Harry's Place

All very well treating Griffin like a Pariah but compare his treatment to that of Yusuf Islam…a man feted and promoted by the BBC who constantly play his music and have several interviews with him. Islam uses these interviews to proselytize for his religion, even claiming Michael Jackson was going to be a Muslim, and that he was having a Muslim funeral. An embarrassed Simon Mayo had to step in and say no it wasn’t a Muslim funeral.
Yusuf Islam it should be remembered, justified the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, Islam went so far as to say he would execute Rushdie himself in an Islamic country.
Here is an extremist Muslim, who will not let women touch him because of his beliefs, who would kill someone for his religious beliefs, being eulogised by the BBC.
I’m sure Griffin could give us a terrific rendition of ‘Horst Wessel’ but would the BBC be promoting him and his views as ‘acceptable’ just because he sings well?

Yeh but Yusef Islam has the voice of an angel and the songwriting skills of a genius. That’s why he gets media coverage, not his political or religious views.

Now I think of it wasn’t there a BNP political broadcast with Nick Griffin singing a song he’d written? I don’t recall it being anywhere near the league of “Wild World” or “Father and Son” or countless other Cat Stevens numbers.

Anyway, one is known for being an artist of some genius, the other for being a fat bumptious fascist.

could you imagine an Irish Sien Fein politician being asked to leave an English Pub, you and all the rest would be screaming bloody “racism” and further encourage the ethnic cleansing of the English.

Well good, as long as that’s cleared up, he might want to murder someone but he has the voice of an angel, so that’s OK. Personally I think Yusuf murders a few tunes but what the hell, he’s famous and Muslim and an artiste, give him a break and let’s give Bernie Ecclestone a break whilst we’re in a forgiving mood. So what if he thinks Hitler’s a good bloke and the Jews are to blame for the financial downfall of the World, Bernie never wanted to actually kill anyone.

Regardless of one’s talents, if one’s views don’t conform to the orthodoxy then you’re a pariah. Does anybody remember who David Bellamy is?

Refusal to serve people who are causing no trouble is rather risky in these “hate-crime” fuelled times isn’t it? Maybe the proprietor is showing his race hatred against the British, or his sectarian hatred against Griffin’s religion.

Why exactly does Neil D seem to be revelling in Griffin’s humiliation? No one should be denied the use of commercial facilities simply because his views fail to coincide with those of the owner. I’m beginning to wonder whether Harry’s Place’s reputation as a bastion of “decent” leftism is altogether justified.

My favourite Cat Stevens song: “I’m gonna get me a gun”

I’m gonna get me a gun
And all those people who’ve put me down
Had better get ready to run
‘Cos I’m gonna get me a gun.

At least one man hasn’t changed his principles in 40 years.

No one should be denied the use of commercial facilities simply because his views fail to coincide with those of the owner.

Most bars carry a sign along the lines of: “The owners reserve the right to refuse service”. If the owner in this case chooses to exercise that right as regards fat, fascist wankers, then I, for one, am not complaining.

I find the political views of black and gays to be very offensive. And liberals and feminists and Muslims and Jews and Catholics.

Women that have had an abortion have no place in my bar as don’t people who smoke, people who complain about people that smoke, people who tax cigarettes, people who smuggle cigarettes, vegetarians, anti-vivisectionists, dog lovers, cat lovers, ex-child stars, people with digital cameras, people who ride motorcycles, people who ride the bus, bicyclists who wear helmets, mothers with toddlers, people with briefcases and backpacks – always stealing the salt and pepper, they are!, 40 year old virgins, people that eat shark fin soup, people that design bumper stickers, people that display ‘Free Tibet’ bumper stickers, Tibetans that haven’t frozen to death, the Dali Lama, Archbishop Tutu, Ayatollah Khamenei, anyone who voted for Reagan, anyone who voted for Carter, hairdressers, plumbers, Code Pinkers, Iraqi War Vets, anyone that has ever been to a Star Trek convention, the munchkins from the Wizard of Oz, Dorthy, anyone with a nude picture on the internet, anyone wearing or who has ever worn a burqa, anyone who has ever commented at Harry’s Place, people who are intolerant of others and the Dutch.

If the owner in this case chooses to exercise that right

I think we all know the sort of society YOU’d long for Brownnose: persecution for thoughtcrime, and social and legal pariah status for those who deviate in word or sentiment from your own oikish partisan cockwaffle.

Is Alan Stoddart on some sort of mind-altering medication?

I find the political views of black and gays to be very offensive.

Then you are a moron, given poltical views are not a function of colour or sexual orientation. It’s like saying you have different musical tastes to tall people. Dumb, in other words.

But the salient point is that if it’s your gaff, you make the rules and you serve or don’t serve as you see fit (within the law).

I think we all know the sort of society YOU’d long for Brownnose: persecution for thoughtcrime

“Thoughtcrime” is entirely apposite when the thoughts in question include “non-white people are inferior”. And as persecution goes, being denied your favourite snifter in a bar is not exactly worthy of Yezhov.

Still, the fat fascist fuck can always pop round to your local. I’m sure a reactionary boor such as yourself will happily drink with him. I get the sense you’re not that particular about the company you keep.

I’m beginning to wonder whether Harry’s Place’s reputation as a bastion of “decent” leftism is altogether justified.

I nearly missed this. Imagine a left-of-centre blog taking delight in a British fascist being being given short shrift by a bar owner? I mean, whatever next?

Seriously, I think some of you recent additions to the the HP commentariat got lost on your way to Conservative Home. Do you need directions?

Cupcake -

Behavior in a store or pub is also not a function of race, sexual orientation, or political views.

It is a matter of disrupting the business.

If other patrons not patronizing the bar because Nick Griffin is sitting in the bar is a matter of righteousness celebration for the removal of Nick Griffin, then, the removal of blacks or gays from a bar because other patrons no longer patronize the bar is equally justified.

Do be careful what you wish for …

I hold no brief for Nick Griffin, but barring someone from a public venue because of his political or religious beliefs is rather like what was done to Jonathan Hoffman.

It is entirely different to refuse to drink with someone because of his views, or to refuse to allow the person into one’s home, but a public place is exactly that, and unless someone has committed an offense, they have the right to enter that public place for lawful commerce.

Having slung out fascists out of a pub I ran, I can safely say the law was behind me. One can refuse service and ask the ‘patron’ to leave if you don’t fancy their choice in shirts or footwear or head adornment. One cannot refuse service on the grounds on mere racxe, sex, gender, sexuality or religion I believe.

The fascists in question were doling out leftlets and starting UDF songs (as they do) to a crowd of uninterested passing footie fans. As i’m an equal opportunity barman, I’ve also throw out Irish republican blowhards, told a few truther trots to shut it or fuck off and generally ensured that if one has to talk politics in a public place under the influence, a certain civility is respected.

The fascists, wearing my week’s wages in designer gear, called me a trot and a paedophile. I insisted that they should both read up on the heterogenous nature of the pre 1914 left and bring up any claims of pedastry with the local po-po. Oh, and to fuck off. Alas, I hear they came acropper with one of the local gangs from the estates (honest, none of my doing) later that night. Awful mess it was.

you seem to be having your cupcake and eating it there Adriane, if a landlord wants to ban specific people then they can, but they aren’t alowed to ban just anyone because of what they look like.

Your argument = not as damning as you thought.

Friend of mine got asked to leave a bar cos ’some other customers were uncomfortable with him being there’ the premeses in question being in Manchesters gay village and the friend being a black guy with dredlocks on his own. Course in Griffins case it’s well known what he stands for, my mate otoh was the victim of pure racial stereotyping.

“I’m beginning to wonder whether Harry’s Place’s reputation as a bastion of “decent” leftism is altogether justified.”

I’ve wondered that too lately.

It still is, for the most part, though…

“Imagine a left-of-centre blog taking delight in a British fascist being being given short shrift by a bar owner?”

Oh, you’re in good company, Brownie.

After all, it seems the civil service is to be persuaded by this wretched government to put aside their impartiality and refuse to deal with the BNP MEP. Thereby winning them many, many more votes and handing them a solid gold propaganda coup.

“Chris Davies, the Liberal Democrat MEP, said that the BNP represented a special case and that the government was entitled to differentiate in its dealings with elected representatives.”

/golfclap

CB -

Hence my wording was very specific … I find the political views of black and gays to be very offensive.

I am not banning anyone from my bar for what they look like. I am banning them because I do not like their political views.

100% legal. 100% bullshit. And 100% following the precedent of banning Nick Griffin not doing anything specifically disruptive in the bar – smoking, fondling the waitress, staggering under the influence, or even singing Hail to the Gender Free Parentland – but simply for who he is.

Adriane, I think you must be too stupid to understand the point CB was making. Let me try and help him out.

The issue is not of banning Nick Griffin simply for ‘who he is’, but because he is a well-known and outspoken fascist. When you say “I find the political views of blacks and gays to be offensive” you are lumping them all together, into a homogeneous entity merely by virtue of their race or sexual orientation – nothing to do with their politics. So, under your system, it doesn’t matter if the black or gay person is a liberal, conservative, progress, reactionary, fascist or anti-fascist. You don’t distinguish on that basis. You only identify them on the basis of their pigmentation or desires.

However, it would be just as acceptable for this landlord to throw out Louis Farrakhan if he walked into the bar. Not because he is black, but because he is a well known racist. The fact he is a black racist is irrelevant. The distinguishing factor here is the views he holds.

Instead, you claim that Griffin is being thrown out simply because of who he is. But, by that line of argument, would you object to a landlord who told Gary Glitter to get out of his pub?

I can’t believe you are actually struggling so much with this so much. You can’t be that stupid, can you?

I hold no brief for Nick Griffin, but barring someone from a public venue because of his political or religious beliefs is rather like what was done to Jonathan Hoffman.

I agree with this, but we’re not talking about a public venue here are we? And that’s the big difference.

Besides, it couldn’t happen to a nicer person….not.

I agree with this, but we’re not talking about a public venue here are we?

This is more or less the crux of the matter. If I’ve spent my life building a successful business, I think I’m entitled to eschew the opportunity to provide services to any passing racist who happens to darken my door.

What’s funny about these sorts of discussions is that the likes of Adriane and Cockwaffle insisit I’m the authoritarian, whereas they merely believe a publican is *obligated* to serve anybody and everybody who happens to show up in his/her establishment.

You couldn’t write this stuff, but they do.

Perhaps Griffin could get a beer down in Cheam. The Lib Dems won in Nonsuch ward in Cheam over Tories, though Labour ended up behind the BNP. So I guess Griffin is more likely to get served in Cheam than Brown?

“Yeh but Yusef Islam has the voice of an angel and the songwriting skills of a genius.”

He has a nice voice but a songwriter of genius? Pshaw! It’s interesting, actually to notice what a strong current of misogyny there was in his music before his conversion. I have often wondered if that is what led him into the life of beards and funny hats.

Brownie and socialrepublican have well and truly ejected Adrienne from the discussion. She can bugger off somewhere else. With Nick.

Meanwhile, over at the Drink Soak Trots, the obsession with HP continues:

http://drinksoakedtrotsforwar.com/2009/07/07/worse-than-journalists/#comments

Apparently, according to hakmao, ‘we’ have a ‘hard on for Nick Griffin’.

Hmm.

‘Alas, I hear they came acropper with one of the local gangs from the estates (honest, none of my doing) later that night’.

What a terrible shame ;o)

Back on topic, may Griffin end up like Peter Griffiths, the man who stole the Smethwick by-election of 1964 by gutter methods, and who ended up as the ‘leper of Westminster’ during his brief stint as an MP:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2001/apr/27/race.world2

When was the last time Will from the Drink Soak Trots was sober? I’d get more sense out of my cheese board

‘When was the last time Will from the Drink Soak Trots was sober? I’d get more sense out of my cheese board’

I’m pleased to see that I’m the latest source of his descent into Tourettes.

Yeh but Yusef Islam has the voice of an angel and the songwriting skills of a genius. That’s why he gets media coverage, not his political or religious views.

I,m not sticking up for N. Griffin, but I find you justifications for Cat Steven’s respectability a bit week. This guy has called for the deaths of fellow British citizens.

Hell, were Hitler to put hair into a chaignon, don a tutu and dance Gisèle, would that make him as respectable as Jusuf Islam?

And Your portrayal of Cat Stevesn as a musical genius has me perplexed. He had but two hit albums, followed by four or five abject artistic and comercial flops, before throwing in the towel and embracing Islam out of bitterness and frustration.

OUr mainstream pols have cavorted with tyrants the world over, tyrants far worse than the BNP, for reasons of economics, energy and oil, and yet no one bats an eye.

The U.S. president bows before and holds hands with the crowned heads of Saudi Arabia, a terror sponsoring country that is ultimately responsable for the deaths of 1000s of innocent people.

When one examinse and mulls over the countless close and disgusting relationships so many mainstrean politicians have had over the decades with so many viscious and repugnant tyrants, it’s justy difficult to get indignant about Griffin.

We do billions ( trillions?) in trade with communist China and say nothing about the country’s abysmal human rights record, and we do a booming business with Saudi Arabia, perhaps the worlds greatest abuser of human rights, without so much as the threat of a single sanction.

BUt hey! We salvage what little morality we’ve left by self-righteously refusing to serve a beer to a guy, a nobody, who counts for absolutely nothing in the gand scheme of things, and we then pat outselves on the back and then a blind eye to all the rest.

Yes, sackcloth gets the full treatment over there.

Which means sackcloth is definately doing something right.

Go Brownie!

Social Republican sounds like my kind of publican.

Some people here are being fucking stupid sanctimonious bores without a crutch to stand on. More concerned about the hurt feelings of the iddle-widdle fascists than their crazed ideology of totalitarianism, violence and bigotry. Fuck off and find a nice right wing blog more disposed to being polite to fascists, I say.

For God’s sake, the man got refused a drink. It’s not the end of constitutional politics is it? It’s hardly even akin to banning the bastard party, which I would be very relaxed about if it was deemed necessary. No difference to banning Hizb. Bet you right-wing hand-wringers wouldn’t be so worried about that, eh?

The shops, cafes, restaurants and bars are not in the private domain when it comes to the reach of the law. You can’t even give your customers permission to smoke on the premises, or buy a beer for his own underage child. If I opened a cafe and refused to serve members of the Catholic clergy, or traffic wardens, simply because I hate the buggers like stink, I would deserve all the trouble I would subsequently find myself in.

Another aspect to this, which I find shameful, is that increasingly our small shops and cafes over here are banning unaccompanied schoolchildren. The vast majority of our youngsters would never dream of stealing from anyone, but they find themselves banned from buying their sweets at the corner shop.

Just because we are routinely getting away with something wrong, doesn’t make it right.

The shops, cafes, restaurants and bars are not in the private domain when it comes to the reach of the law

This is just it, this particular establishment is not breaking the law.

Talking of lonely people, I wonder what Will’s like in his pub?

Do you really think there are any pubs (that he has already been in once) that haven’t barred Will?

Ben

Heaven help you, mind, if you aren’t out by twenty past time

As some of those who have been amongst that dextrous and handsome elite fraternity of bar staff know, NEVER EVER EVER ORDER GUINNESS AT THE END OF A ROUND.

Alan Stoddart
9 July 2009, 11:41 pm

and

John P.
10 July 2009, 2:29 pm

Didn’t the composer of “Peace Train” (a song that was so saccharine it made me gag long before CS became YI) also later offer a recant of sorts re: the fatwa issued on Rushdi’s life?

Regardless, somewhere back in the mists of memory, around the time CS/YI was denied entry into the USA, a British journalist, female published an account in a Brit forum recalling her interivew with CS/YI either in the PA-territories or Israel. CS/YI was in the proud company of young men who were, judging by the conversation, being recruited as potential suicide martyrs for Hezbollah. She said it was one of the most disturbing hours she’d ever spent.

Socialrepublican -in the pub I used to run there was a total ban on asking for ice or, heaven forbid, any other liquid addition in malt whisky other than a small amount of room temperature water in extenuating circumstances.

“However, on March 8, 1989, while speaking in London’s Regents Park Mosque, Yusuf Islam was asked by a Christian Science Monitor reporter how he would cope with the idea of killing a writer for writing a book. He is reported to have replied, “In Islam there is a line between, lets say freedom and the line which is then transgressed into immorality and irresponsibility and I think as far as this writer is concerned, unfortunately, he has been irresponsible with his freedom of speech. Salman Rushdie or indeed any writer who abuses the prophet, or indeed any prophet, under Islamic law, the sentence for that is actually death. It’s got to be seen as a deterrent, so that other people should not commit the same mistake again.” Two months later Yusuf Islam appeared on a British television court-room style program, Hypotheticals. In the episode, A SATANIC SCENARIO, Stevens/Islam is videoed having this exchange with the moderator and Queen Counsel Geoffrey Robertson . .
————————-
Google >on a clear day you can see forever< + satanic cat

Many years ago I worked in a pub that was right out on the headland overlooking the North Sea. The lifeboat crew made our pub their special stamping ground. If they were taking on a new recruit, or a trainee, one of their tricks was to order him a whisky and water. Of course, the water was seawater.

Then when he had downed his RNLI cocktail, they would put him in the boat, take him out to the breeches buoy, and leave him stranded there until chucking out time.

Actually banning Cyclops sounds like a first class business move.

Yonks of free publicity, customers releaved thay they don’t have to mix with a proponent od a fatally obnoxious political line.

Its fine by me and any other profesional drinker !

Old Sailor

Off topic. Excuse me.

Many years ago, I stood in a local pub somewhere in the West Country where scrumpy and Double Diamond were all the rage (perhaps showing my age). In walked a couple of strangers (who b’aint be from round ‘ere), and asked for gin and tonics – which were unceremoniously slammed down on the counter in front of them, sans ice and lemon. Asked one of the two Outsiders – “May I have ice and lemon in these drinks, please?” Came the response from the landlord: “You ain’t in London now, s’know.” (s’know = dost thee know).