I spent most of last week flipping the radio so as not to hear them just going on, and on … about Nick Griffin.
Phil Collins a former speechwriter for Tony Blair, let the cat out of the bag in his commentary for The Times, LAUGHTER IS THE BEST WEAPON: “Before I had [Anglo-Indian] children [about 5 years ago], Nick Griffin’s beliefs were an abstraction for me”
Mary Beard got it right in I wish Nick Griffin hadn't seemed quite so MAD (also for The Times), although as far as I know has only an ‘abstract’ interest in the subject.
Worries about immigration no longer translate automatically into worries about race. People know this; do the police know that yet, or do they still classify people by their Immigrant Category?
And unless they are prepared to believe that most ordinary people are not racists & can make up their own mind about Nick Griffins policies on global warming, education & the need for free bus passes, just as they do about David Cameron, Gordon Brown or Nick Clegg, all the patronising media types succeed in doing with their oh-so-abstract concern is make people agree with Lord Desai “both politicians and journalists … are amoral, sleazy or gutless.”
