And this weeks winner is....... (warning - longish post, plenty of waffle!)

It appears that I have been named blog of the week by Central News, it’s quite an honour for a blog that is only 2 months old to be named Blog of the week by anyone!

Looking at the previous blogs of the week on Central News, I hope I didn't make it in for similar reasons to Spicy Cauldron; that would be disappointing!

Central News is run by a supporter of the BNP and therefore if I was to follow current convention I would have to write some sort of disclaimer stating that whilst I support free speech, I do no want anyone to think I have any association with their heinous views and diabolical actions, etc. etc. yada yada yada!

Perhaps I could say that it is a shame that people are drawn to such a party by the BNP's ability to exploit tensions in areas of the country, perhaps I should decry the BNP stance on putting British people first, their views on immigration, Christianity or the fact they hate Jews!

But you see, to do any of that would be to speak the words of someone else or to repeat someone else’s views. I prefer to look at things myself, to make up my own mind having looked at things from all sides.

As I said in a previous post, I have always had a passing interest in politics but like most people the interest tended to focus mostly on interest rates, taxes and that sort of thing.Through the years I confess that at various times I have voted for all the main parties and indeed a few minor ones. The main criterion for my decision has always been the individual candidate regardless of which party they belong to. Obviously they will tend to have a certain outlook based on which party they represent, but there is many an excellent councillor or MP who do an extremely good job for their constituents despite the party they represent.

I work in the service sector and I meet lots of different people each week, old people, young people, people from various ethnic backgrounds and social groups, and we often have time for a chat over a cup of tea or coffee. Setting the world to rights is a favourite pastime for many people and the conversation always goes in the direction they choose, after all, the customer is always right.

Over a number of years I noticed that the topic of conversation started to change, from sports and the state of the health service, people started to talk about immigration, religion, law and order, lack of police and other currently hot topics. To start with it was in a matter of fact almost apologetic way, as if the failings in society are somehow everyone’s fault and we should all feel ashamed of ourselves.
More recently though, people tend to be a lot more open, concerns regarding Islamic terrorism, the force feeding of Halal meet to huge swathes of the population, children being taught all about every other religion in the world except Christianity, Mosques being built all over the place, lack of jobs for British workers, stupid EU regulation, lack of freedom of speech, Government snooping, to name but a few, have all come up.

Imagine that, British people so frustrated and ignored that rather than talk about the weather they would rather get their thoughts on all of the above off their chest to anyone who will listen.

On my favourites page I have a link to mediauk which has a link to all newspapers in this country. Once a week or so I spend a few hours looking at the local news in places up and down the land.

One thing that always strikes me is the difference between local news and national news. Traditionally one would expect the national news to cover the broader issues, take a look at the bigger picture and to offer more analysis of current events, whilst the local paper would cover school fetes and local rubbish collection times and that sort of thing.

That is certainly not the case anymore; local papers have become one of the only reliable sources of news, although there are some noticeable exceptions where they do not let the truth stand in the way of a good story.
Taking a look at a small cross section, one finds local problems caused due to overcrowding, immigration, violence between different cultural and ethnic groups, lack of local job prospects, breakdown of local services, increased violent crime, criticism of local police services and any number of other issues affecting people’s daily lives.

But where is the same attention to these issues from the National News Papers or the main television channels? The simple answer is that there is very little, and when there is it is always to play down the issues.

As a consequence, when incidents happen locally one may be forgiven for thinking that, because you don’t see the same thing happening in the national news, you are just unfortunate to be living in a problem area, and anyway things are not that bad.

Up and down the country people are living in local conditions that make them unhappy, and to add insult to injury they are made to feel that it is a local issue and therefore somehow it must be a local problem, and as they are local, somehow they must be part of the problem.

Keeping things on a local level makes it much easier to keep the problems under wrap. If it was clear that Eastern European immigration was putting British workers out of jobs up and down the country then God forbid, something might have to be done about it. But keep it local and it is easy to close down the argument by accusing locals of being xenophobic or racist and of exaggerating the issues, after all, if British workers weren’t so damned lazy we wouldn’t have to bring in this alternative workforce in the first place. In fact, it’s your own fault!

When the Religious and Racial Hatred Act was being debated I wrote to my local MP and asked what his party intended to do about the continued erosion of free speech. I pointed out that the situation was getting so bad that an increasing number of people would find themselves voting for the BNP as the only party that took the issue seriously. The response was rather patronising including the somewhat contradictory final statement:

“The Conservative party will continue to support all British Citizens regardless of their origins. I must point out that the BNP is a thoroughly nasty racist party, several of whose leading members have been convicted of criminal offences. No decent person should contemplate supporting them.”

To take this at face value I would be forced to believe that the BNP is full of degenerates and thugs, the sort of people who would think nothing of violent confrontations, hounding people out of their jobs, accepting bribes, deception and any number of other offences.

On the other hand, if one takes a slightly more considered approach, one could easily put together a list of several leading members of the Conservative party who have actually been to prison, and various blogs have lists of Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat Councillors, party members and the like, with convictions ranging from GBH and murder, through to embezzlement, sexual assault, corruption and voting fraud.

Then there are the recent demonstrations by United Against Fascism in which they protest against people whose political views they do not like by trying to have them removed from their job. They site the justification that the people who they are protesting against would take away other peoples jobs if they had the chance. This group and others like it are supported personally and financially by members of the three main parties.

Every business has its share of “bad eggs”, every supporters group, every religion, every political party, every organisation that incorporates a substantial number of people will end up with people that you could do with out, people that cause embarrassment and have a potential to undermine the success of that particular movement.

But you shouldn't engage with the BNP because they are racist and have a racist agenda in which they favour indigenous white British people!

This is where I am the most confused. How is that in any way different from having a Black Police Association, Asian Police Association, or any of the other hundreds of "Associations" set up to further the rights and ambitions of specific sectors of society. After all, success for a lot of these Associations must come at the expense of someone else. If they feel they are under funded, under resourced, under represented etc, this can only be addressed by removing funding or resources from elsewhere, or in the case of promotion and representation, hold other groups back.

I read today that it is totally wrong to discriminate against someone because of their colour as they are born that way, but the same commentator argued that it was not so bad to criticise Polish people for coming to Britain on the grounds that it is not racist because they are white too. But surely the reason some people do not want Polish people coming over here in the thousands is for the same reason they do not want thousands of people from Africa or Asia. It is nothing to do with colour, it is because an influx of too many people from a differing culture causes a dilution and potential undermining of one’s own. But to protest against Eastern European may be anti-EU or xenophobic, protest against African and Asian immigration and you are a nasty racist.

I have been the victim of racial abuse on a number of occasions, fortunately only verbal. Did I find it upsetting, yes I did, but no more so than any other daily random offensive behaviour aimed at me as I go about daily life in this country.

The last occasion was when a young man and his friends had stopped their car in the middle of the road to have a conversation with some others on the side of the road. I couldn’t get passed so having waited patiently for a minute or so I beeped my horn gently as most people would do. I was met with a torrent of abuse with several phrases calling into question my parentage in the context of being white, told that this particular area belonged to their ethnic grouping and people like me were not welcome there. Under today’s legislation and hysteria surrounding “racism” this could be seen as a very serious offence, and if it were not for the one sided application of the law, the youths may have been facing custodial sentences such as those already passed on several white defendants.

However, I remember when I used to drive to work through Broughton and up to Middleton when I was younger. White kids would stand in the middle of the road and threaten you if you asked them to move, I had my car window broken whilst sat at the traffic lights because someone wanted the packet of cigarettes on the passenger seat. The same sort of incident happens all the time up and down the country.

So is it racist behaviour when you offend someone of a different ethnic group to your own, or is it just offensive?

I have posted on lots of other Blogs, often on anti-BNP sites filled with the same vicious canards and always ask the same thing, give us the details. If the BNP is filled with the vile people you say it is, name them along with their crimes and publicly declared statements against humanity.

To date, all I have seen has been a failed attempt to convict two Senior Members of their party by introducing legislation that makes it an offence now, to say things it would have been ok to say a few years ago, whilst at the same time refusing to take action against other groups of people who have made similar remarks which have included specific threats against this nation.

Oh, there’s also a minibus driver who lost his job; his crime? Well if he drives the bus, other people may not like it and so THEY might attack the vehicle thereby endangering him and his fellow occupants.
And don’t forget the other high profile racist, thuggish, thoroughly nasty member of the BNP party and the serious criminal activities she is involved in? Well in fact, she isn't actually involved in anything criminal (unless you really dislike ballet); in fact she hasn't actually harmed anyone nor done anything wrong. But what she is guilty of is being a member of the BNP, that’s it, nothing else.

Politics is a funny game, one year you can vote for Nu Labour and elect a conservative Government and the next time you vote for Nu Labour you get a communist Government. Vote Conservative one time and that’s what you’ll get, next time round, vote Conservative and you’ll get a socialist Government.

A free democratic society is one in which all people are allowed to have a voice, regardless of whether you like what they have to say.

If the BNP is as described than we have nothing to fear because they will never be acceptable to the majority of British people and therefore we should listen to what they have to say and engage in debate on every occasion.

Debate is the way forward, stop the personal attacks and slanderous statements, give them enough rope and they will hang themselves; or will they? Who knows, a vote for the BNP in the future could in fact be a vote for conservatism.

In my younger days I used to be an avid reader of the fantastic 2000 AD comic. I remember one story in an episode of Judge Dredd in which a member of the public is being stoned before Judge Dredd intervenes and saves him. Everyone there is rounded up and interviewed at the section house as follows (condensed):

Dredd: You! What were you stoning him for?
Person 1: I-I don’t know sir
Dredd: What do you mean; you’re bouncing rocks off some poor sap’s skull and you don’t know why?
Person 1: I-I heard something … He did somethin’ or somethin’
Dredd: Do any of you know why you did this?
Person 2: Rover Johnson had it comin’! He was a bad guy. He’d done bad things.
Dredd: What bad things?
Person 2 I dunno .. There were rumours. The whole block knew.
Dredd: Knew what creep?
Person 2: You know – Rover Johnson had it comin’!
Dredd: So when did you first hear there was going to be a stoning?
Person 3: Yesterday morning, down in the Gossiperia. I figured, Well, I’m not doin’ anything tomorrow, might as well go along…
Person 4: No I didn’t know Rover Johnson personally, but I did hear some pretty unpleasant things!
Dredd: Be specific
Person 4: Well, there was … He… I … I’m not sure, really. Rumours – and not very nice ones!



So, do I support the BNP, well call me old fashioned but that is my business.

Should you support the BNP, well clearly, that is your business.


Central News