Sim-O

(source)

Doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in his behaviour with regard to his election spending, does it? I wonder what he will be like as an MP once he gets settled with his feet under the table good and proper. Oh, and what a lovely little threat, too…

Either they [the electoral commission] will decide not to look at it – in which case you want to watch it. Or they will decide to look at it and give me a green light – in which case you want to watch it.

via Liberal Conspiracy

The defeat of the BNP…

At two minutes past six last Friday morning, Nick Griffin walked to the front of the makeshift stage at the Goresbrook leisure centre in Barking, east London, and tried to make his voice heard above a braying crowd. The BNP leader had just suffered a humiliating defeat, beaten into third place by Labour MP Margaret Hodge in the constituency where he had promised to create a “political earthquake”.

But as he began a flustered and angry speech, Griffin already knew that worse was to come. Rumours had been circulating round the east London count for more than an hour that the party had not only failed to get its first MP, it was on the verge of an electoral disaster in the area Griffin had once described as the party’s “jewel in the crown”.

“Within the next five years, the indigenous people of London will be a minority,” barked Griffin, as jubilant Labour supporters taunted him with shouts of “Out, out, out!” “It is going to be too late for Barking, but it is not too late for Britain.” By then, though, no one was listening.

In the next 12 hours, Griffin’s worst fears were realised – and even exceeded. The party was thrashed in its two key parliamentary constituencies of Barking and Stoke Central. Its record number of council and parliamentary candidates failed to make a single breakthrough; and of the 28 BNP councillors standing for re-election, all but two were beaten.

Read the rest

Via Chicken Yoghurt

The first thing I noticed was that the first policy in the BNPs manifesto is the defence policy. The Conservatives and Labour feature defence in the last sections of their documents, the LibDems have it near the middle, page 57 of 104. Read into that what you will.

Apparently our armed forces are in disarray and they intend to avoid the UK coming close “to the brink of destruction”, as apparently happened twice in the twentieth century, because of not spending enough.

The BNP intends to remove ourselves from collective security arrangements, presumably NATO and the EU and spend all the money that we have on developing and supplying British Weapons for British Soldiers.

The BNP aims to have an independent British military, equipped by British factories in all the essential needs of modern warfare.
Our independent force must include an independent nuclear deterrent and capability. These weapons would remain under British control.

So that’s light, medium and heavy guns that aren’t already British made. Tanks and aeroplanes. Oh, and all the ships, helicoptors, and other heavy machinery that the modern war machine needs. That’s all got to be developed and then made.

Then there’s all the communications gear. Y’know, radios, sat nav (which includes the satellites themselves), radar equipment. The list is endless and it will all have to be paid for by the taxpayer. Is it really necessary to have everything home made? Of course it isn’t.

Our independent force must include an independent nuclear deterrent and capability

I wouldn’t trust these clowns with a spud gun, never mind a big red button labelled ‘In an emergency, PUSH’.
Where is all this money coming from? Develop and make a whole independent arms industry and develop and make a new nuclear weapon. Boy, someone’s gonna have to work some overtime.

Britain must be prepared to launch limited operations where it is necessary to protect our citizens abroad and not be deterred by ‘world opinion’.

and it can.

The Falklands campaign was an obvious example where Britain needed to act, but more recently there were clear grounds to rescue people of British descent from the murderous regime in Zimbabwe

What? Did I just read that right?

… there were clear grounds to rescue people of British descent from the murderous regime in Zimbabwe.

What that statement says is that they BNP are prepared to go into a foreign country and “rescue” citizens of that country based on their colour. Not rescue British ex-pats or holiday-makers but Zimbabweans because some of their relatives might have come from Britain. Would they have checked out the geneology of the people they would rescue? No, of course not. It would’ve been a case of the white man gets on the boat and fuck the rest. I’m surprised They’re not calling for Zimbabwe to be renamed Rhodesia as it used to be.

We shall restore many of the historic regiments, particularly those from Scotland, which were disbanded by the Labour government.

Why? Would it reduce costs or improve the abilities of the forces? I understand that the military is feircely loyal to their regiments, but keeping any structure just for the sake of history when function is more important than form is just plain stupid.

We shall renegotiate our presence in NATO to ensure that we maintain independence and neutrality.

Ah, there it is. I wondered when that would come up. By ‘renegotiate our presence in NATO’ they mean leave NATO. A nation cannot be in NATO and be neutral. We leave NATO we can count on no one to come to our aid.

We will raise spending on defence by one percent over the rate of inflation for the next five years so that our forces may never again be committed to any conflict short of equipment or kit, as has been the case with the shameful deployment in the Tory/Labour war in Afghanistan.

Now, bear in mind what has just been said about an independently kitted British war machine, with nukes and everything, tell me, because I don’t know the figures, just roughly, is that one percent going to cover it? Nah, didn’t think so.

This last subsection in the defence section seems a little out of place. Surely it should be in the Culture, Traditions and Civil Society section?

We will introduce a Community Award Scheme for our young people which will take the form of a compulsory one year period for all school leavers during which they will work in the community as the final element of their education.
This scheme will allow young people to choose between a variety of community service options which might include, for example, caring for the elderly or disabled people, environmental or heritage restoration projects or military training

That’s a nice name for compulsory service, isn’t it. At least the youths will be able to choose what they’re forced to do.

The final choice of direction in this regard will be dictated by the school leaver’s scholastic record, preferences and suitability.

So the bullies get the guns and the bullied wipe arses, huh?

Service in this scheme would entitle each individual to receive something back from the society to which they have learnt to contribute, such as free university education, a properly supported apprenticeship or business training.

Instead of receiving guidance and help when you’re young and need it, you first have to earn it. You have to be taught how to contribute to society. You can’t just contribute in your own way, you have to be taught to BNP contribution way.

So what do have so far? We’re going to be neutral. We’re going to build and supply everything our forces needs, from nightvision goggles to aircraft carriers, ourselves. It’s going to be paid for by raising spending one percent over inflation for five years and our kids are going to be taught one particular way how to contribute to society.

Already things are all over the place… and this is just the first section.

Does anybody want a hung parliament? We know they’re a bit rubbish and can lead to all sorts of sorry things happening and all sorts of good and necessary things not happening due to squabbles and back room deals.

We know all this. Stop fucking telling us. What are we supposed to do about it?

The electorate isn’t a single being that has one mind. We’re not all thinking that the best way to show the political classes how unhappy we are, with how Westminster politics has degenerated, is to give the third place guys some power and see what happens.

Some people will be party loyalist and will be voting for who ever is their parties candidate, never mind who it is. Some people will be voting for a candidate because of who he or she is, not what party they belong to. There will be some tactical voting, but it is not going to be on a large enough scale to affect the national outcome.

Personally, I don’t have any party allegiance, but my choice of voting for LibDem Dr Evan Harris is because of him as an MP. Not because I want to stick to Labour or I think the Lib Dems will save the country, but because of his voting record. But I shouldn’t be voting for Evan Harris because that’ll cause UK plc to go into meltdown. Apparently.

So. What are my choices? A tin pot party that’ll get bugger all done and wouldn’t know their arse from their elbow (which would probably be the prefered option according to Labour and the Tories if I wasn’t voting for them two) which is going to achieve nothing. Then there’s Labour who, well, look at the last thirteen years. Whatever good they’ve done has more than been undone by the bad bits.

And finally Conservative, To which I reply like this.

I’m not gonna vote in a way just to avoid a hung parliament. For a start who do I vote for? How do I know which party needs my vote to avoid a hung parliament? I don’t.

People are split and the result is most likely a hung parliament for many reasons, but because the people want it is not one of them.

If there’s a hung parliament, it won’t be ‘the peoples’ fault. It’ll be the politicians.

After searching for Labours’ Manifesto and getting a load of Conservative results, I thought I’d do the Liberal Democrats today (I did do the Torys’ yesterday but didn’t get chance to post it).

I know the Libdems get a rough time of it sometimes, getting overlooked and stuff, but I never expected Google to be so harsh…

I just had a look for Labours’ manifesto. As I typed Google suggested ‘Labour manifesto 2010’ so I went with that. A very poor show from Labour, I must say (click to enlarge) …

Nothing from Labour, who came in at seventh and a bit of a WIN for the Conservatives coming in with the front page of conservatives.com fourth and a link to the Telegraphs’ article about the Conservative manifesto in third place.

Give it away, then. Let some one else make use of it.

How a nation deals with issues such as climate change, war, poverty and imigration don’t just have an effect in that nation. The vaery nature of the issues have an impact on other countries.

What the campaign Give Your Vote aims to do is give those people affected by, but cannot influence those decision, a voice.

If you intend not using your vote then you register with the campaign site and they will send you details of someone from Bangladesh, Afghanistan or Ghana and how they would vote if they were eligible and ask you to use your vote how they would. The press release also says…

The GIVE YOUR VOTE campaign will see:

The Conservative, Labour, Lib Dem and other manifestos launched in Kabul, Dhaka and Accra.

• Local language campaign posters of Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg being pasted on walls across the cities
• Questions on party policies from Britain’s new overseas constituents passed to UK candidates via their own constituents.
• Afghan, Bangladeshi and Ghanaian voters in the British poll will vote by sending a text message on election day to a local number. A registered UK voter will receive a message telling them how they can carry out that vote.
• In the three countries the campaign is called ‘USE A UK VOTE’ and will launch on 30th March following the collection of the first set of UK vote pledges.

Sounds like a noble thing. It brings the idea of a global democracy closer to a reality.

I won’t be using it, I know how I’m going to vote. I also have doubts as to how much real effect it will have. We shall see, eh?

Should Sky be hosting a debate of the three main party leaders?

Sky may be a big name, but they’re not exactly a national broadcaster, are they? They have what? Ten million subscribers (and expected to lose about 17% of them) and the whole of the Sky owned channels have about 7% of the nations viewers. They are not open to everyone like the terrestrial channels are.
For example, if you hardly ever watch the BBC, you could still switch over for and watch the debate about domestic issues, but if you want to watch the debate based on international affairs, which is the one Sky will be hosting, you can’t unless you subscribe to Sky for 12 months. Big important football games are shown on terrestrial and not just satellite channels, so why is this debate restricted to such a small audience?

Many people not only do not want Sky, but cannot justify the expense. In these days of everyone having to tighten their belts and the nature of these debates, being part of the general election campaign, should such a massive amount of people not be able to see it?

The Scots may be moaning about the way that there will be no representative from their major parties (aren’t they having their own debates now?) but with Sky showing one of the debates, it is like one of the terrestrially broadcast events being shown only on STV.

Democracy Club…

In elections these days, all major candidates have a huge team of volunteers behind them, helping them produce and distribute leaflets, get publicity in the local news media, raising their profile and painting a generally rosy picture of them.

But the public gets no such help. They are given election leaflets, party election broadcasts, newspaper interviews with candidates, but they are not given solid, factual information, or simple unbiased analysis of the truth value of these publicity campaigns, especially not at a local level.

We feel that the public needs its own team of volunteers to help them. We want you to be one of those volunteers: gather information on candidates, their leaflets, and local news coverage of them; or publicise vote analyses in local papers around the country; or do other tasks we haven’t even thought of yet.

With your help, we can give the public the same support that the candidates already get.