Always Worth Saying’s Question Time Review

Question Time 23rd January 2025

The Panel:

Lucy Powell (Labour)
David Davis (Conservative)
Matthew Parris (Columnist)
Dale Vince (Green Energy Entrepreneur)

Venue: Stockport

Lucy Powell was on QT only a few weeks ago. Despite a cadre of fresh Labour MPs in the new parliament, Labour put forward the same old, same old, adding to the view that the new Labour intake is low-calibre lobby fodder who’ve never had real-world experience beyond politics and the associated public sector non-occupations.

A fuller biography of Lucy can be found in the September 2024 review here. Suffice it to say, posh Lucy has never had a real job and alongside her A&E doctor husband, James, lives the life of a well-heeled champaign leftie railing about equality.

From his millionaire’s mansion and using his position on the Central Council of the Socialist Health Association, Dr James wrings his hands over ‘Tory austerity; inadequate housing and homelessness’. I don’t know you, Puffin, but he makes me want to puke like an A&E patient with a belly full of booze on a Saturday night during a norovirus pandemic.

Things are no better in the Tory Party, who seem to have given up sending anything approaching bright or best to QT. This week’s offering is two washed-up has-beens, one of whom left parliament 39 years ago. We shall start with Sir David Davis. A fuller QT review biography of whom can be found here.

Suffice it to say, his self-reported backstory is disingenuous. A claim of being born to a single mother and living on a council estate is a fib. By the time they lived in a council house, not only was his mother married, but their council estate was in posh South London where similar properties these days sell for £600,000+

After a Tooting Bec grammar school, Warwick University and London Business School, David rose to be a senior executive at Tate and Lyle while being an SAS reservist. Elected to parliament in 1987, the 76-year-old has been an MP for various parts of Hull and its surrounds as constituency boundaries have altered across the last near-forty years. His highest profile position was as a sleepwalking Chief Negotiator for Exiting the European Union during Theresa May’s doomed Brexit effort.

The inquisitive neutral is forced to conclude Dave Vince is a straightforward con. A fuller QT Review biography of Dodgy Dale is available here.
In short, despite the astroturfing, Vince has made plenty of money from hydrocarbons, not least through his links with Russia. A holder of no less than 127 directorships (up from 101 at his last QT appearance), his low-profile but interesting business partner is Asif Rehmanwala who holds or has held 92 (up from 78).

In his unreliable backstory, Dale claims to have left school at 15 with no qualifications, to spend life ‘off the grid’. In fact Mr Vince did his O-Levels and A-levels, studied computer technology at Poly and therefore appears on a University of Staffordshire roll of notable alumni.

Never trust a man with nothing but first names! Come to think of it, or a woman – eg Fiona Bruce.

In better times, you might know of the character of a gentleman by the company he keeps or, famously via a Cyril Connolly quote, through the health of his wife. These days we rely upon unread comments below articles. Matthew Paris notably wrote a Times piece complaining of his commentors who below the line had called him a ‘snob’, ‘arrogant little squirt’, ‘a pinko’, ‘a proto-Marxoid’, and even a ‘puss-filled queer’.

Below that piece his fans added; posh boy Cambridge liberal who studied at Yale then went to the Foreign Office, followed by a career in parliament. Which, to be fair, does much of my job for me, except to add that after the Foreign Office, Parris embarked on a 7-year stint in parliament from 1979-86 as MP for West Derbyshire.

Born in South Africa – also in better times, 1949 – Paris had a peripatetic childhood in several British colonies where his father worked as an electrical engineer. Educated privately in South Africa and at Clare College, Cambridge, in his autobiography, ‘Chance Witness’, Parris taps his nose while revealing he was offered a job as an MI6 officer but chose the FO instead. Puffins are reminded of another wise adage, once quipped by a frustrated Mrs Thatcher: ‘The Foreign Office exists for the benefit of foreigners.’ The proof of the pudding being that Mr Parris is an unhinged Remainer.

After leaving parliament, the 75-year-old tucked his knees under the London media table and has written and broadcast for the likes of the BBC, ITV (once presenter of the then prestigious Weekend World programme), the Spectator and The Times.

Not like other men, he boasts of ‘cruising on Clapham Common’, whatever that means. Furthermore, a friend tells me, in a Pink News article regarding the 50 most powerful LGBT people, Mr Parris was revealed as enjoying position number 11.

Behave yourselves!

***

Question one, what steps should be taken to prevent attacks like Southport?

La Bruce read out the names of the girls murdered by Alex Rudakubana in the seaside town on July 29th last year. Lucy was glad the girls’ names had been mentioned and noted they were innocently attending a dance class. She added that words can’t describe what happened. We all absolutely share the pain. She waffled sentimentally to avoid the difficult political issues that arise.

La Bruce read out some of the warning signs: knife at school, expelled from school, hockey stick attack, but no mention of the ‘I’ word. What could have happened to stop it, continued the chair? Pain and anger, further pain and anger, was the best Lucy could do. Someone doesn’t become like that overnight. Were the dots joined?

Yes, they were Lucy. The police made numerous visits to the family home in the run-up to the attack. And yet…

Why could he buy knives so easily, Lucy wondered, before hitting a low point with ‘most of this happened long before we were in government.’ Post covid, Rudakubana fell out of the system. No, he didn’t. Lucy was not telling the truth.

Matthew Parris began to wail. We can’t stop it. These things have always happened before, they happen now, and they will happen again.

Oh well, Matthew, that’s alright then.

All the government’s anti-terror Prevent scheme can do, according to Parris, is invite people to meetings and ask them if they want counselling. And anyway (and at this point at least one reviewer’s jaw dropped), Rudakubana wasn’t a terrorist.

What?!

Although he may have looked up ‘some Al-Qaeda thing.’

What a dangerous cretin Parris is.

Some of the fools in the carefully selected studio audience clapped.

Another blamed ‘misinformation on social media’. Someone else appeared to blame a lack of youth clubs.

David Davis was dressed as an undertaker. If it’s bad taste to make such an observation, it is trumped by the appallingly tone-deaf Dale Vince wearing a black hoodie with skull and crossbones logos on the shoulders.

Keir (Starmer), began David, is wrong to say this is a new manifestation. He read out a list of murders, many of them (without him saying so) carried out in the name of Islam. Davis focused on Dunblane. We took away guns after the attack on the Scottish school, he said, but there’s only so much you can do about knives.

How do we catch conventional terrorists? When they talk to each other. Not possible with a singular killer. We need to make Prevent more effective. But they did catch Rudakubana, David. Over and over again and yet did nothing about it.

La Bruce tied herself in knots, quoting judge Mr Justice Goose in his sentencing as saying the perpetrator had ‘no terrorist cause’ and therefore it couldn’t be the flavour of terror Prevent is meant for.

The Al-Qaeda manual, the ricin, pointed out Davis, and anyway, under the Terrorism Act, you don’t need a ‘terrorist cause’. Race and religion are covered in the legislation too.

La Bruce claimed the judge had more information than the rest of us and had heard all the evidence. It must be pointed out that without a trial, there wasn’t a lot of evidence presented to the court. It must also be pointed out that anybody with an internet connection will know more than has been released to the public through the judge and the fake media.

The reason La Bruce and the rest of them have been instructed to not use the ‘T’ word is because they’ll then have to use the ‘I’ word.

Davis blundered on. Counterproductively, if we send people to prison under Prevent, then they join the Islamist gangs inside. Interesting. Especially as there are social media claims of Rudakubana’s affiliations within jail that cannot be repeated by mainstream media.

‘A multi-agency approach identifying triggers. Intervenion. Tackle at source,’ said somebody in the audience.

The father got a few mentions, particularly as he allegedly stopped his son from attacking his old school a few days before July 29th. The father was namechecked again when an audience member said parents need to take more responsibility.

Sensing an approaching truth-berg, La Bruce interrupted. ‘We know next to nothing about the parents,’ she lied. Read this coming Saturday evening’s G-P article, Fiona.

Dale thought we were missing the biggest factor – social media. Rudakubana was racialised by social media; the ricin, Al-Qaeda manual, violent videos. Violent videos of ‘Lybia in 2021’ and ‘London in 2017’ it should be noted. These platforms are run by Musk and Zuckerburg. Musk threatens our democracy.

Rudakubana got his knife from Bezos’s Amazon (rather than from a draw in the kitchen). Musk stoked the ‘riots’. Did he? It was the murder of three little girls and the resulting lies from the powers that be which stoked the protests, Dale.

A 12-year-old also blamed Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg, particularly because of the discontinuation of ‘fact checking.’ How can our own government put up barriers to social media, he wondered, as though this were an undiluted and undisputable good thing.

Notice the emphasis on controlling language and the flow of information rather than on protecting children

In a population of 60 to 70 million, we can’t monitor everybody, said Matthew. Hold on, Rudakubana was well monitored. But…

David wanted to have the last word, we have an Online Harm Bill but there’s still an Al-Qaeda manual to download. La Bruce cut him off. No, no, no, no, no, there isn’t, it’s an academic study of an Al-Qaeda manual. £30,000 an hour Fiona dares not allow Islam to become synonymous with Southport.

They shouldn’t be here. Send them back, said nobody.

Dale had the final, final word. How do we make the tech giants accountable? Make them responsible for their content. While you’re at it, Dale, make the media-political-legal bubble responsible for the consequences of their actions, particularly regarding mass, uncontrolled, unlimited immigration and the resulting racial and religious segregation laughingly known as ‘multiculturalism’.

Question two, did God save Donald Trump to save the world? Given the incoming president has closed the southern border to immigration, is sending the army there and is committed to flying millions of undesirables back to their native countries, he may well save the lives of little girls at summer holiday dance classes.
 

© Always Worth Saying 2025
 

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