The audience on BBC Question Time is meant to be representative of the local community and last night came from Lewisham in South London. I can as a result conclude that the residents of Lewisham are almost without exception either morbidly obese, madly left wing or in terms of intelligence make the X-Factor audience look like a gathering of Nobel laureates.
Among the gems were a contribution from a 29 stone woman who claimed that the coalition were using the immigration debate as a smokescreen for their real agenda of privatizing the NHS and dismantling the welfare state and a only mildly obese old coot who reckoned that merely stopping tax evasion would allow the Government to spend another £90 billion a year on more schools, hospitals, fire stations, welfare payments etc. Heck no chance of closing the deficit then?
Should anyone be shot while unarmed was the question. Half the audience seemed to assume that the Police just liked killing black people at will. The other half thought yes, if the person in question was a member of UKIP.
77% of the British public want immigration controlled. I am in the 23%. But when the matter came up, the fellow from UKIP (deputy Fuhrer Paul Nutter) got only abuse and not any applause at all as he spouted a whole load of total scaremongering hogwash about waves of Romanians arriving here next week.
I guess the Romanians are too smart to want to go to Lewisham lest they be crushed to death by a stampede of 23 stone local residents rushing to pick up a welfare cheque, so it is not an issue there.