Remember yesterday's POST when I suggested Question Time should replace Phil Woolas with a tub of lard? Well, they've gone one better and booked Roy Hattersley. ROFL.*
I understand the Labour Party tried to replace Woolas with Tony McNulty, who Woolas replaced at the Home Office (with me so far?) but Question Time made clear that it would be them who decided who appears rather than the Labour Party.
*For those who wonder why this is so amusing, Roy Hattersley kept cancelling appearances on HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU. After the third cancellation at the last minute, instead of booking a replacement, they placed a tub of lard on the desk next to Paul Merton. It proved to be one of the funniest ever episodes.
Somebody at the BBC has an exquisite sense of irony. It's a shame that Hislop isn't on. I would wet myself rather than miss it if he was.
ReplyDeleteCLASSIC !!!!
ReplyDeleteThis is a brilliant in-joke and will leave the Labour Party droids being very embarrassed as, love him or loathe him, Hatters is never 'backward about coming forward' for his views on New Labour !!
Who says the drones at the Beeb don't have a sense of humour..
I will deffo be tuning in !
Thanks, Iain, made my day...
What?Auntie isnt biased.after.all.
ReplyDeleteYou'd think with everything that's been going on NuLab would want a big hitter on QT to defend their line, rather than this has-been (sorry, never-was). What's the matter with them? Scared?
ReplyDeleteIt would have been so much more fun if they did go with the actual tub of lard that did such and excellent job on HIGNFY. I would have liked to hear the tub of lard's views on the issue raised by Phil Woolas in recent days.
ReplyDeleteI said that 2 hours ago!
ReplyDeleteIain, here it is !
ReplyDeletehttp://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=KddkyZ1UG5g
Alan Douglas
I'd love to think they got the idea from your post but I guess we'll never know. Very funny anyway!
ReplyDeleteGreat to see a Minister who cannot be trusted out on his own.
ReplyDeleteIf you google Roy Hattersley with an image search you get two spitting image puppets before the pictures of him, LOL!
ReplyDeleteLove to see a tub of lard though :o)
This, mark my words, is the final nail in the coffin for this controlling, power-crazed, despotic Labour so-called "government" and its cheerleaders, the Brown Broadcasting Corporation.
ReplyDeleteCome the next election, voters will not forget the way Tony McNulty was pulled off Question Time and replaced with Roy Hattersley. Furthermore, they will not forget the craven, pathetic way the BrownBC bent over backwards to allow them to put up the dribbling Labour sycophant Hattersley on instead.
The British public will demand a party of government which believes in openness. A government which believes in transparency.
A Conservative government under David Cameron.
Lord Lard Hattersley does a Daily Mail thingy, "In Search of England". I'm also trying to find England, my country, which is ignored by Brown and his guttergovernment and by the corrupt and sordid EU. We're all citizens of EU regions, doncha know!
ReplyDeleteSomeone at the BBC had already asked Hattersley before Iain's partial revelation is my very astute guess. And Mr Woolas DID NOT replace McNulty. He replaced Liam Byrne.
ReplyDeleteI'm not surprised they don't want a Minister on. The clue is in the title of the programme - questions.
ReplyDeleteI dislike the rotund Hattersley. I still remember him pontificating a mother who pulled her child out from a bad comprehensive primary school in favour of an independent school. Hattersley who has no experience of educating kid as a father was giving pep talk to the mother about comprehensive schools, why she should leave the kid there despite bad teaching and bullying and almost condemning her for the fee-paying option. He never made it to anything significant except a minor ministerial post in Callaghan govt while his buddy Windbag Kinnock was recommended to EC as a commissioner by none other than the stupid Major.
ReplyDeleteChris Paul, you have proved your idiocy beyond all doubt. I didn't make an assertion about McNulty. I stated it as a fact. How do I know? Let's just say I do, shall we? I'm not betraying my source. I don't know why you are throwing Liam Byrne into the mix - unless of course you have made it up.
ReplyDeletePaul Waugh in the London Evening Standard is reporting this:----
ReplyDeleteOsborne badmouthed Davis in Corfu!
As if further proof were needed of the dangers of crossing the Prince of Darkness, here it is.
Remember when Lord Mandelson first hit back at the allegation that he had "dripped pure poison" about G Brown?
The newly-appointed Biz Sec said at the time, rather ominously: "We talked as much about his colleagues and the state of the Tory party, as we did about the Labour Party. I would no sooner talk about in public what he had said to me about his colleagues than I hope he would what I said about my colleagues."
Well, I'm told that one of the Tories criticised privately by Osborne to Mandelson was none other than David Davis. Yup, the former Shadow Home Secretary came under fire from Osborne, apparently for his lack of support for the modernisation of the party.
There is no comment yet from Osborne's office.
But with senior Tories already warning that Osborne had been "ill-advised" to even think of leaking conversations with Mandelson, the whole affair has revealed just how many Conservative MPs have been rubbed up the wrong way by the Shadow Chancellor.
While some of this is inevitable jealousy at a young rising star eclipsing older colleagues, as Nicholas Watt reports in today's Guardian, there is also scepticism on the Right among those who want Osborne to go further on tax and spend.
As for the other Tories criticised by Osborne...watch this space.
UPDATE: DD (who was the guest at the Press Gallery lunch today - on which he spoke about Afghanistan) has just told me: "I don't know if it is true. But if he did [criticise me], he can join a cast of thousands".
23/10/2008 | Permalink
I do not want to watch the QT and listen to Any Questions. BBC is now Brown Broadcasting Corporation which openly supports Labour. The Tory manifesto should include abolishing the license fee and converting the BBC into a subscription only service and if any one wants to listen to this Labour mouthpiece, I should not be paying for him!
ReplyDeleteI lost interest with Dimblebys and Frost. The former think it is their birthright that BBC should have them in perpetuity and the latter who failed to ask serious questions about Bernie Eccleston's donation and let Blair to ramble on his innocence at that time, which turns out to be not true.
Does anybody remember the days when serving Prime Ministers used to appear on QT? I remember both Margaret Thatcher and John Major did on a number of occasions. Bliar however never did (at least not as PM) and the Big Feartie from Fife hasn't either. They are, as Lady T once said "Frit".
ReplyDelete"Spotted leaving an upmarket Westminster eaterie today - Labour helper Derek Draper and Tory blogger Iain Dale" ES PWaugh.
ReplyDeleteChanging side are we?
The BBC defies the Party Whip and chooses QT panel members on its own?
ReplyDeleteJoke or no joke, this is a minor revolution in itself.
I always wonder what would have happened if Hattersley had been leader and Kinnock his deputy? Off topic since when has English law applied to the Mediterranean?
ReplyDeleteFreedom to Prosper
PS I assume you won't be opening the Harrods sale?
For info/action. Please forward to anyone you think might help by signing the petition.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3089310/Radio-charges-may-force-lifeboat-stations-to-close.html
The background:
RADIOS BILL MAY SCUPPER RNLI
LIFEBOAT crews fear being scuppered by crippling new charges for using their radios from Ofcom, the communications regulator. The RNLI could see the price of using its VHF emergency frequencies rise to £250,000 under plans to charge the full commercial rate.
The charity, which saves hundreds of lives every year currently pays an annual £48,000 at a discounted rate of 50 per cent. It relies on donations and fears the move will have a disastrous impact on fundraising. Peter Bradley, RNLI operations staff officer, said: 'It's a lot of money when you think in terms of lifeboat days and little old ladies collecting pound coins.'
'We could buy several inshore lifeboats for the same amount.'
'The Government rely on us to provide this search-and-rescue service, at a cost of £124 million a year, but they want to charge us for doing it!'
Ofcom has set out plans to bring 'market forces' into maritime and civil aviation communications in a policy it calls Administered Incentive Pricing.
£250,000 represents an awful lot of charity collections, even more so in the current economic climate so, if like me you feel strongly enough about this, please sign the petition below.
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/RNLI-RF-licences/
Do hope that the BBC did this as and act of, as Wrinkled Weasel said, exquisite irony. Either way if I never hear that smug bumble from McNulty ever again my life will be a little happier. 'They' may regard him as 'safe': I regard him as the very acme of new Labour; pompous, ill-informed, nannying. He sounds like the progeny of Frank Dobson out of Harriet Harman. Did he then father Yvette Cooper out of Dawn Primarolo?
ReplyDeleteWoolas DID NOT get McNulty's job at the Home Office you pompous pillock Iain. He got Liam Byrne's. That is the point.
ReplyDeleteI really don't care who Labour offered or QT wanted, although their assertion that they're in charge will perhaps stop Tory bloggers querying the choices Labour make when it is not their choice.
And why are you not reporting that Osborne was invited by the BBC and chickened out? is that part of manning the barricades for the fool?
It's all very well critting a junior member of the govt's availability but where is Osborne?
Surely the Evening Standard story about Osborne is in the dog barks at cat category. It would be a revelation if someone were to claim that none of the Cameroons had not bad-mouthed Davis im private.
ReplyDeleteOld fart
ReplyDeleteI can't believe that Thatcher and Major appeared on ordinary QTs and debated with other panellists. Do you have chapter and verse please?
Amazing to see such staunch Labour supporters like Chris Paul. For them short of running something like Columbian drug cartel, whatever Labour does is kosher, including Campbell lies, Brown Half-truths, Blair lies about Bernie gate etc.. The BBC should invite Bernie Eccleston instead of the portly Hattersley!
ReplyDeleteHattersley has a sinecure column in the Daily Mail, where he doesn't touch politics, but talks about his dog and the Yorkshire Dales. I can't imagine anyone reads it.
ReplyDeleteTonight he will splutter on at length about Tory toffs and the Bullingham Club. Dimblebum will ask him whether he is jealous of the young ambitious Tory, considering he never amounted to anything more than deputy to Welsh windbag Neil Kinnock.
Chris Paul: " . . .is my very astute guess"
ReplyDeleteNice of you to emerge from so far up your own posterior to share this pearl with us, Mr Paul.
memory lapse? 6.07
ReplyDeleteI remember Margaret Thatcher appearing on QT as late as 1990 - it must have been, as she was defending the introduction of the Poll Tax (or Community Charge, as it was officially called). Perhaps Iain could help us on this one?
I know I said it a couple of weeks ago but I do feel the tide is turning. I agree in a crisis we should all stick together but what are the Conservatives offering? People I know all loosing their poorly paid jobs and wondering if they aren't better off being unemployed under Labour.
ReplyDeleteFreedom to Prosper
anon @ 8.29 pm - the tide's turning alright - people suddenly realising that they don't have to support Nu Lab as it has nothing in common with Keir Hardie or Attlee, but has more in common with the Chinese Communist Party. No one in their right minds would plan for unemployment, we all want to fulfill our aspirations and as working class people, we have realised that Zanu-Lab hate us with a vengeance. Yes, the tide is turning and away from your odious party. You'll be lucky if you have any seats in Scotland or Wales next election. And in England, you'd be lucky to keep up to 10 seats in the North, there'll be none in the South that's for sure, now the Lib Dems are getting their act together.
ReplyDeletephil woolas is a good man and much of what he has been saying seems correct.
ReplyDeletemy partner is an immigrant - but i am convinced that economic immigration should not be allowed at the expense of uk,or euro, born people. Unless there is a clear case where we as a country need specialist skills, We should be able to argue that immigration should be based on the needs of this country.
I wonder if we can devise a benfits system which makes it clear that people entering into the uk are not entitled to benefits until they have minimum years of tax contributions (5 years?) (subject to people not being left to starve..)
However where i probably disagree with some on the right, i do think immigration adds to our nation.
I guess Phil Woolas is thinking about these issues and i hope that the PM and Cameron take the racial out of immigration.
Hatters is completely barking. How can he say "Gordon Brown has led the way out of global recession" with a straight face?
ReplyDeleteAlex Salmond has just defenestrated Gordo by pointing out that the great leader appeared to be saying that his variety of boom and bust was good, as compared with any other. Nice one!
Teather is simply on another planet! She seems to have conveniently ignored Vince's u turns. Warsi is just putting her out of her misery.
Still no apology from Dale? What with 75% of readers believing he does apologise when he gets something wrong. Woolas did not replace police minister McNulty he replaced immigration minister Byrne. Apparently I am an idiot for knowing this ... as opposed to Iain who is a star for not knowing it.
ReplyDeleteHattersley was booked I tell you. And Osborne was invited but was frit.
Your post above at 2.27pm was interpreted as Woolas replacing McNulty on Question Time, not in government. On that you were right, but that's not how I read your post. Read it again and you will understand. Or maybe not.
ReplyDeleteSince QT empty chaired Labour, I decided to empty screen QT. Did I miss much? I doubt it.
ReplyDeleteYes, the tide is turning and away from your odious party. You'll be lucky if you have any seats in Scotland or Wales next election."
ReplyDeleteDear African Mum if you read my past posts on here and The Daily Telegraph you will see that I have always supported the Conservative Party but am try to spark them into life.
Have a nice day in Africa
Freedom to Prosper
I never watch Question Time as the audience seems to be stuffed with people who weren't born in Britain (or their parents weren't).
ReplyDeleteAlso Dimblebore is as left-wing as the rest of the BBC.
Still no apology Iain? You were and are wrong about Woolas replacing McNulty. You were wrong to call me an idiot for correctly pointing that out. Apologise immediately.
ReplyDeleteOne of the most elegant put-downs I've heard in a while from Hattersley last night.
ReplyDeleteHe was asked if he thought Phil Woolas was "talking nonsense" about placing an upper limit on the population. He replied: "Nonsense is a word I would not dream of using about a colleague, no matter how appropriate it might be."