David Dimbleby hosts topical debate from Tottenham, London. Panellists include Conservative international development secretary Justine Greening, Labour’s Chuka Umunna, the Green Party’s Jenny Jones, Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens and writer and broadcaster Victoria Coren Mitchell.
Kick off Tonight at 22.35.
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Majority leftist panel.
Again.
Colour me surprised.
Hosted from a Labour-run shit hole again.
Colour me surprised.
And the usual squawking antics from the oh so unbiased and balanced audience.
Colour me gone.
Not Such an unbiased audience this time Phobic-ist,especially one member of the audience who quite clearly condemmed T. Blair as a Traitor ref Iraq-however apart from Peter Hitchens, the panel & no doubt many in the audience appear not to realise just what a shitty mess this country & most of Europe are in-duplictious politicians wallowing helplessly around in the slime/slurry bucket of their pretentious democracy, with a complete disregard for the very serious issues now confronting us all. Rocky future ahead I perceive. Question Time-a propaganda programme for the government, should be closed down-that would save us all a lot of wasted time listening to the clucking of individuals who know nothing about anything & everything about nothing.
Amen to that tarien.
I think you’ll find it’s mainly the hard left/Islamophiles who condemn Blair for Iraq.
Wholeheartedly agree with the rest of your post though.
Well blow me down with a feather !!
Victoria Coren Mitchell on QT? They must be using our TV-tax to provide free booze.
Be fair Sir Arthur, the lady eschewed the hard stuff for the duration of her pregnancy and having produced what would seem likely to be one of the best-fed children in human history, she surely must have earned a bit of relaxation?
I shall not be watching it; not least because it would be illegal for me to do so; however, I wonder what any of the panel have that qualifies them to appear on this programme and pontificate on serious matters. Of course, they have no legitimacy and hence are just there for entertainment value. They are no better than actors and other types of entertainers; the visual proof of bread and circuses.
John in Cheshire
I think you have really got to the core of the matter. The BBC presents an unending supply of nonentities who waste the public’s time with vacuous moralizing and irrational piffle. Umoomoo still thinks that net migration of a couple of million has no effect on the demand for housing. Does he believe muigrants are like snails who bring their houses with them on their backs? If he is a Labour star, what cretins the rest must be. Hitchens is content to play the part of a tiresome, out of touch, old bore. He obviously does not follow the advice of the strern Victorians he pretends to ape and keep his bowels open. His joyless prattling no doubt in some part due to his hours of torment straining at the stool. Killing Islamist terrorists is “counterproductive” and a “recruiting sergeant”. Yet we are told the majority of Muslims views ISIS as a perversion of Islam. Why would these “good” Muslims want to support perverters of their religion? Hitchens contradicts himself and so cannot be taken seriosly.
Another wee night out for Londons knuckle draggers aka an impartial al-Beeb audience.
As long as they don’t shit on the carpet and remember to clap when they’re supposed to things should go to plan.
Has a QT panel ever been biased against the Left ?
“Has a QT panel ever been biased against the Left?”
I got to know how the Left operate when editing a few Wikipedia pages. They full of hate. They have no interest in truth. They work in packs. They are completely intolerant. They are completely unprincipled. The end justifies the means.
They are also absolutely terrible at argument because they are rage rather than reality grounded. A Leftist (such as the editor of Question Time) will therefore always stack any panel in the hope that by sheer weight of numbers (supplemented by interruptions and personal attacks) they will manage to eradicate the voicing of any alternative view.
The BBC also stacks the audience. It is what the BBC calls free debate. They call it that because it pains them to invite anybody from the Right at all.
Wild , Yes. I think a problem is that most right-wingers are too nice and not ruthless enough. The case was not helped by that idiot May saying “The nasty Party”, possibly the most stupid thing a politician has ever said !
Yes and she said it just as the real nasty party were starting to rub our noses in diversity, all for a few extra postal votes. Silly woman.
Exactly my eperience on wikipedia too. Rampant leftist bias and collaboration. e.g. the DUP compared to the KKK, UKIP likened to the National Front, the IRA listed after other suspects for the Birmingham pub bombings, no names allowed of victims of IRA bombings, but names allowed for victims of loyalist killings – I kid you not.
You only have to read Wikipedia to realise it is hopelessly biased. Sadly, a lot of people don’t seem to be aware of that fact. Personally, I regard it as next to useless.
I hope the Million Mask March people get lost and end up in Tottenham. I believe QT is recorded 2 hrs before airing. All that needs to be done is tell them the audience is full of 2ree and UKIP wacist rich people.
Hopefully someone will ask Chucka when Jeremy Corbyn is likely to be ousted. It must be awful for Obama-lite to have to endure watching Corbyn doing the job he covets so badly, so badly.
Let me make a rough list of left-wing columnists who write for The Guardian or The Observer or The Independent or the New Statesman
Owen Jones
George Monbiot
Mark Steel
Mehdi Hasan
John Harris
Charlie Brooker
Polly Toynbee
Yasmin Alibhai Brown
Rafael Behr
David Aronavich
Andrew Rawnsley
Jay Rayner
Steve Richards
Andrew Marr
Laura Penny
Germain Greer
Simon Schama
Sandi Tosvig
Rev Giles Fraser
Lesley Riddoch
Jonathan Freedland
Jo Brand
David Blanchflower
Shami Chakrabarti
Will Self
John O Farell
and so on and so on, none of which you will have heard of because they are never on the BBC, then there are right wing writers and thinkers such as Andrew Roberts, Roger Scruton, Theodore Dalrymple, Andrew Anthony, Emma Griffin, Anthony O’Hear, and Paul Johnson, who are constantly on the BBC. Oh spare us Scruton promoting yet another of his books on the BBC!
That’s a pretty good approximation of how leftists argue – the more incredible thing is they really think they are occupying the moral high ground as they do it
The first list could be a whole set of Only Connect questions.
Q What connects these four people?
Owen Jones.
Ring! ”Yes Ordinary folk team.
”Will they all be typical BBC lefties?’
Coren Mitchell No!!!
Over to you’ Lefties Club’
Will they all be typical middle of the road balanced and unbiased and highly intelligent commentators, journalists of middle of the road newspapers like the Guardian Ind. New Statesman who rarely if ever appear on BBC TV and are vilified by the nasty Biased BBC site.
CM ”Correct and you get a bonus point! No make it five extra points.
Got in in one Invicta 1066.
What is Victoria Coren Mitchell’s chief source of income?
Ring!
The BBC?
No.
Ring!
Poker?
No.
Writing articles for The Observer and The Guardian?
Correct!
Thank you wild.
This list needs just a couple more-but we ought to compile one we can all agree on, and then collate the number of times we get them stuffed onto the BBC…as well as a league table of “who`s hot and who`s not” as BBC 3/Radio 1 might say yeh?
I myself will make a “Shoot-style” league table of two divisions as well as the Euro League/FA Cup possibilities…for each of the above have a “team” behind them, for which they are the captain/star player.
They nearly all play in red of course…albeit stripes, hoops, plain or sponsored logo brands that change by the season.
I`ll set off on it now-adding Frances Crook, Billy Bragg, Tom Robinson, Tony Juniper..etc.
As long as they`re not elected-and not BBC formal stiffies/staffies…then they`re all `players” in our Fantasie Softball Sweepstakes”.
PS- think you`ll find former colonial hockey styxgal “Greer.G”…has been relegated from the Premiere League of Lefties for saying something about translads not being fit to play for the Donny Bellendaz, due to smuggling something bigger than a budgie still in the front of Blatters Bloomers…tight enough for you Seppy?
The far from impartial past of the boss of the BBC’s flagship political show
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1364975/Question-Time-appoints-Glasgow-editor-Nicolai-Gentchev-David-Dimbleby-sign.html#ixzz3qegnmBRm
Nicolai Gentchev, a former output editor of BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, has been the editor of Question Time since March 2011
The Right in the UK believe in a free speech and the Left don’t. So who makes a better editor of Question Time, a Leftist like Nicolai Gentchev, or somebody who believes in free speech? Who is more likely to use Question Time as a platform to promote a Leftist agenda, Nicolai Gentchev or somebody who believes in free society?
I have never yet met (has anybody) a Leftist who could bear to hear Right wing views. If you are on the Right on the other hand, if you are not privately educated, if you watch the BBC, if you work in the State Sector, you will spend your entire life being lectured to by Leftists (while you quietly find out [what is the truth and what are lies]for yourself).
Found in guido comments
http://order-order.com/2015/11/05/who-is-on-question-time-tonight-2/
Dimbleby really is a nasty piece of work. He can’t even look Hitchens in the eye. Typical BBC scumbag. They should pension the dinosaur off !
To me, left-wing people seem like children who have not yet grown up. They are so simple minded that you can predict the wishful thoughts that they are about to say. Today the BBC needed the audience to intimidate Peter Hitchins into a state of fear, as he is one of those who have complained about the BBC‘s censorship policy for climate science, scientists and scientific debate.
The BBC Question Time team would be aware that Hitchens has said that “Sometimes I’ll be on some panel where the question comes up, and so I’ll be compelled to make a few diffident and cautious remarks, listening out as I do so for the peculiar mixture of howl and rumble which is the sound of the modern bigot realising he is in the presence of an unbeliever. ( I remember that happening to Johnny Ball) It’s a bit like that scene at the end of the remake of ‘Invasion of the Bodysnatchers’ (the one with Mr Spock in it) where the alien replicas, realising they are in the presence of an actual unreplicated human, turn as one, point and stare and emit high-pitched screams. You know this is going to end badly. And it does, though I have yet to be torn limb from limb.
He has also said that the “Climate Change Cult” “have the BBC to do their missionary work for them“ and that “Writing about Climate Change is like “throwing stones at a wasps nest“ “angry, bullying, majoritarian intolerance which makes me suspect that they are rather nervous about their beliefs, they are more interested in shouting people down, and stirring the mob, than they are in argument.
He pointed out the moronic suggestion from the BBC that he is ‘giving opinions and scientific fact the same weight.
(1) A prediction can never be a scientific fact about the future? Not even for an Eclipse beyond a thousand years, never mind a Met Office weather forecast beyond two weeks.
(2) The opinion of 97 percent of scientists is an opinion poll without facts about who did this opinion poll. why is it not updated on a regular basis. Why do they not limit the poll to causational climate scientists. In fact have they ever questioned any causational climate scientists, or as with the BBC, where these people environmental activists pretending to be scientists?
Hitchens has also said “As for their use of the phrase ‘climate change denier’, that is just disreputable. The expression is doubly false. Nobody denies that the climate changes. It’s a proven fact that it has done many times. Those of us who think they may be mistaken are not merely entitled to say so without being smeared or roughly elbowed aside by or elected representatives and by the BBC we help to pay for. We should be welcomed, as being the only force capable of causing these zealots to make their case properly and scientifically. As any scientist knows, no scientific question can be decided by majority.
Think it was Hitchens that finally got it out last night, that millions of immigrants affect the obvious elephant stomping around the room when they were discussing housing shortages. Chukka nearly had a fit when it was mentioned!
What is wrong with those others on the panel, who will not face simple, overwhelming facts and dance around the room with an ‘off the wall agenda’ instead and expect us to believe them.
What we want is the housing shortages righting and immigration brought under control, we are an Island after all, not indoctrinated with an ideological spam and scam which most sane people see through immediately.
I am waiting for anyone to ask a lefty the wedding analogy question. That is simply, have they ever been involved in organising a wedding? Imaging trying to organise a wedding for 200 guests. Organising the reception, preparing seating plans, food, drinks for 200 guests. Now what would they do if 2000 turned up and they could not refuse any of them? what if 200 of those uninvited guests were very antisocial and violently drunk? What if 20 of those uninvited guests hated the “happy couple” and were dedicated to killing them?
Planning for nett immigration of the “tens of thousands” and allowing hundreds of thousands in, causes the same problems, only on a much bigger scale. Raising this point is NOT racist. It is very simple mathematics, (which is probably why logically challenged lefties do not “get it” at all).
An excellent analogy. Now wouldn’t it be marvellous to have a tough interviewer hitting a lefty with this analogy and insisting that the lefty does not wander off topic.
Worth repeating until someone tries to give an answer , if they can
I think it is the over use of the word ‘immigrant’……Watch the faces of the tolerant liberals contort with faux outrage as they process the ‘very thought’..
How about this, replace ‘immigrant’ with ‘people without homes’.. Uncontrolled importation of people without homes will cause a housing crisis..A simple overwhelming fact. (please excuse uncontrolled use of inverted commas)………….
Back of an envelope calculations means that 800 extra ,repeat extra , new houses have to be built every day , 365 days of the year including Christmas and Eid for the immigrants . That solves the homes for migrants crisis , but not for our own young ones who want a home .
Following QT, on the programme This Week, Michael Portillo raised his ‘Moment of the Week’.
He stated that,
‘NASA has been taking photographs of Antartica, and has been analysing the results, and it turns out that although some glaciers may have been melting during the recent years, it seems that the overall increase in ice in Antartica easily offsets the the reduction of glaciers.
Between 1992 and 2003 the net increase each year in Antartica’s ice was 112 billion tons of ice per yearand between 2003 and 2008 the rate of increase slowed a bit, to a mere 83 billion tons of increase per year.’
He found it buried in the pages of the Daily Telegraph, had these increases in fact been decreases in ice it would have led the news broadcast for days.
It is because this does not support the global warming theory, that you have to hunt around in the inner pages to find it.
Back to Question Time.
Is it me or did I perceive a fairly tolerant reaction to Peter Hitchens logical statement that mass immigration impacts upon housing? Not so long ago there would have been boos and howls of derision from the audience and smug retorts from certain members of the panel.
Even Victoria Coren at one juncture seemed to reflect on what Peter was saying without challenge on this particular point.
Is the message finally getting through or am I just being over optimistic?
It’s just you.
Peter Hitchins has a brain and uses it. He is on the panel to represent the right but he is no poodle and critics the government strongly as he feels fit. So the panel was 1 lightweight Tory, 1 unreliable Tory, 1 centre left and 2 very left. All totally impartial as usual.
And question 1 (nice choice by editor) gave them ALL a chance to have a go at the government on the question of Junior Doctors, none of whom we are told are ‘in it for the money’. Yeah right. The prospect of £100kpa after a few years, job for life, fantastic pension, and the chance to bunk off for private work, is something none of them have ever given a moment’s thought about. Which doesn’t make them bad people, just wish the bBBC would spare me the sanctimonious one-directional moralising.
The audience looks and sounds worse than it is. Even if the left only comprised 20% of it they’d still sound like 80% because of the way lefties howl and scream all the time. That’s because while we on the right think lefties are stupid, they think we are evil. They shout and scream because in their little leftie minds they think we are Nazis and they are fighting the good fight. The only way to sort it out would be to bar the morons forever like they do in the football stadia. But that would basically mean banning lefties from QT.
Every now and then the BBC give us a camera shot of the audience clapping in response to a panel member, and when one of the panel says something obvious but not to the liking of the Left (for example government spending has to be paid for and high taxes damage wealth creation) about 10% of the audience clap, whereas when one of the panel says something stupid but which sounds good to Leftists (for example that war is a bad thing and therefore we should spend money on hospitals instead of guns) about 80% of the audience clap, so although your point is well taken, I also think the audience is politically unbalanced as well. Public sector unions always seem to figure strongly, usually a few rows back right in the centre. I would be very surprised if these seats were not reserved.
I think another problem is that most Leftist arguments are simplistic and easy crowd pleasers – often little more than slogans. But most of the arguments on the Right tend to require rather more thought and reflection.
Yes that is precisely the problem in a nutshell. The left trade in populist platitudes which sound great to unthinking people, one doesn’t need to analyse a slogan. Trouble is the unthinking are a majority (due to crap education over the last few decades), this is the weakness of democracy. Until this summer for a lot of the unthinking majority voting was an effort too much for them to get their heads around & stayed at home at election times. Now I fear those election-ignorers might just go out to vote, & guess where their cross will be scrawled, in favour of Corbyn. This is a scary prospect, oughtn’t the BBC be warning us about this?