BNP on Question Time

[MKG]

Some good points being made by everyone - isn't it amazing how rational discussion can crystallise an issue if rational people are prepared to listen to other rational viewpoints?

Flo's point about tribalism sparked my interest. I agree - we are tribal. But I think we're very selectively tribal. I often pop onto a Sunderland supporters' forum (being counted amongst those sad people). They hate the Toonies. And if you then pop onto the Newcastle equivalent board, you find that the Toonies hate the Mackems. But you just try bringing down the north-east and, suddenly, the Toonies and the Mackems are comrades in arms. Then if a southerner makes any comment about the north, the Toonies and Mackems are joined by the Smoggies (that's Middlesbrough supporters, if you didn't know) in a united front against the southern softies. Unless England are playing, in which case those southern softies are OK lads and lasses. Mind you, the Scots and the Welsh and the Northern Irish get a bit of stick - at least until anyone from France has a go, and then they're all British through and through. And, naturally, the northerners are proud as punch of their Viking and Danish roots, and the whole of the country is proud of its early Germanic history in the form of the Anglo Saxons, and the Welsh and Cornish loudly proclaim their affinities with the Bretons (although the Welsh tend to forget that they were invaded by the Irish rather than the Anglo Saxons, but I'm sure they're proud of that too when it comes to mind).

So, we're from a town or city, from a region, from a country, from certain foreign rootstock, and proud to be so. We even pride ourselves on being the country which injected so many people into the outside world that there are now countries such as the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, (I'm sure I've left some out) - countries which, although they now have their own special identities, are certainly based upon the British model. When it comes to football, rugby or cricket, they're the enemy. At all other times, they're good old boys (and girls, of course). In more modern times, Brits have uprooted themselves and gone to live almost all over Europe - mainly because the EU laws allow them to - and there are a fair number of those people on this site.

Absolutely nothing wrong with any of it. It's healthy and, above all, it's normal. And I think it's a safe bet that anyone from any part of Britain would willingly recognise it as such.

So, in general, we as a nation would have great difficulty in fixing ourselves upon any particular set of historical roots, we tend to be an outward-looking people, and we certainly have a long history of going elsewhere. That's just us in a nutshell.

Ironic , then, that the BNP can concentrate on a section of that people and convince them that foreign is bad, going to another country is bad, not conforming to the local culture is bad (that one must strike nasty chords around what was the Empire), and that all current evils can be put down to people who have left their homelands to come here. They appear to have invented a line which coincides with our national borders and across which no-one shall pass - inwards. This is what angers and frustrates me - the ability to applaud what we have done in the past and then claim that such actions are evil - and get other people to accept the obvious fallacy.

Yes, the major political parties have not yet developed any credible immigration policy, nor the agencies to police it efficiently (I bet they will soon, though). No, I do not believe that the UK will comfortably support a population of 70 million (by the end of the next decade, I think). So yes - something has to be done and done reasonably quickly. The way to do that, though, is through the normal lobbying procedures and by the use of the normal kind of pressure groups. It does work - who, in the 60s, would have thought that those looney environmental tree-huggers would end up with political influence?

Very definitely NOT the way to do it is to frighten people with tales of immigrants taking away British jobs and occupying British social housing, undermining British religion (what?) and somehow forcing all white British people to change their customs.

It's just not British.

Mike

[pumpy]

Hey Mike, that's about the most sensible thing that anyone could say. Good on yer!

[Big Al]

Hey Mike, that's about the most sensible thing that anyone could say. Good on yer!

Totally agree. When you read the post above it is obvious where we come from if ou sit and think about it a bit but I do think that mike is a bit wide of the mark when he sugests that smoggies are northerners... i mean they are smoggies... a bread apart surely

a slight tangent to look at here but if you are a northerner where does the south start ? vica versa for the soft southerners, where does the darkest north start? I'm in Hartlepool and south starts at middlesborough being in yorkshire etc and I hold an affinity with the northern lot of mackams rather than the southerners...

very interesting.

[Millymollymandy]

Oh that's easy Big Al - the north starts just north of Watford. No, not Watford Gap!

I always assumed that Watford Gap was in Watford, you see. It's the truth, really!

Actually I'd say it was where the northern accents start, so north of Hertfordshire/Beds. Not sure how they speak in Northants. Deffo northerners in Notts which is as far north as I ever go. They have very funny accents there, duck.

[foodinistar]

http://www.slapnickgriffin.co.uk/
courtesy of @alandavies1 on Twitter

Mmmm... 1000+... I enjoyed that. I enjoyed slow deliberate slapping and savouring the reaction but I also liked rapid slapping that makes his head vibrate. Hmm... slow or rapid? Which is best? There's only one way to find out...

And I have to add that I was sickened by the behaviour of the campaigners outside the BBC studios. I have nothing against people demonstrating, but that wasn't demonstrating, that was rioting and I think it made them look stupid.

Those people are as bad as the BNP. Both sides of the same coin are basically antidemocratic and depend on each other for their oxygen of publicity. I'd put them all in a cage with a selection of lethal weapons and charge people to watch (got to get something useful from them.)

[catboy]

one amusing thing coming off the back of the TV show...

me and The Badger (mrs catboy) totalled up how much it would cost the country to "send em back" in our own case (as the badgers family are from beautiful Mauritius and came over here to steal our jobs in the early 70s,) we worked out that if the BNP wanted to buy out her mum and dad, who have a nice house in london, us two, with our place in sussex, her sister, with a nice house in London too, plus give us our salaries for at least a year while we find jobs in Mauritius, then it would amount to over a million quid, and thats just for one family (obvioulsy i would have to go too despite being whiteish and so apparently according to the BNP "more british" than the badger, who was herself born here )....so for each of the 7.5% of folks who describe themselves as "non white british" the BNP, if elected, would have to stump up at least a mil??? i cant do the maths but i'm guessing thats a whole lot of money, so the whole policy of sending people back is ludicrous really...the country would go down the tube almost over night. PLUS what happens to the GDP of a country if you lose 7.5% of the workers?? surely the standard of living would go down for who ever was left? NGs ideas seem, not just repellent morally but really, really undesirable economically. sadly no one tackled NG about the economics of his ideas on QT....

[Rosendula]

That's a good point, catboy. I never thought of that.

And the South start on t'other side of the Humber

[foodinistar]

But catboy, they don't intend to pay to "send people back to their own countries"!!!!!

Like any fascist party, they have a populist, opportunistic, 'reasonable' - "trust us, we're on your side" facade and a nasty real agenda.

When Mussolini seized power in Italy, did he organise elections?
When Hitler grabbed power in Germany, did he organise elections?
When Franco usurped power in Spain, did he organise elections?

The BNP would do to those they class as 'non-white' exactly what the Nazi's did to those they classed as 'non-Arian'.

Actually, what the BNP are proposing is just how apartheid started in South Africa.

I suggest you watch the http://www.slapnickgriffin.co.uk/ piece. Even if you don't slap him, listen to what, from his own mouth, the BNP is really about.

[catboy]

yes i see your point foodinistar, i spose i was trying to point out that the argument for the BNP that most 'normal' people give, which is its a protest vote, can and should be countered by focusing on issues such as economics as that part of the topic is less emotive. That even if you accept his crazy and horrid notions, they cant be put into practice.

We regulalry take politicos to task for policies that would cost the nation finacially..why didnt this happen to NG on QT?..i guess most were so angry to see him there. Me, i'd have welcomed the opportunity to hear him speak on the implementation of his ideas...see where that would have got him with middle england and the Daily Hiel mob.....see how much your house is worth after the country has paid to rehouse almost 10% of the population overseas...!

[foodinistar]

Point taken.

[MKG]

I can't think of a better definition then the one used before the Normans started messing around, when England had divided itself into three major kingdoms - Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex. Northumbria, as the name implies, was anywhere north of the Humber. Right, that's the northerners sorted out. Wessex, by that time, consisted of everything south of a line between the Thames and Severn estuaries. That's the softies, then. Mercia (literally "borderlands") was everything in between - the Midlanders, therefore, who speak funny.

Strictly speaking, by this rule, a north Londoner is a Midlander. That should cause a stir or two. The fact that the whole of North and East Yorkshire falls into Northumbria should ruffle a few feathers too.

Wales, Cornwall, and certain parts of the north-west were off-limits as they developed their Celtic fantasies (more controversy!). Devon was definitely part of Wessex.

Mike

[catboy]

thanks for that mike..bleeding wessex people, comin over here to steal our indentured serfdom...

[Masco&Bongo]

How far does one actually have to go back to find out if you are really 'British'??

A lady who I work with has managed to trace her ancestry all the way back to a Viking invasion, centuries ago - so, is she british then?

My mum has traced our family back to France and Italy in the 17th Century, although looking and listening to anyone in our family, you'd be forgiven for thinking we haven't got a foreign bone in our body.

Given that genetically, the majority of 'british' people are descended from invaders - roman, viking etc... how does one tell whether we are actually british??

[catboy]

How far does one actually have to go back to find out if you are really 'British'??

didnt NG say something to Bonny Greer on QT that it was all those who moved to 'Britain' after the last ice age, (seriously he did!) how do find out who THEY are then? DNA testing??...maybe if your eyebrows meet and you cant walk upright?...actually that most of the BNP anyway.....

[MuddyWitch]

That M&B was my original point! NO-ONE is a 'British Aboriginal' as the BNP put it. I believe they start from the exodus of the Romans. The problem with that is the Romans left most of their multi-national lot behind; only the elite went back to Rome. So there were people of black skin and African origin on these shore as far back as 400CE.

MW