Matt vickers QT… Caught in the headlights..

I was left ashamed and saddened by QT last night. A really horrible selection of people in the audience - mainly the older balding / greying folk desperate to justify voting Tory in the election by ‘what have Labour done for us? Despite Thangam telling them exactly what Labour would do they still said - yes but what would Labour do? It reminded me of the ‘what have the Romans ever done for us’ in Life of Brian’. They dont want to listen or be convinced because they need an excuse to continue voting Tory to live out their xenophobia and racism. The bile towards refugees reflected the Friday night NE pub / working mens clubs discussion for decades now. It’s all Jonny Foreigners fault. The rape our women, murder, rob, take our jobs, our houses, our school places. Ignoring lack of investment by the Tories for the last 13 years into these areas. Germany have taken 2 million refugees and we have took 170,000 but Germany don’t have a housing crisis. Vickers (my MP) is a sanctimonious arrogant Tory suit. He fuels division and hate to stoke up the worst in people to take their eye of the Tory disaster unfolding in front of them. Decent North East folk have to keep pushing decency and respect and fighting hate and division. We can only hope.
 
I was left ashamed and saddened by QT last night. A really horrible selection of people in the audience - mainly the older balding / greying folk desperate to justify voting Tory in the election by ‘what have Labour done for us? Despite Thangam telling them exactly what Labour would do they still said - yes but what would Labour do? It reminded me of the ‘what have the Romans ever done for us’ in Life of Brian’. They dont want to listen or be convinced because they need an excuse to continue voting Tory to live out their xenophobia and racism. The bile towards refugees reflected the Friday night NE pub / working mens clubs discussion for decades now. It’s all Jonny Foreigners fault. The rape our women, murder, rob, take our jobs, our houses, our school places. Ignoring lack of investment by the Tories for the last 13 years into these areas. Germany have taken 2 million refugees and we have took 170,000 but Germany don’t have a housing crisis. Vickers (my MP) is a sanctimonious arrogant Tory suit. He fuels division and hate to stoke up the worst in people to take their eye of the Tory disaster unfolding in front of them. Decent North East folk have to keep pushing decency and respect and fighting hate and division. We can only hope.

Great post, couldn't agree more (y)(y)(y)
 
I missed it and will have to watch on catchup. From the comments it would appear the Daily Mail has a fair few readers in the Toon.
 
An absolute joke of a programme.

More plants than the Chelsea flower show.

Stopped watching it years ago when it became obvious that impartiality didn't exist anymore.
 
QT say they take numbers based on how people voted in that area of the country. Outside Tyne and Wear there are quite a few Tory seats in the NE.

I did get a application form a few years back and it asked how I voted @ the last G/E and EU referendum. Of course people could lie. They also ask you for a question. I was not selected. My question was "how do the panelists propose reducing regional differences in life chances" since then the differences/inequalities have of course increased. There was a distinct split in the audience between those who thought the asylum seekers were genuine and those who thought the majority were not.

My guess is the average age of the viewer for QT is mid 50s - the Newcastle audience looked a bit older on average say early 60s. In general the voting population is older in the UK than the overall population.

I agree there was a surprising distinct anti-asylum seeker element to some of the questions, but no one on the panel could really answer how the UK could realistically deal with upto 600 claims a day for asylum. The UK is obviously a fairly popular end destination.

Germany is an interesting one, the country since the late 1950s has taken in a lot of guest workers from Turkey, southern Europe and the Balkans and more recently many refugees from war zone countries like Syria. At the same time votes for the Far Right AfD (think EDL equivalent) have increased to 10.6% of the National vote (from Zero) which is very concerning. The guest workers and their children were not allowed to be German Citizens (but that may have changed now - not sure). In the past guest workers that became pregnant could be deported. Germany is not always as socially liberal as it first appears.

An EU solution was the pay countries like Libya and Turkey to keep refugees in secure camps, outside the EU zone. Do posters think this is the way forward?
 
Watched it for the first time in ages few weeks back, from Liverpool.......think there was 1? 2? proper Scouse accents, rest were pretty posh well spoken ones asking innocuous questions. Absolute staged shyte.
 
On the programme - The head of Iceland said the North East was at the centre of what we do, just looked where their HQ is, its in North Wales.

At least its not Central London I suppose.

I do think the BBC are a liberalish, Central London based type orgainsation as a broad generalisation, but like a lot of the media they like to provoke reactions at times, a sort of throwing spanners in the works. This might behind some fo their selections. I still think they were hit back by the EU Referendum as they were not really aware of left behind Britain, as much as they should have been. So now they are interested more in these areas.
 
Yes. Pedley is well known for bussing in people from outside the vicinity to "even things up". Seems that is what happened last night - as the Tories have no MPs in Newcastle itself. This is a pretty damning article on The BBC employee tasked with finding QT audiences

 
I was thinking last night some had been bused in from Blyth and Consett areas, opposed to the City of Newcastle which is younger and more left wing.

Personally I like to see a fully mixed audiences so some areas of the country, people wil have to bused in. Where I live all the seats are Tory and the seat beyond them (I think). The nearest non Tory seat will be 30 miles away.

Some of the bused were anti-Labour and I agree were not really listening, but Labiour does have to ask the questions why have they lost so many. They can blame the Daily Mail, but the DM is not new, it was the same in the 1970s and those same voters then voted for Labour that are anti now.

The question was are you going to do to reduce regional inequality senior Labour MP response:

Change business rates for small businesses
Have a new budget
and belating promote green industries
the rest was vague statements or look at our policy document......sorry not good enough.

I know I am going to upset a lot on here, but the question to me was very predictable and I think they are actually given the questions in advance, so showing lack of specifics to me implies its not high priority to the LP. The Stockton South Tory MP did show passion and specifics (OK about Teesside). I don't trust his Party with public services or fairer taxes, but to me regeneration of the poorer parts NE is very important and I don't even live there.
 
Last edited:
I was thinking last night some had been bused in from Blyth and Consett areas, opposed to the City of Newcastle which is younger and more left wing.

Personally I like to see a fully mixed audiences so some areas of the country, people wil have to bused in. Where I live all the seats are Tory and the seat beyond them (I think). The nearest non Tory seat will be 30 miles away.

Some of the bused were anti-Labour and I agree were not really listening, but Labiour does have to ask the questions why have they lost so many. They can blame the Daily Mail, but the DM is not new, it was the same in the 1970s and those same voters then voted for Labour that are anti now.

The question was are you going to do to reduce regional inequality senior Labour MP response:

Change business rates for small businesses
Have a new budget
and belating promote green industries
the rest was vague statements or look at our policy document......sorry not good enough.

I know I am going to upset a lot on here, but the question to me was very predictable and I think they are actually given the questions in advance, so showing lack of specifics to me implies its not high priority to the LP. The Stockton South Tory MP did show passion and specifics (OK about Teesside). I don't trust his Party with public services or fairer taxes, but to me regeneration of the poorer parts NE is very important and I don't even live there.
Oh yeah, that question. The one the questioner asked Vickers to answer as well before he was hastily protected by Tory stooge Bruce.....
 
Who is this gadge Vickers? Take it he's from the new crop of 2019 uber sycophants, willing to defend Bozo and climb the greasy pole at any cost? I'm outside the area, so never heard of him until last night. Looks a right greasy get.
I have watched it and can comfirm your greasey get comment is spot on. Bruce needs to go, I don't want to play the game with you.
 
Back
Top