Question Time 19th June 2025
The Panel:
Peter Kyle (Labour)
Lord Willetts (Conservative)
Katherine Birbalsingh (Headteacher)
Jack Thorne (Screenwriter)
Tommyinnit (YouTuber)
Venue: Greenford
This week Fiona Bruce presents what the guff accompanying Question Time describes as ‘a special episode exploring the challenges of growing up in the 21st century.’ The BBC’s idea of a youth-oriented panel being 46-year-old Jack Thorne, Katherine Burbulesingh (51), Peter Kyle (51) and Lord David Willetts (same age as the Pope – 69).
The one nod towards the young is TommyInnit (not his real name). However, as we shall see, the 21-year-old has nothing in common with ‘those growing up in the 21st century’ other than the date of his birth.
A former student of Nottingham Trent University’s Confetti Institute of Creative Technologies, Thomas Michael Simons is a YouTuber, Twitch streamer and ‘comedian’. Despite being famous for his Minecraft-related videos and live streams, no, I’d never heard of him either.
But wait until you read this:
Father Iain Simons is also a one-time student of Nottingham Trent. A businessman, after graduation he collaborated with the institution on a number of video game-oriented enterprises.
Alongside his son, Simons senior has an interest in several firms positioned at different points of the value chain surrounding Tom’s content.
Risk, such as the cost of sound recording and video production, is handled by one set of companies that are mildly cash-rich or in debt. Elsewhere, revenues accumulate in a company called Innit Incorporated, once rather ungraciously known as ‘Big Huge Money Ltd’.
The latest accounts available, dated the year ending 31st March 2023, show an astonishing £7.7 million, due, cash in hand, or at the bank. An imaginary plastic brick melting £3.3 million more than at the end of the company’s previous operating period.
This is as a result of monetising eleven YouTube channels with over 27.74 million subscribers and over 2.82 billion views. Added to which are two Twitch channels with over 9.02 million followers and live shows in both the US and the UK.
At QT Review HQ we celebrate success and are big believers in the private sector. But, keep in mind every single word that Tommy says tonight is carefully rehearsed to continue to extract the maximum financial value from the very youth who ‘face the challenges of growing up in the 21st century.’
It’s been a while since the staff at QT Review HQ have moved the male menopause sports cars to one side, piled up the beer crates and played multicultural cricket during their dinner hour. Here is our chance. The weather is gorgeous. Katherine Birbalsingh is on the premises.
Miss Birbalsingh is a Zambian-born (6) Indo (4)-Guyanese (4)-Jamaican (6) educator raised in Canada (single). Katharine became one of the Warwickshire (big appeal, not given) Birbalsinghs when her father lectured at the University of Warwick.
A graduate of New College, Oxford (no ball), Katherine is the founder and headteacher of Michaela Community School in Londonistan (2) and a stern disciplinarian (OUT!!! Dismissed for 24, Afua Hirsh’s record innings remains intact).
At her school there is a strict uniform code. Children sit in rows and learn by rote. Corridors are silent and negotiated in single file. A teacher stands at the front of class and imparts knowledge. Make-up is banned.
Puffins keen on a record-breaking career with bat, ball, and 1970s Pietermaritzburg police station ethnicity kaart, might like to score-keep those orderly corridors. According to data provided by School Dash, 98.8% of pupils are of ethnic minority, with a significant proportion of the student body being Muslim.
As we all struggle through another Pride Month, it is Peter Kyle who brings the KY to this week’s QT. A “gay” Labour MP (Hove and Portslade), after graduating from the University of Sussex in Human Geography, International Development and Environmental Studies, Peter did a tour of non-jobs, charidee, promotional and advisory before entering Parliament in 2015.
Besides being a one-time Shadow Minister for Schools, Peter’s interest in les jeunes previously led him to chair a Brighton college, be Chief Executive of Working For Youth, and hold a position at The Body Shop Foundation’s Children on the Edge project.
In a 2015 interview with The Gay UK website, Mr Kyle boasted, “A school in my constituency here has won a Stonewall Award for equality in education. One of the other schools here has a gay group.”
Stonewall is the vile organisation whose Introduction to Supporting LGBT Young People includes the passage, “Meeting strangers from the internet is extremely appealing.”
Jack Thorne is the author of the overpraised and under-watched Netflix drama Adolescence. Beloved of the media bubble as it hinted, not too subtly, that stabbings, beheadings, gang rape, terrorism and the likes are not the result of mass immigration from undesirable countries but, rather, the fault of nice white middle class nuclear families up the North.
What an ass.
Born in Bristol and having spent his childhood in posh Newbury (father a town planner, mother a teacher), Jack attended Pembroke College, Cambridge. In interview, Mr Thorne informs us he lives in a ‘tall Islington townhouse’ from where he crafts his life experiences into gritty provincial working-class episodes of Skins and Shameless.
Keeping it in the bubble, Jack’s wife, Rachael, is a comedy agent, as is his sister-in-law, Cathy Mason. Not her real name, Cathy is Cathy Skinner, spouse of Frank Skinner. Rachael and Cathy produce a podcast in which, in the interests of diversity, amongst other Metropolitan luvvies, they interview their husbands. Excuse me while I puke.
David Willetts (Baron Willetts, PC, FRS, HonFRSC, HonFREng, FAcSS, to you plebs) is a politician, writer and policy expert, and, at 69 the same age as the Pope.
Educated at the private King Edward School, Birmingham, and Christ Church, Oxford (Politics, Philosophy and Economics), David is so clever that he was nicknamed ‘Two Brains’ when Conservative MP for Havant.
Not so clever that he didn’t get caught! David had to resign from the government in 1996 following scathing criticism of his conduct by the Commons Standards and Privileges Committee after a cack-handed attempt to influence an investigation into cash for questions involving former Minister Neil Hamilton.
Not to worry, after leaving the House of Liars and Thieves in 2015, he was elevated to the Lords as part of the associated dissolution honours list.
Why would Baron Willetts, now in his seventh decade, be invited onto a BBC youth programme? Perhaps because of a mighty work?
Sure enough, The Pinch: How the Baby Boomers Took Their Children’s Future – And Why They Should Give It Back sits at 354,980th on the Amazon best sellers list, a bottom-nipping 247,447 places behind the Marquis de Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom.
***
Welcome to Question Time – The Next Generation, began La Bruce in front of an audience well padded with the older generation. She continued with a speech. A million under-16s are referred for their mental health every year, despite their otherwise improved health. AI, social media and all the rest of it. Which led to question one:
Should social media be banned for under-16s? Absolutely, began Katherine, smartphones too. We ban so many things: smoking, sex, driving, killing babies up to the moment of birth. Oh…
The frontal cortex, she continued, young brains aren’t fully developed and smart phone scrooling retards the cortex, which is used to plan ahead and make numerous multiple choices.
At school, she recommends no phones at home. The children who don’t use them advance, anecdotally, in education. It damages little brains. Perhaps in the same way watching Question Time damages those of all sizes.
Tom, who makes his money out of such things, was more selective in his view. Some content might be banned, but people can find their sense of community through social media. Taking it away would be harmful. It helped us find our tribe, didn’t it Puffins!
It’s highly addictive, said an audience member, and you can’t switch it off. Yes, you can. An ADHD teacher wanted social media banned for the under 16s, and so, chipped in La Bruce, does Australia.
Another lady in the audience suggested that the social media companies should regulate themselves. A social theme was emerging: Grok, pack the audience with posh people from London.
Peter Kyle informed us that websites that encourage young people to commit suicide have recently been banned. Hold on a minute. Why were they ever allowed in the first place? Addictive behaviour can be tackled out with prohibition.
Sleep and studying is important. At a technical level, doom scrolling can be challenged. But how and when is he going to do it? We can pass laws and regulations. We are working with the tech companies. I wonder…
Jack Thorne thought this crisis needs more than a sticking plaster. According to Accident & Emergency, children’s outside accidents have reduced but self-harm injuries have increased as young people become more screen-based.
His son is nine and doesn’t know what a smartphone is; therefore, there’s a chance to intervene early. Jack has signed a pledge to keep his son away from such things until he’s 14, but that will be difficult when all his little friends have them.
You can’t win against TikTok, said Katherine. There are addiction teams in the social media industry making these things addictive. Every headteacher is struggling with smartphones – even the strictest head in the country.
And, this reviewer feels obliged to point out, the addiction teams are addicted too. The lunatics are recruiting for the asylum. The unsupervised online world is such a dangerous place for children, concluded Katherine.
As for the dangerous place that is Girl War, Katherine was very Laura Ashley; frilly white collar atop a summery dress of dark green decorated with lighter green leaves and red flowers. As for La Bruce, most businesslike; expensive watch, light grey jacket above a bright red top.
The winner? Depends upon a gentleman’s speciality, Librarian or Una Stubbs in Worzal Gummadge? If you’re not sure what I’m on about, ask an over-scolling friend to explain.
Peter wasn’t keen on a ban. He’s owned by the tech giants, is expecting them to deliver all kinds of political miracles through AI, and if children’s cortexes are being damaged, he may well be tempted to have them damaged in the direction of his political views.
Question two: What does a healthy adolescence look like, and how do we guide our boys towards it?
Jack said his Adolescence drama wasn’t about all young men but about the one boy in the story. Hm. He mentioned the ‘manosphere’. Jack gets asked about his masculinity all of the time as he doesn’t look like the type of man he’s supposed to be. Hmm. That had La Bruce baffled. She asked him to explain.
Look at the comments about me when I was announced for this panel tonight, he replied. There were thirty or forty questioning the way I look and the type of person I am. Hmmm. Jack has not only made the mistake of spending too much time on social media but of typing his own name into the search box. Twitter calls!
A quick look through showed little of interest beyond:
‘I think Jack Thorne could be the perfect writer for a Detective Pikachu movie.’
Pikachu being a Japanese pocket monster.
‘Jack Thorne is a BLM propagandist…’
‘Give Doctor Who to Jack Thorne’
Fairly harmless. Oh, hang on a minute, here it is:
‘Imagine having a name like “Jack Thorne” and writing Netflix slop for wine moms instead of doing paramilitary activities in the Congo for a living.’
Ah, right, point taken. Although I couldn’t find it, Jack explained that somebody had also called him a ‘soy, bearded tw*t. As proof that he is, he was allowed to say the ’T’ word without being censored by La Bruce, a privilege reserved for Islington types with a bit of facial hair who eat (drink? Paint their toenails with?) soy.
Then he started trolling himself, calling himself a skinny weirdo, before turning on a well-known pop star; ‘A skinny weirdo like Jarvis Cocker.’ Take his phone off him!
Time for bed.
© Always Worth Saying 2025
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