Question Time 16th May 2024
The Panel:
Meghan Gallagher (Conservative)
Anas Sarwar (Labour)
Stephen Flynn (SNP)
Alex Salmond (Alba)
Iain Dale (Broadcaster)
Venue: Aberdeen
Meghan Gallacher is currently Deputy Leader of the Scottish Conservatives and an MSP for the Central Scotland region.
The 32-year-old’s only employment was two years on the help desk at John Lewis before she became a researcher in the Scottish Parliament. During this time, according to her register of interests, she was elected to a £35,000 a year seat on Motherwell Council.
Meghan’s partner is fellow Conservative councillor Graeme McGinnigle, a vice convener of education in East Dunbartonshire.
One of the Lanarkshire Sarwars, Comrade Anas is the son of former Labour MP Choudry Mohammad Sarwar, whose Glasgow Central seat in Westminster he inherited when Sarwar Snr gave up his British passport and returned to his native country to become governor of the Punjab.
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.
Defeated in the 2015 general election, Anas was elected to the Scottish Parliament via a party list the next year, and by 2021 had risen to be Scotland’s Labour leader.
The Sarwars have troubled QT Review HQ on a number of occasions. The family cash and carry firm’s VAT problems, political donations from post office boxes in the British Virgin Islands and contributions 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.
Alexander Elliot Anderson Salmond was born in Linlithgow on New Year’s Eve, 1954. After attending Linlithgow Academy and gaining an HND from Edinburgh College of Commerce, he enrolled at St Andrew’s University, where he graduated with a Medieval History and Economics degree. From 1987 to 2010 and again from 2015 to 2017, Mr Salmond served in the House of Commons. From 2007 to 2014, he served in the Edinburgh parliament as First Minister of Scotland.
Subsequently, Alex was involved in a court case concerning allegations surrounding his conduct in office and sexual harassment complaints made against him. In March 2020, a jury found Salmond not guilty on 12 charges. Having resigned from the SNP in the face of the allegations, he joined and became leader of the Alba Party in 2021.
Between November 2017 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in the spring of 2022, Alex hosted The Alex Salmond Show on Vladimir Putin’s ‘Kremlin propaganda channel’ Russia Today. The show was produced by Slainte Media, a company owned by Mr Salmond and his former SNP colleague Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh. In the usual media bubble tax dodge, Mr Salmond’s broadcasting fees are paid to the company rather than to himself.
Puffins will be pleased to read that since Mr Salmond last appeared on QT, and therefore since QT Review HQ last cast a beady eye on Slainte’s accounts, the monies accumulated by the company on behalf of Mr Salmond and Ms Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh have risen to £391,070.
Hailing from Dundee, Stephen Flynn grew up in the Menzieshill area of the city and was educated at St John’s High School. He went on to study History and Politics at the University of Dundee, followed by a master’s degree in International Politics and Security Studies from the University of Aberdeen.
The 35-year-old’s political journey began at the local government level. He was elected as a councillor for the SNP in Aberdeen City Council, representing the Kincorth/Nigg/Cove ward, in 2015. In the 2019 general election, Flynn transitioned to national politics by standing for and winning the Aberdeen South constituency, previously held by Conservative MP Ross Thomson.
Never having had a job, Mr Flynn’s experience of the big, bad world outside of the political bubble only extends as far as being an assistant and office worker for SNP officials.
Flynn’s victory was part of the SNP’s broader success in that election, which saw the party make significant gains across Scotland.
In December 2022, he was elected as the leader of the SNP group in the House of Commons, succeeding Ian Blackford.
His father, Mark, is also a politician and serves as an SNP councillor in Dundee. Stephen’s wife is called Lynn. Yes, Lynn Flynn. Poor soul.
Farmer’s son Iain Dale is a broadcaster, political commentator, and author. He grew up in Essex and attended Ashdon County Primary School and Saffron Walden County High School. He went on to study German, linguistics, and teaching English as a foreign language at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, where he became actively involved in student politics.
The 61-year-old’s early career saw him work in various roles, including financial services and publishing. His political engagement deepened when he joined the Conservative Party and stood as a candidate in the 2005 general election for the Norfolk North constituency. He finished second with 20,909 votes, 10,606 votes behind Liberal Democrat Norman Lamb.
Founder of Politico’s Bookstore in Westminster, a hub for political literature and discussion, Iain also launched a successful online retail business publishing political books and pamphlets.
Dale is the founder of ‘Iain Dale’s Diary’, also known as ‘Mrs Dale’s Diary’, and a co-founder of the inferior politics blog ConservativeHome.
Transitioning to broadcasting, Dale joined LBC Radio in 2010, where he initially presented the Sunday afternoon show before moving to various other slots. He has edited and written numerous books, including political biographies and reference works like “The Politico’s Guide to the 2010 General Election.”
According to the guff, Iain’s annual publication, “The Top 100 Most Influential People on the Right,” co-authored with Brian Brivati, has been a significant barometer of power within the Conservative Party. Hmm.
The last time it was published, Iain and Brian’s most influential person on the right was Boris Johnson, who’s gone. Second, Dominic Cummings, also gone. Continuing down the list suggests the barometer should have been pointing to ‘choppy waters’. Especially for Iain’s biggest riser, up an amazing 63 places since the previous year, a certain Mrs Liz Truss!
Iain’s ‘husband’ is fellow publisher John Simmons.
***
Question one was asked before an empty seat where absent Alex Salmond should have been sat. Hmm. Is recently appointed John Swinney also first minister for those who don’t want independence?
Yes, of course, replied his colleague Stephen Flynn, adding that the problems of the SNP’s minority government are minor compared to the challenges members of the public face with issues such as the cost of living. He then complained that Mr Sunack had called half of the Scottish population extremists. At which point, Mr Salmond took his seat.
A gentleman in the audience observed Mr Swinney’s elevation to be a result of a lack of talent in the SNP.
Mr Salmond thought the SNP had lost its way on the issue of independence and claimed, wrongly, they had a mandate for a second independence referendum following the previous Scottish election, where, Mr Salmond forgot to mention, the SNP received less than half of the vote.
A nut in the audience praised the SNP for bringing socialism to Scotland.
Mr Sarwar thought the Tories were an extremist government. There isn’t a majority for a referendum but neither for the status quo. He quoted fuel poverty and health service waiting lists as evidence of SNP failures.
In a non-joke that fell flat, after placing a pair of spectacles above his nose, Iain Dale claimed to be a Swinney lookalike. Iain compared the new First Minister to an elderly Pope who won’t be in office for long. If you want independence, you have to prove you are capable of ruling. Blaming his quarter Scottishness, Iain claimed to be independence-curious.
Alex Salmond countered that Scottish independence had been around for about a century without a single person losing their life. How dare Mr Sunack call them extremists? Salmond forgot to mention the early Scots Nationalists supporting Hitler, hating the Irish and being self-confessed fascists.
Meghan Gallagher invited Mr Salmond to look at her Twitter feed, if he mistakenly thought the hate-filled cyber-Nats were somehow peaceful.
The panel squabbled about the Scottish health service.
Question two. Should the Scottish government – as in England – stop the teaching of gender ideology as fact?
Meghan mentioned Mrs Cass’s recent report into such things. La Bruce insisted poor Meghan define ‘gender ideology’. Unconvinced, La Bruce read out a definition for her – deep in tranny gobbledygook.
Anas wanted the teaching of such things to be age-appropriate and properly resourced.
The questioner thought it was wrong to tell children they were living in the wrong body.
A teacher in silly glasses and a vivid green dress claimed she was ‘all some children have’. She also declared herself a ‘trusted adult’, with children having nowhere else to go for information. Hmm.
Yes, it should be stopped, said Iain. But young people always have questions. Ideally, parents would answer them. He didn’t want a return to Section 28 in the 1980s, which Iain claimed (wrongly) stopped teachers from mentioning homosexuality.
At Iain’s old school, the head of needlework was the unwilling libertine in charge of sex education. To a hushed audience, Mr Dale recalled Mr So-and-so had…
As with the teaching of gender theory in schools, Iain, that’s enough of that.
But Mr Dale had a solution: professionals should teach sex education. Professionals at what? The mind boggled.
Stephen has two young children, one of whom starts school this year. Stephen would like to think teachers would be empowered to talk about the most important things in the child’s life – rather than getting it from a smartphone where, perhaps, Mr Dales ‘professionals’ lurk.
Meghan stated that Mrs Cass’s Report’s conclusions should be enacted.
La Bruce ummed and ahhed and summed up the Cass Report’s conclusions as being that a ‘pendulum has swung too far’. A euphemism within a euphemism, the question is, should it be cut off?
Salmond suggested that we should have more confidence in the professionalism of the woke loons in the teaching profession. He then contradicted them by saying gender can’t be self-defined.
This was the issue that had broken the Scottish coalition thanks to the looney tranny views of the Greens. He suggested, sensibly, that gender dysmorphia is not a freely made self-definition but a condition to be treated within the Cass recommendations.
Question three, is there a future for North Sea oil?
Yes, absolutely, began Anas, while being immediately spoken over by Steven. Oil and gas are part of a transition and will be for decades to come. The oil and gas industries are partners in a ‘Green Revolution’. We have a plan, the GB Energy company, which, he claimed, devoid of evidence, will bring energy prices down and create tens of thousands of jobs.
Alex Salmond said the Labour Party’s 78% windfall tax will see 100,000 oil and gas jobs go. He mentioned the axing of Labour’s commitment to £28 billion a year of green investment.
A posh English accent in the audience mentioned a Green Revolution of pylons and turbines causing ‘Highland clearances’ with not an acre of Scottish countryside left to enjoy.
£400 billion worth in oil revenues had gone from Aberdeen to the English! According to Stephen Flynn. Frittered down the drain by any future Labour government. He and Anas Sarwar contradicted each other over crackpot energy non-producing schemes for carbon-phobes.
Ian had flown to Aberdeen. Oh dear. Not only destroying the planet but jeopardising the ‘Albert Sustainable’ logo at the end of the QT programme credits. Then, rather than walk, he’d taken a taxi from the airport. Gracious. He had asked the taxi driver what the big local issues were. ‘Oil and gas,’ came the reply.
Iain mentioned energy security. He said (wrongly) that we don’t have coal anymore. Yes, we do, but, as with oil and gas after a future Green Revolution, it sits underground unused. We will need oil and gas for decades. This need not mean Net Zero targets are missed. The SNP are also against nuclear power, said an exasperated Iain.
La Bruce had had enough, with the ‘Albert Sustainable’ logo hanging by a thread – and with the transcripts of all BBC programmes audited for Albert Sustainable compliance – she turned to the audience and begged for someone to mention climate change.
At which point of Net Zero integrity, I banned reviewing for another week and headed for bed.
© Always Worth Saying 2024
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