Anita Anand and Tom with the velvety voice.

The Any Questions from Crickhowell High School was a lively affair. Somehow the audience was entirely made up of shouty Corbynites who heckled and whooped loudly whenever anyone said something unCorbynist, so that once again Jonathan Dimbleby felt obliged to plead that the composition of the audience was Nothing To Do With The BBC. (“NTDWTBBC” )

The Shadow Defence Secretary Nia Griffith didn’t seem to agree with her leader on the matter of the link between terrorism and ‘our participation in conflict’.

Of course there is a link between terrorism and “our foreign policy” in as much as the cause-and-effect  theory is the pretext routinely parroted by Muslims to justify or rationalise terrorism. They know they can get away with it, since no-one knows history these days.

Unfortunately Anita Anand is back in the Any Answers chair, her voice as strident and her opinions as intrusive as ever. She’s a female version of James O’Brien.

“Julian Biddlecombe, I hope I pronounced your name properly William - from Gloucester”  she announced, though why the name ‘William’ should be pronounced ‘Julian’ escapes me. There were gremlins on the line so she moved on to Valerie Ward from Plymouth who skated on very thin ice by mentioning Ed Husain and Ayaan Hirsi Ali while Anand huffed impatiently in the background. Shortly she couldn’t resist interrupting to say that more Muslims have been killed by ISIS than by terrorists.

William came back, but faded away again, then onto the call that really brought out the morality police within Anita Anand.

“Tom Walsh is calling us from Wigan. Good afternoon Tom?”  

“Hello Anita.”  

“There’s a velvety voice. Tom what did you want to comment on?”  

“Too much time is spent pussyfooting around, not wanting to cause offence. We ought to tell it as it is. Some people want to harm us, to kill us.”.

“Mmmmm.”  

“Politicians keep going on [...] my mother used to say you can’t turn a bad apple ripe.”  

“I’m trying to understand what you’re saying. So who are the apples you’re talking about here, Tom?”  

“Well, we can’t go on as we are. Something different must be tried. Civil liberties have to be curtailed for the duration and I’m sure the vast majority of people would be prepared to forego some freedoms for safety.”  

“Tom what do you want them to do? What are the freedoms you want curtailed? Let’s put it out on the table. What is it you want done!”  

“Well we must be - we’re going to have to think the unthinkable.”  

“What is that?”  

“Limited internment." 

“For who, Tom?”  

“For terrorists?”  

“Yeah well, once somebody’s a terrorist I meant there’s a pretty final kind of internment, and that’s prison.”  

“Yes. But you sound like you want to go further than that, I’m trying to understand what it is you’re talking about.”  

“Something different.”  

“Which is what?”  

“Internment. House arrest. Greater powers for the police. I know people say this will act as a recruiting sergeant but we can see there’s no shortage of recruiters. Also life should mean life for terrorist offences, and they should be isolated from other prisoners. Going back to the apple theme, one bad apple spoils the barrel.”  

“Right. So you’re talking abut internment but for those people who’ve been tried as terrorists and identified as terrorists, I mean that happens when they go to jail doesn’t it?”  

“No, no, internment’s a different thing. People would be interned without trial actually for a limited period and only the more serious - during the war there were three categories.”  

“Mmmm.”  

“Ah, ones that were known to pose a threat and they were interned immediately and b, were the darker ones who had restrictions placed on them, no radios, they needed permission to travel etcetera and these are the things they’re going to have to try.” 

“So the 3,000 who are on the radar, pick them up immediately and put them in a - a what, a camp or something?”  

“Well the ones that we know, and don’t forget the authorities know lot of these people that are definite threats, and they should be interned. We’re fighting a war. Not a religion. we’re not fighting a religion, we’re not fighting a people, we’re fighting an ideology.”  

“Okay. Alright Tom, thank you very much indeed let’s go to another caller”.