I was one of those not happy about the notion of seeing BNP leader Nick Griffin on the BBC’s flagship Question Time but knowing that it was something that had to be done in order to face up to a growing trend towards the extreme-right in this country.  My principle concern was that Griffin would be given a soft option, an apathetic audience with relatively soft questions and toothless politicians. Whilst I do not believe my worst fears were realised I have nonetheless some serious concerns regarding how the debate and Griffin himself were handled.

During the first question on whether the BNP should be allowed to adopt Churchill as one of their own, Jack Straw was afforded nearly five minutes, unheard of certainly in my experience of the program.  Straw used the time to give the usual speech about tolerance and fighting the war against fascism etc etc.  it came across, at least to me as pretty easy pickings really, there was little of genuine interest or personal stamp on it.  It was the same sort of asinine bollocks that condensed down to its minimal is the “I’m not a racist but…”

Griffin himself declared that Churchill would have found the BNP his natural home as fighting against its own foreign invasion.  Bonnie Greer pointed out that of course having an American mother with Mowhawk ethnicity meant that Churchill might not even have been allowed in the party but Griffin was undeterred.  Churchill he said spent much of his early political career fighting mass immigration and warning of the dangers of Islam.  Churchill has very much enjoyed the same sort of approach to criticism as immigration does now, I found it interesting that none of the panel mentioned that Churchill in his early political life was an ardent eugenicist and advocated the sterilisation of the mentally ill in a Home Office paper he tabled in 1911.

According to the 2001 census the population of Britain still consists of 92% of people who classify themselves as white, according to the CIA factbook 77% of the United Kingdom as a whole are English with a further 15% made up by Scottish, Welsh and Irish.  Griffin’s stated view to return to a Britain that is 99% White British is therefore clearly incitement to ethnic cleansing.  Bearing in mind London accounts for a huge amount of the modern immigrant population with, according to The Guardian an estimated 30% or 2.2 million claiming in 2005 to have been born outside the UK that leaves very little to spread around the rest of the country.

However according to Griffin 84% of the total population support the BNP’s policy on immigration.  Hang on, run that by me again – 84%, which represents 50 million people in the United Kingdom as a whole, or if you like, the entire White English population and then some.  Griffin further asserts that two thirds of the immigrant population support the policy too.  Is this an example of them pulling the rope up behind them?  We will never know for when asked where this statistic had come from Griffin could not come up with an answer.  Which is code for, I made it up and hoped I could just float it out there without justification.

Griffin’s true colours do occasionally show, he is simply not slick enough to keep himself entirely behind the mask.  Interesting though that whilst he chooses to identify the “indigenous” Britons as those who arrived 17000 years ago he chooses to say that “Britain must remain a fundamentally British and Christian country.”  Interesting because for nearly 16000 of those years Britain was not a Christian country at all.  Clearly Griffin is happy to pick and choose what he likes and offer a very subjective revisionist view of history.  This was shown up by Bonnie Greer again who criticised the lack of mention of the Romans in the BNP’s take on British history, not merely for the fact that they were foreign invaders (not that the Celts or the tribes who came before them were really any different since much of Britain had only become inhabitable after the end of the Ice Age.  People did not suddenly come out of cryogenic suspension on the land they had to come from abroad.

It was also quite evident that Griffin is not a lover of homosexual men, he claims to be speaking for many people when he says the sight of two men kissing makes him feel deeply uncomfortable.  I wonder if he finds two women kissing equally unpleasant.  None of the politicians on the panel made a particularly big play against this point either.

The program, in general, was in a way reminiscent of George Galloway in Big Brother, a man who claimed to be in it for the ideals and yet shown to be quite clearly out of their depth due to the arrogance of their own self-belief.  Griffin wrought his hands and tried to smarm and obfuscate the direct questions wherever he could.  It was compere David Dimbleby though who brought up many of the cogent points that showed Griffin up for the rank amateur he really is.  ”If you look at the things I’m quoted to have said…” Griffin protested, to which Dimbleby asked immediately which quotes had been attributed to him that were not true.  ”Too many to mention” Griffin replied.  This was not however a BNP broadcast, or a short radio interview, or standing outside court being questioned by journalists, this was a serious political program compared by a presenter of considerable experience.  Dimbleby did not let Griffin off the hook and queried if Griffin had therefore never denied the holocaust.  Griffin’s answer spoke volumes for its lack of substance.  ”I’ve not got a conviction for holocaust denial.”

I think all but the most rabid fascist party supporters knew quite clearly what this meant.

Suffice to say I believe the only two people who came out of the affair with any dignity were Bonnie Greer and David Dimbleby.  What worries me very much about such an event is that there still seems to be this naive consensus amongst the neo-liberals and neo-conservatives that no-one really supports the BNP they’re just doing it out of protest.  As such they drastically underestimate the lack of education about serious issues of our time and by refusing to engage on proper policy debates and publicly shoot down the odious characters of the far-right they allow a continued perception that these people are somehow swashbuckling political mavericks who say what everyone is thinking but no mainstream politician dares say.  This has happened before on numerous occasions and is generally a clear road to fuel fascism in society at large and at the very least an acquiescence of policies that one might expect educated people to be appalled by.  The three politicians on the QT panel were considered to be relative heavyweights at yet their arguments were sufficiently dilute as to almost be tacit acquiescence.  They have for too long hidden behind the notion that there is no place for extremism whilst the political hegemony has become more and more right-wing, such that some things considered mainstream now would in days gone by have been seen as very much on the path to fundamentalism.

In truth Griffin came across for what he was, an arrogant man with fascist-leanings who is not especially erudite but has been ostracised and vilified to the point of having become practically a living martyr and regarded as a dangerous intellectual only amongst his party cronies, themselves perhaps the lowest common denominator of cerebral evolution.  I expect to hear him come out and say Enoch Powell was right in his “rivers of blood” speech but I do not expect to hear people allow him to get away with that unchallenged.  When are the rivers of blood coming?  There are now enough immigrants in Britain that would have made Powell’s eyes pop out but there is still no rivers of blood.  Tension, yes, there is plenty of that, caused in no small part by the polarisation of communities into immigrant and non-immigrant by the right-wing anti-immigration agenda.

What Griffin is not is out of touch, and herein lies the chilling postscript of the piece for he has, like the failed Austrian painter he would so dearly love to imitate, managed to exploit public malaise and disenfranchisement and stir up division and hatred against easy target sections of the populations.  Those even more disenfranchised than the “indigenous.”  He has used the classic tactics of inaccurate hyperbole and erroneous statistics and the mainstream politicians have consistently allowed him and his party to dictate the agenda due to their own failure, or inability, to address the central issues on the table.  Make no mistake this is not the end of the story and if we are to avoid the examples of Germany and Italy of the 1930s a great deal of work is to be done.

Song Of The Day ~ Fleetwood Mac – Dragonfly

With sincere and heartfelt apologies to the late great Ian Dury

Why did you get up out the bed
Why did you get up out the bed
Why did you get up out the bed
Why did you get up out the bed
Why did you get up out the bed
Why did you get up out the bed
Why did you get up out the bed
Why did you get up out the bed
Why did you get up out the bed
Why did you get up out the bed

Reasons to feel bollocks, part three

1 2 3

Cold North wind in Winter, sexing of a sprinter,
taking out a splinter and rain
US War on terror, measles mumps rubella,
chicken salmonella and period pain

Articulated lorries, landfill in the quarries
a politician’s sorries plus expenses
Ryanair union-busting, Would-be leaders husting
bankers fiscal lusting – nuclear defences

Channel 4 Big Brother, my bloody children’s Mother
voting for the other – Pussycat dolls
All of Dan Brown’s books, too many TV cooks
the boss’s dirty looks – gangsta’s molls

swine flu epidemic, conservative polemic
redundant academic – the BNP
plague of fecking wasps, fundamental mosques
Yeltsin from Sverdlovsk – herbal tea

Reasons to feel bollocks, part three
Reasons to feel bollocks, part three
Reasons to feel bollocks, part three
Reasons to feel bollocks, part three

1 2 3

Health Service cuts,
being kicked in the nuts,
clothes from sweatshop labour

Sarkozy in Paris,
Living next door to Alice,
death of Richard Harris

no sex for a while, Jeremy Kyle
a dose of Johnny Giles

High School Musical 3, get nothing for free
Nintendo Wiinjury
taramasalata, markets that won’t barter
we don’t need no modern Magna Carta

nothing left to study, blocking online buddy
30-something fuddy duddy
extraordinary renditions, ignoring of petitions
freeze of pay and conditions

lack of any silence, domestic violence
no social conscience

Reasons to feel bollocks, part three
Reasons to feel bollocks, part three
Reasons to feel bollocks, part three
Reasons to feel bollocks, part three

1 2 3

No, no dear dear
Perhaps next year
or maybe even never

in which case

Reasons to feel bollocks, part three
Reasons to feel bollocks, part three
Reasons to feel bollocks, part three
Reasons to feel bollocks, part three
Reasons to feel bollocks, part three
Reasons to feel bollocks, part three
Reasons to feel bollocks, part three
Reasons to feel bollocks, part three
Reasons to feel bollocks, part three

1 2 3

Reasons to feel bollocks, part three
Reasons to feel bollocks, part three
Reasons to feel bollocks, part three
Reasons to feel bollocks, part three

1 2 3
Reasons to feel bollocks, part three

Song Of The Day ~ Ian Dury And The Blockheads – Reasons To Be Cheerful Part 3

It is rare I listen to a political speech these days, even rarer that it should be one of a Conservative politician but I am in the unique position of staring down the barrel of a gun I pointed at myself some years ago when I promised that “if that fucker Osborne ever gets any real power I’m leaving the country.”  There is now the very real possibility that my time may come in less than nine months when this objectionable twerp who was in the year above me at school becomes Chancellor of the Exchequer following what can only be called the foregone conclusion of the next election.

According to Gideon “Call me George” Osborne there is going to be some belt-tightening and apparently “we are all in it together.”  Well we are unless we are earning less than £18k or stand to inherit anywhere between £300k to £999,999.  The first figure is fair enough, it is wholeheartedly wrong for those at the lower end of the spectrum to be targeted, though any of them with any memory will be cautious about believing that the Tories will always give them exemption from any cost-cutting measures.  The inheritance tax issue is rather more baffling.  Firstly those for whom it will benefit are highly unlikely to be swing voters in the norm, this is something for the most wealthy alone, but secondly it is a glimpse into a clear sign that this is not a new Conservative party but the same old ‘nasty party’ in younger clothing, however much wool it may contain.  The rise in the threshold of inheritance tax will cost £3.1bn, which when you consider that the saving attributed to the entire public sector pay freeze will net only £7bn puts this crass policy into some perspective.  We in the public sector will run at a loss getting progressively worse off in real terms for the duration of the next parliament in order that Lord and Lady Ponsonby-Smythe can use the full whack of Daddy, the 13th Earl of Ffarquar’s estate to pay for the refurbishment of the East Wing at Chateau Chinless.

Osborne’s speech would have you believe that it is the Tories who will safeguard 100,000 frontline public sector jobs as a result of the pay freeze, and by inference that the Labour policies will put these jobs in jeopardy.  However if you read closer, he is not saying that, he is saying that the saving gained by freezing the pay of public sector workers is in effect equivalent to 100,000 workers, ie their salaries.  This is an important distinction, for were Osborne to become the next chancellor he would have the wherewithal to control the budget for the public sector but he would not have any say-so in how this budget is spent in individual institutions and neither would his ministerial colleagues.  Therefore any change in budgets could still mean exactly the same number of redundancies if institutions choose not to see their staff as their primary asset, as has already been seen across large sections of the education sector.  Even Howard Davies the director of the LSE who was relatively effusive about Osborne’s speech said that the saving of public sector jobs was “unachievable”.

Another example of the Tories lupine rather than ovine qualities comes in the form of the “married or bust” proposals that they wish to introduce.  We are to believe that if you are married you are far more likely to stay together than if you are not and that therefore ‘for the children’ these measures must be brought in.  Since around 49% of co-habiting couples are not married it is clear there will be a great deal of losers from this, many of whom will have less Conservative or conservative ideals.  Would that another party might turn this into a vote winner for themselves but such is the C(c)onservative hegemony there will be little capital made of it.  Again there was little flesh on the bone as to how much this would cost, one presumes the money saved by drastically reducing the benefits of the single families would be sunk into propping up the couples.  If you could prove that your chosen sexual preference gender found you utterly repugnant would you be able to take the government to the European Court of Human Rights for discrimination against the ugly?

When it comes to pensions we are all going to have to work longer, this does not I’m sure come as much of a surprise to most people and the raising of the age to 66 is merely a hastening of a policy already brought in by Labour.  What is not addressed is the great deal of difficulty faced by many people in finding employment in later life.  Courts have recently stated that companies do have a right to refuse to let someone work past 60 in the public sector though they should be encouraged to allow them to work on.  If it is mandatory that people wait until 66 to be able to claim their state pension then it is in fact merely shifting the burden from pension to state benefit for a large number of these people at the lower end of the scale.  Those for whom it has less effect are likely those who can afford to do without the state pension anyway.  Interestingly the savings from raising retirement age are apparently in fact to reintroduce the earnings link to pensions, which will raise pensions and therefore cost more.  All very laudable one may think but you cannot use your one-shot pistol twice, either this measure is to pay for an increase in expenditure or it is designed to save expenditure it cannot be both, except in the eyes of vote-avaricious politicians.  One must also take into consideration the pledge on not levying national insurance on new businesses for the first 100 employees.  This is a further erosion of the pension tributary and since these 100 employees will not be ‘opting out’ of the state pension this money will have to be subsidised by the government at some stage.

Osborne also looked to show that Westminster was tightening its belt by saying MPs pay would be cut by 5% – which is all very well when you consider that the average MP is on vastly more than most of the population.  It is the other plans though that merit further investigation, the Tories plan to cut the number of MPs by 10% though he did not give details as to how this reduction would be achieved.  In an age already of a democratic deficit the idea of making more people electorally redundant seems a typically regressive move.  Traditionally Tory strongholds have been in areas large in land mass and low in population, it is unlikely that the 10% will be drawn from these areas but more likely that the constituency boundaries will be redrawn to pull together smaller metropolitan constituencies together, thus marginalising the Labour and Liberal electorate.

Osborne, or rather his advisers, have been quite clever, they have made a rather odious conservative man look like he is being prudent and fiscally aware without actually giving a great deal of substance and depth to the proposals.  It has been described as a “bookkeeper’s speech and not a policy speech.”  Many ideas were floated that were designed to catch the headlines and obtain applause from the party faithful but there was scant framework as to how any of these ideas would be funded.

Economic experts reacted cautiously to Osborne’s speech Irwin Stelzer pointed out the anomaly of the Tories not wanting interest rates to go up and further but retaining the contradictory point of wanting people to save more.  It is also clear that there is a further paradox in claiming that public sector pensions would be capped at £50k whilst at the same time assuring that previously made commitments will be honoured.  Since we have bailed out the banks would the directors of financial institutions be subject to the same caps, as they are effectively now no more than civil servants?

The Conservative hegemony has gone so far that now all parties are vying for who can be the greatest public spending butchers.  So for me the question I would most like answered is why is public spending such a bad thing?  After all even those with the most basic knowledge of economics such as myself see that it is not expenditure that leads to bankruptcy it is the discrepancy between expenditure and income that does so.  What is not being asked is what are we spending our money on that may be seen as unnecessary, or if nothing be forthcoming in that column, which is highly unlikely since any such thing is rather subjective, how can we raise income to account for what we must spend?  Have we got to a stage now where even the Fourth Estate have given up questioning the actual validity of the policies and are merely scratching around for the methods by which the parties intend to pay for them.  One presumes were any of them to be honest and actually have the money they like to claim they do that the current media would feel it had nothing to do.

In a time when the banks are being financed by the public purse with no indication of what the public may expect in return, whilst top level bankers accrue massive pension pots and bonuses and banks record profits the like of which seem to be in line with the total income of small countries; in a world where Britain tags along with illegal American warmongering committing vast sums of public money and people to countries in which we have no business save for the financial powers of the few; in a world where natural resources such as gas, electricity and oil are being provided at exorbitant rates despite the wholesale cost having dropped exponentially and the companies in question post profits that are rivaled perhaps only by the banks; in a world where company directors can expect huge payouts when sacked due to lack of competency and golden parachute pension provisions regardless of the efficacy of their work it is surely time to revisit this capitalist model and realise that something is very wrong at the very root of it and the only method of stopping this boom and bust roller coaster is not to eat a little less before you get on, or just hold tighter but to get off the ride entirely.

Song Of The Day ~ Bombay Bicycle Club – The Hill

Do not dream your life away

do not sit at home waiting

in self-imposed purgatory

the dungeon of mundaneity

tomorrow will never come

and break the tedium of today

today must be fixed first

for tomorrow to seem worth making it to

the television like a visual rusk

all content broken down for toothless digestion

the world ticks on oblivious

you are supposed to conform

don’t,

make a difference, get up and start

today can be the first day of the rest of your life

if you choose to let it be

speak to people, you are not alone

others feel the same and are as frightened

needing some sense of benign coaxing

to make them believe it is safe to come out.

and then there are ‘the great unknowing’

the mass of those too blinkered to see it

or too selfish to care

mental drones carrying the yoke of indifference

some are perhaps already lost,

their souls harvested by the Gods of consumerism

believing they have ever had a choice

others long to believe in an alternative

but the message of uniformity is too pervasive

and they are cowed and numb

too tired to struggle, too resigned to care

but only for now

they are waiting, waiting for you to rise

then lines will be drawn

sides will be taken, and all will feel alive

some for the first time, others for the last

some will fight for freedom and justice

others are too scared of those concepts

no matter the outcome

right prevails for having, at that moment, an army to defend it

Song Of The Day ~ U2 – Unknown Caller

They seek him here, they seek him there

Doncaster’s new, elected mayor

he wants to hide the nasty bits of his party beliefs

cos he’s a dedicated follower of fascism

And when he does his little rounds

of council offices in Doncaster town

telling people randomly he’ll cut out all their jobs

cos he’s a dedicated follower of fascism

Oh yes he is (oh yes he is), oh yes he is (oh yes he is)

He thinks he is a paragon of virtue

and when he’s interviewed and shown to be a proper twat

he feels a dedicated follower of fascism

Oh yes he is (oh yes he is), oh yes he is (oh yes he is)

He plans to half his mayoral salary

but the rest of all his policies are all against the law

cos he’s a dedicated follower of fascism

They seek him here, they seek him there

the BNP and Tony Blair

everywhere the blazered brown shirt army marches on

each one a dedicated follower of fascism

Oh yes he is (oh yes he is), oh yes he is (oh yes he is)

There’s one thing that he hates and that is foreigners

But one week it’s immigration and the next it’s ban Gay Pride

cos he’s a dedicated follower of fascism

Oh yes he is (oh yes he is), oh yes he is (oh yes he is)

He likes to come across as Mr Rational

but when confronted with the facts the toys are all thrown out the pram

cos he’s a dedicated follower of fascism

he’s a dedicated follower of fascism

(Profuse apologies to Ray Davies)

Song Of The Day ~ The Kinks – Dedicated Follower Of Fashion

The Night Mail now flies over the border

and no-one writes cheques or a postal order

letters to the rich, letters to the poor

are scarcely written by hand any more

the Post Office itself faces privatisation

whilst the night trains sit empty in unmanned stations

and if you have luggage you’ll not find a porter

tho’ the motorway’s is gridlocked with lambs to the slaughter

the days are long gone of the romance of steam

where engine driver was every young boy’s dream

the great railways were victims of capitalist teaching

as the branch lines were axed by the butcher Beeching

in the 21st century a person’s assignations

are not even limited to their own nations

but written by email with smiley faces

and sent to their lovers in distant places

the planes break the peace of sleepy villages

bringing news of the bankers latest pillages

landing and take-off with deafening noise

not causing the smiles of starry-eyed boys

no posters of wonder of coastal resorts

no heed taken to environmental reports

the receivers of mail do not feel any pain

that their utility bills are not brought by the train

but scowling and sleepy rip open the post

and clutching the contents recycle the most

almost all have forgotten that a personal letter

can start the morning off so much better

When dawn freshens the plane’s are down

to faceless depots they’ve descended

Towards the retail parks at the sanitised parts of town

Towards the fields of disused factories and derelict works

set on the dark plain like giant sarcophagi

None of Scotland waits for them

Men and women are more worried about their jobs

than they are about news.

Letters of thanks, letters from banks

letters of spam for woman and man

receipted bills and some citations

of banking scams from bogus relations

and applications for situations

and debt collectors’ declarations

and recession, recession from all the nations

News subjective, right-wing invective

incessant jingles from Compare The Market

Statements and rumours about how Jacko carked it

Nigerian bank accounts from “Great Uncles” or “Aunts”

and fake lotto wins from Holland or France

most people are more interested in celebrity Twitter

as the economy rapidly goes right down the shitter

the junk mail comes printed in every hue

whilst the once glorious forests dwindle to few

the fatty, the smoker, coughing and snoring

who may soon be denied medical care without warning

viagra, vicodin, enlarge your equipment

we’ll save you £s on your next codeine shipment

Thousands are still asleep

dreaming of terrifying monsters

or of paid-off overdrafts, mortgages or shopping sprees

asleep in gangland Glasgow, asleep in drug-ridden Edinburgh

asleep in depressed Aberdeen

they continue their nightmares

and shall wake soon and long for companionship

and none will hear the computer’s bleep

without a quickening of the heart

For who can bear to risk a computer virus?

Song Of The Day ~ Bombay Bicycle Club – Dust On The Ground

It remains a mystery to me

why anyone votes for BNP

as if Tories aren’t enough

with all their neo-fascist guff

and UKIP (the BNP in suits)

with their pseudo Anglo-Saxon roots

and now we have the England First

one can’t avoid but fear the worst

and Labour now move further right

than even Thatcher hoped they might

the Liberals ever on the fence

preaching to bourgeois “common sense”

Respect has no more unity

than a party who’s only member’s me

the Greens who fail to comprehend

the money men have but one end

but no current change in government

will make those bastards represent

if voting made a change you see

they’d never entrust it to you and to me

they’re quite content just to line their pockets

whilst spending our taxes on ballistic rockets

and when we do run out of oil

what will we grow in poisoned soil

greenhouse effect and acid rain

more cheaper flights and far less trains

which government do you think it’ll be

that’ll make us pay for our A&E?

not to mention the age extensions

before we may hope to claim our pensions

so you can either sit scratching your arse

or try stopping this shit before it comes to pass

Song Of The Day ~ Don Thomas – Come On Train

Police helicopter snarls and roars

breaks the stillness of the night

the searchlight beam that pans the streets

picks out those who took to flight

do we know for whom they seek here

do we care about their fate

do we presume it’s lawless fools

that destroy our peace when it’s so late

Are we sated by the CCTV

that is ever present here

do we really believe only the bad

are the ones who have to fear?

Do you think that 40 days

is acceptable incarceration

for those deemed public enemies

without charge or explanation

or do you cling to fragile tenets

that you’ve not done any wrong

and that your passport will satisfy them

should they ask you to come along

regard those who before you

have felt such confidence

that it shouldn’t take too long

for them to prove their innocence

but you don’t have to be guilty

to constitute a threat

perhaps ‘cause of what you’re reading

or the people you have met

the helicopter passes now

wasn’t you that they were after

go back now to your TV drama or

sitcoms artificial laughter.

Song Of The Day ~ Mazzy Star – Into Dust

It is easy to dissent when the danger is in the shadows

when the consequences are not looking you in the face

they watch you now from behind desks and computer screens

and make their notes in secret without public trace

this is an uneasy period of silent menace

a time of looking at the grey clouds in the sky

the knowledge that there may be greater darkness yet to follow

that may be precipitated within the twinkling of an eye

I cannot say I will be brave if they should come for me

I cannot promise not to buckle under stress or pain

I can only hope that courage will be looked on as having got me there

and that the courage of others might help get me out again

But I would rather live in fear and be able to look myself in the mirror

than be ignorant of what this world is doing to the people who walk the street

and as I sit in comfort as many thousand others

blessed by birth not to be one of those millions who have nought to eat

the age is coming where we will be defined by actions

and we shall see who chooses to stand up and fight

but I suspect the Western world is populated by far too many

who think that they will not be woken by them coming in the night

it seems far-fetched to believe such horror could be just around the corner

we are used to reading such atrocities in the annals of the history books

but ask yourself now were you one of the dreaded asylum seekers

whether you might not receive those same historical dirty looks

Sleep well my friends and think not who has their finger on the button

dwell not upon those in darkened corridors who pull the strings

but keep perhaps in mind to be careful what you say in conversation

for will you really know who’s listening next time the phone rings?

Song Of The Day ~ The Wedding Present – Brassneck