Griffin: Mythical beast – 50% lion, 50% eagle………… Nick Griffin: Racist twat – 100% weasel.

I thought I’d write a follow-up post regarding Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time. You know, strike while the iron’s hot. Of course, the best time to have done that would have been yesterday, but I didn’t get time. So now the iron isn’t so hot, but it’s still very warm. It’s on the two setting: not hot enough to iron cotton shirts, but still too high a setting for your delicates. You definitely wouldn’t go near silk with this heat, but it would be hopeless on, say, linen. I think you get my drift.

Anyway. I’m happy to report that my hastily compiled predictions were mostly correct. Griffin was hopeless. I thought he would be bad, but not as bad as this. I’d read pieces saying that he’s an educated man (he is – gasp! – a Cambridge graduate), a skilled orator and debater. Well, there was little evidence of that on Thursday: he made a complete hash of his big moment in the spotlight, looking like someone who wasn’t even able to convince himself of his own arguments, let alone anyone else.

When the leader of a nationalist, right wing organisation like the BNP is embarrassed about the very words coming out of his own mouth it underlines the fact that there is very little to fear from these people. He was most excruciating when defending his past comments on the Holocaust (“I can’t tell you why I said those things I said”) or when confronted on his meeting with David Duke, the leader of the Ku Klux Klan, in 2000 (Duke is the leader of “a” KKK, not “the” KKK apparently, and additionally, they are “almost entirely non-violent”. That’s right, just the odd lynching here, a burning cross there, tarring and feathering limited to public holidays, etc).

At times it was just painful to watch – like some sort of bloodsport. At other times I almost felt sorry for the man. But then I remembered that he’s a hate-mongering racist twat and the emotion passed. It was excruciating though: his nervous body language, his constant smile/grimace whenever he answered a question. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to make himself look friendly or if he was suffering from acid-reflux. Either way it was just sinister.

The BNP are claiming a bumper rise in new membership applications, but when this is defined as 3,000 people that’s really not a worrying statistic. The general populace could never support a party like this on a grand scale – their appeal is limited to the pathologically racist and a minority of white working class who believe their pernicious lies about immigration. Once the economy starts to turn around and unemployment drops the BNP will once more be consigned to the very fringes of society – their natural home.

Like it or not, Nick Griffin has a right to appear on Question Time

The British National Party is a detestable organisation. Dimwitted troglodytes in thrall to Nazis, they are an affront to everything that is truly British. They are a minority movement of racist thugs coated with a paper thin veneer of political respectability and they are worthy of nothing but contempt and derision. Nonetheless, they are a legal political party with a smattering of representation at a local and European level and as such are entitled to represent themselves on the BBC’s Question Time. Democracy isn’t served by slamming the door shut in the faces of those with whom we vehemently disagree, so those who argue that the BBC are obliged to pretend the BNP does not exist, that an increasing number of alienated and disenfranchised people are not voting for them, that they are not winning local council elections, that they will just go away if we ignore them are wrong. Well meaning, perhaps, but wrong.

The throng of protesters who have gathered at the BBC Television Centre this evening to demonstrate against Nick Griffin’s appearance are also exercising their democratic rights. But they are not helping and, given that the majority of them are almost certainly a rent-a-mob comprised of members of the Socialist Workers Party, they are little better than the fascists they are so opposed to anyway.

Griffin will thrive on this and will attempt to take the moral high ground: here he is, trying to engage in democratic discourse and violent lefties are laying the BBC building to siege and attempting to stop the show being recorded. As pointed out at Harry’s Place, the protesters are simply providing film footage for the BNP’s next party political broadcast. They’re playing right into their hands.

But no matter. While Griffin and his imbecilic cohorts are no doubt terribly excited about their upcoming appearance, they really shouldn’t be. Apart from some short-lived publicity, they are not going to benefit from this. Griffin will try and put up a good fight but his arguments cannot stand up to scrutiny. He will be torn apart by reason and subjected to what he fears the most, what all fascists fear the most: ridicule. He will be battered in this debate and he will be revealed for the intellectual lightweight he is, because apart from his poisonous views on race he has nothing else to talk about, nothing else to offer. I can think of no better way to expose the BNP for what it is than to have Griffin demonstrate his stammering ignorance on national television.

Nobody will be converted to his cause, while opposition to it will be hardened immeasurably.

Looking forward to it.

Most men not in awe of adulterous poisoners shock

Ridiculous column in The Times today about Edward Erin, the philandering doctor who was this week found guilty of spiking his pregnant mistress’s drink in an attempt to cause her to miscarry.

Is Edward Erin the cad most men secretly admire? runs the title of the piece by Melanie Reid.

Presumptuous though it is for me to speak on behalf of “most men” I’m going to do it anyway. No, Melanie. No, he isn’t. What a pointless piece of drivel.

Jumping on the bandwagon

I’ve never really seen the point of Twitter. “Micro blogging”? 140 characters to make a point? Why bother when I can write whatever I want here without such limitations? That said, curious to experience it properly, I put aside my reservations and signed up today. Updates can be seen on the right hand side. I figure if I can’t find the time to do real blogging anymore this might be the next best thing. Or I might just forget all about it. Let’s see.

I always give you my money….

The Beatles’ Remasters are nothing short of fabulous. Having spent probably too long this week researching the differences between the mono and the stereo versions – and driving myself mad in the process – I finally plumped for the stereo boxed set yesterday having concluded that £200 for an incomplete collection (you don’t get Abbey Road or Let It Be in in the mono box, seeing as they were originally released only in stereo anyway) was too much even for me to part with. Purists will tell you otherwise, that mono is how these albums were intended to be heard, that it gives more vitality to the music (especially the earlier, raw albums), but quite frankly I am not an audiophile, I do not have the hearing of a dog and, like a lot of people these days, mostly listen to my music in a digitised format on my iPod. Much as I’d like to hear the mono versions out of sheer curiosity, the manner in which they are being sold (via the box only, you cannot buy them individually) reeks a little too much like exploitation of the hardcore fan to me. So instead I’ll settle for the stereo mixes, ripped at 256kbps AAC.

Even in their compressed form you can hear the love and the effort that has been put into this restoration project over the last four years and cherish the fact that – finally – the most important back catalogue in popular music has been given a release befitting its legacy. They sound wonderful and it really is like hearing these songs for the first time, clear as a nun’s conscience. The packaging of the albums is gorgeous – each CD digipak presented as a gatefold, recreating the feel (if not the exact look) of the original LPs. Compare these to the miserable looking CDs bunged out by EMI in 1987; it’s frankly astonishing that it’s taken this long for the albums to be properly released for the modern age. Although that’s not strictly true of course: buying music in the modern age increasingly means clicking a button and downloading whatever you want from an online music retailer. Despite the rumours circulating this week, you still won’t find The Beatles on iTunes or anywhere else – the only legal means of getting your hands on this music is to physically buy the asset. It’s all very 20th century. But when the product is presented to you in this way, you really wouldn’t want to settle for downloads anyway: it’s a sheer joy to open the box and handle the individual discs, to pore over the artwork, pictures and sleeve notes. All very old fashioned (and I speak as someone who doesn’t buy CDs anymore either) but, for a release of this importance, it’s the only way to do it. Besides, if anything is going to encourage me to set up my stereo properly again and listen to an album in the way it was intended, it is this.

In the meantime, I’m going to spend the day listening to the entire lot through my iPod hi-fi. It may be compressed (and stereo) but it still sounds amazing to my ears, like someone has taken cellophane off a classic work of art allowing you to experience it properly for the first time.

Even Mrs Sane, who is not a big Beatles fan and couldn’t care less what format the music comes in, professes to hear the difference and quite frankly, that alone justifies my purchase as far as I’m concerned. Worth every single penny.

Let’s have a heated debate!

Peter Mandelson says he is open to the idea of televised debates between Gordon Brown and David Cameron in the run up to the general election. Unsurprisingly, Cameron is also keen. Equally unsurprisingly, Gordon Brown is said to oppose the idea:

It has been reported that Mr Brown thinks a televised discussion is unnecessary as he confronts Conservative leader Mr Cameron regularly in Parliament.

Indeed. And nothing at all to do with the fact that he has all the personality and charisma of a mattress. Right now, Gordon Brown is about as likely to win the next election as Harry H. Corbett. Labour’s only hope is that they can somehow stop their leader repelling more voters while hoping the economy makes the most remarkable recovery since Lazarus. Not likely.

So I’m puzzled as to why Mandelson would think this a good idea. Whatever one might think of the man, there’s no denying that he’s a canny political operator and he’s probably more aware of Brown’s personality faults than anyone. Put Brown on a live televised debate against Cameron and it’d make Richard Nixon’s disastrous, sweaty, showing against JFK in 1960 look like a slick and polished performance by comparison.

Great Cultural Questions To Which The Answer is Yes

Oliver Kamm runs an occasional series on his blog called “Great Historical Questions To Which The Answer is No”. It’s a pretty self-explanatory concept: each time he will seize on a question asked by some commentator or other and expeditiously demonstrate that the answer is No. (An example here and here.)

So in a similar vein I humbly offer the first in a series of Great Cultural Questions To Which The Answer Is Yes, prompted by a piece in yesterday’s Guardian by Mark Lawson entitled “Is it time to kill off Big Brother?“. Lawson presents us with a 2,000 word article when, in fact, one word would have amply sufficed. Not only is the answer manifestly obvious, it has been so for many, many years.

Goldmine $ach$, etc

An awful amount of ill-informed hyperbole has been heaped upon investment bank Goldman Sachs in the last couple of days. The company’s crime? Reporting better-than-expected profits for the second quarter of 2009. Such is the luck of financial firms in the post-sub-prime economic fall out: castigated for taking taxpayer’s money to ensure their survival, then pilloried for generating profits that will ensure that the money actually gets repaid. What’s a bank to do?

I do not, never have and probably never will work for Goldman Sachs so I have no personal affiliation with the firm, nor any interest in the success or otherwise of the company beyond that of any other passive observer. But as someone who works in the financial industry (which presumably puts me somewhere between Hitler and Josef Fritzl in the public’s affection) I do feel compelled to stick my two pence worth in.

Much of the reporting seems to focus on the fact that the company was, like many other banks, “bailed out” last year under the Troubled Asset Relief Programme (TARP), so they are somehow making money using state funds. Not so. Whilst it is true that Goldman was the recipient of $10 billion under this scheme, it is hardly a state secret that they neither wanted nor needed this cash injection in the first place. A famously private institution, the last thing they ever wanted was the US government as a major – and interfering – shareholder. They took the money because they were under political pressure to do so – it would have further unsettled already turbulent markets if some banks participated (and were therefore deemed as weak) while others remained self-sufficient.

In any case, Goldman paid back all the TARP funding in June (and had been lobbying to repay it months earlier) along with a fee of $426 million. So in actual fact, the US Treasury has recouped a hefty interest premium from lending money to a bank that didn’t want it in the first place. Not a bad return for the US taxpayer.

Of course the real opprobrium has arisen over how much of the firm’s profits have already been ring-fenced for staff compensation, with talk of $700,000 per employee by the end of the year. Obscene amounts of money? Yes, although no more obscene than the fees commanded by movie stars or footballers. In reality the vast majority of their employees won’t get as much of a sniff of anything like that amount; the real big bucks will – as is always the case – be paid to the star bankers, traders and salespeople who continue to drive record profits for their company. After all, equal distribution would amount to socialism; not something you’d expect to find at this relentless capitalist behemoth.

So far, I’ve not really stayed in touch…

My, how time flies when you’re busy existing. Here we are in the middle of July already. 2009 is hurtling along with a relentless pace and unless I do something soon I won’t have published a single word to my modest blog in nearly a year. I attempted to rectify this situation back in April – I have two posts sat at Draft status to attest to this – but I made the mistake of trying to summarise my thoughts on the major events since I last wrote something in September 2008, ending up with a rambling, pointless missive of no use to anyone, least of all me.

So it becomes a vicious circle: the desire to write is crushed by the uncertainty of where to begin. I would sit there staring at a blank screen, desperately thinking of a way to resurrect the blogging bug and each time just giving up and doing something pointless like updating my status on Facebook (probably the biggest collective waste of time in human history, yet, like scratching an itchy arse, irresistible), or clicking idly through BBC News or even Comment Is Free for inspiration. After an hour of this I would just give up completely.

Mrs Sane (now an official moniker, as we got married last October) would constantly encourage me to write again, as would the (very) few other people who somehow enjoy my witterings. But it just wasn’t happening.

Then I had an epiphany. It was a simple, yet transformative revelation: I would just… write. Never mind what’s happened over the last ten months, I would just publish and be damned. So that’s what I’m going to do.

Cretinism. Creationism.

There are many reasons to dislike Sarah Palin but, for me, one in particular stands out. She is a creationist, which makes her thicker than the primordial soup from which all life developed and, therefore, about as suitable a candidate for the office of Vice President as, say, Harpo Marx. Harpo, of course, never spoke and only communicated through whistling or blowing a horn, so that’s a pretty good analogy for a candidate who has not actually been allowed to speak directly with the press about any matters of import. Not until she’s learnt her script, anyway. A month and still no press conference? What are they afraid of?

Anyway… Depressingly, creationism has been something of a hot topic here in the UK of late too, with debate about its suitability for inclusion in science classes. This is an open and shut case, of course. Nothing that lacks any basis in scientific fact and demonstrates none of the discipline of rigorous scientific enquiry should be allowed anywhere near the subject. It is as preposterous as teaching Klingon alongside real languages or flat earth theory in a geography class. Creationist theory already has its correct place on the UK syllabus – in the Religious Education classes. And there it will – and must – stay. To even entertain the notion of it being taught as science alongside evolution is an insult to academia.

I’ve written about this subject several times before and at greater length than here but the argument has to be maintained every time this silly proposition rears its ugly head. The universe in which we live is a remarkable and fascinating place and we should teach our children what we know about it, not fill their heads will infantile explanations about an ethereal being creating it in six days. Nor should we fall for creationism’s more sophisticated relative “intelligent design”.