Talking Bollocks

Ill Informed Ranting

I listened to Any Questions last week with the BNP leader Nick Griffin. I’d previously blogged about this and a friend email me to say that she thought that, contrary to my opinion, some people were too stupid to be exposed to Griffin’s sort of talk.

I’d respond that, while it’s true that stupid people are more susceptible to the ill informed rantings of racists (IIROR) they ar also more susceptible to the ill informed rantings of non-racists.

And good grief there was a lot of ill informed ranting on both sides in last week’s Question Time. It was a bun fight as I had predicted. Nobody let Nick Griffin finish a sentence. Everyone condemned him before he had a chance to condemn himself. I thought it was a missed opportunity to let the bloke show himself for what he was.

Someone asked him why he visited a Ku Klux Klan leader in America and he started to explain and said that this particular group were “almost totally non-violent” which I thought was a little gem but nobody was able to pull him up on this as no sooner had he uttered the words than the other panellists were asking him other questions and deriding his smile and they never actually picked up on this “almost totally..”.

It frustrates me that the self riotous lefties cannot bare for anyone to hear their opponents opinions. It’s as if they have no confidence in their own argument or opinions.

Bonnie Greer is a black American cultural commentator who usually appears on Newsnight reviewing films or theatre. She sat to Griffin’s left and he seemed constantly to be turning to her for approval.

Griffin made the point that everyone dismisses the idea that Britain has an “indigenous” people but they would not dare deny that Australian Aboriginals or Soux Indians are indigenous. I usually find Ms. Greer intelligent but last Thursday night she seemed determined to talk as much bollocks as everyone else. Pursuant to this she claimed that Britain does not have an indigenous population because it had an ice age! – Amazing.

I think much of the world had an ice age and if you’re going to claim that ice killed everyone off and so people had to immigrate into Britain then you could argue that for everyone in the world. There is even a respectable theory that organic compounds arrived on earth via comet debris and so you could argue that there are no indigenous people on Earth – If you want to be talking bollocks.

Chris Huhne, Sayeeda Warsi, Jack Straw, David Dimbleby, Nick Griffin and Bonnie Greer

Jack Straw sat to Dimbleby’s right. I quite respect Mr Straw and he normally talks sense but he too joined in with the spirit of the evening. He said that he came from a line of immigrants of Jewish origin and during World War 2 all ethnic groups in Britain had pulled together and fought off the Hun. This is the sort of thing we British like, a mongrel breed that’s pulls together in a pinch.

However, Griffin popped his balloon quite quickly by pointing out that Straw’s dad had been a conscientious objector during the war whereas Griffin’s dad had been in the Royal Airforce.

Straw bemoaned Griffin’s anti-semitism but later, when Griffin was trying to say that he wanted to support the “indigenous” people of Britain and that colour was not important, Straw kept shouting “you mean white, you mean white”. Straw is as white as Griffin on my TV so he can’t claim to be discriminated against by Griffin just because he’s a Jew and then accuse Griffin of limiting indigenous people of Britain to whites.

People become idiots when it comes to racism and think it means hating black people. The point is that Griffin was telling the truth when he said that colour is not important. Griffin hates Poles as well as Indians. Czechs as well as Nigerians. But he was not given time to say so as the angry mob just kept yelling that he hated blacks.

One black guy from the audience said that he was born in England, it was the only country he knew and he loved this country. He then asked Griffin where he should go and Griffin said that he was quite happy for the guy to stay in England. This answer seemed to disappoint everyone present.

It was interesting that after spending 90% of the program on baiting Griffin they then turned to other questions and some black guy from the audience complained that New Labour had lost control of immigration. Straw then spouted some platitudes about implementing a points system before  Conservative MP  Sayeeda Warsi joined in the criticism of New Labour on immigration.

I guess this was encouraging in a way. That, though there was real concern about the numbers of people immigrating to the UK, nobody was drawn to be sympathetic to Griffin or to blame the immigrants themselves.

The next question was about a gay pop singer who had died in Spain and how a newspaper had written something..not sure what….I think it was supposed to be insulting to gay people. The question was about free speech in the news papers.

After not letting Griffen finnish a single sentence the hypocrites then pontificated in favour of the freedom of the press to print whatever they like.

The evening was spent trying to put words in Griffin’s mouth and then getting angry when he refused to agree with them. The whole thing was a farce.

A more evenly argued review of the program than this one was published in The Independent the next day.