Question Time 30th May 2024
The Panel:
Damian Hinds (Conservative)
Wes Streeting (Labour)
Nigel Farage (Reform UK)
Rose Hudson-Wilkin (Bishop of Dover)
Piers Morgan (Journalist)
Venue: Epsom
On 14th April, Scotland’s The Nation newspaper reported that Shadow Health Minister Mr Wes Streeting had recently accepted £175,000 in donations, much of it from private healthcare interests. According to his register of parliamentary interests, the very next day, Streeting accepted £15,000 from a Ruth Driscoll and, two days later, £39,000 from Mr Kevin Craig. Who is Kevin Craig?
According to himself, Kevin is an expert in political communications, crisis management and corporate communications. He is the founder and CEO of PLMR, one of the UK’s top 40 and the world’s top 250 communications firms. Not only that, Kevin is standing in the election in Central Suffolk and North Ipswich as a Labour Party candidate. On his business website, he boasts of time spent at Saatchi and Saatchi’s PR Arm, global law firm DLA Piper, and 25 years of experience in public affairs and public relations.
However, on his political campaign website, he prefers the good voters of Ipswich and Central Suffolk to think of him as ‘a businessman, campaigner and charity supporter with decades of commitment to Suffolk’. A commitment to Suffolk that further research revealed has included seventeen years as an elected politician in London local government, including three as Chair of the London Borough of Lambeth’s Planning Committee.
In a previous edition of PR trade magazine Public Affairs News, Kevin commented on the fallout from the Independent newspaper’s Bell Pottinger sting and its consequences for lobbying. The newspaper’s sting had revealed underhand and racially incendiary tactics used by Bell Pottinger while employed on behalf of the Gupta family in South Africa to lobby for the ANC’s President Zuma. Other clients included Chile’s General Pinochet.
By coincidence, one of Kevin’s colleagues from Lamberth Council is standing for the Labour Party in my constituency – 300 miles north of the South London borough, which The Times newspaper recently described as the worst run in Britain.
In a further coincidence, the candidate concerned, Ms Julie Minns, was not only an employee of toxic Bell Pottinger but later a director. As with Mr Kevin Craig, Ms Minns omits to mention this in her campaign material and prefers to talk of being a local lass, a ‘campaigner’ and the first in her family to go to university (as was Mr Craig).
Private Eye has part-covered the Minns story, as has Michael Crick, who, in a tweet, wondered if Carlisle Labour members were given the full facts when Minns was selected. The voters certainly haven’t been, at least not via dishonest Julie and the dishonest Labour Party’s communications.
An important point emerges. Beneath Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeve’s smoke, mirrors, evasion and waffle, the Labour Party is committed to tax, tax, tax and spend, spend, spend. It will not be spent on you. It will be spent where Labour Party donors and a new cadre of surreptitiously elected lobbyists direct it on behalf of their corporate and overseas clients.
Educated privately at Dulwich College, Nigel Farage initially pursued a career in finance as a commodities trader in the City of London. The 60-year-old, who was born in Farnborough, Kent, was one of the founding members of UKIP in 1993, becomming a Member of the European Parliament for South East England in 1999, a position he held until the UK left the EU in 2020.
Farage served as the leader of UKIP during two separate periods, from 2006 to 2009 and from 2010 to 2016, and played both a significant role in June 2016’s Brexit referendum and as part of Donald Trump’s presidential election-winning effort in November of the same year.
In 2018, he founded the Brexit Party, which saw success in the 2019 European Parliament elections, winning the most UK seats.
In a general election the following December, the Brexit Party aided Boris Johnson’s Red Wall breakthrough by taking support away from Labour. After the completion of Brexit, the Brexit Party was rebranded as Reform UK with Ricard Tice as leader and Nigel Farage as Honorary President.
Beyond politics, Farage is a broadcaster and media personality who additionally sells personalised online birthday greetings for £70 a time. Last year, he also appeared in Mr Anton Dec’s ‘I’m Desperate For The Money, Get Me Into The Jungle…’
In the week that Puffins’ favourite Mrs Iain Dale gave up his lucrative broadcasting job to run for parliament and Mr Farage didn’t, could this suggest that two ex-wives, four children and a French girlfriend (Mme Laure Ferrari), have stretched Nigel’s (de-banked by Coutts) coffers to the limit?
Might he take a leaf out of his father’s book? In September 1985, the interesting Guy Justus Oscar Farage, a respectable City of London stockbroker, created media content of his own when censored by the Stock Exchange Council for placing clients’ bargains into a ‘suspense account’ for several days rather than into the clients’ account. One assumes that while in the suspense account, bargains were traded for the benefit of Mr Farage Snr rather than for the client. Tut tut.
When not involved in politics, broadcasting or selling birthday greetings, Mr Farage enjoys fishing, cricket and supporting Crystal Palace FC. Incidentally, despite being labelled by the Lying Media as a weapons-grade racist, besides the girlfriend, both of his wives were also foreign. First wife, Gráinne Hayes, was an Irish nurse, second wife, Kirsten Mehr, a German.
Damian Hinds was educated at St. Ambrose College, a Roman Catholic grammar school in Altrincham and later attended Trinity College, Oxford, where he studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. During his time at Oxford, Hinds was the president of the Oxford Union. Before entering politics, Hinds had a career in business, working for Procter & Gamble and later Hilton Worldwide, on the management and marketing side.
In the 2010 general election, Hinds was elected as the Conservative Member of Parliament for East Hampshire. The 54-year-old is married to Jacqui, nee Morel. They have three children. Before today’s dissolution of parliament, Mr Hinds was serving as Minister of State for Schools.
Rose Josephine Hudson-Wilkin, MBE, QHC, has been the Bishop of Dover since 2019. One of the Church of England’s first women priests, Rose was ordained in Lichfield Cathedral 30 years ago. Born in Montego Bay, Jamaica, Rose came to the UK in 1982 to train as a Church Army minister. During her studies, she met her husband, Kenneth Wilkin, also a clergyman.
The reverends Hudson-Wilkin have two daughters and a son. As proof that when you try to do good in the world, the devil comes to get you, prior to her elevation to Bishop of Dover, she was appointed as a Queen’s Honorary Chaplin to a royal palace. Unfortunately, the palace was Westminster, and the chaplaincy was to the Speaker of the House of Commons – the vile John Bercow.
Piers Morgan, not his real name, Piers Stefan O’Meara. Still not his real name, via his stepfather, Piers Stefan Pughe-Morgan. Still not his real name, in this parish, he is known as Penis Moron. Educated at the £25,000 a year Cumnor House, Sussex, Piers has courted controversy bigly during a long career in the London media bubble. From fake pictures of British soldiers abusing Iraqis to his involvement in the phone hacking scandal to scouring show businesses looking for paedophiles to be photographed with.
https://twitter.com/poyspdivoc/status/1541353210027327488/photo/
In keeping with the ethos of tonight’s panel, one feels obliged to tell of one more incident. When at the Daily Mirror, he used his wife’s savings to invest £67,000 ‘on a whim’ in Viglen the day before the shares were tipped by his own paper. Viglen’s share price more than doubled after the Mirror announced the computer company were to set up an internet division. Tut tut.
***
Question one: is committing to bringing back National Service no more than a stunt?
A lot of people have emailed Damian saying it’s a brilliant idea. The benefits include a more cohesive society. Hang on a minute. Damian continued by saying that 30,000 18-year-olds a year will go into the military. But there’s more than half a million young people in every year group. What National Service? He went on to say the non-military service will consist of volunteering for one weekend a month for a year. How is this ‘National Service’?
Wes began by telling the audience he’d been involved with the Air Cadets for the last year, and they do remarkable things with the youngsters. It’s incredible. As a father of two former cadets, for once, this reviewer can agree wholeheartedly with Wes. He then spoiled the love-in by ranting about government failures being covered up by this policy. After the rant, there was silence – even from the carefully selected BBC audience.
The Reverend Rose started by pointing out she isn’t a member of any political party. She was worried this would be a kind of conscription. She preferred the Prince’s Trust and the Duke of Edinburgh Awards. She wanted the encouragement of a compassionate society.
An 18-year-old in the audience pointed out that he was too busy for such things.
Moron liked the idea but thought it hadn’t been well thought through. He saw an epidemic of anxiety among the young, which service might help. The nation must also serve the 18-year-olds. Housing is expensive, and so is higher education. They can’t even go for a swim without being covered in sewage.
Not a serious policy, began Nigel Farage. He had done the maths. Only 1 in 36 will be in the military. He did agree the younger generation had been damaged, but it had been caused by Mr Moron’s and Mr Hind’s enthusiasm for youth-damaging pandemic lockdowns. He pointed out the Army has shrunk from 100,000 to 70,000 under this government, and the effort should concentrate on treating the regular Army better.
Nigel and Piers went to war. Mr Moron was bigly triggered that Nigel isn’t standing in the election but continuing with his successful TV show, whereas Piers remains unwatched on YouTube.
Question two was about millionaire doctors being asked to work weekends. Wes assured the precious little questioner, who claimed to be a doctor but who looked about twelve, that no doctor will be obliged to work weekends. Those who want to do it can opt-in and be paid overtime. Overtime for weekends? How many of the self-employed are paid overtime for weekends? Or shop workers? Wes went on to say doctors are being forced to go on strike. Are they?
At this point, I was drawn to the statutory foreign railway station among the local photos on the front of the Question Time panel’s desk. The uninitiated might have thought they’d spotted the main stand at Epson on Derby day. Not so. It was Limerick Junction, taken from the bottom left-hand corner of Tipperary racecourse. True fact.
At which point, back in the programme, myself and the panellists were told off by La Bruce. She raised a finger and began, ‘Can I just say one thing? This programme is only going to work if you let each other speak, don’t talk across each other and let the audience in.’ And stop over-thinking the local photos, she wanted to add.
Piers’ mother had had a heart attack. Had she Googled ‘Piers Morgan’? Perhaps, but what Piers wanted to tell us was that she’d been taken to hospital and had a long wait in a corridor with 35 other people. When she finally did get to the front of the queue, she enjoyed first class treatment. He pointed out the growing and ageing population. He apologised to Wes but felt obliged to say Labour’s policy was tinkering at the edges with, given Rachael Reeves’ pledges on tax, no extra money.
A GP spoke. She works over 50 hours a week. Seven hours a day, nice. She wanted more money, surprise, surprise. Nigel agreed with Piers about the population. We have to face up to the fact that the NHS isn’t working anymore. Health Service spending has increased but we’re not getting the delivery. He was in favour of a mixture of private and national insurance funding, like in France.
Something should have happened a long, long time ago, pointed out Rose. We have to stop taking medical staff from abroad. Other countries pay to train those people and then lose them. We must stop doing that.
On this excellent point, and after an enjoyable working day that lasted far north of seven hours, Dr Clock prescribed me a dose of bedtime.
© Always Worth Saying 2024
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