BNP on Question Time

I think in the US it's more a case of Fascist and Nazi being the worst things you can say about somebody. Commie is pretty bad too. Commie fascist muslim trumps everything.

C A Jones Its not really confusing, although I, too, didn't understand. Fascism - extreme right wing; Communist - extreme left wing. The difference is neglible. Both ideologies need to use force and fear to control the people. There are always yes-men to dob everyone in. Petty rivalries can be resolved by a slight hint of dissention to the authorities. Once, we English believed ourselves above this shit - now people think its clever. Its not.

"Both ideologies need to use force and fear to control the people." That's nothing to do with extremism. All governments need to use force and fear - amongst other things - to control people. The vast majority of the population of the UK want a government that does this - to a lesser or greater extent. People who live in Somalia - a country where the government is entirely unable to control people - are often very keen to move to countries where the government can do so. The question is whether the extent of the governments control and its methods of imposing it are morally right. In the case of dictatorships (fascist or communist) it definitely isn't. It a democracy, everyone can argue about it.

I'm not sure you are right about the question being 'whether the extent of the governments control and its methods of imposing it are morally right', Bukh. In Thailand many of the Right claim that the one man one vote form of Democracy leads to a 'tyranny of the majority' and hence PAD and its call for New Politics. Maybe the real question is... do the ends justify the means? Can you have a benevolent dictatorship? Can you have a manevolent democracy?

As for Obama the Right can't call him a 'nigger' so they call him a 'socialist' or anything else they think might appeal to large enough sections of biggots to help pressure him and his administration. I welcome the foresight of the people who realised just how much Obama would need the Nobel Peace prize and anticipated it would help highlight exactly who Obama's real enemies were!

"I'm not sure you are right about the question being 'whether the extent of the government's control and its methods of imposing it are morally right', Bukh." Well, I might add 'and/or practically useful'. My point is that there's no point having a government if it doesn't have any control at all. So, for example, I can't imagine many people in the UK would support a government whose attitude to terrorism was 'please carry on with your terrorism if you feel like it'. So there's both moral and practical arguments about how far you restrict everyone's freedoms to prevent some people doing really bad things. "Maybe the real question is... do the ends justify the means? Can you have a benevolent dictatorship? Can you have a manevolent democracy?" You certainly can have malevolent people elected in a democracy. Then the question is whether the other bits of the democracy - judiciary, wider civil society - are strong enough for it to remain a democracy. You can have a well intentioned dictatorship. You can have a 'not as bad as the most likely alternative' dictorship. I don't think you can have a benevolent dictatorship in the long term.

C A Jones: - Obama is ok, so far. I don't believe his colour is anything to do with his popularity. Its his policies. How many times have we British voted people in on account of their policies only to see them do absolutely nothing? B-)

I thought you gave a very good reply to my post Bukh. I think you hit the nail on the head with 'the question is whether the other bits of the democracy - judiciary, wider civil society - are strong enough for it to remain a democracy'. In my opinion these other 'bits' are never strong enough to oppose a determined challenge from the 'elite' who actually really run things and the best that you can hope for is that the 'elite' are content enough with the status quo to find ways to get what they want without displaying blatent disregard for the wishes of the people. As for Griffin, I notice a recent poll claims that over 20% of those polled said they would consider voting BNP which suggests to me that the BBC probably did choose an audience which reflected the views the government wished to be reinforced... which is one of the ways that 'democracy' uses to point people in the direction it wishes them to go ;O) http://news.aol.co.uk/one-in-five-would-back-bnp/article/200910231843572...

Obama is a dreamer and people like dreamers... until it becomes (or seems) obvious that the dreams are only that. If you believe the Bible then you see that Christ was very popular with large sections of the public until the 'staus quo' (represented by the Romans but in reality the Jewish Royalists and the religious leaders) used its power. Then we see that the people become so disillusioned with Christ that they chose to free a thief and murderer (Barabbas) rather than Christ. The fact that Obama is black simply makes it harder for his detractors to attack him personally but, because he is a dreamer, they only need to suceed in destroying faith in his 'vision' to defeat him!

C A Jones You are a clever person, M. The reason we get debate is so that we feel our views are being expressed and represented. The same with political satire. A sop to the masses as no-one in power actually gives a toss and nothing changes.

I think free speech has to be an absolute. Autonomy only has a valid limiting principle when it directly harms the autonomy of another. I agree with Ayn Rand that racism "is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism...Even if it were proved -- which it is not -- that the incidence of men of potentially superior brain power is greater among the members of certain races than among the members of others, it would still tell us nothing about any given individual and it would be irrelevant to one's judgment of him. A genius is a genius, regardless of the number of morons who belong to the same race -- and a moron is a moron, regardless of the number of geniuses who share his racial origin. " Rand opposed racism. However, she did not let this compromise her belief in individual freedom. She believed all people, regardless of race had the same freedoms. However a man's freedom could not, for example encroach in the freedom of a small businessman who to employ people only of a certain race. In other words, Rand opposed racism because it is illogical but she acknowledged the freedom of the individual to be racist. The BNP would never have appeared on QT if it hadn't been for NuLabs open door policy of the past decade which has alienated and disenfranchised poor, white communities. They had to be invited to QT because they have elected MEPs and a London Assembly member. For me, as a second generation cape-coloured, who grew up in a well-integrated environment of tolerance and opportunity, the frightening rise of racism is more due to Labour than the BNP. There will always be a neo-nazi lunatic fringe but don’t give them reasons for people to vote for them. jude

I'm not sure I can follow the logic of your post, Jude. Surely the BNP LIKE morons - they recruit enough! Personally, I'm not that convinced that 'superior brain power' is neccessarily a good thing anyway. Surely we've listened to the 'brainy' and they have consistently led us is wrong directions and then simply used their brain power to convince us that it wasn't their fault! Give me people who are right not people who are bright. I was talking with a Right-wing American recently who was trying to tell me that Al Gore was not very bright... I was very tempted to ask if he thought that Bush was but instead I pointed out that Gore had been right about Global Warming and right that the US should not attack Iraq after 9/11 but rather concentrate on finishing what it had started in Afghanistan. I can't say whether Al Gore is bright or not but I can say that Bush and all the bright people he employed in his administration were quite simply WRONG. Or they were bright enough to realise that lying was the best way to proceed! Talking about Rightwing lying... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-e-burns/fox-news-is-the-story-wit_b_3...

C A Jones Hey Jude! (sorry) I agree with everything you say.

Oops, sorry Carole, edited and so jumped to the bottom of the thread. I presumed when you said that you agreed with everything Jude said that you included the inference that Jude agreed with Ms Rand... "She believed all people, regardless of race had the same freedoms." Hence my question - You really believe that all people, regardless of race, have the same freedoms, Miss Jones? We must live in different worlds. I believe that all people, regardless of race, religion or richness, SHOULD have the same freedoms! To be honest I don't agree that freedom of speech should be absolute either. I don't believe that hatred, bile and bigotry should be consider to be speech! So long as it is then the bad and the mad will continue to sow their seeds of deception and destruction. In Thailand a media mogul was allowed to use his TV (ASTV) outlet to spread hate and lies because it was useful to the 'elite' who wanted to bring down the democratically elected government. The tactic worked but resulted in terrible rift which has left Thailand on the brink ever since. The most ironic aspect of this freedom of speech is that a young woman was recently sentenced to 18 years in prison for Lese Majesty (insulting the Royal Family). So it's not what you say but who you say it about that makes the difference. Meanwhile Sondi L the mogul whose lies, smears and hatred caused so much division has been sentenced (yet again) to 2 years imprisonment for defamation... yet he has always, somehow, avoided going to prison. Last I heard he was still free even though he had promised that he would be happy to go to jail if he was allowed a month in which to appeal - that was a couple of months ago and he has been voted leader of the new political arm of PAD in the meantime (PAD is essentially a pressure group but has recently decided to chance its arm in the political arena).

Does free speech stop at yelling fire in a crowded theater? On some of these other points, the economic model that included a middle/working class is gone so America is in a post-industrial identity crisis. When people can run their lives and support their families then government control isn’t necessary, the economy just runs and you have a more passive maintenance mode type of government, per Jefferson. I agree that Obama is a dreamer, but people respond to hope and positive messages over the longer term than hatred and the hunt for boogymen, or even concrete results. This is why Jesus the Nazarene was successful at that time, and there were scores of these preacher/messiahs. He was actually executed for tax sedition, despite his insistence that followers should stay at home (stop following him around on tour) and render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. This has nothing to do with magic, the son of god scenario, or any of these other allegories used by writers to make organized religion. Extremists emerge to rebuild a disappeared floor as happened in the Weimar Republic. I’m seeing confederate flags and stickers now and live in the North where you never saw this pre-Obama. We have these angry right wing tea parties and racial tensions have increased noticeably. We shipped the middle/working class economy overseas, gave illegal workers the remaining jobs below the standard of living, and primarily manufacture financial speculation and entertainment now so if (or when) the dollar collapses it wouldn’t be that surprising to see some outwardly fascist figure appear here at the national level.

C A Jones Miss Jones. No I don't think everyone has the same freedoms nor deserves them either. Its all very well to claim all men are equal in the sight of God, except there is no God and everyone is certainly not equal. For everyone with an IQ of 110 there is probably five with an IQ of ninety-two. That's how averages are worked out. Some really are more equal than others. Carole

Ah, having had time to read your post properly Carole it seems that you are not a bigot but probably an elitist - in my book there is little difference :O) Just found this - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-sindell/breaking-fox-news-spun-of_b... Can it possibly be true??? It's common knowledge that Rupert is strapped for cash at the moment - mind you I'm sure many would do it for free ;O)

C A Jones I'm a realist. Most people are not intelligent or informed as far as I can see. Mind you, I am living in N Devon where they still tug their forelock. I'm from Wigan, Manchester so I find this repulsive. Its a relief to talk to people like yourself, Mr. Mangone. C

"I'm not sure I can follow the logic of your post, Jude." Well, M, it is actually Ayn Rand's logic, not mine because she measured human worth/ value by brains. The reasoning still holds however you measure human value; integrity, truth, courage. You could equally argue that racism is illogical because "Even if it were proved -- which it is not -- that the incidence good and noble men is greater among the members of certain races than among the members of others, it would still tell us nothing about any given individual and it would be irrelevant to one's judgment of him. A good man is a good man, regardless of the number of evil men who belong to the same race -- and an evil man is an evil man, regardless of the number of noble men who share his racial origin. " I ought to add that I think our immigration policy is becoming more balanced but the BNPs support could be quashed if the government took a few simple steps. Firstly they should stop spending a small fortune on translation services. I am looking to buy a house in Spain in a couple of years and am therefore learning Spanish. Even then I will have to pay a bilingual lawyer to help. I do not expect the Lecrin Valley council and the people there to provide English documentation for my benefit. Stopping translation services will not only save money but will also incentivise learning English therefore improving people's life chances. Secondly, there needs to be a time-limit on welfare payments linked to the years one has paid tax. For people too young to have paid qualifying tax there can be an alternative work-fare option. Thirdly, social and cooperative housing should become a waiting list and lottery system instead of needs-based. This will also create balanced working communities instead of ghettoes of deprivation. When my ancestor came to England from Africa they already had three things in place i) a job ii) somewhere to live iii) fluency in English. jude

It's fun exchanging ideas with you too, C. You're taking me too seriously, J ;o) I hope you manage to get to Spain although I get the impression that the English are not flavour of the month in Spain, or year, maybe even decade - so I'd advise a chat with Ewan before you make any plans. With the frightening state of the British economy huge changes are bound to come and I fear that most will be for the worse and inevitably many people will look for scapegoats...

C A Jones Ah but you can smoke weed in Spain. C ya l8r.

I argue that the race question has little or nothing to do with how many people with this or that 'human worth' a certain race, or class, might contain! If it should turn out that a certain race, or a certain class did have below average intelligence so what? The fact is that all a class says about an individual in that class is that he or she is a member of it. In other words all you can say for certain about people of any particular race is that they are of that race. In Thailand the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) and others argued that the majority of the people were too stupid to vote on the grounds that they kept voting for the wrong people. Hence they suggested a new form of Democracy where the people were essentially represented by a panel of experts who would vote for them. So what does this tell us about PAD... that they are elitists or liars or both? Yet I believe that many of the very same people who seem to be appauled by racism would secretly welcome a similar suggestion for British politics - although they would qualify it by stressing that it should only be people below a certain critical IQ who should lose the vote. My point being that we have all been so carefully indoctrinated into believing that clever people make better decisions - and are vain enough to believe we are clever - that the idea of only clever people getting the vote will appeal to many not so clever people! Incidentally, if PAD were to get its way but passing an IQ test was added to the requirement to vote then I suspect the new PAD party wouldn't get more than half a dozen votes.

IQ testing is a crude and inaccurate tool. In Ireland, in the Seanad Éireann (House of Lords equivalent) elections, only graduates of the University of Dublin and the National University of Ireland can vote. Unfortunately they still have other methods of allocating seats but this approach seems sensible. I would welcome a system where the House of Lords is given more power to veto legislation from the Commons, and is directly elected by alumni of the old 'UCCA' universities. I know plenty of intelligent and wise people don't go to university at all, but one has to find a reasonable system in an imperfect world.

:O) In a recent poll conducted in Thailand I noticed that the better educated a person was the less likely that person was to support Thaksin Shinawatra (the deposed Prime Minister of Thailand who was overthrown by a military coup). I began to wonder if perhaps the better educated people knew something I didn't... Later statistics in the poll demonstrated that the higher the income a person had the less likely that person was to support Thaksin. When I compared education to income I realised that they tended to go hand in hand. Looking a little deeper it became apparent to me that the highly educated rich were more likely to support Thaksin than less well educated rich. In other words education actually favoured Thaksin but wealth overpowered this trend. My point being that you can't rely on clever people to make decisions that are in the best interest of less clever people when the clever people have a stake in the outcome.

C A Jones The thing is, M, that when you really look at people's reaction to one just being there, you begin to see human nature's flaws. I have been sexually assaulted by a group of men, raped, drug raped and drugged and sexually assaulted. Why? I've got a large chest on a small frame so people think I "must have been up for it." Obviovsly I wasn't or they wouldn't have needed to use drugs. I'm not only good looking, I'm talented too. People want to believe I'm loose and a drug addict. That way they have a 'reason' for what happened to me at the hands of people I trusted. All of them stupid. Perhaps you can understand why I don't like stupid people? They are far too easily led. Carole

Hi Carole, Yes, I knew you'd had a hard time as I'd read your Sex is not Sacred. It's good that you and Dean have formed a band and support each other! The name of your band sounds like it sums up Earth For Profit PLC :O) I hope your lyrics reflect the maddness of the current practice of paying lip service to Global Warming while doing very little about it in reality because those in power seem to believe that profit is more important than the planet and most of the people who inhabit it! You are right - there are a lot of stupid people and many of them seem to be politicians :O) I wish you well and look forward to seeing you on TV.

C A Jones I suppose I'm trying to say that decency is nothing to do with race but more to do with intelligence and education. C

I'm not sure what decency is to do with - but I'm fairly sure it's more to do with people's nature than their intelligence, C. In my experience many people tend to improve with age and I have to admit I often cringe when I recall what a horrible person I was as a teenager... but I didn't realise it at the time. I'd say for me it was more a process of awakening than education but then we aren't all the same.

C A Jones I'm surrounded by stupid people so I may be biased. Lol.

Aren't we all ;O)

C A Jones I was dead nice and oh so trusting when I was young. I learned better. Luckily I have Viking blood. xx C PS. Is it mangonne or mangoane in pronunciation? C

It is actually pronounced Man - gone or Geow Mangon if you prefer the fruity version ;o)

C A Jones I thougt so. Ta.

He's just having a joke since Mangon is Thai for dragon and knights go in search of them, C. Knights of old have knees I'm told but rarely go down on one. For married knights Want to spend their nights with wives and not Mangon If they lose their horse they must walk of course to follow their wing-ed quarry and they quickly find they're left far behind feeling tired and sorry Yet Dragon and knight don't always fight although it is tradition For dragon breeds can make great steeds given the right proposition For nightly prance with knightly lance can conqueor codes of war and dragons tamed are not ashamed to aid their paramour She lights his fire He takes her higher and man and beast are one after the flame he's not the same now he is Man gone.

C A Jones Great! Mangone. I love it. By the way, I'm a Sagittarian Dragon myself.

"The BNP would never have appeared on QT if it hadn't been for NuLabs open door policy of the past decade which has alienated and disenfranchised poor, white communities." Well, New Labour certainly did miscalculate the number of people who'd come here from Eastern Europe EU countries after 2005. Don't know if that's closely linked to the success of the BNP. Are there proportionately more new Eastern European immigrants in the North West and Yorkshire? There hasn't been anything that could sensibly be described as open door policy towards anyone other than EU Eastern Europeans, rich people and students paying huge tuition fees. Despite the stereotypes, people who are actually poor - unemployed, unskilled and semi-skilled - are generally as disinterested in voting for the BNP as they are in voting for anyone else. The BNP main support comes from skilled working class and lower middle class people.

Net immigration for the UK is over 300k per annum and unlike Australia, we are not attracting fiscally self-sufficient english speaking post graduates. I think immigration had an impact on the BNP vote in the London Assembly. In the Borough of Southwark there are high numbers of foreign born residents. I don't know whether they are asylum seekers, failed aylum seekers, people here on working visas, people on bogus visas. I don't really much care either. I think we need to radically cut welfare for everybody regardless of their nationality. My own personal gripe isn't necessarily to do with immigration per se but the failure to expand infrastructure to cope. I will find it very hard to get my children into a decent school because high levels of immigration coupled with deprivation have forced the Estuary accented middle class of Southwark into Dulwich causing all the schools there to be over-subscribed. We have resigned ourselves to the high probability we will have to go private or move to Ireland. I will be frank and lay my predjudices bare - I do not want my child speaking Jafaican; at primary level I want my children to have the same 'Peter and Jane', 'Meat and two veg' education that I had. Even if I am wrong in my desire for a moratorium on immigration (that's why I support UKIP), the perceptions that shape my feelings are widespread and I don't believe they are generated by the right wing press or fascist propaganda. They come in part from my experiences. I feel thoroughly depressed that we seem to be unwinding the progress we made in assimilating people of different races so that I have never experienced racism or disadvantage because of my genetic heritage.

Moving to Ireland and buying a house in Spain - is P getting big bonuses J? :O)

LOL; No but thanks to the government propping up the housing bubble, his London property (which he bought back in the nineties and has a very small mortgage on) would sell for a sum that would buy us a nice house in Galway. We are both prudent savers (being punished by low interest rates to bail out the reckless borrower) with good incomes and very low outgoings. Sensibly, we moved a lot of our savings into Euro some time ago, so escaped the worst of Sterling crash. The Irish and Spanish property crashes have some way to unwind so it will be a good time to take advantage in a couple of years. Unfortunately, I am stuck in London for the next 4-5 years as I am commencing my PhD next year. I will probably look for a post-doc job in Ireland or the US.

C A Jones I love foreigners. I love diversity but I hate the PC that came with it. As a white English person I find my freedom of speech curtailed. I don't undestand why people can say 'Play that funky music, white boy' but would be arrested for saying 'Play that funky music, black boy.' Negros call themselves 'Nigger' but if I were to say it - not that its a word I use - I would be arrested. I'm a Liberal Democrat but I can understand why the 'indigenous white' people are voting BNP.

The pro/ anti immigration debate can go on endlessly. What remains is that a majority of the population, for whatever reason, think immigration is a problem, so something, somewhere has gone wrong over the last decade. Also, you cannot police people's thoughts and feelings. You can only engineer the externals of a society. You can make racial insults illegal but that will only make their private mutterings even more embittered. You can try to convince me that having a class where 80% of the children do not have English as a first language will not be detrimental to my child's education but never in a month of Sundays am I going to send them to such a school.

If you think it's bad in the UK, Carole... I notice that an American broadcaster is suffering a weeks suspension for making a racist remark. It seems he suggested that a missing Columbian driver was "out having a taco."???

C A Jones I think successive prime ministers in Britain have thought they are still in charge of an Empire. And half of Britain's population think the same. We are no longer an Empire. We are a small island off the coast of Europe. We have very little in the way of manufacturing industries and the majority of what few we have left are foreign-owned. The prospects are not good.

I'm with this guy... http://blog.mlive.com/stoneyexpress/2009/10/espn_wimps_out_by_suspending... If it does not insult or attempt to be hurtful surely those people who take it upon themselves to be offended by it in the name of solidarity with those who they think should be offended by it but aren't... err, um... that's why I posted the link - whatever he said :O)

C A Jones I'm with that guy too...

:O)

"The pro/anti-immigration debate can go on endlessly. What remains is that a majority of the population, for whatever reason, think immigration is a problem, so something, somewhere has gone wrong over the last decade." Well, my main criticism of New Labour with regard to immigration is their failure to make the argument for the policies they've pursued. "I will be frank and lay my predjudices bare - I do not want my child speaking Jafaican; at primary level I want my children to have the same 'Peter and Jane', 'Meat and two veg' education that I had." That's a legitimate opinion in terms of education policy. I'm not sure what it's got to do with immigration - which in the last ten years has primarily been from Eastern Europe. I'm not necessarily saying that there isn't a high proportion of students from minority groups in Southwark primary schools now but this is not a new thing in inner London. I went to a state primary school in inner London in the 1980s and, as what Mr Griffin would probably call an Anglo-Saxon, I was generally in a minority - I'd estimate people of my grouping made up roughly 25% of most of the primary school classes I was in. People may or may not think this was a bad thing but it's not something that's changed markedly as a result of any recent government policies. I learned lots of slang words with their roots in Jamaica but look at all these sentences I've just strung together now.