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Anorak News | Russell Brand Appears On Question Time To Debate Ashley Cole, Nick Griffin And The BNP

Russell Brand Appears On Question Time To Debate Ashley Cole, Nick Griffin And The BNP

by | 11th, October 2009

brand-bnp-collettHow Russell Brand skewered the BNP’s Nazi Boy as the Dail Mail kicks the BBC, and Question Time invites Nick Griffin to the debate…

THE Daily Mail rarely misses a chance to wallop the BBC, and today delivers the news that two BNP Herrenvolk have created a “BBC storm” as they are “invited on Radio 1 to insult Ashley Cole”.

Overlooking the obvious reaction that an invitation to insult Ashley Cole is not needed, and that black, white, Nazi or Commie, we can all unite behind a common cause, we read on:

This is the BBC’s own full transcript of the Newsbeat interview:

Randle: Do you think it’s OK for people who aren’t white in this country to call themselves British?

Joey: Civic-ly British they are. You cannot say they are ethnically British. It’s denying our heritage. It’s taking that away from us.

Randle: At what point do they become ethnically British? How long do they have to be here?

Joey: Well, I think it would be an awfully long time before someone would become ethnically British.

Randle: So when you see someone like Ashley Cole play for England, are you happy to watch him?

Joey: If he wants to come to this country and he wants to live by our laws, pay into society, that’s fine.

Randle: But if he wanted to call himself British that would be a problem?

Joey: He cannot say that he’s ethnically British.

The Mail on Sunday has discovered the full background of the two ‘young BNP supporters’ identified by the BBC only as Joey, 24, and 28-year-old Mark.

Who they?

…Joey is Joseph Barber, also known as Joey Smith, who runs the BNP’s record label Great White Records and is one of its leading artists, recording tracks including Pondlife and Christmas Is A British Thing. The other guest was Mark Collett, the former leader of the Youth BNP and now the party’s head of publicity.

Mark Collett… That name rings a siren. It’s Mark Adrian Collett, a former chairman of the Young BNP, the youth division of the British National Party (BNP), a Director of Publicity for the Party?

The BBC tells of over 100 complaints to the Beeb, which might be a lot, or not. And while we marvel that 100 peole are shocked to discover that the BNP don’t much like black people nor immigrants and care enough about a remote political faction to moan to the BBC, we get context:

The row comes after the BBC’s controversial decision to allow BNP leader Nick Griffin to appear on Question Time for the first time.

There is nothing controversial about allowing Griffin to express his views on the telly, however doltish they are. The trick is for the other politicians to pick them part, to speak with gravitas and authority, to impress upon the electorate the value of democracy, voting, politics, humanity and, to our mind, libertarian values.

When politicians say what they believe in and end the “Let’s join the debate”; “It’s time for a debate”; “We need an urgent debate” etc. fudge, the likes of the BNP will be neuted. Right now the BNP exist as the spectre of what will happen if we don’t listen and respect the mainstream parties. If the BNP did not exist, the big three parties would have to invent them.

The Mail’s controversy is rooted in fear that our grasping, mealy-mouthed, remote politicians are not up to the job of undoing Griffin’s monocular and irrelevant views.

Thankfully, Russell Brand is more up to it than most. And if the BBC, with its lust for celebrities on Question Time – so far we’ve seen James Cracknell, Kirsty Allsopp, Will Young and Carol Vorderman – needs a voice it could do worst than invite Brand on.

Brand knows Collett of old, having presented the Channel 4 documentary Young, Nazi And Proud in 2002, featuring Collett as “Nazi Boy“.

You want to see the BNP and see their sad views challenged?

Look on:

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Posted: 11th, October 2009 | In: Key Posts, Politicians Comments (3) | TrackBack | Permalink