And another thing…

In a free and open society (cough) all opinions should be freely aired, if only so that the bad ones can be seen as such and for people to notice that there are better alternatives.

Hmmm, certainly a positive choice. Other non-party political figures I’d trust to give a strong performance against Griffin would be Ian Hislop, possibly Charlie Brooker. For sheer hilarity, I’d love to see Frankie Boyle on the panel that night…

So, who or what should sit next to the labour participant at the next question time?

Say what you like about the BNP, they certainly look and sound an odious bunch.

But…

It wasn’t the BNP that lied to start an illegal war in Iraq, that led directly to the unlawful deaths of untold thousands of innocent people.

It wasn’t the BNP that stitched up a repulsive deal to swap the UK’s biggest mass murderer for oil.

It wasn’t the BNP that released literally scores of IRA and loyalist killers, when they should, by all measures of morality and justice, still be locked up.

It wasn’t the BNP that hounded David Kelly to his death.

It wasn’t the BNP that wrecked my pension.

It wasn’t the BNP that wrecked our economy.

It wasn’t the BNP that engineered a gerrymandering, free for all on immigration.

It wasn’t the BNP that declared British jobs for British workers.

It wasn’t the BNP that squandered the proceeds of the biggest tax take in history, on an ill thought out, programme of useless social engineering projects.

It wasn’t the BNP that sent our soldiers to fight and die in a war in Afghanistan, with no proper kit, funding or even a semblance of a strategy.

It wasn’t the BNP that closed all of our specialist military hospitals, leaving our wounded soldiers to take their chances in the NHS.

It wasn’t the BNP that has sat back and abdicated the care of our wounded to charities.

It wasn’t the BNP that fought our seriously wounded, tooth and nail, to deny them a decent compensation package.

It wasn’t the BNP that sought to smear David Cameron, with repellent emails about his dead son.

It wasn’t the BNP that has exposed the citizens of the UK to a serious deficit in our energy security.

No, that was your lot, Tom…

So, who do you think should sit next to the labour participant?

I don’t think a comedian would send the right message, really…

Tom I sgree with you totaly. Many people in your party would like to close down any debate completly. If people are elected they should be listened to and questioned. after all i have to put up with listening to labour, why should you not put up with the BNP. I will be interested in what they have to say

FFS. It isn’t that difficult to expose issues with the BNP. Just argue your points and manifesto. Refusing to explain why your policies on immigration (main plank of BNP support) are better than theirs just makes you look dumb.

PS: Labour may be better off telling Balls to stop talking about the Tories. His Radio 4 interview today showed he simply can’t talk about his own policies and just lurches into dumb anti-tory spin. He came across as a complete nut job.

Isn’t this the same reaction from the government (Make fun, ignore, call them racists) that has gotten us in this situation in he first place? It’s not just the BNP now, as recent events have shown many more anti-immigrant, anti-Islamic groups are starting to pop up all over the country and getting exposure, set in pubs up and down the country people are miffed, broke, feeling let down and angry. The BNP and it’s ideological partners are only gaining strength from British Jobs for British Workers and a government that is perceived as being dying.

Personally, I’d love to see Polly Toynbee sitting next to Nick Griffin on QT.

With luck she’d spontaneously combust.

the thing that makes me laugh is how the major parties – labour most of all – all scramble to see who can turn their nose up most at the BNP to ‘impress’ the electorate. oh the piety!

most people know that the BNP are crackpots at the fringe – now democratically legitimised in the strasbourg asylum by labour’s own endemic policy failures.

debate them, deconstruct them, show them up, job done. stop making such a fuss – you’ll be shouting ‘za rodina!’ next …

I know! I’m forever shouting “za rodina”, me…

The BNP are useful in that they absolutely do cause a severe dose of panty-bunching among the pretrendy-left.

Of course their attitude towards non-whites is pathetic;, but no worse than the attitude of many of the anti-BNPs towards English public schoolboys/alumni.

Lot of hypocrisy there.

I’d really love to see Richard Herring and his moustache sitting next to Griffin.

Actually, it’s often comedians who turn out to be the most insightful and thoughtful guests on QT – David Mitchell and Frank Skinner spring to mind.

I read about Richard Herring’s Hitler’s moustache show a few weeks ago – he was saying as a middle-aged white person it was a novel experience for him to be stared at on the street. Apparently people would stare at him and then – once at a safe distance – burst out laughing.

He does look weirdly like Hitler, or maybe it’s just that he looks like Bruno Ganz (Downfall) as Hitler.

Incidentally, when my husband wants to deliberately annoy me, he says my mother looks like Goebbels. (She does not!!!)

Oddly enough, though, I’ve just noticed how much Goebbels looks like Dan Hannan.

Hannan: http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~rar4619/Images/Goebbels.jpg

Goebbels: http://www.independent.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00168/Pg-17-Pandora-rex_168518t.jpg

“On the more serious subject of whether or not mainstream politicians should share platforms with fascists”

So you can’t be both a mainstream politician AND a fascist, Tom?

Jules
You may think the BNP are crackpots. As 943,000 people voted for them at the 2009 Euro elections and they polled 10% in parts of Yorkshire, you are labelling a LOT of people as crackpot supporters.

Dismissing opponents as crackpots = not taking seriously..

No worries, mate. ( I type this using an Australian accent,for variety)

The BBC QT audience is stacked against anyone right of Tom Harris.

Watch the spectacle of Nick Griffin being alternately booed, hissed and slow hand clapped.

QT is a farce and always has been since Dimbleby took over from Robin Day. Yes, you do get right wingers in the audience, but the researchers make sure they are the ones who wear plaid shirts and have that kind of scary look in their eyes.

Griffin should go on QT, if only to show how his nebulous his grip on reality is. So far, he has disappointed me on every outing.

I can’t believe there’s even any discussion about this.

The more deranged the policies the more important it is to argue publicly against them.

Freedom of speech includes views one finds obnoxious, so long as they’re legal.

Anything else invites the view that we’re afraid.

This is another good idea from Tom Harris. Last time I said I’d never say that again. I feel dirty.

Also, agreed on the opposition to no-platform. It just makes their victim mentality seem plausible.

If you want to suggest Richard Herring to go up against Griffin, you can suggest this to the BBC here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/question_time/7827200.stm#1

In addition to the above post, I have a family member who works in Immigration, and daily this person has to deal with people and their families who shouldn’t be allowed in this country. My family is 60s immigrant stock. Fully integrated, with members married “out”, the modern day typical mixed blood brood and completely British. But the liberties being take, the state of the border control at the moment is horrendous.

This person takes pride in their job, but on many an occasion when stopping someone for questioning they are told not to bother by the more senior staff and to let them in, they have had to fight, shout and argue with management as they know that these people shouldn’t be allowed in. Sometimes they just think f**k it, if the system doesn’t want to work then why fight daily to do the job they are meant to do.

The visa system is a fraud, there are many MANY people who have indefinite leave to remain who shouldn’t have, drug dealers, criminals, and nuts. But the system is in such a state that many of them are unstoppable. People with no English skills at all! no proof of education and completely unsuitable just waltzing into the country.

Immigration officials aren’t allowed to talk about their work, they are reminded of this and the official secrets act applied, if they blow their whistles they’ll lose their jobs and the government will just ignore the situation again and carry on.

At this very moment if you go to airports up and down the country there is a flood, a tidal wave of “students” coming from South Asia, 20 to 50 year old with their wives and children who are attending what are obviously bogus colleges, but they have student visa, they have to be let in, the front line staff will report their suspicions, but what can they do. Somewhere down the line the Home Office may from time to time go check out the bogus colleges but not before thousands of people have got in and disappeared.

The system is a sham, the home office and the immigration controls a complete travesty, people know we are a soft target and that once in they can work the system to their favour.

Tom, I have just seen your tweet and the devil in me could not resist putting your name forward to sit on the same pannel as Griffin. I don’t usually bother with the farcical programme but I would make a special effort to see that one.

If we allow all these foreigners in looking for a better life then we will reduce our standard of living (as I understand it from the above posts) then the problem will sort itself out when all countries in the world have a similar standard of living. Wouldn’t that be a good thing?

Incidentally, how can you argue on the one hand that immigrants are forcing down European wages then say that foreign companies are moving jobs away to low cost markets?

Admittedly immigration is a mess in the UK, but just remember why – the UK invaded most of the countries these people are coming from, stripped their wealth and enforced English as their language.

While I am not exactly ecstatic about people using up NHS resources when they haven’t paid in I do not want to see people dying in the streets because they don’t yet have a National Insurance card. As an alternative, how about we charge an extra £X for a UK visa and that covers insurance, money they get refunded from their NI payments once they start working.

And I would not be opposed to a minimum standard of English for immigrants either. As long as school leavers were able to attain that level.

For years now the Labour Party has been in intense denial about the embedded sexism, homophobia and anti-semitism of Islam in this country.

It salves its socialist conscience by bitterly opposing the precisely identical and equally odious views of the BNP in those areas.

The reason, of course, is the need to garner and hold as many muslim votes as possible, particularly in marginal constituencies.

But it’s amusing to contemplate what contortions would be necessary if, God forbid, BNP supporters ever became the main force in one of those constituencies.

I talked to a couple of mininsters about this at a conference once, pointing out that equality for women, homosexuals and Jews used to be quite important in the Party.

After a degree of huffing and puffing, followed by some considerable shuffling, they both ended by saying more or less the same thing, “Obviously,I still feel that way. But you know the way it is.”

Indeed I do.

@Iain Gill

I think he reason why discussion of immigration was always considered somehow racist was due to a simple misunderstanding.

That there is a moral component to immigration.

There isn’t of course. It’s simply economic.

Need more people here? Fine. Bring ‘em in.

Don’t need more people here? Fine. Don’t bring ‘em in.

Common sense.

Obviously, asylum is different. There is a moral component there, and we need to take our share.

I was friends with some of the founding members of the Green Party. Everyone, including me thought they were loonies. Of course, most of them are loonies, but their agenda is firmly on the table.

All it takes is for somebody brave, somebody with principles and vision, to take on the more savoury aspects of the BNP remit and you might find we begin to get our country back.

At the moment, the main parties are more concerned with how they look, rather than how they should lead, so until it becomes obvious to all that the Islamification of Great Britain threatens us (and it will) then politicians will carry on with soundbite politics.

A brilliant idea to get herring on with griffin, rich is up for it and makes some interesting points on his blog as to why griffin should be put on television more. This should be pushed as far as possible.