Thursday, 31 January 2013

Question Time - return of the NHS

David Dimbleby chairs Question Time from Lancaster. 
On the panel are Baroness 'working class' Warsi, foreign and Commonwealth Office minister; Alan 'tax rates are different are they?' Johnson, former home secretary for Labour; comedian Dom Trigger Happy - I found a TH cd only yesterday - brilliant music' Joly; Guardian columnist Zoe 'pregmum' Williams; James 'climate change is hippie biscuits' Delingpole of the Daily Telegraph.


rough scoring guide

bang on,as the script, right answer - 3 points
Close enough for government work, right answer -2 points
in the right ballpark - 1point
witty comments - 1 point
sole entrant to guess a question asked - 3 points
Posting first - 1 point

This tournament is sponsored by Timbo 614
Week 4:

DtP 25

kynon 21
Botogol 22
BQ(MP) 22
 Measured 20
Timbo614 20
GSD 20

ND 19

Hopper 19

Budgie 17
Malcolm Tucker 16
Blue Eyes 14


Blue Eyes said...


Tie: Mauve (again... a stopped clock is eventually right)

Is Cameron using all these foreign crises to distract from domestic failure?

Are the Lib Dems cynical bastards willing to screw around with the constitution to suit their own narrow electoral prospects?

Are we as bust as the French? Should we be more honest about how awful the situation really is?

Has Osborne got one thing right, that the Tories are out in 2015?

Has Beckham still got it?

DtP said...

Whoo hoo!

1) Defence cuts in an ever increassingly perilous world (ed...namely because we keep on invading people!)

2)Polish as the 2nd language - that Mr Sheen's been busy.....tumbleweed.....

3) Fuel duty increase - you're 'aving a larf aintcha?

4) What future for nuclear if no one wants it any where the hell near them?

5) Le Keystone Cops ran by err Keystone Cops. How can untrained civvies be expected to doctor statements, pay off journos, repeatedly accidently punch and beat innocent witnessess etc etc

Err...hmmm....should have mentioned Lewisham probably and HS2 and Amazon and benefit changes but....

Again Dimbo's tie, the lurid fuschia appeal is just tooooo strong.

Good luck peeps


DtP said...

Arse! Ooohh miliseconds - double arse

Blue Eyes said...


I nearly didn't get that in, a colleague wanted my attention on something work related! Ridiculous!

Kynon said...

DimbleTie - Pink with psychedelic seabirds on it (probably as close as I'm likely to get this week).

1) Fuel duty rise of 3p? 4p? More screwing over of the ordinary workers etc etc.

2) NHS reduction will save lives? 'ow's that work then? Latest "efficiency savings" mean one A&E for 750,000 (count 'em) (poor - i.e. without health insurance) people.

3) HS2 - 1960's - world put a man on the moon using the computing power of pocket calculators & not a lot of money. 2010's - man can reduce London-Manchester journey time by up to an hour for eleventy-billion of your earth pounds. Progress! (Also - extension to "the North" - people in Scotland look at map, scratch heads at this odd definition of "North").

4) MPs want 32% pay rises, private sector pay is mostly static, public sector full of redundancies/1% caps/pension-ravaging - all in this together, are we?

5) Nuclear - nowhere to put the waste, what?

Ryan said...

Zoe Williams: Columnist with a newspaper with a circulation lower than than that of the Swindon Star.

Hopper said...

Tie: Red as a Lancaster Rose

1. Can we afford 100 billion quid of new weaponry, and do we have any confidence that it will work?
2. France has admitted that it's bankrupt, is it time we did too?
3. Hospitals closing around the country, why does Hunt want to kill us all?
4. Cumbria doesn't want nuclear waste, is this the end of domestic nukes?
5. Toppling windmills - do you really want them around you?

Bill Quango MP said...

1. Closing solvent, popular and generally OK run hospitals. How could a situation like this arise?
{My father in law was treated for cancer in Lewisham. He did eventually refuse to go in there anymore as kept getting MRSA. i thought it was filthy and barely functioning on his ward. All the usual complaints about no water-poor food - uncleaned sinks etc.
However - the people have spoken. They want the}

2. Troops to Mali. How can we continue to reduce the armed forces whilst increasing the number of conflicts?

Has anyone else noticed the strong whiff of appeasement in the nation? We shouldn't get involved ? we've only done harm and we get no thanks for our efforts..

Tony Blair, that's your real legacy, no matter what your new biography might say.

3. Does it really cost £1 million pounds to lay 10cm of track in the UK?
Wouldn't it have been cheaper and easier to just build a new and better Birmingham where Luton is?

4. Is it worth paying £2.5k to a lawyer just so the media stop reporting using the emotive "grandmother" word. I must remember that for any future indiscretions.

"William Quango MP, a potential grandfather, appeared at the Old Bailey charged with.."

5.Council tax to apply to the currently exempt. Was this what all in together meant?

Dimbletie. A silver and black swirl.

* No one has actually guessed a correct Dimbytie. So bonus points to the first to do so.

Nick Drew said...

OK, dimbletie in multiple shades of blue

1) portmanteau question(s) on defence spending / overseas interventions

2) MP's salaries

3) petrol price review a whitewash?

4) should constituencies have similar numbers of electors (ans: yes indeedy, and so the corollary - should the LibDems be hanged, drawn & quartered as traitors ? only asking ...)

5) should Beckham give it a rest?

Nick Drew said...

I forgot to add the rider to 5): ... and other football-related issues, see blogpost

Malcolm Tucker said...

1, Nhs hospital trusts. What a shame the PFI pyramid scam didn't collapse on McDoom's watch.

2. Fuel companies. The report says the fuel isn't expensive but the tax is. So politicians blame the petro companies for their own money grabbing.

3.Banks miss-selling. How did the FSA manage to not notice that every product that was ever sold was a giant scam? Why not forget about the compensation and just give everyone a current account credit of £30,000 for all past, present and future illegal and fraudulent activities.

4. Mali - 350 troops. Some of them will be home Christmas ---2025.

5. GCSEs scrapping. Its wrong to have kids of different abilities. All must be equally rubbish.

red tie at night

measured said...

Good evening.
BQ, you are worth every penny. There are some decent MPs [...and you are one of them.*]
The questions the audience should be asking are Syria, the problem of the level of unemployed Muslim young men and where in Africa the US has agreed to operate its drones from …but the BBC did not cover any of this, so we have:
1. Council tax increases for low income families. DO they know how much we have been paying for all these years? Should we all resort to beachcombing for whale vomit? In fact sperm whales excrete it and it stabilises scent rather than aromas. I come up smelling like roses every time.
2. Fuel. Windmills, expected to have a life expectancy of 50 years, fall over in a 50mph gust. ROFL.
3. Israel. Holocaust day vs. building on settlements. The UN now says that may be a war crime. So what? Syria retaliates… US vs. USSR.
4. In the light of the reversal of closures in Lewisham, who runs the NHS?
5. If Scotland needed advice on how to pose the question, what should we pose as the question on whether to be in the EU?
Red/purple whirlpools with a tinge of dark enigmatic criss-cross. Well, that’s what the clairvoyant told me.
*BQ, please don’t forget my invite to drinks on the terrace in July. Luv minx (aka measured) x

Botogol said...

late home from work (steering committee: coals, hauled over), Mrs Botogol asleep, glass of cotes du rhone in my right hand, tablet in hand.... right then.

Orange tie (or am I too late)

- should there be a vote in parliament before we send troops to Mali

- will Cameron's trip to africa make any difference at all or is he just over excited

- furness hospital maternit closed due to sickness, Lancaster hospital has to cope -- it's like Lewisham again, will weel run hospitals everywhere suffer because of the rubbish ones [local and NHS!!]

- council tax , woould a poll tax be just better.

that's it. glass empty off to fetch the bottle. BQ- are you *really* an MP??

Botogol said...

hang on - that was only four..

5 Do you agree that this is a leading question?

Timbo614 said...

Nearly forgot. Slow news week too..

DimbleTie - Who cares after 9PM

1) Defence cuts versus role expansion

2) Forrin Police Chiefs - Will they understand the British way.

3) MPs salaries - are we not all in this together 1% for them!

4) Educashun & exams are our skool kids ready for real exams?

5) How bad will a third recession be - seems like one continuous one now Germany and the US are joining in again..

That's it - very hurried :(

Budgie said...

1. How many windmills will fall over? General CAGW bandinage JD gets to be called a GW denier, which according to the BBC is worse than being a Thatcherist.

2. Could we put a man on the Moon for the cost of HS2? Ans: probably, provided the MoD don't run the space program (or any government dept, actually).

3. Troops in Mali and defence cuts - is Cameron out of his mind? Ans: yes.

4. NHS in a mess. Again.

5. Cameron in Libya promising the earth. Should the Syrians be warned about his proclivity to hand out cast iron promises like confetti?

Gosh, it's late. I haven't seen QT, honest squire.

Bill Quango MP said...

I need to make the dimby-tie 10pm.
Its only ten pm because he normally pops up just before the news for a trailer.

Tonights Dimby-tie is a blue and green pineapple combo

Q1: Is reducing the travelling time to Manchester from London worth £30 billion?

Audience thinks not. But if you bring London commuting to the North house prices will rise, locals will sell for huge profits and before long they'll be complaining about how their children have been priced out of the villages.

Q2: Are we wise to become involved in another Islamist struggle in Mali?

The troop cutting came up.Strangely the question wanted to know if we would have enough troops to defend the UK?
Who from exactly?

Q3:can't find the wording. But it was about nuclear waste and nukes, green energy.

Q4: Should Prince Charles ask the Queen to go Dutch?

Q5: Internet going down. question was is Clegg a hypocrite on state school choices. Zoe goes off on one about how its wrong to have private schools. She mentions Abbott and Clegg {omits her hot desk pal Toynbee for some reason}

Q6 {rare!} A Polish/Bulgarian/Romanian question.

Alan Johnson in complete denial about immigration.

Bill Quango MP said...


BE -+3, +1 first + 2 = 6

DTP = 7

Kynon = 5

Ryan- Zoe Williams was awful. Really, really awful. How anyone could hold such vapid beliefs so intensely is a mystery.

Hopper - 5

BQ - 5

ND - {the one time you opt out of an energy comes up } - 3

Malcolm Tucker - ohhh -2

Measured - lots of love, but less of points - 3

Botogol - poor for you - 2 {but closest on the tie +1} = 3

Timbo614 - not bad for late - 4

Budgie - 8 {you sure you weren't watching?}

Budgie is the winner and gets to choose which county gets all the nuclear waste.

Cheers all, thankyou.

Bill Quango MP said...

Just noticed Dick has an extra for the polish spot + 2 = 9. You win!

Please choose the dumping ground

Dick the Prick said...

Huzzah, pop it in Todmorden, may raise house prices!

Blue Eyes said...

Great, my best score yet, but still bottom of the league. Now I know how it feels to be one of the hardworkingage families being asked to pay some council tax.

Steve said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Botogol said...

I blame the wine.
Delingpole is a odd bloke isn't he. Did the camera at one point cut to the audience ... who were doing delingpole impressions? and then cutaway again instantly. Or was that my imagination.

Electro-Kevin said...

Will we get 'Independent' comment from Dom Joly ?

The 'i' newspaper is anything but non-agenderised.

Electro-Kevin said...

Let me rephrase ... DID we get... ?

I was out watching Django Unhcained last night.

Very good but not a classic like Pulp Fiction.

measured said...

Harsh. Still it will teach me to rely on the ideas of an elderly neighbour and a glass of sherry.

Where's this?

Bill Quango MP said...

DTP- Todmorden it is..send the trains..

BE - Hardworkingfamilies is the buzz word for our age. One of Brown's spinners came up with it.

Botogol:X-ray specs. One of those trusty Tories who talk a large amount of good sense and a good portion of eccentric twaddle.

EK- Pulp Fiction - definite top 10 movie of all time.
As for Dom..he was..erm..confused. And not very funny either. He's not a great guest.

Measured: There's always next week. the twitter thought the show was boring and uninformative. Had to agree. 3/10.

Kynon said...

Good grief. Scores remaining consistently in the mid-to-high single figures for me. No idea where that's coming from!

Timbo614 said...

@BQ: the twitter thought the show was boring and uninformative.

I agree with twitter.. fell asleep in my chair half way through :)

Electro-Kevin said...

BQ - They should have me on QT. I'd take them off at tangents that they'd never expect.

Blue Eyes said...

BQ the new buzz phrase for "CUTS!" which are affecting non-working people is subtly different: working-age families. See, for example, reductions in Council Tax Benefit.

Agence communication said...

i completely agree with the person who says that "" 1. Closing solvent, popular and generally OK run hospitals. How could a situation like this arise?
However - the people have spoken. They want the}

