Question Time 5th October 2023
The Panel:
Richard Holden (Conservative)
Shabana Mahmood (Labour)
Jon Ashworth (Labour)
Emma Dabiri (Writer and Academic)
Richard Walker (Iceland supermarkets)
Tony Parsons (Author and Journalist)
Venue: Wolverhampton
As the programme began it was obvious the panel was not as advertised. Gormless Jon Ashworth sat where Shabana Mahmood should have been. Has she seen my prep? She can run from the BBC but she can’t hide from QT Review HQ. This is what she’s frightened of:
One of the Small Heath Mahmoods, Shabana Mahmood is a barrister who has served as the Labour MP for bankrupt Birmingham’s Ladywood constituency since 2010. Currently Shadow Secretary of State for Justice, grammar school girl Shabana (King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Girls ) is a graduate of Lincoln College, Oxford where she studied law.
Previously, tolerant Shabana led a hundred-strong mob that closed down a Birmingham Sainsbury’s to protest human rights in North Korea Iran Saudi Arabia Israel. The issue being retail goods produced in the ‘occupied’ territories.
Enriched by mass, uncontrolled, unlimited immigration, and fortified by the electoral culture of her native Mirpur in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, Miss Shabana ludicrously receives 80% of her constituency’s vote. Helpfully and tellingly, the Advice Surgeries page of Sabhana’s website begins with ‘If your case is about housing or immigration…’ Know your voter.
Ms Mahmood copes with the cost of living and energy crises by taking donations. Speaking of Sainsbury’s, one of those donors is Fran Perrin who gave Ms Mahmood £25,000 as recently as 12th July 2023. Not her real name, Ms Perrin is properly addressed as The Honorable Francesca Elizabeth Sainsbury Perrin. A ‘philanthropist’, Fran is the daughter of retail billionaire David Sainsbury, Baron Sainsbury of Turville.
The Honorable Francesca’s husband is the interesting William Perrin whose current roles include membership of, in his own words, ‘The lay advisory board for what is probably the world’s largest civilian-run surveillance system.’
What might the mass surveillance industry billionaires want in return from a possible future Labour Government’s Minister of Justice? Hmm.
Two weeks later, Shabana accepted £20,000 from Martin Taylor, an ‘investor’ and one-time co-owner of the Cayman Islands-based Nevsky hedge fund which focused on companies in the former Soviet Block.
What might Soviet investing Cayman Island hedge fund billionaires want in return from ….? Hmm.
Clitheroe-born Richard Holden has represented North West Durham for the Conservative Party since the December 2019 ‘Get Brexit Done’ general election. The first Tory MP in the constituency’s history, grammar school boy Richard (Ermysted’s Grammar School, Skipton and Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School, Blackburn) has never had a job. After graduating in Government and History from the London School of Economics, the 38-year-old joined Conservative Campaign Headquarters where he spent several years in the press office and became a SPAD.
In the 2017 parliamentary sex pest scandal, and while media advisor to defence secretary Sir Michael Fallon, Richard was found not guilty after being tried for sexually touching a woman in her 20s without her consent at a party. At the time, Holden’s girlfriend was QT regular Charlotte Ivers.
One of the Dublin Dabiris, Emma Dabiri is a renowned Irish author, academic, broadcaster and race obsessive. Her debut book, ‘Don’t Touch My Hair’ was published in 2019. Dabiri is highly sought-after as a speaker at events and corporate functions, her specialities being race, gender, race, colonialism, race, cultural issues, race, race and race.
According to the Irish Times, after completing a journalism course at Ballyfermot College of Further Education, the 44-year-old left Ireland to study African Studies at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies where she was spotted by a model scout and then television makers. While still in academia, she presented BBC Four’s Britain’s Lost Masterpieces, Channel 4 documentaries such as Is Love Racist? and a radio show about Afrofuturism.
Emma’s second book ‘What White People Can Do Next,’ sits a supremacist 43,319 places ahead of the Marquis De Sade’s ‘120 Days of Sodom’ in the Amazon best sellers list. As for what Emma can do next, might one suggest a packed suitcase accompanied by a one-way ticket?
Tony Parsons is a renowned British journalist, broadcaster and author. The 69-year-old kickstarted his career as a music journalist for the New Musical Express (NME), where he notably wrote about the punk music scene. Over the years, Parsons has married and divorced fellow writer and journalist Julie Burchill and established himself as a bestselling novelist with multi-million-selling books published in over forty languages worldwide.
Grammar school boy Tony’s second wife is called Yuriko. One of the Yokohama Yurikos, Mrs Parsons attended Tokyo’s 女子美術大学, before enrolling in the University of Edinburgh’s Edinburgh College of Art. In the interest of integration, Ms Yuroiko’s Facebook page is written in her native language. My Japonic Nihongo is a bit rusty but she comes across as a jolly type who has a dog called ‘Stan’ and refers to Tony as ‘Mr Husband San,’ as if a short-skirted Toyota 2000GT driving wifie in ‘You Only Live Twice.’
Incidentally, I order my railway engines from Japan as they’re a fraction of the English price and are much better runners. You get a lucky bag in every parcel and a packet of tissues emblazoned with the motto ‘Play More.’ The online shop also sells scale models of school girls. A very strange place.
Was it a Puffin who told me that halfway up Mount Fuji on his Japanese holiday of a lifetime, he spotted a venting machine selling … I just can’t say the words. Very, very strange place (but still preferable to being shackled to Julie Burchill). Anyway.
Richard Walker OBE attended £15,000-a-year The Grange School in Northwich. A Durham University graduate in Economics and Social Geography, in the interests of equality of opportunity, Richard serves under his father Executive Chairman Sir Malcolm Walker at the family’s Iceland foods business.
Speaking of donations, in May 2017 the then Mr Malcolm Walker donated £50,000 to the Conservative Party. His knighthood was announced the following month. In November 2019 Sir Malcolm donated another £25,000 to the Conservative Party. Son Richard received his OBE in a subsequent Queen’s Birthday Honours list but has since thrown his toys out of the Tory Party pram, or rather his frozen food out of the trolley, after being refused a constituency candidacy at the next election.
As for yokel photos to adorn the front of the Question Time desk, the Living in Wolverhampton blog suggests the Wolverhampton Art Gallery – featuring the local people of Wolverhampton’s perception of The Battle of Tettenhall &Wednesfield in 910AD – and Wolverhampton Grand Theatre, currently taking bookings for (music from) The Temptations and the Elvis Presley (tribute act) World Tour.
***
La Bruce introduced the programme with a black eye and her arm in a (private hospital?) sling. Has there been a girl fight? Bigly triggered by an empty kosher aisle in Sainsbury’s, did she beat up Shabana Mahmood and lock her in a cupboard?
This week’s provincial pictures were of a statue of a chap on a horse and another statue recognisable as Billy Wright of Wolverhampton Wanderers. This week’s foreign railway station had one of Mussolini’s fountains in front of it, making it Bari.
The first question was about the cancellation of the HS2 line between bankrupt Birmingham and Manchester.
Richard Holden blamed the fundamentals, especially the war in Ukraine which has put up the cost of construction and the pandemic since which passenger numbers have not recovered.
La Bruce asked about the Network North projects that will be funded from the cancellation and the confusion over which routes are covered. Especially ones that appeared on a map yesterday but disappeared from it today. Richard decided it was up to local mayors. Presumably, the mayor of Gatehouse of Fleece will decide what’s to be done about rebuilding the Beeching axed Paddy Line which would make my house half an hour closer to Stranraer.
Jon Ashworth (Labour) announced the whole thing a shambles. He read out his prep – a list of Tory Government transport projects previously promised but subsequently cancelled.
An audience member complained that HS2 was a Labour folly inherited by the Tories. It was a Labour idea embraced by the Tories, Jon explained in correction.
Emma reckoned the fundamentals hadn’t changed. One hundred years ago the UK had 32,000km of track and now there’s just 16,000km. There needs to be more track to reduce delay causing congestion. Does this interest in railways make her a Puffin? No. Note mention of the useless 1793 French invention the ‘kilometre’. Rather than 32,000km, a Puffin would have said 19,883 miles, 70 chains, 5 yards and 10 inches.
Sunack had been brave to announce the cancellation, said Tony Parsons. It would have been the easy decision to prevaricate. The money spent thus far was a runaway gravy train. Taxpayers have been taken for mugs. The money could have been spent on houses rather than a Labour/Tory vanity project.
The next question did reference a Puffin, Brigadier The Right Honourable John Enoch Powell MBE, and wondered if the Conservatives should ostracise Suella Braverman for her recent anti-uncontrolled immigration comments as Mr Powell had been following his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech. La Bruce quoted two sections. It being the only sensible thing that Fiona Bruce has ever tried to say, one feels obliged:
We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependants.
As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood.
Emma spoke first. Yes, she saw rivers of foaming blood approaching too and thought Suella’s comments a pre-cursor to genocide. Tony Parsons agreed with Emma and added Macron to the list of politicians to be cancelled following the French president’s recent comments on a similar theme. Despite the cancellations, Tony insisted we are generous and tolerant. Suella’s use of the word ‘hurricane’ played dangerously to the gallery. On the other hand, he noted there are 20 million women suffering under the Taliban in Afghanistan and they can’t all come here.
An idiot in the audience announced Ms Braverman ‘pure evil.’
Another idiot referenced the immigration issue as a distraction from hospital waiting lists, real poverty and food banks. Does he really not realise that the one causes the others?
Richard Holden drew a distinction between Ms Braverman and pure evil. We have a multicultural society these days. Referring to Ms Braverman again and nodding towards Mr Sunack, he more or less attempted to prove it by saying look at all the darkies in the Cabinet.
‘This is the danger with representation politics,’ quipped Emma.
She should be ostracised said Richard Walker but won’t be. Language really matters. The speech was designed to whip up division and fear. We’ve relied upon immigration for thousands of years, he announced, while omitting to mention that we haven’t.
A lady in the audience asked the key question. If you were desperate and in a foreign country, wouldn’t you want to come here too? No matter what the traitors in the media-political bubble say, the correct answer is, ‘No, I would stay and make my native county a better place.’
Jon answered ‘as an MP for Leicester’ where, you’ll recall, this time last year the minority British city’s Gujerati Muslims and Gujerati Hindus were kicking lumps out of each other while the (British) police force tried to keep them apart. Jon was bigly triggered. Rather than being a human dustbin, Leicester is a tolerant place where the only thing the immigrants disagree over is who can make the most Dvali lamps.
The third question was about phasing out cigarettes. Tony was a one-time 30-a-day full-strength Marlborough cowboy who gave up smoking when his father died of lung cancer. But he thought prohibition might make smoking glamorous to young people.
Emma said that smoking is less normal amongst children these days than when she was a teen. She thought the health priority should be spending more money on NHS wages.
Both of the politicians supported the policy but Richard Walker wanted retail to be allowed to keep on making money out of selling tabs to kids.
The final question was about another ban. The one on mobile phones in school. Tony was all in favour. Mobile phones are a tyranny. La Bruce quoted the headmistress of £30,000 a year St Paul’s School in London who thought the ban unenforceable and wanted such technology integrated into school instead.
Emma’s concentration span had been reduced by her smartphone. Prior to the invention of the technology when a schoolgirl, to her benefit she’d read and read and read in her teenage years. Whereas these days big corporations use blanket communication to drive complex hypernormalisation creating fake narratives. I knew she’d say that.
Richard Holden wanted them banned in the classroom and highlighted cyberbullying. Classrooms are for learning. The other Richard agreed. Hold on a minute. Dick Holden? Before wasting his life in parliament, didn’t he compile our excellent Saturday morning crosswords?
Opening the discussion to the floor, Bruce pointed and shouted, ‘The black guy in the middle.’ Is that allowed?
Jon Ashworth noted this government proposal is guidance that can’t be enforced and many schools already don’t allow phones in the classroom anyway. He supported the policy all the same but insisted this was a party conference distraction meant only for the following day’s newspaper headlines. Something Jon and the Labour Party wouldn’t dream of doing next week at their conference in Liverpool.
Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech can be read in full here.
© Always Worth Saying 2023
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