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Thought it was a bit shambolic, and a missed opportunity; perhaps Nick Griffin on his own answering questions put to him by an audience would have been a better idea. I agree that it became a point scoring opportunity for the other people on the panel [the Liberal guy, as ever, being the voice of reason; also being the only person I have ever heard point out the fact that it was the Conservative Party that did away with border controls]. What does concern me is that Griffin has a habit of saying things sometimes that I [to my horror] find myself inwardly agreeing with. However, don’t let anyone feel sorry for this man or his party. We have a lot of problems in this country and he and they are just parasites feeding off those problems, with no actual solution to them.
What do you expect?
His views are so stupid, it was obvious all the other parties would round on him. He had a fair hearing. Thought Baroness Varsi and Bonny … were great. Hune and Straw less so. Straw seemed to want to dodge the immigration issue and Hune to score political points. Must admit, before this week was unaware of Nick Griffin’s past and how anti-coloured he was. Thought it was all immigrants he wanted out, seems he’s just a white supremacist. Anyone born in Britain is British full stop, does not matter what their colour. Griffin came over as an idiot. Would imagine anyone who voted for him will feel embarrassed now. Though can’t see the questions being so pointed if he appears in the programme again. If questions were about normal politics (e.g. Postal Strike), then he may be able to come across as a normal politician. Which would be worrying.To blame the BBC for giving him a platform is crazy, if the BNP gets a million or more votes and MEP’s, they are entitled to a place around the table. Frankly, I am surprised there is not a law to ban a white supremacist party. Now that the BNP has to open up to non-whites; hope our coloured friends can infiltrate this party in their thousands.
To equate his views with us going in to Iraq or Afghanistan is rediculous, as they were done with the best intensions.
Having a Polish Spitfire pilot behind that poster; and Winston Churchill in their propaganda is pathetic. Churchill would not be allowed in Griffin’s Britain (Native American grand parent) just puts their views in to perspective. What does Griffin think about the thousands of Muslims who fought in both World Wars, or today’s Gurkas.
Question Time has convinced me that proportional representation would be bad for Britain.
It also brings home how stupid I was not to vote. We all have a duty to keep the BNP out. Their appearance in tonight’s programme was primarily the voters fault for not turning up.
Value Is Everything
Had to laugh when he referred to himself and his fellow ‘indigenous British’ as Aborigines. Perhaps he would consider reflecting just what the said ‘indigenous’ folk did when they took it upon themselves to subjugate a ‘race’ far away who having been living in their country for at least 40,000 years have a better claim than any outside of sub-saharan Africa to being described as an indigenous population: the Australian Aborigines.Presumably white Australians would be welcome to join the BNP
A good hour for democracy
words are mightier than the ban
Agree with Drone’s post more or less 100%.
It always amuses me, incidentally, that the BNP’s research lab is smart enough to be able to trace family records of "indigenous" white people back 17,000 years (where even the best-stocked reference libraries and archives in the country can’t go much before 1538 unless Domesday or village rolls have survived); yet it required "recent radio evidence" to come to hand for it to discover that the Holocaust might just have taken place after all.
The party is one whole sorry, bile-sodden morass of contradictions barely worthy of even a protest vote, and let’s just hope last night appalled more of the curious than it inspired.
Per the Gurkas, Ginger, Wikipedia reports that Griffin evidently supported them and their bid to stay in the country. How opportunistic. And not especially consistent. Hard not to be reminded of that one episode of Cockney W*nker in
Viz
, wherein W*nker is about to violate himself to that day’s
Sun
‘s page three girl photo until he realises it’s one of Naomi Campbell. Cue rant with mate about sending home all "sooties" – apart from Frank Bruno. "Yeah, course, Frank Bruno’s done waanders for the country. Goes withaat sayin’", etc. etc.
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
The BBC were right to allow the BNP leader on to Question time but I agree with Wallace and Friggo that it turned out to be nothing more than a witch hunt.
There was no debate and the BNP haters got their way but in the long term it may backfire and be of benefit to the BNP.QT should be a prog which discusses recent relevant issues but it was nothing like it last night and just turned out to be all about having a go at the BNP. Also Dimbleby is useless and should remain neutral in these discussions but always shows bias.
Let’s get one thing straight – the increase in racist problems in the UK over the last few years is due solely to the shambolic immigration actions of our Govt and this is the only reason that the BNP have gained in popularity and managed to obtain over 1 million votes in the Euro elections
……this would have been unthinkable a decade ago.Our awful govt has got blood on it’s hands over Iraq and also over the racist issues it has created in this country.
I will never vote for the BNP and hate it’s racist stance but the Govt have helped it grow due to their useless uncontrolled immigration actions.
What got me was how totally
thick
Griffin is. Rambling, incoherent and full of non-sequitors. This guy’s got a Law degree from Cambridge – do they just give them away?
Mike
PS: Oh, and Peter Hain was acting like a fascist yesterday, too.
Not sure that I agree with that; if we think that he is just a racist buffon we may underestimate how clever/devious he actually is. As I said, I do find myself agreeing with things that they say, and have realised that what they do is make me have a grievance that I didn’t know I had which then starts to bother me [eg wounded servicemen having to pay to watch the tv in hospital].I would imagine that most of the people that needed to watch this programme didn’t bother.Does anyone know of people that have voted BNP? I’ve met a few and they all argue that it is a protest vote.
The BBC have absolutely shot themselves in the foot with this one – instead of the usual informed debate the program descended into a witch hunt against Griffin, a tactic that will play into the hands of Griffin and his supporters and which will serve to re-enforce his "persecution complex".
This was an opportunity to hold Griffin and his policies to account with reasoned, structued debate – instead it resembled children postulating in the playground.
The only plus side is it exposed Griffin as an intellectually weak and feeble, almost sad and pathetic, individual.
Mo and, dare say even Happy, have made some good points about the sort of people the BNP attract. However the BNP prey on issues that do concern the man in the street.
Your average voter is not that politically sophisticated, they don’t care about political nuances – they care about what they perceive is happening around them and they care that mainstream politicians seem more concerned about lining thier own pockets and feathering their own nests or moats. they don’t care if it is a minority – mud sticks and all are tarnished.
If the mainstream political parties – and all three of the main parties are as bad as one another – do not get off their pedestals and start engaging with Joe Public on the issues that concern the man in the street – then they cannot complain when the public turn to the parties, like the BNP, who do give the "impression" they do care about his concerns.
Shambles of a programme where the normally excellent David Dimbleby let his or the BBC’s fears that Griffin would be able to promote his party via a good performance on issues other than race and immigration get the better of him and the programme was allowed immediately to descend into an embarrassingly childish one sided attack rather than attempting to answer the questions as put as in a normal edition.
As it was they needed to have no fears because Griffin was remarkably poor for an allegedly well educated person and totally lacking in intellect and charisma, so on this form his contributions on general matters would have been likely to unveil yet more shortcomings rather than win the BNP more support.
There are definite issues social and economic issues around immigration that need to be addressed and if successive governments fail to even mention them for fear of upsetting people then the electorate can’t be blamed for looking elsewhere.
It will probably be the rest of the media’s turn now to shoot itself in the foot by keeping the non story (bad performance on a bad programme)in the papers and on the news for far too long.
That sums up how I feel about the whole matter Paul.
The show was a complete farce, more like Inquisition Time than question time, I’ll never watch it again.
…….a normal edition of QT does not usually involve 4 panellists ganging up and attacking the other one.
What Dimbleby failed to do most of the time was get the panellists to answer the questions. What the programme failed to do was to ask its usual range of questions…….if it was going to be a one issue special they should have said so and if it was it should have been handled much more constructively than what we saw.The biggest danger of all was that the BNP was going to gain popularity through its leaders brilliant performance including proving that the BNP have policies for other issues aswell but due to Griffin’s general crappiness and the bearpit nature of the programme this didn’t happen…..as it was I don’t think it would have happened if they conducted the programme in its usual fashion but my point was that the BBC were scared of the possibility.
Strongly agree with Paul and others here…
There should have been a concerted effort to take apart the BNP’s flimsy policies rather than the repeated witchhunt over Griffins past. Griffin renounces many of his past views (unconvincingly perhaps) but would QT allow repeated questions at Ken Livingstone for his promotion of and platform sharing with an Iman who has praised Hitler repeatedly and called for a secong holocaust or Tony Benn for his quoted hero worship of the 20th cenhtury’s biggest murderer?
Griffin was very nervous and suprisingly lightweight. Britain has never been a fertile ground for extremists of either wing (thank god) and it is good news that hes not as charsimatic and controlled as the late Pim Fortyuen and the late (again) Haider.
What the programme failed to do was to ask its usual range of questions…….if it was going to be a one issue special they should have said so and if it was it should have been handled much more constructively than what we saw.
Do we need to hold fire slightly before arriving at that conclusion? For all that
Question Time
last night was a simulcast between BBC1 and Five Live, it wasn’t broadcast live and unedited on either – the show proper started at 7pm and ran for longer than the broadcast hour.
I rather suspect that there were some other questions that were asked during the course of the recording, and were dropped during the editing process (which, due to constraints of time, I also suspect would have had to start whilst the show was still going on).
Questions, therefore, to ask of the editorial team’s decision to splice and dice the available material to make the show appear more single-issue than it probably was. However, as countless entertainment shows such as
QI
and
HIGNFY
are either repeated or made available on-demand in their "XL" format, I think there would be genuine merit in doing the same with this particular episode of
Question Time
if no other.
And I don’t propose that in the belief that Griffin would have proven any more intelligent or cohesive on the other questions put to him. Quite the opposite, in fact.
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
Griffin was very nervous and suprisingly lightweight. Britain has never been a fertile ground for extremists of either wing (thank god) and it is good news that hes not as charsimatic and controlled as the late Pim Fortyuen and the late (again) Haider.
A Pim Fortuyen or Geert Wilders equivalent in this country would probably argue a more seductive, articulate case for their respective vicious mandates.
But is the obverse that either are too exotic a beast for a lot of your more archetypal BNP / NF / C18 etc. supporters to want to have something to do with?
I’m thinking particularly of the former, who was openly gay, fond of expensive three piece suits, and if memory serves also had a man-servant. Not exactly the material and personal baggage of too many of the disenfranchised here, I’d venture.
Strip away the protest voters who have swollen the BNP’s share of the vote of late, and the core of their remaining support – the "career fascists", if you like – are thick, ugly and ridiculous. Notwithstanding his education, schooling and purported media savvy that sets him slightly apart from antecedents such as John Tyndall, Griffin mirrors these supporters exactly.
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
Also Dimbleby is useless and should remain neutral in these discussions but always shows bias.
If there is one criticism to be leveled at David Dimbleby’s handling of the programme last night, it might be the following.
His father, Richard, was I believe the first journalist to file reports from Belsen concentration camp, and to a certain extent I suppose the liberation of that camp has loomed large in the consciousness of the Dimbleby family for the thick end of 64 years.
I wonder, therefore, if emotion took over from professional integrity and detachment last night? A sense in David’s mind that he was going to have this little b*stard come what come may?
Here he was, after all, sitting next to a man in Griffin who has continuously denied that camps such as Belsen ever existed (only to modify that opinion superficially in light of the "recent radio evidence" mentioned earlier in the thread); yet he has greater reason than many to know that they did, and of what was found in them.
If that hypothesis is even halfway true, then yes, David did fail himself to a limted extent last night, but then it’s difficult to imagine who else might have taken over for one week only had its producers harboured the same concerns and wanted someone with less "baggage" in the circumstances. Getting Jeremy Paxman to deputise, for example, would have been interpreted as a calculated move to outwit and humiliate Griffin even more devastatingly, whether actually the intention or not.
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
I think you are right Jeremy. Its perhaps debateable how far right Pim was, but either way, they wouldnt appeal to the BNP’s current constituency. Ultimately, the bigoted fat left and right have made far less headway in the Uk than any other western democracy (bar the US perhaps). Humourless demagogues fixated on big goverment simply do not appeal to the british (Brown????)
Hain has been a disgrace again today. He has no right to dictate who we should or shouldnt listen to. He simply doesnt get it does he? A partonising and condeseding noboby….
……this would have been unthinkable a decade ago.
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