General politics discussion thread

[Enter Raven]

Was anyone really hoping they would all just stop, and then every time Griffin tried to say something they'd say "you're a dousche", every time, cut him straight off.

 

Fromy where I was sitting, the Tory was the only one that came off respectably, and that was more due to a good ability for public speaking than anything else. Poor selection of panel members, where were the aggressive rabble raisers all sat poised to tear him apart?

[nfc90210]

Are you serious? The nervous laugh he did throughout the show was just showing how mcuh he was shitting himself

 

I actually thought that was a symptom of nervous excitement more than anything else.

[bobbins]

Have to say I loved Jack Straw absolutely shitting himself the entire hour, he could barely calm himself down to waffle out an answer most of the time.

 

A classic moment was when Nick Griffin was referring to his visit to Libya and telling Gaddafi to stop funding the IRA

 

Straw's response after a moment of silence - "......well you were trying to get him to fund you instead!!!!"

 

Nice one Jack

That wasn't a joke. That was genuinely what Griffin was doing there. It took Straw to point that out, nobody else would have done it.

 

Bobbins how do you figure Jack Straw came of best of the main 3 I thought Huhne won it but was a shiet showing alround.. Warsi trying to hide her seeming homophobia by skirting around erm what people can and cant do was hilarious.

 

I cant take jack Straw seriously as he looks like the Demon Head Master, and he doesnt have a grip on his own constituency according to the people that live there.

 

He got called on Immgration on QT and bottled it trying to attack the BNP and deflect the issue.. rather than answer the question. Ffs even Huhne tried to blame the Tories for the emss and they havent been in power since 1997.. Why can they just say we fucked up, this is how we will fix it.. Its not hard.. I think a bit of honest from the main parties wouldnt go a miss and may go someway to repairing the mistrust in politics..

 

 

A few we fucked it up admissions would be a start

Well I can't believe that I'm defending Jack Straw but I was listening to what he said rather than thinking that he looked like the Demon Headmaster. As for immigration, you seem to want simple answers to very complex questions. Apologise and fix it, isn't really a nuanced position. He was giving honest answers about what they're trying to do to solve problems linked to immigration. It will never be a perfect situation, you just have to work to come up with ways of making it as fair as possible.

[nfc90210]

Also, going off-topic, Bonnie Greer turns sixty-one next month. She looks well on it.

[SpursRiot2012]

That Warsi is definatly fuckable

[PowerButchi]

Also, going off-topic, Bonnie Greer turns sixty-one next month. She looks well on it.

 

Really? I wouldn't chuck one up her.

[patiirc]

Well I can't believe that I'm defending Jack Straw but I was listening to what he said rather than thinking that he looked like the Demon Headmaster. As for immigration, you seem to want simple answers to very complex questions. Apologise and fix it, isn't really a nuanced position. He was giving honest answers about what they're trying to do to solve problems linked to immigration. It will never be a perfect situation, you just have to work to come up with ways of making it as fair as possible.

 

Hey I * always* to what the Demon Headmaster says, the swirly eyes thing has got it going on.

 

 

Seriously though.. Yes, there are very complex and multiple, multiple issues re immgration. To stop it incorporating every aspect of everything, though it may be best to start with something simple, just so that there is at least a common starting point. Rather than now where by e everything is a quick fix, keen jerk or is waffle or conjecture without much planning.

 

 

Labour adopt the Australian sytem re points for immigration. Okay has that solved the issue? No? why not? Has anything Labour has done including combined UK Border taskforce or whatever its called solve the issue? No.. Has fining lorry drivers for bringing illegal immigrants over despite not knowing they are stowed away solved the problem, No? and so on.

 

 

Is there a problem? I dont really think so. The issue has been distorted beyond all kinds of normalcy by political manouvering and getting one over on the other parties, the media, pandering to the media for sound bites and gross misrepresentation of the situation.

 

 

Yes there are parts of the UK that have become ghettoised to whatever ethnic mix and there are places I suspect where English isnt the first language. So What?, Hows that different to say the US where Spanish is taking a foothold in many areas and South American/Cuban ghettos are predominate?

 

What people seem to be upset with is that its all about the effect on them and their percieved way of life. We are Brits dont you know and therefore things should be done properly. Iam sorry, afaik, The UK/Britain/whatever has depended on skilled migrants for a very long time. Appeals for help rebuilding to 'The Empire' after WW2 is just one example of how we as a comibnation of nations have reached out and asked for help.

 

 

This time though, we are not asking for help, instead it appears that the Eastern Europeans and Iraqis and so on are coming over to take 'our' jobs threaten 'our' way of life and threaten everything that is known. Its bollocks of course., There are jobs, its just attitudes have changed and now some types of work is considered beneath ordinary Brits. Cleaning, Fruit picking etc.. So the wages may be crap, its a job irrespective. There was a Bbc News programme recently where some fruit pickers, who used to have what was a Busman's Holiday each summer went back to the farm they used to pick on. The people now picking were all Poles. It could be claimed minimum wage, oh no poor them!... Its phsyical work, traditionally shit paid.. However, it gets people fit active and serves a purpose. It also looked like it could have been a good laugh. Those returning to visit admitted it was as much and though modern methods had changed the way fruit is harvested it still was a lot of fun with comeradery etc.

 

Me point is its considered to be beneath some people to work like that; so they dont. People can harp on about benefit scroungers and dossers ect but these too have always been about.

 

So what exactly is the issue? People doing jobs no one else seemingly wants to do? A loss of national identity (always going to happpen to some extent with the world becoming smaller through tech etc)? The loss of language? Langauge will evolves and people from even the turn of the 1900s wouldnt recognise English as it is as meanings are changed, grammar changes and words change. The Blade Runner mash up of different languages could be considered where things are heading ultimately.

 

 

The thing is its change people fear.. Britain, UK whatever is no longer the force it thinks or ever thought it was. We as a nation have to accept we are not going to be among the global forerunners and that we do need help and that things will change things happen and life goes on. Immigration . allowed or illegal is going to be a part of this come what may. A straight forward and simple start point may help cut through all of the bullshit and misnomas and actually change peoples perceptions in the long run, instead of 'Holy shit! they are all immigrants and they dont speak english! Look! they want all their customs! What about my way of life? We will be ruined!'.. and so on that we are force fed as being the view in the interim.

 

A simple start yes, plain speaking no game playing cutting through all the bullshit and just saying how it is will be a start. an apology for all the dressed up and insome cases complete crap policys changes and behaviour of our politics and politicians would be a fine start and could help things in the long run.

 

 

AS a side note, Baroness Warsi really not with this gay thing http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-5489.html

[bobbins]

If I understand you correctly, your problem is not with any aspect of immigration, but with the general public's irrational media-fuelled fears of immigration. I really don't see what amount of "plain-speaking" from leading politicians can solve that problem.

[tiger_rick]

I was expecting Straw to make a tit of himself on immigration after the butchered quote Harry posted before the show but I don't think he did. He's definitely in denial if he genuinely thinks fears about immigration haven't increased BNP support but what he said about it was right. Stuff like putting a cap on population is impossible.

 

It was a good show. Griffin made an absolute tit of himself. He was shown up totally as a lying bastard who cannot back up any of the things he spews. I thought Waasi was the best guest. She conducted herself well, made good counter arguments and didn't have her head in the sand about key issues.

 

The only fear I have is how large the proportion of people who, like Harry, somehow feel that Griffin came off well on the show is. All we've heard from the media in the last few days is that British people are intelligent enough to make their own minds up about the BNP. I don't think that is true for a lot of people.

[Yoghurt]

I was expecting Straw to make a tit of himself on immigration after the butchered quote Harry posted before the show but I don't think he did. He's definitely in denial if he genuinely thinks fears about immigration haven't increased BNP support but what he said about it was right. Stuff like putting a cap on population is impossible.

 

It was a good show. Griffin made an absolute tit of himself. He was shown up totally as a lying bastard who cannot back up any of the things he spews. I thought Waasi was the best guest. She conducted herself well, made good counter arguments and didn't have her head in the sand about key issues.

 

The only fear I have is how large the proportion of people who, like Harry, somehow feel that Griffin came off well on the show is. All we've heard from the media in the last few days is that British people are intelligent enough to make their own minds up about the BNP. I don't think that is true for a lot of people.

 

Bingo, the general media has sorely overestimated the general intelligence of the native populace. The belief Griffin came off well according to some people in spite of reality is utterly indicative of their support no matter what, and their ill reasoning isn't going to be changed by logic nor fact.

Edited October 23, 2009 by Yoghurt

[ReturnOfTheMack]

Last night, as Bonnie Greer prepared to enter the electric atmosphere of the BBC Question Time studio, she came face to face with Nick Griffin for the first time.

 

"It was the strangest thing because as I came out of my dressing room prepared for combat, it was as if he'd been waiting for me in the corridor," she says.

 

"I was the last to emerge and when he saw me, he turned and smiled his greasy smile and clumsily half extended a hand. I ignored it and thought to myself: what are you about? Are you forgetting I'm black? Are you forgetting you called me a black history fabricator? Are you trying to show me you aren't racist?"

 

But the off-camera behaviour of the leader of the far-right British National Party towards Greer, a black Chicago-born writer who became a British citizen 11 years ago, was to become even more bizarrely ingratiating as they entered the studio.

 

"We were seated next to each other and as we were having our microphones attached, he leaned towards me like I was his new best friend and tried to make small talk. "Bonnie, how many times have you been on?" he asked. "Bonnie, do you find it scary?" I looked him straight in the eye. "No," I replied sharply, "but you might."

 

Speaking exclusively to the Evening Standard immediately after filming at Television Centre in west London, Greer, 60, describes - over a stiff vodka - the ordeal of sitting next to Griffin as "probably the weirdest and most creepy experience of my life".

 

"I spent the entire night with my back turned to him. At one point, I had to restrain myself from slapping him. But it was worth it," she insists, "because he was totally trounced. I had thought we'd face a formidable orator, somebody who knew his facts and had his ducks in a row but the guy was a mess!

 

"From the moment the audience began shooting questions, it was a case of the Emperor's new clothes. He was completely exposed as an evasive liar who couldn't even stand up his own quotes and looked like a buffoon."

 

The other panellists - Justice Secretary Jack Straw, shadow minister for community cohesion Sayeda Warsi, and Lib Dem home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne - came down on him like a ton of bricks, she says.

 

"They were formidably prepared with quotes and statistics, and [host] David Dimbleby was excellent at holding him to account. I don't know if the cameras picked this up but Griffin was trembling and shaking like a leaf.

 

"There was a pivotal moment in the show when Dimbleby pressed him on whether he was still a Holocaust denier and he just looked totally bereft. For a couple of seconds there was a deafening silence. It was an amazing moment. You could see the panel thinking, 'He's done for'.

 

"He had climbed in the ring with some heavyweights and in all honesty, he got slapped around. The audience and the panel took him down time after time. It was a blood sport. He looked totally out of his depth. I was shocked by how ill-prepared he was. He didn't seem to have credible answers to anything."

 

Before the show there were those who expressed concerns as to whether this elegant but softly-spoken intellectual would be robust enough to take on Griffin.

 

As the only non-politician on the panel, her job would be to lift the debate above party politics, but she'd need to be less the lofty academic and more the voice of the people.

 

Outside the BBC complex, hundreds of screaming anti-fascist protesters were engaged in running battles with the police because they believed Griffin - an MEP whose party won six per cent of the vote in the last European elections - should not have been invited.

 

At stake was the future credibility and popularity of the BNP and its leader who would no doubt try and present a sanitised version of himself and his party.

 

Was she satisfied with her performance?

 

During the show, which focused on making Griffin account for his pernicious views on subjects ranging from immigration to the Holocaust to homophobia, Greer was well received but came across more as a bemused lecturer than the feisty combative some had hoped for.

 

For example, when Griffin was asked to explain how the BNP could justify using Winston Churchill as its symbol, Bonnie pointed out that Churchill's American mother was rumoured to have Mohawk blood and that he could not have joined Griffin's "all-white" party.

 

Later she scolded Griffin for calling David Duke's Ku Klux Klan a "non-violent organisation" and said he was talking "BS".

 

And she invited him to the British Museum for a lesson to understand once and for all that there is no such thing as "the indigenous English people".

 

But it took a black audience member to really raise the roof when he told Griffin: "You're a disgrace. The vast majority of this audience find what you stand for to be completely disgusting."

 

Why was she not more strident in her attacks on him? "I didn't need to, because others like Jack Straw waded in so heavily. I felt my job was to subtly lampoon him, toy with him, expose the idiocy of his ideas.

 

"I didn't want to come across as the angry, screaming black woman pointing my finger and hollering because that's how people like Griffin and his supporters view black women. I saw us as a team - it wasn't an ego thing, wasn't as if I had to take him down all on my own."

 

There was a touching moment, she says, just before they started recording when Sayeda Warsi ran over to her and said: "Are you okay sitting next to Griffin?" "I said: 'I'm from Chicago, I'm not scared of this guy!' And we just hugged spontaneously. We were like two prize-fighters going into the ring to do battle."

 

Was it a tough choice to appear alongside Griffin on the show? "When I was asked I deliberated for days. As someone who grew up in America and who is more cultural than political, I wasn't sure what I'd bring to the table. But then I realised, I'm the only one on the panel who has chosen to come to this country.

 

"I chose to come here because I saw it as a country of decent, fair people. But also because this country gave my father, Ben Greer, who was a black sharecropper from Mississippi, his first decent experience of white people he'd ever had.

 

"He came here during the war, in a blacks-only unit as part of General Patton's army and was involved in the second wave of D-Day landings, and later he always spoke about how well the white working-class Brits had treated him, the very people who today are said to be turning to the BNP.

 

"My daddy always said that sunlight is the best disinfectant. So I decided to come for him, and also for my deceased white English mother-in-law, Joan Hutchins, who had never met a black person before she met me, and who welcomed me into her heart."

 

The day had begun with top-secret calls from Television Centre to Greer and the other panellists that they should be ready and dressed to go "any moment" and that cars would be dispatched to pick them up with "just 15 minutes notice".

 

Greer picked her outfit carefully: a demure dark top and jacket and on her wrist, a colourful African bead bracelet. "I was wearing the colours of Jamaica and of Africa," she laughs. "A touch of ethnic."

 

They were provided police contact numbers - and in Griffin's case a police escort - in case they had to change their route at the last moment.

 

At 6pm, with hundreds of protesters engaged in running skirmishes with the police out front, they were quietly smuggled in through a back entrance.

 

"Usually we all mingle in the green room before the show but there was no mingling this time and we all had our own private green rooms. The show itself was tense, like no Question Time I've ever experienced.

 

"To me, the stars though, were the audience. It was a typical London multicultural audience and they were just brilliant in the way they held Griffin to account. It made my job easy."

 

Does she think that the BNP membership would swell, despite Griffin's poor showing? "No, I think that young people watching the show who might have been tempted to join the BNP will think again after seeing his dismal performance.

 

"Having him on and holding him to account on such a public forum is like getting to interrogate the Wizard of Oz - he's been built up and up, but then you find he's just a windbag and there's nothing there."

 

At the end, she laughs ruefully, Griffin turned to her and gave her his business card. "Bizarre - I can't even begin to understand why."

 

She shrugs. "Afterwards, there is usually a communal supper for all the panellists. But not this time. Nobody could bring themselves to break bread with Nick Griffin."

 

Credit: Londonstandard.co.uk

 

Seems the people in the studio also thought he was bricking it.

Edited October 23, 2009 by Darkstar

[Enter Raven]

The only way to stop people voting BNP is to offer another option (like UKIP) that aren't nutbag fundamentalists but also aren't the big three. I wouldn't vote UKIP because they want to build fossil fuel plants everywhere and take down wind farms but you see the point I'm getting at.

[David]

The only fear I have is how large the proportion of people who, like Harry, somehow feel that Griffin came off well on the show is. All we've heard from the media in the last few days is that British people are intelligent enough to make their own minds up about the BNP. I don't think that is true for a lot of people.

 

What I mean when I say that Griffin came off well is that he wasn't shown up in a way that will change the minds of those that vote him or his councillors in at local elections up and down the country.

 

People are voting for him because they are most likely frightened and/or concerned by various issues such as immigration, which they feel the current Government isn't doing anything to keep tabs on.

 

I have to be honest, I don't think there is a major problem yet, but there definately has to be some sort of system put in place for the future, such as the Australian points system (which has been put into place).

 

However, I like to keep tabs on whats going on by watching political television shows and reading up on whats happening.

 

Granted, i'm more concerned by politics north of the border, but I keep up reasonably well with things down south too.

 

The problem with the show for me is this;

 

People who are voting for Griffins mob are having their opinions formed by what they read in the tabloid papers, and by what they are seeing on shows such as Border Patrol on Sky.

 

The majority of them aren't reading reputable newspapers or watching shows like QT on a regular basis, and with the state of politics in the UK I can't say that I really blame them.

 

Now, these BNP voters would have sat down last night to watch Griffin be challenged by questions put to him by what can be described as mainly black or asian audience members, with a few middle to upper class sounding whites thrown in as well.

 

These are the people that the people who vote for the BNP are complaining about.

 

Why not have some working class whites in there, maybe even some who voted for the BNP as a "protest vote", to put the questions to Griffin?

 

It would maybe have done the people at home a bit of good to see people "just like them" taking part, picking holes in Griffins arguments.

 

As it was, i've listened to a few radio phone-ins and the like, and there has been a fair amount of people mentioning words like "bullying, one-sided, unfair treatment," and the like.

 

I even heard one caller comparing Griffin to Joan of fucking Arc!

 

I didn't think it was wise to have Griffin shot down by the very people that some of his voters (disillusioned, not racist) feel alienated from.

 

In some ways, all it will have done is confirmed their doubts.

 

Also, the show scored over 7 million viewers. Thats three times more than their highest rating ever.

 

I'll be the first to suggest that Griffin should guest host Raw!

Edited October 23, 2009 by hardcore_harry

[Enter Raven]

I didn't think it was wise to have Griffin shot down by the very people that some of his voters (disillusioned, not racist) feel alienated from.

I watched it and to be fair, on the whole, the audience ask questions, if it's a decent or current question the panel then discuss it. The combination of the host and the other panel members were the ones who made Griffin look like a moron. The black dude in the front row who went on a rant pretty early came off like a moron himself to be honest. Griffin was incapable of answering nearly any direct question regardless of the creed of the individual asking.

 

Ultimately Griffin's getting a whole load of press and attention because Labour sent a personal invite to every country with a poor economy to send their entire population to England, and now BNP look like the apex of the forces opposing that motion. They're not, they're idiots. If you want immigration to improve, you may as well vote Tory and cut your losses on the stuff they don't do right, which everyone will.

Edited October 23, 2009 by Enter Raven

[ColinBollocks]

Watching it just now.

 

While I think it is the right thing to have partys like the BNP on Question Time (Free speech being a big factor and the ability to educate those that think the BNP are in the right). But it sometimes feels like a massive set-up to bully Griffin (some say he deserves it). In saying that Griffin has hurt himself, as he's denying things he's said to his members.