Thread: A Question of Question Time

Originally Posted by Crunchie

Total non-event in my books. Griffin wasn't given enough rope to hang himself, the rest of the panel bored me, less the tory girl (and yes, yes i would).

The auidience where weighted, so pretty bonk QT.

However, one thing that did get my back up, the English thing, with the usual we have no right to claim that race as we are all mongrels.

Maybe so, but from the conception of the English as a recognised people, there is a sizeable % of the population who can trace their origins back to that period of time, whether Anglo-Saxon/Danish/Norwegian etc, when they were labelled 'English'. The Normans refered to us as English, or Aenglish.

I am in no way saying i have a clearer right to live in this country than anyone else, but surely i have the right to call myself English and to be recognised as such? Yet to do so means you are instantly villified as a racist. (By the way i veiw myself as British first)

That because in order for us to be the compliant muli-cultural society the state demands we are to be then our culture and values need to be modified.
This is why being British is racist but being Asian British or African British or Martian British is something to be proud of. Just being plain old fashioned British is frowned upon.

Originally Posted by Crunchie

Total non-event in my books. Griffin wasn't given enough rope to hang himself, the rest of the panel bored me, less the tory girl (and yes, yes i would).

The auidience where weighted, so pretty bonk QT.

However, one thing that did get my back up, the English thing, with the usual we have no right to claim that race as we are all mongrels.

Maybe so, but from the conception of the English as a recognised people, there is a sizeable % of the population who can trace their origins back to that period of time, whether Anglo-Saxon/Danish/Norwegian etc, when they were labelled 'English'. The Normans refered to us as English, or Aenglish.

I am in no way saying i have a clearer right to live in this country than anyone else, but surely i have the right to call myself English and to be recognised as such? Yet to do so means you are instantly villified as a racist. (By the way i veiw myself as British first)

I think the reason it so often gets branded as racist is that those who make the claim add that it is some way gives them rights over those who should be considered equals. In my mind claiming top be English is quite OK, it is the claim to special rights and treatment tha is the problem

Originally Posted by Fallschirmjager

Originally Posted by amazing__lobster

The problem is though, even in countries without a state benefit system you will find people who do not want to work.

There may well be though there will be enough chavs willing to work for their bottle of White Lightening Cider and packet of fags. Those unwilling to work get nothing.

I think its called motivation :D
There isn't going to be any while the state caters for your needs without obligation to support yourself.
The most pertinent point of the night was largely ignored which was the audience member who asked why we were allowing millions into the country while unemployment is 2.5million and rising. Nobody wanted to hear that one....

Originally Posted by Ventress

Turned it off after 15 minutes- load of bollox. The panel raised against Griffen was toothless and all he did was chuckle at the free air time he got.

Where was George Galloway? He could have given the fat ba$tard more of a run for his money than Straw and Co.

No I doubt that, George Galloway would have told us how great he was and how badly he was treated by the press etc and that he was often misrepresented, would rather have seen the two of them in the ring gloves on.

I think the reason it so often gets branded as racist is that those who make the claim add that it is some way gives them rights over those who should be considered equals. In my mind claiming top be English is quite OK, it is the claim to special rights and treatment tha is the problem

I always say I am English first, then British. England was my country of birth so that is what I class myself as even to the extent of using the White (Other) option on forms. Why should I be ashamed of the country of my birth. I wouldn't expect a Yank, Indian, Ugandan to say they were anything else other than the country they were born in.

The problem is England is seen as the Imperialist creating superpower that enslaved a world and we are still paying for it now. I love the way our country has developed, I love the way that I can go into any major town and experience other cultures and cuisines, but please do not make me ashamed of the country I served to defend and love dearly.

Originally Posted by jagman

Originally Posted by amazing__lobster

The problem is though, even in countries without a state benefit system you will find people who do not want to work.

They would if they were hungry enough.

I'd rather we didn't go down that route. We're still coping flak for the potato famine and that was another balls up caused by moronic, incompetent politicians, too busy debating the bloody Corn Law to notice all the people starving. And the calibre of the political class has certainly not improved since!

The funniest bit on Question Time was hearing these corrupt politicians talk about their ‘moral compasses’ (they who voted for the Iraq War and fiddled their expenses claims) without a trace of irony. And Jack Straw, having the sheer effrontery to cite WW2 and his Jewish ancestry, when his own father refused to fight in it - and he himself a chief architect of the Iraq War.

How very New Labour.

There was even a ‘Baroness’ on the show who looked about 28; another PC non-entity rewarded with undue honours. Mind you, she looked a bit uncomfortable when the subject of homosexuality came up. David Dimbelby bailed her out and saved her from having to be truthful to her Islamic faith position. A dear friend of mine is gay and I’d have loved to hear the Islamic position on homosexuality.

Or would it be not very ‘diverse’ to ask?

All in all highly amusing; a bunch of snout in the trough careerist politicians, an audience packed with smug, metropolitan tosspots and no discussions of MPs expenses, illegal wars, the crises in Gaza or the coming Police State. These MPs have never done a decent days work in their lives, never dirtied a fingernail or spilt so much as a drop of their own blood – yet they are responsible and their hands are unclean.

You judge a man by the strength of his enemies. When powerful people start attacking you it’s a sign that you’re on the right track.

Change is coming and they are right to be afraid…

But England has not been a country since 1707 - neither has Scotland! Quite shocking that there were no events to mark the anniversaries of:

a)the uniting of the English and Scottish thrones in 1603
b)the Act of Union in 1707

Pleased to say I didn't watch it.

I wonder what this has done for QT viewing figures?

Talking of metropolitan tosspots I wonder what value that creature Greer added to the debate. Her complete absence of balance and objectivity is amply demonstrated through one of her works entitled 'Jitterbug'. To quote:

In a series of five interlocking playlets the award-winning playwright Bonnie Greer looks at the Jitterbug, the dance phenomenon that not only changed popular dance, but is the influence in the lives of several people across time and space:

A Jewish grandmother and an Auschwitz survivor; Two lovers, he Arab, she Jewish; Two German Jews on their way to oblivion and the young Black man with a secret; An African American woman and her holiday at Auschwitz; and A young Black British girl, who must decide the fate of a beloved teacher, a victim of homophobia and anti Semitism.

Originally Posted by Fat_Cav

I wonder if Jack reminded Peter Hain about free speech, re the Daily Hate/Stephen Gately article? Or even the Communists/Marxist/Left-wing extremists posing as UAF either? Is free speech only OK if you're left of centre?

Completely agree. As the UAF have said before:

“We don’t believe in free speech – for facists�

According to the Guardian, this rabble were chanting "Build a bonfire, build a bonfire, put Nick Griffin on the top, put the Nazis in the middle and burn the fucking lot." Guardian website If the BNP were singing about cremating Jews, how would that go down?

When the English Defence League takes to the streets, it's 'rioting' but when the UAF do it, apparently it's 'direct action' and not the same at all. They're two sides of the same coin - streetfighting mobs who waste police time and public money.

No MP should have anything to do with the antifascist mob, they're fundamentally undemocratic and all they do is stir up support for the BNP with their actions. If I was political I'd be lobbying David Cameron to remove his support from these hooligans.

Over 8 million people watched that pantomime, the BBC are laughing their C**** off

Originally Posted by vvaannmmaann

Pleased to say I didn't watch it.

I wonder what this has done for QT viewing figures?

Over 8 million, up over50% on the normal

Well, pretty much formulaic but one or two surprises:

Nick Griffin - Inappropriate smiles, facial twitching and that unfortunate eye and an overeagerness to appear 'friendly' made him extremely creepy. At first I thought his "I can't tell you why I denied the Holocaust" was an admission of the belief suspension that is required to deny the event, it is unexplainable, but no he was trying to make out that he was being gagged by Europe, not so as the Lisbon Treaty has not yet been ratified. He strove to make himself appear a reasonable man.

Jack Straw - His diatribe and long-winded overblown rhetoric would put an insomniac in a deep coma after 20 seconds. He started blaming the Tory Government of Harold McMillan when asked about modern immigration policy - even Dimbleby had had enough by that time. He came across as useless, totally out of touch and very much yesterday's man. I couldn't get over the fact that he was of Jewish decent yet his father refused to fight Hitler (absolutely nothing to do with the debate but still stuck in my mind).

Chris Huhne - A total waste of space and the only 'fleshed' thing he came out with flew in the face of official Lib Dem policy.

Bonnie Greer - Good old down to earth American folksy with a bit of humour who realised that rising to the bait would get her nowhere - came out with the quote of the show to me about wait and see what happens to the BNP when they have to open up membership, classic.

Sayeeda Warsi was magnificent and the only panellist who had a clue what the real issue was last night. She was the only one who put up any sort of a credible argument and who strove to tackle the issues. Her remark about Asylum Seekers: She is a lawyer and a politician she cannot talk about bogus asylum seekers, asylum seeker is a legal term for someone seeking asylum, is she had made it plain that what was referred to as bogus asylum seekers were in fact failed asylum seekers she would have done far better. She had obviously come prepared to debate the issues - good for her.

David Dimbleby - I thought he did a reasonable task of trying to get some of the issues condensed, if he hadn't fired a few points at Griffin the whole programme would have dragged on about the one point. He did his best to get Straw to answer a question succinctly, a near impossible task which he handled reasonably well.

The Audience - Inevitably the right-on crowd would have clamoured to get tickets. Some seemed to be outdoing each other to spit their hatred at Griffin, all well and good for scoring points in the wine bar afterwards but did nothing to get Griffin to expose himself on TV. The one who said "where would you send me, the South Pole?" just played into Griffin's hands because all he had to say was what he did: no no I would love you to stay here. I now also know that I'm a racist thug because I have always referred to people as Afro-Caribbean instead of African-Caribbean.

The BNP gets support because ordinary people are able to suspend belief and believe the convenient lie fed by Griffin that the BNP aren't racist because there is a widespread concern about unfettered immigration in this country. The BBC ran an article on the news the other day that a female job candidate with an Asian sounding name had a 1 in 16 chance of being picked for interview whereas the same CV with an English sounding name got a 1 in 9 chance, this rather dispels the 'coming over here taking our jobs' jargonese so beloved of the Mail but only Warsi sought to engage on the one issue that is drawing voters to the BNP.

On the Steven Gately issue I am amazed that the whole panel had read the Mail article. In fact I find it hard to believe unless they had been given some sort of heads up or they were lying. Personally I believe Dimbleby when he said the panellists didn't know what the questions would be (some were obvious anyway) because if the did know then they did a piss poor performance of dealing with them.

On the whole my prediction was fairly accurate, Straw, Huhne and the audience would have gifted Griffin an easy victory had not Warsi engaged on the issues at hand.


Whet: Last week when QT was in Hull my mate attended. The audience had to be sat down by 6, a short warm up and the guests introduced, then they warm up with a question from the audience and after that first question filming starts and the programme begins. Why you had to divert the thread with that stupid persual of Colton is beyond me other than you were desperate to cover up for a ,frankly, appalling display by your Lib Dem representative.

I actually thought she did quite well, and her points about the Romans leaving their citizens to 'hook up' with the local 'indigenous populace' was excellent. Britain is already a mongrel nation, and the messages about that are overshadowing people's genuine concerns about uncontrolled immigration and lack of tracking of asylum seekers and illegals once they are here.

As usual, I found myself agreeing with bits of what each of them said. And disagreeing with bits of what each of them said.

I do think it was the right thing to get Griffin on the programme, if only to shoot down his 'made up facts'. All the panellists had done their research, and were able to use logic and reason to do just that. Those who deny him a platform are denying the rest of us the ability to use debate to diminish his power.