Meet the Panelists – BBC Question Time 09-12

by Unity    
February 1, 2012 at 8:55 pm

Apropos of my recent blog on tokenism and gender balance in the composition of BBC Question Time panels, I’ve now pulled together a complete list of the people who have made at least one appearance on a Question Time panel since January 2009 and am looking for a little crowdsourced assistance with the next stage of my analysis.

Yor mission, should ou choose to accept it, is to help out with tagging the political links and associations of some panelists.

What I’m actually looking for is information and opinions on some of the other, less obviously political names on the list, either in terms of a verified link to British political party – I thnk we all know now that Carol Vorderman is rabid Tory, even if that wasn’t entirely obvious until she appeared on the show, or a reliable assessment of where they sit on the standard left-right political axis.

To keep it simple, stick to left, right and centre as answers where possible, although I’ll also take with neutral or independent if you feel that someone is genuinely operating outside the usual categories.

Final instructions if you do feel like ptiching in:

- any responses in comments and not via Twitter please, as its just easier to keep track of things that way

- no tracking people down via Twitter to ask them about their political views if you don’t already know where they stand, it;s not nice to hassle people for trivial reasons, and

- for the avoidance of any doubt, the Brian Cox who appears on the list is the actor, not the scientist.

So now, without further ado, on with the list, which is given in rank order by number of appearances:

Rank	Panelist	Appearances
1	Vince Cable	10
2	Nigel Farage	9
3	Caroline Flint	8
3	Kelvin MacKenzie	8
3	Theresa May	8
6	Caroline Lucas	7
6	Chris Huhne	7
6	Kenneth Clarke	7
6	Peter Hain	7
10	Andy Burnham	6
10	Diane Abbott	6
10	Liam Fox	6
10	Nicola Sturgeon	6
10	Sarah Teather	6
10	Sayeeda Warsi	6
10	Shami Chakrabarti	6
17	Alan Johnson	5
17	David Starkey	5
17	Douglas Murray	5
17	Elfyn Llwyd	5
17	Jo Swinson	5
17	Melanie Phillips	5
17	Menzies Campbell	5
17	Paddy Ashdown	5
17	Shirley Williams	5
26	Alex Salmond	4
26	Andrew Lansley	4
26	Ben Bradshaw	4
26	Charles Falconer	4
26	Charles Kennedy	4
26	David Laws	4
26	Douglas Alexander	4
26	Ed Balls	4
26	Iain Duncan Smith	4
26	Janet Street-Porter	4
26	Margaret Beckett	4
26	Mehdi Hasan	4
26	Michael Heseltine	4
26	Michael Moore	4
26	Peter Hitchens	4
26	Philip Hammond	4
26	Ruth Lea	4
26	Simon Hughes	4
44	Caroline Spelman	3
44	Charles Clarke	3
44	Chris Bryant	3
44	Chris Grayling	3
44	Christopher Meyer	3
44	Damian Green	3
44	David Davis	3
44	David Miliband	3
44	Ed Davey	3
44	Fraser Nelson	3
44	George Galloway	3
44	Grant Shapps	3
44	Harriet Harman	3
44	Ian Hislop	3
44	Jack Straw	3
44	Janet Daley	3
44	Jeremy Browne	3
44	Jeremy Hunt	3
44	John Denham	3
44	John Redwood	3
44	Julia Goldsworthy	3
44	Justine Greening	3
44	Ken Livingstone	3
44	Leanne Wood	3
44	Liam Byrne	3
44	Max Hastings	3
44	Michael Gove	3
44	Nadine Dorries	3
44	Norman Baker	3
44	Piers Morgan	3
44	Polly Toynbee	3
44	Salma Yaqoob	3
44	Susan Kramer	3
44	William Hague	3
44	Yvette Cooper	3
79	Alastair Campbell	2
79	Andrew Mitchell	2
79	Bonnie Greer	2
79	Boris Johnson	2
79	Brian Cox	2
79	Camila Batmanghelidjh	2
79	Charles Moore	2
79	Cheryl Gillan	2
79	Chuka Umunna	2
79	Clare Short	2
79	Clive Anderson	2
79	Daniel Hannan	2
79	Danny Alexander	2
79	David Mitchell	2
79	David Willetts	2
79	Ed Miliband	2
79	Fern Britton	2
79	Francis Maude	2
79	Germaine Greer	2
79	Gloria De Piero	2
79	Hilary Benn	2
79	Jane Moore	2
79	Jenny Tonge	2
79	John Sergeant	2
79	Jon Gaunt	2
79	Katie Hopkins	2
79	Kirsty Williams	2
79	Margaret Curran	2
79	Max Mosley	2
79	Michael Forsyth	2
79	Monty Don	2
79	Nick Ferrari	2
79	Rachel Reeves	2
79	Richard Dannatt	2
79	Rory Stewart	2
79	Sadiq Khan	2
79	Shaun Woodward	2
79	Simon Jenkins	2
79	Simon Schama	2
79	Stephen Pollard	2
79	Tessa Jowell	2
79	Toby Young	2
79	Will Self	2
79	Yasmin Alibhai-Brown	2
123	Aaron Porter	1
123	Adrian Adonis	1
123	Alistair Carmichael	1
123	Amanda Platell	1
123	Andrew Roberts	1
123	Anna Soubry	1
123	Annabel Goldie	1
123	Archbishop John Sentamu	1
123	Benedict Brogan	1
123	Benjamin Zephaniah	1
123	Bianca Jagger	1
123	Bill Rammell	1
123	Billy Bragg	1
123	Bob Crow	1
123	Brent Hoberman	1
123	Brian Paddick	1
123	Bruce Anderson	1
123	Carol Vorderman	1
123	Carwyn Jones	1
123	Charlotte Harris	1
123	Christina Schmidt	1
123	Christine Blower	1
123	Claire Perry	1
123	Clarke Carlisle	1
123	Clive James	1
123	Colin Blakemore	1
123	Constance Briscoe	1
123	Cristina Odone	1
123	Dambisa Moyo	1
123	Dame Ann Leslie	1
123	David Blunkett	1
123	David Frum	1
123	David Lammy	1
123	David Steel	1
123	David Trimble	1
123	Deborah Meaden	1
123	Derek Simpson	1
123	Digby Jones	1
123	Dr Phil Hammond	1
123	Ed Byrne	1
123	Edwina Currie	1
123	Elin Jones	1
123	Elizabeth Truss	1
123	Eric Pickles	1
123	Esther Rantzen	1
123	Fiona Phillips	1
123	Frank Skinner	1
123	George Osborne	1
123	George Pascoe-Watson	1
123	Gerry Kelly	1
123	Hardeep Singh Kohli	1
123	Helena Kennedy	1
123	Hugh Grant	1
123	Hugh Hendry	1
123	Iain Gray	1
123	Jacob Rees-Mogg	1
123	Jacqui Smith	1
123	James Caan	1
123	James O’Brien	1
123	Jan Royall	1
123	Jarvis Cocker	1
123	Jeanette Winterson	1
123	Jeffrey Donaldson	1
123	Jim Allister	1
123	Jim Knight	1
123	Jimmy Wales	1
123	Joan Bakewell	1
123	John Prescott	1
123	Julia Hartley-Brewer	1
123	Julian Fellowes	1
123	Justin King	1
123	Justine Roberts	1
123	Kate Mosse	1
123	Kirsty Allsopp	1
123	Liam Halligan	1
123	Lionel Barber	1
123	Liz Kendall	1
123	Louise Bagshawe	1
123	Lynne Featherstone	1
123	Margaret Ritchie	1
123	Maria Misra	1
123	Mark Littlewood	1
123	Mark Malloch Brown	1
123	Mark Serwotka	1
123	Mark Steel	1
123	Marta Andreasen	1
123	Martin Bell	1
123	Martin Sorrell	1
123	Martina Anderson	1
123	Mary Beard	1
123	Mary Bousted	1
123	Matthew Parris	1
123	Michael Howard	1
123	Michael Winner	1
123	Mike Russell	1
123	Nerys Evans	1
123	Niall Ferguson	1
123	Nick Griffin	1
123	Nicola Horlick	1
123	Nigel Dodds	1
123	Nigel Lawson	1
123	Noreena Hertz	1
123	Norman Lamb	1
123	Owen Paterson	1
123	Patrick Harvie	1
123	Pauline Neville-Jones	1
123	Peter Oborne	1
123	Phil Willis	1
123	Pierre-Yves Gerbeau	1
123	Priti Patel	1
123	Rageh Omaar	1
123	Richard Lambert	1
123	Richard Littlejohn	1
123	Richard Madeley	1
123	Richard Perle	1
123	Robert Winston	1
123	Roy Hattersley	1
123	Sally Bercow	1
123	Sammy Wilson	1
123	Sarah Sands	1
123	Shappi Khorsandi	1
123	Sherard Cowper-Coles	1
123	Simon Callow	1
123	Simon Heffer	1
123	Simon Wolfson	1
123	Stephen Dorrell	1
123	Stephen Twigg	1
123	Steve Easterbrook	1
123	Stuart Rose	1
123	Suzanne Burlton	1
123	Tariq Ali	1
123	Tim Farron	1
123	Tom Conti	1
123	Tom Hunter	1
123	TristramHunt	1
123	Vera Baird	1
123	Victoria Barnsley	1
123	Victoria Coren	1
123	Will Hutton	1
123	Will Young	1
123	Willie Walsh	1

Exclusive: How the government is exaggerating the cost of abortions

by Unity    
November 25, 2011 at 11:02 am

Last week the Telegraph revealed ‘new figures’ from the government that put the cost of abortions £30m ‘higher than previously thought’.

Lord Alton, the crossbench peer who obtained the new figures, said: “I have written to Lord Howe setting out a number of concerns about how Parliament came to be so very badly misled about the costs to the NHS associated with abortion.

I think the most pressing concern Lord Howe needs to address is why Lord Alton’s can’t understand his own bloody correspondence.
continue reading… »

Poor memory? Blame evolution, not Google

by Unity    
July 17, 2011 at 12:03 pm

If you mooch around the science sections of popular news websites this weekend then chances are you’ll encounter something called ‘The Google Effect’.

From what I can tell, the BBC’s report started out the headline “Internet is ‘changing our memory’” but have since backed off a little and are now running the story as ‘Internet’s memory effects quantified in computer study’.

The Guardian – with perhaps more than half an eye on climbing Google’s own search rankings with its take on the story – has gone for the headline; ‘Poor memory? Blame Google.
continue reading… »

Nadine Dorries claims backing for her campaign but it’s not so simple

by Unity    
July 5, 2011 at 9:03 am

Yesterday, Conservative MP Nadine Dorries posted a press release on her blog, claiming that the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) backed the amendment that she and Frank Field MP have put forward.

The amendment calls for ‘independent’ abortion counselling for women who want an abortion, with the aim of excluding respected organisations such as BPAS and others, and is tacked to the contentious Health and Social Care Bill.

She wrote:
continue reading… »

Why Nadine Dorries is indeed pushing abstinence-only education

by Unity    
July 3, 2011 at 6:40 pm

There is some considerable – and I might also say deliberately contrived – confusion as to the question of whether tory MP Nadine Dorries’ abstinence bill amounts to the promotion of abstinence-only sex education.

Dorries and her supporters claim that she isn’t pushing abstinence-only sex education and, of course, use this claim to deflect criticism based on the well-documented evidence of the abject failure of abstinence-only programmes in the United States.

To understand why, we need first to be clear about what is actually included in the National Curriculum under sex education as a mandatory element – and everything we need to know is to be found in the Science curriculum.
continue reading… »

Lesson for Dorries: report says abstinence education doesn’t work

by Unity    
July 1, 2011 at 4:24 pm

The American Foundation for AIDS Research published a new issue briefing in 2007, which fully deserves to be widely circulated.

It assesses the effectiveness of abstinence-only sex education programmes for HIV prevention amongst young people.

The briefing pulls together the evidence from a wide range of published studies covering the outcomes of abstinence-only programmes in both the US and internationally and arrives at an unsurprising but damning conclusion:
continue reading… »

The TaxPayers Alliance and their disingenuous polling

by Unity    
June 28, 2011 at 11:50 am

Today, the ‘Tax Payers’ Alliance’ are touting a new opinion poll which, so they claim, ‘reveals that the public support billions in spending cuts to foreign aid, high speed rail, trade union funding and a Green Investment bank’.

The poll, itself, is pretty much standard TPA fare – a stream of questions asking whether the public would support cutting expenditure on thing that appear to be pretty expensive but about which the majority of the public know and understand far too little to make anything that remote resembles an informed choice.
continue reading… »

Daily Mail threatens blogger with libel over 2-year old post

by Unity    
June 23, 2011 at 4:49 pm

Kevin Arscott of the ‘Angry Mob‘ blog is a reasonably well-known figure in the British blogosphere, one of several bloggers who specialise in tracking and exposing some of the worst excesses of tabloid and mid-market newspapers.

This morning, a bit of a kerfuffle has broken out on Twitter after Kevin received a nastygram from the Daily Mail’s lawyers threatening him with a libel action if he didn’t remove a two-year old post from his blog.

Kevin took down his post, but it can still be read via Google’s cache.
continue reading… »

Could the #superinjunction lead to Twitter being banned in the UK?

by Unity    
May 20, 2011 at 10:52 pm

This evening’s news that a professional sportsman who may or may not be the person known as ‘CTB’ has filed legal proceedings against Twitter and ‘persons unknown’ appears to have prompted a degree of bemusement.

And nowhere more so than over at Heresy Corner, where the Heresiarch has rather uncharacteristically succeeded in massively over-analysing the situation…
continue reading… »

Does the law see ‘rape as rape’?

by Unity    
May 18, 2011 at 2:52 pm

Are some rapes more serious than others? So far as the law is concerned, the answer is “Yes”.

What the law recognises is that the specific circumstances in which a rape take place may give rise to a number of aggravating factors and/or mitigating factors that must necessarily be taken into account when handing down a sentence following a successful conviction.

Use of extreme violence – i.e. beating the victim to a pulp in addition to raping them – multiple/repeat victimization and/or the existence of prior convictions for rape are treated as aggravating factors and result in a much longer sentence.
continue reading… »

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