Question Time 20th March 2025
The Panel:
Steve Reed (Labour)
Helen Whately (Conservative)
Richard Bacon (Broadcaster)
Fraser Nelson (Columnist)
Greg Swenson (Republicans Overseas)
Venue: Reading
Steve Reed OBE is Labour MP for Croydon North and Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. A Member of Parliament since 2012, the 60-year-old boasts of working-class roots (son of a print worker) after growing up in the mean streets of St Albans and attending the local boys’ grammar school.
Openly gay and a former leader of Lambeth council, when his father died Steve mentioned he’d been a professional footballer. Usually razor-sharp on Wendyball, I struggled to place him and asked my assistant, Miss Chat. She came up with a Ted Reed, who played for Millwall. Since Miss Chat is a girlie and only trusted to correct spelling, grammar and capitalisations, I have my doubts. Perhaps a Puffin might fill in the gap in the unread comments?
On the programme last October, Puffins already know Steve is a serial trougher whose biggest donor – well into six figures – is the interesting Ms Lisbert Rausing, daughter of non-dom tax-dodging Swedish packaging billionaire, Hans.
Born in Mansfield and educated at Wellow House Prep and £30,000-a-year Worksop College boarding school, Richard Bacon dropped out of Trent Polytechnic for a media career that reached an apotheosis when sacked from Blue Peter for drug abuse. Subsequently, as if returning from a Blue Peter Summer Expedition to northern Laos or rural Colombia, Richard was ‘taken ill’ on a flight and had to be placed into an induced coma suffering from ‘pneumonia’.
After filling in a questionnaire and being brain-scanned at ‘a place in Orange County which specialises in ADHD’, Mr Bacon holds an Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder card. Having married well, Richard lives in a $5.3 million California mansion in the exclusive Bird Streets neighbourhood of Los Angeles.
Smelling a spouse’s daddy’s trust fund, further investigation shows the monied Mrs Bacon to be Rebecca McFarlane, daughter of former Barclays chairman, John. A Doonhamer, Mr McFarlane was a non-executive director of the Royal Bank of Scotland at the time of its controversial and illegal rights issue in 2008. A fuller QT Review biography, which includes an estate agent’s spiel on his house, is available here.
Truro-born Fraser Nelson is the son of an RAF serviceman and, therefore, divided his childhood between Scotland and Cyprus. Educated at Clackmannanshire’s private Dollar Academy, he attended the University of Glasgow (History and Politics) and the City University, London (Diploma in Journalism). Beyond the journalistic, Fraser is also a director of the Centre for Policy Studies, a ‘dark money’-funded think tank whose anonymous donors pay for influence in Westminster.
Helen Whatley, not her real name, Helen Olivia Bicknell Whately, is the MP for Faversham and Mid Kent and Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. The Conservative former minister’s parents were Robin Lightwood FRCS, a surgeon, and Andrea, a physician.
The 48-year-old is an old girl of fee-paying Waddingham and Westminster Schools, the latter being the alma mater of Puffins’ favourites Sir Nicholas William Peter Clegg, Dominic Ralph Campden Lawson and Adam Fatty Bunter Boulton. After graduating in PPE at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, Helen became (briefly) a management consultant with PwC and AOL before moving into politics.
Helen’s opportunities to trough were somewhat limited as a minister prior to the general election. Since then, she has been able to take money from the usual types: toffs, foreigners and despotic governments. Donors include Sedat Zorba, £2,000; Charles Villiers, £2,000; Lady Swire, £2,000; Abdul-Majid Jafar, £5,000; and £3,700 from the Saudi Arabia Ministry of Foreign Affairs for a Gulf jolly.
Helen also received £346 from Policy Exchange, another of those influence-seeking think tanks, for a taxi home from the Conservative Party Conference.
Although Helen couldn’t trough when a minister, perhaps her husband might have done better? Albeit by profiting through the crackpot and self-contradictory policies of his wife’s government.
The interesting Richard Marcus Whatley, known as Marcus, is an entrepreneur in energy, food and tech. In her submissions to the House of Commons Registry of Interests, Helen describes her spouse as a ‘salad producer’. Not quite from a market garden in the Home Counties, Marcus is a shareholder, founder and CEO of Grow Up Farms.
Not a farm as you or I might define it, Grow Up is based in a £100 million shed on the Ramsgate to Dover ‘A’ road. There, Marcus’s company ‘grows’ vegetables in an indoor, soilless environment by soaking them in chemicals and pesticides.
With all the artificial light and heat, this type of intensive factory farming is heavy on energy. Not to worry, next door is the Kent Renewables power station.
As you can see from Street View, Kent Renewables make their money by burning timber to generate electricity. Somehow, this filthy countryside-destroying production of vast amounts of carbon dioxide counts as green and, as such, receives taxpayer subsidies via mechanisms such as Renewables Obligation Certificates and Contracts for Difference.
Does Mr Whatley have an interest in Kent Renewables? Yes, he does and held a directorship there between 2010 and 2016.
A previous and current shareholder and director of a series of similar energy developments, Marcus claims these plants provide energy for thousands of homes, whereas they power adjacent industrial facilities in which he also enjoys a financial interest.
For instance, Cramlington Renewable Energy Developments provides to two nearby major pharmaceuticals, allowing big pharma to use subsidised energy while powered by filthy wood chips and emitting vast amounts of carbon dioxide.
Seventy-year-old Greg Swensen is a graduate of Boston College and Chicago’s Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management. A husband to Mary Ellen, their two children are both in investment banking, one with Goldman Sachs, the other with Morgan Stanley.
For, despite being introduced as the Chair of Republicans Overseas, Greg is a banker and a founding partner of Brigg Macadam. This is: “a corporate finance firm focused on international financing, particularly in emerging and frontier markets, with a strong presence in Africa, and a sector-agnostic approach, though with particular exposure to mining, energy, agriculture, real estate and financial services.”
Make no mistake, when Mr Swensen becomes dewy-eyed about freedom and democracy in Ukraine, in reality he couldn’t give a toss and is interested only in turning the resource-rich territory into the Congo of Eastern Europe.
***
Question one: What’s next for the Art of the Donald Trump Deal in Ukraine? Steve Reed welcomed recent progress but found Mr Trump’s means unorthodox. An unorthodox ceasefire, one must concede, in the sense that they’re still fighting. Mr Reed suggested an unconditional and immediate ceasefire instead, as a result, somehow, of Mr Starmer’s coalition of the willing.
These are necessary baby steps that have gotten us closer to peace than at any time in the last three years, said Greg. It’s better than body bags. Speaking of the battlefield, Greg’s had so much work done he looks like a plate from that book by Sir Harold Gillies, the wartime plastic surgeon.
More body bags, not fewer, observed Richard. Gaza and Ukraine are worse off. People are talking about a Third World War ‘for the first time.’ Richard, they’ve been talking about World War Three since the end of World War Two. Richard had a pre-prepared line to drop: “I don’t think Trump is a Russian asset, but he is an asset to Russia.” Groan. What has Trump got from Putin? Early days, replied Greg.
Putin’s agreed to stop bombing infrastructure, said Fraser. But he still is, responded La Bruce. Fraser saw bombing infrastructure as a ‘partial truce.’ Trump wants peace, said Helen, dressed in her Arctic warfare kit: white jacket, lichen green blouse, moulting Arctic fox streaked hair. But without a permanent settlement, Putin will try to come back for more.
Back on the battlefield, a lady in the audience suggested Trump is a loose cannon. Greg assured the lady the loud reports and shaking ground are the president being ‘candid’ and nothing to be frightened about. A loon in the audience wanted to send troops and planes. As if seeing them step into their meat grinder would intimidate the Ruskies.
Greg noted the European economy is ten times the size of Russia. What he doesn’t realise is that it is Balkanised and part-controlled by pacifists or by people who lean towards Russia.
Before the next question, La Bruce plugged the next two QTs. Speaking of war zones, one is from Dartford. Speaking of violent foreign countries hostile to the Englishman, the other is from Cardiff.
Question two: Is the welfare system broken? All was well until the pandemic, said Helen. La Bruce told her she was wrong, and such things had troughed not now, but in 2013. Helen responded that the Tory government introduced Universal Credit, which is a simpler system.
No, it isn’t. Here’s an important point that never gets a mention. Under Tax Credits, people were paid according to their income. Therefore, it became a low-wage/zombie business self-employment top-up. Universal Credit is more complicated and relies less on income. Therefore, for many of the low-paid, it isn’t worth working – they are better off on the sick, and that is where they are migrating to.
Not broken, began Fraser, rather a disaster. Two thousand people a day are going on the sick and most of them will never come off it. He wanted a mountain of bureaucracy to process the needy away from their benefits.
Two people this reviewer knows are waiting for hip replacements. In the interim, they can’t do anything and are stuck on a waiting list. A lady in the audience told of a similar experience through her daughter.
Steve made the mistake of trying to contradict a member of the public. Bubble dweller v woman with a sick daughter. Only one outcome. Grass skirts against Red Coats. He knows not to do it again.
Another lady in the audience wanted to tax the wealthy, not realising the wealth is her pension and property, which the government would burn in a minute.
Richard, who will have private health care, wanted the government to be more radical. He asked for a show of hands in agreement and was rewarded with a forest of them. La Bruce was on the ball. That is a very easy question to ask, which different people will interpret in a different way.
Speaking of ‘private’, given that employers now pay 15% National Insurance on a wage and employees 8%, someone on the average income would be able to buy some decent private insurance for that kind of monthly. Worth a try?
Question three: Given the issues raised by Saint Sir Gareth of Southgate’s Dimbleby lecture and the Netflix series Adolescence, how can we help our young people?
La Bruce wasn’t happy. She asked her own question and replaced ‘young people’ with toxic masculine boys and their misogyny. This reviewer hasn’t seen Adolescence, but doubts Richard’s claim that this is the ‘biggest television programme in the world.’
He also said it was from the North of England. Hmm. I haven’t seen it, so I don’t know, but if this is a scenario similar to Southport (or Huddersfield or Sheffield et al), am I correct in assuming an important characteristic has been changed?
Gareth Southgate is emotionally intelligent, but nobody watches the Dimbleby lecture, said Richard. He then made an important point. The smartphone is a recent invention. Apps and social media even more so. We don’t understand what effect these ‘direct lines’ are having. Like cigarettes, perhaps smartphones should be illegal until you’re 16.
Saint Sir Gareth had also referenced a lack of male role models. According to Fraser we have an unequal distribution of fathers. He was frightened to say ‘black’, and given the oblique reference to recent violent events in the North, Richard had been frightened of the B word too. Andrew Tate was mentioned a few times. I’ve never seen his content either.
Here is another important point from the reviewer’s point of view. There’s much media I don’t review because it’s so violent. I can’t sit through it. I get laughed at by the International Brotherhood of Reviewers for leaving the cinema twenty minutes into Cocaine Bear, but why would anybody want to watch that? Mainstream cinema and video games are awful. Much of the mediascape is rotten, not just boys and the smartphone.
Violent rant over (for this week).
© Always Worth Saying 2025
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