Who was the American who got all upset on Question Time? I should be able to remember who it was but its gone for some reason.

None of what Harry posted actually links back to the post made by Kenny.

This?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/1544897.stm

I was referring to his point on aggressive questioning.

You do realise that 'agressive questioning' doesn't necessarily mean shaking your fist and shouting "Why are you such a racist fucker?" don't you? It can just as easily refer to a robust examination of someones beliefs and refusing to let them avoid answering the question at hand.

We will likely follow up that "aggressive questioning"....

Fantastic idea. We will likely follow up that "aggressive questioning" that is reserved only for him by having various members of the crowd shout & jeer when he speaks.

The result will be a television show featuring the presenters, fellow guests and crowd all heckling one man.

I'm sure that will show him up for the "lunatic racist scumbag" that he is, and will definately make sure that the public don't feel any kind of sympathy for him or his party.

So you agree that your 'response' to Kenny wasn't actually adressing any points he'd made, you were simply following on from his reasonable point with your own imaginings of what would happen.

I agree. It runs the risk of turning into a circus and that is no way of intelligently bringing down his policies and ideals. Intelligent and impartial debate would better serve destroying the man and the party.

Thats right Joe.

You win the argument. Do you want a shiny badge?

Yep.And once you've finished shining it you can turn it sideways...............................

I agree. It runs the risk of turning into a circus and that is no way of intelligently bringing down his policies and ideals. Intelligent and impartial debate would better serve destroying the man and the party.

FFS has everyone got me on ignore?

Of course not lad.

We are reading what you post, it's just that some of us are choosing to dismiss it totally.

...based on your desire to vent fury at an incident that not only hasn't happened yet, but is 99% certain to never happen. Carry on twatty.

Take it easy mate. I'm not "venting fury" at anything. I seriously couldn't give a fuck if some Romanian nutcase smuggled a gun into the venue and shot Griffin right in the skull.

I've said before that I find the BNP, and the media/left wing circus that follows them to be interesting.

Dimbles: "The BNP are opposed to same sex marriages"
Griffin: "No we're not opposed to same sex marriages"
Dimbles: "Well on your website it says you are"
Griffin: "It doesn't say that on our website at all"
Dimbles "Yes it does because I'm quoting directly from it now"
Griffin "..................Yes it does say that on our website but...."
(Studio guest off camera tries to stifle her laughter).

FFS has everyone got me on ignore?

My Flower to Bush, the Occupier: The Story of My Shoe
By MUTADHAR al-ZAIDI

Mutadhar al-Zaidi, the Iraqi who threw his shoe at George Bush gave this
speech on his recent release:

In the name of God, the most gracious and most merciful. Here I am, free.
But my country is still a prisoner of war.

Firstly, I give my thanks and my regards to everyone who stood beside me,
whether inside my country, in the Islamic world, in the free world. There
has been a lot of talk about the action and about the person who took it,
and about the hero and the heroic act, and the symbol and the symbolic act.

But, simply, I answer: What compelled me to confront is the injustice that
befell my people, and how the occupation wanted to humiliate my homeland by
putting it under its boot.

And how it wanted to crush the skulls of (the homeland's) sons under its
boots, whether sheikhs, women, children or men. And during the past few
years, more than a million martyrs fell by the bullets of the occupation and
the country is now filled with more than 5 million orphans, a million widows
and hundreds of thousands of maimed. And many millions of homeless because
of displacement inside and outside the country.

We used to be a nation in which the Arab would share with the Turkman and
the Kurd and the Assyrian and the Sabean and the Yazid his daily bread. And
the Shiite would pray with the Sunni in one line. And the Muslim would
celebrate with the Christian the birthday of Christ, may peace be upon him.
And despite the fact that we shared hunger under sanctions for more than 10
years, for more than a decade.

Our patience and our solidarity did not make us forget the oppression. Until
we were invaded by the illusion of liberation that some had. (The
occupation) divided one brother from another, one neighbor from another, and
the son from his uncle. It turned our homes into never-ending funeral tents.
And our graveyards spread into parks and roadsides. It is a plague. It is
the occupation that is killing us, that is violating the houses of worship
and the sanctity of our homes and that is throwing thousands daily into
makeshift prisons.

I am not a hero, and I admit that. But I have a point of view and I have a
stance. It humiliated me to see my country humiliated. And to see my Baghdad
burned. And my people being killed. Thousands of tragic pictures remained in
my head, and this weighs on me every day and pushes me toward the righteous
path, the path of confrontation, the path of rejecting injustice, deceit and
duplicity. It deprived me of a good night's sleep.

Dozens, no, hundreds, of images of massacres that would turn the hair of a
newborn white used to bring tears to my eyes and wound me. The scandal of
Abu Ghraib. The massacre of Fallujah, Najaf, Haditha, Sadr City, Basra,
Diyala, Mosul, Tal Afar, and every inch of our wounded land. In the past
years, I traveled through my burning land and saw with my own eyes the pain
of the victims, and hear with my own ears the screams of the bereaved and
the orphans. And a feeling of shame haunted me like an ugly name because I
was powerless.

And as soon as I finished my professional duties in reporting the daily
tragedies of the Iraqis, and while I washed away the remains of the debris
of the ruined Iraqi houses, or the traces of the blood of victims that
stained my clothes, I would clench my teeth and make a pledge to our
victims, a pledge of vengeance.

The opportunity came, and I took it.

I took it out of loyalty to every drop of innocent blood that has been shed
through the occupation or because of it, every scream of a bereaved mother,
every moan of an orphan, the sorrow of a rape victim, the teardrop of an
orphan.

I say to those who reproach me: Do you know how many broken homes that shoe
that I threw had entered because of the occupation? How many times it had
trodden over the blood of innocent victims? And how many times it had
entered homes in which free Iraqi women and their sanctity had been
violated? Maybe that shoe was the appropriate response when all values were
violated.

When I threw the shoe in the face of the criminal, Bush, I wanted to express
my rejection of his lies, his occupation of my country, my rejection of his
killing my people. My rejection of his plundering the wealth of my country,
and destroying its infrastructure. And casting out its sons into a diaspora.

After six years of humiliation, of indignity, of killing and violations of
sanctity, and desecration of houses of worship, the killer comes, boasting,
bragging about victory and democracy. He came to say goodbye to his victims
and wanted flowers in response.

Put simply, that was my flower to the occupier, and to all who are in league
with him, whether by spreading lies or taking action, before the occupation
or after.

I wanted to defend the honor of my profession and suppressed patriotism on
the day the country was violated and its high honor lost. Some say: Why
didn't he ask Bush an embarrassing question at the press conference, to
shame him? And now I will answer you, journalists. How can I ask Bush when
we were ordered to ask no questions before the press conference began, but
only to cover the event. It was prohibited for any person to question Bush.

And in regard to professionalism: The professionalism mourned by some under
the auspices of the occupation should not have a voice louder than the voice
of patriotism. And if patriotism were to speak out, then professionalism
should be allied with it.

I take this opportunity: If I have wronged journalism without intention,
because of the professional embarrassment I caused the establishment, I wish
to apologize to you for any embarrassment I may have caused those
establishments. All that I meant to do was express with a living conscience
the feelings of a citizen who sees his homeland desecrated every day.

History mentions many stories where professionalism was also compromised at
the hands of American policymakers, whether in the assassination attempt
against Fidel Castro by booby-trapping a TV camera that CIA agents posing as
journalists from Cuban TV were carrying, or what they did in the Iraqi war
by deceiving the general public about what was happening. And there are many
other examples that I won't get into here.

But what I would like to call your attention to is that these suspicious
agencies -- the American intelligence and its other agencies and those that
follow them -- will not spare any effort to track me down (because I am) a
rebel opposed to their occupation. They will try to kill me or neutralize
me, and I call the attention of those who are close to me to the traps that
these agencies will set up to capture or kill me in various ways,
physically, socially or professionally.

And at the time that the Iraqi prime minister came out on satellite channels
to say that he didn't sleep until he had checked in on my safety, and that I
had found a bed and a blanket, even as he spoke I was being tortured with
the most horrific methods: electric shocks, getting hit with cables, getting
hit with metal rods, and all this in the backyard of the place where the
press conference was held. And the conference was still going on and I could
hear the voices of the people in it. And maybe they, too, could hear my
screams and moans.

In the morning, I was left in the cold of winter, tied up after they soaked
me in water at dawn. And I apologize for Mr. Maliki for keeping the truth
from the people. I will speak later, giving names of the people who were
involved in torturing me, and some of them were high-ranking officials in
the government and in the army.

I didn't do this so my name would enter history or for material gains. All I
wanted was to defend my country, and that is a legitimate cause confirmed by
international laws and divine rights. I wanted to defend a country, an
ancient civilization that has been desecrated, and I am sure that history --
especially in America -- will state how the American occupation was able to
subjugate Iraq and Iraqis, until its submission.

They will boast about the deceit and the means they used in order to gain
their objective. It is not strange, not much different from what happened to
the Native Americans at the hands of colonialists. Here I say to them (the
occupiers) and to all who follow their steps, and all those who support them
and spoke up for their cause: Never.

Because we are a people who would rather die than face humiliation.

And, lastly, I say that I am independent. I am not a member of any
politicalparty, something that was said during torture -- one time that I'm
far-right, another that I'm a leftist. I am independent of any political
party, and my future efforts will be in civil service to my people and to
any who need it, without waging any political wars, as some said that I
would.
My efforts will be toward providing care for widows and orphans, and all
those whose lives were damaged by the occupation. I pray for mercy upon the
souls of the martyrs who fell in wounded Iraq, and for shame upon those who
occupied Iraq and everyone who assisted them in their abominable acts. And I
pray for peace upon those who are in their graves, and those who are
oppressed with the chains of imprisonment. And peace be upon you who are
patient and looking to God for release.

And to my beloved country I say: If the night of injustice is prolonged, it
will not stop the rising of a sun and it will be the sun of freedom.

One last word. I say to the government: It is a trust that I carry from my
fellow detainees. They said, 'Muntadhar, if you get out, tell of our plight
to the omnipotent powers' -- I know that only God is omnipotent and I pray
to Him -- 'remind them that there are dozens, hundreds, of victims rotting
in prisons because of an informant's word.'

They have been there for years, they have not been charged or tried.

They've only been snatched up from the streets and put into these prisons.
And now, in front of you, and in the presence of God, I hope they can hear
me or see me. I have now made good on my promise of reminding the government
and the officials and the politicians to look into what's happening inside
the prisons. The injustice that's caused by the delay in the judicial
system.

Thank you. And may God's peace be upon you

The translation is by McClatchys special correspondent, Sahar Issa.

The rise of the English Defence League, whose protests against Islamism have sparked violent city centre clashes, has been chaotic but rapid.

Three months ago, no one had heard of the EDL. But the organisation has risen to prominence in a spate of civil unrest in which far-right activists, football hooligans and known racists have fought running battles with Asian youths. The leadership insists they are not racist and just want to "peacefully protest against militant Islam".

Yet at EDL events, skinheads have raised Nazi salutes and other EDL supporters have chanted racist slogans such as "I hate Pakis more than you". One protest in Luton in May ended with scores of people attacking Asian businesses, smashing cars and threatening passersby.

Insiders have talked of plans to enlist football fans to march for the cause on the basis that "you need an army for a war".

With the organisation's confidence growing and plans for rallies in Leeds, Manchester and tomorrow in Trafalgar Square, concerned police chiefs and government ministers are asking what the English Defence League is, and what it wants.

It appears to have a hardcore of fewer than 200 in "divisions" in Bristol, Birmingham, Leeds and Luton. But those ranks are swelled by rightwing groups including gangs related to football clubs. Last night close to 500 had said they were considering attending the protest in London.

Its roots are modest, according to its self-proclaimed leader, a 28-year-old carpenter from Luton who goes by the pseudonym Tommy Robinson. He said the germ of the EDL was evident growing up in the Bedfordshire town.

"Everyone mixes until the age of 13 or 14 and then it stops and there are Asian dinner tables at school," he said. "I don't know what it is. Maybe their parents don't want them to mix."

Those separate tables are magnified in Luton today where a large part of the Muslim population lives in a network of streets around the main mosque in Bury Park. The town has had an unhappy connection with Islamist terrorism ever since four suicide bombers set off from there to attack London's transport system and kill 52 people on 7 July 2005.

Before that, there were tensions when a radical Muslim group protested in the town centre after the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Those feelings reached boiling point this March, when a small group of Muslim antiwar protesters held up placards at the homecoming of the 2nd Battalion Royal Anglian Regiment which read "Butchers of Basra" and "Anglian soldiers go to hell".

"The group that protested against the soldiers had been in the town centre since 2001," said Robinson. "In 2004 we held our own protest when we held a banner up saying 'Ban the Luton Taliban'.

"We were groups of friends and family, people who had gone to school with each other. We decided they could not be in the town centre again."

Only a handful of Muslim protesters disrupted the Anglians' homecoming parade, and they were drawn from an small extremist group that had already been ostracised by the mainstream Muslim community. However, it was enough for Robinson and others to set up a group called United People of Luton, and look across the country for support.

"We realised we didn't just want them off the streets of Luton, we wanted them off the streets of Britain," said Robinson.

Using Facebook, they forged links with a Birmingham-based group called British Citizens Against Muslim Extremists and quickly realised there was potential for a national organisation. "When we saw Birmingham's demonstration they were using the same slogans as us: 'We want our country back', 'Terrorists off the streets', 'Extremists out', 'Rule Britannia'. From there the EDL was set up."

Chief superintendent Mark Turner, of Bedfordshire police, said the group's aims were "really quite ill-defined".

That stems from the different interests that have rallied to a cause, which itself was named after the Welsh Defence League, set up by Jeff Marsh, a former football hooligan and convicted criminal.

The movement has been so fragmented that Robinson set up a website to drum up interest in March, while Chris Renton, listed as an "activist" on the BNP's leaked membership list, set up another EDL site. Paul Ray, another far-right activist from Dunstable, near Luton, broadcast video polemics on YouTube.

Ray's broadcasts on his Spirit of St George internet channel include his claim that a "very, very high proportion of the Muslim population is an Islamic extremist" and his description of Luton's Muslim community as "an al-Qaida enclave".

According to Robinson, none of these activities were co-ordinated.

By Ray's own account published on his Lionheart blog on the eve of the 8 August clashes in Birmingham: "The English Defence League that was originally built over many months and eventually set up by myself and others, was hijacked over the last couple of weeks leading up to tomorrow by a bunch of 'pirates' led by Chris Renton."

Around the same time, Trevor Kelway, a Portsmouth-based EDL supporter, became a spokesman for the organisation. In statements and phone interviews, Kelway pushed the line that the EDL was a peaceful, non-racist organisation, even promising that the last Birmingham protest would be "a great day out for all concerned".

When the day arrived EDL supporters were involved in running battles and police made 90 arrests.

Sharon Rowe, assistant chief constable of West Midlands, said the force had tried "everything they could" to liaise with the EDL before the demonstration but had been largely ignored. "If the EDL come back to this city I've got more of an evidence case and intelligence to therefore arrest them a lot earlier, to prevent a breach of the peace."

Fringe groups are rife in the world of the EDL, many of them have been established for far longer, and their beliefs often appear contradictory.

Davy Cooling, 26, a driver from Luton who helps run the EDL, admits to attending BNP events when he was younger, although he said he is not a member of the party.

"A few years ago I attended two or three meetings of the BNP in Luton, but I do not agree with their policy of banning black and other ethnic minoirity groups from membership. It doesn't matter what religion or race you are. Everyone is welcome to the EDL."

What does unite the group is a willingness to fight, said Robinson. "We feel that only people with that mentality will go [to demonstrate]," he said. "That's why it's all lads. Your upper class people won't stand there and get attacked, through fear.

"I am from the mentality that I am not going to back down. It started with what they did to the soldiers, but after that it has been about the two-sided treatment our community get compared to what the Muslim community get from the police and the council. The police hit us with batons and come at them with kid gloves."

This is not a version of events recognised by Bedfordshire police's Mark Turner: "We've had a series of marches where we have seen damage to property, we have seen people being assaulted, we have seen the odd racist attack – and that quite simply can't be tolerated."

Robinson said the group has recruited football supporters from clubs including Chelsea, QPR, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Aston Villa, Swansea and Cardiff.

But its lack of coherence has attracted the interest of those keen to harness the EDL's growing support.

They include Alan Lake, a London-based far-right activist who has advised Swedish nationalists on "countering jihad" and is advising the EDL in an attempt to broaden support with football fans and marshal events more carefully.

"We are catching a baby at the start of gestation," said Lake, who is considering funding the EDL. "We have a problem with numbers. We have an army of bloggers [in the far-right] but that's not going to get things done.

"Football fans are a potential source of support. They are a hoi polloi that gets off their backsides and travels to a city and they are available before and after matches." Observers from anti-fascist groups draw parallels between the EDL anger at Islamists and an earlier generation of football hooligans who supported loyalist paramilitary groups.

"In the 1980s and 1990s these hooligan groups perceived the threat to English masculinity was coming from the IRA's mainland bombing campaign," said Nick Lowles from Searchlight.

"They associated themselves with the loyalist movement and the chant 'no surrender to the IRA' was popular at football grounds around the country. Now many see what they term 'Islamist extremism' as the biggest threat."

Lowles said that while many of the hooligans involved were nationalists and racists, only a handful would associate themselves with fascist, far-right policies. "While it is not a fascist organisation, there are a handful of organised fascists in key positions We are concerned that as the EDL grows it will attract more extremists and fascists."

Lowles warned that the threat posed by the EDL should not be underestimated. "We saw the effects of hooligan incursions into Oldham and Bradford in 2001 and we must ensure that small groups of racists cannot whip up and incite this sort of trouble again.

"The authorities have a responsibility to local communities to protect them from violence. We have witnessed enough of the EDL to know that they want to whip up trouble wherever possible. They must nip this problem in the bud."

The EDL are just a harmless bunch of football fans.

Saw it on telly chatting to an dear about the climate and stuff over a coffee and fair trade cookie

The Prime Minister wants to give constituents the right to sack their MP if they have been proved to be "financially corrupt".

Making his final conference speech before the election Gordon Brown said some MPs "let our country down".

"Never again should it be said of any Member of Parliament that they are in it for what they can get; all of us should be in Parliament for what we can give."And so where there is proven financial corruption by an MP and in cases where wrong-doing has been demonstrated but Parliament fails to act we will give constituents the right to recall their Member of Parliament."

The Prime Minister also announced that if Labour is re-elected, it will hold a referendum on electoral reform.

Among a series of proposals, Mr Brown said he wanted teenage parents currently in council flats on their own to live in "supervised homes".

He said: "I do think it's time to address a problem that for too long has gone unspoken, the number of children having children. For it cannot be right, for a girl of sixteen, to get pregnant, be given the keys to a council flat and be left on her own.

"From now on all 16 and 17 year old parents who get support from the taxpayer will be placed in a network of supervised homes.

"These shared homes will offer not just a roof over their heads, but a new start in life where they learn responsibility and how to raise their children properly."

At the start of the speech, Labour delegates gave the Prime Minister a standing ovation as he said: "We need to fight, not to bow out, not to walk away, not to give in, but to fight, to fight to win for Britain."

He attacked the Tories saying they had made the "wrong choice" on the economy.

"Only one party with pretensions to government made the wrong choice; the Conservative Party of Britain," he said.

And the Prime Minister said bankers had "lost sight" of the values of fairness and responsibility.

"One day last October the executive of a major bank told us that his bank needed only overnight finance but no long term support from the Government," he said."The next day I found that this bank was going under with debts that were among the biggest of any bank, anywhere, at any time in history."

Mr Brown confirmed that the new fiscal responsibility act would mean that: "Every change we make, every single pledge we make, comes with a price tag attached, and a clear plan for how that cost will be met."

The Prime Minister said 50,000 "chaotic families" would be entered into a family intervention project "with clear rules and clear punishments if they don't stick to them."

There will be a new law to force future governments to spend 0.7% of the national income on international development aid.

Anyway who is going to supervise these "chaotic" familys? the same worthless social workers who stood by while children were tortured and killed?

Smeato to stand as a Jury Team candidate at the Glasgow North East by-election.

http://video.stv.tv/bc/news-250909-smeatongrilled/

What a fucking clown.

Tories will never win in Scotland.

I don't think that is very fair, Social Workers get a very raw deal from the press, on the whole they do an amazing job given the limitations imposed on them.

So, Gordon Brown says the Sun's switch of support from Labour to Conservative won't matter, as it's "people who decide elections, not newspapers".

Fine, but considering it's got some stroke considering it's the most circulated newspaper in the UK and many people who read it don't trawl their way through manifestos and instead go with the bullet points featured in tabloid papers such as this, it's not looking good, Gord.

Years ago, Britain's biggest selling daily boasted that "It was the Sun wot won it". In truth, it never was. The paper - which is first and foremost a commercial product - tends to follow its readers' views rather than set them.

So, Gordon Brown says the Sun's switch of support from Labour to Conservative won't matter, as it's "people who decide elections, not newspapers".

Fine, but considering it's got some stroke considering it's the most circulated newspaper in the UK and many people who read it don't trawl their way through manifestos and instead go with the bullet points featured in tabloid papers such as this, it's not looking good, Gord.

I thought it was a foregone conclusion that the Tories are going to win the next general election anyway..?

I don't take much interest in politics, although I really should, but I have a question. Why is it that Gordon Brown seems to be getting assassinated by most of the media while Tony Blair got off scot-free? It seems to me that Brown inherited a mess rather than caused it.

Maybe my question is an overly simplistic way of looking at things.

You might have a point, but Brown was Chancellor during that whole time, so he also helped to contribute to the mess.

Very true but it seems Blair has come out of it smelling of roses while Brown has been buried with this shit. I mean isn't Blair in line for a high ranking role in the EU in the near future?

Our economy wasn't doing well either pre-Iraq or pre-global crisis hit. Brown, quite literally, spent the family silver, or in this case gold, and when the crisis hit we were utterly fucked because the concept of putting something aside for a rainy day is utterly alien to him. The trouble with a house of cards is eventually even the gentlest of breezes can make it come tumbling down.

Pretty much yeah. The more countries that have them the more likely that someone will use them.