Question Time 6th March 2025
The Panel:
Bridget Phillipson (Labour)
Harriett Baldwin (Conservative)
Richard Tice (Reform UK)
Adrian Ramsay (Green)
Venue: Skipton
This present situation reminds this humble reviewer of the end of the Cold War but with the roles reversed. This time the superpower losing interest in expensive and ineffective minions, isn’t a Russia dismayed with members of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union, but a USA tired of paying for NATO.
For East European satellite armies filled with dishevelled conscripts, read hollowed out Western armed forces – including ours. For delusional politbureaus consisting of Communist Party lifers divorced from the realities of their citizens’ lives – read our own deluded Starmer & Co. They who are going to put boots on the ground in Ukraine, and planes in the air, despite a paucity of such things with Union Jacks on them.
No matter what the blowhards on the Question Time panel, or in the House of Thieves and Liars say, this a Russian and American carve up of Ukraine. Ourselves and the French’s role is if back at Suez, except our armed forces are a tenth of the size they were in the fifties and they’re not going anywhere.
One possible outcome being Ukraine’s mineral deposits being protected by American ‘contractors’ for the benefit of America while the rest of the place is left to fend for itself in the style of Afghanistan and Iraq. We shall see. But first, your panel:
Posh Brideget Phillipson is the Labour MP for Houghton and Sunderland South and the current Secretary of State for Education.
Not her real name, Bridget Maeve Dimery left her native North East at the first opportunity to study politics at University College, Oxford. A drama school-type, Puffins will be unsurprised to read the 42-year-old has never had a job beyond a position in her mother’s controversial ‘charity’.
A fuller QT Review biography can be found here.
Once a practitioner of the unconvincing fake Northern accent for TV, Bridget has now given up and presents as the metropolitan technocrat that she is. In keeping with the stereotype, husband Lawrence Lionel Dimery is a financial services wallah, late of the Bank of England and now a senior market risk analyst. Grammar school boy Lawrence is a graduate of University College London.
Donors to Bridget include the interesting Fostermco Ltd who, according to documents filed at Companies House, contributed a five-figure sum to millionaire Bridget days before liquidators arrived to wind up the worryingly indebted company.
Fostermco Ltd is (was?) a vehicle of talent agent and gallery owner Michael Foster, a former Labour party candidate. On his LinkedIn profile, Michael calls himself ‘an economist’. Is this a theatrical joke aimed at Bridget’s Cabinet colleague fraud Rachael Reeves?
Posh Richard Tice is an old boy of £54,000 per annum Uppingham School. Richard graduated in Construction Economics and Quantity Surveying at the University of Salford after which he joined the family upmarket property and construction firm, Sunley Group, founded by self-made grandfather Bernard Sunley.
There is such a thing as the Bernard Sunley Charitable Foundation, established in 1960 through a donation of company shares. Since then they’ve awarded over £140 million in grants to fulfil their mission of ‘working to raise the quality of life and provide greater opportunities for the young, the elderly, the disabled and the disadvantaged’.
Good for them!
Memmo to politicians: instead of burning other people’s money on Lesotho and transgender mice; cut taxes, deregulate and encourage entrepreneurship. The resulting thriving private sector will sort the needy out for you with no need for a call upon the taxpayer.
Richard’s squeeze is QT regular and girl bully Isabel Oakeshott. Gordonstone former-pupil Isabel recently decamped to Dubai on account of school fees. Partner Richard, Reform UK MP for a Lincolnshire seaside resort, therefore divides his time between The Gulf and Skegness.
Not going to lie – if forced to choose, I’d rather stick with Skeggie. I was in Dubai decades ago during my previous more interesting life and can’t understand why anybody would want to relocate – cheapo ex-pat corrugated schoolroom next to the Creek or otherwise. Just a load of sand served by an airport the size of an Aldi – with one Tristar parked outside. Can’t have changed that much. Can it?
Harriett Baldwin, not her real name – Dame Harriett Mary Morison Baldwin, MBE – is a public school headmaster’s daughter and herself an old girl of the exclusive Marlborough College (£51,000 PA) whose former pupils include Kate, Princess of Wales.
Woman of the people Dame Harriett graduated from St Edmond Hall, Oxford, with a First in French and Russian before further study at Montreal’s McGill University Desautels Faculty of Management. Armed with an MBA, the 65-year-old embarked upon a two-decade-long career with the honest helpers of the proletariate at JPMorgan Chase.
Elected to parliament in 2010, Mrs Baldwin represents West Worcestershire on behalf of the Conservatives. Present husband, James Stanley Baldwin (yes, Stanley Baldwin) is a businessman and television producer.
Adrian Ramsay, not to be confused with Gordon Ramsay, more of whom later, is the co-leader of the Green Party of England and Wales and the MP for a Waveney Valley constituency which straddles the border between Norfolk and Suffolk.
Puffins will be unsurprised to read that Adrian has never had a job. After graduating in politics and sociology from East Anglia University, he took three years to complete a year-long MA while being a councillor on Norwich City Council. A ‘career’ in NGO non-jobs followed, including as a ‘carnism’ activist. Carnism being, as every Puffin knows, the ‘invisible belief system that conditions people to eat certain animals.’ Oh.
According to the TheyWorkForYou website, via the House Of Commons Register of Member’s Interests, the 43-year-old has taken more than £214,000 in donations in the last six months from people we’ve never heard of. Added to which are expenses charged to the BBC for appearing on TV and radio.
For instance, during his last appearance on QT, Adrian claimed £67 to reach the venue by train and £275 for a taxi back home. In between times he troughed a £40 dinner. An additional cost of £383 for appearing on Question Time on top of his £150 fee.
Make no mistake, with QT being recorded between 9 pm and 10 pm, by the time of the 10:45 pm broadcast all of the panellists and La Bruce will be in taxis, already well away from Skipton, and racing towards their beloved London post codes. There, their butlers will be filling the bath with boiling water (or even bleach) to scrub the smell of the provinces off the Metropolitan elitists.
Question one was about Ukraine. A consensus arose both between the panelists and nearly all of the carefully selected BBC audience. It boiled down to: Putin bad, Trump even badder. Bridget wanted Ukraine to be part of any peace process.
She was proud of Starmers ‘leadership’, as Italy, Spain and Canada drop out, Germany can’t decide as they don’t have a government, Poland refuse to allow thier troops to leave Poland, the likes of Ireland and Austria are neutral, and others such as Slovakia and Hungary continue to lean towards Russia.
Speaking of a unanimity that doesn’t exist, she was proud of the support all of us had given Ukraine, particularly in our universal enthusiasm for taking refugees.
The fight in the Oval Office between Messers Zelensky and Trump had been difficult for Bridget to watch. Remember that line from Dr Strangelove? ‘No fighting in the War Room!’
Harriett was concerned that the present situation is a surrender to Putin’s terms. She didn’t want the Russians to be rewarded for an invasion. When challenged by the chair on how we were going to do anything about it without American help, she seemed to think that a 2.5% defence spend from a small GDP is the equivalent of a 2.5% defence spend from a big GDP.
An audience member wanted to stand up to … America, especially to Vice President Vance.
We get petulance not principles from President Trump, began Adrian. Terrified of Trump as well as Putin, he suggested picking a fight with both of them simultaneously.
Richard had been to Ukraine driving a truck delivering aid. As well as seeing the brave soldiers on the front line, he’d also seen the grieving mothers, and was more comfortable with the idea of a compromised peace deal.
Perhaps these things should be conducted behind closed doors, he suggested when La Bruce pressed him upon the details.
Farage fawns over Putin, butted in Bridget. Over a decade ago, Richard reminded her. In case Brigett wants to be further outraged, here are some old photos of Putin being welcomed by; Macron, Biden, Obama, Blair, Prince Phillip, George Bush and Gordon Ramsay.
Few in the carefully selected BBC audience disagreed. A former serviceman thought the Russians should give hard-fought-for territory away, and our army should be sent if they don’t. Skipping some uncomfortable lessons from recent decades, he took exception at Vance’s comments about our not having won a war in the past forty years.
Speaking of territory occupied by hostile invaders, La Bruce broke off to plug next week’s programme – which comes from Wolverhampton.
Interestingly, both lady panellists wore fetching pink jackets over white blouses. La Bruce wore a light blue jacket atop a jumper decorated with a (partly obscured?) word. It seemed to read ‘AMOU’. As every Puffin knows, this is Portuguese for loved.
Likewise, every Puffin also knows my Arabic is a bit rusty, but in case her left hand side was hiding something, if I recall correctly in sand-swept Dubai ‘amout’ means ‘I’m dying’ and ‘amouz’ means ‘banana’. Make of that what you will.
© Always Worth Saying 2025
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