Archive for October, 2009
The BBC Bottled It
First off, let me say that I am no supporter of the BNP. This isn’t about their politics, or even their personnel; it is about democracy and being treated like children.
For all its posturing, and the proclamations of their being the upholders of freedom of speech, the BBC bottled it last night. They gave Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, a national platform on the flagship political debate show Question Time, and then reduced the whole thing to a version of the Jeremy Kyle show, albeit with posher accents.
As I understand it, the point of Question Time, or any other debate show, is to debate the issues of the day. Instead, last night they debated the following: immigration (hardly news), the holocaust (er, news to be sure, but it didn’t happen this week), homosexuality and, erm, that’s it.
It may be that the panel don’t know which questions are going to come up, but I would bet my house that the producers of the show picked questions from the audience that they knew would expose the BNP’s views, rather than simply allowing debate on the issues of the day. And it seemed that the other panel members had been briefed to attack these at any opportunity, however slight.
I think this says more about the so-called tolerance of the British public, and the awful smugness of our liberal media elite: they pretend that they have done the decent thing, and then allow a massacre in the full glare of the studio lights.
Whatever you think of his politics, last night no-one came out of it looking good, and it may just have made people feel something new about the BNP – pity.
Cops & Robbers
Bit of excitement around these parts last night. Or at least I heard there was, as we slept through the whole thing.
Turns out a deadbeat student from around the corner decided to kick the wing mirror of our car last night at about 12ish. Luckily for us, but spectacularly unfortunate and bad for him, our neighbour Helen spotted him doing it and steamed out.
A melee of sorts ensued, with 3 (yes, 3) police cars showing up, and carting her around the side roads in search of the chap in the white t-shirt. Anyway, she spotted him, and he spent the night in clink.
Can’t fault the service: we had 3 calls from various police officers and victim support bods. I said that it been my BMW Touring rather than the crappy Zafira that had got the boot, I might have needed some victim support, but otherwise I was fine.
Thing is, the chances of my getting the cost of a new wing mirror out of him (if needed, not sure if I can repair it yet), are about as likely as the police turning up when you need them. Err, hang on….
Bargain Websites?
On the way in this morning, I saw this van. On the side it said: “Websites from £2.99 per month.”
There’s so many things wrong with this, that I haven’t got the time to go in to them here. Suffice it to say there is one fairly safe bet that you can make about the quality of the work at that price. It will suck.