My mother always taught me that no one can help the colour of their skin. I have believed in this all my life. Griffin's racist views are vile to me and every civilised person. What the BBC succeeded in doing however was in making many of the non-London audience feel sorry for Griffin. What is popular in the mosques and synagogues of London does no necessarily play well in the great cities of the Midlands and the North. Diane Abbott noted this on Andrew Neil's show that immediately followed Question Time!
My title is taken from page 6 of today's Daily Telegraph and refers to Sue McGregor, 68, who presented the Today programme for 17 years who said "I don't think it was right to completely skew the formula to him and one issue. It either gave him a huge audience for his views, which I would not approve of, or it gave the impression of attack dogs against Nick Griffin". That is BBC speak for we cocked it up! The article goes on to say, "Privately many members of BBC staff have said that inviting Mr Griffin on to the programme may have back fired" Another bit of economy with the truth! There was nothing wrong in inviting him on but it was the way he was treated that caused the problem. The BBC made him into a martyr and as the Romans say , "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church"
Well there was plenty of Griffin's blood spilt and he took what the Duke of Wellington would have called a hard pounding but remind yourself who eventually won at Waterloo?
Griffin sat there nervously and took it, kept his cool, and was there at the end to raise the issue of the ethnic cleansing of London to hoots of derision from the biased audience and panel. It was a performance of courage in a very difficult environment.
Today however, the Daily Mail runs a story headlined below, sourced back to 10 Downing Street that shows Griffin was telling the truth. Click on the link below to read it.
Labour 'deliberately let migrants in to make Britain more multicultural and so Tories could be accused of racism'
It claims that Labour's relaxation of immigration controls in 2000 was a deliberate attempt to engineer a 'truly multicultural' country and plug gaps in the jobs market and that it was approved by Blair and Straw. I won't summarise the article but urge you read it for yourself. Its very frightening.
And therein lies Griffin's usefulness in the political debate. He can raise issues which other, more Political Correct, party leaders are scared to touch not because these issues like Islam and immigration are not important, but because of the possible damage to their pygmy like political reputations. When one is interviewed by the Civil Service one is always asked to chair a committee on some fatuous topic. The one essential as chairman is to ensure that you elicit everyone's views no matter if you and the rest think someone is a real numpty. Numpty views sometimes turn out to be important and even if most of that person's views, as with Griffin are indefensible, one must be careful of dismissing all their views without examination. Play the ball not the man!
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Racism begins with our families, parents, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, grandparents, people we admire, respect and love.
However, as we grow and mature we come to the realization that what we were told by our family when we were children were slanted lies base on their prejudices. We realize that most people are like ourselves and not so different and want the same things, like a home, steady work, a Medicare plan and schools for our children (if you travel you will see this). We realize that most people are of good hearts and goodwill.
This reminds me of a parable from the good book where a Levite and Priest come upon a man who fell among thieves and they both individually passed by and didn’t stop to help him.
Finally a man of another race came by, he got down from his beast, decided not to be compassionate by proxy and got down with the injured man, administered first aid, and helped the man in need.
Jesus ended up saying, this was the good man, this was the great man, because he had the capacity to project the “I” into the “thou,” and to be concerned about his fellow man.
You see, the Levite and the Priest were afraid, they asked themselves, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?”
But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”
That’s the question before us. The question is not, “If I stop to help our fellow man (immigrant) in need, what will happen to me?” The question is, “If I do not stop to help our fellow man, what will happen to him or her?” That’s the question.
This current climate of blaming others for our woes is not new. We have had this before and we have conquered it.
Remember “Evil flourishes when good men (and women) do nothing”. Raise your voices with those of us who believe we are equal and we can win this battle again.
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