RACIST BUFFOONERY

London is a fantastic place, if you'll forgive my statement of the bleedin' obvious: it was, if memory serves, my contemporary (at least according to my younger friends, who have this lack of respect for my mature years) Samuel Johnson who said that if you're tired of London, you're tired of life.

Actually, to a degree, London enforces a certain degree of tiredness on you, especially if you're of a bent that is less than enamoured of physical exercise like yours truly. Public transport is excellent, for all that the Brits tend to moan about it all the time, and taxis are - well, not cheap, but at least not larcenous - but you still have to use Shank's steed quite a bit. For instance, getting to the Sanctum Sanctorum (Stamford Bridge) last Wednesday to watch Chelsea annihilate Atletico involved a schlep down and then back up the Fulham Road, from Sloane Square, where we've laid our heads for the week.

And that's to say nothing about the previous trek down to the Bridge to seek a ticket for the match, which was a happily successful enterprise, surprisingly enough.

But enough of the trials and tribulations of getting around: the vibrancy of London's streets is more than enough to make up for having to walk them. I'm off to spend Saturday morning sauntering around the King's Road, which is something I've never actually done.

The news scene here is dominated by two things, pretty much. One is the postal strike, which is characterised by charge and counter-charge about who is to blame for reneging on which deal and which Cabinet minister is in cahoots with which set of bloated plutocrats. Anything familiar about that?

The other is the appearance of that racist buffoon, Nick Griffin, on Question Time, a BBC programme during which members of the public direct questions at a panel of worthies and politicians (yes, I know most of you knew that)

The mere appearance of the fool Griffin on the programme provoked howls of disgust and protest, howls with which I tend to find sympathy, since the crypto-Nazi thug comes to the table with dirty hands. Apologists for racism and other forms of hate-speech glibly allow the stock concepts of freedom of thought and expression to trip from their lips, but the thing is, people like Griffin deny even more basic rights than these to fellow human beings, so their hijacking of basic rights to give themselves a platform from which to continue their hate campaigns is not really legitimate.

Luckily, like our own brand of racist idiots, Griffin and his like do themselves no favours when they are eventually allowed to pollute the airwaves with their foul notions. I watched a good chunk of the programme, and the idiot was incapable of stringing three sentences together without his intolerance and fascism (sorry about the repetition) showing from the damp, dark recesses of the stone under which racists of all nationalities cower.

The debate is still going on: should the BBC have let this thinly-disguised thug on to national television, providing him with a platform for his disgusting brand of racism?

The general opinion seems to be that, given that Griffin did himself no favours by being completely unable to disguise the paucity of his arguments and the horrific nature of his policies, the fact that his mask has been ripped away has overcome the negative effect of his views being aired at all.

Countering this, people of a liberal outlook point at the poll results on Saturday morning which indicate that a substantial number of people would consider voting for the National Front, sorry, the League of British Fascists, sorry the Ku Klux Klan, sorry, the British National Party. I'm not surprised, really, look at the comments which extol racism, directly or otherwise, on this site, if you want an idea of how many people are not exactly free of intolerance.

The people who think Griffin should not be afforded publicity might be right, but on the other hand, many, many people who might have thought Griffin was not so bad now know that he is pretty bad, so on a balance, it was probably the right idea to drag him out from under his rock.

The fact that he is now protesting that he was unfairly treated makes it pretty clear that he came off worse, after all. Even The Sun, which is not exactly the most liberal of rags, described Griffin's sorry excuse for a justification of his mad ideas as his downfall.