Question Time 24th October 2024
The Panel:
Steve Reed (Labour)
Nigel Huddleston (Conservative)
Danny Sriskandarajah (CEO NEF)
Emily Sheffield (Columnist and Broadcaster)
Venue: Plymouth
Danny Sriskandarajah (not his real name, Dhananjayan Sivaguru Sriskandarajah) is the Chief Executive of the New Economics Foundation, a British think-tank claiming to promote ‘social, economic and environmental justice.’
Their publishment material shows them to be climate change carbon-phobic psychotics who believe covering the countryside in wind, solar and battery farms is good for the environment and making energy unaffordable for the poor is somehow ‘social justice.’ Their most recent accounts show the Chief Executive is paid £110,000 per annum and that almost all of their income comes from donations from virtue signalling foundations and funds.
Born in Sri Lanka, Danny was educated at the selective James Ruse Agricultural High School in Carlingford, New South Wales, before attending the University of Sydney. A Rhodes scholar, the 48-year-old attended Magdalen College, Oxford, where he read for an M.Phil. and then a D.Phil. in international development. Afterwards, he engaged in a Soros’s tour of ‘Civil Society’ organisations including The Institute for Public Policy Research, The Royal Commonwealth Society, Comic Relief, CIVICUS and scandal-ridden OXFAM, of which he became £148,216 a year chief executive.
For that kind of money, instead of selling your soul to the globalists, why not just drive a train? Perhaps with such in mind, Danny supplements his income through authorship. His mighty work, ‘Power to the People: Use your voice, change the world’ sits an impressive 133,096 places ahead of The Marquis de Sade’s ‘120 Days of Sodom’ in the Amazon best sellers list. Although, it is only 99p.
Steve Reed OBE is Labour MP for Croydon North and Secretary of State for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs. A Member of Parliament since a 2012 by-election, the 60-year-old boasts of working-class roots (his father was a print worker) after growing up in the mean streets of St Albans and attending the local boy’s grammar school. Openly gay and a former Lambeth councillor, the 60-year-old is an accomplished Westminster freebie trougher. During his previous appearances, QT Review noted foreign jollies that included both being a ‘Friend of Israel’ and a ‘Friend’ of friendless Bangladesh.
His most recent Member’s Interests submissions, made on October 14th, show £155,200 from a Ms Lisbert Rausing, £5,000 from Martin Taylor, £3,000 from an organisation called ‘Don’t Panic’, £2,000 from the GMB union, another £10,000 from Ms Rausing etc etc etc. Also on the list, the Oxford Farming Conference paid for hotel accommodation for the impoverished Mr Reed. As a minister responsible for farming, should Mr Reed be taking money from the farming industry?
As for the interesting Ms Rausing, she turns out to be the ‘philanthropist’ daughter of food packaging billionaire Hans Rausing. A non-dom, Mr Rausin moved to England in the 1980s to avoid taxes in his native Sweden. Should the minister for food be taking six-figure sums from those who make their money from the food packaging industry?
Between elections, Nigel Huddleston’s constituency was abolished and replaced with Droitwich and Evesham. A seat he took in July 2024 with a majority of 9,000 over his opponent, Chipiliro Kalebe-Nyamongo – presumably one of the Worcestershire Kalebe-Nyamongos. Mr Huddleston lives in the county with his wife and two children. That interesting spouse is Melissa, an American, who on her LinkedIn profile packages her domestic and school-run responsibilities as ‘strategic, results-oriented leadership, driving results by creating and managing the best teams on the planet’.
Good for her. I know of at least one Going-Postal scribe who tells of his life toiling in a supermarket in Carlisle as if a secret agent cum investigative journalist embedded behind enemy lines in exotic locations. *Coughs* *Taps nose*
A graduate of Christ Church, Oxford, 53-year-old Nigel’s degree is in Politics and Economics. Further study took him to UCLA Anderson School of Management in Los Angeles, where he met Melissa, at the time seconded to marketing the Walt Disney’s Mighty Ducks Professional Hockey Team. Later in her career, she ‘managed the repositioning of Healthy Choice Soups’ and ‘showed her leadership ability on a cross-functional promotional project for a holiday event’. Oh.
Meanwhile, Mr Huddleston became a management consultant with Arthur Anderson and Deloitte, and was Google’s Head of Travel before being elected to parliament in 2015. Not gonna lie, I’d rather save the Pope’s life while disguised as a Philippino schoolgirl.
***
Question one was about slavery reparations. In the words of the questioner, for the ‘sins of our fathers.’ As much sinned against as sinners, none of the panel mentioned ourselves being kept as slaves by the Romans and the Normans and, in my part of the country, by the Scots.
Nigel wasn’t keen on reparations but was more enthusiastic regarding an apology and understanding and acknowledging the past. He reminded the audience that we helped to abolish slavery.
As every Puffin knows, the slave trade ended in the British Empire in 1807 with slavery itself being outlawed by an Act of Parliament in 1833. However, we were beaten to it by Haiti which abolished slavery in 1804 following a revolution in which the whippl were slaughtered. However, it doesn’t seem to have done Haiti much good. Will they be suing because we didn’t try hard enough to keep them in chains?
Steve wasn’t keen either (now that the Labour Party are in power) and contradicted some of his own Foreign Secretary David Lammy’s previous comments on the subject. Steve wanted something to be done but hesitated to say what, beyond that it shouldn’t involve funds from the taxpayer. Instead, he preferred to ‘do something about climate change’, claiming that Samoa, where the present Commonwealth Conference is taking place, is ‘in danger of sinking’. Goodness.
A tinged lady in the audience said her ancestors were slaves. Like the rest of us. Add the Japanese to the list that includes, Romans, Normans and Scots, as they used our POWs as slave labour during the war.
Another tinged lady asked if reparations aren’t on the table, then how can we help these countries? The simple soul seemed to think that any payments would go to the countries rather than to the Swiss bank accounts of the Third World kleptocrats that run them. Steve suggested a skills transfer.
Danny reminded us of Mrs Thatcher’s opposition to Commonwealth sanctions against apartheid South Africa. He said she had been on the wrong side of history, but forgot to mention the catastrophic consequence of majority rule being forced upon the African. As an example, with a population of 60,000,000 there were 583 homicides in England and Wales in 2023-2024. In South Africa in the same period, with a population of 62,000,000 there were 22,000. Was Mrs Thatcher wrong?
Danny said that the industrial scale of the trans-Atlantic slave trade made it uniquely evil and that there are ‘Countless British institutions, companies, individuals, foundations, and the state, that were implicated in that.’ Interesting.
Speaking of the virtue signallers giving to Danny’s New Economics Foundation, the biggest annual donor by far at almost £1 million is the Laudes Foundation, a vehicle for the fortune of Clemens and August Brenninkmeijer, who grew rich through their Dutch-German-Swiss manufacturing and retailing business C&A. The fortune was amassed in part through the ‘social, economic and environmental justice’ of Aryanising Jewish property and using Jewish and non-Jewish slave labour in their garment factories in the Lodz ghetto and in Berlin during the war.
When Danny was challenged by La Bruce about the size of any reparations, Danny said he didn’t want to talk about the money but the principle. What a hypocrite.
Emily agreed with the king that we must understand the path of history. We have been slow to have a discussion about colonialism, which did, outwith slavery, benefit some of these countries. Emily was reading all of this from notes in front of her. She thought it was problematic that this was a discussion based on money. She noted that other countries were involved in slavery too. She mentioned that the United States, France and French colonies abolished slavery quite a lot later than us.
Are there any other places she could have mentioned where abolition took place a lot, lot, lot later than us? Perhaps, Saudi Arabia who officially abolished slavery in … wait for it … 1962. Obviously, not ‘uniquely evil’ enough for Danny or any of the other panellists to call it out. Unofficially, slavery continues in Saudi Arabia and other Muslim and African countries. Something else the media-legal-political bubble in London never mentions.
Perhaps they’re frightened that if the scope of injustices are broadened from the ‘Atlantic slave trade’ the rest of us will want reparations from the bluebloods here who mistreated our ancestors. Although slavery was abolished in 1833, in Britain unpaid indentured apprenticeships weren’t outlawed for another five years. It wasn’t until 1843 that the Coal Mines Regulation Act stopped under-tens from working down mines and it wasn’t until 1900 that boys under the age of thirteen were also forbidden from working underground.
Shall we allow David Lammy and Danny Sriskandarajah a choice? They can watch their children picking cotton in the Carolinas or going down a coal mine in England. Which would they prefer?
Hold on a minute. Speaking of bluebloods, Fake Fiona introduced the programme with the words, ‘Making her Question Time debut is Emily Sheffield. In the past, she was the editor of the London Evening Standard, before that deputy editor at British Vogue. Now she’s a broadcaster and columnist in artificial intelligence.’ Hm. I wonder if there’s something Fake Fiona isn’t telling us? Surely not. But I’m sure I know Emily from somewhere else. Hmm.
The mind’s eye wanders to rural Eastern England, where endless windswept flats are interrupted by the North Sea and the fresh country air violated by the distant Satanic roar of belching furnaces burnishing steel from ore. Farmer Reg Sheffield stands in his field contemplating yet another below-average year of struggle upon the land. But where there’s muck there’s brass. Daughter Emily was born in the Lindo Wing of Paddington’s St Mary’s Hospital – the Royal Family’s maternity ward of choice.
As a young adult, our Emily boarded at Marlborough College (£50,985 per year ex-VAT). How do we know all of this? Her sister told us so. The sibling is Samantha Gwendoline ‘I was raised in a field near Scunthorpe’ Sheffield, better known to Puffins as Samantha Cameron, wife of the former Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, Lord David Cameron.
Furthermore, to you oiks, Farmer Reg should be addressed as Sir Reginald Sheffield, 8th Baronet. An Old Etonian, the family seat is at Normanby Hall, part of several thousand arable acres of North Lincolnshire family estate, a spit away from Scunthorpe and its steelworks. Puffins will be pleased to read the Daily Telegraph reports seven wind turbines at Normanby Hall generate £350,000 a year in income for Sir Reginald.
A descendant of King Charles II, Emily is also a hereditary journalist. Great-grandfather Sir Roderick Jones was Chairman of Reuters, great-grandmother Enid Bagnol, the novelist who authored the horsey classic ‘National Velvet.’
Emily attended East Anglia University before a career in print which includes spells at the Evening Standard, British Vogue and various ‘strategic communications’ gigs including one with the Conservative Party. Emily was also a non-executive director of Koovs, a failed fashion firm founded by Puffin’s favourite Lord Waheed Alli, an Injun even more dodgy than Danny Sriskandarajah.
Another question came from one of the tinged ladies who’d spoken about reparations. Following the acquittal of the police officer accused of murdering Chris Kaba, how can the police re-establish trust within the black community? The questioner thought the police had got it wrong. La Bruce asked if she thought the jury had got it wrong. The questioner feared for her children because of unconscious bias and inherent racism within the police as an institution.
And there’s the rub: how on earth can you get different races of people to live peacefully in the same place at the same time, be it within a Commonwealth or in England’s big cities, when their self-interests and even perceptions of reality are so far at odds?
© Always Worth Saying 2024
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