Question Time 27th April 2023
The Panel:
Rachel Maclean (Conservative)
Lisa Nandy (Labour)
Layla Moran (LibDem)
Camilla Tominey (Journalist)
Venue: Greenford
There is a spat on my ‘1970s Football Terraces, Floodlight Pylons and Belfast Roofs’ Facebook group. A picture was posted of Muslims praying on the pitch at Tranmere’s Prenton Park. There were complaints. Cleverly, mine revolved around the women being segregated from the men and put to the back. Wendyball fans will be familiar with a ‘Her Game Too’ obsession forced upon the terraces while one tries to concentrate on the Local XI’s end-of-season squeaky bum time fight against promotion.
According to Admin, Muslims on the pitch with women segregated and pushed to the back is ‘inclusive.’ The image stayed. He also thinks I’m ‘sad’. A change from ultra-far-hard-extreme-right, I suppose.
As revenge, I’m withholding my unique old photographs of dusty and dilapidated Middle Eastern sports grounds, used by the inclusive followers of the Book for beheadings, sacrificing goats and publicly flogging daughters who’ve been cheeky.
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If, like this humble reviewer, you’ve never heard of Greenford, it is a suburban town located in the borough of Ealing in West London. It is situated 11 miles west of Charing Cross and has a population of over 45,000 people. The town is known for its large industrial estates and its enriched, tinged, diverse, vibrant communities. Greenford is also home to a number of parks and open spaces, including Ravenor Park and Osterley Park.
Greenford is split between two constituencies: Ealing North and Southall, both Labour and represented respectively by James Murray and Virendra Sharma.
In keeping with the gender-based discriminatory values of those who administer the likes of ‘1970s Football Terraces, Floodlight Pylons and Belfast Roofs,’ this week’s inclusive Question Time excluded men. As the 10:45 pm kick-off approached, four girlie panellists and a girlie chair took to the Greenford pitch in anticipation of the first question which was about Sudan. For some strange reason, there are those here who think that those in Sudan should be brought here at your expense. La Bruce added that the Germans are doing it faster and better.
Rachel Maclean (Conservative) flannelled and drew attention towards our armed forces heading over there and the fluidity of the situation in Khartoum.
Rachel Helen Maclean was born in Madras in 1965 and is the current Minister of State for Housing and Planning. Maclean was elected as Redditch’s Conservative Member of Parliament in the 2017 general election. Prior to her current position, she served as the Minister of State at the Ministry of Justice and as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at other departments. Outside of politics, Maclean has worked for HSBC and co-founded an HR-software business. While at Honkers she was posted to Australia, Japan and Hong Kong.
She is also the founder of a charity called ‘Skilled and Ready’ formerly known as ‘Skills for Birmingham, founded with the hign minded intention of ‘the advancement of education for the public benefit, in particular but not exclusively young people, students and pupils through the provision of training, advice and guidance.’ By 2019 its accounts, submitted over eight months late, showed the charity had an annual income of £17,000 but an annual expenditure of £73,000. Also in 2019, the ‘charity’ was removed from the Charity Commission’s register.
Maclean studied Experimental Psychology at St Hugh’s College, Oxford and has a master’s degree in Work and Occupational Psychology from Aston University. She is married and has four children.
Lisa Nandy (Labour) was refreshingly disinterested in the plight of the Sudanese and preferred to score party political points regarding ministerial differences during the evacuations from Afghanistan.
Tediously regular on the Question Time panel, Puffins already know all about Lisa Nandy; her grandfather was a Liberal pier, her father an Indian public school boy, her husband a London lobbyist. At university, Litha produced racy photostrip cartoons imparting relationship advice.
My new best friend, Mr A.I. Bot, insists upon us that Lisa Nandy is a Labour Party politician who has been Wigan’s Member of Parliament since 2010. She has held several shadow cabinet positions. Nandy was a candidate in the 2020 Labour Party leadership election, finishing in third place. Before entering politics, she worked for several charities and think tanks – i.e. she’s never had a job. Nandy attended Newcastle University and later earned a master’s degree in public policy from Birkbeck, University of London.
Camilla Tominey (journalist) pointed out diplomats had been evacuated and that our actual Man In Sudan was on his holidays at home in Wimbledon. His deputy was on his hols too. Camilla blamed you and me. We should have grabbed an opportunity years ago when Sudanese professionals were protesting in the streets of Khartoum for a change of government.
Camila Tominey is a British journalist and commentator who is currently the Associate Editor and Royal Editor of The Daily Telegraph newspaper. She has covered the British Royal Family extensively throughout her career, and has also worked for other publications such as the Daily Express and the Evening Standard.
Layla Moron (Liberal Democrat) kept on calling the Sudanese ‘Brits’. She invented the idea of exceptional visas to allow people who aren’t even Sunandese ‘Brits’ to swarm here in uncontrolled numbers. She decided we have a colonial tie with that part of the country. So do the Arab World, Layla, their turn to sort it out.
Layla Moron is also tediously omnipresent on QT. The pan-sexual half-Palestinian hottie is Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon and was first elected in 2017.
Brexit-hating Layla’s father, James, was a high-ranking EU diplomat. As a youngster, the exotic Ms Moran grew up in Egypt, Belgium, Jamaica, Jordan and Ethiopia and attended the £44,000 per annum Roedean boarding school near Brighton.
Prior to entering politics, the lush 39-year-old (who gets younger on every QT appearance) worked as a mathematics and physics teacher at the exclusive British School of Brussels (€42,000 per annum) and also worked in the technology sector.
***
Incidentally, I know it’s a nuisance when someone goes on and on about their new best friend, but I must tell you this about Mr A.I. Bot. He knows exactly who I mean when I type in ‘Lay a Moron.’ Not only that, you’ll recall he charges double if I mention Question Time. Well, he charges nothing to look up Ms Moran (don’t start, behave yourselves). True fact.
***
COBRA has been called twice in one day, retorted Rachel. That’ll bring the Sudanese warlords to their knees! ‘Some of them can’t get out,’ squealed Litha. Good. If you must leave, go to a safe part of the Sudan or another part of Africa. Why must they come here? Asked no one.
An idiot in the audience said she worked in a local school that offered everything to everyone from everywhere in the world. She blamed you for the situation in Afghanistan where the various warring factions have been slaughtering each other for at least a millennia before you were born. The Lononsistan audience clapped like seals.
The next questioner couldn’t speak English, at least not properly. La Bruce translated the Bank of England’s suggestion that we’re all going to be worse off.
Camilla latched on to pay rises, saying public sector rises will increase the tax burden and add to inflation. Lisa blamed 13 years of the Tory government and ignored the pandemic, war in Ukraine and the madness of Net Zero. Unchallenged, she said Mrs Truss ‘crashed the economy’ whereas in reality it continues to grow, albeit sluggishly. ‘Where is the hope? Where is the plan?’ The hope is in the post-Brexit jobs market. The plan is to get a job. They are hiring. They even hired me.
Layla mentioned her door knocking. She continued, she keeps on coming across people. While knocking she met a constituent so poor they had to decide between food or their depression medicine. This is allegedly happening in Abingdon and Oxford.
A tinged gentleman in the audience whinged. He was going to tax the rich, not those on one or two hundred thousand a year but those who have billions and got rich by doing nothing when people try to tax them.
A black lady in the audience couldn’t afford to heat and eat. Hmmm. There are empty planes flying to Sudan. Perhaps a better life awaits than in the mean streets of Abingdon, Oxford and West London.
Somebody wanted to rejoin the European Union. Yay! It was Lay a Moron whose father became rich when, erm, employed by the European Union.
A loon in the audience blamed Brexit too. Somebody else was somehow spending £700 a month on her energy bill.
Question three was about the housing crisis affecting young people. It’s crazy in London, the questioner continued. So what?
Litha decided there’s only a one in three chance of a child born today owning a house by the time they are fifty. ‘The whole thing is an utter mess.’ She rattled through fifteen housing ministers in order to score political points. She wanted further legislation in the private housing sector including not allowing evictions. All that will do is reduce the number of private rentals available, Lisa. Advice to private landlords – move to Airbnb.
‘It’s just insane in London!’ began Moron. Stuff London. If Londoners really must own a property, move to the Muslim half of a mill town up the North and buy a one-up one-down with a credit card.
Moron wanted rent controls based on local affordability. Young people were moving out of Oxford as the million-pound houses (occupied by people who can’t afford medicine or food) are unaffordable for first-time buyers. Nobody in the Londonistan audience related the housing crisis to immigration, immigration or immigration.
Rachel Maclean pointed out that housing in London is devolved to the Labour authority there. Labour did no better when they were in power nationally. She had facts, but she didn’t want to get into them. Following laughter, she was embarrassed into reading some of them out. Something about council houses in Wales and the Labour Party’s 2007 financial crash. Litha lept to the defence of Sadiq Khan. He’d build 30,000 council houses for a city of 8,000,000. She began to rant about Atlee.
Camilla wanted to take the politics out of this. There is a consensus that more houses are needed. Even from the nimbies, as they want their children to be able to live nearby. She claimed developers sit on land to make a paper profit and that foreigners buy property off-plan as an investment rather than a residence.
The next question was about the bully Dominic Raab. Moron had read the whole report that led to his resignation. Putting his hand out in front of people! ‘You don’t do that in the modern day.’ She mentioned Priti Patel and Gavin Williamson as bullies too. There is a bullying culture in government. The Tories have to go, not just Raab.
Rachel Maclean worked with Raab but there was a line to be drawn. A forensic investigation had resulted in his resignation.
Someone in the audience sprang to the defence of Raab. The bar for bullying cases is too low. He blamed woke civil servants and was hissed by the bullies in the hall. The last word went to Litha Nandy. Litha had read the report too. She’d worked with different ministers and they didn’t understand there was a ‘power imbalance.’ She thought the bullies give politicians a bad name. Badder name, Lisa.
© Always Worth Saying 2023
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