Question Time 10th February 2022
The Panel:
George Eustice (Conservative)
Vaughan Gething (Labour)
Delyth Jewell (Plaid Cymru)
Sebastian Payne (Financial Times)
Laura McAllister (Cardiff University)
Venue: Newport
Dicks out, announced Fiona Bruce (Chair). Delyth Jewell guffawed like a fishwife. Bruce giggled like a schoolgirl. Sebastian Payne laughed a little bit too loudly while George Eustice looked suspiciously self-conscious and, perhaps surprisingly, so did Vaughan Gething. Laura McAlister seemed puzzled, as if unfamiliar with the topic.
So much for the usual weekly pre-recording penis obsessed Question Time Green Room banter (makes you wonder what they’ll be like when they find out Dame Cressida has resigned), what about the actual show?
The first question referred to the relaxation of coronavirus rules in England a month early.
George Eustice (Conservative) thought this was a good thing and not at all premature. It was based on evidence. The vaccine had been a great success.
George Eustice has been MP for Camborne & Redruth for twelve years. Educated privately at the Truro Cathedral School, George was previously a member of Ukip. A former PR man, George is married to Katy Taylor-Richards, another House of Commons type once of the Daily Express, Head of Press at Policy Exchange, a researcher for David Davis and secretary to House of Commons finest, Dover MP and jailed sex pest, Charles Brett Anthony ‘I’m a naughty Tory’ Elphicke.
Jackie Collins lookalike Deltyh Jewell (Plaid Cymru) disagreed and couldn’t see any justifying evidence. She thought it was ‘distasteful’ and had been announced in order to save the prime minister’s career.
“Purely political,” concluded a lady in the audience in a crimson patterned scarf and with her spectacles across her hairdo. She suggested a proper inquiry.
Vaughan Gething (Labour) wanted a UK wide enquiry. He wore a mid-blue suit with a light blue tie. An odd little badge was attached to his left lapel. One suspects it had his name and postcode on in case he is later found wandering lost in the streets of Newport.
Vaughan was concerned that Mr Johnson’s announcement had been made without tier upon tier of bureaucracy deliberating upon it in meeting after meeting after meeting. It sounded as though the Welsh Health Minister Vaughan had found out the important news at the last minute via the telly.
Delyth shook her head and nodded at the same time.
Things could have been done differently during the pandemic, conceded Mr Gething, but only at the UK level, he added, covering his own back.
The remarkably English sounding QT audience was less socially distanced this week, with only one empty comfy Newport multiplex seat between each of them.
“Do no harm and follow the science,” said Laura McAllister (Cardiff University). She then relied upon the harmful quack non-science of opinion polling to claim the PM is unpopular and untrusted. Trust in the Welsh first minister is at 5.2 whereas it is only 4 point something for Boris Johnson, she claimed, plucking the numbers from the air un-scientifically.
Laura McAllister CBE, Fellow of The Learned Society of Wales, is another public sector bod who has never had a proper job. Described in the guff that comes with Question Time, she is Professor of Public Policy and the Governance of Wales at Cardiff University and Co-chair of the Independent Commission on the Constitutional Future of Wales. Zzzzzzzzzz.
Not content with that, Professor Laura has decided she should be on the FIFA Executive Council. Laura played 24 times for the Welsh Ladies wendyball team, making her debut in a 12-0 defeat to Germany in a Women’s UEFA championship qualifying competition in which Wales lost all six of their matches and conceded 36 goals.
She lost out another time, passed over by FIFA after an Executive Council vote in Montreaux.
Former Plain Cymru candidate Laura has been a board member of toxic Stonewall who even the BBC have given up on. The LGBTQI+++ lobbyist’s Introduction to supporting LGBT young people contains the immortal Savilegate-esque line
“Meeting strangers from the internet is extremely appealing as it doesn’t share any of the threats that talking to people in your social circle has.”
In Wales Online’s 2015 pink list, Laura came 4th, beneath another director at toxic Stonewall, Andrew White, and on top of Louise Thomas, chair of Pride Cymru. Wales Online also informs us Laura has a ‘partner’ called Llinos Jones who, surprise surprise, makes radio programmes for the BBC.
Bruce paused the proceedings to make an important announcement.
“Next week we’re in Leeds.”
Question two. A psychic in the audience asked, “Are the problems in the Met much deeper than Cressida Dick?”
After consulting with her earpiece, Bruce announced that Chief Constable Cressida had resigned that very minute. She passed the question to Sebastian Payne (Financial Times).
“They certainly are,” announced the geeky journalist with the outsized spectacles. He suggested breaking the Met up into smaller units. He has lots of female friends. They don’t feel safe. They have to wander the dangerous streets at night to avoid being in the same room as him (he didn’t say but we all were thinking).
Sebastian Payne is a journalist and author. His mighty work Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour’s Lost England is the astonishing 6,645th most popular book on Amazon, an amazing 147,827 places AHEAD of QT Review’s benchmark for such things, The Marquis de Sade’s One Hundred and Twenty Days of Sodom.
Attention! Mega trigger alert. And this isn’t a joke. Sebastian’s book really is marked by Amazon as “18 years and up” whereas the Marquis de Sade’s really isn’t. Seriously. You have been warned.
Crouch End resident and former Guardian intern Sebastion does have a connection to the North of England having been born in Gateshead in 1989 and having been privately educated at the £14,000 a year Dame Allen’s School in Newcastle.
A graduate of Durham University (Computer Science), Sebastian headed south in 2011 to study investigative journalism at City, University of London.
Before joining the FT and writing his filthy book, Mr Payne’s other gigs included Andrew Neil’s Ghislaine Maxwell supporting Spectator Magazine, The Washington Post and The Telegraph.
Mrs Payne is Sophia Gaston. After eight years as a university student, Sophia moved into research and is currently a director of the British Foreign Policy Group, an independent think tank. Sophia hosts the Eyes on Britain podcast in which her exhaustive investigations lead her to state the bleeding obvious.
Putting to one side the stabbings, shootings, riots and looting, a chap in the South Wales audience told us the Met’s biggest problems were homophobia and misogyny. Another loon forgot about crime too and also obsessed about misogyny.
Is there a big, long German word that means hoping somebody gets home after a night out to find their house has been burgled?
Delyth shook her head and nodded at the same time while setting her face like Jackie Collins trying to swallow a lemon. Vaughan said the only reason Cressida had been kept on for so long was because there was nobody to replace her.
Lady of a certain age and high ranking academic and would-be sports supremo, Laura, pointed out that academia and sport is run by white people of a certain age.
A person reviewing the programme asked rhetorically, “Laura, in the interests of diversity, are you going to give up your well-paid positions to a tinged person of BAME?”
La Bruce put on her very serious face and summoned her inner Police Constable Savage in Charing Cross Police Station canteen, at coffee time, during a bad night shift. In a first for Question Time, she announced,
“My father kidnapped some African children and used them to make dog food.”
QT Review presumes this to be a quote from Cressida’s unruly copper’s WhatsApp, but since Bruce’s father was a Unilver executive based in the colonies, you never know.
“There is inbuilt sexism in every structure,” announced Laura before rattling through the isms and phobias.
Interestingly, nobody mentioned crime or the types of people most likely committing it. Muggings, stabbings, robbery, drugs, fighting, forced marriage, terrorism, illegal immigration, Albanians, none of it got a mention. The public services appear to exist so that posh telly people can have nicey feelings while never having to use them. Unlike us plebs.
As if an amen, Laura’s privileged white, upper-middle-class lips ended her comments with the word ‘diversification’.
“Oh, you’re gay. She’s just a girl,” a teacher quoted of her pupils in despair, her hands literally wringing.
Love, you can listen to somebody say ‘gay’, or you can listen to Reggie and Ronnie breaking your kneecaps with a hammer. Which do you want to prevent?
This time, Delyth just nodded.
It got worse. Diversity. Acceptance. Wellbeing. White. Straight. Middle-class. Men. Men. Men. Please, Cressida Dick was a woman. I give up.
Delyth Non Jewell (yes, Non), is a Plaid Cymru member of the Welsh Senedd who grew up in Ystrad Mynach, and attended Ysgol Bro Allta and Ysgol Gyfun Cwm Rhymni schools and has been president of Dafydd ap Gwily.
After brainy Delyth completed an English degree at St Hugh’s, Oxford, she took an interest in square goalposts and numbers on the shorts and embarked upon a masters degree in Celtic studies. Reference to the Oxford University Celtic Studies Masters degree website reveals that the course lasts for 9 months in a row while students learn of Celtic history (Brother Walfrid?), culture, music (There’s only one George Cadettie, it’s in the nettie, George Cadettie) and important Celts from history (King Billy McNeil, Paul McStay, Maurice Johnson) as well as the contemporaneous threats to the Celtic tradition (yes, that means you, Hugh Dallas).
Unfortunately, Delyth wasted her qualification – she could have been a social worker in Coatbridge – by going to London and becoming a Plaid Cywmu researcher at the House of Thieves and Liars.
Unsurprisingly, Ms Jewell has never had a proper job. Rather, Delyth has boasted of her involvement in women’s rights and international development through her connection with ActionAid. While straplined ‘Changing the world with women and girls’, one wonders of ActionAid’s commitment to change?
In a May 2020 website article entitled “How are Muslims observing Ramadan during the coronavirus crisis?”, ActionAid trustee Abdul Shiil forgot to advocate any change to forced marriage, first cousin marriage, female circumcision or covering women from head to toe in a black sheet and prefered to inform poor girls in Muslim countries that,
“We are encouraged to continue our act of giving and goodwill by donating as part of our Sadaqah Jariyah.”
This is a religious obligation placed upon Muslims to give money to the likes of Abdul Shiil, who continued,
“It can be as simple as supporting ActionAid by donating £5 a month to provide hygiene kits with soap and sanitary towels or giving £10 a month to provide food supplies like rice, oil and lentils to those who need it most. As we know, every good deed performed during Ramadan is multiplied several times in the eyes of God.”
Elsewhere pound signs multiply in the eyes of ActionAid’s quangocrats.
Page 54 of their most recent annual report helpfully informs us that the Chief Executive was paid a £114,490 salary in 2020 with another £8,450 being paid into his pension. The Director of Fundraising received between £90,001 and £100,000, the Director of Public Engagement between £80,001 and £90,000, the Director of Policy, Advocacy & Partnerships between £100,001 and £110,000 and the Director of Organisational Effectiveness was also paid between £100,001 and £110,000.
One time, people were better than that. In March 2019, the South Wales Argus ran a story about Delyth Jewell’s grandmother’s hundredth birthday. Doreen Jewell was born in Sunderland on the 8th March 1919, the youngest of eight children. She left school at 12, was apprenticed to a French polisher, worked in the town’s Vaux brewery and moved to Birmingham during the second war after being drafted to work in a munitions factory. After marrying Ken, she moved to his native Rhonnda Valley and raised a family.
Should Boris Johnson apologise over the Kier Starmer Savillegate scandal? Bruce read out the actual House of Liars and Thieves quote.
“A former Director of Public Prosecutions who spent more time prosecuting journalists and failing to prosecute Jimmy Saville.”
Vaughan thought, of course he should apologise. How dare the prime minister tell the truth! He changed the subject to those shouting at Keir Starmer outside Portcullis House but omitted to mention they were outnumbered by police officers. He announced that challenging paedophilia and necrophilia was the preserve of ‘racists and fascists on the internet’.
The prime minister has an ‘unfaithful relationship with the truth’ said Vaughan, speaking as a member of an elite which concealed the truth about Jimmy Saville for decades.
Vaughan Gething is no stranger to QT Review, his lengthier biography is available elsewhere. The highlight being he is a half Zambian Englishman from Beaminster whose odd Welsh accent is reminiscent of how a half Zambian Englishman from Beaminster mistakenly thinks a Welshman might talk.
Now then, now then, Uncle Sebastian was going to fix it for Boris to resign.
“Don’t you mean apologise?” wondered Bruce.
The media man from up the north corrected himself while laughing nervously. Or was it more of a yodel? Like, “Er ere errr ere eerrr.”
He told the audience he’d been chased down the street by a mob too. Really? Is there something about larger than life dirty book author Sebastian that the politicians and the BBC aren’t telling us?
Laura said an interesting thing,
“The trust, the contract that politicians have with the public and with the electorate is based upon the use of language and trust and respect.”
No. Perception management is based upon the use of language. Trust is based upon honesty when confronted by cold, hard fact.
That’s why the media-political elite are so bigly triggered by Savile. Not only does Savillegate expose the difference between public and private truths but also reminds the entitled media-political clique they may be excoriated by plebs who are more concerned with right and wrong than with the manipulation of words.
Sebastian said claims of Starmer’s culpability in the non-prosecution of Saville come from the darkest conspiracy theory corner of the internet. No, they don’t. They come from Keir Starmer who, in January 2013, publicly apologised for not prosecuting Saville. As the Scottish Daily Express put it,
“Sir Kier Starmer apologised for the failure to bring charges against the evil predator Jimmy Savile when he was England’s top prosecutor.”
The next question wasn’t about The Ukraine, the energy crisis or inflation. No, it was about a cat taking time out from torturing mice and pulling the limbs off dickie birds, to be kicked around the kitchen by its owner, West Ham full-back Kurt Zouma
Laura droned on about society, exceptionalism, racism, sexism and homophobia. It makes you wonder what else the cat got up to besides bringing up fur balls and leaving its muck in a neighbour’s vegetable patch.
Kurt Zouma appeared to be in the audience (oh, I’m bad). He defended himself by saying other people race horses and shoot birds. If anything, he’d been rather soft on the cat.
“Are use equating horse racing with kicking a pet, Kurt?” asked a concerned Bruce.
They use whips on the horses, he retorted.
“For a limited number of times,” corrected Bruce as if recalling a recent good whipping in harness and saddle, not interrupted until her safety word.
Welsh footballers are role models, claimed Delyth. Just in time, she stopped herself from saying Ryan Giggs and referenced Gareth Bale instead. The panellists agreed that the Euro 2020 England team were a credit, as if throwing a penalty shoot out so that Nike Black Lives Matter might get a photo opportunity was a good thing.
Again, the reality is less important than the optic.
But, all of them forgot to say the England and Wales men’s teams. Pass the pitchforks and shovels. Burn the witches!
The final question wondered of Brexit opportunities for South Wales.
Delyth didn’t want opportunities, she wanted to scrounge. Wales had received more hand-outs from the English taxpayer via Brussels than it now gets direct from London.
Never one to spare words, Laura over-described her scrounging. She wanted somebody else to provide ‘European structural something or other programme aid’ in the same way the little chap in the advert wants somebody else to get his water from the well.
As the programme, and Commissioner Cressida’s career, drew to a predictably disappointing end, the same tired, unapologetic, manipulated Remainer language spewed from a deluded panel unaware that the good people of Wales had voted Leave.
© Always Worth Saying 2022
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