BNP pt2

A quick appendum to all the BNP stuff. As I wrote below, BNP support is coming from Labour as this YouGov/Channel 4 poll shows.

So what you going to do Gordon?



H/T: To Political Betting for putting this up again

BNP-QT

So how was it for you?

Like many I thought Griffin came across exactly as I thought he would - shifty, nervous, ludicrous.

But... As others have pointed out, how will this play out in Bradford, Dagenham etc?

To be honest I don't think that his support will rise. Yes it may look like he was being bullied and yes I agree with Iain Dale that perhaps the Beeb should have stuck to the topical format of QT instead of focussing on the BNP. But the support he has is already there, I doubt he will get new support after this. We'll see when the polls are done, spose.

Anyway well done the Beeb for sticking to its guns and well played Alan Davis on The Week where he was perfect foil to the shrill Diane Abbot.

BTW, funniest moment? Jack Straw reaching for a (partisan),er, straw. He was asked if Labour were to blame for the rise of the BNP and in his waffle he ended up trying to blame the Conservatives and Enoch Powell for the policy that allowed Commonwealth citizens to work for "the Mother Country" in the '50s.

At least I think that was what he was trying to say because he was waffling. Also Jack try not to make it too obvious when you are reading your SPAD notes!

TARDIS INTERIOR

Some pics of the new interior



And flipped for the actual programme:


It's got a staircase!

H/t Scooty

Comedic values

I see the BBC is once again in a self-flagellation mode again with the news that Mock the Week has been censured for a joke by Frankie Boyle about Rebecca Adlington.

The joke "The thing that nobody really said about Rebecca Adlington is that she looks pretty weird. She looks like someone who's looking at themselves in the back of a spoon" was deemed "humiliating" by the BBC Trust.

Now look, there were 75 complaints, yep 75! That's from an audience of around 2m. And that wasn't the end of it - One, that's ONE, viewer continued to complain which resulted in the formal censure.

So 0.0037% of viewers complained intially. Then 0.00005% of viewers were sad enough to keep going.

Listen, I like Mock The Week. I find Frankie Boyle is gloriously rude and bare knuckled. Some of his jokes are extremely close to the bone but that's him. If you don't like it, turn of the TV, watch something else, do something else. Don't try and decide for me and 1,999,998 other viewers (or 1,999,924 other viewers if you include the original sad cu..complainees) what we can watch post-watershed.

Interestingly The Trust concluded that a joke about the Queen was "in bad taste" but was broadcast long after the watershed and was "within audience expectations for the show".

So were the Adlington jokes.

Free for all not Pic n Mix

"Five years on, the broadcasting ban remains a nasty little law, flirting with censorship."

Peter Hain is continuing his campaign to prevent the BNP from appearing on Question Time

I have always argued and will continue to argue in favour of free speech.
It is not a pic and mix, if there is free speech for one there is free speech for another.

"Tolerance of the intolerable is the hallmark of a democracy."

Why do Labour want to block these odious idiots anyway? They complained loudly about the Sinn Fein broadcasting ban - or were those bunch of political thugs acceptable to their ideology? (I thought the broadcasters did a brilliant job circumventing a ban that should never have been ordered and Labour correctly applauded the media's actions.)

You cannot decide on who has free speech. Although we don't have a written right to free speech, we do have laws and precedences to protect people. If Griffin, or any other loony commits an offence for incitement to racial violence or violence against a person then hit him with the law.

There is one straight precedence, it is fine to exercise free speech but you cannot shout fire in a packed cinema. So apply that. And whilst you're at it, arrest those thugs at the Finsbury Mosque for incitement as well. Like free speech, laws should be applied to all no matter what religion, colour or which House of Parliament you sit in.

As always, confront the bigot, don't make him a martyr. It is your natural constituents, Labour, that are voting for them.

The BNP is tapping into fears about jobs, housing, crime, the "way of life", and the only answer you're coming up with is to try and ban them?

AS I argued before, if you ban one political party, where does it stop? Hmmm, UKIP, bunch of loons, ban them. Tory Party? Full of rascists and capitalists, ban them. Lib Dems? Those orange book lads look a bit off-our-message, ban them.

Where do you stop?


Oh, and while I'm here, THE BNP IS A LEFT-WING PARTY! Look at its manifesto commitements, they're all socialist ideals. Just because they want to kick "anyone not them" out of the country and use nationalist imagery, it does not make them right wing, the left has used that as well!!


One final thing, the quotes on this blog - you may be interested to know that these come from Ann Clywd, the then-Labour spokesperson on National Heritage,on the fifth anniversary of the Sinn Fein broadcasting ban.
Here's the final one...

"Being right is not the key. Being allowed to be obnoxiously wrong is. The constitutional concept of free expression means something in continental Europe, and it means something in the United States. It should mean something here."

Appendum: Even Richard Littlejohn is calling for a ban!?! H/t Obo

cycles

Funny how the political messages seem to come around again and again!



This is from pre-war elections!

h/t theo spark

BOGOF

Gordon Brown has announced plans for a £16bn sell-off - just enough to pay August's loan.

Now aside the rights and wrongs of an asset sale, the one thing I noticed is that he wants to sell off the 33% stake in Urenco.

Urenco supplies equipement to enrich uranium for the nuclear industry, y'know the industry that everyone is turning to as fears about oil and gas dependency rises. An industry that will be growing - shadows of the gold sell-off anyone?

Still he's insisted that there will be "no threat to national security".

That's alright then

...

oh sh...

GLOBAL COOLING?

so the BBC has decided that there has been no evidence of global warming for the past 11 years.

Hey ho, shame no-one told Jeremy Vine who is sending two of his listeners to a global warming supporting scientist to see if he can "convert" them.

the universe

Over at Rick Veitch's, he has a photo which shows what the universe looks like. It's from scientist at the Miskatonic University who somehow took a picture from outside time and space ;)

Looks cool tho'

American politics

Conservatives and liberals: American politics explained
If a conservative doesn't like guns, he doesn't buy one.
If a liberal doesn't like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.

If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn't eat meat.
If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone.

If a conservative sees a foreign threat, he thinks about how to defeat his enemy.
A liberal wonders how to surrender gracefully and still look good.

If a conservative is homosexual, he quietly leads his life.
If a liberal is homosexual, he demands legislated favours.

If a black man or Hispanic are conservative, they see themselves as independently successful.
Their liberal counterparts see themselves as victims in need of government protection.

If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation.
A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him.

If a conservative doesn't like a talk show host, he switches channels.
Liberals demand that those they don't like be shut down.

If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn't go to church.
A liberal non-believer wants any mention of God and religion silenced (unless it’s a foreign religion, of course!)

If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it.
A liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his.

If a conservative slips and falls in a store, he gets up, laughs and is embarrassed.
If a liberal slips and falls, he grabs his neck, moans like he's in labor and then sues.

If a conservative reads this, he'll forward it so his friends can have a good laugh.
A liberal will delete it because he's "offended".

Hat tip: Donal Blaney

Doctor Who Logo

So the new logo is up

Not sure about the "DW" bit, makes me think that there was a brand consultant involved.

Just as I got used to the cats-eye logo as well ;)

Doctor Who - SPOILERS

Looks like the post-regeneration episode is being filmed attm.

Look away now if you don't want to see...
S
P
O
I
L
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R
S

S
E
R
I
O
U
S
L
Y



Looks like Tennant's costume, according to Bleeding Cool there's twitter about unusual cravings, as Rich says "Post regeneration?"







I wonder what the appeal to dads will be this time? ;)

cheers Alun Vega

zeitgeist

A fews things from pop culture.

On All-Star Family Fortunes, the celeb families were asked to name the top ten best known superheroes -
Number Four was SuperTed

Hahahahahahhahahahaha...ah

Doctor Who gets a new logo at 0800 tomorrow - Check here

Alan Moore returns to fanzines, with the launch of Dodgem Logic next month.

Europe

So it's down to the Czechs and the Poles to pull the ordinary EU people out of this tecno-cratic nightmare that is developing in Brussels.

Or we wait to see what Cameron does if Lisbon is full ratified.

The EU is not for the people, it is for the technocrats with Tony Blair at its head. Sod the people, the sheeple, they will do what is told or face the consequences.

Oh and the animals too apparently.

God this is depressing. What on earth did my father's generation sign us up for? You know that Common market thingy, the one that Labour opposed right up till 1987.

That's the other thing that confuses me - where have all the Labour anti's disappeared to? It couldn't just have been Tony Benn surely? Is hatred of the Conservatives so ingrained that they have ditched their principles just to try and stay in power and try and do another Tory split-shit-stir?

With their reputation? ;)

Update: Dan Hannan, needless to say, has plenty on this. I like the Guardian cartoon he notes in the article

Education, education, education

The Devil has done an excellent piece on the Tories' plan for Swedish style voucher education so go and read it and come back here.

I was talking to people last night about education - not so much the National Curriculum but what is education for and how should it be implemented.

First up - this idiocy of keeping kidults in education to 18. Now this is ridiculous and a blatent attempt to massage the NEETs figures. If a 16-year-old does not want to be in education then what do you think the effect will be on those that do want further education? Bored, angry pupils disrupting lessons, knowing that there is nothing the teacher will actually do is the probably result.

So scrap this ridiculous law.

Second - Higher education. Why should there be universal higher education. That's not what the real world is about. The net result is a funding crisis and non-courses so that the new universities can survive.

Why should it take three years to do a Hairdressing degree?

What should happen is the re-installing of Higher Education colleges, polytechnics and "proper" universities - each catering for the needs of the pupil - so you have practical, mixed and academic courses. Some people are academically minded, some are practical and some are mixed ability. Aim to get the best out of those students.

Third up was education in general. At the moment you have a centrally controlled rigid structure run on ideological grounds rather than on what is best for the pupil. There should only be two compulsory subjects post-14: English Language and Maths. That's all. people need to read, write and count if they are going to succeed in whatever course their lives take them.

Other courses should be based on ability. So, taking my older brother for an example - he was a shocking academic (we actually suspect he may have been dyslexic) but give him an engine, art pad or piece of wood and he could create like you wouldn't believe. So should he been forced to do all those academic subjects when more practical ones may have suited him more?


Pre-14, there should be compulsory maths, english, history and a.n.other. My preference would be art or a language. There should also also be intelligent streaming. I.E. Put children of the same ability in the same group. But with constant monitoring. Some kids will move on in a subject faster and earlier than others. Streaming allows tailored education to suit each group.

For instance if i was teaching a difficult maths group then once a week or so we could play darts or snooker with two of the kids as designated scorers. They would have to add and subtract without calculators. I know people who would have improved significantly if they had been taught in a more practical manner.

But this could also challenged by the child. Say he believes that he should stay in a group, he can have a month or so in the new year to prove himself capable. Give a child a challenge, a competition, most will go for it.

In my perfect world, each child would have a full basic education and then skills. whether academic or practical, would be layered on top.

But that's a perfect world, I'm interested in seeing the praticalities of a Tory government.