Question Time 13th June 2024
The Panel:
Douglas Ross (Conservative)
Anas Sarwar (Labour)
Kate Forbes (SNP)
Stephen Nolan (Political Strategist)
Iain Anderson (Businessman and Adviser)
Venue: Edinburgh
Tonight’s politicians are on Question Time too often. Politics north of the border is even more of a bubble than the London media-political-legal clique. QT Review is sick of Douglas Ross, Anas Sarwar and Kate Forbes and has run out of things to say about them. Incidentally, in the run-up to the general election, Forbes and Sarwar aren’t even MPs but rather MSPs. Douglas Ross is both an MP and MSP, but dark clouds gather over his Moray seat at Westminster – more of which later.
However, a reprieve from the usual QT Review suspects emerges in the form of Iain Anderson, a ‘businessman and advisor’. He made an appearance on the programme on 22nd January 2022, but interestingly, no QT Review biography of him can be found. The reason for this peculiar absence is revealed in the subsequent review, where I profusely apologise for the non-appearance of the previous week’s column. The reason? I had been unwell.
Having tested negative for COVID, I concluded Vodoo was at work. My effigy’s head was being knitting-needled by Layla Moron, George the Poet and Chief Juju Priestess Emily Thornberry – while topless and in a grass skirt. Wrong, wrong and wrong. I’ll lay a penny to folding money that Iain Anderson was at work. The following is what he didn’t want you to find out:
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Iain Anderson is a prominent Scottish businessman and advisor known for extensive public affairs and corporate communications work. He co-founded and serves as the executive chairman of Cicero/AMO, a leading public policy and corporate communications consultancy. Anderson has been influential in advising global FTSE and Fortune 500 companies on public policy and communication strategies.
In addition to his business achievements, Anderson is notable for his advocacy for LGBT rights. In 2021, he was appointed by Liz Truss, then Minister for Women and Equalities, as the UK’s first LGBT Business Champion. Anderson’s role included fostering inclusive corporate environments. Keep this in mind when seeing rainbow flags in the workplace. This is far from spontaneous but an obligation insisted upon by the likes of Anderson.
According to the guff, his leadership extends beyond the UK, as he engages with international organisations and investors to ’emphasise the importance of diversity and inclusion in corporate governance and supply chains’. Anderson’s work is recognised globally, with numerous accolades including being named one of the Financial Times’ Outstanding Global 100 Executives and a Stonewall Ambassador.
In recent developments, Anderson made the headlines by leaving the Conservative Party after nearly four decades to join the Labour Party. His decision was motivated by concerns over the Conservative Party’s stance on LGBT issues and a perceived culture war under the leadership of Rishi Sunak.
Or was it?
As might be expected from a communications professional, there is much that his guff omits. According to documents lodged at Companies House, Anderson’s vehicle is Ciscero Consulting Limited, a public relations and communications company with 60 employees and a turnover of £8.5 million.
The small print reveals that Ciscero is owned by Havas UK Limited, which is owned by Vivendi SE, which is owned by Compangnie del’Odet SE, which is owned by Bolloré Participations SE, which is part of a Bolloré conglomerate controlled the Bolloré family, whose patriarch Vincent Bolloré is worth a cool $10,000,000,000.
According to Forbes (not Kate, but the US business magazine of the same name), the Bolloré family began manufacturing cigarette wrappers and bibles in 1822.
After a stint at the Edmond de Rothschild bank, head of the family Vincent took control of the business in 1981 and has been instrumental in continuing its progress into a global giant. The group is active in media, advertising, shipping, construction and logistics and owns a majority stake in telecom conglomerate Vivendi. In 2018, French officials reportedly launched an investigation into Vincent Bolloré’s dealings for alleged corruption. His group denied involvement.
Again, according to Forbes, Vincent’s personal wealth has increased by $3.5 billion in the last four years. Mention of logistics and supply chains in Ian and parent company Bolloré’s publicity reminds us that Mr Anderson is not emphasising ‘the importance of diversity and inclusion in supply chains’ for any common good but to maximise profits for Bolloré by wrapping their business activities in virtue.
Through a subsidiary called Socfin, the Bolloré Group is one of the biggest plantation owners in the world. Not that type of plantation? Yes, that type of plantation. Socfin manages some 200,000 hectares of palm oil and rubber tree plantations in Africa and Asia. If you’ve been told that palm oil production occurs at the expense of critical habitats for many endangered species and primal human communities, you won’t have heard it from Ciscero.
When we’re told that Mr Anderson left the Tory Party and joined Labour because of LGBT and culture war issues, this is an outright lie. Mr Anderson switched parties to be closer to power on behalf of his corporate clients and corporate owner in anticipation of the government changing at a 2024 general election.
Those clients include, amongst many others, Tyson Krupp (steel and armaments), Bombardier (aviation and armaments), Barclays, PayPal, Royal Mail, American Express, et al.
In other words, a roll call of globalised corporations hoping to make a fortune out of an incoming Labour government’s commitment to high taxes, mass immigration, high public spending (but not on you), the Net Zero scam, a cashless economy, foreign wars and much more.
All this to be paid for by a transfer of wealth from you to big government and big business and enshrined in Blair/Brown-like legislation, put through parliament by their lickspittle Starmer, and enforced by the lying lawyers, bent barristers and enemy-of-the-people judges in the British-hating Londonistan legal glitterati establishment.
In last week’s QT Review, we noted that Mr Mudassar Ahmed (a PR, research and digital cross-cultural communications type) was surreptitiously donating to a Labour MP through a fake company. The week before that, we noted that a Labour ‘local lass’ standing in this reviewer’s constituency turned out to be a Bell Pottinger lobbyist from London.
Make no mistake, unknown to may voters, July 4th is looking like a massive win for the lobbyists, legalists and their globalist corporate clients – at your expense.
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As for the other panellists, Kate Forbes (not her real name, Kate Elizabeth MacLennan) is the MSP for Skye Lochaber and Badenoch and the ludicrously titled Deputy First Minister of Scotland and Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Gaelic. The 34-year-old spent part of her childhood in India, where her parents were missionaries.
The committed Christian was privately educated at Uttarakhand’s Woodstock International School before graduating in History from Selwyn College, Cambridge. After further study at Edinburgh University, Ms Forbes was awarded an MSC in Diaspora & Migration History. Apart from two years as an accountant, Kate has never had a job.
Douglas Ross is the leader of the Conservative Party in Scotland and the son of a North of Scotland gentleman farmer. Douglas is a graduate of the Scottish Agricultural College and a qualified UEFA Wendyball linesman. This latter position has led to a recent tangle with his expenses. The rules say that he can claim travel expenses to Westminster from the airport closest to his constituency.
However, Douglas has been claiming from places where he’s been officiating at football matches. Tut, tut. In the melley, he has announced he will step down from his role as an MSP, but only if he loses his Moray seat in the election. With a majority of only 513, Puffins might think his seat is in jeopardy. However, the second-placed SNP are also in turmoil, and third-placed Labour trailed by more than 19,000 votes in 2019.
Stephen Noon is another communications wallah, this time with Weber Shandwick. The Edinburgh outfit ‘work at the intersection of technology, society, policy and media, adding value to culture — to shape and re-shape it.’ Oh.
Also of the LGBTQI++ inclination, Mr Noon recently became a research associate at the University of Glasgow Centre for Public Policy, where he is ‘developing a policy lab approach to dig deeper into policy challenges across the board – for example, in public health or in relation to the climate crisis.’ All very sinister.
One of the West of Scotland Sarwars, Comrade Anas, son of a Labour MP, was privately educated at £14,000 a year Hutcheson’s Grammar School. After graduating from the University of Glasgow, Anas worked as an NHS dentist for five years. His father, cash and carry magnet Chaudhry Mohammad Sarwar, gave up his Glasgow Central seat and British passport in 2010 to become governor of the Punjab. In the style of the subcontinent, his Westminster seat passed to Anas who was MP from 2010 to 2015 when defeated at the polls by Alison Thewliss of the SNP.
More about the interesting Sarwar clan can be read in a previous QT Review here.
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Question one wondered about the veracity of election campaign spending promises. Anas Sarwar will tax hydrocarbon profits and tax non-doms. Labour will give 200,000 Scots a pay rise and somehow raise money by spending it on GB Energy. There would be no return to austerity.
Kate Forbes interjected to remind Anas that that’s what Mrs Truss said. We’ll do this and this and this and not bother with costings. Douglas wanted to reduce the size of the government. £12 billion would come from lowering benefit fraud.
A large man in the audience suggested every British public service is broken and none of the parties will raise enough money to address this. A lady in a wheelchair complained of being charged £32 for a round trip in a taxi. It had taken years for the council to put a ramp in at her home.
Iain said the Conservatives’ sums don’t add up. La Bruce wondered about Labour’s sums. He did a little rhyme about the recent turnover in government ministers but didn’t have any figures. He was reduced to claiming to be ‘convinced’ of Labour’s plans.
Stephen saw this as ideological, a systematic, a structural problem. It’s not, Stephen; it’s a practical problem caused by government being too big and public spending too high. Being a lobbying wallah, he has to pretend, on behalf of the people who pay him to advocate for them, that the tax-paying well is bottomless.
Question two addressed a just transition from oil and gas to ‘clean’ energy without losing jobs.
Kate said ‘climate emergency’. New oil and gas licences will be looked at case by case. La Bruce wondered how any oil and gas licences could be allowable given Net Zero. The carefully selected carbon-phobic BBC audience applauded.
Anas said the tap would not be turned off. Oil and gas would continue for decades to come. He then promised everything to everybody; all the hdyrocarbons and every type of alternative energy, being paid for simultaneously, for free, by GB Energy while cutting prices for consumers.
As I type, according to Gridwatch, about three-quarters of our installed wind capacity is unused. We are importing about 25% of our electricity via the interconnectors at vast expense. Last night it was an unseasonably cool 4C. The Net Zero clap-trap is madness and will bankrupt us. Presumably Keith doesn’t mean a word of it and will change the policy the day after the election. On the other hand, he might be deluded enough not to.
A silly girl in the audience, trying too hard to look and sound like Greta Thunberg, asked the panel if they’d read any science. She and her husband were doing their best. They drove an EV — one of those big, heavy vehicles powered by imported brown-coal electricity stored in batteries full of toxic chemicals mined by children in the third world. Fortunately, the damage she was doing to the environment was minimal because there is nowhere to charge it up.
A lady in the audience said we’re in a large mental health crisis, especially among the young. But we’re talking about oil and gas, replied Bruce. The chair missed the connection, that vulnerable people, such as the young, are the most likely to be stressed by the constant repetition of global warming alarmism.
Another young lady, this time trying too hard to look like Harry Potter, quoted the world’s leading experts who say a livable future for us is simply not compatible with any new oil and gas fields. The green jobs were going to the Philippines. Really? If I recall correctly, the land of brown-outs and a diesel generator blasting away on every doorstep. We are locked into extreme weather; our air is no longer breathable. Children’s futures are in jeopardy.
Dear God. Will these loons be running the country in three week’s time? I determined upon my own just transition: from watching this tripe to being in bed.
© Always Worth Saying 2024
The Goodnight Vienna Audio file
