Nick Griffin ? Yes, here are the handcuffs! (Question Time)

Member Name: thedevilinme

Product:	Question Time
Date:	24/10/09 (93 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Big guns get together

Disadvantages: They never answer questions

It will be no surprise to learn that the BNPs appearance on Thursdays Question Time will have earned record viewing figures, believed to be around 8 million, unheard of for this time of night, all those people saying the odious Nick Griffin should not be given a big stage on Britain's flagship current affairs show the first to tune in with their popcorn. But it didn't earn Griffin any votes as he walked into an ambush. Talk about a duck shoot! In fact I think he even LOST votes on immigration issues he was that poor and unprepared.

It promised to be compulsive rubber necking TV and I was one of them with snacks and a brew to hand. Could our expenses snorting, tax dodging, warmongering mainstream politicians collectively batter Griffins arguments enough to make him look like what he is or would he score some points? The answer was a resounding victory to the mainstream and Griffin surprisingly feeble as a loaded audience and panel in West London had the easiest and most one-sided political *debate* of their lives as host David Dimbleby fed ludicrous Griffins vile quotes back to him to put the plonker in his place. And so say all of us. I knew the guy was nasty but not this bad. The sexy black academic Bonnie Greer absolutely nailed him on his bizarre ethnic test to be British by reminding him this country was covered in ice once and no one lived here. We are all descended from just a handful of Africa's indigenous tribes. Why would any political party on the planet want to ostracise so many groups in society?? The answer, of course, is that they are not a political party but a bigoted hate gang full of Northern Neanderthals. UKIP, the middle-class BNP, are now the bigger right wing threat to the country after this and picked up a lot of BNP votes on Thursdays disaster.

The irony of the show was the issue he does score on, immigration, and why he is where he is, he said little about ad the other politicians said it was perhaps a tad too much. Britain is undoubtedly going through seismic change now like when the ice and glaziers ground and crunched over us and its making a lot of people unsure about their role in life and work. Globalisation is all about cheap labour and we are tumbling down the pay scale. One-in-eight of our prisoner's aren't born here and one-in-five babies are now born to foreign mums. The Daily Mail put the mug shots on the front page and it registers with BNP support. We have armed patrols in all of London's black inner city areas due to surging gun crime. Why young black guys want to shoot each other is beyond most people's comprehension but they are doing it and no one has solutions. 45% of London's unemployed is now classed as black. Britain is polarised by the race issue and a lot of people are asking each other if that is the way forward for Britain. A prominent Labor advisor to Blair has admitted increasing immigration was deliberate to erode the right wing Tory support. But no party except this vulgar one will even mention the obvious issues over mass immigration and so this will increase to fester. Its certainly the case a high percentage of BNP supporters could well have a criminal record though!

http://www.guncrime.org/race_ethnicity.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/feb/17/race. uk

Most of the one million British people who voted BNP didn't do it because they hate people of colour (although I'm sure some did) but because they are allowed to have a free vote in Europe and given the luxury to blame their failures or concerns on someone else for once, the only point of the BNP. The lower classes are not as sophisticated as the middle-class in hiding that simmering dislike of other races. Griffin is a joke but if he uses his two million pound European parliament budget well, say by employing the spin doctor types that got us to invade Iraq for oil and McDonald's, then he will be a menace and precursor to someone more dangerous.

As far as enthralling TV this wasn't. The mainstream parties are under real pressure to stop the far right growing as fast as it seems to be and so having to agree to challenges like this debate to see him off with their political argument. They have to kill the menace now before it's too late. Griffin - Cambridge educated - maybe no mug around the type of people who vote for him and can articulate his points well and prompts debate in work canteens and dinner parties alike, but not here in the more sophisticated media gaze. We may not like the BNP but they like to discuss 'those issues' we do but don't own up to. We are all hypocrites in some little way over 'the big debate' of immigration and race. I was at a posh dinner do last week and I could not believe how much the people around the table were ever so slightly racist and bigoted in their views. Some of these people were not even white yet nodding away??? To me the immigration split in that room was a social class one.

When a politician like Griffin is restricted to the odd news Voxpox purely to be berated by politicians and pressure groups then you have to be able to seize those moments to deliver your message. He has enough slick delivery in his anarchist handbook to register with the electorate if given the chance but clearly out of his depth Thursday night. He was sweating up, unable to deal with damaging quotes thrown back at him and was a resounding flop. I will be surprised if he is still leader in the spring for the general elections.

He had a mandate to be on the show as the BNP has two European seats and so the democratic right to play with the big boys to represent their constituents on these shows. I personally don't feel he should have been on though but if Gok Wong can get a TV show to purely patronise working-class women with their lumps and bumps in the nude so middle-class women can snigger at them on C4 then fairs fair. We all have ugly lumps and bumps, be it on our bodies or our politics and we don't need to wave them around. One or two people on here have accused me of being racist for having the audacity to mention race and immigration issues on here but its that unwilling attitude not to debate these issues creates the Nick Griffins of the world. I have a set of balls to talk about it and I hope I help to dilute the tension here but the worst people in life are the ones who berate moderate and measured views on immigration and race like mine and yet secretly share the same concerns.

One of the easiest things in life is to blame others when you're down on your luck, and there lies the problem with Britain and racism - we of all colours and creeds practice it in some way but always take the easy option to demonize the preachers of hate so to make ourselves feel better, allowing that hate to build and build. This time next year the BNP will have won a seat in the Houses of Parliament, with only the government to blame for that for not stemming immigration, joining all those Sein Fein IRA scum the system also allowed in, our democracy alarmingly open. Don't forget both Hitler and Stalin were nominated for the Nobel Peace prize before they became who they were.

Peter Hain, the labor Mp who shouted the loudest about the BNP not being allowed to go on, protested because he knew Griffin would seize this platform and earn legitimacy, if just from the BBC invite. Nationalist LePenn earned a huge chunk of the French vote after his first big TV slot and a big chunk of their TV audience will have quietly agreed with some of the things LePenn said, especially on immigration and crime, and that's what really scares the mainstream parties here. I don't think Griffin should have been allowed on for that reason alone. This is a dangerous time for immigrants and minorities here. The second reason he should not be allowed on is he operates racist membership to his party and that's just not on.

-The Show-

The show works with the familiar knowing and somewhat establishment posh tones of David Dimbleby chairing a panel of four guests. They are normally politicians, but sometimes people in industry and quango world, but increasingly peppered with vacuous celebrities, everyone from Jack Dee to Will Young given the end seat near the toilets to no doubt subtly plug tours, DVDs and books...

The likable Will, who has a degree in politics from Exeter, had made a comment on Simon Mayo's Radio 5 show that he quite fancied a go on Question Time. During his chat the controller of BBC1 rag in to say he could come on at his leisure. Five months later he did and he was awful, rhetorical feeble answers, presumably because his record company told him that any wrong reply or comment could hurt his fan base and buying demographic. It was cringing TV and why celebs should not come on unless they are opinionated, say like Piers Morgan, Richard Little John or the great Jeremy Clarkson. Jo Brand is quite good although it won't be long until Grayson Perry; the cross-dressing modern art potter is allowed on that way its going.

The audience write down a question they would like to ask and the researchers pick topical ones. Obviously last nights questions were all 'bigot related' to make sure Griffin did get slaughtered to avoid the building riot outside, most of that mob in the audience. But in this case I have no problem with that. I did notice that a question on the news story of the day wasn't asked, the post office strike, which is normally the point of the show. But 'we are not racist' questions were asked and that was that.

The audience tends to reflect the place the show is taped in as it's taken all around the U.K and the debate always feisty and honest, last nights West London audience perhaps the only point scored to Griffin. I did enjoy it when Griffin revealed the Foreign Secretary Jack Straws dad was a conscientious objector in the war though. His Jewish father didn't seem to want to help stop the genocide by taking up arms. You don't expect mainstream politicians to ever answer tricky questions that we usually know the answers too as we don't want to hear the answers but we do like to see the MPs squirm because of that, as did the hopeless Straw. But Thursday evening for just one night a year they finally united and agreed on one thing-let hammer the BNP and make the country a safer place. It's a shame they can't come together and agree on more things like that. In the end Griffins pathetic performance reflected his core vote and there is more chance of Sharia Law in the UK than fascism after this disaster for his ridiculous party. Keep on Rockin in the free world...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/question_ti me/default.stm

Summary: The bear pit