A Place to Stand

Bonnie Greer, the BBC guest on Question Time has said that it may gave been a mistake to make it look like Question Time was set up to lynch Nick Griffin. He himself, perhaps, disagrees since he is making a complaint about it.

The leader of the British National Party is launching an official complaint about his treatment on the BBC's Question Time programme, claiming he was "bullied".

Nick Griffin says he was the victim of a set-up in which the format of the current affairs debate show was changed "after 30 years".

He said: "That was not genuine Question Time, that was a lynch mob."

Iain Dale says something similar

He was nervous, trembling, acting with exaggerated gestures, grinning at inappropriate moments and at times incoherent. But. And there is a but. The fact that with one exception every single question was about the BNP or related subjects played into his hands. He was got at. He was ganged up on, and many people watching will have felt a little sorry for him at times. Five against one is never very edifying.

That is about what happened. All of the others were prepped with quotes, often pretty embarrassing ones, from Griffin's past. That is a perfectly fair tactic though it may be rough for all the other guests to get together in advance. It is entirely improper for the officially impartial BBC chairman to be part of that conspiracy. It is worth pointing out that Jack Straw, the Labour guest has a history as a communistic student leader of the 1960s & is therefore bound to have a long trail of looney claims behind him. That has never been & indeed should not be the main focus of a current affairs panel.

Dimbleby has regularly claimed that the questions are chosen by the audience & what we think but having once been in an audience I can confirm that that is simply a lie. The BBC hand out a list of questions they want asked which they are invited to rephrase & then they select the best examples to ask. In my occasion Dimbleby had to come back to us & say nobody had asked 2 of their questions but that he was going to give us another chance to get it right. So the fact that the questions were all ways of attacking the BNP is no coincidence. Indeed twice during the programme audience members did try to ask real questions designed to mention BNP policy. The first about the EU membership to which D said "we might come to that" & the 2nd about repatriation to which he said "We will come to that - I promise its the next question". He didn't & it wasn't.

Perhaps some time when there is a Green representative on we will see the BBC orchestrating an entire programme bringing up all the hundreds of scare claims that Fascist Luddite movement has made over the years which have so totally proven to be untrue. Perhaps they will do a programme holding the corrupt Nazi supporting war criminals of the Labour, Conservative & LibDem parties to account for their lies about Yugoslavia & their genocide there. When that happens we will be able to say the BBC is not automatically biased towards the ruling genocidal fascist nomenklatura.

Interestingly the most effective moment was when the Tory Baroness, a Moslem woman, spoke up for the Conservative policy of cutting immigration to a set figure. Griffin was almost cheering her & it was clear the racially diverse audience agreed. There is no question that immigration is a problem & the only reason for the rise of the BNP is because no official party does anything. We will sees if the Conservatives do now though promising to set a limit without saying what it will be begs the question as well as not saying whether they do so, whether they will do so enthusiastically enough for it to work & whether it is possible to do so while in the EU.

A minor point - Griffin was seated on the left so that he was always filmed from the left showing up his eye which does leave him looking, at his best, like Gordon brown on a particularly bad day. It is possible nobody at the BBC had thought of that & it was a pure accident. Regrettably looks do matter in politics & it was premature baldness as much as anything that did for William Hague.

The Guardian is reported that the Unite Against Fascism protesters outside the BBC are chanting this charming ditty...

"Build a bonfire, build a bonfire, put Nick Griffin on the top, put the Nazis in the middle, and burn the fucking lot."

I wish the BBC would not continuously refer to them as "anti-fascist" demonstrators. If the word has any meaning people who want to censor free speach to prevent dissent ARE the Fascists.

BBC coverage today has been of the same sort as normal - running quotes from the programme but, for example while running Straw's attack on Griffin over WW2 omitting his immediate rejoinder that Griffin's father fought in the war whereas Straw's was a conscientious objector, & of course interviewing people from both sides - the 2 sides being those who think the BNP are dreadful & should be wholly censored V those who think the BNP are dreadful but should be only regularly censored.

Labels: British politics, Media