Question Time 3rd June 2021
Panel:
Lucy Frazer (Conservative)
Peter Kyle (Labour)
Heather McGregor (Academic)
Anthony Costello (Independant sage)
Jenni Murray (Broadcaster)
Venue: London & Edinburgh
First question. Only £1.4 billion extra for school funding? Are the Government waiting for Saint Marcus of Rashfrord to step up?
Excitable Peter Kyle (Labour) said that children were breaking into schools at weekends in order to find some kind of activity. Dame Jennifer Murray (Broadcaster) was baffled. A real expert, the Education Tsar, had come up with a terrific pan for ‘kids’ who need help. The plan would cost £15 billion (of your money) but Mr Williamson the Education Secretary preferred £1.5 billion which Dame Jennifer deemed wasn’t enough.
Lucy Frazer (Conservative) was unconvinced by the evidence. Money was needed to extend the school day to ‘improve life chances’. She didn’t believe the comparative statistics from other countries which didn’t include what Lucy was spending on laptops.
Lucy Frazer (not her real name) is the Conservative MP for East Cambridgeshire and Solicitor General for England and Wales.
Privately educated at Leeds Girls High School, after graduating from Newnham College, Cambridge, Ms Frazer became a barrister in commercial law at South Square Chambers, Gray’s Inn. Specialising in restructuring and liquidation, Lucy became fat on the putrid remains of the likes of BCCI, Woolworths, Railtrack and Lehman Brothers while the shareholders lost everything.
Her husband, David Leigh, is the former Chief Executive Officer of global private educationalists Study Group and current CEO of ‘global total workforce solutions firm’ AMS. It has been said that David is related to patrician Tory MP, and cast iron Brexiteer, Sir Edward Julian Egerton Leigh. If so, Lucy is related by marriage to, amongst others, Colonel Denzil Branch MC, Prince Nikolai Galitzine, Duke Georg Alexander of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Catherine II of Russia, King George III and un-funny sneery leftie non-‘comedian’ Alastair ‘Al’ James Hay ‘The Pub Landlord’ Murray.
Derry Donna (formerly Long Kesh Linda) spoke from the QT50 audience. She calculated the Government’s extra money worked out at ‘fufty painds’ per pupil.
Heather McGregor (academic) called upon Saint Marcus of Rashord to intercede on all of our behalfs. She thought decisions made now would have an effect across the next 20, 30, 40 years. Will they?
Heather MacGregor, Commander of the Order of the British Empire, is an academic and head of the Herriot-Watt business school in Edinburgh.
A crackpot Remainer, post Brexit referendum Heather decided that the over fifties shouldn’t have been allowed to vote.
An interview in Own the Way You Live blog described Heather as an academic, author, TV presenter, philanthropist and financial journalist (the FT’s Miss Moneypenny) and a qualified pilot who has performed stand up comedy at the Edinburgh fringe.
Previously, Heather was Managing Director of Taylor Bennett, a recruitment company that sources PR types for quango land, the public sector, charidees and Puffin’s old friends at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. During her time at TB, Heather took the credit for setting up another foundation, the Taylor Bennett Foundation. Although the Taylor Bennett website assures us, “We oppose discrimination on grounds of age, gender, sexuality, disability, religious belief, race or ethnicity,” this isn’t the case at their Foundation which boasts,
The Taylor Bennett Foundation is a charity that exists to encourage, black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) graduates to pursue a career in communications.
In other words, young white people are disqualified from the foundation’s, “10-week training programmes during which trainees are paid a training allowance, to encourage them to make a career in communications,” because of their race.
This is doubly disappointing as survey after survey shows that the second most disadvantaged group in education are working-class white boys with bottom of the class being occupied by traveller and gipsy children. One wonders how many places TBF have offered to gipsies? I emailed them to ask but received no reply. Judging by the photographs on their website, none.
Shame on Heather McGregor. Shall we tip her statue into the water beside her exclusive Union Canalside Edinburgh home? I think we should.
Incidentally, before Puffins feel sorry for traveller’s children. Take it from one who knows, just because they can’t read and write doesn’t mean they can’t count.
Anthony Costello (independent sage) said that teachers were the unsung heroes of this pandemic. Hahahahahahahaha. Put him back in his box.
Despite being billed as an ‘independent sage’, Anthony Costello FMedSci FRCPCJ FRCP is a paediatrician. A lockdown fanatic, Peter is taking time out from helping sick children to bash the Government on behalf of the BBC.
Why does teaching need all this extra money anyway? The rest of us are managing on less money.
A GCSE, A-Level, University student arms race broke out amongst the QT50 audience, each of which’s member had a more disadvantaged child in education.
Why do they go on and on and on about education? I’m sure I’m not the only Puffin who’s realised a farthing of work is worth a guinea of schooling.
The next question was about easing of the lockdown.
Anthony saw the vaccine rollout as being a success but didn’t credit the Government, rather the NHS and Oxford vaccine team. But the Indian variant, the delta variant, is 70% more transmittable and less susceptible to that vaccine. Anthony wanted to watch the data and take care, especially with indoor mixing.
Bruce told Heather she wasn’t a scientist, as Heather said she wanted restrictions eased sooner. Heather preferred a long term solution for business rather than knee jerk reactions to data.
Anthony said China hadn’t had a lockdown. Which is crap. Friends in Wuhan were bigly locked down for months.
Dame Jenny was baffled, one scientist says one thing and then another says the opposite. She says everything in a silly, patronising voice while her face is framed by an ornamental Victorian lavatory chain apparently holding her specs together.
Tony from the QT50 panel had a Lancaster bomber on the wall behind his right shoulder (regular QT viewers may remember his Nimrod). It seemed to be following a river as if delivering vaccines to needy foreigners, or a bouncing bomb to the Hun.
Lucy was data orientated as was Peter who, in his Alan Partridge voice said, ‘Follow the data, not the date.’ There shouldn’t be an amber, he added. We need crystal clear advice, red or green with no amber, not personal responsibility for our actions. Interesting.
As yet another LGBTQI+++ month begins, it is Peter Kyle (Labour) who puts the KY into this week’s tube of Question Time KY Jelly. Ms Kyle is the openly “gay” MP for Hove and Portslade. After graduating from the University of Sussex in Human Geography, International Development and Environmental Studies, Peter did a tour of non-jobs in charidees, promotional video, advisory etc before entering Parliament in 2015.
As well as being the present Shadow Minister for Schools, Peter was previously Chair of Governors at the Brighton Aldridge Community College, Chief Executive of Working For Youth and employed by The Body Shop Foundation’s Children on the Edge project.
In a 2015 interview with The Gay UK website, Mr Kyle boasted,
“A school in my constituency here has won a Stonewall Award for equality in education. One of the other schools here has a gay group”
Regular readers of QT Review may recall with suspicion an occasionally quoted line from page 17 of Stonewall’s Introduction to Supporting LGBT Young People,
“Meeting strangers from the internet is extremely appealing”
Later in the interview Mr Kyle criticises Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 which, ironically, was introduced by the then Tory government to protect young people from being groomed by predatory homosexuals.
Next question, mental health.
Tennis world number two, 23-year-old Naiomi, has pulled out of the French Open as being forced to do press conferences affects her mental health.
Jenny was sympathetic. Athletes are pestered by journalists the second they step off the track exhausted. Jenny was bored by it. Bruce contradicted her, quoting Billy Jean King. That’s business, responded Jenny, I want to see sport.
A very shy girl, diagnosed Dr Anthony. Half Japanese and half Hiatian, he observed during his examination. Identifies as black and does a lot for Black Lives Matter he could tell by massaging the bumps on her head. Leave her alone and interview her coach, Dr Anthony wrote on his prescription pad. His bill’s in the post.
Heather preferred watching tennis to watching interviews.
A consensus emerged that the athletes should be left to concentrate on their sport rather than do media. It will make no difference. The sponsors need their brands to be seen close up and in conversation with the stars. The media needs the content.
Lucy had been to a school to talk about mental health.
Peter thought creativity was derived by different personality types from people of different backgrounds. Naiomi’s personality helped her excel at tennis, why should she be driven out because of a personality type which didn’t do media? He said some strange things about us introverts. He said introverts wouldn’t go into Parliament because they’re frightened to. No, Peter, they’re not frightened of anything, they’ve just got other things to do.
Anthony invented a few more symptoms, assuming she got abuse on social media and then assuming that was because she’s black and female.
Next question. Evicting tenants.
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Never mind that. Puffins want to know about this humble author’s toothache. Regular readers will be pleased to hear that I am well on the mend, no longer taking painkillers and have even begun to mix real food into my baby food.
Obviously, Puffins have been praying for me, lighting candles, clapping on the doorstep and, if they’ve seen how much weight I’ve lost, been banging their dustbin lids on the pavements along the Falls Road. A careful and well-planned exercise regime means all that lost weight is going back on as muscle. My ‘body goal’ being Jane Fonda when she was seventy-five.
***
Lucy said it was necessary for landlords to take control of their properties if needs be. Peter said that showed a lack of empathy. There should be a longer period of time. No fault evictions should be banned. Peter, they’ve had six months notice and if you want to be free of the threat of eviction then buy your own house. In the enriched parts of the North of England’s mill towns, you can pay for one with your credit card.
Heather observed that we need a private rental sector. If houses aren’t put up for rent that will cause homelessness.
Dr Anthony said he was shocked that 90,000 children in London live in temporary accommodation. Is he therefore in favour of strict controls on immigration, I ask myself? Instead of inviting them to live in his mansion, he instructed architects to invent low carbon, prefabricated, cheap accommodation for plebs.
Jennifer’s heart bled for the needy. From her multi-million pound property in London, when the wind is in the wrong direction, the ample Dame Murray can smell a nearby food bank.
Presumably because of some gruesome crime committed in a previous life, grammar school girl Dame Jennifer Susan Murray (not her real name) was born in Barnsley and graduated from Hull University before beginning a life sentence at the BBC which included spells at Radio Bristol, South Today, Radio 4, Today, Newsnight, Woman’s Hour et al.
In her March 2021 Saga Magazine column, Dame Jennifer criticised the British Empire saying that we had a lot to learn from Germany! Railway timetabling? Wooden hut construction? Chemistry?
Dame Jennifer went on to explain that we should proactively explain the history of our Empire in the same way that Germany teaches its citizens about the Nazi’s in World War II. Which begs the question, why did Dame Jennifer accept her Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire honour?
Dame Jennifer was kind enough to explain the agony. Rather than turn down her DBE she ‘questioned’ it, due to its links with Britain’s colonial past. In a 2011 edition of The Radio Times she wrote,
“Was I making a terrible mistake? Had I become a traitor to my class by rushing headlong into the bosom of the Establishment? Should I, like the poet Benjamin Zephaniah, be repulsed by anything that had the word Empire in it and which, for him at least, recalled the days of colonialism and slavery?”
By ‘her class’ Dame Jennifer means a class of sneering Britain-hating North London luvvie snobs at the toxic BBC. She need not have feared. Far from evicting her, impressed by the self-righteous hand-wringing elitist hypocrisy, her class booked her for Question Time.
© Always Worth Saying 2021
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