A CRIME IS A CRIME

Let’s not waste any time trying to find anything logical in this brutal murder in Woolwich – there is nothing logical to be found. This evil act  is utterly unjustifiable and a life has been lost. As Billy Bragg said on Thursday, “The barbarous murder of an innocent man on the streets of London yesterday is shocking. What he did for a living cannot be used to justify what happened to him”. Such unjustifiable violent acts periodically emanate from the more fanatical corners of some sections of our communities. As has been said elsewhere the Woolwich murder has no more to do with British government policy than the Boston Marathon had to do with Chechnya. Terrorists and want-to-be terrorists or jihadists thrive on coverage in the media; the perpetrators of the brutal murder on the streets of Woolwich don’t deserve the oxygen of publicity. Violent people will often try to justify their actions by claiming that they are "political" we don’t need to do it for them. They will only be encouraged to do so if politicians appear to agree with them over their misguided motivations. The police and security services are best placed to prevent it, not the politicians. Extremists and fanatics may be attracted to use violence; we can and should treat the perpetrators of such crimes as criminals. Hannah Arendt’s book ’The Banality of Evil’ about the trial of holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann, detailed the relationship between idiocy and evil – this same relationship can be found in the history and justifications of past jihadist attacks which have nothing to do with religion. Whatever their claimed cause there can is no justification for their actions. The life of Fusilier Drummer Lee Rigby has been lost in the most brutal of circumstances and a family left in mourning for their lost loved one. We would do well to remember that above everything else.

A MAN OF STRAW

One other thing that I have never worked is out how violent behaviour and assaulting Police Officers can be squared up with alleged peaceful democratic protest. If you really claim to belief in freedom of speech and democracy then that goes as far as to allow someone who holds views that you may find utterly offensive, repulsive and insulting to speak their piece.

You cannot get selective when it comes to freedom of speech. Sadly that fiasco in London and the near wall to wall media coverage before and after the event, has given the oxygen of publicity to the BNP on a scale they could never have imagined in their inbred sad little dream world - which is a real shame!

A few things struck me - Jack Straw was very weak, very tired and looked a tad punch drunk - very reminiscent of how Tory Ministers used to look like in 96/97 in the dying days of the John Major Government.

Jack Straw aside from avoiding the main issue, which is that his and successive governments (and most political parties) have failed to deal with the issue of immigration which has left the field to the extremists and allowed vulnerable people to be exploited by unscrupulous employers, is clearly representative of a government that is clearly on the way out.

The pretty basic failure to deal with immigration has been compounded by a failure to process (and this includes reject) asylum applications speedily which has left many people in limbo (often for years) neither able to work, pay their taxes, access services and to participate in and make a contribution to the economy and society.

Also thought that the panel, save for spending over half the programme attacking Griffin, largely failed to expose what a complete idiot Griffin is, not to mention his pretty obvious partial and selective grasp of both reality and history and the real dangerous insanity of his parties policies - which was a real missed opportunity!