I'll watch it on the iPlayer tonight or tomorrow. Should be interesting. Do we have BNP supporters on the forum?

Fool? The man is a visionary!

No seriously he is not.

Incidentally, come back to visit home >_<

should be interesting. I expect a fist fight to break out.

For those of you who don't have televisions (or are too lazy to leave the computer) you can watch it live in about 20 minutes...

HERE

Democracy and freedom of speech are the principles they fall back on, not realising the irony that they would happily enforce laws and actions (in addition to turning a blind eye to their underground violent groups - Combat 18, the "Defence League") without the public vote once power is granted to them. Example - mixed race marriages, the BNP manifesto openly despises this, and Griffin has made no hesitation in saying so. If they are elected, how are they going to "reverse the tide of immigration"? In my uni tutorial group, we had a black and asian student, and just like me they were born and bred here. Why would they choose to go home (not forgetting the terrible irony that Britain is their home)? The only way of the BNP of enforcing such pledges in their manifesto, and thus satisfying their core electorate, is to use force in "kicking out" non-whites. Where is the democracy in that? Of course, non-racists and those on the fence previously would start to see the motions that they allowed to happen, and begin to protest. Only for them to be silenced and ignored as the BNP carry out their actions. Where would the freedom of speech be then?


As for those saying the demonstrations are wrong, how so? Of course they should be allowed, much like the Iraq War, Gaza atrocities, EDF (up until they turned violent) protests were OK... everyone has the right to ridicule and protest in anger over abhorrent views, just like everyone has the right to express those views in the first place.

But I feel a line has been crossed here. By accepted BNP on Question Time, it is also allowing the general public to perceive them as a normal party - a very dangerous thing. You just has to read the history of the rise of Nazis to see how they went from a very legitimate party to completely changing how politics worked in a democratic Germany - something they had to do in order to complete their aims of racial purity and supremacy.


And I've been watching BBC News coverage of this, they are covering the papers just now... the Daily Mail and Express are hating on him!

Well I watched it the program and my view on Griffin being a tool most certainly has not changed.Do kind of think the whole question time thing has given him and his party an enormous amount of publicity,the kind of which they probably could not have gained via most conventional means.Griffin himself came across as a bumbling misinformed idiot who seemed to constantly change what he thought.Like I previously mentioned,I do not agree in anyway with his views or policies and have largely ignored him and his party to date and will continue to so.But if the saying is true that 'no publicity is bad publicity',then that idiot Griffin has just got his party more coverage than he could possibly have dreamed of and the BBC (along with the protesters) have just helped him do it.

Machie wrote:
> What did you think of it all Garin?

It was basically a lynching that even the presenter took part in.  I dont think thats the way to convince people of the evils of the BNP.  I doubt Nick Griffin will get much sympathy but I've no doubt his treatment will become part of his party's spiel now.  Especially as they like phrases like "political elite" these days.

I don't have any sympathy or support for the BNP, but I do believe in freedom of speech.

Surely the protestors' actions were rather fascist in themselves?

I haven't seen this weeks QT yet, but it has already made more people aware of the BNP which, as has already been mentioned, is rather ironic.

It was certainly an interesting show.

I'm more concerned over some of the comments on many of the news reports that came out this morning. 

The BNP seem to be doing fantastically in gaining the support of people who are too ignorant to look into their history and just go on face values, the same people who will believe what they read in a newspaper and form a lynch mob over some stupid story.

The issue is that this has happened before.  There was this guy in Germany who was originally banned from public speaking over his views then towed the legal line to make his party legally able to enter the political arena.  He succeeded in gaining leadership of his party in 1933 and played on individual fears to get the 'working class people's' vote.  Once in power...well, you know the rest.

Ok, you could call that conjecture, but looking in to Griffin's past it's all shockingly familiar.  You can say 'oh, surely no-one would vote for them to give them power' but people already have and looking at some of those discussion boards those same 'working class' people who are angry because they've lost jobs (despite not wanting to take up new ones because they're too proud to be a street sweeper etc) think that they've been hard done by.

Has there ever been a protest against protesters ?.That would be interesting.

Alfonse wrote:
> Apparently, some courageous person made their way to the protest
> area with a BNP banner. They were heavily beaten.

It's getting hard to see who the fascists are!




The BCC has put this Griffin video response up. Some people may think he has a few fair points. The 'normal' politicians had better start to raise their game...
^Hmmm...

Last nights episode was amazing, everybody should watch it.
John Sergeant is classic.

I think last night's was more worthwhile and entertaining than the BNP episode. Sergeant really pulled the rug from under some of those politicians. Jacqui Smith especially:

"Both my dogs are dead actually.
"Perhaps you should have fed them more then!"

That "comedian" really killed the show for me yesterday. The muppets comment was simply awful.

Well basically, Robert Kilroy-Silk was on the show. He came out with some controversial comments, and rather than a well reasoned argument, one of the panelists claimed he looked similiar to one of the old men on the muppets.

Try and catch the episode on iplayer anyway, it was still quite an interesting episode.