Rantime.

Firstly, a quick update. Today I got up ridiculously early (9!), mainly due to the mother waking me with her 5 minute attempt to put my guitar back on it's stand,(damn that tricky latch system.)
So I got up..and spent the next few hours questioning why I did so. In walking the dog I decided that dew on the ground is God's message to us that we shouldn't go out until at least half 10 ish.

I didn't do much else for the rest of the day apart from a quick trip up to town to pick up my sister from school, Halloween  supplies from wilko's, and deposit some money into my bank account. Turns out, I've been pre-approved for a loan, I turned it down, but it's nice to know people have a high opinion of you.

This evening Seb, I, and our respective dads went to 'Beau Thai' (puntastic). Had a really good meal and some brilliant conversation. We established that Amsterdam has a red and blue district, my dad thinks swimming with dolphins is gay, and that a girlfriend is more costly than a prostitute, amongst other important things of course.

Anyway. Tonight was he night that, after weeks of public debate, Nick Griffin was allowed to appear on Question Time. Personally I think the BBC made the right decision to let him on, but the arguments for and against were so close, that either decision would have been understandable.

I, having watched the whole hour, found it incredibly disappointing. It was childish, simple, obvious, uninformative, single minded, playground politics. If you want informed debate you should have unified, set, objective questions that a representative of each party should be allowed to answer without interruption.

For years people have called Nick Griffin an uninformed, ignorant, racist. He may be all of these things, but saying that is not going to dissuade the British right wing voters who are on his side. People are generally attracted to the BNP as they feel threatened by growing ethnic communities, the idea of British Patriotism is attractive to them as they are fed images of a whiter, English speaking, unified country. Conveniently in this fairytale all current social and economic problems vanish. No one is going to be put off the BNP by saying the leader is racist, because most of their followers harbour racist tendencies. Where the potential to pull the BNP apart lies is in the fact that their policies don't go far beyond race and culture. Ask them about healthcare, education, transport..they won't be able to hold their own, where as many parties can.

Anyway,my main point is that calling a racist racist will get us no where. What's needed is a sceptical informed questioning of the whole political system and a unified attempt to battle apathy and ignorance within both the political system and the electorate as a whole.

xxx