Bye bye, Question Time

Time for a wee rant. I thought I'd watch Question Time tonight because it seemed to have good Scottish representation with Nicola Sturgeon and Duncan Bannatyne. Unfortunately, it also had the usual Westminster time servers: Caroline Flint, Norman Lamb and Lord Heseltine. So these are my conclusions:

Heseltine doesn't know who Ant & Dec are. Maybe it's an age thing. He's old - but then I'm old and I know who they are. Heseltine also thinks Scotland produces nothing and gets given all its money by England. I have a lovely picture of this: the whole population of Scotland at a luxury hotel sitting by the pool under a sun umbrella quaffing margaritas and telling the waiter: charge it up to the English tax payer. If only. I thought after the referendum we were partners within the UK? Not on this showing.

Caroline Flint knows which Coalition policies she doesn't like but is hard pushed to name a Labour policy apart from the mansion tax.

Norman Lamb is a nice guy from the Lib Dems but he has no policies to offer either, so he just tries to defend the LibDem role in the Coalition. I suspect that boat has sailed, Norman.

Duncan Bannatyne has no idea how the Jobseekers' scheme works. He recommends that a woman in the audience stop applying for jobs online (although the Job Centre and the companies hiring say she must) and wants her pounding the streets asking for a job. Good one, Duncan. Maybe that's what you did 40 years ago but we've moved on since then. We have these amazing things called computers. And we have the internet. But no doubt you have people who do all that for you. Memo to the rest of the politicos on the panel: never mind humiliating the disabled and the unemployed, as one sensible member of the audience said. How about supporting them? I wish the very best to the young people in the audience who hardly got a word in edgeways. They're the people who matter and scant support they're getting if this lot are anything to go by.

Poor Nicola Sturgeon must have felt she was sitting in a parallel universe. I know I did. The audience favoured keeping Trident and updating it to the tune of £100bn. Indeed, some even welcomed the idea of Trident being moved to the north of England. (Let it go, I say!) Not one member of the audience said: Haud oan, the UK is a tiny wee country - and a pretty poor country too - so could we forget our delusions of being a world power and concentrate on looking after our own people?

I don't think I'll bother watching again.