Question Time 22nd October 2009
Panel:
Sayeeda Hussain Warsi (Conservative)
Jack Straw (Labour)
Nick Griffin (British National Party)
Chris Huhne (LibDem)
Bonnie Greer (Author)
Venue: London
With Question Time absent for another week, QT Review was opened to the floor. Suggestions included Drag Race. A friend tells me this refers to the type of activity one might have accidentally walked in on during a Friday night lock-in at the Union Jack Club in Chorlton-cum-Hardy in the 1970s. Linfield versus Coleraine sounded more attractive. An old Question Time with Robin Day in the chair and Enoch Powell on the panel? More attractive still. Which gave me an idea.
Perhaps surprisingly, the most popular QT ever didn’t include Robin Day, Rue Paul, or even the Blues Windsor Park goal machine Jordan Stewart. In a long-running series that has boasted George the Poet, Terry Christian and (tranny alert) Paris Lees, the most popular edition ever took place in October 2009, attracting an audience of over 8 million. I wonder why? Only one way to find out. YouTube calls.
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Welcome to Question Time boomed hereditary BBC presenter David Dimbleby.
The first question was from Peter Log, “Given that the Second World War was driven by the need to disarm racist and oppressive regimes, is it fair that the BNP has hijacked Churchill as its own?”
A stuttering Jack Straw (Labour), accompanied by whooping and applause from the impartial audience, claimed millions of black and Asian people had won the First World War. Despite Dimbleby claiming at the top of the programme that panellists didn’t know the questions in advance (you’ll note that these days Fiona Bruce makes no such claim), Straw seemed to be remarkably well prepared. He continued by telling of his Blackburn constituency being twinned with Peron, close to the Somme battlefield. If you thought Blackburn was twinned with Bangladesh, shame on you. Jack had, coincidentally, brought a list of names from the Peron war memorial, half of which he claimed were Indian or Pakistani. More whooping.
Privately educated Old Carthusian Dimbleby addressed his own cuttings, the suspicion being that they were from Bulldog,
“Nick Griffin, you said if Churchill were alive today his place would be in the BNP. Why did you say that and why did you hijack his reputation?”
(This was in the days before Churchill’s reputation was that of a weapons-grade racist and Islamophobe whose statue deserves to be vandalised).
Mr Griffin (British National Party) replied that no other party would have Churchill because of his attitude towards immigration and, in his younger days, his criticism of Islam. The war was about sovereignty, Griffin continued, the sovereignty that Jack Straw’s Labour Government were giving away to the European Union.
(This was in the days when Britain was in the EU).
Mr Griffin’s father had been in the RAF during the war, Mr Straw’s had been imprisoned as a conscientious objector for refusing to fight Adolph Hitler. There followed some applause but mainly booing from the impartial audience.
“What’s that got to do with the issue?” demanded impartial Dimbleby.
“Mr Straw was attacking me,” replied a composed Griffin.
A twelve-year-old in the audience reminded Mr Griffin that 80% of our trade was with the EU. The chair cut him off, saying, “We may come to that later.” Yes, Dimbles, seven years later in a referendum.
A black man in the audience became overexcited. Think of the benefits immigrants have brought, he implored. Struggling. If Puffins can think of any, include them in the unread comments.
Nick claimed that newspaper quotes about him were outrageous lies. This gave Dimbleby an opportunity to read some of them out,
“Holocaust denial? Ethnicity, I want to see Britain become 99% genetically white. Mixed marriage, it’s a shame when a unique human genotype becomes extinct.”
Mr Griffin disputed these and the Daily Mail’s assertion that he’d said, “Black people walk like monkeys.” An outrageous lie claimed Mr Griffin.
Sayeeda Warsi (Conservative) said that the values of Churchill weren’t BNP values. These being more innocent times, she mentioned people of “coloured backgrounds”. Cancel the gal! Despite not knowing in advance what the first question was, Warsi read out a quote from the BNP’s Mark Collett criticising Churchill.
Bonnie Greer (Author) said she wasn’t a politician, her background was in culture. She informed us that Churchill’s mother (Lady Randolph, daughter of financier Leonard Jerome and Clarissa Hall) was a Mohawk Indian. Mohawk style whopping followed.
A QT Review biography of Bonnie Greer is available here, the key points being her lived experience in a £1 million pound apartment in London’s exclusive Soho and her career as a box-ticking quango and committee queen.
Chris Huhne (Liberal Democrat) thought the BNP’s politics as old as the hills and defined them as ‘find people to blame’. Perhaps find an MP to blame for perverting the course of justice and send him to jail, Chris?
In 2009, Christopher Murray Paul-Huhne was the Liberal Democrat MP for Eastleigh in Hampshire. Privately educated at Westminster school, Chris is the son of film star and writer Ann Murray and the grandson of Major Bill Gladstone Murray, founder of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Mr Huhne graduated from Magdalene College, Oxford with a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics, being awarded not just a first-class degree but a starred first-class degree. During his later difficulties, Mr Huhne was awarded the Daily Mail title, “Sneering Public School Trot.”
On completing his education, Chris moved into the City via journalism, becoming a Liberal Democrat MEP in 1999 and an MP in 2005. At the time of the broadcast, Chris was happily married to his Greek economist wife Vicky Price, (not her real name) and lived in a three-story townhouse in Clapham, South London.
After being re-elected in the May 6th 2010 general election, tragedy struck six weeks later at half time during a World Cup match.
Consulting the calendar shows that day to be Thursday 17th June and that day’s World Cup fixtures to include Greece v Nigeria. Are we justified in assuming that Mr Huhne and his wife (real name Vasiliki Courmouzis) were watching that game? I think we are. At half time, with the score at 1-1 and Nigeria down to ten men, the phone rang. The call was from the News of The World saying that the following Sunday’s edition would expose Mr Huhne as an adulterer. According to the Independent newspaper, Mr Huhne administered the news to Ms Courmouzis and then went to the gym, leaving her to plot her Greek tragedy revenge during the next 45 minutes. Puffins will be pleased to hear that, rather like Mr Hunhe, Greece scored away from home and won the match 2-1.
Ms Price’s revenge consisted of waiting until months after the ensuing divorce before telling the newspapers that Mr Hunhe had added his speeding penalty points to her driving licence. The two of them were jailed for perverting the course of justice.
Enoch Powell, rivers of blood, continued the Liberal Democrat MP, culminating with quoting Griffin as having said “Adolph went a bit too far.” Griffin denied the quote. Huhne said he had heard the quote on a video.
Despite the totally spontaneous nature of the programme, Dimbleby happened to have seen the video too and had made notes from it. Allegedly while with the American Friends of the BNP, Griffin had been filmed alongside David Duke of the Klu Klux Klan.
Griffin disputed being filmed with Duke. Dimbleby suggested that Duke might have been in disguise. Under a pointy hat? Griffin wondered before reminding the audience that, anyway, Duke had been the leader of a “non-violent Klu Klux Klan.”
“Nick, Nick,” interrupted Bonnie Greer, “don’t go and talk about the Klu Klux Klan. No, no, no, no, no. I can tell you about David Duke. Don’t talk about David Duke.”
Jack Straw wanted to come in. Mr Straw had seen these things on YouTube too. I wonder what subsequent filming might tell us about Mr Straw? Hmm. Nick Griffin was the Dr Strangleove of British politics. Although Straw’s reference was completely lost on the audience, might there be a part for Mr Straw in a re-make of Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece? Could one introduce a Chinese spy? Hmm.
Comrade John Whitaker Straw was privately educated at The Oaklands School and Leeds University where he was active in adolescent leftie layabout politics, eventually being awarded a lower second class degree in Law.
After the 2010 general election, Straw eventually spoke out about the long-standing problem of child sexual exploitation (ie Muslim rape of British girls) in his Blackburn constituency. But not until he no longer relied on its Muslim block vote, as he did not stand in the 2015 election.
Towards the end of his parliamentary career, Straw was caught out by secret filming while touting himself to a non-existent Chinese telecoms company. In return for £5000 a day Straw offered to sell his influence as a former foreign secretary. The Guardian newspaper reported:
Straw, one of Labour’s most senior figures, claimed that he operated “under the radar” to use his influence to change European Union rules on behalf of a commodity firm that paid him £60,000 a year. He also claimed to have used “charm and menace” to convince the Ukrainian prime minister to change laws on behalf of the same firm.
Following an enquiry, Straw was cleared by Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards Kathryn Hudson who said there’d been “no breach of the rules on paid lobbying” adding that Straw had been speaking “off the cuff”.
More recently, in July 2020, when challenged, Mr Straw claimed that he had never heard of pro-Chinese lobbyists The 48 Group, despite previously having been photographed collecting a 48 Group fellowship from Lord Heseltine.
A white woman said that the human race had started in Africa and all of us are an ethnic minority. More whooping! Love, it can’t be a minority if all of .…. never mind.
Griffin was challenged on anti-semitism. He said he couldn’t answer the question because of European law. Straw and Huhne became very pointy shouty as they jumped to the defence of ‘Europe’. Pressed by Dimbleby, Griffin said he had changed his mind but couldn’t say from what to what, or about what, because of those pesky European rules. Fortunately Straw was on hand to do some mind-reading,
“Auschwitz,” he said.
(This was in the days before the Labour Party had been exposed as an antisemitic cesspit).
The next question was from Tariq Ali, “Why is Islam a wicked and vicious faith?”
“Because it treats women as second class citizens. It says a woman victim of rape should be stoned to death for adultery,” said the BNP leader while the camera accidentally cut to where the BBC had bunched safe looking brown people in business suits.
“It doesn’t fit in with the fundamental values of British society; free speech, democracy, equal rights for women,” he continued.
There was some applause.
“What’s your policy on Islam?” Asked Dimbleby.
A truce, Mr Griffin replied, adding Mr Straw had the blood of thousands of Iraqis on his hands after an ‘illegal’ 2004 war. We should leave the Muslim countries alone while our country remains fundamentally Western, British and Christian. Some applause.
Ms Warsi said she’d seen Mr Griffin with extremist Muslim Abu Hamza, a “nutter from the East End of London”. She said Hamza wasn’t part of the Muslim faith. Twelve years later she would not dare repeat that. There would be pickets outside her house. Only Allah knows who is a Muslim. Her life would be in danger.
A gentleman asked of Mr Griffin’s travelling, saying that travel broadens the mind and makes people more tolerant of other cultures. No, it doesn’t. As one watches the foreigner’s dead bodies pile up, one is reminded of the incompatibility of different cultures and the need to keep them apart.
A Bangladeshi Muslim in the audience quoted from the book of Revelation, even that got a clap from this audience. Bonnie wanted to talk about the Romans, she admired their multi-cultural society. The girl’s in favour of Empire after all.
Johnny Lylle asked the next question, “Can the recent success of the BNP be explained by the misguided immigration policy of the present Labour Government?”
“No, it can’t,” said Jack Straw, “Enoch Powell.”
Stumbling Jack explained that Enoch Powell had launched a campaign in the 1960s to bring ‘Afro Carri B N People’ to this county to work in the NHS. Yes, that’s how he pronounced it, ‘Carri B N People’.
“Let’s deal with the present, Jack Straw, not Enoch Powell,” Dimbleby snapped.
Straw laughingly called the BNP a fringe party on the right. With the party’s commitment to more social housing, better health care for OAP’s, protecting working-class communities from mass immigration and stopping the importation of cheap factory and mill workers from abroad, the BNP were so far to the left that Lenin would have blushed. That’s why Jack Straw and the Labour Party were terrified of them and why the BNP did so well in working-class northern areas.
Straw then made a lazy leftie racist remark about there being no such thing as the indigenous British. He then said that his government were actively seeking to control the immigration numbers better. What a racist! He claimed 30% of his constituency’s population were of Asian origin.
Dimbleby wanted a yes or a no. Is the BNP’s success based upon the Labour Party’s immigration failings?
“No.”
To a fair bit of applause, Baroness Warsi called Jack dishonest. Her own Dewsbury had the biggest BNP vote in the country. This was because of poverty and social issues as well as immigration. This is a debate about resources, not black or brown people. We need a cap on the number of people coming here, an annual limit. But not to pull up a drawbridge. We need the brightest and best.
A West Yorkshire Hussein-Warsi, grammar school girl Sayeeda attended Leeds University, marrying her cousin from Pakistan during her first year. She subsequently studied at the College of Law, York, before qualifying as a solicitor.
There are claims and counterclaims about whether her first marriage was arranged (ie forced) or romantic. Confusion increased by her second husband’s first wife (got that?), a simple soul from rural Pakistan with little English, not realising her husband had divorced her until he’d married Ms Warsi.
As if living every Yorkshire lass’s dream, Sayeeda’s new husband whisked her away to honeymoon in …… Islamabad.
Subsequent to the QT programme, having joined the government she then resigned from it. The contentious North of England issue being the UK’s policy towards Gaza. Likewise, during the Brexit campaign, she began as a Leaver but ended up as a Remainer. She has also been tangled up in an obligatory expenses scandal after subletting a London property she was claiming parliamentary expenses on.
In the present day, the Baroness is (Abu Hamza style) a go-to for the Islamaphobia card and spends much of her time ranting on Twitter.
A cockney chap blamed all of this on the Conservatives joining the EU.
Labour had failed with immigration and people are disgruntled said another audience member. Before our eyes, a lady invented woke, complaining Straw had said ‘Afro Caribbean’ instead of ‘African Caribbean’. Good job she couldn’t listen over and over again on YouTube until it sounded like ‘Afro Carri BNP’.
Huhne thought immigration policy shambolic. “We have to get back control of our borders,” he said. Was a young Donald Trump listening? Taking notes and drawing up plans?
Griffin said it’s not the Labour Party’s fault, but that of the whole of an elite who have imposed multiculturalism upon us, the indigenous people.
“Whites,” said Jack Straw.
Griffin preferred the word, ‘indigenous’.
Mr Griffin saw that as the nub of the issue. You wouldn’t dare go to New Zealand and say to the Maori that they weren’t indigenous, nor to the Red Indians of North America. People have been here for the last 17000 years. We are aboriginals, here since time immemorial. Not allowing us to be indigenous is racist. That is why people are voting British National Party, because they feel shut out of their own country.
“Successive governments are committing genocide against their own people, is that your theory?” Asked Dimbleby perhaps still leafing through Bulldog.
Griffin replied that, from the grassroots, that’s what it looked like as the elite celebrated multiculturalism.
Nicholas John Griffin was born in Barnet in 1959. He was educated privately at Woodbridge school in Suffolk and at the Felix School. He attended Downing College, Cambridge, leaving with a lower second in Law and a boxing blue. As with previous QT guest Dan Hodges, Mr Griffin only has one eye, the other being lost to an exploding shotgun cartridge.
Aged 14, Nick joined the National Front, remaining a member until 1989. In 1995 he joined the British National Party rising to become its leader and, at the time of the most popular QT programme ever, one of its two recently elected MEPs.
Between 2004 and 2006 there were two attempts to prosecute Mr Griffin and a colleague Mark Collett for race hatred regarding comments made in closed party meetings secretly filmed by the BBC. Although the BBC and the Crown Prosecution Service had an attack of the vapours, jurors didn’t. Mr Collett and Mr Griffin were acquitted at the end of both trials.
In the present day, Mr Griffin, the father of grown-up daughters, lives quietly in a farmhouse on the Shropshire/Powys border. On Twitter, under the enigmatic strapline “There is no parliamentary road; separate from Sodom!”, he posts photographs of snow-covered solar farms and of himself spending weekends guarding the Clive of India statue in Shrewsbury town centre from the Mid-Shropshire chapter of Black Lives Matter.
During this research, your reviewer discovered a disturbing headline. The Independent bellowed, “BNP Leader Nick Griffin Declared Bankrupt”.
Closer inspection suggested this to be a manoeuvre wiping out a disputed £130,000 legal bill, no doubt built up during the endless ‘lawfare’ campaign that the establishment waged against him and the BNP. Your reviewer remained concerned. Perhaps, ironically, Mr Griffin’s time as an MEP might help? Is there a pension?
The print is very small and the calculation complicated, but from the EU’s own publications your author (and he might be wrong) calculates that Mr Grifin’s non-contributory MEP’s pension for serving one term in the European Parliament comes to 1575 Euros a month. Non-contributory means all is paid for by the EU taxpayer. The MEPs pay nothing in.
In the even smaller print, there is mention of an Additional Voluntary Pension Scheme. Further and difficult research, showed that of all the EU countries MEP’s could have chosen to set up their pension scheme, they accidentally chose secretive, low regulation, low tax Luxembourg. Two-thirds of contributions to this scheme come from the EU and one third from the MEP’s salary. However, Puffins will be relieved to hear that in the very, very, very small print, MEPs appear to be able to claim their pension contributions back on expenses. This means MEPs contribute nothing to their contributory pension scheme, with the EU taxpayer paying the lot!
This reviewer estimates that Mr Griffin’s non-contributory contributory pension will pay an additional 1000 Euros a month, taking the total to 2575 Euros, which equates to about £26,000 a year. Those of us in the private sector might like to note, given that annuity rates are miserably low, retiring aged 60 on that level of pension would need us to fill a pension pot with well over a million pounds of our own money.
Bonnie Greer wanted to talk about the ice age when people couldn’t live on the ice.
Dimbleby wasn’t happy.
When the ice melted, Nethanderals, continued Bonnie.
A tinged member of the audience claimed to be from this country and offered to repatriate Nick Griffin to the South Pole. Members of settled immigrant communities are also concerned about further immigration, retorted Nick. Another tinged gentleman turned on Jack Straw, claiming that the rise of the BNP was caused by his immigration policies
Jack said he was a third-generation Jewish immigrant. This is disingenuous. Mr Straw is a Christian and only one-eighth Jewish via his maternal grandfather’s mother.
Dimbleby quoted Frank Field. Party leaders should pledge that the population should not breech 65,000,000. Twelve years later it is at least 68,000,000.
None of this was working decided Ms Warsi.
No, it isn’t, agreed Griffin, “You see with your own eyes what’s happening in towns and cities all over Britain. The place is changing at a remarkable rate. The ordinary public simply doesn’t want it and it’s time the elite learned that.”
No more needed to be said.
© Always Worth Saying 2021
The Goodnight Vienna Audio file
