Question Time 16th February 2023
The Panel:
Robert Jenrick (Conservative)
Stephen Kinnock (Labour)
Ian Hislop (Private Eye)
Ruth Wishart (Journalist)
Lionel Shriver (Author)
Venue: Rugby
Mr Hislop is the editor of ABC1 demographic high-end male readership Private Eye magazine which specialises in luxury car and investment fund advertising with a few un-funny cartoons and dull, sneery articles squeezed in between.
As a £30,000 an hour television presenter, he captains one of the teams on the BBC’s dull and sneery Have I Got News For You alongside funnier captain Paul Merton, four funnier panellists and a funnier guest quizmaster.
Mr Hislop was privately educated at West Sussex’s £37,000 per annum Ardingley College and Magdalen College, Oxford, from where he graduated in English Literature.
Mrs Hislop is author Victoria, an old girl of Tonbridge Grammar School and a graduate of St Hilda’s College, Oxford. Sticking two posh fingers up at the Amazon best sellers list, her mighty work The Island was made into a TV series for Greek TV – something, despite its resonance with the Greek, never achieved by the Marquis De Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom.
In the interests of equality of opportunity and in a killer blow to nepotism, the Hislops’ son William was educated privately at £47,000 a year Tonbridge School before taking the family place at Oxford. Furthermore, William is an actor, writer and stand-up comedian who has a podcast on BBC Sounds.
William is with United Agents who represent many of the proletarians at Private Eye, including Tom Jamieson and Nev Fountain who also write for the BBC.
In the interests of diversity and multiculturalism, the Hislops live in a millionaire’s mansion in the mono-cultural village of Sissinghurst, Kent, (average semi-detached house price £750,000) a few miles from Royal Tonbridge Wells.
Speaking of houses, Cambridge-educated grammar school boy Robert Jenrick is the Tory MP for Newark and a former Minister of State for Housing. His own pile was featured in a 2008 edition of The Times and was valued at the time at a cool £1.5 million. Eye Manor in Herefordshire is a Grade I listed building built in the late 17th century in the Carolean style for sugar magnate and slave trader, Ferdinando Gorges.
An unfortunate 129 miles from his Newark constituency and 161 miles from the House of Commons, Puffins will be ecstatic to hear that since he entered parliament in 2014, the taxpayer has paid Mr Jenrick a six-figure sum in expenses for travel and accommodation in London.
Question one. Does Nichola Sturgeon’s resignation mean the end of Scottish independence? A burning issue in Warwickshire. Ian Hislop observed Ms Sturgeon gets an easy ride south of the border. The independence movement will continue but we will lose the cult of personality. Which is a good thing. Pitched against an array of Tory old Etonian Brexiteer prime ministers was an SNP advantage now gone. With her own loan scandal and overspending on ferries, there are real issues in Scotland that were more likely to be addressed without Sturgeon.
A load of cobblers, replied hatch-faced crone Ruth Wishart, fresh out of a taxi from the cemetery. Wearing a Caledonian blue cardigan, blue checkered shirt and even blue spectacles, beneath a shock of hair as white as the top of Ben Nevis in mid-winter, Miss Wishart had come dressed as her national flag. She agreed the cult of personality wasn’t good for politics. Regarding the likelihood of independence, she preferred the phrase ‘will have an impact’. But this isn’t a gift for the Labour Party. Old hags like herself were the only Scottish demographic remaining that were likely to vote Labour.
77-year-old Ruth is a journalist, uber-Scottish nationalist and Brexitphobe who has written for The Herald, the Scotsman and The Guardian and who has held senior editorial positions at Scotland’s parochial and inward-looking Sunday Mail, Scotsman and Sunday Standard. Surprise, surprise, Wishart is also a regular on BBC Scotland and BBC Radio 4.
Part of an even more pompous and self-important elitist bubble than London’s, north of the border Ruth has served as a Trustee of the National Galleries of Scotland, Chair of the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow and a Governor of the Glasgow School of Art. In 2017 she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Open University.
In the interest of multiculturalism and diversity, Ruth lives in monocultural Argyll and Bute’s village of Kilcreggan.
Dour even by local standards, last year grievance granny Ruth took to Twitter to complain about the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations.
“Dinner in a hotel in Dumfries and Galloway last night,” she grumbled before Elon Musk’s organ, “Female waiting staff had Union Jacks in their hair. Reception had a full-size cut out of her Maj! Am recovering this morning in our base camp.”
Doomed, doomed, she was doomed, I tell you, doomed!
Ruth is more enthusiastic about illegal immigrants victimising British women. Branding as ‘terrifying and utterly depressing’ the protests in Liverpool against schoolgirls being harassed by illegal immigrants housed in the award-winning 4-star Suites Hotel and Spa in Kirkby.
Robert Jenrick didn’t know. He damned Sturgeon with faint praise and reminded the audience she left behind various problems, even falling life expectancy. He wanted a unifying way ahead with the government in London able to cooperate with the next Scottish leader instead of being bogged down in endless constitutional debate.
Stephen Kinnock thought it wouldn’t make any difference with the voters as they were already drifting away from nationalism to (he hoped without saying so) the Labour Party. He urged Rishi Sunnack to resign too.
Bizarrely La Bruce asked the Warwickshire audience if any of them supported the SNP. Unsurprisingly, no hands were raised.
This is a blow for Scottish nationalism, began Lionel Shriver, and also a blow for the radical trans activism which brought her down. Krankie’s resignation speech was disingenuous. Her full tank had become a resignation in a short period of time. Lionel blamed it all on the Gender Self-Identification Bill. As a woman, Lionel thought the simply-too-tired-to-continue argument to be ‘too girly’.
Lionel Shriver (not she/her real name) is a native of the heaving metropolis that is Gastonia, North Carolina. Christened Margaret Ann, the Presbyterian minister’s daughter changed her name when a 15-year-old tomboy. In the American style, Ms Shriver attended the Fred A Olds Elementary School in Rayleigh North Carolina before graduating from Henry W Grady High School in Atlanta, Georgia.
A bit of a swot, she applied to university when only 15 and enrolled at Emroy University, Atlanta as a 17-year-old before transferring to the prestigious Barnard College, Columbia University, New York. From there, also in the American style, she graduated ‘magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa’. A Third? A High First? Asked to leave after de-bagging the chaplain and throwing him and his ladyboy companion into the East River?
Despite being a tomboy, Lionel is married (to a man). The couple live in London’s posh Bermondsey where she scribes great works and contributes to publications such as The Spectator, The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, The New York Times, The Economist, Harper’s and The Guardian.
Keen on Brexit and unenthusiastic about mass uncontrolled unlimited immigration, Lionel self-categories her early novels as being, “Anthropology and first love, rock-and-roll drumming and immigration, the Northern Irish Troubles, demography and epidemiology, inheritance, tennis and spousal competition, terrorism and cults of personality.”
Quite.
Subsequently, she hit the big time with We Need To Talk About Kevin. This 2004 novel was, in a further slight to the Marquis De Sade, made into a film starring Tilda Swinton.
Ruth referenced Jacinda Ardern, claiming (wrongly) the New Zealand prime minister resigned at a time of her own choosing. Then she said breakfast when she meant Brexit. Nurse!
Question two was about the asylum system and recent demonstrations outside the Knowsley 4-star hotel full of illegal immigrants. Mr Jenrick condemned the violence and law-breaking. The illegal immigrants are the ones who have broken the law, he eventually accidentally suggested while talking of dinghies crossing the channel. He recommended claiming asylum after coming from a safe country should be made illegal.
Thirteen years of Tory failure of which the asylum system is part, said Stephen Kinnock. One can’t help but wonder how the failing health service and failing education system benefit from mass uncontrolled unlimited immigration? Stephen preferred to blame Brexit.
One of the South Glamorgan Trougher-Kinnocks, Stephen is the son of former EU Commissioner Lord Neil Gordon Kinnock, The Baron Kinnock. His mother is former Member of the European Parliament, Glenys Elizabeth Kinnock, Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead FRSA. Stephens’s wife is Helle Thorning-Schmit-Trougher-Kinnock, a former prime minister of Denmark who didn’t leave school until she was 27 having completed a degree in the Danish equivalent of Politics, Philosophy and Economics.
A true socialist, Mr Kinnock sent this daughter to public school, the £28,000 a year Atlantic College near Llantwit Major in the Vale of Glamorgan. As an even truer socialist, Mr Kinnock then lied about it, claiming this wasn’t really private education as the Danish taxpayer was providing funding through a scholarship.
Likewise, in solidarity with the Tolpuddle Martyrs, Mr Kinnock has been a Swiss resident for tax purposes – while simultaneously being a Danish resident for tax avoidance purposes – regarding a half ownership of his wife’s house.
Previously Stephen had a non-job with the British Council during which time he spent a brief spell in the Leningrad cells for drunk driving. Before becoming an MP Mr Trougher-Kinnock also worked for the World Economic Forum.
Despite representing Aberavon in the House of Commons, the fifty-three-year-old lives in London’s posh Kilbrun where Mrs Thorning-Schmidt-Trougher-Kinnock is the Chief Executive Officer of Save The Children. And is a member of the Board of Trustees of Friends of Europe. And is on the board of directors of Vestas. And is the Chairperson of the Women’s Commission to Promote Women’s Football in Denmark. And is a member of the International Commission on Financing Global Educational Opportunity. And is a United Nations High-level Advisory Group member. Etc etc etc etc etc.
The kind of life more lucrative that awaits the recently departed Baron Nichola Krankie of Cross-Dressing in the Parish of HMP Barlinnie.
Ian fizzed with Rwandphobia, as did Ruth. ‘How can you say Rwanda with a straight face?’ Said Ian while successfully keeping a straight face.
Unfortunately for the panel, some of the illegal immigrants have been dumped in Rugby and the audience were slow to clap like seals at the panel’s vacuous catchphrases.
Unconvincingly, La Bruce invented a sob story. Jenrick didn’t take the bait. ‘We are one of the most generous countries in the world.’ This reviewer feels obliged to point out that that’s the problem, not the solution.
Two big pull factors – a non-contributory welfare system and once you get here you’re in for good and can get your relatives in, observed Lional wisely. Her answer is to leave the European Convention on Human Rights, whose open borders rules tie the courts.
Another sob story, this time from the audience. People in Tigray are killing each other. Their problem, love.
Ian went on an imaginary field trip to Knowsley. The illegal immigrants are sent to unsuitable places in deprived areas. But this wasn’t the fault of the illegal immigrants. Ian was terrified of the outsiders but here’s the crux of the issue. To himself and the elite in London, those outsiders aren’t the mob of illegal immigrants victimising British women, rather you and me and the native inhabitants of these islands who live outside Hislop’s toxic media-political Britain-hating millionaire’s bubble.
© Always Worth Saying 2023
The Goodnight Vienna Audio file
