Question Time tonight comes from Middlesbrough, which has the lowest life expectancy in England and Wales and, according to the BBC, a council that “will be the least resilient to such public sector cuts“. It also boasts a 33ft tower which changes colour when you send it a text message.
On the Trafalgar Day panel tonight we have Philip Hammond MP, John Denham MP, Caroline Lucas MP, General Sir Richard Dannatt, George Pascoe-Watson and finally a woman who was described by Boris as “incarnates all the nannying, high-taxing, high-spending schoolmarminess of Blair’s Britain. Polly [Toynbee] is the high priestess of our paranoid, mollycoddled, risk-averse, airbagged, booster-seated culture of political correctness and ‘elf ‘n’ safety fascism“.
For those playing the Buzzword Bingo, we’ll be using the In It Together Rules meaning that references to Philip Hammond being a multi-millionaire score points but references to Toynbee’s villa in Tuscany and tax arrangements mean that you miss a go. Playing your Dannatt card and getting carriers, jets or Falklands is worth a point, Gibraltar wins two but the phrase Carriers without Harriers beats every other hand at the table. The usual squares of Thatcher, dead unburied, doomed are expected to be in high demand and please note that fairness has been removed from cards tonight. Too easy.
The LiveBlog will also cover the entertainingly awful This Week, with Andrew Neil, Michael Portillo, Alistair Darling and the pickled remains of Charles Kennedy. This programme will be marked using Billy Blofeld’s patent pending “Gellard Scale Of Rabid Left Wing Whinging“.
David Vance, TheEye and David Mosque will be slashing the public sector here from 10:30pm.
That Gellard scale is great; I will be adding billy’s link to my blog tomorrow. Luckily I am not in the UK and can’t get iplayer so won’t be suffering the Dimblefuck blood pressure pusher.
One for an open thread or post in it’s own right:
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/localgovernment/2010/10/bbc-exaggerates-council-spending-cuts.html
“Last night on the BBC’s News at Ten they used this graphic over Nick Robinson saying:
So dear taxpayer the Government has decided on … a 26% cut for councils leading to fewer services, …
And so on he went through the butcher’s list of cuts. Earlier in the day the BBC was describing the cut as “almost 30% of council budgets”. This presentation of the numbers must be very worrying for many people and it is not very honest…
…In addition to the council’s income from council tax many of its services, ranging from social care to parking, are charged for and have always been charged for. Last year my council spent £1,031 million on the revenue side and £151 million on the capital side. Our £53 million savings target is only 4.5% of that. Seen in the round this cut is not quite so harrowing. The axe not quite so bloody.
“UK rail network ‘at risk’ from climate change”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11601014
Give me strength.
I knew the audience was “representative” last night when one of Polly’s pronouncements was given rapturous applause. My thesis is that this is only possible with a Beeboid-loaded audience.