March 2021
Panel:
Mims Davies (Conservative)
Steve Reed (Labour)
Victor Adebowale (NHS Confederation)
Dan Hodges (Journalist)
Bonnie Greer (Writer)
Venue: London
As every Puffin knows, this is the week of international women’s day. Question Time favourite Mrs Eddie Izzard (not of this parish) being unavailable, the fairer sex are represented by Bonnie Greer and ‘Mims’ Davies. In the interests of inclusion, all of the panellists (and the chair) live in London. White people are massively underrepresented, the privately educated over-represented, as are members of the million-pound house owning community.
***
Now that Britain is doing much better in the fight against coronavirus compared with other parts of Europe, the BBC have decided not to mention it anymore.
The first question was about sexism and harassment towards women which the questioner insisted was not a problem caused by women. “Tell me your name again?” asked Bonnie Greer (Writer), as patronisingly as possible.”Becky.” Women have to be in charge decided Bonnie, in politics, law and media. Was she doing a Meghan style self-promotion? Do we solve this by hiring Bonnie pronto?
What are the government going to do, asked Bruce? More officers on the streets replied Mims Davies (Conservative). There’s a bill going through the House, focused on domestic violence. My local council has more money, Mims added. Miriam Jane Alice Davies is the parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Employment. She represents Mid Sussex, the former seat of Churchill’s grandson and uber-Remainer, Bunter Soames. In the interests of equality, Miriam was educated at the £38,000 per year Royal Russel school in London, whose patron is the Queen.
Most of the victims of violence are men, says your reviewer. Somebody from the QT50 audience agreed with me. The audience member said that women had to take responsibility for their own actions and their consequences.
Long Kesh Linda was back! Calling her self ‘Bonnie’ too, still in disguise, still trying to get into Pontins. She said something about the Deputy and First Ministers in Belfast. Farouk wanted to speak. Was he about to confess to something? He did look the type. We need an environment where women can flourish, he sensibly said.
Bruce was a bit cross. She’d been on a reclaim the streets march when a student and the world hadn’t instantly turned into a perfect place.
Steve Reed (Labour) was surprised that so many women were concerned about their safety. He blamed all men, and told us to become allies of women. Then he blamed the Government. Steve is the openly ‘gay’ MP for Croydon North. According to his parliamentary expenses, Steve is also a £60 per half-hour survey filler inner. Mr Reed has taken part in various overseas jollies at your expense, including one to Japan where, even after you paid for his accommodation, he still managed to spend an extra £400 a day of your money on ‘subsistence’. According to the dictionary, subsistence means, ‘the minimal resources that are necessary for survival’. Well.
Dan Hodges (Journalist) looking very grey and with a beard, stumbled over his words and muttered that it was the fault of men. He sympathised with victim’s families and called the Conservative candidate for London mayor a disgrace. The Tory was trying to politicise the issue. Surely not?
Victor Adebowale (NHS Confederation) thought Becky’s question was a good one. He wanted to educate young boys to respect themselves and women. Victor sounded a bit like me. He is a Wakefield Adebowale after all. It was unacceptable for women to feel unsafe in open places.
Bonnie told us we are a deeply masculine society, there are clubs near where she lives that don’t admit women. Men only Mosques in her mill town? No, Bonnie lives in a million-pound apartment in Soho. She means the exclusive London gentleman’s clubs of the West End. Bonnie’s husband is posh London lawyer David Hutchins. I wonder…..?
I also wonder where are all these do-gooders were during the Asian Muslim ‘sexual exploitation’ (ie rape) pandemic?
Question two, are the Royal family racists? Steve Reed was very sad and agreed with the Queen’s statement through the week about keeping any investigation within the family and the possibility of ‘different recollections’. Bruce got cross, snapping at him to answer if he thought the royals were racists. Steve changed the subject as quickly as Piers Morgan running away from a stuttering weatherman. This was a societal problem and not just to do with race. He talked about the mentally ill being restrained by the police.
Victor Olufemi Adebowale thought the royals probably weren’t. He should know. He meets them more than most, when they’re giving him honours and a peerage. Black people have disadvantaged systemic outcomes and the Royals are part of the system, he claimed.
Dan thought them dysfunctional rather than racist. He muttered on. Well known to just have one eye, Dan seems to be down to just one arm. His right was animated as he spoke, this left lay limp on his lap. Did he say Meghan is the new Rosa Parkes? Speak up lad! Cuttings about avocados? Culture war? Mutter, mutter. Not exactly Oprah is he? A new Nigel Farage or Donald Trump will show up. Not sure where that came from but it sounds good to me.
What Dan was trying to say was, if a culture war were to topple the Royal family what would they be replaced with? The culture warriors (including the BBC?) haven’t thought this through. Dan, on his various social media profiles, lays great store in not having gone to public school, as if this is a good thing. Mutter, mutter, mumble, mumble.
Mail Journalist Daniel Pearce Jackson Hodges is the son of luvvie Labour MP Glenda Jackson and the theatre director and art dealer Roy Hodges. Dan was educated at Edge Hill College, Ormskirk. In the interests of equality of opportunity, after completing his education Dan spent five years working for, erm, his mother as a parliamentary researcher.
His wife is Michelle di Leo, a PR guru who formerly represented the environment destroying airline industry. Her Twitter feed is full of Hilary Clinton crap. Michelle got to meet the toxic hag during Clinton’s visit to Swansea University in 2017. Michelle, Dan and their children live in Glenda’s £1million London home.
Formerly a member of the Labour Party and a Guardian and New Statesman contributor, Hodge’s politics shifted when he discovered that the Mail pay more.
Bonnie felt like Erol Flynn. She’d spent the post-Oprah week fending off the hostile American press. Dianne Abbott had decided the Royal family weren’t racist, which was good enough for Bonnie. But it’s a royal household too. The courtiers might need a clear out. Bonnie was still hoping for a witch hunt.
A fuller QT Review biography of Bonnie Greer, Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, can be found here. The key points being, Bonnie’s lived black experience in a £1 million apartment in the exclusive Soho district of London, and being a quango and board appointee queen. A grumpy and somewhat off the shoulder Bonnie Greer hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. Your humble reviewer can’t pretend to be an expert on art but can spot a similarity with Marie-Guillemine Benoist’s turn of the 19th-century daub entitled ‘Portrait d’une Negresse’ displayed in the Lourve. Not too similar thank God.
Ms Greer was born two days after Prince Charles, has an obsessive-compulsive race card disorder and is a poet and writer. Her mighty work, ‘Entropy’, described in a New York Times review as ‘painful’, is the 1,350,660th most popular book on Amazon.
A lady from the QT audience laid into the tabloid press, calling them racists and bigots.
Bruce licked her lips and threw the grenade to Dan. Dan kicked the closet door off its hinges. There is racism in the media, unconscious racism, conscious racism, institutional racists, structural racists. Bonnie asked if Dan was one of them? Oh no, Dan hadn’t seen or heard anything. That’s alright then. He went on to say that there hadn’t been any racism aimed at Meghan, despite what he’d just said about the media being racist. Bonnie kept on picking at him. Instead of just saying, regardless of race, Kate and Meghan don’t like each other, Dan got drawn into the ‘press playing the girls off against each other’ narrative that Bonnie fed him Oprah style.
Victor reminded us all that he’d met most of the Royal family (at investitures?) and they weren’t racist but the press were. He cited their Meghan coverage references to gangs and the hood. How do we bring our society together, wondered Victor?
On the vexed issue of race. One is forced to ask, what race is Meghan Markle? Her father, Thomas Markle Sr, is white. Her mother, Doria Ragland, is a bit of a mixture. If Doria were a dog, one suspects she’d be able to drag Sherlock Holmes across Dartmoor, while rounding up sheep and delivering brandy to a trapped mountaineer.
A grumpy Bruce said we had to move on or we’d be out of time.
The next question regarded the one percent pay rise for health service workers.
Mims said there’s a pandemic handbrake on the system. “Do they deserve more than one percent?” snarled Bruce. Mims’s long drawn out off-topic response abbreviated to ‘no.’ Bruce repeated the question and told her to answer it this time. Bruce was crosser than we’ve ever seen her before. Victor was surprised, he was expecting 2.5%. Victor’s colleagues were on their knees. “But secure jobs?” contradicted Bruce. “Not good enough,” claimed Victor.
For twenty years, Doctor the Lord Victor Olufemi Adebowale MA, Baron Adebowale of Thornes in the County of West Yorkshire, Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire was chief executive of non-profit social enterprise Turning Point Health & Social Care, a drug and alcohol charity. Puffins concerned about Victor’s finances will be relieved to hear that he certainly isn’t non-profit.
When Baron Victor became Chief Executive in 2001, his salary was £85,000 a year. Despite the financial crash of 2007, by 2012 his wage had risen to £165,000 and by the time he left the organisation, in 2020, it had reached over £200,000 per annum. No wonder they can’t make a profit!
Victor is also involved in a bewildering array of quangos, patronages, task forces, board appointments and honorary this’s and thats. [See addendum]
His Lordship’s lived black experience includes the following:
As a non-executive director of the Co-op, Barron Adebowale ‘earns’ £60,000 a year to attend twelve meetings. On the downside, he has to sit beside his fellow non-executive director, the irritating former Labour MP for Salford and Eccles, Hazel Blears.
As Chair of the NHS Conference, Victor is paid £50,000 per annum for 2-3 days work per week.
Victor lives in a £1 million house in London.
As a non-executive director of the Nuffield Health Group, in 2019 his Lordship was paid £16,000 for attending 4 meetings.
If you’d like the Barron Victor at your own meeting, he is available from JLA public speakers agency priced between £2500 and £5000.
As a director of Leadership in Mind, Victor is unlikely to find himself sitting next to Hazel Blears but is very likely to be sitting next to his own wife. In the interests of equality of opportunity, Victor appointed his wife, the interesting Lady Tracey Gail Adebowale-Jones, to be the only other director.
Lady Tracy is a graduate of Wolverhampton University and has an MA in, erm, Equal Opportunities. She is a published author but under a different name, Tracy Austin (not her real name). Tracy further, and successfully, confounded the QT panellists author’s league table by offering her mighty work, “Mapping Clinical Governance in Voluntary Sector Organisations”, as a free download. Booo.
On her LinkedIn profile, Tracy self defines as a freelance photographer. Her Flickr account has three followers, her speciality being capturing the back of people’s heads at horsey events.
Fiona wanted a figure out of Steve Reed, 2.1% replied Steve. He mentioned clapping on the doorstep and saving Boris Johnson’s life. He called the pay rise a pay cut then we all cringed as he mentioned ‘crony contracts’. He critisised Dominic Cummings’ 40% pay rise. No, Steve, Dom got a 100% pay cut when he was kicked out by Carrie Symmons.
There was a shouty shouty (including Bruce) about track and trace.
Dan calmed it all down, by mumbling. Still down to one hand, he mentioned two criteria; what we want and what we can afford. These were difficult to juggle because of the pandemic and because of the chancellor’s odd deficit-reducing strategy
A very grumpy Bruce told him to hurry up.
Bonnie reminded us that there are 500,000 dead in the US where there isn’t a health service. She called the NHS a miracle. The envy of the world. A one percent pay rise? She summoned her inner Oprah, “What, what, what?”
Bruce started shaking in the background and waving her hands about. She muttered something. It sounded like, “Ok, I’m done with this, sorry, no sorry, you can trash me, mate, but not on my own show, see you later, sorry, can’t do this.”
The credits began to roll. Was it a few minutes early? Over the still live microphones, Bonnie was heard to say, “Diabolical behaviour.”
“And we all have to sit here and listen,” added The Baron Victor.
“1045 to 1145 every Thursday,” Agreed what’s left of the QT viewers, “Incredibly hard to watch.”
Addendum
Here is a list, from various sources, of some of Victor Abedowale’s appointments:
Adebowale has been involved in a number of taskforce groups, advising the government on mental health, learning disability and the role of the voluntary sector. He is Co-Chair of the Black and Minority Ethnic Mental Health National Steering Group and is a member of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. He is a patron of Rich Mix Centre Celebrating Cultural Diversity, a patron of Tomorrow’s Project and of the National College for School Leadership. He was a member of the National Employment Panel, the New Economics Foundation Board and is a member of the Institute for Fiscal Studies Council. He is a Director of Leadership in Mind organisational development consultancy, a non-exec of the health IT consultancy IOCOM, Chair of Collaborate and in 2015/16 chaired The London Fairness Commission. He has advised governments of all parties on Employment, Housing, Poverty and Public Service Reform. He is currently Founding Chair of Collaborate CIC, Director of Leadership in Mind. Non-Executive Director at the Nuffield Health Group, and Co-founder and Chair of visionable.com. He is a visiting professor and Chancellor of University of Lincoln, a Court Member of the London School of Economics and a Cross Bench Peer in the House of Lords.
© Always Worth Saying 2021
The Goodnight Vienna Audio file
