Question Time 29th June 2023
The Panel:
Helen Whately (Conservative)
Rosena Allin-Khan (Labour)
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (Chef and Campaigner)
Dia Chakravarty (The Telegraph)
Mhairi Black (SNP)
Venue: Exeter
Hugh Christopher Edmund Fearnley-Whittingstall was born in Hampstead, to Robert Fearnley-Whittingstall, of a landed gentry family formerly of Watford and Hawkswick, Hertfordshire, and gardener and writer Jane Margaret, daughter of Colonel John Hawdon Lascelles OBE, of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps.
Hugh was brought up in Gloucestershire and educated at £34,000 per year Summer Fields School,Eton College (£46,000 per annum) and St Peter’s College, Oxford, where he read philosophy and psychology.
Father-in-law Colonel Lascelles was awarded his OBE in 1945 for war service as Head of the Inter-Services and Political Secretariat at Allied Forces Headquarters.
His citation mentions duties of an ‘onerous and responsible nature’ involving ‘long hours of work and great tact and discrimination in dealing with political questions.’
One sympathises.
Hugh married Marie Derome, a child and adolescent psychologist, in 2001. The couple live in East Devon with their four children.
Professionally, Mr Fearnley-Whittingstall is a renowned celebrity chef, television personality, journalist, food writer, and campaigner on food and environmental issues. The fifty-eight-year-old is best known for hosting the River Cottage series on Channel 4, where he demonstrates his ‘back to basics’ philosophy about cooking.
Fearnley-Whittingstall is a strong advocate for organic and sustainable farming practices, often highlighting these topics in his shows and books. He has also led high-profile campaigns against food waste and overfishing, aiming to inspire change in the food industry.
Question one, is it time to give up on the Rwanda plan?
Helen Wheatley said the government disagree with the Court of Appeal, who have just kiboshed the Rwanda resettlement of illegal immigrants plan, and agrees with the High Court who previously said the opposite. She wanted to stop the small boats. It costs £6 million a day to house them. Not being allowed to stop here will be a deterrent.
Mhairi Black shook her head. It was her moral compass on the wobble. “There is no such thing as an illegal human being,” she grunted from her high horse. She blamed mass, uncontrolled, unlimited immigration on austerity and covid contracts.
Mhairi Black is the SNP MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire South and the party’s deputy leader in the House of Commons. Black was first elected in 2015 and has held the position since. Never having had a job and elected when 20, she is the youngest MP in the House of Commons since the Reform Act of 1832.
Black holds a first-class honours degree in Politics and Public Policy from the University of Glasgow.
A tinged loon in the audience went full Linekar. Nazis! 1930s! Dear me. Some in the carefully chosen BBC audience applauded.
Posh Rosena talked total nonsense. The Labour Party are in favour of mass, uncontrolled, unlimited immigration at any cost and the likes of Rosena will tell any lie to promote it.
Rosena Chantelle Allin-Khan, born on 10 May 1978, is a medical doctor, MP for Tooting and currently serves as the Shadow Cabinet Minister for Mental Health.
Allin-Khan was a strong advocate for remaining in the EU during the Brexit referendum and later campaigned for a second referendum. She also ran as a candidate in the 2020 Labour Party deputy leadership election, finishing in second place.
Educationally, the 45-year-old studied medical biochemistry at Brunel University and later pursued medicine at Cambridge University. Before her political career, she worked as a doctor, and claims to have participated in humanitarian aid missions in various locations such as Gaza, Israel, Africa, and Asia.
However, such assignments tended to be brief, political and flirted with Islamic extremism. A previous edition of QT Review pulled apart Dr Rosena’s dishonest back story.
“Migrants run the NHS,” according to another nut in the audience.
Hearts bled. Sixteen-year-old orphans in Africa are your responsibility, apparently. Not the responsibility of their fellow Africans, somehow.
Hugh Fearanley-Whittingshatll began reciting a ‘tragic and beautiful’ Somali poem. No. Seriously. Stop. I don’t think I can take any more. Where do the BBC find these ar*es? Hugh went on to say, despite living in a millionaire’s mansion in east Devon, he thinks he is in Nazi Germany.
La Bruce asked the audience if any of them agreed with the Rwanda policy. Somebody asked the panel why they thought France was unsafe. La Bruce told him that didn’t mean he supported the Rwanda policy. She asked again. Not a soul in the carefully selected BBC audience raised a hand. The BBC audience then applauded their and the BBC’s virtue signalling bias.
Dia Chackrabaty, in a green sari, thought the Rwanda policy wouldn’t work anyway and never was going to work. The illegal immigrants are coming from volatile and insecure societies. Are they? France? What planet does she live on? “I don’t know the solution,” she added. You don’t know anything, love. In a few months Labour will be in power, she predicted, and this issue will haunt them as well, she giggled.
Question two, a very large lady asked of taking water companies back into public ownership. The clowns clapped. “Yes,” began Hugh.
Cool Hugh has an ear stud in his left ear. He is going to nationalise the industry without paying compensation to shareholders. Perhaps the proletariat could run Hugh’s country estate better than he can? I’m sure he wouldn’t expect a penny in return if they tried.
Helen wasn’t in favour of nationalisation. Victoriam infrastructure and global warming (yay!) were expensive influences on the water industry, but most of all the problem was monitoring. Successful Conservative government monitoring has revealed a gazillion gallons of raw sewage in your river which nobody had previously noticed. Ahhhhh.
Helen Olivia Bicknell Whately, born on 23rd June 1976, has been serving as the Minister of State for Social Care since October 2022. She has been a Member of Parliament for Faversham and Mid Kent since 2015 and has been re-elected with an increased majority in 2017 and 2019.
Prior to her current role, Whately served as Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury from 2021 to 2022 and was appointed Deputy Chair of the Conservative Party in 2019. Whately has consistently supported the National Health Service and was in favour of UK withdrawal from the European Union.
She was educated at Woldingham School (£37,000 per annum), Surrey, and attended the sixth form at Westminster School (£46,000 per annum).
Before entering politics, she studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers and AOL as a management consultant in the healthcare sector – which she sometimes disingenuously describes as working in the NHS.
Her husband, Marcus, is in the green energy sector. His companies specialise in generating electricity for big corporations by chopping down the countryside, turning it to mush and setting it on fire. Somehow this is defined as being good for the environment.
An utter nut from the audience referenced ‘climate change’ and then said there’s not enough water to go around, resulting in toxins from the rivers being spread everywhere during flooding. Not enough water … flooding …
Rosana was drowning in swage. She had no idea what to do other than to cut chairmans’ pay. Labour won’t nationalise. She backed Ofwat, who are the regulatory body presiding over the industry’s collapse.
The girls talked over each other. None of them had a clue about business. If Scotland was an independent country, according to Mhairi, they’d have unlimited borrowing capacity – but no currency.
“With that in mind,” continued polite Dia, a publicly owned water industry would be a Cinderella passed over by spending on the NHS and other public services. She told the story of the bad doctor who drives his patients to the pharmacist.
“Where’s this going to, dear?” Wondered La Bruce, as if Bruce Forsythe.
“The pharmacist isn’t a doctor,” retorted dear Dia. Can’t argue with that.
Hugh wanted to nationalise everything. “Ownership for profit is a busted flush.” He’ll be giving his millions away then.
Question three, could you tell me why we can’t get to see a doctor? Lesley the questioner had collapsed and been taken to hospital. Back at home, seven months had passed and she still hasn’t seen a GP.
Because the greedy doctors are on strike?
Dr Rosena sympathised. She sees lumps in A&E that have become inoperable. Some patients stay in her A&E for three days because there’s nowhere else to send them. Labour are committed to a massive increase in (unionized) NHS staff.
How long with that take?
La Bruce repeated the question a few times to no avail.
“It’s an absolutely fair question,” was the best Rosena could do.
Dia asked Rosena about her colleague Wes Streeting’s proposed health service reforms. Reforms outwith the will of the doctor’s union the BMA. Rosena just looked blank. Then said VAT on school fees would pay to rebuild the NHS.
One of the Sylhet Chakravartys, Dia Sudeshna Amrita Chakravarty is a prominent political activist and commentator. She is known for her role as the Political Director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, a position she held from 2014 to 2017. Born in Bangladesh, Chakravarty moved to the UK to study, is a graduate of Oxford University and, after being called to the bar, was a tax consultant before moving into advocacy and public affairs with the Freedom Association.
Currently the Brexit editor at The Telegraph, the 38-year-old is a regular contributor to several media outlets, including the BBC and Sky News, where she often discusses economic and political issues. Dia is also known for her advocacy of free market principles and her criticism of high taxation and government overspending.
Ms Chakravarty is also a director of the Jobs Foundation, a social sciences and humanities research and experimental development company. Her fellow directors include the gloriously named Lady Susannah Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe, presumably something to do with the Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe Baronets of Elvetham Hall in Elvetham in the County of Hampshire.
Back in Bangladesh, Dia is also part of a notable great and good establishment family. Her mother, Sultana Kamal, is a graduate of the University of Darkie and a lawyer, human rights activist and former advisor to the Government of Bangladesh. Grandmother Sufia was a poet, feminist and political activist who took part in the Bengali nationalist movement in the 1950s.
Never mind that.
Dia is a good little singer. Here she is chirping a Bangladeshi classic that tells of an exotic dark-skinned beauty, trapped in a political bubble in the big city, dreaming of being chained barefoot to a sink in Carlisle while her (much older) handsome but balding dream-boy husband bashes out content for a superior blog.
Incidentally, my pupil, Mr A. I. Bot, suggests that should read ‘Univesity of Dhaka.’
Hugh touched upon his speciality and blamed fat people for putting a strain on the NHS. We need more fibre and fresh fruit and veg. He announced poor diet a ‘right-wing policy.’
Helen was shocked and cared about Lesley and everyone else, no doubt while having her aches and pains attended to in Harley Street.
At which point, La Bruce put me out of my agony by announcing, “We’re out of time.”
© Always Worth Saying 2023
The Goodnight Vienna Audio file
