Question Time 6th February 2025
The Panel:
Michael Shanks (Labour)
Russel Findlay (Conservative)
Kate Forbes (SNP)
Lorna Slater (Green)
Alex Massie (Journalist)
Venue: Glasgow
An outbreak of journalism on this week’s Question Time, or at least of journalists. £30,000 an hour host Fiona Bruce is supposed to be a journalist, as is guest Alex Massie, and as was fellow panellist Russel Findlay. Since I’m here, why not throw this humble reviewer into the mix, albeit as a journalist with a small ‘j’ – or ‘jai’ as they pronounce it north of the border.
Before entering politics, Mr Findlay had a 30-year-long career on the investigative side, working with outlets such as the Sunday Mail and the Scottish Sun. Specialising in organised crime, in December 2015 he survived a doorstep acid attack at the hands of a criminal disguised as a postal worker. An experience he later detailed in his book “Acid Attack: A Journalist’s War With Organised Crime.”
About as popular as a Glaswegian on the front path with a knife in each hand and a bottle of acid between his teeth, this mighty work sits 155,387th on the Amazon best sellers list. A skin melting 104,173 places behind the Marquis de Sade’s ‘120 Days of Sodom’.
As for Alex Massie, more dosser than detective, the unkempt 50-year-old is notable for his insightful political prose, is the Scotland editor of The Spectator and is a columnist in The Times and The Sunday Times. His writings have also appeared in publications such as The Washington Post, Politico and The Daily Telegraph. In 2012, he made the Orwell Prize shortlist.
Educated at £55,000 per annum Glenalmond College in Perthshire, after being overlooked (twice) by Cambridge, he attended Trinity College Dublin, where, alongside a Mr Matthew Magee, he won the John Smith Memorial Mace debating competition while representing the University Philosophical Society. A hereditary journalist (son of Allan Johnstone Massie CBE FRSL FRSE), Alex began his own career with The Scotsman as a Washington correspondent and has served as an assistant editor for Scotland on Sunday.
So much for those three. The hot news from the journalist with a small j is that while doing my prep on the others, I gave in to temptation. As we all know, when you teach someone to use an internet search engine, the first thing they do is type in their own name. Likewise, newly familiar with Street View, the first thing they look at is their own house. Apparently, when first instructed in Twitter a chap you may have heard of tweeted ‘Ed Balls’. As for the AI… When doing my research for this week’s QT, I couldn’t help but pass my details across my assistant Miss Chatbot.
Well.
Despite lengthy investigations into the likes of the UK’s clandestine propaganda war against Iran and secretive Home Office contractors driving the mainstream fake news cycle, Puffins will be interested to read I’m notable for – according to the mightly algorithms deciding such things – “Postcard From Birmingham, Part Eight.”
That’s the one where myself and Mrs AWS say what we see from left to right while on the balcony of Birmingham Library. The view between Lew Grade’s old ATV Alpha tower to the modest three-story building (to the left of the Hyatt Regency) housing the Consulate of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan now defines my fifteen minutes of fame.
Perhaps wary of an iffy AI-driven legacy, Glasgow-born Russell Findlay left journalism and became the Member of the Scottish Parliament for the West Scotland region in 2021 on behalf of the Conservatives.
He became the leader of the party in September last year. An outspoken critic of the Scottish government’s gender-recognition legislation he campaigns on justice issues, including measures to prevent drug-soaked mail from entering prisons.
***
The first questioner asked, besides being elected President of the United States, had Donald Trump also been elevated as Master of the Universe.
Yes! Next question.
The panel and audience begged to disagree. Kate complained about Trump’s over-the-top comments dominating the news cycle. Hmm. Regarding Gaza, she added her responsibilities as Deputy First Minister of Scotland and Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Gaelic include ‘world peace’ and that it was reprehensible that Palestinians might be removed from their homeland. She is committed to a two-state solution. Presumably, one being Isreal and the other being a long, thin Monte Carlo stretching from Erez to the border with Egypt.
Kate Forbes (not her real name, Kate Elizabeth MacLennan) is the MSP for Skye Lochaber and Badenoch and the ludicrously titled Deputy First Minister of Scotland and Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Gaelic. The 34-year-old spent part of her childhood in India, where her parents were missionaries.
A committed Christian, Kate was privately educated at Uttarakhand’s Woodstock International School before graduating in History from Selwyn College, Cambridge. After further study at Edinburgh University, Ms Forbes ‘earned’ an MSC in Diaspora & Migration History. Almost the white sheep of tonight’s panel, Kate spoils her copy by, apart from two years as an accountant, never having had a job.
Michael Shanks mentioned the news cycle too, hmmm, and preferred a ‘sovereign Palestinian state’ to a Donald Boardwalk lined with casinos. A wiseacre in the audience wondered who would rebuild Gaza if not the Americans. Another saw the Trump plan as US UK Isreal ethnic cleansing.
Lorna’s heart bled for the Palestinians who are now going to be removed to build a resort. There is an eight-part series to be written entitled ‘Postcard from Lorna Slater’. A weird individual, the 49-year-old hails from Calgary in Canada’s Alberta province and is a Scottish-Canadian Green politician and engineer.
In 2019, she became co-leader of the Scottish Greens alongside Patrick Harvie. Two years later Slater was elected as MSP for the Lothian region. Following the party’s cooperation agreement with the Scottish National Party, she was appointed as the laughable Minister for Green Skills, Circular Economy, and Biodiversity. Unhinged Lorna claims to be autistic, with some confusion surrounding what lies hidden within her own greenery. Once defining as a ‘girl’, she now calls herself ‘trans’ and a ‘person’ while retaining she/her pronouns.
Alex thought the US presidential result was ‘sub-optimal’. I.e. the voters are wrong … again. Amongst a volley of insults, he called Mr Trump a moron. One of those billionaire morons married to a super-model, he forgot to add. Alex then contradicted himself by explaining the genius of Mr Trump’s sub-text – the Arabs pay to rebuild Gaza or get stuck with the Donald Plan. All good diplomacy contains ‘or else’.
La Bruce wondered of virtue in any of Trump’s recent announcements. If you’re wondering why the BBC are so hostile to Donald Trump in its own news cycle then let me explain. It’s because they get paid via a recently uncovered USAID scam through which the Democrats bankroll various state-run media with US tax dollars.
To a ‘charity’, BBC Media Action, when Jo Biden came to office the annual donation from USAID was £358,000. By the time he left the White House, it had risen to £2.6 million, an increase of 700%. As for what the BBC does with the money, they claim it’s used to ‘train journalists’ on such things as climate change and ‘changing perceptions’ about the Covid-19 vaccination.
Puffins will be pleased to hear that employees enjoy six-figure salaries and the trustees include tinged BBC newsreader Reeta Chakrabarti. Their projects include ‘Gaza Lifeline’ and a series of films dispelling LGBTQI+ stigma in the Ukraine.
Mr Massie explained Trump’s counter-offensive (which includes his comments on taking over Gaza) – a deliberate strategy of putting a lot into ‘the zone’ thus making it difficult for his opponents to coalesce around any single point of opposition.
Question two, are the Labour government’s unpopular policies advancing Scottish independence?
Labour’s Michael Shanks disagreed and then showed why they’re unpopular by beginning with the hackneyed ‘Fourteen years of…’ speech which blames everything on the previous Tory government.
Michael Shanks serves as the Labour MP for Rutherglen. The Ayrshire-born University of Glasgow history and politics graduate worked in the charity sector before retraining as a modern studies teacher. At first the thirty-seven-year-old contested the Partick West ward in the Glasgow City Council elections but was not elected.
After a series of further electoral disappointments and dissatisfaction with Labour’s stance on Brexit and antisemitism under Jeremy Corbyn, Shanks resigned from the party in 2019 but rejoined in 2020 following Keir Starmer’s election as leader. In October 2023, Shanks won the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election following the recall of the SNP’s Covid lockdown growler Margaret Ferrier – and retained the seat at the 2024 general election.
The audience took him to task. One mentioned closing the Grangemouth oil refinery as a recent Labour decision. The next mentioned Miliband’s attempts to destroy the North Sea oil industry through the Net Zero madness.
Kate read out a list of people worse off since the election, from old age pensioners to Waspi women to oil refinery workers. She complained about lots of things that she’s in favour of, such as high energy prices. Alex Massie had no sympathy for the Waspi women as they’d had forever to plan before their retirement age changed. He misunderstood. The Labour Party lied to the Waspi women in the run-up to the election, that’s the point.
Question three was about an enemy of the people judge stopping the development of new oil and gas fields in Scotland on the grounds of the emissions the extracted hydrocarbons would produce. Conservative Russell was in favour of drilling but the others were all at sea.
This is what happens when lobbyists pay politicians for legislation with the legislators then becoming subservient to the globalists in the courts. As per the Democrats and the BBC, expect more horror stories about how our politicians are compromised by foreign lobbyists as more revelations appear from Elon Musk’s investigation.
Labour, the Greens and the SNP became bogged down in global warming claptrap and the Net Zero legislation. All kinds of nonsense was pulled out of thin air. Carbon capture, hydrogen, (useless and intermittent) windfarms, non-existant Small Modular Reactors, all were touted as some kind of arriving cavalry.
Apparently closing down the Grangemouth refinery and the North Sea oil and gas industries and sacking everybody creates jobs. Alex Massie and some audience members preferred a hybrid energy approach comprising of both hydrocarbons and renewables. Fat chance with Mad Miliband in charge.
The final question was about bed blocking in the Health Service. Ten years ago the SNP government promised to solve the problem in a year. Since then the situation has worsened. The panel blamed covid, the ageing population, Australia and Westminster (ie the English). Nobody blamed the sclerotic, over-bureaucratic NHS with its endless policies, plans and pay rises, that’s unable to throw up some cheap-as-chips convalescent prefab wards staffed by non-medical staff. Which is all it needs.
Perhaps Scotland might benefit by the Scottish being removed while Donald Trump rebuilds the place?
© Always Worth Saying 2025
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