Virtual Methodist

Managed to turn up for my live radio slot on Downtown yesterday morning without my pre-prepared "Review of the Week"... Ooops... so I had to quickly write it from memory... and given that this was at 7am, even with an extra hour in bed it was a miracle that I wrote anything vaguely coherent... Here is an amalgam of the pre-prepared script and my improvised one... Should we show tolerance to the intolerant? Should we afford the full rights of a democratic society to a party, which, if they gained power even for a nanosecond, would completely overturn that democracy, in the same way that the Nazi Party did in Germany in the 1930s? Were the BBC influenced by their respect for the 1,000,000 people who voted for the BNP in the recent European elections, or by the thought of the extra 4,000,000 viewers they were likely to get for Question Time by stirring up a media storm around it? And did Nick Griffin's subsequent appearance reveal him to be the "squalid racist...

I have stated before how anxious I am at the rise of the BNP on the back of political disaffection in England, but yesterday's pelting of them with eggs, was, as another blogger put it, "a waste of perfectly good eggs." In fact it was worse than that... It will help to reinforce their mythos of being a persecuted minority in "their own" country. The way to counter them is not with violent action, even something as monor as throwing eggs, but with non-violent protest and rigorous public debate. It was interesting to hear that the policy of the BNP is not to use their MEP windfall to further the cause of the party or to feather their own nests (or build an island in their moats so that ducks can feather their own nests) but to give a tithe to community ventures, such as the celebration of St. George's Day (the celebration of a semi-mythical Syrian soldier in the Roman army) or a Christian Christmas... Skip over to the Unfinished Christian's blog for his ta...