BNP’s Griffin humiliated by BBC, but that will probably help not hinder

    It made sense for Nick Griffin to emerge from BBCTV’s Question Time as the victim rather than an aggressor, and he certainly achieved that, although I doubt if that’s the way he planned it.

    Also not emerging with much credit were the unbearably smug trio of mainstream political non-entities Messrs Straw, Huhne and “Baroness” Warsi. Poor Bonnie Greer was hopelessly out of her depth, as usual. Why does the BBC bother re-inviting this woman. She seems perfectly nice, but has nothing to say, apart from a few right-on thoughts lifted straight out of the Guardian. The more Straw, Huhne, Warsi, Chairman Dimbleby and the invited audience combined to humiliate Griffin, the more likely his impact was going to be favourable. Lots of high-falutin Congressional committees in the U.S. always look like unbearable bullies when they line up, say 20 strong, surrounding one hapless testifier. Even if it was Jimmy Hoffa, you couldn’t help feeling sympathy for the little guy.

    I had sat down, armed with my lap-top and tuned into my Twitter page, to say I told you so every time Griffin said something about his political philosophy which showed he clearly came from the left, as fascists do. But I waited in vain. The BBC had obviously other things on its mind than letting the viewers have any idea about the BNP’s (Banque Nationale de Paris) policies.

    Listening to the odious Peter Hain today still going on about how we are all too stupid to be able to listen to the BNP without becoming fascist beasts ourselves is getting a bit hard to handle. The Labour party has failed its core working class vote, by allowing their northern carzees to be over-run by unemployment and immigrants. This means that in the upcoming general election, even hard core Labour strongholds will be lost to the BNP. Silencing Griffin is all about this, not some breach in standards of decency.

    It was interesting to hear that Jack Straw’s father was a Conchie. That will surprise nobody who knows this amoral lawyer, who will happily spout the line that the last person paid him to speak. Listening to him when he was Foreign Secretary justifying the Iraq war was always nauseating. If he had been in opposition he would have said exactly the opposite. But Straw can’t be all bad. Did you notice how he dumped his provincial librarian specs in favour of contact lenses when he had the hots for U.S. Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice?

    Griffin at least had his moment in the spotlight, even if the BBC made sure we only heard about racism. He did manage to get in a word towards the end about the teaching of sex to school children, which will have gone down well with his prospective voters. Griffin thought this shouldn’t happen, presumably because this is a moral matter best left to parents, not agents of the state.

    It was interesting to hear Times columnist David Aaronovitch saying today that Griffin’s thoughts on homosexuals and sex education (Griffin said he was disturbed by men kissing in the street, just like almost everybody else except Aaronovitch) showed how out of touch Griffin was. I’d wager that any politician advocating that sex education should be handled by parents and not schools would find themselves in a huge majority, with the likes of Aaronovitch out in the cold.

    Well done to the BBC for at least allowing us to meet Griffin. It was a pity that we were denied his views on the politics that matter, rather than outdated and boring arguments about holocaust denial and race.

Will the BNP’s Griffin show his leftie credentials on Question Time?

“the BNP is old Labour with racism”

    Hat’s off to the BBC! Finally, it seems to have woken up to its charter obligations to stimulate wide ranging, unfettered debate in Britain.

    Last week the BBC was doing it with Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician who was formally banned from entering Britain for the outrageous reason that others might break the law if he came to our country to speak. BBC Radio 5 Live had an extensive phone-in in which Wilders and assorted Muslims had their say. Excellent! Wilders told the truth about the danger of Islam in a way none of our useless politicians dare.

    This week, we will have the pleasure of hearing Nick Griffin, leader of the British National Party (or is it Banque Nationale de Paris?), on BBC TV’s Question Time. I’m not sure how nauseating Griffin’s performance will be, but it can’t be more sick-making than listening to the likes of Labour’s Peter Hain and Home Secretary Allen “Pat” Johnson saying Griffin should not be allowed to speak. Peter Hain, still a member of CND the last time has was asked, seems to think the BNP is vile and odious. Maybe. But who is he to stand in judgement?

    Doesn’t he belong to a party which recently lauded the traitor Jack Jones as a magnificent trade union leader, who it turns out was paid for spying by the Soviet Union during the height of the cold war? Even Prime Minister Gordon Brown paid tribute to the former TGWU leader after his death. I would describe Jones as vile and odious, and I wouldn’t be surprised if other lefties from the Labour Party weren’t similarly on the take during the 50s, 60s and 70s. But that shouldn’t mean it should be denied a voice, even though Jones clearly was on the side of those who would have destroyed our freedoms. The more we know, the better we can judge who to vote for.

    On Thursday’s Question Time, Griffin will be introduced as a far-right politician, when in fact he is a leftie. His party is against globalisation and free trade. He wants to tax the rich until the pips squeak.  The BNP wants to nationalise utilities, protect domestic industries, and retain the NHS. The BNP’s manifesto is a wish list of stuff most of which even the Liberal Democrats would agree with. It will be interesting to hear him speak on Thursday to see if my belief that the BNP is a socialist offshoot is true. Let’s face it, the Fascist Party in the 30s was led by ex-Labour’s Moseley.

    As former Tory bigwig Norman Tebbit put it so memorably; “the BNP is old Labour with racism”. 

Cameron Speech Was Clever, Emotional And Impressive

But He Fails My Test On Europe, Climate Change, NHS and Tax

One Failure Might Be Negotiable, But 4 Means “Thumbs Down”

I won’t be voting for a party that is afraid to stand up for solid, Conservative principles. Lucky old UKIP, I say.

    I’ve been agonising over whether to swallow my principles and vote Tory at the next general election. Yes, I know that a vote for UKIP or some other minor party is really a waste, but I find it difficult to reconcile my urge to see Gordon Brown and the Labour Party humiliated to such a degree that not only will they be crushed at the polls, they will do so badly as to prevent them returning to mis-govern us for at least another generation, with my unwillingness to stomach some of the worst, hand-wringingly wet, counter-productive drivel on offer from Tory party leader David Cameron.

    Cameron started off on the wrong foot four years ago with me when on his first interview with the Today programme, he talked about how he wanted to detoxify the Tory brand. “Brand! The Tory party is not a brand,” I shouted at the radio. After a year of this I quit the party, but that still doesn’t mean that I can’t vote Conservative at the next election, even though I voted UKIP in the Europeans.

    So I paid close attention to Cameron’s speech to the Tories in Manchester. Yes, it was a splendid, powerful, erudite speech in many ways. I loved his taunting of Labour with the cry that the Tories will have to solve Britain’s poverty problem. I was moved by his words about his poor son Ivan. His views on the need for a smaller state impressed me. I was entranced by his closing peroration about the sort of country Britain could be, shorn of the incompetent, arrogant clip-board Nazis of Labour.

    But there were major reasons why Cameron’s speech left me less than impressed. Firstly, his few words on global warming reminded me that he has fallen totally for the case presented by warmers like Zac Goldsmith that human activity is killing the planet. If he can’t be bothered to brief himself on something so important, why should I trust him on other things? The Tories will impose taxes on us in the name of climate change that will destroy our economy, and have no impact on the weather.

    Secondly, his words on Europe were disappointing, and left me with the impression that Cameron always weighs his words for impact, while making sure he is not committed to something that might be a bit difficult. So he railed against the Labour party for denying us the referendum on the Lisbon treaty, but balked at doing something about it that might cause trouble. He should have simply said that Britain’s ratification of the Lisbon Treaty by a Parliamentary vote fell short of the promise made to the British people at the last general election, so is therefore legally and politically invalid. Britain can only ratify Lisbon by a vote by the people in a referendum, and he should have announced his intention to do that as soon as he wins the general election.

    Thirdly, his views on the National Health Service leave me cold, although I realise that this is a difficult issue for the Tories because of the Labour lying machine, which is more interested in grandstanding for votes, than seeking the best way to deliver health care to the British. Cameron has milked the fact that he has been a serial user of the NHS, and can’t wait to tell us how much he loves it. But I want to hear at least hints of reform intentions, so that this failing, monolithic, Stalinist edifice can be pointed in a new direction.

    Some of the speeches at the conference were interesting. Shadow education’s Michael Gove was very impressive with his ideas about education vouchers and how he will set the system free with parents licensed to set up new schools without interference from socialist bureaucracies. Unfortunately, the Tories denial of the efficacy of grammar schools in liberating working class children was another reason I quit the party.

    George Osborne made the best of a difficult speech on how the Tories will tackle the massive deficit. But his refusal to accept that low taxes might spur the economy to recovery and eventually provide higher revenues to tame the deficit, was annoying, although I gather from rumours in the current Spectator magazine that there is a tax-cutting agenda being worked on in the background.

    The most crass moment came from Chris Gayling, and it wasn’t his gaffe over the appointment of General Sir Richard Dannatt. Grayling’s claim that putting higher taxes on alcohol would solve the problem of drunken violence, made him sound like some 50s Scandinavian Sandelista. Please, Grayling, don’t make the rest of us pay more for something which won’t change behaviour anyway. And can you think of anything that is less Tory than this idea?

    But it was William Hague who finally made my mind up for me. Now Hague has been a big favourite of mine. He is very funny, speaks superbly well, and used to have an agreeable, right of centre view of the world. Hague has been lobotomised though. Listening to his performance on BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions Hague had been stripped of personality so as not to frighten the horses. He didn’t even dare criticise the ridiculous award of the Nobel Peace Prize to U.S. President Barack Obama. (I found out this morning that the nominations for the award closed in February, which meant that Obama had been in office for less then 3 weeks when he was given the award). Hague also followed the feeble party line on climate change.

    I won’t be voting for a party that is afraid to stand up for solid, Conservative principles. Lucky old UKIP, I say.