Question Time 19th May 2022
The Panel:
Lucy Frazer (Conservative)
Lucy Powel (Labour)
Emily Carver (Institute of Economic Affairs)
Mo Hussein (Commentator)
Alyn Smith (SNP)
Venue: Liverpool
JUDGE NOT, THAT THEE BE NOT JUDGED. FOR WITH THAT JUDGEMENT YE JUDGE, YE SHALL BE JUDGED: AND WITH WHAT MEASURE YE METE, IT SHALL BE MEASURED TO YOU AGAIN.
So says the Book of Matthew, Chapter VII, Verses 1 and 2, of the King James Worth-Saying family Bible, published by The Society For Promoting Christian Knowledge, London, in 1843.
One hundred and seventy-one years later, during Scotland’s 2014 debate over same-sex marriage legislation, Question Time panellist Alyn Smith, then an MEP, judged opponents of the proposed new law as being ‘mean’, ‘small’ and ‘bigots’.
Listen to her!
Under an obligation within the worn leather covers of a family bible, your humble author feels prompted by God to judge Mr Smith.
Alyn Edward Smith is the pop-eyed, bouffanted, 1970s ladies hairdresser Scottish Nationalist Party MP for a Fallen Gomorrah that encompasses Fintry, Doune, Bridge of Allan and Tyndrum.
While QT Review was being opened on countless breakfast tables last Friday morning, readers of the Stirling Observer (between word of a new ASDA and talk of an old hand grenade being found on an allotment), were put off their porridge and stream water with the headline ‘MP to Marry Boyfriend’.
The Observer whispered, as if over a crofter’s garden wall, that Stirling MP Alyn Smith had announced his engagement to Jonathon, judging by an accompanying photograph, a much, much younger man.
The picture showed the two of them near the bushes in a public park. The Observer explained, “The couple, pictured in King’s Park, have been together for nine years.” Groom-to-be Alyn was quoted as saying, “We would not usually make our personal business public like this but we wanted to share.”
Excuse me, I’ve missed a bit off, “…share some good news!”
Interesting.
If during a Sunday morning constitutional on a late Spring Highland holiday, a Puffin hears a commotion while passing a stone-built kirk adjoining a Masonic hall, it might be old friend of QT Review Pastor Jack Glass objecting to some banns.
Last year The Scottish Sun reported Mr Alyn’s ‘partner’ to be trans rights activist, former SNP staffer and would be SNP MSP, Jordon Henderson, 18 years Smith’s junior.
Should we judge Mr Smith a libertine pervert?
Smith’s interest in the young has also found an outlet as a trustee of LGBT Youth Scotland.
Besides that, the former MEP for Scotland’s CV is thin. During a childhood partly spent in Saudi Arabia, Smith was educated privately at Hutchesons’ Grammar School, Glasgow, and at the Universities of Heidelberg, Leeds, Nottingham and the College of Europe in Natolin, Warsaw. He specialised in Law but, having been an eternal student, only practised for six years before politics called.
(There’s a Julian and Sandy joke about, in less permissive times, having a criminal practice that takes up most of our time, but I can’t quite segue it in.)
As for his own judgementalism, Smyth’s ire could have been directed closer to home than Holyrood’s sincere opponents of same-sex marriage.
Historic tweets from Smith’s partner (Mr Henderson in this instance) contained a series of violent, racist and misogynistic communications too vile to repeat in a family review. Despite many being aimed at female SNP colleagues, Smith sprang to his racist and misogynistic partner’s defence, claiming the unbridled hate speech to be merely ‘undiplomatic’.
***
The first question wondered of conclusions to be made from the completed police investigation into Partygate, as the BBC bored us stupid with its Borisphobia yet again.
Lucy Frazer (Conservative) changed the subject to the cost of living crisis which, if anything, is worse news for the Tories. Why didn’t she mention falling unemployment or rising wages?
Alyn Smith (SNP) was offended. Oh, no, no, no, it wasn’t over. There were still Partygate political points to be scored. The impartial BBC Tory hating audience applauded.
A succession of national anthem booing Liverpudlians lined up to bash Boris, wanting him sacked, hung, drawn and quartered, diced and scatted over the sea.
Smiley Emily Carver (Institute of Economic Affairs) blamed Starmer and moved the focus to Beergate. She suggested an amnesty for everybody fined because of the confusing and ever-changing pandemic rules.
Boris doesn’t understand the lives ordinary people live, claimed Lucy Powell (Labour). Hahahahahahahahaha. What does she know about ordinary people?
Posh Ms Powell is Shadow Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and MP for Manchester Central. Comrade Lucy is an old girl of Parrs Wood High School in Greater Manchester’s posh Didsbury. As her husband is a medical doctor, I would estimate their household income to be at least £250,000 a year with you paying many of the Powell’s personal expenses. A graduate of Somerville College, Oxford, and Kings College, London, Lucy has enjoyed a non-career of non-jobs in the Labour Party, PR, campaigning and quango-land.
Mo Hussein (Commentator), who also looks and sounds a bit fruity, mentioned the forthcoming Sue Grey report which will drag the Partygate issue out for even longer.
Question Two. What will it take to get inflation under control?
It’s very hard, replied Lucy Powell. Unprecedented. The highest in my lifetime, she lied. Born in 1974, within her lifetime annual inflation has peaked at 21%. She is a liar.
La Bruce (chair) obsessed about the G7. In order to knock Britain, the other 200 plus countries in the world don’t exist, just the six with a lower inflation rate than ourselves.
Lucy Frazer focused upon growth, saying our rate of growth is impressive within the G7.
Meanwhile, in the real world, oil (Brent crude) is cheaper now than it was on average between 2011 and 2014 despite petrol prices being higher now. Oil peaked at $140 a barrel in 2008. It is now $109 a barrel with petrol prices much higher than in 2008, not lower. Either you’re getting ripped off or the marketplace is not fit for purpose.
The UK wholesale gas price is dropping, is a fraction of what it was at Christmas and in March, and is no higher than it was in September 2021. Gas and electricity prices should be lower soon. Inflation should start dropping – or you’re getting ripped off.
As for food, because of green bollocks, grain and sugar are being turned into ethanol and added to petrol. Madness.
The panellists can’t be bothered with marketplaces, how they work and how they might work better, because they don’t understand them. Rather they regurgitate gormless point-scoring catchphrases fed to them before the programme by their special advisors.
Emily blamed the Bank of England and the extra money supply caused by quantitative easing. Then she suggested increasing the money supply further by index linking benefits.
According to the guff that comes with QT, Emily Carver writes a column for the website Conservative Home. Although a pale and inferior imitation, with its interest in politics and current affairs CH is not unlike our very own superior Going-Postal.
As this week’s QT Review topic seems to be judgement, one hesitates before reaching for the Marquis De Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom.
Suffice it to say, Emily’s mighty website work, Conservative MPs may not like to admit it, but radical planning reform is now a matter of survival for the Party attracted only 184 unread comments, a miserbly disappointing 1,853 behind my colleague Mr Richard Puller’s Going-Postal Crossword No. 219.
Perhaps not surprising, as Emily has never had a job. A graduate of the University of Bristol (French and German) and the London School of Economics (European Politics), in her ‘working’ life Ms Carver has done nothing beyond policy, research, media and columns.
Currently, besides her un-read and uncommented upon CH contributions, she is Head of Media at the Institute of Economic Affairs, London.
Mo suggested despite the Tories being previously small government and low tax they would have to intervene in the cost of living crisis later in the year.
Oh. Listen to her again! Alyn Smith complained about Emily’s Institute of Economic Affairs and wanted to know who they represent. Emily replied that the institution’s donors were confidential and she was capable of speaking as herself.
Alyn predicted interest would rates while suggesting more taxpayer’s money is spent on increases in universal credit and subsidies on energy. Alyn was obviously unaware of the direction in which energy prices are moving.
Lucy Powell wanted a windfall tax. Lucy Frazer said interest rates were in the hands of the independent Bank of England, not the government.
Question three, an ethnic in the audience asked if is right for the national anthem to be booed. He went on to say it was, and tried to justify his anti-British bigotry by referencing the suffering of Hillsborough victims. Excuse me Mr Tinge, if there’s anything you don’t like about our country, **** *** back to where you came from.
Alyn didn’t agree with booing ‘other people’s songs’. He hijacked price rises, the Establishment and Partygate to justify his anti-British prejudice.
All audience members who contributed wanted the anthem booed.
One wonders, can we boo the knee?
Emily wouldn’t boo.
Mo wanted to build consensus.
Mo Hussein (not his real name, Mohammed Sultan Hussein) is Managing Director (Public Affairs and Innovation) at PLMR. A graduate of University College, London (first degree, French Language and Literature, second degree, Modern Israeli Studies), Mohammed also attended Harvard Business School. PLMR stands for Political Lobbying and Media Relations, a reminder that following his education Mr Hussein, as yet another PR, policy, research and advice wallah, has never had a real job.
The audience oozed victimhood. Liverpool has been treated terribly over the years. Perhaps by all those Labour councils who’ve wasted vast amounts of money tipped on the ungrateful city by the poor old long-suffering British tax-payer?
Lucy Powell wouldn’t boo God Save The Queen. As a Man City fan (posh, lives in London, probably never goes to a match, sounds about right), she wouldn’t boo a minute’s silence for Hillsborough victims either.
Lucy Frazer didn’t want the national anthem booed either. She thought it was sad, especially in Jubilee year.
***
Incidentally, Puffins may be tempted to judge this author a hypocrite repressing something. Allow me to explain from between impressive gate posts fronting a pleasant Home Counties mock Tudor property as a smiling Mrs AWS and the children line up beside me.
I thought the Blue Oyster Club opposite Brussels Midi railway station was a pub. Honest. Just because I was present at a Friday night lock-in at the Union Jack Club in Chorlton-Cum-Hardy doesn’t mean I participated. And if a fireman from the Wirral still writes, big deal.
***
Question three. Is working from home good for society?
Emily is in the office, funded by persons unknown, five days a week.
Lucy Frazer worried about people’s mental health, so did audience members, one of whom pointed out the ‘chronic underfunding’ of mental health services.
Lucy Frazer (not her real name) is the Conservative MP for East Cambridgeshire, privately educated at Leeds Girls High School and Newnham College, Cambridge. After being called to the bar, she specialised in commercial law and troughed beyond avarice on the putrid remains of BCCI, Woolworths, Railtrack and Lehman Brothers while shareholders lost everything. Husband David Leigh is even posher than she is.
Lucy Powell saw advantages and disadvantages. Employment settlement. Flexibility, choices, digital revolution crystalised. More special advisor keyword bollocks. Here’s some more; ‘Jacob Rees-Mogg, head boy anthesis of modern Britain’. Oh.
Legislation is needed to make sure that the benefit of WFH goes to the workers, suggested Alyn, rather than the corporations. Where do responsibilities lie? For household expenses accrued while working? For accidents at home while on company business?
The last question regarded the stripping of World Heritage Site status from Liverpool due to the redevelopment of the impressive dockside. Should they try to get it back?
La Bruce laughed while telling us Oman had lost its Arabian Oryx Sanctuary World Heritage Site as all the oryx had died. Nasty.
Do you want to live in Disneyland?, wondered Alyn, which is a problem in parts of Scotland. He described himself as a friendly outsider and it was up to Liverpudlians to decide for themselves.
And that was it. Which was a shame. With a libertine pervert and the Shadow Minister of Sport on the programme, I had prepped for a ‘gay’ footballer question. Not to worry, obviously all is not what it seems in the mainstream media’s coverage of the story. There is enough material for a full article. Watch this space.
The Goodnight Vienna Audio file
