Question Time LiveBlog 21st October 2010

October 21, 2010 at 7:00 pm


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.