It Shouldn't Happen To A Dog

The naming of dogs, as T. S. Eliot once so nearly put it, is a difficult matter.

BNP supervillain Nick Griffin was interviewed by resident B.B.C. intellectual Andrew Marr at the weekend, encouraging the viewer to believe that a great unmasking was in the offing and that those darned meddlesome kids would be blamed at any minute for the would-be Great Dictator's fall. Having softened Griffin up with some tedious policy questions, however, Marr steadied himself for that last question ... the coup de grace. What are the names of Griffin's dogs?

Those, like Sordel, who had heard the story before were one step of the drama unfolding before their eyes, for Griffin's dogs (at least, according to widespread assertion) are called Anne and Frank. Griffin's jet-shoes and discombobulator ray could surely not save him now. The Resident Intellectual had the "genocidal racist" parked upon his own petard on the cusp of detonation.

Except, it turns out that the Griffin hounds are called Bella and Otto.

Now, I'm not sure where I heard that thing about Anne and Frank, but in retrospect it always sounded rather odd. As a thought experiment, the idea of an anti-Semite calling something that he intends to love, feed and exercise by a name that will call to mind a young Jewess does not seem especially likely. Unless Griffin actually bought the dogs to beat - an imputation that even his many detractors have yet to suggest - it would have made more sense for him to have named the pets Adolph and Eva.

Or perhaps, in the light of his patriotism, Oswald and Diana.

The problem is that one is only too ready to believe the worst of Griffin. When a man, with sober rationality, proposes sinking the ships of would-be immigrants, the views that he will espouse in public invite speculation as to the ones that he is concealing.

Gordon Brown for example, speaks of a future increase in public spending, when everyone knows that he is lying through his teeth and intends to cut it dramatically. In the light of this shameless and transparent neglect of the truth by a "mainstream" politician, no great leap of the imagination is required to hop from sinking ships to Arbeit macht frei.

So, perhaps Griffin is lying about the names of his dogs. Or perhaps he is lying about something considerably more sinister.

Either way, the more that Griffin is perceived to have been smeared by his unscrupulous opponents, the more likely it is that the electorate will be to discount even those accusations that have a sound basis in truth.

Which is a worry, because the tag that Griffin used most frequently when referring to those opponents was Liberal elitists.

And, to be perfectly honest (delightful though it might be to meet The Resident Intellectual) Sordel would not wish to do so at the cost of the bring the first up against the wall when the revolution comes.