Colcam

BBC Radio 4s Any Questions programme, where members of an audience ask the panel for their views on topical subjects, was broadcast from Bexley in Kent this weekend. Jonathan Dimbleby was in the chair, and the guest panel consisted of Frank Field, Labour MP, Oliver Letwin, Conservative MP, George Galloway, Respect Party MP, and Professor Colleen Graffy, the US law lecturer and former chair of Republicans Abroad.

The questions, unsurprisingly, were mostly concerning the suicide bombings in London and, in my opinion, only one member of the panel had anything remotely useful or new to say on the subject - George Galloway. At this point I should state that I can't stand the man, and have previously made my views on him clear in this weblog, but in this case I can only say he was excellent. His comments throughout were intelligent and knowledgeable, and his grasp of the problems faced far outshone the two mainstream politicians, who seemed only to be capable of the same old cliches, the same meaningless posturing, with no useful ideas or answers whatsoever.

With the pro-Bush Professor Colleen Graffy on the panel, it was only a couple of minutes before George went about bursting her bubble. I quote only the last sentence of Graffy's answer to a question on whether terrorists should be excommunicated by their religious leaders, before George intervened to correct her.

Graffy: ......."Can we change the messages that are given to young people - if, if you've never seen it before I encourage you to check out memory.org that's M E M R I which is translations of Arab newspapers wh".......

Galloway: "It's an Israeli, Israeli organisation".

Graffy: "Uh well it - it's a trans - it, it's" -

Galloway: "It's an Israeli organisation".

(Audience applause)

Graffy: "Middle East Media Research"............(Laughter from audience) "You, you can, you can check it out yourself it is translations of Arabic progr".......

Galloway: "It's an Israeli translation".

Graffy: "And you will see from Arabic into English and you'll hear that the head of the London Centre for Islamic History when the attacks firdt happened said that he questioned whether it was done by the intelligence agency of another western country hostile to Britain, some Zionist Americ ??????? to overshadow the G8 summit but said if it was indeed al Quaeda it was a great victory for it. This was not from someone in - eh - Saudi Arabia this is from - London".......

Galloway: "According to the Israelis".

(Loud Laughter)

Graffy: "No - according - from a translation.......that's".......

Galloway: "It's an Israeli website why don't you be honest with people"?

Graffy: "Why don't you be honest that it is a translation from al Jazeera an".......

And there, unfortunately, Jonathan Dimbleby stepped in and quickly shut them both down in order to move on.

I quote this, without even attempting to keep it in context, only because it was extremely amusing, and because I find the views of Colleen Graffy, who argues that what she describes as "group think", a mindset she thinks has taken hold of Britain, has imprisoned us all here into thinking George Bush is bad.

Arrogant Bitch. She may be a British citizen, despite the accent, but she doesn't know the British people and, despite (presumably) living over here and having the opportunity to try to understand other points of view, is obviously as brainwashed into the Bush doctrine as a suicide bomber is into trying to blow her off the face of the earth.

You can listen to Any Questions (15-07-05) HERE