Swiss to ban minarets

I have just heard on "Euronews" - one of Virgin cable tv's news channels - that the Swiss public have voted in a referendum to ban minarets. 57% were in favour of it apparently, which by referendum standards is pretty solid.

Come on, guys. Just what are you scared of? Minarets are hardly going to kill you, are they? After all, you have 4 languages and their practitioners seem to rub along fine. Say....it's not prejudice against muslims, is it? Hmm. Here's me thinking they were harmless, if slightly strange people who were into cheese and cuckoo clocks. And taking dead Jews' money. Sorry, didn't mean that last one. Maybe it's having gone 500 years without a war that's made them so jumpy. And the lack of battle experience has left them feeling vulnerable. Reminds me of that Seinfeld joke:

"Ever see that little Swiss Army knife they have to fight with? Not much of a weapon there. Corkscrews, Bottle openers. 'Come on, buddy, let's go. You get past me, the guy in back of me, he's got a spoon. Back off. I've got the toe clippers right here.'”

We don't need no (State in our) education

OFSTED reported last week that one in three British state schools is 'inadequate'. In terms of apsiration, this statement doesn't exactly reach for the stars. 'Inadequate'? They have fallen short, not of 'excellence' but of 'adequacy'. I often hear that children should not be made to feel inadequate. But there's really no need. According to OFSTED the state system is making a pretty good fist of it.

If it were 1 in 100, 1 in 50 or even 1 in 10, parents might be forgiven for thinking that state education was worth chancing their arm with. But if you have a 1 in 3 chance of condemning your child to claw their way through a system that was 'inadequate', well - you wouldn't be surprised if parents voted with their feet.

Problem is, they can't really. Opting out of state education is expensive. But need it be?

We would do better to look at Sweden, where the government has trialled 'vouchers' for education. Parents are given the cash, they decide what to do with it; they can go public, or they can try private. The Conservatives flirted with such an idea, but I'm not sure what their policy on it now is.

Howls of derision always arise from teaching unions, of course, who decry any attempt to 'privatise' education. Translation: they don't want parents to choose where to send their child. They (and the British left) want to keep children in their place - in the arms of the state. Great for the 2 out of 3 that, presumably, have education that is 'adequate' or better. Not so rosy for the 33.3% who are left. Opponents of parental choice seem to have co-opted the Jesuits' maxim: "Give me the child and I will show you the man". I went to a Jesuit (state) school, so I know a thing or two about that ;)

Labour have had 12 years to make good on their promise of "education, education and education". They have failed. Millions of school leavers will enter the job market with inadequate skills. Why? Government sets the policy, teachers implement it. At least 1 out of these is to blame. It's no pretty obvious that Government diktats have a lot to do with it: what should be taught, when, and to meet which politically-motivated target. Exam grades at GCSE and A Level keep going relentlessly upwards, while employers, universities and businesses keep complaining about illiterate and inumerate 18 year-olds. It's partly because grade inflation is the result of government targets. Much easier to give examinees an easy ride through coursework, resits and guided questions than to really raise standards.

Not that British teaching philosophy has helped. In many countries, like Slovakia you need a masters degree to teach languages or science; not here. In Japan being a physics teacher requires many years experience in industry; here just a bachelors degree and a teaching qualification will do it. Talk about poverty of aspiration.

The Rules of Work - comebacks to workplace bullies

Most people you meet at work are nice. But a minority aren't. They're bullies. They can fall into many categories, depending on the nature of their bullying.


I’m not talking about good-natured teasing from your colleagues. Nor about people who are simply rude.


The thing I’m talking about is those times when you might find yourself on the receiving end of childish, idiotic comments, or ridicule or mockery, not designed to be good humoured, but to belittle you. For example:

"You didn't do that very well, did you?"
"Do you always make such a mess?"
"Did you go to school?"
"Did you get changed in the dark this morning?"

Why do some people say these things? It stems from low self-esteem, which people compensate for by trying to lower the status of others or projecting an image as a dominant character who can shove others around. Anyway, here’s what you should do.


1. Don’t be submissive. Submission signifies weakness, and only those perceived as weak are ‘picked on’. True on David Attenborough’s nature programmes, true in the office. So don’t look down, instead keep steady eye contact. Don’t flinch, and it’s better if you don’t blink either. No nervous laughter. If you’re standing, stand up tall, straight, face-on. If you are close to the guy, suddenly come closer. It will unnerve them.

2. Don’t overreact, show anger or emotion. Bullies want a reaction, they are stumped when they don’t get one. Don’t be rude – no swearing etc. Be icy calm.

3. Some people advocate dignified silence. This may work in some contexts but I don’t generally agree. You can’t be a punchbag. Show you’re not to be messed with and that you don’t take crap lying down. The best reaction is to act unemotional and unimpressed. But say something back.

I think that a silent response can communicate disdain, but may also make you look like a ‘soft touch’. You should communicate disdain, mixed with pity, and laced with a dose of sarcasm.

Some comebacks:

You still here?
That’s…almost funny.
Nice try.
Don’t give up the day job.
Here we go….mastermind.
You used to be funny.
You should be a comedian. Just not yet.
Do you want a round of applause?

4. Just say one of these. Remember it’s how you say it that counts. Calm, slow, unwavering and authoritative. Don’t rush or let your voice become too high-pitched or breathless, as this communicates weakness. Have a slightly dismissive tone of voice, slightly sarcastic.

5. If you can’t think of anything to say, or the situation doesn’t really warrant a sharp verbal risposte, then you can remain silent – but it is your body language that will be your response. Be silent and just stare back with confidence. This is the position that says, "that comeback doesn't even deserve an acknowledgment."

The Rules of Work - avoiding embassassing faux pas

You know the scene. Man meets female colleague by the water cooler. Man notices larger-than-usual tummy on colleague. Man congratulations colleague on impending birth of her child and asks when the baby is due and what food cravings is she having. Compounding his blunders he asks if she’s thought of a name for her child and is having a home birth, perhaps?

Colleague tells man she is actually not pregnant. It turns out she has just been overdoing it on the chocolate digestives and is wearing a slightly more figure-hugging dress than usual. Man is now stuck in a pit of horrendous embarrassment, from which there is no easy escape-route. As an added bonus, on some occasions the man will desperately try and extricate himself from the cavernous hole into which he has dug himself by telling his colleague she looks 'healthy'. Which can only be interpreted as telling her she looks fat, Nice.


Making assumptions about your colleagues, even if done innocently and with the best of intentions, can often lead to embarrassing situations. Offering congratulations on phantom pregnancies are one such pitfall. Others include misjudging someone’s age, qualifications, marital status, or family arrangements.


In the communal kitchen at work I witnessed a collague of mine, a lady of about 50, being asked buntly if she was pregnant. Incredible but true. She said ‘no’ and the lady who asked her had to apologise profusely. Luckily no offence was taken! I have to admit I walked off because otherwise I would have burst out laughing.


A good way to avoid this, if for instance you think someone is pregnant, or has bought a new house, or has just been to their daughter’s graduation, is the gambit: “So what’s new with you then?”


It opens up the conversation without creating too much expectation or piling on too much pressure. If they are pregnant they may tell you. If they’re not they obviously won’t. Or if they are pregnant but don’t actually want to tell you, you have respected that right. Similarly their daughter, whom you knew 6 months ago was at university, may have dropped out of her course. Asking "what’s new?" gives your colleague the right to tell you or keep quiet about this, without being asked about a graduation that never happened.


If you want to find out something about someone’s life after work, judge first of all how well you know the person. What kind of relationship do you have with them? If you only know them in a professional capacity, try the “what’s new with you” or “how was your weekend?” opener. Wait and see how much they open up.


Warning: if they often talk about their family it doesn’t mean you can steam straight in there and ask whether their child is eating solids yet. A safer option is “how are the family?” If you know they are in a relationship and you’re dying to know whether they’re engaged yet, first consider whether they have spoken to you about it. If they have you can say “how’s it going with Jennifer?” or whatever his/her name is. But consider this: if they haven’t actually told you about their relationship, but you’ve heard it on the office grapevine, or from other colleagues, should you be asking at all?


Underlying all this is the pernicious effects of gossip and noseyness, which we all succumb to now and again but which we should all strive to avoid. Why? Because of the negative energy it generates. Gossiping reduces the value of people, both the target and the perpetrators. It reduces our value as human beings and leaves us as objects tossed around at the whim of others. Remember the law of karma: what goes around, comes around.

Thierry Henry’s handball and the degradation of sport

Thierry Henry was caught in slow-mo reply handling the ball (twice) in a crucial game against Ireland last week, leading directly to France’s winning goal and eliminating Ireland from the World Cup Finals in South Africa next year. A storm of invective has poured down on Henry’s head, but virtually all the actors in this saga have diminished themselves and international sport is – once again – exposed as a degrading spectacle that has less to do with heroic endeavour and more to do with gamesmanship, hypocrisy and chauvinism.


Henry first. He cheated, no two ways about it. His first touch may have been accidental, his second most certainly was not. His actions are fractionally mitigated by the fact it happened in the heat of the moment, rather than in the premeditated fashion of, say, taking illegal performance-enhancing drugs. But cheat he did.



His dishonesty was joined by a lack of moral courage when, realising that TV cameras had caught is malfeasance in every excruciating detail, he issued a highly qualified apology in which he appeared to blame…the referee. Maybe the referee was incompetent, but Henry acted to willingly deceive him. Still it continued: when the storm of controversy really exploded, he added disingenuousness to his list of qualities: by calling for a replay after FIFA had ruled one out. Brave? Mais non, mon ami.


For some reason Irish politicians got involved and ranted about injustices towards smaller countries. You can bet that Irish politicians care not one jot for the sport of football, or the fans, but politicians are adept at riding waves of national hysteria to further their own advancement, and so it was here.


For many Irish, this has been a chance to wallow in victim status, to dredge up past injustices throughout their history and to draw a parallel with a football match. It’s pathetic – but not entirely surprising. This is international sport, after all. If war is the continuation of politics by other means, then sport (or rather international sporting competitions) are the continuation of war by other means.



Of course, Ireland’s complaints reek of hypocrisy. Maybe the replay principle could be applied consistently, because if it were, it might be to Ireland’s disadvantage. Georgia were victims of a penalty injustice on the 11th February which Ireland gladly accepted; and Montenegro would probably like a replay for the 0-0 game on the 14th of October when Irish player Paul McShane handled the ball in the area and didn’t tell the ref it was a penalty. Fair play? Ireland are no saints.



Remember when England were eliminated from the 1986 World Cup by Maradona’s “Hand of God”? England were aggrieved but didn’t ask for a replay. No formal complaint was made, they just got on with it. At the time FIFA praised England for the manner in which they accepted their defeat. The score should have been 1-1 but England just accepted it. Ireland would do well to conduct themselves with dignity instead of wallowing in self-pity and demanding a replay. I’m sure most Irish people aren’t like that, but this is what happens when sport becomes a metaphor for national honour, or national victimhood. It’s a shame that some England fans still can’t let the 1986 handball go and still dredge it up, but that’s what happens when sport is so tightly woven with nationality. Most England fans I meet now, however, acknowledge that Maradona’s skill as a footballer outweighs the injustice of that incident. It will be interesting to see whether Ireland fans are still banging the ‘injustice’ drum 25 years later.


It's not just Henry, or the French (or the Argentinians). Cheating, gamesmanship and the absence of honour and integrity now seemed to be an ingrained part of just about every sporting event, across many cultures. Even the Irish players seemed to accept Henry’s cheating. Listen to what Damian Duff had to say: “If it was down the other end and it was going out of play, I’d have chanced my arm. You can’t blame him. He’s a clever player but you expect the ref to see it, it was so blatant.” There you have it. In a way you have to admire Duff’s honesty. He would gladly cheat, he’s says, so he politely declines to condemn Henry. Amazing.


In reality is a storm in a teacup. Who cares who won, and how, and whether it was by means fair or foul? But as I argued in my piece on ‘abolish international sport’, where ‘national’ teams are involved, chauvinism and grandstanding are never far behind.


If Henry had taken the unlikely (perhaps very unlikely) action and stopped play, admitting his foul, he would have been lauded as a true sporting great and a role model, even if his team had lost. His honour would have been salvaged. But here’s the thing about cheating: the inescapable law of karma. What goes around comes around. It always does. It has to. So now Henry will be forever vilified as a cheat, his reputation lies in tatters, his sponsorship deals on the line, his very name synonymous with duplicity. It won’t stop there. His children will read about their father’s dishonour. They too will have to live with it. What an awful fate, all for one lousy goal.


It’s horribly unfair to Henry, of course – because as Damian Duff so shamefacedly explained, they all do it; they just hope they get away with it. But Henry also has to accept that the higher the stakes, and the higher your profile, the greater the scrutiny.


Sport should be about the human spirit, endeavour, training, determination and achievement. But it has become a win-at-all costs gladiatorial battle, inflamed by international contests with their national anthems and flags, and egged on by huge salaries and corporate deals. In the grand scheme of life it is not as important as the many pressing international issues of the day. It can unite, and entertain, but the pressure to be ‘winners’ means that something far more important than winning has been lost: integrity. Without it, sportsmen (and women) are nothing.


From doping in the Tour de France, to fake blood injuries in rugby, from diving footballers to ball-tamperers in cricket, sport has become demeaned. Players are so desperate to win that they will seek unfair advantage by whatever means they can. In athletics I have heard the argument that all sprinters know the other guys take drugs, so they feel if they don’t do the same then they are being cheated. I never used to understand what teachers used to say about cheating: “You’re only cheating yourself”. But now I do: if you have a gold medal round your neck, but you broke the rules to get it, then you know in your heart that you are not really a champion. You have to lie to your children when they ask you how you won it. What a burden.


Some people say that why not just abolish testing and let athletes take whatever drugs they like. It would be the death of sport because the competition would be between rival laboratories and doctors, not athletes.


In the world of mixed martial arts contests, a fighter was recently disqualified for taking steroids. Bas Rutten, a veteran fighter, said that the individual concerned wasn’t really a mixed martial artist because he didn’t have enough confidence in himself, his abilities and his training – he was so unsure of himself that he felt the need to add a bit more to his engine by taking drugs. It’s true. You could say the same about cheating footballers. They are not real sportsmen.


Magnanimous in victory, generous in defeat. It marks a higher calibre of person. Some players are only gracious when they’re winning: take Serena Williams, for example, and her foul-mouthed outburst. Some players’ skills are nullified by their violence, like Roy Keane, who is a thug and a coward. Other cowards, like Sir Alex Ferguson, look for excuses to explain away defeats. We need sportsmanship, not gamesmanship. Money and international contests have helped demean sport.


Competitive sport should be encouraged. It is, after all, a form of entertainment. But ‘international’ events should be abolished and the strictest rules imaginable should be introduced to stamp out cheating and its close cousin, gamesmanship. But it needs to go deeper than that. Children across the world should be taught that honour and integrity are the hallmarks of a great human being, which is so much more important than being a winning sportsman. And that while one should strive to win, being a good loser is a lot harder than being a good winner.

The Rules of Work - how to stop procrastinating

Procrastination. It's the bane of many people's working lives. Some people procrastinate because they don't know where to start on a task, some because they lack the confidence to do it, some because they are perfectionists and some because they just can't face it. I thought I'd share some of the things I've found helpful in overcoming procrastination.

Make an immediate start – even a ‘microstart’ - to every job you are given. Especially the rotten ones. Don't wait - do it straight away. Before you have time to over-think what you're doing or to rationalise yourself out of it.

It actually doesn't really matter what this 'start' to the work is; it could be a sketch, a memo, a few bullet points, a garbled document that you keep for yourself. You can delete it later - it doesn't matter, just do something right away.

Making a tiny start to something immediately will have a good psychological effect on you – boosting your confidence and self-esteem, informing your subconscious that you can actually do this damn piece of work, that it’s not impossible and it is do-able.

On the other hand if you don’t touch your unpleasant piece of work for ages it will become more repellent and unconquerable in your mind, creating a vicious circle of procrastination.

Try that for starters!

Abolish international sport

It's a funny thing about sport, but when teams suddenly become countries: "Germany", "France", etc - the contest suddenly becomes less about sport and more about national pride. When England beat Australia to win the Ashes the entire country basked in the glory. Even though the baskers themselves couldn't throw a ball for toffee and have contributed exactly nothing to "their" team's success.



So here's my proposal. All 'international' sporting events should be abolished. Not sporting events themselves; just that athletes should compete as individuals at the Olympics and at every other sport, and that the England football, rugby etc teams be abolished and players play for any team they want to - clubs, associations etc.



The reasoning being firstly : that international sport divides rather than unites; that it promotes nationalism, even racism, cements differences and encourages jingoism and xenophobia. It is, as Orwell said, "war minus the shooting". Hardly what the world needs. Secondly: that in a sporting context 'nationality' is actually pretty meaningless. Andy Murray was born in Scotland but trained and learnt his skills in Spain. So he actually owes more to Spain than Scotland. So shouldn't he really represent Spain, if anyone? After all we have no control over where we were born. It just depends on where your mother went into labour. I could have been born in France is mum had delivered early. So can I play for France? Mum was born in Tanzania, so I can play for them too? It's meaningless. Most people have 'foreign' blood in them.



International sport equates sporting prowess with nationhood, even ethnicity. And if American athletes win say 10 golds, how does that mean 'America' has won 10 golds? It doesn't. It just means that those individuals have won them. Nothing at all to do with insurance salesmen in Texas or computer programmers in San Francisco. They haven't done anything. This false sense of 'belonging', of somehow partaking in the success of others, living your dreams and fantasies vicariously through the success of others who just happen to share your passport is simply nonsense. Do you know an olympic gold medallist? Have you ever met one? Have you personally helped him/her to perfect the techniques that enabled them to win gold? Of course not. So you can claim no credit for their success. The feelgood factor you get from their success in competing for the team of the country you live in is illusory.



A wiser man than me, Professor Noam Chomsky of MIT, renowned linguist, author and campaigner said this about sporting loyalties during a live interview in front of an audience:



"You know, I remember in high school, already I was pretty old. I suddenly asked myself at one point, why do I care if my high school team wins the football game? [laughter] I mean, I don't know anybody on the team, you know? [audience roars] I mean, they have nothing to do with me, I mean, why I am cheering for my team? It doesn't mean any -- it doesn't make sense. But the point is, it does make sense: it's a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority, and group cohesion behind leadership elements -- in fact, it's training in irrational jingoism. That's also a feature of competitive sports. I think if you look closely at these things, I think, typically, they do have functions, and that's why energy is devoted to supporting them and creating a basis for them and advertisers are willing to pay for them and so on."



Professor Chomsky's slant is that obsessing about sport distracts the masses from the important things in life, like politics. But extrapolate his point further to people's association of entire countries or races with sporting contests . It's not a big stretch.



Take English football. Many people like watching football. They like to see the skill of the players and the teams. But a curious thing: they think that a team is equivalent to themselves. They think that they are a team. So they say: "We won on Saturday"; "we beat you"; "we're better than you" etc. It makes me laugh. "We"? "We"? Since when do you play for Chelsea? Are you a goalkeeper or something? It used to be the case that teams were composed of players who were all local lads from the area. Those days are long gone - now football is in the hands of huge and powerful corporate giants, media companies and billionaires. I'm looking forward to laughing my socks off when the day comes that rival teams are owned by companies that are in partnership with each other, or even the same company. Just to see the bafflement of the 'fans' who believe that 'their' team is apart from, and distinct from, all the others.


On a local level sporting loyalties are laughable. Irrational. An imagined and entirely concocted 'rivalry' that sweeps people along into believing that they have 'enemies'. Two guys could pass each other in the street perfectly peaceably. But if the next day they are wearing colours from opposing teams they suddenly become rivals. Amazing.


On an international scale it is even more absurd. If sport is truly about aesthetics, admiring the strength, speed, technique, determination and willpower of the competitors, then grouping teams of individuals by country should be abolished. Individuals should compete as individuals, teams merely as colleagues. In many sports the players in the same teams don't even have the same nationality, they only qualify through ancestry, so it's meaningless anyway. International sport encourages the most ugly kind of jingoism and nationalism, often with a healthy dose of racism thrown in for good measure.

It could be too ambitious an aim. Perhaps the desperate urge to have a sense of belonging, the divisiveness of 'them' and 'us' is too strongly ingrained in human nature to achieve this. But we could make a start by abolishing the contemptible 'league table' of medals that 'countries' win at the Olympics. I don't care that the UK did so well, beating France, Australia etc. It wasn't our country anyway, just a miniscule proportion of people who hold the nationality and outperfomed another tiny number of individuals, none of whom have any affinity whatsoever with the watching viewers.


Even the 'positive' aspects of international competition - camaraderie, national hysteria, strangers kissing each other in the street - is all based on 'beating' someone, on being 'better' than someone and on being, in some way, superior. I'm not against competition, I think it's healthy. I'm against it being based on nationhood. The world would be a much better place without it.

Question Time - Nick Griffin

Who’s afraid of Nick Griffin? Lots of people, it seems. After Thursday night’s performance on Question Time, maybe they shouldn’t be. No-one comes out well from the BNP/Question Time debacle – not Nick Griffin, not the BBC, the audience, panellists or protestors.


I missed the show but caught it on BBC iPlayer later. Griffin’s mission was simple: appear respectable, be moderate, seem reasonable. Trouble is, when you’ve spent your adult life hobnobbing with the Ku Klux Klan and saying that Auschwitz is a fairy story, your mission is pretty much impossible. Sure enough, he squirmed like a maggot on a hook when his outrageous beliefs were quoted back at him. Griffin is also a coward – he stubbornly refused to admit what everyone in the studio, and sitting at home watching on the sofa, knew: that his agenda was driven by skin colour and race; nothing to do with culture.


Should he even have been on there?


Yes, he should. Yes, of course. You get 900,000 votes and you can’t be censored. If we don’t have freedom of speech, we have nothing. Otherwise who will decide who can and cannot speak? It won’t be you, that’s for sure. The BBC were right to say that as a public sector broadcaster they couldn’t censor a politician with votes.


Freedom of speech doesn’t open the door to murder and pillage – we quite rightly have laws in the UK that forbid inciting racial hatred, or incitement to murder, or advocating violence, threats to kill etc. So people like Nick Griffin have to be very careful what they say now. It wasn’t always like this: Enoch Powell’s infamous “rivers of blood” speech was allowed to pass in 1968, whereas today I suspect he would get his collar felt by the long arm of the law. There’s no need to be terrified of someone whose views are so comical even people who hold them are embarrassed to express them.When intolerant people come into view, it always brings out the intolerance in others. It's instructive to watch.


For a start the adolescent loonies ‘protesting’ against his appearance seemed oblivious to the plank in their own eye. They complain about ‘fascism’ but by deciding for themselves who should and should not appear on television they are have a little sideline in fascism going themselves. It seems that plenty of violence is dished out by the anti-Nazi league/Socialist Workers party who spend their lives in pursuit of a cause or a bandwagon to jump on.


Of course we have plenty of ‘fascists’ in this country. Fascist has become one of those derogatory terms that is nowadays applied to absolutely anyone you disagree with. Like foxhunting? You’re a fascist. Want to ban foxhunting? Fascist. Want to cap immigration? Ban anything? Or do anything unpopular? Then you’re a fascist. Fascism is about the worship of the state, combined with a mercantilist economic policy that has little to do with free market policies and an aggressive, nationalistic foreign policy that is opposed to the free movement of peoples and other aspects of globalisation.


By most of these standards the BNP don’t score highly on the fascist scale. To call them ‘Nazi’ is just absurd, and denigrates the victims of Hitler. They have a policy on immigration that in some ways is very left-wing: to stop it, even reverse it. They don’t believe in the free market, free movement of people


We have racist, sectarian, violent groups in the UK but you never hear the anti-fascist protestors or the Socialist Workers Party or the anti-Nazi League complaining about them. Sinn Fein, an organisation that’s murdered thousands of people, now sits in Government; Islamic extremist movements that advocate violence and preach beliefs incompatible with Western values are never picketed by the Anti Nazi League when they appear at mosques or campuses or schools. Funny, that.


Jack Straw came across as a man of straw - refusing resolutely to concede that Labour's misguided immigration policy had fuelled the rise of the BNP when even his own supporters could see that was the case. He was so righteous in his indignation he refused to acknowledge what everyone could see. His refusal to budge or even admit there was room for improvement in immigration policy rebounded on him and he suddenly seemed evasive, shifty, myopic and even arrogant.


Bonnie Greer, no doubt a woman of considerable talents and qualities, ended up looking arrogant, petulant and foolish. It would have been quite easy to deconstruct Griffin’s absurdities around the topic of genetic purity, but Greer chose to try and appear superior and again refused to acknowledge anything. Perhaps that’s how panellists are coached before appearing on screen, or maybe that’s the done thing.


One minute she harked back to the Ice Age to demonstrate there were no such thing as 'indigenous' Britons, the next patronising Griffin by alluding to his "two two" and suggesting he do more reading. She was stumped, however, when Griffin craftily suggested that no-one would deny there was such a thing as an indigenous Maori or Aboriginal.


It was obvious Griffin had a point, even though it was used to mask a sinister and dangerous eugenics theme. There is no such thing as pure-bred British – we’re all hybrids after all, out of Africa. But it’s also true that the British have been a fairly insular bunch prior to mass immigration in the 1950s, and everyone knows that’s what Griffin was getting at.


Before 1066 of course it wasn’t anything like that – Angles, Saxons, Danes, Vikings, Celts, Romans with their black and Mediterranean heritage; they all settled here. The DNA in Great Britain is an indecipherable mix, a hotch-potch. But notwithstanding the Hugeunots, Jews, Irish, scattering of black slaves brought in through the seaports and a few others, white British people had indeed developed a settled culture they identified as ‘British’ prior to the 1950s. It’s undeniable.


The killer point though, the one that everyone in this country understands, is that Britishness is now defined by nationality, character, language and values – not by skin colour or ethnicity. It’s something I’m proud of. I like that about this country. One only has to look at the furore in insular China, where there is uproar over a half-black, half-Chinese girl appearing on a talent show. Many Chinese simply can’t accept that someone with black parentage can be ‘Chinese’ (or Han Chinese). Nationality is defined by ethnicity, which we know is a fallacy as all races are mixed. But in the UK nationality and ethnicity are separate. People who combine and try to pretend they are the same them look stupid and are actually embarrassed about their own views.


I also believe that people who settle in a country, at any point in history, have an obligation to respect the laws, traditions and customs of the society they find themselves in, and attempt to integrate as best they can. Not easy if you experience racism and discrimination, but you must try. Some groups seem to have managed this better than others.


Multiculturalism has not served the UK well. It’s lead to insular sub-societies cut off from the mainstream, sometimes embittered and feeling disenfranchised and searching for an outlet for their identity, sometimes in the most extreme ways, as in the suicide bombings of 2005. Having a society where everyone feels they have a stake is more constructive. Unfortunately the BNP want to promote a cultural apartheid in this country, which would only do harm.


No-one believes that people with dark skin should be ‘sent back’, as the NF used to say. Sent back to where? The British hospital they were born in? It’s a non-starter and everyone knows it. Britain has absorbed immigrants very well, by and large. So it wasn’t necessary for Bonnie Greer to talk about Ice Age Neanderthals.


The BBC themselves also emerged with little credibility. They wanted to have their cake and eat it; one moment saying that Griffin could not be denied a platform because of the BNP's electoral success, the next trying to rig the audience and panel against him with hostile questions and a partisan audience. Why stick a black woman next to Griffin? Bonnie Greer was chosen because she was black, make no mistake about it. It was the BBC’s attempt to embarrass Griffin. But the audience could see through it.


It wasn't necessary to ban Griffin, censor him or rig the audience and panel. He was given enough rope to hang himself, and by the end he had done so by attempting to defend the indefensible. Politics based on skin colour is so absurd even racists are embarrassed to admit to their views, and the audience sniggered when he was cornered about the Holocaust.


One of the few good points Bonnie Greer made was that without freedom of speech we have nothing. I enjoyed watching Griffin talking rubbish about indigenous race, he looked foolish. Not surprisingly, his own party is far from happy with his performance. I look forward to seeing more of him, and then watch his party implode, despite the opinion polls showing imaginary 'swings' and 'surges' for him.


What of the BNP themselves? Groups founded purely to attack others always end in schisms and fratricide - they cannot contain their desire to destroy and so always turn on themselves. That's why the BNP is an offshoot of the old National Front, why Irish Republican Groups splinter and why racists always fight civil wars with each other.


I don’t think there’s any need to fear the BNP. They have nothing to offer because the UK is ethnically mixed now, and it’s irreversible. Everyone knows that. Once we have a controlled immigration policy and the economic climate improves, they will fade away. Even by the standards of fringe parties they are small. It’s seems clear to me that a lot of people who vote for them do so as a protest because they’re scared, worried or angry about immigration and ‘foreigners’. Some are racist, I will bet most aren’t – they’re just ignorant and fearful. My guess is that prolonged media coverage will (a) expose the BNP to more ridicule and (b) force the Government to have a sensible immigration policy.


People who spread fear always do so because they are fearful themselves. Fear is what drives them: fear of the unknown, fear of change, fear of ‘the other’. Nick Griffin and his supporters have lived, and will continue to live their whole lives in fear. That is their greatest punishment.