And I was nearly on my way to bed before 1am before I saw this link. Yesterday, the BBC reporter Ben Brown took on his toughest target yet, the man with cerebral palsy dragged from his wheelchair by police during the student protests last Thursday. And although that sounds like sarcasm, it turns out to be true. While it doesn’t take a great deal of effort to make a man like Brown look like an idiot, Jody McIntyre does it with grace and intelligence completely undeserved by the moronic anchor.

Here’s the full interview, which unfortunately contains quite a few skips:

So in the footage we see a man sitting in his wheelchair, barely moving, being attacked by four police officers. Two in full riot gear, because you can never be too careful with those CP types. One drags him across the road by his arms, dropping him on the tarmac. This is the second time that evening that McIntyre has been dragged from his wheelchair, the first time also hit with a truncheon. But this was the time it was filmed.

Perhaps I’m mad from keyboard fumes, but this strikes me as a story about police brutality. But that’s not how crack journalist Ben Brown saw it. This was his chance to get a confession out of one of the most dangerous rioters of them all.

Let me stress, I don’t believe that McIntyre deserves special treatment because he’s disabled. I hate all disabled people, and their disabled showing off, like any right-minded individual. And it does seem that McIntyre is a frequent troublemaker. But I do think that perhaps his physical limitations should be taken into account when making wild accusations against him. I’m all for assuming equal abilities, but since I didn’t see his robo-mecha suit in the video, I’m guessing Brown’s peculiar line of questioning about throwing rocks to be perhaps a tiny bit utterly fucking moronic.

I say “peculiar”. What I mean is “horrendous”. But such is the complete desperation of the BBC to assume the police line on any matter. They will stretch to such ludicrous places. I’m not saying this as some SMASH THE STATE! anti-establishment loony. I’m far too lazy to be that. It’s more of an analytical response to the bewilderment I felt while watching the live coverage on Thursday.

During the blanket coverage on the BBC News Channel, we were shown near-constant helicopter shots of the crowds as they were brutally attacked by the police. I watched an officer repeatedly punching a teenager in the head until one of his colleagues put a hand on his shoulder and presumably mentioned he should probably stop the beating now. I wasn’t watching with special magic eyes – it was in the centre of the image of the crowd. No reporter or anchor mentioned this sight immediately in front of them. That was within a minute of switching the footage on. The agenda was clear.

Supt. Julia Pendry was the bitter voice of the police for the day. How on Earth anyone thought such an antagonistic, aggressive and seemingly pathologically deceitful police officer was a helpful spokesperson probably says everything about the shambolic state of the police. Every time she appeared she would directly contradict anything she’d previously said. And at no point at all throughout the day did any of the BBC’s news staff question her on this. She began the afternoon telling us that the students were able to leave at any time they wished. They were penned in. She told us that the students had diverted from their course against police will. According to previous reports by the BBC the police were the ones to divert the wayward crowds in the direction to which she so objected. She said that the students and teenagers had only been “kettled” (not an appropriate term when there’s no way out, since the steam absolutely cannot escape) after the violence had begun, when the BBC had shown and repeatedly explained that they were trapped long before any unrest began. The worst had been a few thrown paintballs.

As evening approached she announced that they were now beginning to release students from where the police had kept them. No one challenged on her having said they were free to leave at any point all afternoon. Also, the police weren’t allowing anyone to leave.

Later still she explained that they couldn’t let anyone go home because of the violence. This was while there was no violence occurring, but shortly before the most violent moments occurred when freezing students finally had enough. No one pointed out that she’d said they’d been allowed to leave all afternoon, and that she’d said they were being allowed to leave an hour before.

The farce became even more pronounced when the BBC anchors started informing their own reporters that they were wrong about the students’ being trapped. The excellent Mike Sergeant explained that they were unable to leave, to which the anchor replied informing him that he was incorrect, because the police lady had said so. He again tried to explain that no one could get out, and lots of scared children wanted to go home, but was cut off by the anchor again sternly telling him off for disagreeing. It was blink-inducing.

Ben Brown, also out in the crowds, was being stupefyingly stupid. Some students had set fire to some rubbish, which confused Brown to such an extent that he could barely speak in sentences. Apparently witnessing the orangey magic for the first time, he stammered nonsense about how enormous it was (it was smaller than your average campfire), attempting poetic descriptions of the plumes of BLACK SMOKE rising into the night sky. It was a small wonder he didn’t strip naked and start screaming. This did lead to one of my absolute favourite moments of the entire day, when he incredulously asked one of the protesters, “What’s the point of lighting fires in the middle of Parliament square? What does it achieve?”

“It’s a bit cold,” was the student’s unimprovable reply.

When rocks were being thrown by the crowds, Brown – so very proud of getting to wear one of the police helmets (Look daddy! It’s like I’m in Afghanistan!) – picked one up and then described it for something like nineteen hours. He couldn’t get over how big it was. First fire, then rock. It was a big day for Brown. As twelve riot officers suddenly charged a couple of teenagers graffitiing a wall, their batons raised. Never mind that Ben, tell us about the rock again.

I naively thought at one point in the afternoon that 24 hour coverage, with constant live footage, meant that moments like the police charging the crowd of teenagers on horseback couldn’t be buried as they would have during the 1980s. A completely unprovoked and terrifying attack had been caught on film. Surely now, surely this would force questions to be raised. But by the evening this moment was buried, forgotten, with Superintendent Pendry’s delusional version of events having replaced any of the things we’d all watched happening. By the evening the police had only responded to violent attacks from students, with nine officers taken to hospital with bruised fingers or sore knees, and one with “serious head injuries” after he “fell off his horse”. He’s disappeared now of course, and even Pendry didn’t have the gall to suggest that someone actually knocked him off his horse. But anyone who’d been watching for more than an hour knew this wasn’t true. And presumably the BBC reporters knew it wasn’t true too. They’d said themselves how surprising and shocking the horse charges had been. And while we were told about the injured policemen every two to three minutes, with the same written on the scrolling captions every thirty seconds, there was no reporting whatsoever, all day, of specific numbers of protesters who’d been injured. Occasionally a reporter on scene would see an ambulance carting one off, but it was quickly ignored.

Of course every time Brown would try to tell off one of the students he spoke to for being such naughty targets, they’d spoil the illusion by saying what they’d actually seen, rather than what the police had told them they’d seen. Stories of school kids wandering around with blood pouring down their faces, tales of children being crushed as students fled from the police rushes, and many personal accounts of people having been hit, or seen their friends hit, by batons, were rife. But somehow never reported later. And Alfie Matthews, the 20 year old now requiring brain surgery after being hit in the head by the police, went completely unreported.

The Matthews story doesn’t stop there. The police genuinely attempted to stop his being taken to the nearest hospital, as his brain bled, because they didn’t want students being treated in the same place as their officers. Fortunately the ambulance driver was too horrified by this to obey, and ignored their instructions. But no mention on the day – but you be sure that nine police officers who aren’t named or identified have been inspecifically injured.

And of course this peaks with Brown’s astonishing interview above. Clearly if McIntyre has previously professed revolutionary desires, it’s the reporter’s job to question him on this. And Brown could have done so with whatever level of aggression he felt necessary. But to so openly suggest that “rolling toward” the police – in a wheelchair he’d just explained he can’t operate – was in some way a reason for being attacked, is mystifying. To then – after he’d had it explained to him that the physically disabled man couldn’t move his own wheelchair – repeatedly demand of McIntyre whether he’d been throwing rocks seems like parody. Is he really asking that?

But to behave in any other way would be to suggest that the police had done anything inappropriate. After all, if he hadn’t filed a complaint immediately, how could the police have acted in an improper way?

The vitriol with which he questions McIntyre is just strange. Although as quickly as it becomes apparent how much smarter McIntyre is than his interviewer, so does Brown’s hostility rise.

Brown’s a disgrace. McIntyre comes out of it very well, thanks to his calm responses, and disgust with the questions. (It’s quite a shame that he attempts to make it be about some anti-Palestinian bias – the BBC couldn’t be more pro-Palestine if they funded Hamas.) And the BBC continues to believe that it is in some way required to report whatever the police say, without question. We should perhaps be wondering about this.

(Pics via Rev Stu.)

First of all, a story about pi being calculated to 2.7 trillion digits is accompanied by this caption:

“Pi is an irrational number, meaning its digits go on forever.”

Um, not quite. I think you’ll find an irrational number is one that starts crying because the wallpaper’s the wrong colour, or something.

And then follow the headline, “Archbishop urges population cap” and you get this story about a group of MPs arguing for, I guess, culling, that at no point mentions the Archbishop. It’s a bold headline choice, suggesting the Archbishop wants to shut down our borders to all those Johnny foreigners. He might want to ask them about that, since it’s now their 7th most read story.

Presumably they’re getting a bit confused with a story from last October when the former moron Archbishop George Carey declared his delightful views on immigration. He explained that the reason the BNP were gaining popularity was because of our “open door policy” to immigrants. Never mind that the BNP’s popularity has waned in the last few years (I mean, why let that trouble your ghastly views?), but to suggest that the BNP might be becoming more popular because there’s too many foreigners coming into the country… Um, maybe someone can see the irony here? “If the mainstream parties begin listening to the voters,” he said, “the BNP can be consigned again to the fringes.” That’s right George. If the mainstream parties adopt the policies of the BNP, then we’ll not need the BNP at all!

UPDATE: They’ve now updated the linking headline to read, “Carey in immigrant ‘values’ call”. But haven’t thought to update the article to mention Carey at all. Is everyone at the BBC drunk today?

Many are arguing that giving the BNP a voice on a respected BBC programme legitimises them, and will increase their popularity. Others counter this by saying his views will be exposed and people will become more aware of the party’s racist and fascist nature. Each likes to accuse the other of patronising the population. But the point where everyone gets caught up is in the figure of 900,000 people who democratically voted for them.

One side likes to argue that these 900,000 people are confused about who the BNP really are, and would not vote for them if they really knew their bigoted values and opinions. Another side likes to argue these 900,000 people want a party who’s willing to stand up for Britain against Europe, or bring in real change, and they’re resorting to the BNP in desperation. What almost no one seems to suggest is the possibility that there are 900,000 hateful racist bigots who voted for a hateful racist party.

This determination that people are either confused or moderate is peculiar in the extreme. They’re bigots, and there’s a political party who shares their views. So they vote for them. It isn’t very complicated. There are racist people. Lots of them. They’re everywhere. Our deranged need to pretend that everyone is just misguided or under-informed prevents us from recognising an important reality. Britain has lots and lots of racist people living in it, and the BNP very adequately represents them.

There’s no ambiguity about the BNP. They’ve made some very haphazard attempts to spin themselves to be an anti-Europe party, who just happen to want immigrants to go back to where they came from and hate the Jews. But you don’t even need to scrape the surface to find their views – they aren’t embarrassed by them, and don’t try to hide them. Andrew Brons, who recently won a seat on the European Parliament, was a member of the Nazi-formed National Socialist Movement in the 60s, and by the 70s was high ranking in the National Front. There’s no secrets in this party – they’re openly, boastfully racists. They’re Nazi-affiliated, if not outright members of neo-Nazi organisations, they’re Holocaust deniers, they believe in white supremacy. I can’t stress enough how out in the open this is. Let’s pluck a ridiculous example. The record label that publishes their racist songs is called Great White Records. No one’s confused.

If someone has problems with Europe, and doesn’t feel like the Tories are going to address it, they’ll vote UKIP or Veritas. (Of course here you can have the fun of hunting for relationships with less savoury roots.) If someone votes for the BNP it’s because they’re a racist.

So here’s the pickle: We’ve got a sort-of-democracy in this country, and with that comes our requirement to allow people to freely vote for whomever they wish. When one party receives almost a million votes, wins council seats and positions as MEPs, we as a nation have welcomed them in.

The BBC is a public service broadcaster. They’re required by law to be non-partisan. But I believe they have discretion and editorial control of a programme like Question Time, and clearly they could have refused to invite Griffin. It’s unquestionably a ratings and attention-gaining coup to make this move, but I have no idea which is their motivation. However, the problem with Question Time as a format for this is quite what a hideous programme it is without a BNP member on the panel.

Born of Radio 4′s Any Questions, both shows follow the same format. A panel of politicians and public figures take unknown questions from the audience. Of course the boast that the panel are not forewarned of the questions is meaningless – whatever the four or five main news stories of the week might have been will be the questions asked, and the panel will have been appropriately prepared for receiving them. The only unknowable is the light-hearted question at the end, where in a week where a politician had been on a fancy holiday they might be asked, “If you could go on holiday with one politician, who would it be and where would you go?” Here they stumble and murmur a confused reply, unsure what their team of advisers would have liked them to say, and the farcical nature of the programme is lit up for all to see. “Um, well, I suppose I’d like to go with David Cameron and his lovely wife, and we’d go to, um, a good British resort to boost our local economy?” Yuck. Neither presenter, brothers Jonathan and David Dimbleby, as it happens, has the wit or gumption to challenge scripted responses, nor force guests to actively debate with or respond to opposing views given. Instead they allow the panellists to take it in turns to say their pre-prepared piece, and then another chance to say it again instead of answering a direct question.

But what makes both Question Time and Any Answers so remarkably revolting is the audience. Pre-selected based on their political views, they bray and jeer like disease-infected cattle whenever someone says the binary opposite of their pre-defined positions on a matter, and then clap as if they’re trying to mash their hands into a bloodied pulp whenever someone says something they agree with. Should the audience be divided on a subject then their wire-frame opinions are voiced in a battle to see who can clap the loudest when their representative repeats their asinine position once more. Anything sophisticated or nuanced is ignored or literally shouted down by these fetid idiots.

Tonight’s episode is going to be this times a million. The BBC have allowed a few BNP supporters to be in the studio, and the programme will be dominated by the two audience groups trying to shout each other down, or beat each other on some imaginary clapometer from hell. (Add to that the inevitability of some anti-fascist protesters who will be in there – I can’t help feeling a little confused as I watch the footage of anti-fascist protesters campaigning against free speech. It just doesn’t seem to quite work as a concept.)

My guess about the panel is a lazy display of people trying to outdo each other about how much they’re against Griffin. They’ll each make it their goal to prove that their political party is best at not agreeing with racist opinions, and each will try to get Griffin to say something offensive. I fear that Griffin will have the sense to refuse to address any of these subjects, but instead incessantly bring up matters such as education, the financial crisis, and Europe, and of course immigration. He will talk a lot about how Britons are fed up of immigration. He will state that all the main parties have failed to address these key issues, and it’s time for a party who’s willing to listen to the people, and so on. And of course never even have to suggest what his own solutions will be, because no one will ask him – they’ll be too busy telling him how they hate him more than the others.

Of course I could be wildly wrong. I do hope so. I hope that Griffin exposes himself as the despicable human being he is, and the rest of the panel eloquently rebut his remarks and educate the audience with original and smart thoughts. Although even if this is the case, I doubt they’ll be heard over the frenzied mooing of the audience.

Whatever happens, we need to snap out of our denial about how many racist bigots live in this country, and start working out how we respond to them now they have a political voice.

PS. For anyone not convinced that BNP voters know and understand the party for which they vote, have a fun look through the Have Your Say responses on the BBC this evening.