Nick Griffin and Question Time

His issue with Muslims.

As I mentioned earlier, in our more metropolitan parts moderate Muslims tend to be great to get on with.

In your more poor districts they tend to be more insular, with their youths being of the angry, trapped-between-two-cultures types, with quite a lot being in gangs straight out of A Clockwork Orange, including a lot of armed drug dealing.

With anyone else I would agree with this point in principle. However, when it comes to Griffin, I just don't accept the sincerity of the man that his only issue is with racist Muslims.

Sorry, I think anyone who thinks his points are valid, and that he's not usuing them as a way to, in due course, further his inherently racist views, is a little naive.

I wonder how the BNP will cope with the new rush of members once they relax their recruitment criteria

The flood of non-whites to join their party could overwhelm them... they'll have to open new centres in Brixton etc.

Yep.

Hmmm. Too easy that one IMO.
Give me an example of this racism towards whites.

Balls.
Jack Straw got an absolute toasting from two or three audience members about how they thought we needed more dialogue about immigration and how we need a cap etc etc. They were moderate right wingers. The simple fact is that in the population you can't find that many BNP supporters as a proportion. They only got 6% of the vote at the Euro elections.

Just because a person is a twat, or how he reached a view is pretty unpleasant, doesn't mean you can't agree with said view.

I mean Hitler was against smoking, do you plan to start up a 40-a-day habit because he was a vile little shit?

I think that there are a frightening number of BNP supporters -- at least around here -- however they aren't the type that turn out to vote.

^Yup, same round here, but the expenses issue may change the 'not bothering to vote' bit.

A lot of people who don't actually live anywhere near the poorer areas and hinterlands, don't understand the sheer volume of rage at seeing their areas change so quickly. Worse still, the governments been little help in giving assistance to local services - it's not unexpected for a local surgery to need help with several languages.

It's why I really detest the metropolitan left, they fuck about in their little reality distortion bubble as though every prick with a chip on their shoulder can cry into a succession of fucking lattes.

They really need to go to an estate in Hull, waffle on to the cuddly unemployed there and get a face full of broken glass for their troubles, they may start noticing their rack of opinions are worthless outside of London around that point, and that people like Polly Toynbee really need sealing in an iron maiden filled with fire ants.

My two cents.

I know I wanted to expose the BNP to debate, but I was slightly surprised that it turned into "Ask Nick Griffin". He wasn't on an equal footing with the other panellists, he was the centre of attention. Four out of five questions were specifically directed at him.

He did get exposed as a big racist bastard, and wasn't allowed to portray himself as a moderate but seeing as everyone knew (or should have known) about that already, it's hard to qualify the whole thing as a "success" for either him or the others.
I also felt a little sorry for him, particularly since he was visibly nervous. But one soon snaps out of that.

^He game some good licks though, Straws face - when Griffin pointed out that while his father was fighting the Germans, Straws father was in jail for refusing to fight them - was a picture.

The whole deification of Churchill was rather interesting too, seems to be some airbrushing of history going on.

The audience came pretty poorly armed - after trying to prove Griffin racist for the first 50 minutes, they spent the rest of the time arguing about Stephen Gately - with none of the appeasing panellists genuinely prepared to defend the right of free speech.

The number might be firghtening depending on your point of view but I don't think it is a large proportion of the population and I correspondingly wasn't surprised to see only two or three in the QT audience.

Nonsense. Regardless of Jack Straw's face, what he did there was make an irrelevant (although he thuoght it was dramatic) point, very much in the mould of someone who is really just an agitator rather than a genuine politician. It was entirely typical of his entire performance.

I agree with that though. Winnie had some interesting views...

Impossible to do it otherwise. It would have been like a fucking great elephant sitting on Dimbleby's head if they hadn't tackled Griffin head on.

Visit the hinterlands of the North West much? Darwen? Blackburn? Burnley? Nelson? Rochdale? Bury? May want to give it a try.

Panoramas recent visit to a housing estate gave a wonderful insight into similar places dahn sarf.

As for the QT audience - you do know they're cherry picked right? If you were planning to base UK demographics on last nights audience make up, then around 40% of the population isn't very white, and 80% are under 30.

Guess we can cancel the census with QT on air then?

I honestly think the 'rate of change' thing has been the biggest problem. Up until maybe 5 or 6 years ago, towns and villages were populated by families that had -- all inbreeding aside -- been there for generations. Certain areas in Leeds, Bradford and Manchester were designated for asian and blacks and, although there has certainly been conflict, generally the two didn't mix.

Suddenly, because of immigration from EU migrant workers, change and multiculturalism has literally landed on the doorstep and it's been perceived to be threatening, frightening and unsettling. Coupled with a crippled economy, job losses and dole queues doubling (but not sounding English), it's caused real deep anger that is aimed at anyone a bit different. And the BNP provides a political mouthpiece to voice that anger.

The majority of people in the UK don't live in London or had years of experience with a broad mix of culture. Like you say, those that do and can't understand what the problem is want to visit Bransholme in Hull and ask them if they want to learn Polish to help with integration.

Of course they are cherry picked. The point is that across the UK BNP support is quite small. Doesn't matter whether every fucker in Blackburn is a fan.

I didn't say it was demographically representative.

I think you only really see the views of people of a social standing like your own, in that case.

Who really doesn't get the issue with rate of change? Do you honestly believe that the government has no understanding of that? So are you actually saying you think the level of immigration itself has been wrong?

I ask because if it is going to happen then I can't see how anyone thinks the process could be managed. People are people, and they don't like change. And they especially don't like strange other people. So they'll believe lies like the brown people get the council houses first etc.

Let's be clear: being concerned about immigration doesn't make you a BNP supporter. So I'm not saying that a small proportion of people have concerns about the growth of the UK population or the influx of migrants.

I'm saying that a small proportion of people think all the blacks should go home and we should ban interracial marriage.

There were plenty fo people in that audience who had concerns about immigration policy but only a few looked like they had gone full retard.

Uh, no. As far as I could tell, I stated that I believed there were more BNP supporters than you accepted (just that they didn't vote) and then I reiterated what Ecky said and added why I thought that issue was there in the first place. I didn't make any explicit comment about the government's understanding or whether I thought the level of immigration was wrong.

Well, that's rather fatalistic, isn't it?

And this attitude is precisely why the BNP's gone from a bunch of fringe nutters to seats in the EU, a seat in London and a creeping influence in councils.

When will it matter? When the NW sends a bloc of BNP MPs down to Westminster? When that 6% changes to 30%? When places like Stoke are BNP controlled territory?

Saying:

is the next best thing to that though

I don't disagree that concern about immigration = BNP supporter.

However, for the huge number of people that don't 'get' politics and don't usually vote, they have enough exposure to the BNP to think that the BNP will sort out their immigration woes, and thusly they imply they support them.

The rate has been insane, I'm a big fan of multiculturism - you tend to get the best of many cultures, and the UK's history been one of filching the best ideas from invaders - but it needs to be handled properly.

Even local asians have been getting pissed off at the east europeans - hearing a 3rd generation descendant complaining about Polish immigrants not speaking English tickles me, but it happens.

There's also been a lot of alienation. There are asian parts round here it doesn't pay to walk around at night if you're white. And walking through the asian area of Nelson, you feel like an alien. You expect a bell to toll, and a brown Clint Eastwood to appear to shoot you!

We're talking about the make-up of the QT audience, not the threat the BNP poses to UK democracy.

No. There is a difference between a rough representation of voting patterns and demogrpahic representation.

You realize a number of BNP voters don't think the second part of that paragraph right? You understand that a number of their voters are more interested in protecting their livelihoods, perception of society and jobs?

They'll tolerate the bad parts for what they see as the good parts - I'll assume you voted Labour, do you agree with everything they've done? Do you think every Labour voter are 100% behind Labour policy when they vote? No? Then why apply that criteria to BNP voters?

We were talking about both, hence:

Have you been picking up evasion tactics from Mr Griffin?

You suggested that the rate of change and mainstream politics failure to address it was causing the BNP rise.
So I'm asking:
- do you genuinely beleive that the main parties don't understand about the problems caused by the rate of change?

Because I don't believe that. What I do believe is that if you have a significant rate of change there is very little you can do to make it go smoothly.

The BNP gets its support by doing what the other parties don't do and steps over the line by starting to peddle comforting lies about immigrants (like all the council house stuff). That's what the 'worried' punter in the street wants and that's why I don't think a lot of the support the BNP has garnered could easily be held onto by mainstream parties. Trying to quash those lies is very very difficult. Although obviously they should try (and they may not have been trying hard enough).

I'm not going down the rabbit hole on this one.

My point is that the QT audience usually broadely reflects voting priorities either of the country or an area. the simple factis that only 6% of the UK votes at the Euros were for the BNP. So it cannot be a surprise that o few were in the audience.

They don't pack the place with Greens when there is a Green on.