Qvestion Times
Was the BBC right to invite BNP leader Nick Griffin onto Question Time on Thursday? Once there, was he a victim, barracked by the panel and audience alike as they reacted to his inability to explain his denial of the Holocaust?
Views differ. But one thing is for sure. The lid has ricocheted off a simmering debate about race and immigration in this country. Some people are now unafraid to be openly racist.
I, somewhat deliberately, live a quiet, small kind of life most of the time. In the two days since BBC 1’s Question Time aired on Thursday night I have come into contact with precisely six adults. One of them is my partner. Of those six people, five - all but my partner - have initiated conversations about that edition of Question Time and then voiced racist, deeply questionable views about immigration, the “state of the nation”, foreigners taking “our” jobs and abusing “our” NHS, about why we should be “policitically correct” about Muslims and a lot more besides.
All five, a group of three and a group of two, used the programme as a vehicle to rehearse tired old arguments about issues which do not in any way affect their own lives. All are white, British living in the largely mono-cultural environs of South West England.
I live in the sticks, so what do I or anyone I come across down here know about multiculturalism? Maybe that’s the point. What a can of worms. Worthy of 8m viewers on a Thursday night?
