Question Time LiveBlog 2nd February 2012


Tonight Question Time comes from Southport.

David Dimbleby is joined by Southport by International Development Minister Alan Duncan, Shadow Justice Secretary and frequent Guido target Sadiq Khan, Labour ex-Minister Digby Jones, Emma Boon from the TaxPayers Alliance and Grange Hill writer Phil Redmond.

As with last week, please remember that humour is good, sarcasm is fine, biting wit is even better but direct threats of violence and disgusting language are not acceptable. We will not add such comments. Have fun – but be good now…

Your Moderators line-up consists of David Vance, David Mosque, TheEye and, hopefully, John Ward.

It’s a 10:30pm kick off and we’ll be staying open for This Week too. See you here later!

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18 Responses to Question Time LiveBlog 2nd February 2012

  1. Geyza says:

    Four politically correct lefties vs Emma boon then.  Alan Duncan is an arch Blairite since he came out as a gay MP. Digby Jones would not officially join labour, but he happily worked for them in government and lent them *some* economic and business credibility in their dying years.

    I cannot afford a new TV yet, (because I work for a living and am not living the high life on benefits), so I cannot afford to watch it again this week.  With those guests, I would kill my TV again if I did watch.

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  2. Framer says:

    Does Dimbleby get paid a taxable salary as other BBC public sector workers do and should, or is he paid through a company in which case will he declare an interest when the inevitable question is asked?

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  3. George R says:

    “Why women (including me) say ‘no’ to Question Time ”

    by Janet DALEY

    http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/janetdaley/100134609/why-women-including-me-say-no-to-question-time/

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  4. Maturecheese says:

    When will we ever get a balanced panel.  This looks like its going to be another lefty fest.  How many times are we going to hear the words ‘Poverty’ and ‘Child’ tonight?

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    • Reed says:

      …or the one that currently trips off their tougues without the slightest thought… 
       
      most vulnerable members of society

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    • London Calling says:

      “Caring about the poor” is generally an offset to a selfish and priviledged life, about the same as the purchase of indulgences  from the Church in medieval times. It’s why Cameron says it ten times a day, (as do all the labour MPs who’s constituencies are full of poor voters who’s votes they need)
      A few are poor through no fault of their own and deserve our support. But others have chosen “poverty” through the choices they have freely made – a lot of them single muvvas and the penniless who have moved to Britain from the Third World for whom work is not part of their culture. I can’t think of any reason why I should care tuppence about them, let alone go to work each day to support them as well as my own family. Frankly, sod the poor. Narcisism is feeling good about yourself because “you care” but for the most part it is self-serving hipocrisy: a left-wing specialty.

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      • wild says:

        The poet T.E.Hulme said in 1916 [he was killed in Flanders in 1917″] “It is a widepread but entirely mistaken idea to suppose that you ammend for the advantages of wealth by asserting that you are a Socialist.”      
             
        I was reminded of this when the multi-millionare Ed Milliband (his father [read David Horowitz to find out about that Stalinist little shit] set up a tax avoidance arrangement so that his egalitarian loving sons would not have to pay any inheritance tax on his Hampstead home) jeered at the front bench for being millionares.      
             
        It is a profitable business preaching big government if you earn your living from big government. All you need to be a Labour members of Parliament is to combine bottomless greed and envy with a complete lack of interest in truth.

          
        Politics is not show business for ugly people, it is filling your pockets with money taken from people struggling to put food on the table on the grounds that you (unlike everybody else) know what is “social justice” is and therefore you deserve it.   
           
        It is stealing from the charity box because you think you deserve a new suit.

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    • Merlin says:

      Did you also notice the engineered applause for every comment that was in defence of the indefencible foreign aid scandal?  One liberal was clapping so hard I thought her hands were going to spontaneously combust!

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  5. wild says:

    I find that the political Left barrack and interrupt so frequently on these programmes it almost defines what it is to be on the Left.

    The reasons for this seems to be threefold. Firstly the Left are narcissists.When they have eliminated all of their opponents and have the stage to themselves their speechs can go on for hours.

    Secondly, allowing other people to articulate a different point of view carries with it the danger that people who disagree with them might  be persuasive.

    Thirdly, because they view politics as a struggle for power, and nothing more, they will try to sabotage their opponents chance of being given a fair hearing.

    It is why the Left are so hostile to a free society. They are very in favour of themselves having the freedom to do and act as they like, but they are completely opposed to anything (be it other people or what other people calls facts) preventing them from doing and acting as they like.

    It is a sort of “I am (and should be) free but you are (and should be) my slave” society.

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    • Henry says:

      “I find that the political Left barrack and interrupt so frequently on these programmes it almost defines what it is to be on the Left”

      Janet Daley describes them as “a well-organised crew of political axe-grinders in the audience

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    • Merlin says:

      Brilliant comment mate, I couldn’t agree more!

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    • Andrew says:

      I more often than not think the snwer lies in your second point.  It’s an Alinskyite trick.  I suspect given conversations we have with people we all know, the reality is their thinking is in the minoirty and the silent majority is us.

      Their real fear is that if ever we work that out, they are finished, so their effort is to shout the counter narrative down and to do so in order to silence you, lest you or others have soething that resonates with the majority or worse still shows the people that others think their way too.  They need to shoot you down at all costs, so your argument cannot get a foothold.

      The AGW argument is a great example of this.  hvaing been on the backfoot for so many years, a crack has appeared in their argument and a counter argument has begun to achieve a critical mass that is pushing them back.  The left tried to stifle it for a long time but it has broken through and with some contiuned effort, their parlour trick will collapse.

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  6. john says:

    QT may well be coming from Southport this evening, but dare I suggest the audience will not !

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  7. Alfie Pacino says:

    I’m giving serious thought to giving this a miss…
    Just this once

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  8. Robert Pullen says:

    my first time here, lets see what goes down

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  9. Andrew says:

    I felt mildly surprised to see that the attempted stacking of the deck for the left didn’t really work out last night.  Jones was a very pleasant surprise and pulled a flanker by making the audience see that all the money that’s going on foreign aid comes from taking it out of their pocket.  There was applause from both sides of the argument but I felt as Merlin described it, the pro aid supporters were doing it more in a desperate attempt to get the noise level up and failed.  The funny bit of the aid question was the actual asking of it.  Watching Johnson’s face as the words came out, he knew he was going to have to defend a stupid policy with an answer that borders on kafkaesque

    Khan was terrible.  The panel did a really good job of putting him back his box when he tried to clamber out and was reduced to doing his best to sit out of arguments lest he appear a fool.

    Apart from his “peoples republic” cobblers, Redmond actually spoke some sense a lot of time and did pay the “oh I’m so cool and irreverant” role so often turned out by Will Self.

    I felt the left got a bit of a fat lip last night.  More of it!

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  10. My Site (click to edit) says:

    ROBERT BROWN; Bit off topic, but just a snippet on Digby Jones. Did anyone else note a comment he made in the press about the removal of Shreds’ knighthood. He was agin the action, concerned that it would have a negative effect on a potential entrepreneur from ‘Bangalore’ wanting to flourish here. BANGALORE ! What is this fool on? What is wrong with home-grown talent? Just goes to show the mind-set of his and others of his ‘kind’. Then you’ve got the likes of Dyson, off-shoreing his workforce[not alone in that] then keeping his design people here[how long for]. His products are not any cheaper though, notice that? 

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