You can, pretty easily, express his ideas in non-inflammatory language: they are not especially radical. While I don’t agree with them, worse policy suggestions come out of other politicians every week.

The thing is, the words he used, in English, failed to express correctly his proposal. They mean pretty much what the media took them as meaning.

If some politician said ‘lock up the Muslims’, would it be the BBC’s responsibility to translate that into ‘arrest anyone, regardless of religion, against whom there is reasonable grounds for suspicion of involvement in serious illegal activity’?

What would be very interesting, is if those who are so cross with the BBC wrote (on this blog) what they think would have been a fair headline and fair set of opening paragraphs for a report of the Archbishop’s interview.

Yeah I’d like to see that.

I’d find it difficult to imagine how things such as

“An approach to law which simply said – there’s one law for everybody – I think that’s a bit of a danger.”

could be spun in to a positive light… But I’ll keep an open mind. Let’s see if Sunny or others can re-write the BBC article without being mean to da dear bwishop. Perhaps they could avoid quoting him altogether? That would be a start

Whatever the Archbishop’s exact words, however they were reported, what he really really wants, even if only demonstrated by the ideas he floated, got out to the public. And they overwhelmingly did not like it.

What would be very interesting, is if those who are so cross with the BBC wrote (on this blog) what they think would have been a fair headline and fair set of opening paragraphs for a report of the Archbishop’s interview.