Well, yeah. If someone came into a greasy spoon and started rattling the drawers with no intention of buying anything, I’d be a mite concerned. Maybe they’re from the Department of Health or something.

“I was invited to come in and drink coffee, but declined as I didn’t want to make a big deal of my just looking about.”

The absolute swine!! Send them back now!

“It felt that they were treating me as an anomaly. A bit of a freak.
I’d just had my lunch directly across the road in a Chinese noodle place.”

I think it’s probably more for the novelty value than any sense of being treated like a Victorian sideshow. Personally, I love Arab cuisine; a bit of pigeon pie covered in sugar.

Chinese food = good; Arab food = bad, is that the gist of your argument?

Would a McDonalds make you feel better? Irish brothers in America selling German food? Ironically generally staffed by non native English speakers because no bugger will work for the wage they offer. Is that the RIGHT kind of food?

Or should we just go back to people hawking their turnips in wooden trays?

The Lewisham shopping center on a saturday afternoon is a sight to see.
No middle class people go there. It’s a ghetto shopping center.

I went into a cafe where arab guys were standing ouside smoking on Lee High Road this afternoon, and as I walked down to the back of their cafe, to just take a look, I was asked what I was doing.
”Just looking” I said, but they still thought my behavoir was suspicious.
I talked with one of the guys for a few minutes and said I was like a tourist who knew Lee High Road from years ago, but I hadn’t seen their cafe before.
I was invited to come in and drink coffee, but declined as I didn’t want to make a big deal of my just looking about.
It felt that they were treating me as an anomaly. A bit of a freak.
I’d just had my lunch directly across the road in a Chinese noodle place.

Where just a few doors along is a Baltic/Polish supermarket that has a Bureau de change shop frontage and seems to be a space for people from the Baltic countriies.

Lewisham is a place that Nick Griffin would love to make a documentary about.
I guess that he has to be prevented from doing so. And be called a Nazi (etc) if he did.

Because saying things like ”do you want your local high street to become like Lewisham or Lee High Road?” … might get a lot of people saying ‘no’

They were certainly not under represented, despite what the right is saying today. They are a minority.

That question about immigration and unemployment was the most important question of the right in terms of addressing the BNP and no one even came close to tackling it

eh?

in terms of their proportion of voters, BNP-supporting audience members who questioned/commented were, if anything, over-represented.

And not exactly the best advert for his party.

“Why is there immigration when there’s white unemployment?”, for instance.

What a surprise they feel the need to resort to lying about this, in the midst of so many other lies…

I look forward to Jacqui Smith’s humiliation next week – it won’t be such a set-up but I am sure she will get what she deserves

Yes, I have. What’s your point?

Not sure why you feel the need to knock Greer’s excellent writing ability, combine that with a comment about how the BNP have had an alleged increase in new applications and you come out of that comment looking a bit odd.

Just a thought.

You don’t have to stack the deck or resort to porkies to show what Griffin and the BNP are. To do so reaks of uncertainty and fear.

Jacqui Smith to face the same format next week? l somehow doubt it.

The word ‘stalker’ springs to mind.

He’s probably got a shrine to her in his bedroom with a lock of her hair and some stolen underwear. Probably dances around his house wearing them, blacked, up with his balls tucked between his legs.

“We were seated next to each other and as we were having our microphones attached, he leaned towards me like I was his new best friend and tried to make small talk. “Bonnie, how many times have you been on?” he asked. “Bonnie, do you find it scary?” I looked him straight in the eye. “No,” I replied sharply, “but you might.”

Speaking exclusively to the Evening Standard immediately after filming at Television Centre in west London, Greer, 60, describes – over a stiff vodka – the ordeal of sitting next to Griffin as “probably the weirdest and most creepy experience of my life”.

“I spent the entire night with my back turned to him. At one point, I had to restrain myself from slapping him. But it was worth it,” she insists, “because he was totally trounced. I had thought we’d face a formidable orator, somebody who knew his facts and had his ducks in a row but the guy was a mess!
…
She shrugs. “Afterwards, there is usually a communal supper for all the panellists. But not this time. Nobody could bring themselves to break bread with Nick Griffin.”

Evening Standard

I’ll say!

I find it sad that he thinks that Jack Straw’s face went ashen because comparing what dads did in the war is political debate.

I also noticed that he was trying to listen to “even ethnic minorities” with “consideration” but I wonder if anyone will tell him that the effort to treat the audience members as individual human beings made his face sneer?

Why does that leave me thinking of some awkward teenager who’s just made a cack-handed attempt to chat up the most glamorous girl in the classroom, and then walked away bragging to his mates, “Yeah, yeah, she totally fancied me” while ignoring the look of utter disdain on her face.