Enoch Powell? quote

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7077348.stm

an essential belief in the importance of history and the land that Edward Heath foolishly regarded as the territory of the man who would appear in public in areas with deep racial tension and deliberately contribute to it

i don't get this

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7077934.stm

gone.

Heave Ho, you do not get that because it is tangled to the point of impenetrability. I suspect the author could not tell you now what he was thinking when he wrote that.

I assumed whoever did it was spoofing Scruton's style.

Scruton has style?

Douchebag style.

and a car that just won't stop!

looks like dog latin

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44216000/jpg/_44216803_hastilow_bbc203.jpg

Racist pirate ghosts haunt a black-owned hairdresser. Starring Noel Fielding and Richard Ayoade. Script it, DL.

Ha, during my teenage work experience at a local B'ham newspaper, one of my principle duties was to shred the douchey press releases Hastilow sent every four seconds detailing his every move.

just be thankful you weren't doing it a few years earlier when he was editing one of the bloody things.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/white/rivers_blood.shtml

Anyone else see this? I thought the programme was, essentially, a neat package of incitement to racial hatred and I'm fuming.

Oh, those crazy comments...

Being white and male means that you are at the bottom of the pile

There are far crazier things on that nice establishment web forum.

The content of the programme was crazy enough...(strong suggestion at the end that the July 7th bombings are linked to immigration, for instance...)

I think you are right, Zoe, but on the other hand, I find it difficult to see how one could make a documentary about Powell's speech at the present time and not do that. It was important to mention the paradoxical way in which the left wing working class, inc members of trades unions, marched to Parliament in defence of Powell, just as it was important to include the interviews with members of the public from '68. I didn't get the impression that they were "blaming" immigration policy for 7/7 above and beyond the simple fact that it if it wasn't for immigration then the perpetrators wouldn't be here in the first place. You could claim that the 7/7 bomber's video could have been shown in its entirety, but then the documentary wasn't about that primarily and, in any case you just wouldn't get a documentary saying Brit foreign policy was to blame for 7/7 (even tho vast swathes of the popn know that it was) on the BBC.

If you were making the documentary what would you have done differently?

Watched it with my girlfriend who, lovely as she is, is rather more right wing than I am. Led to an argument. I should add she's not in the least bit racist, thank god, she just has more reservations about immigration than me (and I'm the British-born one!).

Hey G Genie - I hear what you're saying. I guess above all it was the suggestiveness and emotiveness that bothered me: the Clockwork Orange music being used to soundtrack Powell's predictions of doom, the close-ups of his sad face combined with the suggestion that he was simply 'misunderstood', the looming question: "did he have a point?" despite having just deconstructed his speech and exposed just how racist it was.

You're right, too, that it did not directly 'blame' immigration policy for 7/7...but I did feel that this link was also too strongly suggested. Or at least it said "a lot of people think this" while showing images of bleeding, injured, distressed, limping passengers. I know next to nothing about film theory but the combination of images + words in that segment hardly put the idea into any proper perspective.

That the programme delighted so many Powell supporters (see messageboard) made me very uncomforable. The bbc claimed they were wanting to encourage debate, but judging by that web forum they only managed to entrench existing prejudices.

It's all a very sensitive issue at the moment, and I don't think they handled it nearly as sensitively or *clearly* enough. Encourage debate: fine. But in doing so they could have been a whole load more responsible.

That said, I might be horribly wrong and could have been over-sensitive. I would very much love to be horribly wrong, so would be pleased to read more of your thoughts. At the moment I don't know whether to be reassured or upset that the programme seems to have riled nobody but me and the wife. (Having said that, I don't know anyone else who saw it...apparently some people go out on Saturday nights...)

To answer your question, if I was making the documentary, I'd rip out the Clockwork Orange soundtrack, the emotive montages, all the references to 7/7 and add a whole load more sociological analysis. I have no doubt that it would be a very boring documentary.

It's an emotive subject, though, so it might be daft to think it can be reduced to a dry academic discussion. Or maybe that's precisely what needs to happen. Dunno.

The thing that struck me most about the programme was the extreme reluctance of any of the interviewees to admit that they sympathised and/or agreed with Powell (Winterton and Heffer were diplomatically chomping at the bit I thought).

Scruton has style?

-- Aimless, Sunday, 4 November 2007 19:32 (4 months ago) Bookmark Link

Douchebag style.

-- Noodle Vague, Sunday, 4 November 2007 19:33 (4 months ago) Bookmark Link

and a car that just won't stop!

-- Mark G, Monday, 5 November 2007 02:10 (4 months ago) Bookmark Link

Oh I laugh at my old jokes..

This whole 'white' season has left a bad taste in my mouth but then I'm exactly the kind of do-gooding, politically correct, immigrant loving liberal that has led this country to the precipice of race war and social disintegration...(contd. every HYS thread ever).

I watched the Working Men's Club programme.

It was very 'this is how it is' especially the BNP loving son who would come second to some short planks on Mastermind, put it that way.

Of course, ridiculing their intelligence and attitudes is exactly the kind of thing that drives them into the arms of the B*P.

See also this predictably patronising overview in yesterday's Observer:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/mar/09/television

I wasn't ridicuing their intelligence, just his. His dad was a good deal smarter, but.

As far as the filmmaker was concerned, he may have been 'moved' by the situation, but at least the film did not insist that the viewer was to feel the same way. No, I couldn't place the last song either, but the conclusion I came to was that the WMC's were dying out because they were. A lad, given the choice between going down the WMC with his lass or going down the town to a 'glitzy' pub and drinking 2 beers less would choose the latter. On a dull tuesday, he'd maybe go down with his dad to where the beer was cheaper, etc. The WMC 'committe' may well have the problems they stated, but making the changes necessary to update the image would be unthinkable. So, Keith gets to sing his repertoire, and time gets filled, more or less. (Oh, and I do come from this sort of background, that's not a 'I know what I'm takkin about like' statement, but it's more than second-guessing. We laughed, we felt sad, got disgusted, and reflected, like anyone else watching that didn't 'get bored' by watching working class people.

the working class got exported decades ago

Moving this to the other thread.