Question Time December 14th 2023
The Panel:
Meghan Gallacher (Conservative)
Anas Sarwar (Labour)
Angela Constance (SNP)
Kate Andrews (Journalist)
Stephen Noon (Political Strategist)
Venue: Kelso
This close to Christmas nobody in the London bubble can be bothered with a BBC panel show, not least one as far away from Islington as the Scottish Borders town of Kelso. This week’s QT panel, therefore, are the nonentities’ nonentities, household names only in their own houses. Except for Kate Andrews who must be desperate – or is being paid to lobby for someone foreign and rich.
Meghan Gallacher is currently the Deputy Leader of the Scottish Conservatives and has been serving as MSP for the Central Scotland region since 2021.
In her register of interests, Meghan informs us she’s a ‘volunteer befriender in Motherwell’. A much-needed profession. Those of us who have actually visited the Lanarkshire town, and especially those with English accents, take part in a regular but little-known ceremony. We stand on our doorsteps every Thursday evening at 8 pm for a minute’s applause for the Motherwell Befrienders to whom we owe our lives, or at least our unbroken limbs.
The 31-year-old has never had much of a job, her only employment being two years on the help desk at John Lewis before becoming a researcher in the Scottish Parliament for former Blues and Royals officer Sir Edward Brian Stanford Mountain, 4th Baronet, an MSP for the Highlands and Islands. During this time she was elected, again according to her register of interests, to a £35,000 a year seat on Motherwell Council.
Meghan’s partner and the father of her 18-month-old daughter, Charlotte, is fellow Conservative councillor Graeme McGinnigle, a vice convener of education in East Dunbartonshire. Graeme is pictured here setting an example to the sweet wee souls being educated by East Dunbartonshire as he takes time out from cradling his infant daughter to cradle an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, the floor around him strewn with bullet casings.
Have we reached peak Motherwell befriending?
One of the Lanarkshire Sarwars, Comrade Anas, because of his skin colour and religion, is given a free ride by the supine mainstream media north of the border.
Son of former Labour MP Choudry Mohammad Sarwar, Anas was privately educated at £14,000 a year Hutcheson’s Grammar School. After graduating from the University of Glasgow, the 40-year-old worked as an NHS dentist for five years before inheriting, Punjab-style, his father’s Glasgow Central seat in parliament.
Mr Sarwar Sr, an immigrant cash and carry magnet, had given up his British passport and returned to his native Pakistan to become governor of Punjab. Anas was defeated in the 2015 general election but returned to politics the following year when elected to the Scottish Parliament via a party list.
Becoming party leader in 2021, Sarwar Jr led Scottish Labour to its worst-ever Holyrood election results a few months later – receiving only 20% of the vote. Mr Sarwar lost the seat he was contesting but was re-elected anyway via the same party list dodge.
Unincumbered by mainstream media sensitivities, the Sarwars have registered on the QT Review HQ radar a number of times. Family firm VAT problems, political donations from post office boxes in the British Virgin Islands and other donations from a convicted child sex offender can be read of here.
Details of the foreign aid budget’s connections to the Sarwar family ‘charity’ with its footprint in Glasgow, The Gulf and Pakistani prisons and sweatshops are detailed here.
Since he last featured in this column, Chaudhry Sarwar has moved on after being sacked as Governor of the Punjab.
Playing the politics of both sides, he supported an opponent rather than his party colleague Chaudhry Parvez Elahi in the race to become Chief Minister of the province. Governor Sarwar was removed from office by Prime Minister Imran Kahn (currently serving a three-year jail term for corruption). Remember, the instant these crooks set foot on British soil they become honest, upright, incorruptible citizens. Don’t they?
Hatched-faced Angela Constance is an SNP MSP representing Almond Valley. If you’re wondering where Almond Valley is, it is the name for Livingston used by people who come from Livingston but who are too ashamed to mention Livingston. The 53-year-old growler serves as the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs in the Holyrood parliament.
In 2020, she took on the role of Minister for Drugs Policy to preside over Scotland’s catastrophic substance abuse strategy which sees the country hold the highest drug misuse mortality rate in Europe – 3.5 times higher than England and Wales and worse even than the United States.
Before a career in politics, Ms Constance obtained a Certificate of Welfare Studies from West Lothian College and an MSc in Social Work from the University of Stirling and worked as a social worker and councillor for West Lothian Council.
The presence of Angela allows us our regular QT Review reminder that the SNP’s origins lie within Nazism, fascism, racism and sectarian bigotry.
Arthur Donaldson, a founding father, was pictured with the Hitler Youth and urged Scots to side with the Germans while the Luftwaffe was bombing Clydebank. Another founding father, Andrew Dewar Gibb, quoted Hitler in his speeches and was a confessed fascist who expressed a visceral hatred of foreigners. His 1931 work, The Wrongs of Scotland claimed ‘The Irish have invaded Scotland by hundreds of thousands while Scotsman have had to emigrate to make a living.’ Not quite as keen on mass, uncontrolled, unlimited immigration as the official party line these days pretends to be.
Kate Andrews is a journalist and economist, currently serving as the Economics Editor for The Spectator and who has been a lobbyist for the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA). Privately educated Kate attended the $20,000-a-year Christian Heritage School in Trumbull, Connecticut, and the nearby $48,000-a-year Greens Farm Academy. After high school graduation, Miss Andrews attended our very own University of St Andrews where she took an MA in International Relations and Philosophy.
A fuller QT Review biography of Kate appears here.
As soon as another of her (too) frequent appearances on QT is announced, Miss Andrews receives a predictable wall of hate from leftie Twitter (presently known as ‘X’). Partly because she is the type of nicely presented girly girl that the degenerate left despises (no shaved head, tatts, pink hair or whooping noises) but partly because of the opacity of funding in the institute that she’s represented.
According to documents lodged with the Charity Commission, out of the IEA’s total annual income of £2.5 million, £2.4 million (96%) comes from donations. However, the donors are anonymous, the suspicion being they are overseas interests secretly paying for access to British politicians and media to promote policy change for their own financial self-interest. Keep this in mind when listening to Kate’s impartial opinions.
Stephen Noon came to prominence in his role as Chief Strategist for Yes Scotland during the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. Before this, Noon held a series of senior appointments in the Commons (on the Press side of things) and had a long career in the SNP that included working as an advisor to First Minister Alex Salmond.
Following the referendum defeat, the 55-year-old slipped from prominence by joining the Society of Jesus and training to be a Jesuit priest. During this time he studied theology in Toronto, begged in the Basque Country, worked in a primary school and hospice, and became a director of the London Jesuit Centre. Upon leaving the order in 2022, Mr Noon moved into ‘public affairs’ with Weber Shandwick, the Edinburgh outfit who ‘work at the intersection of technology, society, policy and media, adding value to culture — to shape and re-shape it.’ If these people are so good at communication and moulding opinion, how come they send a shiver down the spine?
Before he was famous, Mr Noon hit the headlines all the same in 2003 when he was sacked for being gay. An Opus Dei-type glutton for punishment, Mr Noon took up an opening as press secretary to Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, but was dismissed after being informed his sexuality was incompatible with his position in the Church.
***
Question One. For how much longer can the Tories remain one party? Asked a lady with a mysteriously strong English accent.
Meghan Gallacher referred to Mr Sunack’s five priorities, the people’s priorities. The Conservative Party is a broad church.
None of the factions speaks to the people of Scotland, claimed Angela Constance. Mr Hunt’s recent economic Autumn Statement doesn’t help the scroungers north of the border, she more or less said. In Scotland, there’s a population challenge (to applause from the challenged) requiring mass, uncontrolled, unlimited immigration into little places like Kelso.
And the credibility of the SNP? Wondered La Bruce hinting at camper van scandals. Used to be worse, we used to get 12% in the polls, responded Angela.
An audience member wondered why taxes were higher in Scotland. Because taxing people to death is ‘progressive’, replied Ms Constance.
At that point, the question was passed to the kettle who took the opportunity to call the kettle black. The Tories are corrupt, began Anas Sarwar. He then monologued from a carefully prepared dog whistle-laden script. Well briefed and well-rehearsed, the frankly impressive Mr Sawar made one faux pas when saying the blockade in Palestine (somehow the fault of the Tories?) means Palestinians are ‘dying to death’.
Stephen Noon saw relief in proportional representation which would allow the ultra-hard far-Right wing of the Tory Party to stand alone and free the others (who presumably aren’t in any way Conservative) to move on. Also, a centrist Tory Pary might reach out to Labour and the Libdems – according to Stephen.
Despite the loud noises, the Tories think Sunack is the man to take them into the election, began Kate. Voting earlier in the week suggested the parliamentary Conservative party agreed a ‘cruel gimmick’ to deport a small number of illegal immigrants to Rwanda at great expense. Kate was disappointed. Presumably she’s shilling tonight on behalf of third parties who churn cheap labour or benefits into their profits.
Question two, again delivered in a plummy English accent, asked if Scottish independence is now a pipe dream.
Angela Constance blamed the English rather than the failings of the SNP. In a snipe at their north-of-the-border political rivals, she reminded the audience the Labour Party is not in favour of a second independence referendum, nor are they committed to re-joining the European Union.
What is the SNP’s independence strategy? Asked La Bruce. Being committed to it, replied Ms Constance. La Bruce persisted. What is the constitutional route available to the SNP? Gaining a mandate, said Angela. She claimed independence to be a panacea that would cure everything.
The energy has shifted, according to Stephen, shifted towards a future Labour government in Westminster. That protects ‘us’ for five years but electoral reform and independence would bring about permanent protection. He wanted a smooth, successful independence that included ongoing relationships with the rest of the UK and the European Union.
The self-delusion was high. He forgot to mention the lack of a Scottish currency and the transfer of Scottish sovereignty not from London to Edinburgh but to Brussels.
Sarwar wanted change rather than independence and the first step in that change is a Labour UK government after a 2024 general election and then a Labour majority in the Scottish elections in 2026.
The SNP can’t blame anyone else as, like the Tories in London, they’ve been in power for a long time, said Kate. She then told an untruth, unchallenged, that life expectancy in Scotland is plunging. No, it isn’t. Life expectancy in Scotland is rising but more slowly than it was previously.
Meghan said independence wasn’t the big issue. She then reamed off a long list of issues that the Tories are failing on, such as NHS waiting lists – which she then blamed on the SNP.
Angela came back to blame Brexit.
Question three, from another Englishman, wondered of the fall in standards in Scottish schools. The SNP blame everybody else noted Anas Sarwar. The education system needed ‘fixed’ with more teachers and assistants. The money will come from growth.
Stephen Noon blamed everybody. There is a collective responsibility. In England they teach to test, in Scotland they teach to learn and think. Do they?
It’s not all about resources, countered Kate, as spending per pupil is higher in Scotland than in England but attainment is lower. We have to look at the curriculum, children have to be taught to read, count and spell.
Angela was happy with falling educational standards as instead ‘resilience in an ever-changing world’ was being provided. She pointed out that the attainment gap between rich and poor was narrowing. Kate interupted to say that’s because of the standard dropping.
Nobody said it’s absolutely nothing to do with resources but with discipline, hard work (in teachers and pupils) and schools selecting children according to aptitude and ability. At which point I used my iron disciple to switch the telly off and go to bed.
That being the final edition of this series of Question Time, all that remains is for QT Review HQ to wish Puffins a happy and spiritual Christmas and a prosperous and peaceful New Year.
© Always Worth Saying 2023
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