A Credible Threat?

The BNP are like one of those nasty, spiteful individuals many of us have had to work with at one time or another. Despised for their attitude and/or behaviour but tolerated for many reasons, not least of which is the desire to avoid being seen as a bigot. A situation which many of them are very, very good at manipulating to their own advantage.

Despite this, the BNP's public profile is probably higher now than it has ever been at any time in the past, as is their support amongst the general public.

However few, if any, of these people are genuine racists and/or fascists and most wouldn't willingly be found dead in the same room as these vermin under normal circumstances.

Unfortunately with MPs, asylum seekers and illegal immigrants openly abusing the system - often with blatantly fraudulent claims - and little or no realistic prospect of legal redress, most now feel the need for drastic action.

Most are well aware of what the BNP stand for but see this simply as a protest vote that will have little real effect on the lives of 'ordinary' people yet will send a powerful warning message to the mainstream parties. One elderly gentleman put it quite simply as, "You haven't left us much choice."

The Church of England also decided to weight in against them in the form of a joint statement by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York urging voters not to let their anger be exploited.

This is not the first time John Sentamu has spoken out in connection with politics and he has been described as having a liking for "grand gestures", while Rowan Williams has demonstrated on many occasions that his arrogance knows no bounds. An excellent example of this can be can be found <here>.

Naturally such a controversial statement only served to inflame matters, giving the BNP more ammunition and driving many people who see this as inappropriate interference in temporal affairs or who simply want the church and/or religion in general out of their lives, to consider voting BNP in protest.

It's interesting to note that while the Tory and Lib-Dem leaders both support the separation of church and state, only Nick Clegg has actually said so in public. Gordo as we all know has a rather different viewpoint and has been known to become quite abusive towards anyone who disagrees with him on the matter.


It's easy to draw a parallel between the current political crisis and the Nazi's election successes in 1933. However the anti-semitic cultural bias which existed in Germany at the time, and still exists in many parts of that country even now, has no direct or indirect equivalent here. We 'Englanders' are a fairly tolerant lot even where vermin like the BNP are concerned.


However a poll published by the Times yesterday clearly shows that despite the BNP's "striking advances", all their efforts to present the BNP as such a terrible threat still amount to little more than running around, waving their hands in the air and screaming "The BNP are coming! The BNP are coming!"

Indeed he did

Earlier today I received a text msg saying "You really have to see this" followed by several grinning smilies and a link to a post on DoverLocals.

Possessing the usual primate curiosity I had a look. Then looked at the link in that post which leads back to a post on here...

And started laughing when I realised all that carefully crafted - and not so carefully crafted - abuse had completely gone to waste. The intended recipient had been away and simply did not know it had ever existed!

Absolutely Priceless.

Did I miss something?

More than just hard work this time

Campaigning can hard work sometimes. In the past the most difficult part was trying to motivating people into caring about politics.

That's no longer the case. People who in the past said "Sorry, I'm not interested" when approached are now motivated enough to care about politics in a way they haven't been for many years.

Unfortunately it's almost entirely negative.

All of our activists are reporting a very unfriendly, often hostile reception with the most common reaction to their approach being "Piss off!" and occasionally the use of much stronger language.

One of those delivering leaflets was called back by an irate householder who angrily demanded "Do you see a sign saying please push excrement through my letterbox?"

Naturally this has led to some considerable ill-feeling towards our MPs in general and the party leadership in particular for placing them in this position. Several have quit with one or two saying they might come back for the general election if things have calmed down, while others are swearing they've had it with New Labour and won't be back until the "whole damn lot are expelled".

Of the few people who are prepared to talk, many simply want to vent their quite justified anger. Often asking how we have the balls to ask for their support or demanding to know why the party won't get rid of that "one eyed Scots git" and any other MP caught fiddling their expenses.

Unfortunately it's not that simple. There is no mechanism for recalling an MP once elected. Furthermore, the CLPs have no direct authority over the Parliamentary Labour Party or the NEC. Candidate selection must be from the 'Panel', a list of potential candidates approved by the NEC. The NEC also has the authority to block candidates which it has used in the past and is threatening to use again if the CLPs attempt to deselect any of the currently sitting MPs.

Attempting to point this out while campaigning would be counter-productive at best. Even the suggestion that there are still many honest, hard-working people in the Labour party who want to help local people, rather just help themselves to anything that isn't bolted down, is being met with open derision.

However the one thing most of them do agree on is the only way forward is to remove all MPs involved whether their claim was "within the rules" or not and prosecute those who made blatantly false claims or submitted improper accounts.

The only bright spot in a truly terrible week was overhearing a member of the public asking a tory activist who paid for Charles Elphicke's fancy suit.

I've only been away a week... (Part 1)

A lot has happened during my enforced 'hiatus'.

Michael Martin finally agreed to resign as Speaker of the Commons. What wasn't made public was that he only agreed to do so on the condition he was allowed to enter the House of Lords immediately where, I have no doubt, his greed will know no bounds and he will oppose any attempts at reform as vigorously as he did in the Commons.

An interesting coincidence was the timing of an announcement by the Metropolitan police and the CPS that they would not be investigating the expenses leak for what were no doubt very valid reasons. Just one hour before his resignation was announced.


More thieving toerags have been 'outed' and as we've come to expect, all of them are denying they did anything wrong. I was particularly impressed by the way Anthony Steen shot himself in the foot with his insane rant on Radio 4's The World At One.

Mr Steen 'said' that the public should not have been allowed to see what he claimed on parliamentary expenses. That ministers had "mucked up the system" by introducing the Freedom of Information Act. That "it is this government that insisted on the things which caught me on the wrong foot" and that his critics were "jealous".

Well... At least he admitted to getting caught I suppose.

Mr Steen later apologised "unreservedly" for his remarks claiming he was "deeply upset" and had "over-reacted". David Cameron told Radio 4 the following day that it was "an appalling thing to say" and that he had warned Anthony Steen that he will be expelled from the parliamentary party if he steps out of line again.

I suspect that had Anthony Steen not already agreed to stand down, he would have been given little choice in the matter.

I've only been away a week... (Part 2)

The discrepancy between how the major parties are handling the expenses fiasco has continued to widen. The Tories are taking decisive action to ensure that at least a portion of the money will be repaid and many of those MPs involved will also be standing down at the next election. David Cameron has also announced that he is reopening the list of candidates for "anyone who wants to apply".

The Lib-Dems are still a long way behind despite Nick Clegg's desire to be seen as running a clean party but they are starting to make some progress with the departure of Chris Rennard. Naturally this is due to his ongoing health issues and not because he's been 'outed' over his finances or his alleged 'inappropriate' behaviour towards female staff at the party's Cowley Street headquarters and female PPCs.

Last of course is Gordo and the Labour leadership who are doing everything they can to protect those who've been 'outed'. With the exception of a few sacrificial scapegoats, they will not be required to make even a token repayment or stand down at the next election.

To make matters worse - if that's even possible at this point - the NEC has 'discretely' warned the chair of certain CLPs that it will not permit the deselection of sitting MPs. That it will exercise it's power to block any alternative candidates and that anyone proposing or supporting such a motion risks expulsion for bringing the party into disrepute.

And to round all this off, the Christian far right in the form of the Christian Party and the Christian Peoples Alliance have launched their European election campaign with a pledge to tackle Britain's "moral malaise". Thereby adding the option of religious fascism to the racist fascism and eco fascism already on offer from the BNP and the Greens.

I've only been away a week... (Part 3)

Closer to home, I had my attention drawn to DoverLocals. A local forum which had a post from one member suggesting that the UKIP had an "unrealistic worldview".

Naturally this is a matter of opinion, but on looking at some of the other opinions being expressed there I'd have to say that by their own standards, it's not just the UKIP which have an unrealistic worldview.

Mind you, I was amused by the suggestion that Chris Precious and Vic Matcham should stand on behalf of the Monster Raving Loony Party. A bit unfair on Chris I know, but Vic has always been potential Monster Raving Loony material and as for the thought of those two in Brussels...

What wasn't so amusing was evidence that the anti-monarchy campaign led by the Murdock press is still producing twisted results many years after it dribbled away to nothing with even Murdock himself admitting it had been a dismal failure.

Murdock blamed British apathy but I suspect it had rather more to do with the fact that the vast majority of the tabloid readership has the attention span of a four year old and an unhealthy obsession with certain parts of the female anatomy.

It started with Vic suggesting that the Queen should intervene in the current political crisis which one 'member' took as an opportunity to dribble on incoherently about the monarchy, suggesting that abolishing it would allow us to address homelessness and properly equip our troops in Iraq.

This rather twisted viewpoint was supported by other 'members', one of whom stated they did not believe the 'rubbish' about the monarchy attracting tourists to this country. The only person who dared to disagree with this suffered a torrent of abuse which had to be seen to be believed.

I had intended to link to these posts but on returning to the site to get the information needed I discovered that the entire series of exchanges had been heavily edited by the forum moderators with some posts being deleted altogether.

I suppose I should have expected something like this as some of the remarks were really, really nasty. However the editing has changed the entire tone. It now reads like an unwarranted and rather sarcastic attack by a new member instead of a vicious and unprovoked attack on that same new member by a bunch of twenty something Essex Girls.

They'll be trying to dig him up next...

Glaswegians are often stereotyped as drunkards and/or thieves. Something which I've always thought was rather unfair to the many thousands of Glaswegian Puritans who neither drink nor steal, unlike the current batch in parliament, many of whom it now transpires do both with gleeful enthusiasm.

However I may have to reconsider my position on this after learning that Glasgow Council have 'appropriated' what is probably the most famous Welsh character in English literature - Merlin, Wizard and Adviser to King Arthur of Camelot.

A council spokeswoman said that Merlin - created by Welsh clergyman Geoffrey of Monmouth in the 12th century - had been added to a list of 'well-known' figures from the city based on a book by Scots advocate and amateur historian Adam Ardrey who spent six years 'researching' the matter.

Mr Ardrey claims to have discovered this while researching his own family name and while he doesn't specifically claim to be descended from Merlin, the implication is plain to see.

"I found that my name Ardrey was connected with the very first reference to Merlin, which had him fighting at the Battle of Arddreyd."

For anyone other than Glasgow Council, this sort of obsession would be taken as a sign of mental illness rather than a historical revelation.

Sadly, this sort of blatant theft is precisely what we are coming to expect from Glaswegian politicians.

Isn't it Mr Speaker...


Merlin magics up Glaswegian link

Help! Help! I'm under attack!

I've been forced to temporarily enable comment moderation after some rather nasty racist remarks by some anonymous idiot.

I suppose this was inevitable given my antipathy towards these vermin and their insane compulsion to attack anyone who disagrees with them. However it appears that it was my suggestion that they had little chance of winning which really seems to have annoyed them.

But I suppose where your average fascist dictator type is concerned, telling the truth has always been one of the worst offences one can commit.

It certainly sounds good

Tory leader David Cameron made good on his promise to put Shadow Cabinet expenses online yesterday afternoon as part of his allegedly tough new policy on tory MPs expense claims.

Yes, I know. The very idea of the tories keeping a promise is shocking, but is this anything more than a desperate attempt to look as if they are genuinely committed to 'cleaning house'?

I'd say "Of course not" but then I would have to admit that I'm biased. However it is interesting to note that no tory MPs have been suspended yet. Not even those blatant fraudsters Andrew MacKay and his wife, Julie Kirkbride.


And what is our own glorious leadership's response to this action?

Nothing whatsoever...


Shadow Cabinet expense claims published online

Those who do not remember history...

Thing are looking increasingly grim for Elliot Morley with a party activist who campaigned for Morley when he was first elected threatening to stand against him as an independent if he doesn't quit.

If this sounds rather familiar, well so it should. This is an almost exact parallel of what happened at Tatton in the 1997 general election when a previously safe tory seat fell into the hands of a man who later described himself as "an accidental MP".

It's just rather unfortunate that Mr Maw felt the need to run around with his hands in the air screaming "The BNP are coming! The BNP are coming!"

Constituent may fight MP for seat

The Stress of Activism

This morning we were discussing the agenda for the weekend with some of the activists who are going to be out campaigning for the forthcoming European and local elections. The conversation eventually got round to the stress of campaigning on behalf of someone most people now see as a thieving toerag.

Whereupon one wag pointed out that this was nothing compared to the stress caused by resisting the temptation to beat the living daylights out of said thieving toerag.

Another one rides the bus (BNP mix)

It's no longer just New Labour activists and, increasingly, New Labour MPs who are using the 'threat' of the BNP in a desperate attempt to coerce voters into supporting them with blatant 'vote for us or the BNP will win' scaremongering tactics.

The tories have now jumped on the bandwagon with the launch of a new website entitled NothingBritish which opens with the slogan,

"There is Nothing British about the BNP"

Which unfortunately is probably the only untrue statement on the site. Something the authors would know if they got out of their nice, air conditioned offices and visited the real world once in a while.

Fortunately, despite all the panicmeisters running round waving their hands in the air and shouting "The BNP are coming! The BNP are coming", they actually have little chance of winning.

But just to be sure, if you cannot bring yourself to support the mainstream parties after their gross dishonesty then please vote for the UKIP in the European Elections next month.

Remember there are far worse 'alternatives'.

http://www.nothingbritish.com/

Monochromatic Lunacy

I've just seen the Green's new European election campaign and I have to admit I've never seen a more blatantly opportunistic power-grab in my entire life.

The Green Party is offering itself as an 'alternative' to parties which are "mired in sleaze" with their leader, Caroline Lucas saying the party promised a "positive and clean" brand of politics.

The Greens are promising to save the environment, the economy and create a million new jobs as well. They plan to do this by pouring around £44bn into crackpot energy schemes which even the scheme's supporters freely admit cannot supply our energy needs now or ever.

The Greens plan to fund this by scraping nuclear weapons and nuclear power, along with windfall taxes on non-renewable energy firms and anyone else they consider to be environmentally unfriendly. They believe this would raise about £19bn with the rest coming from government borrowing.

The Greens describe this as a "Green New Deal".

And to round it off, their symbol for this plan is a poster sized banknote bearing the head of Caroline Lucas like some petty third world dictator.

Quite frankly, a far more appropriate place for her head would be on a pike in front of the polling station as a warning to voters that there are worse things than the UK Independence Party.

Too Little, Too Late?

Elliot Morley, MP for Scunthorpe, has been suspended until further notice and could face expulsion from the party when his case is discussed by the National Executive Committee in a meeting next Tuesday.

Gordo announced the suspension this afternoon at the launch of our now almost certainly doomed European and local election campaign.

If Morley survives the NEC meeting as he is likely to considering his close ties to the current leadership, then the CLP must take steps to select an alternative candidate if they are to retain any credibility at all.

It should not be necessary to remind CLP members what happened at Tatton in the 1997 general election after the Tatton Conservative Association refused to select an alternative candidate to the now throughly disgraced Neil Hamilton.

Double Act

Tory MP Andrew MacKay has 'resigned' his post as parliamentary adviser to David Cameron after it came to light that he had claimed the full second home allowance for their London home while his wife Julie Kirkbride, MP for Bromsgrove, had claimed the full second home allowance for their constituency home.

As we've come to expect, MacKay is defending this arrangement claiming that it had been agreed with the Fees Office, but has agreed to appear before David Cameron's scrutiny panel to discuss how much of this allowance should be paid back.

With such a blatant case of fraud - the second to be revealed in less than 24 hours - David Cameron should be pressing MacKay to stand down instead of simply resigning as an 'adviser' and agreeing to discuss whether he should repay some of the money.

More importantly, with such pitifully weak responses from both sides of the house, this may well have effectively handed control of the Commons to the first party to promise criminal proceedings against any MP who has defrauded the system as blatantly as Morley and MacKay have done.

But which one is the bigger joke?

I heard an appallingly bad joke from one of our activists last night.

After many, many years of hard work researchers have finally identified who put the c**t into Scunthorpe. They can now say with large degree of certainty that it was the people who voted for Elliot Morley MP.

This of course is a reference to his admission that he continued to claim £800 per month in mortgage payments for full 18 months after it had been paid off in 2006. Naturally he is claiming that this was a mistake and not a blatant fraud which would have landed anyone else in front of the local Crown Court.

While in extremely poor taste, this does show just how far the labour party has fallen when party activists are mocking the MPs they worked so hard to get elected in the first place.

MP repays mortgage expense error

Another one rides the bus

Another new labour MP jumped on the tory's bandwagon this morning by offering to repay 'all' of the money claimed for "fittings, furniture and household items" for his second home over a five year period.

All this might seem like a good start but in reality is nothing more than a token gesture with the very worst offenders being conspicuously silent on the matter. It's certainly no coincidence that most of those making this 'gesture' have much smaller majorities than would be considered 'safe' under normal circumstances.

By comparison the Metropolitan Police - an organisation with a long history of corruption, greed and professional misconduct - arrested three of it's officers yesterday in connection with a number of offences relating to inflated expenses claims, including misconduct in a public office, conspiracy to defraud, theft and false accounting.

Anger grows over Hope's expenses
Labour minister to repay £41,709
Officers arrested over expenses

Anyone but the BNP

Tory Peer Norman Tebbit, former party chairman, is urging people to "teach the big parties a lesson" and "show them who is master" by boycotting them in the forthcoming European Elections. Lord Tebbit did not endorse any specific party but he did stress that he did not want people voting for the BNP.

It is interesting to note that one of the largest of these smaller parties are Eurosceptics as is Lord Tebbit himself so this is probably not a coincidence. Particularly as the UK Independence Party is the only one coming out of the expenses fiasco with clean hands having dealt "absolutely ruthlessly" with both Tom Wise and Ashley Mote after their 'financial irregularities' came to light.

More importantly, if the "public anger" and "sense of betrayal" which many political commentators have been referring to recently is reflected in the results of the next month's European elections then the UKIP could take a majority of the seats being contested.

Whether this would constitute the "pretty powerful shot across the bows" Lord Tebbit believes Tory, Lib-Dem and Labour MPs need is debatable but it's certainly not something they can afford to ignore.

Naturally, Lord Tebbit's own party are not too pleased with him about this and Tory leader David Cameron warned him that he risks being expelled from the tory group of peers.

Boycott big parties, says Tebbit

Away with the fairies

Well the apologies started in earnest this morning with Gordo jumping on the bandwagon at the Royal College of Nursing conference in Harrogate, North Yorkshire with the following lacklustre effort.

"I want to apologise on behalf of politicians on behalf of all parties for what has happened in the events of the last few days."

Fairly bland 'I'm sorry we got caught' nonsense of the sort one would expect from the socially retarded and not the Prime Minister of a modern democracy, but not totally unexpected of course. However he soon followed it up with this.

"We must show that, where mistakes have been made and errors have been discovered, where wrongs have to be righted, that it is done so immediately."

Mistakes? Errors? Is he totally deranged?

With everything which has been made public so far, it's difficult to comprehend how Gordo could still believe he can gloss any of this over as a mistake or an error.

I suppose the most charitable explanation is that the strain has finally pushed him over the edge and he is now living in some deluded fantasy where people still believe what he says.

Brown apology over MPs' expenses

Panic in da House

I heard a rumour this morning that certain members of the leadership have been discussing the possibility of calling an immediate general election.

If true, I can only assume that they are hoping this most singular act of desperation will distract attention from the expenses row and allow them to quietly sweep it under the rug during the fuss attending the run up to a general election.

This may save individual MPs, particularly if they fail to retain their seat as the tabloids will probably lose interest once they are out of office. Their readership certainly will as the majority of them have the attention span of a four year old. But in doing so, it will almost certainly destroy the Labour Party as an effective force in British politics. The 'two horse race' will once again be the sole province of the tories and the liberals.

However what's far more likely is that this rumour is simply an expression of the sense of panic prevalent amongst MPs as they await further revelations.

More importantly, it shows that new labour MPs simply do not care about the party or the people who elected them. It shows how they're willing to sacrifice this party's future to save their own miserable hides.

The Laddie Vanishes

Tony Wright, chairman of the Commons public administration committee, is probably the only MP in the country who actually wants to see Damian McBride at the moment. He wants McBride to give evidence to the committee which is currently investigating the role of 'special advisers' in UK politics.

The only problem is he can't find him.

Strange as it may seem, for once the timing of this event isn't significant as McBride hasn't been seen in public since Gordo booted him out of no. 10 and, not surprisingly, no one is admitting to having seen him elsewhere either.

So, has he 'done a bunk' or have Gordo's blackshirts been 'cleaning house' Godfather style?

MPs 'seek to trace' aide McBride

Unsuspecting eh?

For a long time now it's been generally recognised that the alleged deterrent effect of so-called 'safety cameras' is virtually non-existent. Many have suggested that it is and always has been nothing more than a cover story to hide their real purpose of raising revenue by penalising unsuspecting motorists.

Naturally there appears to be a certain degree of truth in this allegation until you consider the simple fact that these idiots wouldn't have been fined if they hadn't broken the law.

Nothing demonstrates this more clearly than the case of Tom Riall, chief executive of Serco Civil Government who was convicted of speeding at Sudbury Magistrates Court. Riall, who pleaded guilty to driving at 102.9mph on a 70mph road, was fined £300, banned for six months and had six penalty points added to his licence.

Quite frankly, with Serco having supplied more than 5000 'safety cameras' within the UK there are many things you might wish to call Tom Riall, but "unsuspecting" is certainly not one of them.

Speed camera boss in 100mph drive

Waccy-Baccy 'outs' Gordo

It looks like that "significantly better advice" Gordo seemed to be getting is limited entirely to 'new media' if the photograph accompanying the following article from the BBC is anything to go by.

Brown 'right' man for UK - Smith

Naturally this comes as no surprise to those of us who have always suspected that Gordo's true political affiliations were somewhat further to the right than he is prepared to admit.

Ironically, one of Gordo's highly expensive PR team is former BBC producer Nicola Burdett who was hired precisely to prevent this sort of thing. A task in which she is obviously having rather mixed results.

Phoul Play or just a Phoul smell?

This morning I had my attention drawn to Phorm's new "Stop Phoul Play" website in which Phorm attacks it's critics and accuses them of "conducting a smear campaign" in what I can only describe as a deranged frenzy.

The site itself is an uninspired combination of the worse aspects of Microsoft's "Get The Facts" campaign, the copyright lobby's 'anti-piracy' propaganda and pre-war Nazi propaganda. It attempts to de-humanise it's critics by applying labels such as "Privacy Pirates", "The Angry Activist" and "The Concerned Consumer" to them in much the same way the Nazis did with European Jews.

A bit extreme?

Perhaps, but the use of de-humanising labels is extremely popular amongst those who's activities cannot stand up to scrutiny and while the Nazis were certainly one of the worst, they were neither the first nor the last to use such tactics. The copyright lobby's liberal use of the terms "pirate" and "freetard" to describe anyone opposed to their member's extortionate business practices is simply one example of this.

In this case it seems to have backfired rather badly and if anything, has only served to draw more attention to those critics and Phorm's alleged misconduct.

Quite frankly, the whole thing looks like something McBride and Draper might have cooked up after spending the entire afternoon in the pub. However the idea appears to have actually come from right-wing tory attack-rat Patrick Robertson, a 'PR consultant' who's own history of blunders rivals that of McBride.

Robertson's previous 'clients' include convicted perjurer Jonathan Aitken and it was while acting for Aitkin that he rather infamously faxed a confidential memo to the wrong number. A blunder he later compounded by surreptitiously obtaining the recipient's ex-directory phone number in order to leave a message on his answering machine asking for the fax to be returned.

This remarkable display of bad judgement can be found here:-

Stop Phoul Play

Some of the media coverage can be found here:-

The Register article 1
ThinkBroadband
PCPlus
The Guardian
The Register article 2