POINTS OF CONTENTION

The government's plan to expand the Australian-style points system to encompass qualification for British citizenship was discussed on this morning's 'Today' programme.

It's funny how the BBC fixes on certain aspects of a story and hammers away at them at the expense of everything else. A Home Office source, quoted in the 'News of the World', says that an example of point-losing 'bad behaviour' (in Alan Johnson's phrase) would be the behaviour of those Islamic bigots who hurled abuse at soldiers during their homecoming parades.

Quite why did Sarah Montague think the 'free speech' of such people was worth four questions out of a total of nine to immigration minister Phil Woolas? Woolas himself was forced to say, "Let's not get hung up on one issue".

Sarah's Guardianesque mindset (or should that, these days, be simply Beeboid mindset) made her final question almost inevitable: "Isn't there a danger that...you would end up only allowing white, Christian possibly, middle-class, professional people into the country, and anyone who falls outside that..." (adopting a silly voice) "...oooh, you're not quite...". Mr Woolas interrupted this drivel, and rightly so.

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Earlier Norman Smith (BBC correspondent) discussed the issue with Ms. Montague and was as delicate as Sarah herself about the identity of these "anti-war protesters", calling the potential 'free speech' victims "those who took part in anti-war protest or that sort of thing". Do you mean Muslim extremists by any chance Norman?

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The BBC has a habit of avoiding the 'M' word whenever negative images of the 'M' community or potential members of that community are involved in a story.