David Dimbleby lays host tonight from Edinburgh. On the panel are SNP MSP Keith Brown, the entire membership of the Scottish Conservatives: Annabel Goldie MSP. Scottish Labour Leader Kezia Dugdale MSP, singer and luvvie extraordinaire Billy Bragg and Merryn Somerset Webb, editor of MoneyWeek also apper.
Kick off Thursday at 22.35.
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How many times can Billy Bragg be on Question Time before everyone in the Country has had enough?
He can’t sing – He can’t write a tune – His politics are extreme – And nobody gives a damn about him…
Except the BBC that is..
The BBC can’t even use the excuse that he is popular – his career has been quite unspectacular.
All the presence of this loudmouth on so many BBC programmes tells us is about the age of the idiots who produce BBC programmes and that their political beliefs haven’t grown up, either.
I don’t watch this rubbish; legally I can’t, even if I wanted to; but whenever I read about it I’m again astounded by the torpor of the bbc. They’ll not let it end until Mr Dimbleby is extinct, will they? What hold does he have on the sodding bbc?
Born bred lived and will die BBC. He owes everything he has achieved to the BBC. So far as I am aware, he has never appeared on a non-BBC programme.
When he eventually passes away on the job, tributes will fly in from everywhere, flags will be at half mast, we will have to endure a state funeral to mark the event. There will be a fly past. We will have to endure week on week of Mandelaesque reviews into his life. Huw Edwards will be dragged out to describe the lengths he had to go to to get the old boy’s job by ripping Election Night Special off of him. There will be an anniversary to mark the day, when we will all be encouraged to look back in awe at what he achieved and did for public service. And then another anniversary after that.
And all because he was an interfering old buffer who was often wrong but never in doubt.
Bragg is a patriot, we are reminded constantly. Quite how is never explained. Perhaps they use his recordings at Guantanamo.
“Perhaps they use his recordings at Guantanamo. ”
So the rumours of torture are true!
The talentless UAF/Hate Not Hope gobshite will no doubt be delighted at today’s ONS population predictions, and brand anyone a Racist/Nazi/Fascist if they have any concerns.
So here we go again, three left wingers versus two right wingers. The right are always outnumbered on the panel.
I think all the panel members are pro staying in EU, that is if the question comes up. No bias there then.
Edinburgh is not a hotbed for SNP support so I am anticipating a mixed reception from the (left wing ) audience towards Keith Brown.
Audience and four panel members will be critical of George Osbournes Tax Credits.
Who knows there may even be some praise for the House of Lords from the anti House of Lords panellists Keith Brown SNP and Billy Bragg.
Predictable – but I would like very much to be proven wrong!
It must be me, but I can’t bring myself to watch this rubbish – nor listen to its equally banal R4 counterpart.
I take my hate off to those brave B-BBCers who can endure this biased tripe… and remind them not to forget their blood pressure medication, if prescribed!
Yes GC, thank goodness for those who will view it and report back – I am not too keen on it myself; as my son says, ‘I’d rather shove hot needles into my eyeballs’…
Not that I would dream of commenting on something I hadn’t seen – I just ‘enjoy’ hearing about the antics, and what people make of them.
The only time that I ever watch this tripe is when someone has pointed out something spectacular or amusing on this site.
I then download this via I-Player. A good example being the appearance of professional gobshite Bunny La Roche. I even watched this twice.
So carry on you brave masochistic types and keep us sensitive ones informed.
Billy Bragg is very popular with the Brothers in the TUC and performs at the Tollpuddle Martyrs Festival just a couple of miles from his millionaire style country estate. The prices should deter the hobbledehoy.
An adult weekend pass is £30, a child (aged 5-15 years) ticket is priced at £5. Children aged under 5 can attend for free. A camping tag is priced at £15 per tent, and a camper van tag is £30. A Friday festival pass is£10 per adult, and a Saturday festival pass is £20 per adult. Parking is priced at £5 for weekend pass holders .
The traditional Sunday Rally Day is open to all and free – apart from the parking fee of £10 a vehicle. Please respect the Festival and the local community by using the car parks.
Car parking in the TUC or church car park is priced at around £10 per vehicle on Sunday. Coaches free, drop off and park to the east of the village.
Come and see Billy Bragg, and maybe the ghost of Tony Benn near the river Piddle.
http://www.efestivals.co.uk/festivals/tolpuddle/2015
Billy Bragg, the boy who never grew up but who,nonetheless, made a bloody fortune from his juvenile delusions. Thanks to the bbc promotional efforts.
I always confuse Billy Bragg with Billy Connolly – disappointing in several ways, really.
So Billy Bragg used to get paid. Who was daft enough to do this?
Sorry GWF and good luck to your concert. I won’t be attending
Because,
I’d rather shag Diane Abbott and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in a threesome, watched by Anjem Choudry who is self masturbating whilst being tied up by Jimmy Savile and Cyril Smith for seconds than attend this songfest.
Apologies wronged. You have to take it.
Apology commensurate GWF.
Red flags flying! Alas not for me,
Yasmin,Diane… get the dominatrix chains prepared I’m on my way over!!!
I can take it, I can take it!
Wronged – you could always have made it a foursome with Camila Batmanjellyfish.
Lobster,
No, I chose not to include her as she would take my money under the pretence of giving it to kids.
I’m not that gullible, who do you think I am, Dave.
With Abbot and Batmanjellyfish – that’s more of a tensome.
Seeing this crowd of scum, you begin to appreciate General Pinochet’s point of view.
Last week on Question Time they should have had somebody on from the Institute of Economic Affairs to put the case against tax credits. This week they should have had a constitutional expert who could put forward the case that there is an abuse of power by the House of Lords. It is not only the guests they do invite (who do not add to the debate) which leads to the bias, but the guests who are not invited.
Watching the BBC you are never short of people putting forward every shade of middle class public sector Leftist opinion, what the analysis of the Right is however has usually to guessed at from what Leftist attack. The BBC in general operate on a no platform for people with right wing opinions.
Question Time is unusual in that you might sometimes hear an opinion that comes from the Right. That is why they have a Marxist as its editor – to permanently stack the deck in case by chance people might be contaminated by a view that does not come with the approval of Guardian readers.
Seems the BBC has A. News Production Suite Booker complement to A. Newsroom Tealady to ensure who gets invited on to comment is also ‘appropriate’ and anyone not kept well away.
Looks like the BBC is finding it difficult to get even third-rate guests to appear on this moribund pile of ordure.
Dimblebore has all the vivacity of a putrid corpse. At least the viewers won’t have Ken Clarke and the Hackney Hippo regurgitating the same inane verbiage.
Quite impressed with the comments of Merryn Somerset Webb, she seems head and shoulders above the rest of the panel.
If I was a lefty I might well say similar- albeit to a lesser extent- about Kezia Dugdale. But,thank goodness I’m not.
Merryn Somerset Webb (on Question Time) and Julia Hartley Brewer (on This Week) were by far the most intelligent contributions of the night, yet in both programmes there was a predominance of left of centre commentators. I am still waiting for the BBC programme with a predominance of right of centre political opinions.
Agree, Wild. IMO Andrew Neil is usually the best of them and will challenge. Always noticeable on This Week how Portillo is often quite magnanimous but the leftie never is.
Brewer gave a cogent argument against unfettered tax credits – amazes me no politician can be so erudite. How did we survive without them for the whole of the 20th century?
Agree, wronged-Merryn was the only guest who appeared able and clear in her responses, unlike the rest she works amongst the real world of business/industry & really comprehends the duplicitous outpourings of the political scene, that the gullable swallow daily. Next question-Population to rise by 10 million over next 20 yrs or so, from the statitics I have unearthed we are already there with a population of 70 million +, so what the H is Britain doing agreeing to take another 20,000 Syrians over the next 4 yrs? Where are these people going to live? Who will pay for their accommodation & obvious needed medical care & will the education ministry have considered how & where the children of these immigrants will go to school-most no doubt unable to speak a word of English. I must have been asleep during the last 30 yrs, & have woken up to absolute choas &an incomprehensible direction leading to utter disaster & being forced along by unscrupulous dictators in what was once a Free Democartic Nation-consider the Dictator President of Zimbabwe presented with a Peace Prize ! World gone Mad.
Billy Bragg….the quintessential english..(small e)..working class cheeky cock-nee chap-ee low key country pile just outside of Bridport Dorset ..’Who would walk 439.8 miles and would walk…439.8 miles…more back ( I looked it up).. just to be the man…(Proclaiming)…’Ahh would have a completely useless left wing uninformed fuckwittington opinion..and Ahh would have a few thousand more’….in Edinburgh…. (typing personally, I haven’t seen this particular BBC offering yet, I’m guessing)..Billy Bragg..FFS! …short of a few bob..Billy.?
Blood and sand, I agreed with Billy’s Braggs views on the formation of an English Parliament.
Does this mean I may attend Tolpuddle after all?
Ah Wronged, this explains my orphaned answer on the midweek thread. You intended your comment for this one. I have no idea what Bragg’s ideas on an English Parliament may be, but here’s my tuppence worth.
Unlike;
the Scottish ‘Parliament’ building which had an estimated building cost of £4M but an actual bill of £40M (think Olympian estimates, i.e. Jowell suggesting the Olympic set-up would cost only £2Bn but that figure barely covered the VAT bill she had originally overlooked), or
the Welsh ‘Parliament’ building which was voted in by less than 25% of the Welsh electorate, most of which live in North Wales, or
the Norn Iron ‘Parliament; which was just an excuse to employ former(?) terrorists.
I suggest that an English ‘Parliament’ utilise the existing MPs who sit in English constituencies and that Westminster programme this ‘Parliament’ into the existing House of Commons timetable.
There are many positives to this; the English MPs are already aware of UK-wide and EU-wide issues through their attendance in the Commons as UK MPs. The English MPs are already funded for, as is their Civil Service support. Utilising the current MPs and building will save us poor taxpayers from funding yet another grand architectural project, which will on past performance far outweigh the initial building cost estimate.
Finally such a move will stop the EU regional nonsense of another 9(?) ‘Parliaments’ spread throughout England with the commensurate support costs for each new building and staffing/pensions costs.
As I say, I have no idea what Bragg phoned in from the drawing room in the west wing of his manor, but I’d hazard it was not the cheapest option.
So we get a teenager in the audience giving us a lecture on the 80’s Thatcher and the miners, which of course gets a round of applause. Obviously her lefty lecturer/teacher/parents forgot to tell her one thing, Labour closed more pits than Mrs T!
I think its true that, never mind Labour, Tony Benn closed more pits than Mrs. T.
Oh for those happy far flung days of the poll tax . “Can’t pay, won’t pay”.
Strange how the lefties don’t use that argument about the bBBC licence fee
This Week followed Question Time, Julia Hartley Brewer was as so often excellent, on the programme she highlighted some interested facts about tax credits stating that many people choose tax credits as a lifestyle choice and asking the question -why should so many of us taxpayers have to pay for their lifestyle.
hartley Brewer exposes the myth about ‘hard working families trying to make ends meet,etc. Their choice is that they have more children they can ill afford to extra extra money or choose to work only a restricted number of hours -part time and not full time so that they qualify for extra benefits. I believe the marginal rates are 16 hours per week for a single person and 24 hours for a couple. The incentive becomes NOT to work more hours, as working beyond these allotted hours you begin to detrimentally affect the amount of benefit you receive. What a ludicrous system!
For 7/10 couples claiming working tax credits only one adult is working whether they have children or not, and in a third of households no one is working at all.
84,000 families who claim tax credits have 5 or more children, I could not afford to have 5 children as a full time worker not claiming tax credits. Both my wife and I had to work full time and rely on grandparents for picking up the children from school.
They have a stress free state guaranteed regular income, I have to meet stress filled targets in work and pay a massive mortgage.
I thought the Welfare state was meant to be a safety net not a convoluted web of benefit analysis.
There are far too many people who expect other mugs like me to pay for their chosen lifestyle.
Julia was spot on.
In addition, a couple of points I would like very much to mention,
1. Why in the 7/10 household where coulples are claiming working tax credit does the other adult ho does not work receive money for being a dependent when they could work full or part time.
2. I see with my own eyes many many so called poor families smoking and drinking quite heavily. As a father I could not afford to do either and spent my wages on my family. It is estimated that smokers alone spend between 2 and 3,000 pounds each year on smoking. Why has there not been (to my knowledge) a survey conducted specifically upon the families claiming working tax credits to counter the bleeding heart left wing arguments of the right attacking the poor.
How about the Left exploiting those of us who have worked all their lives and claimed nothing but paid all taxes in full.
Tattoos, Sky subscriptions and mega screen TV’s don’t come cheap either….
If you buy your telly and Bulgarian fags down the pub car park there are serious savings to be made.
When JHB was presenting on LBC, she confessed to being a Labourite in the late 70’s, early 80’s,but she saw the light.
Billy “innit” Bragg. “Cor blimey, all youse bigots need more multi-culti rammed dahn yer froats innit you bigots n cants”.
“Except where I live of course”.
Hipocrisy anyone?
For those that don’t know this is where he lives
And all for writing anti British sh1te like this, strange that looks like a very British abode.
Take down the Union Jack, it clashes with the sunset
And put it in the attic with the emperors old clothes
When did it fall apart? Sometime in the 80s
When the Great and the Good gave way to the greedy and the mean
Britain isn’t cool you know, its really not that great
It’s not a proper country, it doesn’t even have a patron saint
It’s just an economic union that’s passed its sell-by date
Take down the Union Jack, it clashes with the sunset
And ask our Scottish neighbours if independence looks any good
‘Cos they just might understand how to take an abstract notion
Of personal identity and turn it into nationhood
Is this the 19th century that I’m watching on tv?
The dear old Queen of England handing out those mbes
Member of the British Empire – that doesn’t sound too good to me
Gilbert and George are taking the piss aren’t they?
Gilbert and George are taking the piss.
What could be more British than here’s a picture of my bum?
Gilbert and George are taking the piss
Take down the Union Jack, it clashes with the sunset
And pile all those history books, but don’t throw them away
They just might have some clues about what it really means
To be an Anglo hyphen Saxon in England. Co. Uk
I’m very proud of my MBE (not gained for running marathons) and it will have it’s annual outing, with my other service medals, at the Remembrance Sunday service next weekend. Fahk orf Bragg, you muppet.
Er , is he for it or against it ?
This is a commentary on being an Englishman in Britain; the British Establishment does not recognise properly the English and England’s history and their contribution to it. It is subsumed and lost under British and Britain’s.
He campaigns for an English parliament and recognition of England, as do I. The English are under no obligation to defend the Union – what does it do for them? It is currently all about Scotland, England is being fobbed off. That is part of his message, and whilst I don’t share his politics, I am in agreement on this.
Plenty of room for “migrants” there. Needs to do some work on the roof, though.
I absolutely could not bring myself to watch QT last night (that’s rare for me). Just the mention of the hypocritical Billy Bragg put me off completely. How was it, for those who braved it? You have my sympathies.
It was dire, as it always is coming from Scotland. Not that Scotland is particularly horrible, but the focus is generally on internal scotch issues, which means it’s irrelevant to the rest of the UK.
“but the focus is generally on internal scotch issues”
Which, as my Scottish in-laws frequently point out, is typical of Scotland these days.
They don’t live there now – I suppose you could argue that that’s typical as well.
Couldn’t Billy squeeze a couple of migrants into his mansion ?
The hypocritical faucialist cockwomble.
Mansion? It looks more like a mausoleum.
If only!
Am I sensing discrimination against cockneys here? Steady on chaps!
Bragg is a professional cockney; i.e couldn’t wait to get out. Barking and Dagenham now resembles a region of Somalia/Iraq/Pakistan/Nigeria, but B&D was always a bit nouveau riche compared to Mile End, Stratford, Plaistow etc.
BBC = BRAGG BULLSHIT COMPANY
Melvin or Billy?
Billy Bragg is such a phoney I think of him as a kind of comedy turn. The clip of him hamming up singing
The Red Flag is actually hilarious.
Why are members of the British parliament excluded?…but Scottish MEP’s are invited onto QT in English/Irish/Welsh constituencies?
It’s a BBC Scotland production.
More to the point , why was Billy Bragg invited ? Couldn’t they find a Scottish asshole ?
The Proclaimers were washing their hair that night.
LOL !
I thought he was called Biwwy Bwagg
They must have sacked that Socialist QT producer, Nicolai Gentchev, since the Edinburgh show was not full of the usual ‘lefties and ethnic’ plants performing seal clappers, with scripts and cameras at the ready with red herring quotes thrown in like: “The NHS would not exist without the immigrants” and the like.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1364975/Question-Time-appoints-Glasgow-editor-Nicolai-Gentchev-David-Dimbleby-sign.html
But still I did enjoy this previous show enormously: