Question Time LiveBlog 27th October 2011


Question Time tonight comes from Winchester.

David Dimbleby is joined by Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith – who after the EU referendum rebellion declared yesterday that he will not vote against his Eurosceptic principles again.

We also have ex-GMTV presenter, permanent feature on Guido’s political totty reports and occasional Labour politician Gloria De Piero, Deputy Leader of the Liberals in Scotland Jo Swinson (oddly an absentee from those same totty lists), UKIP leader Nigel Farage and Julian Fellowes, As Baron Fellowes of West Stafford he takes the Conservative whip in the Lords.

Two Tories on the same panel? Surely a booking mix-up? Heads will roll.

TheEye can’t be here tonight so will leave you to the tender Moderating mercies of David Vance and David Mosque.

It’s a 10:30pm kick off. You know where to be. And how much alcohol to bring.

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45 Responses to Question Time LiveBlog 27th October 2011

  1. London Calling says:

    Stay one a head of the lefty Twitterati. Interesting how the lefties see the QT panel packed with Right Wingers.  I wonder what they make of the audience? The bench they are sitting on up-ends when one righty gets up to go to the loo.

    https://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23bbcqt

    Felt I had stepped on a different planet there.

       0 likes

    • Reed says:

      From that link:

      On tonight’s panel in Wenchester: Sir Iain Duncan-Smyth, Nigel Farageois and Lord Julian Fellowes with Gloria De Wench and Jo Wench

         0 likes

    • Demon1001 says:

      Amazing that they include Liberals as right-wing because they are in coalition with the nominal Conservative Party.  They are too stupid to realise that the same argument can be used in reverse – there are two Conservatives, so as they are in coalition with the Liberal Party then they should be counted as Left-Wingers.  Then we would count as 5-1 to the left with Farage as the single representative of the right of centre.

         0 likes

    • Henry says:

      Lefties think the BBC is establishment & right-wing. They’re moving where the centre is again to claim that they are of the centre. Or perhaps just a little to the left of centre…Then immediately they start on about “the bourgoisie”, “class”, “inequality”.

      Standard use of this left/right concept: pretend one is moderate and accuse the other side of being the loonies 🙂

      I worry about the safety of letting anyone out on the streets who thinks QT has any right-wing bias attached to it

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  2. David Preiser (USA) says:

    They think they’re setting up a Tory Split fight.  Farage is the BBC’s favorite rent-a-quote on the issue, but the producers figure they’ll get a nice Tory Split fight between IDS and Fellowes. Clever.

    Too bad I won’t be around to watch more than about 10 minutes of it.

       0 likes

  3. Reed says:

    The BBC love to get Farage on precisely because he’s competition for the Tory vote. Otherwise, I’m sure they would rarely bother.

       0 likes

  4. David Preiser (USA) says:

    A Leftoid QT watcher is unhappy that two IBM employees tweeted that they’ll be in the audience tonight.  Claims the tweets mean they’re officially representing IBM.  By that logic, all biased tweets from Beeboids are a breach of the Charter.  Bet he won’t agree, though.

       0 likes

    • The Cattle Prod of Destiny says:

      I notice from the leftoid wassocks blog that he is a regular attendee with a number of associates who also regular try to get on the show.

      So much for a ‘specially invirted audience.’

         0 likes

      • My Site (click to edit) says:

        ROBERT BROWN; Cattle prod, i think you meant ‘invited’, but your slip of the finger has almost become a freudian slip, ‘invirted’ could become ‘inverted’, perfect.

           0 likes

  5. cjhartnett says:

    I`ll not be expecting anything from Fellowes…the kind of toff from central casting to show that the Tories are full of Jacob Rees-Mogg types.
    In a decent government, Duncan-Smith might be good…unfortunately, he`s carried too much of the weight and isn`t too good these days…hard to think of any better though in a thin and pretty awful bunch of ministers(May? Hunt? Maude?…low grade prep school nobodies)
    Still Nigel is on in a good week, and hope he sticks Dimblebys barbs back down his throat…take you pick with the multi jowelled flubberer!

       0 likes

    • Grant says:

      cj,
      I am surprised how often Nigel appears on the BBC generally especially as he is quite difficult to interrupt  !

         0 likes

      • The Cattle Prod of Destiny says:

        He’s on a lot because he is an idiot who comes across to the public as a self satisfied right wing nutjob.  He’s a laughing stock outside of the UKIP puddle.  And yes he may well be quite different in reality but it is perceptions that count in politics not reality.

        The BBC hope he’ll put people off right wing politics.  That’s why he’s on so much.

           0 likes

  6. Llew says:

    Is this the annual balancing act where the BBC can then use to quash any claims that the BBC is always biased to the left?!

    Keep an eye on the messages sent into the BBC (ceefax, twitter etc), there’s bound to be some stating the BBC is unfairly and always biased towards the Tories. Funny that you never see messages about the bias any other time week in week out.

       0 likes

    • Grant says:

      Llew,
      Well spotted !   ” We had so many complaints about the right-wing bias, we are going to redress the balance for the rest of the year ”  Blah , Blah………..  

         0 likes

  7. Edward Hendry says:

    Nigel Farage!? I’m there!

    I always enjoy hearing him speak.

       0 likes

  8. David Mosque says:

    You can bet every penny of your mortgage that in the next few days the IslingtonGuardianistas will be complaining somewhere about BBC right wing bias.

    Sure as eggs is eggs. 

       1 likes

  9. David vance says:

    David M

    Can you invite me please?

       1 likes

  10. Demon1001 says:

    This is the first time I remember, even nominally, right-left parity on the panel.  Three left, three right – I’m sure it’s only to try to display “Toricutz” as someone above suggests.

       1 likes

  11. ian says:

    A couple of useless tarts….obviously the presence of these nobodies is QT’s idea of gender equality. How patronising towards women! Bet you Dimbleby shuts the blokes up so that these two can preach caring left-wing crap at them all night.

       1 likes

  12. hippiepooter says:

    What an absolute class act David Dimbleby is.  It completely mystifies me how he catches so much flak here.  We need to savour him while he lasts.  We simply dont breed them like that any more.

    His brother though ..

       1 likes

  13. Scottish Chatter says:

    Came across this guy discussing question time tonight. https://twitter.com/#!/DaftLimmy
    Example tweet: America, the war starting and war losing nation. England, the plastic furniture throwing, snobby fucking arrogant fucking cunt nation.
    Oh and surprise surprise the BBC pays him to make programmes.
    sigh!

       1 likes

    • Demon1001 says:

      Had a quick look at the link.  He comes across as a foul-mouthed, arrogant buffoon.  He doesn’t believe that anything English should be mentioned as hes is a “Scot”.  Well whoopy-do, did he object when we had a Scottish panel in Glasgow the other week?  Of course not, he is just a xenophobic little Scotlander.   

         1 likes

      • Grant says:

        Demon,
        Sadly, my country is full of narrow-minded little prats like him. One of them is called Alex Salmond !

           1 likes

        • Demon1001 says:

          Once on facebook there was a Scottish nationalist (lower case because I don’t know exactly what left-wing party he supported) who claimed that English nationalism is bigoted and racist and Scottish nationalism isn’t.  He tried to pretend that the SNP are inclusive while the EDL aren’t.  He totally ignored the fact that English-bashing is a past-time enjoyed by most politicians North of the Border, particularly the SNP.

          Grant, you may not know the answer but do you know of many, if any, English people representing a Scottish Parliamentary seat? 

             1 likes

          • Grant says:

            Demon,
            There certainly have been in the past. Off the top of my head, I am not sure about now. My own MP, Mark Lazarowicz , although from a Polish family originally, was certainly brought up in England,
            Maybe Roland can help me out here.
            But, I take your point.
            I have said here often before, if I were English, I would go for independence now and leave the EU !   

               1 likes

    • Roland Deschain says:

      “Thank f*** I’m a minority in this “union”, thank f***, thank f*** I’m no a blinkered English or blinkered American, thank f***.”

      Not sure how being a blinkered Scotsman is any better, but presumably the BBC knows.  And somewhat limited in his vocabulary.

         1 likes

      • dave s says:

        That man is the best argument for Scottish independence i have come across. He sounds as if he would be ideal to head a Scottish BBC.

           1 likes

        • Demon1001 says:

          That’s not fair to decent people like Grant.

             1 likes

          • Roland Deschain says:

            Sadly, I came to the conclusion some time back that you’d be better off without us.  Not just an enormous chip on our collective shoulder but a king-sized deep-fried Mars bar too.

            But I will do what I can to stop it happening.

               0 likes

            • Grant says:

              Cheers, Demon, don’t forget Roland !

              Roland, I did my post above before I read yours !!!

                 0 likes

  14. cjhartnett says:

    Saw the first twenty minutes or so of this show.
    I reckon that IDS is a tragic symbol of our times.
    Clearly a good man who might once have been along the lines of Wilberforce or Barnardo in his chosen field.
    A man that once showed courage and convictions…and still there are flashes of it all once in a while.
    He was however destroyed as a man of convictions in 2002-that “Quiet Man” bit will hound him to the grave, and rightly so!
    To be such an unwilling creature of a political machine that simply uses him as cover is a tragedy…to see him twist his own logic around as a corpse on a gibbet in regard of a referendum was pitiful.
    Clearly a nice guy turned into what I saw because he plays politics and doesn`t change anything.
    As a wise contributor to this site wrote recently-“there is no bad time to do a good thing”.
    So all that IDS and the other political toadies were saying about tactics etc last night just wasted all our time.
    I think the political class need to vote again on this one…like the Danes and the Irish are used to doing!

       0 likes

    • Grant says:

      Spot on cj.  And IDS is one of the few MPs who has had a real job, in his case Army Officer.

         0 likes

  15. Bupendra Bhakta says:

    Jo Swinson – a human word cloud.

    Bones up on the key words likely to feature in any discussion and then regurgitates them with added conjunctions but with little thought original or otherwise and zero understanding.

    Let’s hear it for the voters of East Dunbartonshire who I’m staggered to learn have elected her twice.

       0 likes

  16. John Anderson says:

    Judith Curry is an eminent scientist in the climate field.  About a year ago she started to argue that far too little attention was being paid to the uncertainties sirrounding climate records,  possible causes of climate variations, and forward predictions.

    She attracted a huge amount of flak from the climate lobby and other scientists in the Warmist cult.  But she stuck to her guns.

    In this post she picks up on the fact that some of them are now beginning to accept that there are indeed a lot of uncertainties.  Quoting individual scientists who have been in the leadership IPCC and of the Gadarine rush to economic folly.

    http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/27/candid-comments-from-global-warming-scientists/

    The Warmist edifice appears to be crumbling.   But I bet Richard Black will not report the article that Judith Curry deals with.

       0 likes

  17. Derek Buxton says:

    Fellowes is a “conservastive in name only” as is Cameron.  I heard him make one comment about the EU and that was too much. he knows nothing of the organisation or how it works……still most of the toy government don’t either.

       0 likes

  18. David Preiser (USA) says:

    I didn’t get a chance to catch this last night.  Was there, as I suspected, a Tory Splits set up between IDS and Fellowes, with Farage there to egg it on?

       0 likes

    • Demon1001 says:

      More like splits between Farage and IDS who appears to have been bitten by the Europhile bug (or should I say “plague”?).  I think Cameron probably told him to wind his neck in as he clearly denied the claims that he’d said he would never vote against his conscience on Europe again.

         0 likes