[Youngian]

He’s been mercifully quiet for a long time. Still a massive prick I see.

[Nigredo]

To borrow from Zelo Street (back when it was worth reading), Lett's not.

[Crabcakes]

Fed up of being made to feel bad because he's in no way helping the poor and vulnerable, more like.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Quentin pwned.

[Andy McDandy]

Rather telling that he sees it as a game rather than as a discussion.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Telling, but not surprising.

I'm with him in one thing, though. I don't know why they invited him either.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Longer clip:

[Bones McCoy]

We could also ask why Letts is answering questions on this policy.

He's not a minister, he's not been elected, he represents no interest group like small business, local council, fishermen or industrial workers.
The time has come for journalists to stop interviewing "journalists".

[Andy McDandy]

News is expensive - you have to send reporters and camera crews out, get footage, cut it, make it into a story, and hope it doesn't go out of date.

News discussion is cheap - just get a few rentagobs in a studio, read out some headlines, and watch the sparks fly.

[Bones McCoy]

News is expensive - you have to send reporters and camera crews out, get footage, cut it, make it into a story, and hope it doesn't go out of date.

News discussion is cheap - just get a few rentagobs in a studio, read out some headlines, and watch the sparks fly.

I understand that.
The breadcrumb trail still doesn't lead to Quentin Letts, on the telly, daily.

[Andy McDandy]

Only if you're seeing it from a "debate issues of the day and hopefully shine some light on things" angle. From a "start a row which will be picked up by the Internet people and lead to lots of retweets, quick, who can we get into the studio at short notice and who needs the appearance fee?" angle, it's easier to figure out.

[Boiler]

Dear God, never mind a knife - Quntin brought a teaspoon to that gunfight with Adil Ray, didn't he?

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Only if you're seeing it from a "debate issues of the day and hopefully shine some light on things" angle. From a "start a row which will be picked up by the Internet people and lead to lots of retweets, quick, who can we get into the studio at short notice and who needs the appearance fee?" angle, it's easier to figure out.

True. I really need to lower my expectations.

[Nigredo]

News is expensive - you have to send reporters and camera crews out, get footage, cut it, make it into a story, and hope it doesn't go out of date.

News discussion is cheap - just get a few rentagobs in a studio, read out some headlines, and watch the sparks fly.

I understand that.
The breadcrumb trail still doesn't lead to Quentin Letts, on the telly, daily.

I'm also confused, isn't he just Der Heil's theatre critic these days?

[The Weeping Angel]

Only if you're seeing it from a "debate issues of the day and hopefully shine some light on things" angle. From a "start a row which will be picked up by the Internet people and lead to lots of retweets, quick, who can we get into the studio at short notice and who needs the appearance fee?" angle, it's easier to figure out.

Also why Facebook and twitter have helped to devalue news.

[Youngian]

I'm also confused, isn't he just Der Heil's theatre critic these days?

Letts demonstrates the difference between critics who know their craft and hacks ligging free tickets for copy.

[Andy McDandy]

Another public school student newspaper kid, ripping off old copies of Punch in the hope it'll impress the English teacher.

[Andy McDandy]

He's still a wanker.

Sunlight washed into Westminster Hall through the stained-glass window by St Stephen’s porch. It made a perfect stage of the flagged steps. And there, backlit by the Almighty, stood the small, froggy-voiced figure who is leading Ukraine against the Russian outrage. People said he’d be vaporised within days of the invasion but here he was in our citadel a year later, amid shouts of acclamation.

It was icy in the 11th-century hall. People’s breath formed clouds as they stamped their feet, a distinctly British throng of tweed jackets and ratting coats and Marks & Sparks winter scarves. Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit had been kept, rarest of things, a Westminster secret. Only at daybreak were parliamentarians told. There was no time for serried seating. A few park benches were arranged for the infirm but otherwise it was a standing-only event. That sunlight caught flecks in the air. Dust from Norman days?

The Conqueror’s* people would have recognised a warrior like Zelensky. He entered with the Lords and Commons Speakers. Alongside their ruffed flunkys loped two Ukrainian bodyguards in fatigues. “Slava Ukraini!” bellowed an MP near me, hoarse with emotion. People clapped, hands held high over their heads. The cheering felt feral.

Sir Lindsay Hoyle began with a few words of something that was either Ukrainian or Lancastrian**. Three years ago Zelensky was the first foreign leader Hoyle met after becoming Speaker. They had tea, with doilies and sugar lumps and Chorley cakes. Different age. Now Hoyle attacked the wickedness of Putin’s invasion, gave his own roar of “Slava Ukraini!” and handed the floor to the president.

Zelensky’s English, delivered with a meerkat growl, was not perfect. No matter. He had instant stage presence and an actor’s skill with pauses. He opened with word from the trenches where his countrymen were at that very hour fighting under a hailstorm of enemy missiles. The sun silhouetted his khaki sweatshirt and the cropped hairs of his head. It was as if he were being haloed.

A few tall daffodils swayed above the crowd: an earl (Courtown), a Lib Dem copper (Lord Paddick), a doctor (Crewe’s Kieran Mullan), a Mancunian lawyer (Gorton’s Afzal Khan). The cassock-and-surpliced Archbishop of Canterbury had somehow dragged himself away from the General Synod. The Speaker’s secretary was in immaculate white gloves, like a snooker referee.

Zelensky singled out Boris Johnson for thanks. “You got others united when it seemed absolutely, absolutely impossible.” The hall tensed momentarily, then clapped. Later Zelensky thanked Rishi Sunak, too. But most of the gloop was for our country. “Great Britain, you extended your helping hand.” He praised the “grit and character” of the “Brits”. “You didn’t compromise your ideals ... You didn’t compromise the spirit of these great islands.” Johnson nodded approval. It was almost as if he had written some of this speech himself.

Zelensky recalled visiting Churchill’s War Rooms in Whitehall. They inspired him to press through unimaginable horrors towards victory. “Evil lost,” said Zelensky of the 1940s. Evil would lose again. Cue a barrage of explosive applause.

The compliments, of course, were part of a plea for fighter planes. Hoyle was presented with a Ukrainian fighter ace’s helmet. On it were the Ukrainian words for “We have freedom, give us wings to protect it”.

Zelensky noted that the King, whom he was about to visit at Buckingham Palace, was once an air force pilot. “In Ukraine today, every air force pilot is a king.” He’s an artful cadger, the Ukrainian leader. At this rate he’ll clear out our quartermasters’ stores.

The event closed with another British custom: one of those rip-snoozer speeches from Lord McFall, the Lord Speaker. Has Ukraine not suffered enough? There were handshakes with Liz Truss, Lady May, David Lammy and Sir Archibald Davey, leader of the Lib Dems***, Westminster’s answer to the Wagner Group. And then Zelensky departed, cheered to the hammerbeam oak rafters. What a man.

*It was built 11 years after his death, dickhead.

**Just fuck off.

***And when you've fucked off, fuck off some more.

[Abernathy]

"like a snooker referee"

CUNT.

[Yug]

I see he's managed to spell Zelenskyy wrong all the way through. Sloppy? Or deliberately disrespectful?