Archive for the ‘bnp’ tag
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.