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Question Time tonight

weltweit said:
I hadn't had much exposure to McDonnell before, not being a politics wonk, so this was the first time I had really seen him. I liked him, he was quite nervous at the start but came across as sincere and straight talking, a little like Corbyn himself. It was noticeable also that after he spoke, the audience applauded, whereas after Liz Truss spoke no one clapped at all !!!
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Shy clappers = shy voters, but voters, note.
 
Yet, on the Daily Politics, Brilllo failed to challenge Nigel Dodds on his party's continued links with the UVF (Dodds, Paisley and Robinson attended the funeral/wake of John Bingham, a UVF man). There was also no mention of his party leader's involvement in Ulster Resistance in the 80s.
 
killer b said:
Mcdonnells apology wasn't for us, so how sincere it sounded to us doesn't matter. I'm not sure if it'll be anything other than brushed off by anyone outside the hard left.
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If Mcdonnell et al make it through to the next GE we can only guess at the extent of the shitstorm of this sort of bile that would be thrown by the media.
 
nino_savatte said:
They work for the British state, which makes them okay. :hmm:
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apparently for those politicians involved getting them off the naughty list and onto the approved instantly washed all the blood of their hands. Funny that. I didn't see the QT IRA apol, I saw (virtually) a vertabim version in the snow interview though. Seems fair enough to me. I wonder how much traction the 'terrorist friend' stuff is going to have, it doesn't appear to be going away. Y'kown, beebs ignored everything else about the QT session in order to do the 'mcdonnel apologises over IRA' headline. Guess we will see if this and the 'jezbollah' stuff matters much in the cooming year
 
DotCommunist said:
apparently for those politicians involved getting them off the naughty list and onto the approved instantly washed all the blood of their hands. Funny that. I didn't see the QT IRA apol, I saw (virtually) a vertabim version in the snow interview though. Seems fair enough to me. I wonder how much traction the 'terrorist friend' stuff is going to have, it doesn't appear to be going away. Y'kown, beebs ignored everything else about the QT session in order to do the 'mcdonnel apologises over IRA' headline. Guess we will see if this and the 'jezbollah' stuff matters much in the cooming year
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The 'terrorist friend' spiel is sounding increasingly desperate tbh. Thing is, the BBC (and the others) never challenge the DUP on their links to Loyalist paramilitaries. When the DUP walked out of Stormont, they BBC dutifully repeated their line about the IRA still being "active" but said nothing about the UVF and the others. As for the Thatcher government's contact with the IRA during the 80s, not even this is mentioned.
 
In some ways I was disappointed with McDonnell's performance. The IRA thing - meh, whether or not the apology was good, it seemed to be enough for people that he publicly apologised. Similarly with the Thatcher assassination thing. It was a shame that he took the line that he did on the national anthem though. I don't find it convincing that Corbyn was so overwhelmed that he 'forgot' to sing it - he didn't sing it because he's a republican and he doesn't agree with it. Good. Make the case for it, stand up for contentious objection, freedom of expression and republican values. People elected Corbyn in part because of his authenticity - don't trade that away to counter *perceived* public outcry. I wonder if this is the early effects of "bubble thinking" kicking in - his colleagues in the PLP convincing him to take the synthetic outrage of the corporate media more seriously than he needed to.

But what I didn't like most was his equivocation on his tax plans. Before the election Corbyn talked about raising the top rate of tax to *at least* 50p plus to increase corporation tax to pay for free tertiary education. Judging by what McDonnell said 50p will be the ceiling for any top rate of tax increase - the same as under Gordon Brown in other words. And there was no mention of increasing corporation tax increase at all. I hope the latter was an oversight. Instead, McDonnell focused on clamping down on tax evasion and tax avoidance. Fine. But every party is nominally committed to this. Will this (plus peoples QE) be enough to fund Corbyn's reforms? And as a matter of justice, not just tax receipt collection, the people at the top should pay more. The levels of inequality in this country are a joke.
 
Jeff Robinson said:
In some ways I was disappointed with McDonnell's performance. The IRA thing - meh, whether or not the apology was good, it seemed to be enough for people that he publicly apologised. Similarly with the Thatcher assassination thing. It was a shame that he took the line that he did on the national anthem though. I don't find it convincing that Corbyn was so overwhelmed that he 'forgot' to sing it - he didn't sing it because he's a republican and he doesn't agree with it. Good. Make the case for it, stand up for contentious objection, freedom of expression and republican values. People elected Corbyn in part because of his authenticity - don't trade that away to counter *perceived* public outcry. I wonder if this is the early effects of "bubble thinking" kicking in - his colleagues in the PLP convincing him to take the synthetic outrage of the corporate media more seriously than he needed to.

But what I didn't like most was his equivocation on his tax plans. Before the election Corbyn talked about raising the top rate of tax to *at least* 50p plus to increase corporation tax to pay for free tertiary education. Judging by what McDonnell said 50p will be the ceiling for any top rate of tax increase - the same as under Gordon Brown in other words. And there was no mention of increasing corporation tax increase at all. I hope the latter was an oversight. Instead, McDonnell focused on clamping down on tax evasion and tax avoidance. Fine. But every party is nominally committed to this. Will this (plus peoples QE) be enough to fund Corbyn's reforms? And as a matter of justice, not just tax receipt collection, the people at the top should pay more. The levels of inequality in this country are a joke.
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Yes, in the face of an entirely predictable media shitstorm, Corbyn's team appear to taken a defensive, apologetic tone from the get go. This brief 'honeymoon' period is their chance to get heard, and I would have expected more of an attempt to connect with the potential voter via a clear articulation of their policy aspiration(s). In that respect, very disappointing...however eloquent or sincere they come across.
 
If we got rid of all the non-dom shit and all the other offshore loopholes then a top rate of 50p would provide plenty of revenue to rebuild public services. Renationalisation could also provide much better value for money.

Both of those things would require a serious amount of paperwork though. Paperwork and lawyers.
 
brogdale said:
Yes, in the face of an entirely predictable media shitstorm, Corbyn's team appear to taken a defensive, apologetic tone from the get go. This brief 'honeymoon' period is their chance to get heard, and I would have expected more of an attempt to connect with the potential voter via a clear articulation of their policy aspiration(s). In that respect, very disappointing...however eloquent or sincere they come across.
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could just be an attempt to put these things to bed early, iit is the first week etc. They'll need to be less reactive though or be seen as bossed around by the press/widhy washy/inept or whatever
 
DotCommunist said:
could just be an attempt to put these things to bed early, iit is the first week etc. They'll need to be less reactive though or be seen as bossed around by the press/widhy washy/inept or whatever
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Could be. I suppose what I was (naively?) hoping for was the rider..."but, I'm not at all apologetic about my desire to/belief in..."
:(
 
It hasn't even been a week yet give them a chance to formulate policy won't ya? They can't lay everything out in the small ttime slot given on question time! It's conference soon so I'm sure more will be revealed then. Remember, they're still politicians as well.
 
Jeff Robinson said:
In some ways I was disappointed with McDonnell's performance. The IRA thing - meh, whether or not the apology was good, it seemed to be enough for people that he publicly apologised. Similarly with the Thatcher assassination thing. It was a shame that he took the line that he did on the national anthem though. I don't find it convincing that Corbyn was so overwhelmed that he 'forgot' to sing it - he didn't sing it because he's a republican and he doesn't agree with it. Good. Make the case for it, stand up for contentious objection, freedom of expression and republican values. People elected Corbyn in part because of his authenticity - don't trade that away to counter *perceived* public outcry. I wonder if this is the early effects of "bubble thinking" kicking in - his colleagues in the PLP convincing him to take the synthetic outrage of the corporate media more seriously than he needed to.

But what I didn't like most was his equivocation on his tax plans. Before the election Corbyn talked about raising the top rate of tax to *at least* 50p plus to increase corporation tax to pay for free tertiary education. Judging by what McDonnell said 50p will be the ceiling for any top rate of tax increase - the same as under Gordon Brown in other words. And there was no mention of increasing corporation tax increase at all. I hope the latter was an oversight. Instead, McDonnell focused on clamping down on tax evasion and tax avoidance. Fine. But every party is nominally committed to this. Will this (plus peoples QE) be enough to fund Corbyn's reforms? And as a matter of justice, not just tax receipt collection, the people at the top should pay more. The levels of inequality in this country are a joke.
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Spot on. He had an air of pained reasonableness throughout the prog, well the bits I saw, even if that still sounded more real than the average politician. But ultimately he DID sound like an average politician and he was apologetic on all the key points. Being an oldie I can compare this with Labour left/Bennites doing their turn on QT or similar progs in the 80s. Same attempt to make a case for social democracy/parliamentary socialism, but also a seeming acceptance that popular values were to the right, thus the apologetic tone. In fact he made less of an outright attack on the obscenity of austerity, the tory party and all it's works (and indeed New Labour and all its works) - again, in the bits I saw. You can be 'reasonable' in your tone, just as corbyn himself has been in the campaign, but if you can't give a confident account of what you are proposing there really are signs of slippage already.
 
First time I watched QT in years.

Truss was challenged about the 2 million jobs, - many zero hour contracts. Could have been good to mention of those 1 million aprentiships, many seem to be pisstaking things like customer service apprentis.

Tim whatsname wheeling out the deceptive line about Labour not winning because they were too left wing. Was only really challenged by an audience member. Of course people who thought Labour were too left voted Tory. Hardly surprising. But the other 76% of the electorate fancied neither. What does that tell you Tim.
 
nino_savatte said:
They work for the British state, which makes them okay. :hmm:
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So do Jerry and Martin, these days.

queen-shakes-hands-former-ira-commander-martin-mcguinness-bbc.jpg



It's fine for Brenda to shake hands with Sinn Fein leaders, but not for Mc Donnel to have made those comments 15 years ago. Not much sense in that really, is there?
 
tim said:
It's fine for Brenda to shake hands with Sinn Fein leaders, but not for Mc Donnel to have made those comments 15 years ago. Not much sense in that really, is there?
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The public will forgive your street fighter past if you can step up now you are in the big boy league. McDonnell gets that as does Gerry Adams in the Dail now Sein Fein have ambitions to hold the balance of power. Not sure if Corbyn does.
 
Anyone fancy predicting the topics of the questions?

I haven't been keeping up with the news this week so don't know what is current.

I bet there will be one on migrants though.
 
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