BS: The BNP conundrum

Subject: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Emma B
Date: 26 Sep 09 - 07:58 PM

I'm not normally a fan of Fraser Nelson, the current editor of The Spectator magazine; but, although I disagree with many of his views and conclusions based on a traditional Tory perspective I nevertheless feel that he raises some valid issues too in the Coffee House

"....ask why I'm so keen to trash the BNP and Griffin – and ask if I'm guilty of the same kneejerk liberal reaction that I accuse others of.

A fair point: 'racist' can seem like a playground chant, and any rebuttal of the BNP needs more detail to be credible.

Yet I oppose them for the racism reason. The party incubates and legitimises genuine racism
The BNP has cleverly learned to bury these racist sentiments beneath legitimate concerns about immigration.

When Hitler started National Socialism in Germany it started off with 2 percent of the vote. So I don't think you can write the BNP off on account of its small support

Simon Stephenson says it's time to explain better why we hate the BNP. I totally agree.
The lobotomized left (which I distinguish from New Labour at its peak) are characterized by debating via two main tools: hysteria and name-calling.
A look at the opinion polls shows how successful this tactic is. But the voters repelled by this are not all coming to the Tories. It's a reminder just how counter-productive namecalling is."

---

Previous BNP thread (click)

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: jeddy
Date: 26 Sep 09 - 08:14 PM

i don't just hate the BNP for its racist views, its veiws about immigration or even its hatred of anyone not seeming to be normal.
of course all this i dispise, but not only for the obvious reasons.

i would hate with the same passion any party whos idea of a debade was to use violence. to use lies and intimidation for any reason, is disgusting to me.

more to follow, just thought i would start what i am thinking about this.

take care

jade x x x x

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Emma B
Date: 26 Sep 09 - 08:27 PM

Meanwhile - look out Plaid Cymru and the SNP!

The BNP is hijacking your heroes too!

The BNP group's merchandise website, Excalibur, is selling items emblazoned with images of St George, William Wallace and Owain Glyndwr together with slogans such as "British by birth, Welsh by the grace of God".

A 4.5m high bronze statue of Glyndwr mounted on a horse was presented to the people of Corwen, Denbighshire – the town of Glyndwr's birth – in September 2007 at a cost of £125,000.

The sculptor Colin Spofforth spent four years creating it and said he was "shocked" when he found out it was being used by the BNP. "First of all, what they have done is against the law," he told The Western Mail. "I certainly did not give any permission for it to be used and I never would have done."

from The Independent on Sunday 27 September 2009

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 26 Sep 09 - 08:43 PM

"The lobotomized left" is an obvious example of what the man complains about later in the same line - "hysteria and name-calling".

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: akenaton
Date: 26 Sep 09 - 09:10 PM

Emma...I dont think there is one member here who would support racism or the BNP for that matter, but there are issues (like immigration, which need to be debated, that debate is not happening here, because, whenever the issue is raised, the usual suspects start screaming.

On Question Time on Thursday Mrs Harmon was asked about the effects of economic migration, she made no attempt to answer the question, but embarked on an attack on the BNP, to large cheers from the audiance.   Now that.... and what often happens on this forum when race or immigration issues are raised, seems to me to be a form of fascism.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Joe Offer
Date: 26 Sep 09 - 10:26 PM

Yeah, it would be interesting to discuss this subject without the screaming, wouldn't it? I get a lot of complaints about the BNP threads, mostly because there's so much screaming and because the bullies allow so little in the way of rational discussion. I've been labelled a BNP sympathizer because of my complaints about the bullying. I've heard from at least a couple of people who no longer want to be associated with Mudcat because of the nastiness of the BNP threads. Maybe it's time to tone things down and deal with the subject without hysteria?
See the quote Emma posted above:

The party incubates and legitimises genuine racism. The BNP has cleverly learned to bury these racist sentiments beneath legitimate concerns about immigration.

The BNP IS a serious threat, and an effective response is needed - but we're certainly not seeing any sort of effective response. There's truth in the comment about how the "lobotomized left" has responded with hysteria and name-calling. We certainly see it here at Mudcat. Is a rational response possible, or is the best response to continue screaming and name-calling? The BNP is indeed clever in capitalizing on legitimate fears about immigration. Too bad the "lobotomized left" doesn't seem to be able to come up with a rational response.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: jeddy
Date: 26 Sep 09 - 11:14 PM

how anyone could call you a BNPer joe is beyond me, you have proved time and again your feelings on the matter.

ok, trying to take the emotion out of this subject could be rather difficult and i hope we can manage it on the... what ..6th go?

just because we disagree with people about the things they believe to be right does not make them unreachable. we have no idea of how exactly they came to think the way they do.
take the 12 year old girl, do we think she is racist....or brainwashed? maybe she has no other source of knowledge, her parents probably are very scary to her when they talk about these things. at that age you believe what your parents tell you, most of us did, at least about certain things.
i imagine that the family concerned have get togethers where there are lots of people talking the same way, just as we do here, in our own weird family.
so who do you think is responsible for her actions?

i know i haven't been consistant in the way i would like to handle those who are truely racist, one minuite i want to lock them all up the next i want to TRY to educate them... WHY?... coz no one has all the answers, hell if i even had one i would be happy.

every person that is driven to the BNP has their own reasons. it is hard to be reasonable, but i think we must be with geniune people who have found an understanding with them.

immigration: are we overcrowded?   
still not sure, there were alot of interesting facts in the last thread that i had no idea about.
maybe it is the actual location of the majority of housing that makes us feel like we can't cope with anymore people.
look around in towns, there are so many empty properties,surely we don't always have to build new ones?
even when new housing is called for, look where they build it, smack bang in the midle of a flood plain....DUH!!!!
so when we do get flooded out, there are so many people trying to find spaces in the emergency lodgings, that they can't cope!




OK...breathe......sorry i got myself abit worked up, which was what i was tying to avoid doing.....this is going to be harder than i thought.

what i am trying to say, is what would happen if we did close the boarders now?... it would give the government time to think through what could be done with the great numbers of occupiable properties or land.   fair enough this would be one way of doing something to help.

the other option is to leave open the boarders, welcome those with building experiance and say help to reform this area, house, plot and we will pay you. it would certainly help them, us, and it would creat jobs for everyone as it is such a huge task.

ok my rant over for this evening.

take care all

jade x x x x x




does any of this make sense?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: jeddy
Date: 26 Sep 09 - 11:24 PM

oh yeah, i have just figured out why this wouldn't be possible.

the labour government has lost all our money!!!!
i knw about the recession, i don't know why it came about and i know even less why why the banks were bailed out yet they still award themselves with offencive bonuses(?).
i am shocked that someone isn't saying that is down to migrants and their families!

j x x x x

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: ButterandCheese
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 12:31 AM

So the same old tired name calling and arguements drift to yet Another BNP thread, sorry Emma, I know you mean very well indeed, and are one of the very few who can put together valid arguements in a sensible manner. If this particualr thread is to survive I believe the founder of the thread can be given editing and modding rights. I think perhaps this might be a good idea, that way the thread stays on track.
I've always felt that the left has always had a certain lobotomisation to it, feed'em the right script lines and they'll do the knee-jerk "how high do you want us to jump" thing, Seen it too often at actions and demos over the years, put me off attending the events for quite awhile. I realised that the few shouldn't be allowed to ruin it for those who genuinely cared and genuinely wanted to work for change. Name calling and making fun doesn't work and the people that indulge themselves in this sort of things (you know who you are)are not contributing anything.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: akenaton
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 04:53 AM

Emma is one of my favourite contributers here, so please leave off with your patronising remarks......after 4 posts!

Fascists are ridiculous....especially the hypocritical left wing variety!      They deserve to be made fun of.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: The Sandman
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 06:13 AM

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: akenaton - PM
Date: 26 Sep 09 - 09:10 PM

Emma...I dont think there is one member here who would support racism or the BNP for that matter, but there are issues (like immigration, which need to be debated, that debate is not happening here, because, whenever the issue is raised, the usual suspects start screaming.

On Question Time on Thursday Mrs Harmon was asked about the effects of economic migration, she made no attempt to answer the question, but embarked on an attack on the BNP, to large cheers from the audiance.   Now that.... and what often happens on this forum when race or immigration issues are raised, seems to me to be a form of fascism
with respect mbs george who is a member here,supports the BNP.
I understand why many people fell disenfranchised and turn to the BNP,the other parties need to cop on,it is obvious that the mainsteam parties are filled with career politicians,however [imo]the BNPs policies would not solve our economic predicament.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Jack Campin
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 06:26 AM

The BNP is indeed clever in capitalizing on legitimate fears about immigration.

The fears about immigration the BNP exploits are the same as those the Daily Mail and the rest of the Britist right promulgate, and they are *not* legitimate. They are all the result of spin-doctoring, misrepresentation and outright lies. We don't need to offer ANY concessions to the fear-mongering scum who are manufacturing the issue.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Emma B
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 07:31 AM

Jack, I agree with you wholeheartedly about your comment that the 'fears' about immigration and danger it presents to the country have been cynically manipulated and exaggerated by the right wing press - I think I have posted some examples of their, totally unfounded, scariest headlines in a thread once but this, however deplorable, is a fact!

I said I didn't agree with much of what Fraser Nelson writes, he represents a very different political viewpoint to my own, but nevertheless, he recognizes the the real fear of the racist BNP when he sees it and advocates a course of action that is NOT yeliing expletives or simply dismissing them as loonies.

Kevin, - as Captain Mainwaring would say, 'well spotted McGrath' :)

Jeddy makes a good point about overcrowding and housing stock.
There is a long history why affordable housing from local authorities etc is in desperately short supply and demographics related to employment policy etc why a lot of it is simply in the 'wrong place'

Ake, believe it or not as a left winger (although I believe my prefrontal cortex is still very much connected), I actually feel disenfranchished myself from mainstream politics in this country probably every bit as much as some feel disillusioned.

In fact, the article I quoted from shares your views (if not mine) that the left is, in some of its attitudes, also 'fascist' but bear in mind this is the view of an economic libertarian who is also sceptical about global warming

Joe, I hope people recognize you as the fairminded person you are; a friend of the UK if sometimes as bemused and confused by the Brit way of life as we are about the US (tries not to mention health care :) )

Well folks, as I think I've pointed out before - no one 'owns' a thread - they have a very real life (or self destrction suicide) of their own.

Thank you Joe for allowing a further thread to arise from the bitter ashes of the last and allowing yet another opportunity for rational discussion (not I hope without the relief of some humour)

"But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread carefully because you tread on my dreams"

'Em'

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 07:32 AM

It seems to me that concerns expressed about the flood of economic migrants into this country might have more credibility, were it not for the fact that the flood in question has taken more than fifty years to reach the horrendous total of.........five percent of the current population.

In the last five years numbers of EU workers have come here in pursuit of earning a living, just as numbers of Brits have been doing in other EU countries ("Aufwiedersehn Pet") for many MORE years.

So would somebody tell me please where this "FLOOD" of spongers and cheats are disappearing to, while their doppelgangers are doing all the jobs our fastidious work force don't want to dirty their hands on?

Anybody who thinks that the immigrants in this country are not overwhelmingly an asset, is being taken in by racist propaganda, mainly from the BNP.

That is the measure of how insidious and dangerous that organisation is.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 07:47 AM

So anyone who has any reservations about an unprecedented scale of immigration is "scare mongering scum" and can only have been duped by BNP propaganda.
I do not think that I will join this debate.
keith.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Andrez
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 08:01 AM

Hmmmmmmmmm the UK seems to be getting more and more scary these days and when I read through this thread and recall some of the other BNP threads I cant help but hear Billy Braggs lines about the "sounds of ideologies clashing".   

So having said that my solution to the problem is the same one I use when I am confronted by people of the "born again christian" persuasion. I usually choose not to engage because they are locked into their point of view and are unwilling to entertain the possibility that a point of view other than their own might have some validity. Regrettably, I have some in-laws of this ilk and regardless of what evidence might be provided to challenge their views they inevitably resort back to their biblical dogma and come out with a variation of the line "if your not with us your 'agin us". At this point there is little left to say. This is the closed mind syndrome in full flight and it just isnt possible to work through ideas let alone the values that underpin these ideas.

So having said that its also important to understand that ideas have power and that by repeating a particular "line" often enough that idea can gain traction in peoples minds.......... especially in this day and age when so many of the certainties of the "past": the things that gave us a sense of community and national identity have lost their binding ability and people just want an instant package to grab onto and believe in..... just like the "born agains". And yes we've seen before what happens when ideas take off like this thank you Mr Hitler and Co......... so having a good knowledge and understanding of the patterns of history helps to ground you in understanding what is happening as a result of the kind of ideas and values being promoted by the BNP and similar groups. Its about keeping perspective and your cool regardless of all the shouting going on in the streets, the media or even this forum.

From the prophet Bragg again: "When one voice rules the nation, 
Just because they're on top of the pile, 
Doesn't mean their vision is the clearest".

Thats a useful line to keep in mind when groups like the BNP ( or the Nazis in days of yore) try to capitalise on the hate and forms parties like the BNP to promote their ideas in the world at large.

And having then said that its also important to decide when its time to take a stand, when things have crossed the line marked out by your own personal beliefs and values. So that might be at the ballot box, it might be in a street march, it might be in writing a song that expresses something that millions of other people feel and recognise through your words....... well the response is always going to differ from person to person but the point is that at some point or another it is important to challenge the people or parties that are promoting hate and division and separation regardless of whether this is in the local community or at a national level.

Despite all the negative PR about Indians being bashed in Australia, a few months ago I joined about sixty thousand people who felt the need to support multiculturalism in our community by making a statement and marching through the city. It was a great day and I believe it sent a message to all of the haters out there that the majority of people do not support their views or the values that go with them.

Having said that, good luck with the thread EB :-)

Cheers,

Andrez

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Emma B
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 08:47 AM

Thanks for your post Andrez we hear too little about the situation in Australia which must surely be a country with an interesting history of immigration!

OK - immigration

To start with some objective figures, unfortunately 5 years out of date but that is a problem with collecting this type of information
Nevertheless it probably reflects the trend of immigration this century

Fact or fiction in the great UK immigration debate

Some of this obviously is still very pertinent -

CLAIM: Immigrants place a burden on Britain's public services.

Reliable data on the use of services are hard to come by. One solid figure is that 27 per cent of health professionals in the UK were born abroad, suggesting that the NHS at least benefits from immigration

and some ties in with the demographic problems about adequate housing stock, fear of ghettoization etc

CLAIM: Immigration is an important issue all across the UK.

Actually, immigrants are not evenly spread across the UK. South-east England draws almost half of all immigrants, despite making up barely 20 per cent of the UK population.

However the recent recession has caused some very real concerns about economic migration both inside and outside the EU

ACAS in its report on the action at the Lindsey oil refinery concluded
"Whilst the report shows no evidence of the law being broken there is a source of tension around the Posted Workers Directive and its application to construction work and the UK's industrial relations system.
These issues have been highlighted by the recession."

Although immigrants into the UK come from all over the world there is undoubtably a racist agenda in many of the 'concerns' expressed about immigration policy.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: pdq
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 08:53 AM

"immigration: are we overcrowded?"

Yes, the United Kingdom is overcrowded, with about 640 people per square mile.

Ireland has an about 150.

As in the United States, the discussion should be about helping legal immigrants and discouraginging illegal ones. People who apply and are granted entry to any country are an asset. Those who sneek in usually cause problems.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Lox
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 08:59 AM

"but there are issues (like immigration, which need to be debated, that debate is not happening here, because, whenever the issue is raised, the usual suspects start screaming."

Ake.

If you want to talk about immigration and you think it is an important issue, then start a thread and call it "the tricky issue of immigration" or something like that.

Then you will have a forum in which you can discuss the issues around immigration.

People will be able to express their views.

You will be able to explain your views and if anyone disagrees you will have the opportunity to support your views or learn from those of others depending on how you feel

You will also get the oportunity to provide information supprorting your claims as will others.


I will then be free to open up mudcat withut reading another whingeing post about how noone talks about immigration.


The reason noone else has started such a thread is that noone else has felt motivated to do so.


So here's your chance.


You are now free, just as you always have been, to start a discussion on immigration.


Then finally you might stop banging on about your fantsay that somehow you are being censored or you civil liberties are somehow being curtailed.

--------------------------


In the meantime, isn't Emma's thread on the subject of the BNP very interesting.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 09:11 AM

"One solid figure is that 27 per cent of health professionals in the UK were born abroad, suggesting that the NHS at least benefits from immigration"
And you think that is a good thing Emma?
The majority of these come from countries much poorer than us.
Countries with much higher levels of disease and infant mortality, and much lower life expectancy.
Can it be right for a rich country like ours to entice away their desperately needed doctors, nurses and technicians just to spare ourselves the cost of training, and paying competitive salaries.
That is a throwback to a racist, colonialist, exploitative past.
It shames us.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Lox
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 09:20 AM

"And you think that is a good thing Emma?"

She made no comment one way or the other.

The point was that those who claim that immigration is a burden on the NHS are wrong. In fact it benefits the NHS

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Emma B
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 09:26 AM

'the discussion should be about helping legal immigrants and discouraginging illegal ones People who apply and are granted entry to any country are an asset.

- no argument!

'Those who sneek in usually cause problems.'

Illegal immigrants are often very real victims themselves - remember the Morecambe Bay tragedy
btw I was glad to see this report a couple of weeks ago

"Hundreds of people a year are illegally brought into Britain, often under the promise of lucrative work, and a significant number end up working as virtual slaves for families.
They often have their false identity papers confiscated, are given little or no pay and suffer mistreatment.
Bondage can occur when illegal immigrants are forced to work to pay off "debts" for non-existent services such board and lodging. People who want to leave or go to the police are sometimes threatened with violence or told their families will suffer."

from a report in The Independent from SIX years ago!

Four years ago Spain, who had a very large problem, launched a programme granting legal amnesty to up to 800,000 undocumented immigrants.

It was estimated that more than one million people lived and worked in Spain illegally - thousands in two of Spain's most important industries: agriculture and construction without any legal status, they formed the most vulnerable layer of Spanish society.

Applicants who could prove they arrived before a specified date, had a job contract and no criminal record, had three months to sign up as taxpayers.

A member of the Spanish government explained at the time
"We have a number of illegal immigrants in Spain who are not contributing to the system, to the social system, with their taxes and who have been working here on an irregular basis where they are exposed to illegal gangs."

The 'solution' was not without its critics

The Panorama programme : Immigration - Time For An Amnesty? - was shown on BBC One at 8.30pm on Monday 9 March 2009.

Boris Johnson, mayor of London, the city where the majority of the UK's illegal immigrants reside, is in favour of an amnesty.
He told the programme -
"If it does look as though they could make a contribution to society, we should regularise their status or offer them the chance of regularising their status.
There would be some very tough criteria. Obviously no criminal record would be one, an ability to support yourself and support your family, commitment to society and the most, the most important thing is they should have been here for a considerable period of time."

link

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Emma B
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 09:42 AM

"One solid figure is that 27 per cent of health professionals in the UK were born abroad, suggesting that the NHS at least benefits from immigration"
And you think that is a good thing Emma?

No Keith I have the same reservations as you - a similar situation exists in North America I believe

"Stealing From the Poor to Care for the Rich"
NY Times December 14, 2005

Because American-trained doctors usually preferred university hospitals or metropolitan areas
Foreign-trained doctors who qualified tended to stay in the community, where they worked hard. Many who left went to other small communities and small hospitals where there was a need.
But in all this time, I noticed that virtually none of these doctors returned home

our gain was the developing world's loss

According to a study published in October in The New England Journal of Medicine, 25 percent of all doctors in the United States are foreign medical school graduates. A large majority - 60 percent - come from the developing world, where doctors are scarce and countries are being destroyed by AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases."

The author, a retired doctor, concludes
'The United States and other Western countries have not only ignored the appalling lack of qualified doctors in undeveloped countries, but because of self-interest have perpetuated this problem. We should resolve our shortage by ourselves, without stealing doctors from countries that desperately need them.'

What solutions would you offer Keith?

Maybe better financial backing for students from all backgrounds to undertake a long and expensive training?
More funds available to reward qualified staff who opt to remain in their own country?

Unfortunately we DO live in a world of economic migration, in 2005 it was reported that Britain has lost more skilled workers to the global "brain drain" than any other country, according to a report by the World Bank.

"More than 1.44 million graduates have left the UK to look for more highly paid jobs in countries such as the United States, Canada and Australia.
That far outweighs 1.26 million immigrant graduates in the UK, leaving a net "brain loss" of some 200,000 people."

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: jeddy
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 09:47 AM

an amnesty sounds like a wonderful idea, the no criminal background check i am totally i favour of, it would take away alot of power from those who smuggle these people in. i would have thought that taking power away from the gangland bosses and at the same time giving those who are desperate enough to use them a fresh start.


however, if we would be rejecting poeple on the grounds of criminality, what do people think about sending migrants home when they break our laws? , maybe it could be any sentance over say 3 years?   i know that sounds sarcastic but it isn't.

it costs so much to keep someone in prison, that money could go to help someone who will respect the laws into starting a new and safe life instead of keeping someone banged up.
just a thought.

take care all

jade x x x x x

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Emma B
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 09:57 AM

Jade, deportation orders already exist

Under UK immigration law a deportation order may be made against a foreign national. A deportation order not only authorises the individual's removal from the UK but also makes him liable to be held in custody until he is removed.

A deportation order also means that the foreign national is ineligible to return to the UK while the order remains in force and takes precedence over any visa or other leave the foreign national previously obtained

Criteria

A foreign national may be made the subject of a deportation order for a number of reasons. These include:

The Secretary of State believes that is in the interests of the public good that the foreign national is removed from the UK;

The foreign national is the spouse, civil partner or child of an individual who is the subject of a deportation order; or,

The foreign national is over 17 years old, has been convicted of a criminal offence which carries with it a prison sentence and the court which sentenced the foreign national recommended that he be deported once he has served his sentence.

For further information on
The Effect of a Deportation Order
Family Members of an Individual Facing Deportation
and Deportation After a Criminal Conviction
see link

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: pdq
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 10:30 AM

The figures people believe are the figures they want to believe.

I see claims that over 9 million people living in the United Kingdom are foreign-born if you include the children they produced. That is 15%, not 5% as mentioned above. When they concentrate in their own neighborhoods and continue to speak their native languages, they are not really very "British".

Yes, many British citizens are leaving and their numbers offset the immigration numbers, but only for one year. The following year's numbers start with the net increase figures.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 10:40 AM

Harriet Harmon isn't my favourite politician (a short list that would be) but it's fair to point out, in respect of that Question Time response, the questioner did specifically plug the BNP as a source of reliable information in his question.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Owen Woodson
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 10:59 AM

I didn't see the programme, but that is potentially worrying, since it sounds as though this guy was either a member or sympathiser. Are we likely to see BNP plants asking questions in order to plug the BNP.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Emma B
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 11:04 AM

If children are born in the UK they may accurately, for statistical purposes, be described as being born to foreign born parents or, in some cases, the children of forign nationals if their parents are not British citizens.
However it is simply illogical and misleading to include children of British citizens, who may themselves be born outside the UK, as 'foreign born' and just plays along with the BNP image of a non-British population of second or third generation descendants of immigrants.

As I stated earlier 'ghettoization' can be a very real problem as indeed the Spanish feel about the estimated 100,000+ UK ex pats who lead a very seperate unintegrated lifestyle from their host communities.
In an English town I once worked in all the mayors for over 20 years had had Irish family names!

Some of the reasons for this are too obvious to go into any detail but would include the need for family and community support networks, availability of accomodation coupled with 'white flight' etc

Some of the 'solutions' are not so obvious but we have a thread that is open for discussion!

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: theleveller
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 11:43 AM

So the same old tired name calling and arguements drift to yet Another BNP thread, ...........I've always felt that the left has always had a certain lobotomisation to it, feed'em the right script lines and they'll do the knee-jerk "how high do you want us to jump" thing,"

Yup! Same old tired name calling!

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 11:55 AM

The background to this has been the way that globalisation has been promoted in respect to finance and manufacturing and just about everything else.

Jobs, and entire industries, can move freely from country to country, regardless of the impact this has, but the one exception has been people, so far as movement across pretty arbitrary boundaries are concerned.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: The Sandman
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 01:27 PM

MCGRATH,thats why the BNPS policies are not the solution,they can no more deal with multinational capatilism than any other party.
I also find the violence that some of their members indulge in appalling .
Richard Barnbrook - the BNP's third highest elected official - has been exposed fabricating two murders in a high profile BNP campaign. He has been found guilty of bringing both the Greater London Authority and the Barking and Dagenham Council into disrepute.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Owen Woodson
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 01:30 PM

Radio 4 6pm news has just run an announcement that Jack Straw has agreed to appear on the same edition of Question Time as Nick Griffin. For more details see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8277399.stm .

The show will go out on Thursday October 22nd, from London.

I'm not surprised at the Labour Party's choice, but I am deeply disappointed. Apart from the fact that Straw totally fails to impress me as a politician, there are one or two things in his background which make me think he is not the man to stand up to a bully boy like Griffin. I'm thinking in particular of his comments about Muslim veils making him feel uncomfortable. And there was the instance of him caving in to pressure and letting the supposedly sick and senile Pinochet flee the country.

let's hope that at least one of the other panellists can show a bit more fire and commitment.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Owen Woodson
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 01:41 PM

I've just caught the end of an important edition of File on 4 on the growth of violent extremism among the British far right. The show has now finished but is available on Listen Again http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006th08 .

Today's edition is a repeat of last Tuesday's broadcast, and it looks as though it will be taken down from Listen Again at 20-00 on Tuesday 22.09.

If you want to grab it, grab it now.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 02:07 PM

""So anyone who has any reservations about an unprecedented scale of immigration is "scare mongering scum" and can only have been duped by BNP propaganda.
I do not think that I will join this debate.
keith.""

That's the way to promote rational discussion Keith....NOT!

Where in my comment do you imagine you found the words
"Scaremongering" and "scum"?

What is it about the plain FACTS I quoted, that leads you to the supposition that I feel that way about those who have, as you put it, reservations.

And lastly, can you adduce actual evidence of an "unprecedented" scale of immigration, or is it your contention that an increase to five percent, over a period of fifty+ years, IS a "flood".

As far as I can see, we have a situation where immigrants tend to congregate in certain locations in large numbers, possibly because they feel safer so, after the somewhat unenthusiastic welcome the first arrivals received.

I can't honestly say I blame them.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: ButterandCheese
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 02:24 PM

In my short time actually posting, as opposed to observing, I have been constantly reminded of the song Which Side Are You On? written in 1931 by Florence Reece Pete Seeger's version is probably the most well known, but Billy Bragg does an intereting version of it

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: GUEST,Jenny Brampton
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 02:25 PM

Here we go again, another BNP thread that will degrade into a mudbash!

Jenny B

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 02:45 PM

""More than 1.44 million graduates have left the UK to look for more highly paid jobs in countries such as the United States, Canada and Australia.
That far outweighs 1.26 million immigrant graduates in the UK, leaving a net "brain loss" of some 200,000 people.""

It would appear that the tide of immigration, like any other, ebbs and flows according to circumstances. Not exactly the claimed flood!

---------------------------------------------------------------------

""I see claims that over 9 million people living in the United Kingdom are foreign-born if you include the children they produced.""

The children permanent immigrants have are no more immigrants than the children I have. Mine are English, born and bred, and SO ARE THEIRS.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

On the subject of immigrant healthcare professionals, I have some slight inside knowledge of this area, and it is certain that:-

1. No British government department has ever forced a foreign doctor or nurse to immigrate.
2. No customs or other official at sea or air ports has ever prevented a doctor or nurse, immigrant or British, from leaving our shores.
3. Most immigrant healthcare and social care professionals regularly send money home to support their extended families in their countries of origin, and I know personally one or two who virtually support whole villages.

I am in favour of prevention of illegal immigration, but I cannot see the number of legal immigrants we have as anything less than a benefit to this nation.

Ake, and others, make much of their claims that nobody discusses or addresses this question, when what they really mean is nobody enthusiastically joins their proposed witch hunt, except of course the BNP.

If I had to support the agenda of a racist, Fascist, bigot in order to put forward my argument, I'd keep my mouth shut.

Since time immemorial, it has been the habit of the uninformed to blame all the ills of a nation on "Johnny Foreigner", and it always was, and still is, true that the root cause is generally much nearer home.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: ButterandCheese
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 03:00 PM

A few try to convince us that the BNP are no real threat, that the true threat comes from the major parties. If I recall my history rightly Neville Chamberlain try to convince Britain that Mr. Hitler was no threat either. I am reminded of the David Low cartoon inwhich Mr. Hitler hands Chamberlain a piece of paper upon which is written "I promise to be good".

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 03:48 PM

Don, I was adding your comments to those of Jack Campin who said

"The fears about immigration the BNP exploits are the same as those the Daily Mail and the rest of the Britist right promulgate, and they are *not* legitimate. They are all the result of spin-doctoring, misrepresentation and outright lies. We don't need to offer ANY concessions to the fear-mongering scum who are manufacturing the issue. "

Sorry I misquoted "fear mongering scum " for "scare mongering scum."

Also Don, it is simply a fact that the current level of immigration is unprecedented in our history, and that England is about the most densely populated nation on Earth.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 04:16 PM

"No British government department has ever forced a foreign doctor or nurse to immigrate"
I did not claim that they had Don.
The word I used was enticed.

Does that make the plundering of the third world for their trained medical staff acceptable to you?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 04:17 PM

Keith: Also Don, it is simply a fact that the current level of immigration is unprecedented in our history, and that England is about the most densely populated nation on Earth.

That's a couple of quite sweeping statements.

You say they are facts. So I presume you can prove them and quote the sources for both facts.

On the first one, I am still looking for data to tell me if the current level of immigration is unprecedented. I'm having trouble with it, so I need to ask you to provide your source for your claim. My instinct tells me that you are wrong and that immigration 1935-1945 was probably steeper than now. I suspect that the immigration rates in the 'Windrush' era were a lot higher as well. But you're ahead of me Keith, so set the record straight for us please.

On the second one, you are certainly wrong because (as was reported widely in the press last week) Britain is actually 52nd in the population density league table. That does not amount to "...about the most densely populated nation on Earth." If you look at the list then it is quite fatuous to draw comparisons between UK density and that of, say, a windswept boggy wasteland (albeit a beautiful boggy wasteland) like Eire, or a useless desert like Saudi Arabia or much of the USA.

You see Keith, if you want to start a debate about immigration then you, that's YOU!, need to start talking truth, rather than lies and hysteria. You prove Don's point rather well.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 04:45 PM

Thanks Royston, for saving me the effort of typing that.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 04:54 PM

""No British government department has ever forced a foreign doctor or nurse to immigrate"
I did not claim that they had Don.
The word I used was enticed.

Does that make the plundering of the third world for their trained medical staff acceptable to you?""

No Keith, plundering any other country is emphatically NOT acceptable, and as soon as you show me the evidence that these people WERE enticed, rather than simply choosing to come here, then I will agree with you that it was wrong.

So far, all I can see is a number of people who have come into England as legal immigrants, and performed functions of great benefit to the country, and the indigenous population.

Many of course, came as students, and achieved their qualifications at English colleges and universities, before applying to stay on and pursue their careers here.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 04:57 PM

Royston and Don, I said England was about the most densely populated nation on Earth.
I was not comparing it with Saudi Arabia?!
Among major nations, England comes third in density after Bangla Desh and South Korea.
It is double that of Germany and quadruple ythat of France.

So I was right in what I said.

You ask me to justify that current (10-15years) levels of immigration are unprecedented in our history.
They are.
I could offer you periods when it was less, but I doubt that would satisfy you.
Why not prove me wrong by finding a period when it was higher.
Good luck!

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: ButterandCheese
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 04:59 PM

Actually the most densely populated country on Earth is currently Bangladesh with a population density of 2,200 people per square mile. The most densely populate area in the world is the principality of Monaco with a population density of 42,000 per square mile.
And the UK you ask....?

637 per square mile, which rates the country at 48th in the world

my source is the 2001 census for the UK figure

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 05:02 PM

""Here we go again, another BNP thread that will degrade into a mudbash!

Jenny B""

Another GUEST post with the thinly veiled intention of starting a slanging match.

No thank you, Jenny. I think we'll keep this one civil, which is why I am bothering to reply to you.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 05:15 PM

Butter and Cheese, my post was about England.
We are both correct.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 05:18 PM

No Keith, you were wrong. You are still wrong. You are still talking shit.

Re-order the latest list in descending order of total population (the measure of the 'major'-ness of all countries) and GB is 20th. You just can't get anything right can you?

league table

I didn't say that you made a comparison between GB and Saudi Arabia. I made that comparison. I made it because when considering relative population density, you have to consider that some countries have a high percentage of their land-mass which is uninhabitable.

Also, France sits at 110/km2 against GB's 246/km2. That is a little over double, not quadruple. And you seriously believe that intelligent people should be debating with you. Why? What a waste of time...

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: ButterandCheese
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 05:27 PM

Oh right, Wikipedia a REALLY reliable source of information (not)

keith's source of information came from figures that were obtained in a parliamentary answer from the Office of National Statistics. (please name you sources where possible, it saves alot of trouble and name calling)

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Lox
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 05:32 PM

"I see claims that over 9 million people living in the United Kingdom are foreign-born if you include the children they produced. That is 15%, not 5% as mentioned above. When they concentrate in their own neighborhoods and continue to speak their native languages, they are not really very "British"."

First - Where do you see these claims? can you provide a link or is this a figment of your imagination?

Second - "When they concentrate in their own neighborhoods and continue to speak their native languages, they are not really very "British""

As I have posted here before, I lived in the Indian/south Asian ghetto of highfields in Leicester for a year and a half.

The myths propagated about areas like this by people who never go into those areas except to pass through them have very little in common with the facts.

British youth of Asian origin in Leicester talk English with strong Leicester accents and participate fully with society as a whole.

There are many other assumptions in PDQ's generalization above that I would love to challenge but I am utterly exhausted at the thought.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Lox
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 05:35 PM

"Among major nations, England comes third in density after Bangla Desh and South Korea."

What????


On which planet?????


Such an absurd claim requires no repudiation.


You remind me of the Pirates in "Asterix" books - desperately scuttling your own ship.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Jack Campin
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 05:36 PM

The BNP is indeed clever in capitalizing on legitimate fears about immigration.

Those fears are NOT legitimate, and you repeating yourself doesn't make them so.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: ButterandCheese
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 05:36 PM

Lox try phoning the office of National Statidtic in the morning, they maybe able to enlighten you

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Emma B
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 05:36 PM

I live close to the N Wales border - just a few miles away whole communities continue to speak their native language :)

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: ButterandCheese
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 05:38 PM

Emma, Britain is full of surprises like that, it's what make us, us:)

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: pdq
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 05:39 PM

The United Kingdom has a population density roughly the same as Japan or South Korea. It ranks about 10th to 12th among countries with 10 million people or more.

If the people of the UK feel their lives are being adversly affected by the population exposion, they have every right to try to correct the problem and do it now.

Once all of your farmland is under houses it's too late.

Population density is correlated to crime and violence as well as general "quality of life" considerations.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Lox
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 05:40 PM

Butter and cheese,

I grew up in Hong Kong.

I understand what the term "population density" really means.

Compared to HK, London feels positively rural.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: ButterandCheese
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 05:41 PM

Your source, pdq, is......

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 05:47 PM

Butter and Cheese

I have quoted my source. The table is linked to UN data from here

http://esa.un.org/unpp

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 05:51 PM

...Whereas Keith has nothing but his own imagination to back him up.

Keith hasn't quoted a source so how do you know where he gets his fantasies from? I keep asking him to enlighten us but rarely get any answers.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: pdq
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 05:54 PM

If you use the active link from a few posts back, you need only eliminate the countries under 10 million population. They may big large but not equal to the UK or Germany. To get the "52nd" rankig used by one poster, you would have to accept Monaco and Macau as major world powers.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Lox
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 05:59 PM

"you would have to accept Monaco and Macau as major world powers."

I don't see the relevance of whether they are major powers or not?

Exactly how many qualifications and exceptions do we need to go through to whittle the list down so that we finally prove that the UK is the most densely populated place on the planet?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Lox
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 06:07 PM

On the subject of Jack Straw,

I am also disappointed at this.

I believe he is too aggressive a debater to deal properly with the BNP.

I believe the best way to show them up is to be patient, give them a big coil of rope and then gently encourage them to hang themselves with it.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: ButterandCheese
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 06:10 PM

Population density is population density, doesn't matter a fig if the country or what have you is a world power or no

The simple fact is, is the UK as a whole is way down on the list of population density. So this current level of immigration is unprecedented in our history line is to put it simply BS, a scremongering tactic exploited by the BNP and the like.

Royston I know you quoted your source, pdq didn't and still hasn't

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: pdq
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 06:42 PM

Mine is the same source, I just skipped countries with less than 10 million population. How many people are crowded into Andorra doesn't mean a fig to most UKers.

The point is simple: the decision as to how many people should be allowed it any country belongs to the people of that country. Same with a recent thread where the subject of Iceland's whaling came up. Basically, it is the business of that country's citizens.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Emma B
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 06:55 PM

pdq while I don't want to stray too far from the subject of this thread I can't accept your last analogy.
The migratory endangered denizens of the oceans are not simply the 'property' of one single nation to slaughter at will not only in my opinion but in the opinion of many world organizations too.

now back to the thread......

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 07:00 PM

One problem is that the league tables on this kind of thing don't tend to include England, sionce it isn't an independent country.

However, anyone whomever gets out of the major cities will have to admit that England has a lot of countryside without that many people living there.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: GUEST,Roger in Sheffield
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 07:00 PM

Member Keith seems to be the only one making any sense on this thread. Because the guy spoke the truth the pack here turned on him. Well done Joe. Please hit these Bnp threads on the head. Big big turn off.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: ButterandCheese
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 07:26 PM

Thanks Emma...oh and GUEST,Roger in Sheffield , please don't dictate what we should or should not be talking about. I merely verified the sources that Kieth was using for his figures

and pdq let me extend that to most UKers don't give a fig what goes on outside their own towns never mind outside the country, which is rather sad...so very blinkered and parochial

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: GUEST,Roger in Sheffield
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 07:44 PM

BaC, Most BNP voters are working class city dwellers.
Far from being fascists, their background is the labour movement.
Their problem is that the current, unprecedented influx of immigrants are here in Britain to cream off Social Security hand-outs.
Basic services have not been provided for this flood of people.
The existing population find fewer job opportunities, and wages driven down.
TRUE British people have lost a sense of belonging in the places they grew up in.
Their is no social housing availble for them and rents are driven up.
Medical services are overwhelmed and the schools grossly overcrowded with English a minority language.
They are not fascist thugs, THEY ARE BRITISH.
The major parties just call their legitimate concerns "racism."

When the issue of the great BNP successes was debated on Question Time, immigration was the elephant in the room.
The only panallist who tried to raise the issue was an economist.
The three politicians and the trade unionist just changed the subject and carried on talking about electoral reform, vile fascists etc.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Lox
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 07:48 PM

Thanks roger,

We've actually had that exact cut and paste job already on a different thread.

I guesss it isn't your turn with the brain cell tonight.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Emma B
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 07:50 PM

Roger is a 'new' guest whose attitudes and speech patterns are strangely familiar from previous incarnations.

I had hoped that discussion amongst members, however diverse and conflicting our opinions, might have continued a little longer without mudcat's resident 'troll'

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Lox
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 07:55 PM

Oh and by the way Roger (sam ... helen ... whatever ...),

if you do intend to try and pass yourself off as a new guest, at least try to disguise your writing style a little.

Though I will say thanks for making me laugh.

This is why the BNP has spent the previous 30 years as a laughing stock.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: ButterandCheese
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 08:26 PM

Guest Roger, I'm new to this, but even I found the original of that post while looking for something else.....I found the original to be pathetic and a bit sad, your's doesn't change my opinion.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: jeddy
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 08:33 PM

thanks for the link em, i understand that we have deportations now, but what i would like to know is if and when a migrant or assylum seeker breaks are laws, some of which even i have distain for, why do we still pay for their prison stay?
i mean if we want to save money why not just deport them straight after trial? of course this might lead to failiures to ensure justice.

i can see why alot of people speaking a foriegn langauge would want to live close to each other, saftey in numbers, easy communication, shared values.
however what does annoy me is when someone (any nationality) lives in a country long enough to have brought up kids still cannot understand the native langauge of that country, or at least not seem to be making an effort.


i am really sad to see yet another thread be brought down by people who do not wish to disscuss things but want to argue that they know best.
come on, isn't this what we are trying to get past?
should we be trying to out the 'facts' as everyone knows them and to actually expand on knowledge and truth?

i don't mind starting by saying that i thought i was very open minded...until i came on here and discovered alot of the things i thought i knew about immigration and facism, were completely false.
i have learnt alot by reading informative posts that have been written with as little emotion as possible.
i have discovered things about myself that i am unhappy with.

when unsecure people discover this, they stick their heads in the sand and will argue until the ending of the world.
being secure enough to say, i was wrong, you have changed my mind..thankyou, is much more freeing.

so, i cannot name you all, but thanks for educating me in a way that i don't find boring or patronising.


take care all

jade x x x x x

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: GUEST,Roger in Sheffield
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 08:34 PM

I quoted the words of a member who can tie any of you lot in bloody knots, and he's British !

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: ButterandCheese
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 08:57 PM

no, Roger the Dodger, you cut and pasted your own words from on thread to another, showing a complete lack of originality, which is the hallmark of the BNP....and British? a traitor to Britain is more like it.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Emma B
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 09:06 PM

remember

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: ButterandCheese
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 09:08 PM

Just putting him in his place, the little snot...now he is forgotten

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Joe Offer
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 10:32 PM

I've heard racism describe as America's "original sin," and I think there's truth in that. Once upon a time, I thought that America was racist, and the rest of the world not so much so.

Then I lived in Berlin in 1972-73, and I found that Berliners hated the southern Europeans they called "Turks" (no matter what country they came from), and they worried about the "Turks" taking jobs from taxpaying Germans - although the southern Europeans did jobs that native Berliners didn't want to do, I guess I could understand German workers worrying about losing jobs in a recession while "Turks" were still employed. Much of the attitude about "Turks" was racism, but part was a legitimate worry about instability of employment that may (or may not) have been caused by immigrants.

I went to England in 2002, and I always had thought that England was the home of noble, liberal thinking. My preconceptions were shattered from the moment I arrived at Heathrow and found that a good number of the immigration and customs officials were foreign-born, just like in the United States. I found that London was the most ethnically diverse city I have ever encountered. But all was not well - I found working-class, UK-born Londoners who were resentful of the presence of foreigners. Part of their response was indeed racist, and part was legitimate worry about the threat to their employment in hard times.

So, the BNP has capitalized on these legitimate fears (which are admittedly laced with racism). The talk show hosts in the US capitalize on the same fears (which are also laced with racism). Because the BNP and the US talk show hosts are fascist, we liberals tend to discount the fears (and the racism) of the masses, and that's a dangerous thing. Like it or not, we liberals are guilty of elitism, because we have failed to listen to the concerns of the working people. As a result, the fascists have found our Achilles heel.

We'd better take heed.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 11:32 PM

Ignorance is voluntary, not in any way admirable or to be pandered to.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: jeddy
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 11:32 PM

i couldn't agree with you more joe. we have forgotten how to listen to each other, no matter what class we are in.

we think of ourselves in catagories, us and them.
us, we think and feel one way, them don't think or feel anything about us at all.
so many issues affect us all, no matter what we have or what we were born into.
why is it so hard to imagine that others have the same needs and wants as we do?
joe i am sorry if you had a hard time in the UK, i assume you came as a tourist? why should any person visitor or migrant, feel unwanted unless they have behaved in a way that caused offence?

i hated it when we felt like that and we were only in wales. let alone if i had spent a huge amount of money and travelling time getting to somewhere that i thought would be great fun and welcoming.

onto the subject of people feeling threatened by migrant workers, are they being paid less? so the bosses want to employ them first to save on costs?

i can't rememebr who and i am too damn lazy to find out, made a good point about the worlds companies can relocate to any country where the overheads are cheaper, and people complain when they cannot follow the work.
i have said it before but it is not the workers fault that they are working (if this is true) for less than the locals would, because i assume that even though it is less to us, it is obviously more money to them.
why blame them? it is easier to blame and intimidate them than it is to tackle the real culprits.. the bosses... the government.. the EU.

so maybe before we shout about the wages or that we think migrants are nicking the jobs and undercutting the local workforce, maybe we should try to see the bigger picture?
they are simply people trying to improve their lot in life.

how many of us when buying a new car go for one step up from what we had?
it is the same thing just a bigger scale.
i understand the fear, especially when you live in one of the high immigrant areas, that this country is being taken over, and that you are slowly being pushed out, again you have to look at the bigger picture.

ok i am giong before i reapeat myself too much and end up confusing my poor tiny brain.

take care all

jade x x x x

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Joe Offer
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 11:49 PM

People are afraid of losing their jobs and homes and personal safety, Richard. Those fears may be irrational and unfounded, but they need to be answered nonetheless. If you are unwilling to give a sympathetic answer, don't blame the "unwashed masses" for listening to the BNP.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 03:05 AM

Royston, can you not challenge me without being abusive?
Am I not always polite to you?
You describe me as "talking shit" and my posts as "fantasies" from my "imagination."
This response is what I said at the start would keep me and others away.
Foolishly, I thought it safe to make simple statements of fact, but no.

You challenged me on two statements.
One was that current levels of immigration are unprecedented in our country's history.
I note that you have dropped that challenge.
I was right and you wrong.
An acknowledgement would be nice.
(I would say that your ignorance of such a fundamental fact undermines your credibility on this subject)

The second was that England is about (meaning near to being) the most densely populated nation on Earth.
This (impeccable) source gives the density for England as 398 per square km last year, and increasing.http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmhansrd/cm090720/text/90720w0078.htm

Unless you can list a large number of comparable countries ahead of us,(I have already given Bangla Desh and S.Korea), then my statement stands as a reasonable description of the hard evidence.
No shit.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Gervase
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 03:30 AM

'Sam Hudson' seems to have reappeared on Facebook, posting more abusive and threatening messages. I've reported and blocked him/her there, but it's a shame the same can't be done here - if there is anything posted on livejournal about Keith I very much doubt that it comes from the people SamH claims.
Personally I think immigration is a legitimate concern for anyone, but because of the way it has been hijacked by neo-Nazi parties, the facts are crucial. People vote BNP because of a perception rather than any hard evidence or tested policy, and they need to be swayed by irrefutable evidence.
As Joe says, people are afraid for their jobs and their physical safety. Yes, we know those fears are misplaced, but it does the voice of reason no favours if anyone merely mentioning them is met with abuse and allegations of dishonesty. Keith is not a racist or a fascist - he is merely articulating what I imagine a huge number of people in Britain feel. If that is simply shouted down and written off as racism or ignorance then the battle against the BNP is probably lost.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 03:36 AM

And those will of course be a fake Royston and a fake ButterandCheese on LiveJournal - just as SamH (then a member, but who now appears to have dropped his cookie) threatened to me by PM.

Is it any wonder that people cannot and will not take the BNP and its supporters seriously when that is the way they conduct themselves?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: theleveller
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 03:36 AM

I've just heard on the news today that Fuehrer Griffin had admitted that his loathsome little party's future is in jeopardy as a result of the opposition that has been generated following their EU election wins. So well done everyone - looks like we're winning the battle against these fasists.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 03:50 AM

Keith: even if immigration were a net disbenefit to the UK (which I would deny) the BNP's policies on it are based on racial discrimination, pure and simple.

Look at the list of places from which Griffin proposed to ban all future immigration. Have any of them got a substantial white population (other than an invading oppressor order)?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 03:59 AM

The good news - even from the far-right "Times"

Although to be fair I suppose the Times would oppose the BNP since the BNP if elected and if doing as promised would impose "British values" on the Times against its foreign owner, and since the dirigiste economic proposals of the BNP would be contrary to Murdoch's wholly laissez-faire wishes.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Joe Offer
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 04:03 AM

"Sam H" - you are not welcome to post at Mudcat because you have posted under a number of identities. If you can't be honest about who you are, we don't want to hear from you at all.

-Joe Offer, Forum Moderator-

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 04:04 AM

Richard, why on earth do you assume that I am in any way supporting BNP policies???????????

Re Sam, I ignored his shit for the shit it is.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 04:05 AM

Blimey Joe, you are up early today!

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Bryn Pugh
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 04:34 AM

For the most part this is an excellent thread - thank you, Emma.

I posted in a previous BNP thread that I was thinking of discarding my Croes Celtaidd, as these are advertised for sale on the BNP marketing site. (I haven't - just got a shorter chain so the Croes Celtaidd is more evident than previously).

To hear that statues of Owain Glyn Dwr are being dished out defies belief.

I am glad that the BNP is to appear on the gawping-box. Perhaps the oxygen of publicity will be another nail in its coffin.

I too read in today's "Times" that the BNP is on the bones of its arse. Long may this continue.

Love to all from Erica and Bryn

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 04:36 AM

Keith,

I haven't dropped the challenge on "unprecedented". You are ignoring it. I have asked you to provide evidence that supports your "unprecedented" statement. I can find no evidence. You need to prove your statements, not me.

I actually over-estimated you, believe it or not. I thought that you had the sense to compare like with like figures but I was even wrong about that.

You take the density for England, which is not a "state" or politically organised "country" and you start to compare it with other whole countries. And you wonder why you piss me off?

England, as a region of the UK, contains some major conurbations - London, Midlands, Manchester/Liverpool, Leeds/Bradford - think of them as the "greater" areas of those cities. FFS, over 10% of the UK population lives in Greater London alone. I have to go to work now but for starters I went HERE and found that about 11,000,000 live in the conurbations. That's a heck of a lot of people and it makes the rest of the land-mass pretty bloody empty, you fool.

If you want to look at regions then, taking your fatuous French comparison, you should compare the "England" figure with, say, five French arondissements that include the cities Paris, Marseille, Lyons, Toulouse and Nice.

Your claims are unproven. Your use of figures amounts to lying.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 04:44 AM

The reason, Keith, is that I have not yet seen any significant distinction between your views on immigration and those of the BNP.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 04:55 AM

Richard, that is an outrageous slur.
I challenge and defy you to find any post of mine to justify that insult.

Royston, you have now called me fool and liar.
I posted about England. My post was accurate.Your reply is digusting.

And you still deny that current immigration levels are unprecedented?
That IS foolish.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 05:08 AM

Royston, this article gives all the ONS statistics to support the headline "Record Immigration sees UK poulation soar."
"Record" in this context means unprecedented.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1567068/Record-immigration-sees-UK-population-soar.html

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 05:25 AM

Royston, I thought you might be interested in this headline.
England is most crowded country in Europe
England has become the most crowded major nation in Europe, official figures have revealed.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/2967374/England-is-most-crowded-country-in-Europe.html

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 05:26 AM

Guest Sam H - go back and read my post and you will see how. Perhaps I should copy your PMs (if you are the same Sam H) over here. I had done you the courtesy of treating your PMs as not for entire copying, but I am content to abandon that (and reserve the right to do so if necessary).

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 05:27 AM

Ooh! the deletion of Guest Sam H's last post gave me the 100!

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 05:30 AM

Well, Keith, if your views on immigration are not the same as those of the BNP how do they differ?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 05:35 AM

1. The Torygraph is not necessarily the best source of fact, and the article betrays an obvious spin.

2. However, buried in it: -

"Officials said the higher immigration figures over the next five year took account of the huge influx of workers from eastern Europe."

3. So, Keith, you plan to change EU law how?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 05:41 AM

My views on immigration are broadly represented by the cross party (MAINSTREAM parties) group of elected parliamentarians called Balanced Migration.
http://www.balancedmigration.com/

That is a million miles from the racist policies of BNP.

Now, unless you can substantiate your disgusting insult, I hope you will do the decent thing and withdraw the statement and apologise.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 05:46 AM

Keith,

In spite of everything, I still overestimated you.

Your telegraph article about "record" immigration contains no support for its own claim, or yours. The "record" or "unprecedented" nature of immigration remains an unsupported throwaway comment.

The article is in any event 2 years old and whatever rate of immigration existed at the time, existed at the height of the economic bubble. We all know that since then a lot of migrant east european citizens have returned home and the article itself specifices that it is that group which was responsible for any notable increase.

Look HERE for some recent home office figures and you will see that the total number of work permit entrants was down 12% on 2008 figures, let alone 2007 figures or earlier, when things were booming.

And, knowing the lies that are spouted about asylum, note that 72% of asylum claims were refused in Q2 2009. Hardly a tidal wave there.

The Telegraph article about "English" population density is as mendacious and spurious as you are. As I have already said, you need to compare eggs with eggs. If you want to compare "England" (a region of a country) then compare it with comparable regions of comparable countries. To compare a region with a whole country is to lie, to distort or just to be plain stupid. You choose.

And you still miss the point. The way to deal with an influx of working taxpayers that need public services is, duh!, to provide more public services! It really is that simple.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 05:47 AM

Richard,
1. The facts in the article are impeccable ONS statistics.Which are you challenging?
2. Yes I know. Your point?
3. I was only asked to verify my claim that levels are unprecedented.
In this atmosphere I am going to stick to facts.

Now withdraw your insult and apologise please.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 05:52 AM

Royston, I made it clear that by current levels I meant "10-15years"
The ONS figures quoted give figures within that timescale.
I find no period in history with higher figures.
I defy you to find any.

I am not missing or making any point, just stating facts that you keep challenging.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 05:54 AM

Keith,

Learn to read. The article only contains ONS statistics about total population growth. The biggest drive in population growth is the birth rate, not immigration. The article contains no data whatever to suggest or prove that there is "record" immigration. It contains no data about overall immigration rates in 2007 or earlier. Therefore it contains no data to support contemporary immigration being at "record" or "unprecedented" levels. That claim is simply spun out of an unrelated dataset.

Refer to my comments about how the press make you think you know something in the Sharia Law thread.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 05:58 AM

Keith,

in response to your 05:52

The 10-15 year projection is of TOTAL POPULATION NUMBER

It is not a graph or dataset or projection about immigration rates.

THERE IS NO COMPARATIVE IMMIGRATION DATA IN THAT ARTICLE.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 06:01 AM

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/nugget.asp?id=260
Here are the official immigration statistics.
I can find no period with higher figures and nor can you.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 06:32 AM

Keith, it's a ten year spread. I specifically suggested that immigration was probably higher in the 1935-1945 period and in the 50's / '60s baby and immigration booms. If you restrict the time period enough then you can make anything a "record".

The point is that you claimed we are in a "record" or "unprecedented" era of immigration now. The telegraph article, which was a distortion and which you mis-read, is a two years old set of lies.

Now, even the two year old ONS figures you've found show that in the years 1998-2007, the peak immigration rate was in 2004. In 2007, when the Telepgraph wrote their helpful article, the rate was lower than in 2004. So whichever you slice it the Telegraph were lying when they claimed a "record" level in 2007 and you are grossly incorrect to be referring to the same fallacious claim in 2009.

And the wider point is that if you had come here and said that you were worried about what all the facts prove are sharply falling immigration rates in 2009 as compared to 2004-2007 and a large-scale return of migrant workers to their home countries, then we could have had an honest discussion.

However you came here with a load of out-of-date hysteria, mis-understood (I suspect deliberately) data, and you assert that this should be the basis of an adult debate?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: theleveller
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 06:44 AM

To base an argument for or against immigration on numbers alone is missing an important factor – population age. The UK population is ageing rapidly; a third of us will be over 55 by 2025. With a declining birthrate from the late 80s to the early 2000s and an increase in women waiting until their 30s and 40s to have children, this poses problems. Who will look after us in our old age? Who will run our essential services? Who will fill the skills gap that we are already experiencing?

Here's a section from a BBC article:
"In a dramatic and unprecedented demographic shift the number of young people is dwindling while the older sector of the population rapidly expands.

The underlying cause is that we are living longer and having fewer children - well below the replacement rate of 2.2 per woman - but the size of the baby boomer generation, who are just starting to retire, is accelerating the trend.

By 2014, projections suggest, over-65-year-olds will overtake the under-16s.

And by 2025, the number of over-60s will have passed the under-25s for the first time. "

For me, the answer is obvious: we need immigrants. Anyone have a better answer?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 07:04 AM

As an aside....
http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/News/DailyBulletin/941304/Royal-British-Legion-rethinks-BNP-donation/0B210C745B16A32205A3D414589B48

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 07:54 AM

I posted about the current 10-15 year period.
I said the level is unprecedented.
That was true.
I am sorry that you do not approve of the period I chose.

I posted about England.
I said it was about the most densely populated country.
That was true.
I am sorry you do not approve of the country I chose.

I have posted no views about immigration, just those facts.
What I got back was hysterical abuse.
I have been called fool, liar, fantasist and accused of having BNP's racist views on immigration even though I expressed none.

I was a fool, but only for thinking it possible to hold a rational debate on immigration with people like you.

Have this thread to yourselves then.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 08:23 AM

We may be misunderstanding each other on the time period thing.
You said " I specifically suggested that immigration was probably higher in the 1935-1945 period "
If you mean higher than now or any time in the last 15 years then you are wrong.
For someone with such strong views to be so ill informed is amazing to me.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 08:46 AM

I do not immediately see anything on the "Balanced Migration" page to which you refer, Keith, that sets out policies, although I do see a set of scare stories.

What are the policies of that group, and how do they differ from those of the BNP?

And how do you propose to change or disapply EU law so as to exclude Eastern European labour?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 08:51 AM

Richard, I am not debating immigration with you.
Balanced Migration's agenda is easy enough to find.
The MPs who form it would be grossly insulted at the BNP link you seek to make.
Beware of libelling yourself.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 09:00 AM

Here are some facts:

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?ID=950


Net migration last year fell below natural population growth for the first time for a very long time. Ever since 2007 (the date of the Torygraph article you cite) net immigration has been substantially below the projections you feared.



In fact, as of 28th August this year http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/News-By-Industry/Services/Travel/Visa-Power/Net-migration-to-UK-falls-to-lowest-in-five
And before you say "Oh, the Times of India" - it's actually from a Reuters feed.

Come on Keith - tell me how your immigration policy differs from the BNP's. I'll start by assuming you are not planning to sink ships, or throw people out of aeroplanes somewhere over Africa.

Right now, all I see from you on the point is that you don't want Johnny Foreigner here.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 09:07 AM

Richard, you were able to tell me that my views were the same as BNP, without me even expressing them.

That was an unpleasant lie for which you have not apologised.

I have directed you to an organisation that reflects my views.

I have had enough abuse and false accusations here.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 09:10 AM

Here's what the border agency says.


So that's settled then: the BNP immigration policy is based on untruth and racialism. On what else do they assert that they have any sensible policies?

Have you noticed that on their websites even their supporters don't like thier policies for a dirigiste economy (curiously, the point at which I might have the most interest in them if I thought them capable).

What about national service? The idea that you can take a bunch of idle thugs into the army for a year or so, and turn them into a bunch of fit active thugs with automatic weapons who will be the only people who can vote? Yes, I can see that one working. Not.

Or the Heath Service - the BNP will repatriate migrants - so removing mostly fit young people with no need for long-term services, at the same time as getting rid of piles of doctors and nurses. Not very convincing.

Any more for any more?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 09:14 AM

Here's a nice pocket comparison tool for politics

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 09:21 AM

Might I intervene to suggest that the use of 'Torygraph' for 'The Daily Telegraph' is one of those facetious cliches more liable to undermine than support an argument? It strikes me always as one of Private Eye's less felicitous coinages: tendentious and self-righteous, assuming a sort of knee·jerk shared leftiness among all 'right-thinking' contributors to the thread which might well, as I say, alienate as many as it will persuade in support.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 09:26 AM

Oh, incidentally, over on the fake mudcat Sam Hudson is announcing his victory in debate against ButterandCheese. ROTFLMAO

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 10:01 AM

Richard Bridge. "nice pocket comparison tool for politics"

Here's the BNP policy on capital punishment, and a finer example of newspeak has not come my way all afternoon. "Restoration of capital punishment for paedophiles, terrorists and murderers as an option for judges in cases where their guilt is proven beyond dispute"

So presumably anyone who's not found guilty beyond dispute (Is this the same as beyond all reasonable doubt, and if it is why can't they say so?) will just face a jail sentence ?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 10:07 AM

keith, how can you continue to be so dense. You haven't proven anything about England's relative pop density because you haven't managed to make a like for like comparison. You've compared a region of the UK with a set of entire countries and to do so is meaningless.

You claimed that we were now experiencing record immigration levels and when you were put to proof you came up with a two year old article with data about total population number, not immigration. All the actual evidence about immigration blows you out of the water on 2007 as well as 2009 grounds.

I still suspect immigration was greater 35-45 and Windrush era but, as I said, I can't find data. What I know, I assert as fact. What I don't know I propose as a theory, suspicion, feeling etc. You would do well to learn and read better in future.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Emma B
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 10:19 AM

"Formed in 1982, it (the BNP) was, in its early years, very similar to the NF in its ideas, policies and support. From the late 1990s onwards, however, the party embarked on a programme of "modernisation" under its new leader, Nick Griffin.

Learning from the successes of French Front National, the party tried to give up its skinhead image, swapping bovver boots for sober suits.

How genuine the conversion has been may be gauged by the party's constitution which is still, and I quote from it, "wholly opposed to any form of racial integration between British and non-European peoples" and believes in restoring "the overwhelmingly white make up of the British population that existed in Britain prior to 1948".


While one might rightly be cynical about the rebranding of the BNP, what has indubitably changed is the nature of its support.

During June's Euro elections, the polling organisation YouGov conducted a survey of about 32,000 voters, including more than 1,100 BNP supporters.
About half the BNP voters, YouGov found, were out-and-out racists, many of whom would probably have supported the party in its pre-modernization days

But they've been joined by a swath of new supporters whose hostility towards immigrants is shaped less by old-fashioned racism than by a new-fangled sense of fear and insecurity. Many are traditional Labour supporters who now feel abandoned by the political mainstream, anxious about their future

Little will sway the views of the hard-line racists, YouGov's Peter Kellner believes. But those drawn to the BNP because they have become alienated from the mainstream political process should not simply be dismissed as bigots by the mainstream.
It is the failure to engage with them, and with their fears and concerns, that helped pave their way to the far right."

Kenan Malik - discussing the decision to include the BNP on the panel of Question Time
full article

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 10:34 AM

EmmaB, Jeddy and Joe,

You have all made similar points about how to deal with the disaffected.

I have posted here on many occasions that the bases of progressive social policies should be:

Wage depression - ruthlessly enforce a fair minimum wage so that all workers receive the same minimum protection.

Social housing - build more of it.

Schools - build more of them

Hospitals...and so on.

The answer is not for working folk to start falling on each other like dogs in an effort to tear out what they believe is the best deal for themselves at the expense of the wider community. That is what BNP politics are: greed, selfishness, entitlement and hatred of "them", "the others" etc.

There can never be any toleration of people who actually believe that the way to improve a society is, in effect, to have a 'cull' - whether that be extermination or transportation.

I and people like me are campaigning for that sort of political dialogue but it justs get harder and harder to get past the Keith's of this world who have just wilfully decided that we are "swamped", "flooded", "deluged" etc etc, by a "tidal wave" of "unprecedented" and "unnecessary" or "unjustified" immigrants that are "crowding" this scepted isle, blah blah blah.

As you can all see, it doesn't matter how much evidence piles up against them, they just won't change the tape that runs on a loop in their head. Ultimately it is pointless and you just have to leave them behind.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 10:49 AM

Hello Sam, you great stupid gobshite. You are probably too thick to realise this, but it is a principle of British law that, before a person can be convicted, their guilt has to be proven beyond reasonable doubt. IE., there is no such thing as two classes of sentence depending on how convinced the jury is about the accused's guilt. Obviously the BNP are planning to dismantle this crucial pillar of the British legal system without telling anyone.

Unlike many prominent members of the BNP and other assorted detritus of the far right, neither I nor anyone I know, has ever murdered anyone, or committed an act of paedophilia, or blown up a pub or a supermarket out of a disliking for the clientele. (As a matter of fact, nobody I know has ever blown up a pub or a supermarket, full stop.)

You keep some very strange company there Sam. Bet you don't half feel at home.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Emma B
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 11:16 AM

Government figures published in Agust show that net migration to the UK dropped by 44% in 2008.

The Institute for Public Policy Research highlights the fact that the drop is largely explained by rapid increases in the emigration of non-British citizens from the UK – up 50% in 2008.
This trend is particularly marked for migrants from new EU member states – net migration from these countries was just 14,000 in 2008, down from a peak of over 80,000 in 2007.

There is strong evidence that migration responds to economic conditions – people come to the UK when there are jobs, and leave when there aren't.

Ippr's Head of Migration, Tim Finch said: "ippr has pointed out for some time that migration flows go in cycles, and these latest figures for 2008 indicate that after a number of years in which net migration was high, it is now declining sharply – almost certainly because of a combination of the economic downturn, the short term nature of much migration from new EU countries, and the impact of stronger controls and management put in place by the government.

"There has been a lot of irresponsible scaremongering about immigration in recent years which was based on the false assumption that high net migration into the UK was inevitable for years to come.

As our recent report on re-migration showed, migration flows go both ways and we now need to be thinking about how our managed migration systems can continue to attract and retain the migrants we need to help our economy to recover and grow."

statistics taken from Office for National Statistics Migration Statistics Quarterly Report, August 2009, available at : http://www.statistics.gov.uk/statbase/Product.asp?vlnk=15230


Unforunately all too many people believe the scare 'statistics' of the Daily Mail that 'prove' we are "swamped", "flooded", "deluged" etc etc, by a "tidal wave" of "unprecedented" and "unnecessary" or "unjustified" immigrants that are "crowding" this scepted isle,


For example, although the largest numbers of immigrants to the EU in 2006 were recorded in Spain, Germany and United Kingdom among these countries only Spain also had high immigration relative to its population size.

The highest rate of immigration was, in fact, recorded in Luxembourg, followed by Ireland, Cyprus and Spain.
These four countries had significantly higher rates compared with other Member States, while for Germany and the United Kingdom, immigration per 1000 inhabitants was close to the EU-27 average.

Eurostat, 'Recent migration trends: citizens of EU-27 Member States become ever more mobile while EU remains attractive to non-EU citizens'.

So in reality the immigration rate for the UK is around the EU average; in other words a global – or at least European – phenomenon.

To also discover how papers like The Daily Mail use misleading crime stats to make readers frightened of foreigners and falsely claim the NHS is about to treat "A million failed asylum seekers" check out Mail Watch

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 11:19 AM

There's no point answering Sam H, the post will be deleted and then it will make even less than sense than at present, if you can imagine such a thing.

But to expand my own argument, it is simple.

Stop all scroungers - including the home-grown scroungers who vote BNP because they reckon that as soon as the foreigners are in the ovens then their own incapacity benefit will be 50k a year and they'll get a council penthouse.

Make damn sure that all employers pay at least a fair minimum wage to all workers. That is TAXPAYING workers.

Make sure that all taxpaying workers pay a fair and progressive income or other tax.

Then we can start really delivering proper social provision to the taxpaying and or needy citizens of this great nation regardless of the colour of their skin or their original birthplace.

If it works in most of the rest of Europe (Germany, Scandinavia, Netherlands, France -OK, not sure about France- and Spain) then why should we be so stupid as to not get the message?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 11:21 AM

To Keith A:

Everything that Emma said at 11:16.

Maybe one of these days we might actually flush you all the way around the bend.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 11:50 AM

Emma, please view the alternative views on the same figures by this cross party group of MPs.
http://www.balancedmigration.com/pressreleases/Commentonipprre-migrationreport.pdf
http://www.balancedmigration.com/pressreleases/CommentonONSdata27August2009.pdf

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 12:14 PM

Royston, you have now added "dense" to the list of insults.
I might take that as a joke had you not already called me shit talker, fool, fantasist and liar.
I will not debate with such an abusive, foulmouthed protagonist but if you must keep challenging those two facts I will keep replying.

BBC has done the research on immigration levels. Figures are here.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/uk/2002/race/short_history_of_immigration.stm

Your other argument is just that you do not regard Enland as a country.
Everyone else does, including ONS.
It is the country I live in and where I experience the overcrowding of services and environmental degradation.
It is also the country where the overwhelming majority of immigrants to Britain choose to settle.
Do you consider Scotland a country?
If not, please try and convince a Scot.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: ButterandCheese
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 12:48 PM

Please do not feed the troll

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 01:07 PM

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40833000/jpg/_40833669_nicholas_soames_bbc_203.jpg

Talk about a swelling population!

Keith, you need to re-check the facts. I gave you the links. Net immigration is not the threat that you said it was.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 01:11 PM

Oh just go and do one Keith.

Your latest URL, which you probably read as carefully as all the others still has no comparative data. Just a sprinkling of random numbers - example: after the war 157,000 poles settled here. It gives no year on year data that we can compare with current data. That was in any event just a side-thought on my part. The substance of our dispute, as I said from the outset, is that we are not experiencing "record" or "unprecedented" immigration of any sort, and that has been proven by me and by others.

England is no more an adminstrative country than is Kent or Essex or Hertfordshire. The ONS has stats for those as well. To make a comparison you have to compare like for like and when you compare administrative countries then GB is not "about the most densely populated..." which was your ridiculous claim. Even England doesn't meet that claim but to compare it with the whole of France, as you did, is fatuous in the extreme and serves only to boost your paranoia and that of certain others.

Here's an example of like for like. Greater London density: 4,761/km2 as opposed to Paris at 20,164/km2 - that's 5 times the population density of London.

Or you could compare UK / France as I did earlier.

Basically all your assertions about immigration are shown to be false and I don't much care whether you or Sam H hear the truth from me or from Emma B or from whomever.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 01:25 PM

Hells Bells, I have now plodded through most of the tendentious crap in the Balanced Migration booklet. I see one point of difference from the BNP so far - no plan for large scale emigration of previos immigrants.

What I do see is a lot of out of date (2006/7) assumptions and logical fallacies: it has all the hallmarks of an attempt to rationalise a set of wishes.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 03:58 PM

" Net immigration is not the threat that you said it was."
I said no such thing.Another false allegation from Richard.

Royston, you are wearing me down. Can we both agree on these statements and I can leave you to it.

1. Of those countries of comparable, or larger, size and population to that geo-political entity called England, only two have a higher population density than said entity.

2. The level of net immigration has dipped this year as a result of the recession. Over the previous 15 years it has been high. I and others, including the Telegraph, say that those years included "record" or "unprecedented" rates but you think there may have been a higher rate sometime around middle of 20th Century.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: ButterandCheese
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 04:07 PM

actually the myth of mass immigration is just that a myth

The latest official figures show that in the year to December 2008, net immigration to the UK was 118,000, down 44 per cent on the previous year. 512,000 people migrated to the UK and 395,000 left in 2008

-Office for National Statistics. 2009-08-27

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 04:08 PM

Sam, I find myself in a quandry, because your behavior is so objectionable. And we don't know how many individuals we are dealing with underneath the same Guest names that keep popping up. It might be helpful - if indeed you actually *care* about these thngs you comment upon - if you became a constant member and discussed these matters seriously. Of course you'll recieve flack, but you don't seem to care too much about that, so there should be no problem.

I find your behavior frustrating, because you do not engage in the discussion by making any genuine case (bar random comments about "scroungers") for those disenfranchised working class peoples, that you presume to speak for. It is deeply frustrating for me, as someone from a working-class background myself, I might sympathise with some of those complaints, if they were shown to be substantiated rather than simply the product of empty and hate-fueled propaganda promulgated by far-right politicians seeking power. I'd really like to know the truth. I don't believe that 'statistics' can answer for the degree of discontent among the working classes today. I's like to know what's going on.

Does economic migration serve the *broader economy*, but nevertheless harm the *working classes* economically and socially?

I don't personally know. But I'm discomfited enough by the continued and building murmurings amongst the working classes in particular, to feel it is an issue that needs to be addressed - with them directly, in person, by those in power.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: ButterandCheese
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 04:13 PM

The BNP no more care about the working clsses than do the major political parties, they're just using them to gain power, feeding them the lines they want hear, or should I say think they want to hearSame cynical BS time after time. The talking heads change the word and the attitude don't

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 04:16 PM

Butter & Cheese I agree.
In fact aren't they prepared for an err genocide of sorts against the very same so-called 'white trash', which are currently their meat and drink?!

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: ButterandCheese
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 04:26 PM

no working class, no disabled (mental and physical) , no non whites. I'm surprised that old chestnit Arayan Races hasn't reared it's head...but I foget, the BNP are respectable aren't they? (not)

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 04:56 PM

Keith, you have said little else!

If your memory is that bad, try these words from you "Royston, this article gives all the ONS statistics to support the headline "Record Immigration sees UK poulation soar."
"Record" in this context means unprecedented.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1567068/Record-immigration-sees-UK-population-soar.html"

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 05:09 PM

No Keith, you're still talking rot.

The figures just don't add up for you. England has about 52m people on about 130,000km2. If you look at comparable populations then you get to places like Congo, Burma, South Africa. All have very low densities. As I said at the beginning of this argument the reason for that is these places are inhabitable by humans. You do get Italy, which has 500/km2 - a lot more than "England" but as anyone knows, this is not a country bulging at the seams with people hanging onto coastal clifftops under the groaning pressure of the bloated population. The same as this country is a largely empty, green and welcoming place, as is Holland (also a greater density than England.) So your point is what?

You get S. Korea at about 48.5m people and 100,000km2; quite a lot denser than England and quite harmonious.

So no, there is just no evidence that England is more densely populated than comparable land-masses or geo-political units or whatever. If you seek to compare England with deserts, jungles and rocky mountain ranges then I will call you very much more than just stupid.

We can agree on the current immigration rate issue. We can agree that there is presently no rate of net migration that is unusual, high, unprecedented. We can agree that net migration is reducing, dramatically and that migration is not a "problem". So WTF did you start all this shit for?

We can agree that you were wrong to say there is a contemporary "record" or "unprecedented" rate, we can agree that the Telegraph were talking bollocks when they said it was a contemporary issue in 2007.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: ButterandCheese
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 05:14 PM

The Torygraph talking rubbish. What else is new?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 05:38 PM

Crow Sister,

To sustain whatever standard of life we think we have, and the one we aspire to have in our ever-extending old age, we need either a shed-load of extra taxpayers and service-providers each year or we need to all start paying a lot more of more progressive taxes and still find quite a lot of extra tax-payers each year. Year on year.

Governments need to ensure proper regulation of the labour and finance markets so that every job is a proper job. A job that has a minimum fair reward that allows each worker to participate in society to a commonly agreed minimum and reasonable standard.

If working people respond to the current laissez-faire feral capitalism by acting like bloody slavering hyena, fighting each other for the last scraps of flesh on the carcass, then all is lost. That way lies BNP politics.

Suppose the BNP took power and "kicked 'em all out". Where are our dentists, doctors, nurses, builders, agricultural workers? The "entitled" white majority have for years found "trades" to be somehow beneath their great entitled heritage. We now have several generations of illiterate dunderheads with stupid and pointless "degrees" in media science and tourism & leisure etc etc. BNP Britain is a truly terrifying place. We simply can't live without the immigrants who bring to this country a sense of diligent work and study ethic that it seems "the indigenous" have to a significant extent decided is beneath them.

I know that bloody pop density figures are ridiculous and pointless but the debate is dominated by people like Keith and The Telegraph and until we pull down their stupid totem poles of numpty facts and distorted figures, it seems we can't even approach a serious discussion about social need, social costs, social work and the issue of who on earth is going to do it (the work) and pay for it (the society)

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 05:57 PM

""If the people of the UK feel their lives are being adversly affected by the population exposion, they have every right to try to correct the problem and do it now.

Once all of your farmland is under houses it's too late.""

Pdq, it seems you don't have the capacity to understand verbal communication, so I have a suggestion you might like to try out.

Go to Google Maps, and choose the "Satellite terrain option". You will see the British Isles as seen from an orbiting satellite. Zoom in until the shape and size of the towns is just discernible.

All of that green stuff is open country. You will now be able to see for yourself just how little of that farmland is under houses.

Your population explosion is in reality,...........a damp squib!

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 06:08 PM

Thanks for the elaboration Royston, elements of what you had to say I was aware of, others I was not. But I think to be honest too many of these 'discussions' miss the essentials by presuming that everyone knows the score. I've always been a socialist but I believe in hearing out all people, and especially those who's voice may not be well represented. In a democracy the voice of the masses, must be honestly heard and addressed - whatever their feelings are founded upon. Who is going to convince them, that it isn't Johnny Foreigner (with a Polish name this time) that left them with a two week labouring job rather than full-time employment, but the results of rampant Capitalism? I feel sad for some of my peers, some got the 80's council house pay-off, some got the lower middle class aspirational loadsa-money leg up, and the rest were left to scavenge on the skeletal carcass of industry which Thatcher left them. Thatcher shattered the working classes, and the BNP is the swarm of flies left in her wake.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 06:21 PM

""To also discover how papers like The Daily Mail use misleading crime stats to make readers frightened of foreigners and falsely claim the NHS is about to treat "A million failed asylum seekers" check out Mail Watch""

Better still read the statements of Josef Goebbels. That will tell you not only HOW people can be misled with bogeyman stories, but also WHY that is a very effective political tool, and WHAT can be achieved by using it.

A very small group of thugs, led by a scruffy and insignificant house painting ex corporal managed to use it to take over most of Europe, and most of Russia.

Ring any bells?

Don T

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 09:05 PM

I don't understand how anyone can miss the fact that it is all Thatcher's fault.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: ButterandCheese
Date: 28 Sep 09 - 09:17 PM

I wouldn't give that dreadful woman that much credit, besides the problems go much further back than that

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: jeddy
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 12:51 AM

phew!!!!!

after wading through so many charts, numbers and ping ponging of surveys and stuff i am knackered. some of which i found helpful but some were labourious and confusing.

glad we have finally got back to what this thread should be, which is trying to find a way to educate people of these facts and getting them to look at the tactics for what they are.

while i have no idea how the recession came about, i do know that the government have been wasting our money for years building up to it.

NHS. (as i understand it)
hospitals closed and sold.
more managers and less staff.
more equipment but not more personel to run it.

look anywhere and you will see waste.

councils, schools, roads.. all money being wasted.

this is what the average person is worried about, the price of things going up while wages stays the same.
they worry about their job security, which as you good people have shown is misplaced.

there are so many of us who can see where the government is going wrong, why can't they?

they are paid a fortune, they didn't even have to pay for their own lightbulbs FFS, how are they supposed to relate?

this is the reason the BNP have even had a mention in the polls.

my brain hurts in frustration!!!!!!!

take care all

jade x x x x

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: theleveller
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 03:16 AM

"Once all of your farmland is under houses it's too late."

The reason more houses are needed is not becaause of immigration, it's becuase we have a population that is living longer and, as a result of social trends, there are more single person households who require accomodation. So, perhaps the answer would be compulsory euthenasia at 70 and enforced co-habitation. Hell, it makes as much sense as stopping immigration.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Gervase
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 03:17 AM

Crow Sister and Jeddy have 'got it'; it's a complex issue that can't be settled by assumptions and name-calling.
As I've said before, Keith isn't a BNP supporter or a racist or a fascist - he's just like many of us; bombarded with figures and aware of a widely-held perception that there has been more inward migration (a less emotive term than immigration perhaps) in the past decade than there was when we were younger.
If that perception is wrong, then it's not going to be shifted by accusing people of talking shit, talking rot, being fools or any number of insults. The people flinging the insults around are no doubt sincere in their beliefs, and have the facts to hand to back their arguments, but shouting at someone and belittling them is not going to help win the case. I hope, for our children's sake, that the people adopting that tack aren't teachers.
Any non-partisan outsider viewing this thread could be forgiven for seeing a couple of bombastic bullies shouting down and ridiculing someone.
But that would just be a perception, of course, and they don't count...
As an aside, instead of simply giving a link and saying, "there it is; go figure", it would help the debate hugely for those of us who are less informed if the poster could give a brief but accurate precis or summary of the link, explaining exactly why it is important.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 03:21 AM

Richard, you quoted me try to justify your falsehood.
But, I made no value judgement and expressed no emotion about any projection.
To say I expressed "fear" is a plain lie.
Your conduct towards my posts here has been beneath contempt.

Royston, this is how I will leave the population thing.

Irrefutable fact.
The ONS refers to England as a country of Britain and gives its population density as 398/sq.km. in 2009.
Irrefutable fact.
No major country on the planet except N.Korea and Bangla Desh are more crowded.

Not a false comparison.
I make no comparison.
I merely offer two facts for rational assesment by intelligent people (but please don't feel excluded Richard dear).

On the immigration rate thing I will refer again to the Telegraph.
It is not a rabble rousing tabloid, but a reputable and respected publication. It is in the mainstream of intelligent political debate in this country
It is right of centre by UK standards, but would be centre left in USA.
You can disagree and challenge what it says as I often do, but you can not just dismiss it as "bollocks".
They desctribed recent rates, from ONS figures, as record rates of immigration.
It was not challenged by ONS, government, Home Office, BBC, Guardian or anyone else I know of.
Only you.
Again, intelligent people can make up their own minds. (Richard dear, just do the best you can with whatever you have got.)

I have not expressed a view and do not intend to.
I may submit the published views of others when I get a moment.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 03:30 AM

Keith, if you cannot read and understand what you yourself have said I cannot help you.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 03:44 AM

Jeddy, the idea that "waste" of money is the cause of the recession is fallacious. As Keynes demonstrated (and the "New Deal" in the USA) government expenditure adds to economic activity. Thatcher showed us the converse, namely that taking money out of the economy reduces economic activity.

The recession's immediate cause was that borrower defaults on housing loans in effect took money out of the economic system, so that the function of banks to recycle savings into expenditure to fuel economic activity was impaired.

To go one stage further back, the unwise loan decisions were made for two reasons.

First, banks are regulated to have to hold reserves of a certain percentage of their book assets, precisely so that the probability of bank failure if too many savers want their money back at once is reduced. Creative accounting enabled the circumvention of those rules and the reation of "assets" in the form of derivatives that could as a result of small overall changes in economic conditions swing wildly in value - even to negative value.

Secondly, the remuneration structures in banks favoured employees who gambled in such derivatives over those who dealt with solid longer term investments, so the gambling bacame rife.

Both of those things were anabled by Reaganite and Thatcherite deregulation of banks and bank-like operations.

That deregulation also enabled the one-way removal of money from the host market (eg, in the case of UK banks, the UK) to foreign owners (say, in the case of HSBC, to Hong Kong and Shanghai) so creating a deflationary effect if not compensated by inward investment.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Gervase
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 03:49 AM

I know the BBC might be viewed as a right-wing organisation, but the history of migration it gives in here in the link Keith provided is interersting.

In 1945, Britain's non-white residents numbered in the low thousands. By 1970 they numbered approximately 1.4 million - a third of these children born in the United Kingdom.

That would imply that from 1945 to 1970, some 467,000 people settled in Britain - which averages a shade under 18,700 a year.

Some 83,000 immigrants from the Commonwealth settled in the UK between 1968 and 1975

So, not including when Amin was kicking out the Ugandan Asians who have now become such a central part of our economy, we were averaging just under 12,000 a year. Uganda accounted for 80,000 in 1972.
Then we fast-forward...

Between 1998 and 2000, some 45,000 people arrived from Africa, 22,700 from the Indian sub-continent, 25,000 from Asia and almost 12,000 from the Americas. Some 125,000 people were allowed to settle in the UK in 2000.

To me, and to many others, that would seem to indicate that inward migration in the past decade has reached unprecendented levels. Yes, it may now be waning, but the perception remains that immigration, for whatever reason, is higher today than it was in the past.
For some people that is a source of concern - for all sorts of reasons, many of them irrational and stoked by malevolent propaganda from the far right. But is is still an issue that needs to be addressed with care, courtesy and with facts.

If you start flinging insults you will lose people. And if you lose people like Keith and me, then you have done the BNP's job for them.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Gervase
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 03:53 AM

Oops - maths wrong there by a factor of 100 per cent!
Between 1945 and 1970 we are looking at an average of around 37,000 people a year settling in the UK. It is still hugely less than in the past decade.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: theleveller
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 03:59 AM

To form assumptions based on population numbers or density is grossly over-simplistic. A true picture can only be obtained by considering demographics, social trends, regional variations and, of course, people's needs and aspirations . Relate this all to government income and expenditure and then – and only then – can you reach a true picture of the benefits or otherwise of immigration. All the rest is simply propaganda.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 04:05 AM

Gervase,

Keith is a lost waste of space. He's just out looking for fatuous ways to justify his own preconceptions...comparing England or UK to Bangladesh. Or to deserts or jungles so that he reckons we appear "overcrowded". So I will continue to regard him with contempt. Yes Keith, you quoted some facts to support the lies you tell yourself and intelligent people decided you were an idiot.

You see once Keith stops going on about England being a bit like the Congo in terms of comparing the population densities, he - and you - are still faced with the fact that we are not "overcrowded" and we *need* immigrants.

So Keith, anything sensible to contribute?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 04:41 AM

Royston, a record rate of insults for a single post!

We do need and benefit from immigrants, but people disagree on how many.
How many would you say?
Any limit?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: GUEST,Norman Smith
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 04:42 AM

Well done Keith, you won yet another round. Keith is BRITISH. We respect you sir.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Bryn Pugh
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 05:00 AM

Sam H and Norman Smith - get back under that rickety-rackety bridge before I fetch Great Big Billy Goat Gruff to you.

What I fail to see explained in any of the BNP "literature" (for want of better term) is how it proposes to disapply the Sixth Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights which the Human Rights Act 1998 embodies :

The death penalty shall be abolished. No one shall be condemned to death or executed.

Answers on a post card to my address at Mudcat.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 05:01 AM

That would be, of course, precisely the wrong reason to respect Keith, even if he had won another round. The reason to respect him, if correct, would be for his mastery of sources and arguments, irrespective of his nationality or colour.

With that, Keith, I hope you can agree.

For the purposes of this post and this post only, I do not propose to debate the factuality or otherwise of Keith's sources or arguments.

The purpose of this post is merely to underline the racism of Guest Norman Smith and to hope that Keith will openly distance himself from it.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: theleveller
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 05:27 AM

"BNP "literature" "

Very poor quality - the print comes off when you use if for the only purpose that it merits.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Gervase
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 05:29 AM

Keith is a lost waste of space
The arrogance of that remark beggars belief. You might as well say that the majority of the British population is a lost waste of space. Survey after survey highlights perceptions of immigration and population density as matters of real concern to British voters. To dismiss anyone voicing such concerns as fatuous, foolish or unnecessary is to hand the issue to the BNP.
You may well feel satisfied at your deft command of the facts and your ability to 'destory' misconceptions, but you really do yourself and the anti-fascist cause no favours.
So, no prizes for 'hearts and minds', I'm afraid.
To address the points you make - ye, we do need immigrants. Our agricultural and health sectors would collapse without them. It's a message that needs to be put across strongly and with the facts.
'Overcrowding' is another matter. Do you know what? I really don't know what to thing aboput the issue.
I live in rural West Wales, where sheep outnumber people. Overcrowding to me is an abstract concept. If I lived in Bradford or Tower Hamlets I might feel differently. Even here in West Wales, however, I have met people who say they will vote BNP because they believe Britain is overcrowded and that no other party is seriously addressing the issue.
The BNP makes great play of claiming that white working class residents find it difficult to get social housing and that 'immigrants' find it easier. Those claims lodge in the minds of voters - people who would not necessarily vote BNP, but who might nevertheless begin to harbour a perception that there is something 'wrong' with the system. There is a pressing need to look at such claims and calmly and accurately address them, using language that anyone can understand and which does not alienate anyone who might nurse such a perception.
You will get nowhere if you stand on a soapbox and shout insults. It might make you feel good, but you'll find yourself merely preaching to the choir while the rest of the congregation has wandered off to St Nick's down the road.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 05:39 AM

"We now have several generations of illiterate dunderheads with stupid and pointless "degrees" in media science and tourism & leisure etc etc. BNP Britain is a truly terrifying place. We simply can't live without the immigrants who bring to this country a sense of diligent work and study ethic that it seems "the indigenous" have to a significant extent decided is beneath them."

Growing up during the eighties, I recall well the 'tone' of Thatcherite Britain (if not *precisely* the policies and economics generating that), I recall that there seemed to be a general devaluing of more traditional trades. Everyone was expected to 'better themselves' (whatever that really meant?) and 'aspire' (ditto). It seems to me that there was a major political PR campaign, in which the right wing press were fully complicit, to effectively undermine working peoples personal pride in their traditional trades, and engender a belief that you had to be getting 'somewhere'. In retrospect, that "somewhere" was an utterly vacuous no-where, with it's foundations in nothing of any real substance or essential worth to society.

I don't think that working class folks all just spontaneously decided that traditional trades were somehow 'beneath' them, I think it was a long-term process of brainwashing by Tory media and government, which has left us with a deficit in skilled people to fill those core roles in our society.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 05:52 AM

Norman,Sam and similar Guests, do not even try to ingratiate or associate yourselves with me.
We have nothing in common.
You are not welcome here.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 05:54 AM

No Gervase,

We're down to brass tacks here. Or chicken and egg stuff.

Sections of the British public are brainwashed with this Daily Mail / Telegraph bollocks. You can discuss and debate with some people who, when they realise that the truth is rather different to the perception, they put aside the propaganda and join in the real debate.

Sorry, Gervase, but Keith stands as an exemplar of the active instigating and propagating of the brainwashing and misinformation - he has done nothing but actively to seek and then to twist and distort information to suit his preconception or his agenda, whatever it is, and to try to package the nonsense up and sell it to others.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 06:02 AM

Blimey, I did all that by stating 3 facts!

Do you think we should have any limit to inward net migration Royston?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: theleveller
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 06:08 AM

"I don't think that working class folks all just spontaneously decided that traditional trades were somehow 'beneath' them,"

Absolutely! In most instances their jobs were destroyed, especially in the mining, steel and many manufacturing industries. For that, we can blame the likes of Thatcher, McGregor, Hesseltine etc. Even the newer coalfields have now been closed and dismantled - twice a day I pass the remnant of Gascoigne Wood in the Selby coalfields, scene of the famous 'bull-run' and subsequent police brutality during the '84 conflict. Similarly, in Hull, the docks and the fishing industry have been dismantled - no wonder we have such fertile ground for the BNP's lies to take root.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 06:40 AM

On the subject of limits on net inward migration, there are limits and yes, they are necessary.

The government introduced a points-based screening system in 2008 for visa and related work-permit applications. Every applicant has to show a case on grounds including their particular skills or their business offering being useful or necessary to the country and they are also rated on their assets and ability to support themselves, as well as family links and associations in this country. There was evidence introduced earlier in this thread I think as to the extent to which this system has resulted in better turnaround of applications and rejections, I don't have figures to hand but maybe someone else can oblige?

So the limit is not an absolute number - that would be crazy - but rather the system is intended to ensure that only qualified and necessary or beneficial applications are approved on a case-by-case basis, very many are rejected.

Now we can talk about this system and we can debate what types of application are necessary or desirable to our society or economy but there is no point framing a discussion about "uncontrolled", "unlimited" or "untrammelled" immigration; because there is no such thing. There is only controlled and regulated and restricted migration to this country.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Gervase
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 07:06 AM

From an earlier post:
it justs get harder and harder to get past the Keith's of this world who have just wilfully decided that we are "swamped", "flooded", "deluged" etc etc, by a "tidal wave" of "unprecedented" and "unnecessary" or "unjustified" immigrants that are "crowding" this scepted isle
Yes, it is hard if you see it as a wilful and deliberate attempt to misinform. I don't believe it is.
If you look at the figures provided by the BBC, which Keith first cited, you will see some raw data which has the capacity to alarm some people.
If you don't see that then you clearly don't understand how people tick. The BNP does, and it exploits that.
To counter the propaganda of the BNP people need to know a number of facts which are not easy to find:

1) how many people are arriving annually in the UK.
2) how many of those are arriving legally.
3) how many of those are arriving illegally.
4) how many are working and making a net contribution to the British economy (in what sectors and for how much).
5) how many are claiming benefits or living in social housing and are in effect dependent on the state.
6) how many people are leaving the UK annually.

I have not been able to find an accurate source for those figures. If someone can, then that would be a good start to the debate.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Gervase
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 07:44 AM

And to repeat a quote from the other BBC link analysing the rise of the BNP:
...they've been joined by a swath of new supporters whose hostility towards immigrants is shaped less by old-fashioned racism than by a new-fangled sense of fear and insecurity. Many are traditional Labour supporters who now feel abandoned by the political mainstream, anxious about their future and distrustful of any figure of authority.
Shouting at people like that and calling them names won't work.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 07:50 AM

Some of the figures you requested Grevase.The components of immigration
12. The three major components are:

Economic migration.
The present government have trebled the number of work permits issued from 43,000 in 1997 to 129,000 in 2007. Dependants are additional.
Family reunion.
The government changed the rules in June 1997 to permit marriage to be used as a means of immigration. The numbers have since risen by 50% to about 42,000 a year.
Asylum.
The government have sought to tighten the system and have made a number of improvements. However, they are still not removing as many as are rejected each year so the pool of illegal immigrants continues to grow. Applications are currently running at about 30,000 a year.
Illegal immigration
13. There are three main sources of illegal immigration - those who enter illegally on the back of a truck, visitors and students who overstay their visas, and rejected asylum seekers who the authorities fail to remove.

14. In June 2005, a government commissioned study gave a central estimate of 430,000. Migrationwatch updated this to 475,000 (Briefing Paper 11.6). In March 2009 a study by the London School of Economics suggested a central estimate of 725,000 of which 518,000 were thought to be in London. The government continue to be opposed to an amnesty - for good reasons (Briefing Paper 11.7).

The briefing papers were issued by Migration Watch.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 08:21 AM

I note that Keith has not accepted my invitation to reject one of the troll's expression of respect effected principally because Keith is British. That is somewhat disappointing.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Gervase
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 08:25 AM

Richard, are you trying to contribute something positive to this discussion or are you merely interested in point-scoring?
"Norman,Sam and similar Guests, do not even try to ingratiate or associate yourselves with me.
We have nothing in common.
You are not welcome here" says it clearly enough for me.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 08:25 AM

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford - PM
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 05:52 AM

Norman,Sam and similar Guests, do not even try to ingratiate or associate yourselves with me.
We have nothing in common.
You are not welcome here.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 08:27 AM

Richard, you are such a silly.
Bless.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 08:31 AM

Gervase, the facts are that Keith posted links to reports of allegedly "unprecedented" immigration as if they were a cause for current concern. Naturally he now says that he was not "afraid" - and I infer that to be because steely eyed lantern jawed real men never admit to feeling fear - but the only tenable readings of his consistent postings are that the alleged immigration and the reported projections were damaging and called for extraordinary measures to restrict immigration.

But in fact the reports were two years out of date and since then net inward migration has fallen by more than projected, is now below natural population growth (ie the excess of births over deaths) as a cause of total population growth and is continuing to fall.   

Additionally, he posted as if we were one of the most densely poulated areas in the world - but in fact produced a skewed comparison by weasel wording. Normally as a lawyer I would respect the talent if not integrity of a fellow weasel, but here it was both transparent and unworthy.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Gervase
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 08:58 AM

To be honest, to base an argument about population on a couple of years' figures is facile. The argument has to be based on trends. On the longer-term figures we have, the trend over the past decade has been substantially higer than for previous decades. That is what people are concerned about. The fact that the past two years have seen a net migration deficit is important, but we will need to see if that trend continues.

You may feel that the UK's population density is irrelevant. Perhaps, but this is where we have to return to perceptions. For sure, the Yorkshire dales, the Highlands of Scotland and the uplands of Wales have very few people, but the major conurbations are very densely populated, and incomers have always headed for the conurbations.
The unspoken fear of many is the "ghettoisation" of many parts of our larger cities, coupled with a perception that many immigrants appear not to wish to integrate with the existing population - particularly those coming from a very different culture (Polish and Irish incomers are harder to spot and therefore harder to point the finger at than Somalis or Afghans). In that sense, relative population densities are important to people and should not be dismissed.
However uncomfortable the subject, it should be engaged with and not avoided or pushed aside as irrelevant.

As Peter Kelner says in Kenan Malik's BBC analysis, "those drawn to the BNP because they have become alienated from the mainstream political process should not simply be dismissed as bigots by the mainstream. It is the failure to engage with them, and with their fears and concerns, that helped pave their way to the far right.
"But just as fear is driving many towards the BNP, it is also shaping much of the response to the BNP. The result is an incoherent and illiberal reaction, vacillating between demonising the BNP and pandering to its prejudices."

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Bryn Pugh
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 08:58 AM

VIth Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights :

In a Schedule to the Human Rights Act 1998.

The death penalty shall be abolished. No one shall be condemned to death or executed.

Well ?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 09:07 AM

Richard dear,
"the facts are that Keith posted links to reports of allegedly "unprecedented" immigration as if they were a cause for current concern"

Don't you remember at all?
I only posted those links because grumpy old Royston said I lied about unprecedented immigration, and I had to justify it.

Now be a good boy and say sorry for those nasty things you said about me and the troll folderols.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 09:16 AM

Some observations on the Migration Watch papers, in bold.

Economic migration.
The present government have trebled the number of work permits issued from 43,000 in 1997 to 129,000 in 2007. Dependants are additional.
Family reunion.

In the same period, UK unemployment levels fell year on year, proving that those work permits were necessary and desirable to our economy and society. As we established earlier in this thread, large numbers of migrant workers have returned home at the end of their permits or as a result of the recession

The government changed the rules in June 1997 to permit marriage to be used as a means of immigration. The numbers have since risen by 50% to about 42,000 a year.

This statement is not entirely correct and taken out of context, as it is, it is a little disingenuous and does not represent a useful discussion. In 1997, the goverment removed the "primary purpose" rule, which said that parties to a marriage had to prove that the primary purpose of the marriage was not to gain entry to the UK. This led to some contentious and allegedly inhumane situations.

Even having taken out the primary purpose rule, it remained for applicants to prove that they could provide adequate accommodation for themselves and any dependants without recourse to public funds and that they could financially support themselves and dependants without recourse to public funds.

Since 2004, new rules have been brought in to deal with sham or forced marriages.

Some more complete details are HERE on the migration watch website. Keith, if you find a website you like then please quote it more fully so as to ensure that your fact snippets don't cause people to be mislead

Asylum.
The government have sought to tighten the system and have made a number of improvements. However, they are still not removing as many as are rejected each year so the pool of illegal immigrants continues to grow. Applications are currently running at about 30,000 a year.
Illegal immigration
13. There are three main sources of illegal immigration - those who enter illegally on the back of a truck, visitors and students who overstay their visas, and rejected asylum seekers who the authorities fail to remove.

14. In June 2005, a government commissioned study gave a central estimate of 430,000. Migrationwatch updated this to 475,000 (Briefing Paper 11.6). In March 2009 a study by the London School of Economics suggested a central estimate of 725,000 of which 518,000 were thought to be in London. The government continue to be opposed to an amnesty - for good reasons (Briefing Paper 11.7).

I don't think anyone would deny that the government failures to remove failed asylum seekers or other known 'illegals' is a bad thing for everyone - notably for the illegals themselves who remain either in detention centres or on the worst margins of our society.

But I ask, what is your point? If everybody agrees about this, and believes we need to get our act together on removals.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 09:34 AM

More on the subject of Asylum;

In 2007 there were 23,000 applications for asylum, continuing a declining rate since the peak of 84,000 applications in 2002

In 2006 a new process was developed to deal with all new applications in a much quicker and efficient way (6 months from application to decision). A separate process was created to clear, by 2011 a backlog of 400k-450k applications.

The source for this is in the NAO report of earlier this year. Executive summary HERE

It gives a warts and all view of the asylum process and how removals are proving the biggest problem.

However against a backdrop of falling numbers of applicants and a lot of good, concerted effort to deal with removals it seems at this rate even Keith will be able to sleep safely at night; because the whole thing just isn't as scary as many seem to believe.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Gervase
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 09:41 AM

Thank you for those figures Royston - to my mind it's almost criminal that the Home Office hasn't got all the information readily accessible on its website for anyone to see at a glance. That one act along would help to demolish many of the BNP's arguments.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 09:42 AM

Thanks Royston.
The page was updated last April.
This was the situation then.
5. Foreign immigrants are now arriving at the rate of about ½ million a year - or nearly one a minute. Allowing for those who leave, net foreign immigration reached 333,000 in 2007.

6. Meanwhile British emigration has risen in recent years and was 96,000 in 2007. This gives a net increase for 2007 of 237,000. These current levels of immigration are 25 times higher than at any time in our history (Briefing Paper 6.1).

Unprecedented indeed!
25 times higher no less.
What would that be down to now Royston?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: jeddy
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 09:55 AM

keith,
i have no doubt you are not a supporter of the BNP or are a friend of trolls.
i understand your need to be vindicated, and to answer anything you find to be offencive to you. but please for the sake of simple minded folk like me that are reading this, let some of it go?

it isn't about figures, it is about public perception.
although facts and figures are very important, what is even more so is explaining what they mean in a way that us normal people understand.

thanks for the post richard, i am going to have to read that about three times before i can understand it, but i am grateful for you trying to explain.
it isn't that i am thick, just not up to posh words.

i know the banks are mostly to blame for the recession, but the government hasn't exactly built up a reserve of money.
i remember something about selling our gold when prices were low, because they were so desperate for funds?

see, if i was an outsider reading this, i think i would have been put off by us lot assuming i knew the facts to begin with and that i understood the situation completely.

i respect your factual brains and ways of thinking, but most of us need things spelt out abit more clearly. as does the public.

take care all

jade x x x x x

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 09:59 AM

Jade,
Yes you are right.
I will now "wind my neck in."
keith.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 11:17 AM

No need for confusion Jeddy.

Put simply, Keith is desperate to prove or persuade that we are drowning under a tidal wave of uncontrolled and unnecessary immigration.

To do this he will dredge up polemics and half truths from various sourcers and then lie about them and twist them around a lot to suit his objectives. He will find various facts and figures and mis-represent them for the same reasons.

He asks people to comment about the issues rather than the figures and then just refuses to address those issues and...guess what...goes back for another go at misrepresenting some new information.

Take the latest post. Let's assume that 2007 net arrivals were 237,000 (or even 333,000 - it doesn't matter). Keith thinks, because he read it in a migration watch polemic of April 2009, that this is 25 times greater than at any point in our history.

Yet Gervase quite rightly calculated from one of Keith's other sources (BBC) that between 1945-1970 there were on average 37,000 immigrants annually, which makes the 2007 figure either 6 times or 9 times greater than in the whole 25 years 1945-1970.

Keith gave you half the truth about marriage-related immigration policy and half the truth about asylum and work-permit entrants. You just need to ask yourself why he keeps doing this. This is what the BNP do. They insinuate things, they tell half the truth.

I don't think Keith is a BNP supporter, but he has an axe to grind about immigration. He is not someone who has been lied to and who is seeking proper information; he is someone desperate to prove - against all the facts - that there is a far greater problem around immigration than there really is. At least that is the conclusion from his actions here.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Gervase
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 11:24 AM

...which makes the 2007 figure either 6 times or 9 times greater than in the whole 25 years 1945-1970.
...which is precisely the sort of statistic that concerns people, and the BNP exploits those concerns.
I accept, though, that setting it against net unemployment and demonstrating that the majority of those people are either contributing to our net worth or have now gone home is the more nuanced and difficult element - and that's why it's a pity the figures aren't posted up as plain as a pikestaff for all to see.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 11:28 AM

And what is immigration down to now?

Annual immigration statistics for 2008 and quarterly immigration figures for April to June 2009, covering migration from Eastern Europe, asylum applications and removals and voluntary departures, were published by the Home Office on 27 August 2009.

The figures show that work applications from the eight accession countries have continued to fall in 2009. In the second quarter of this year there were 26,150 applications from workers in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia and the Czech Republic - down from 46,070 in the same period in 2008.

The number of Bulgarian and Romanians applying for accession worker cards also continues to fall. There were 580 applications in the second quarter of 2009, a fall of 43 per cent, compared to the same quarter in 2008.

The Office of National Statistics (ONS) published figures earlier the same day that show net-migration fell to 118,000 in 2008, from 209,000 in 2007, the lowest since the eight accession countries joined the EU in 2004.

In the first half of 2009, 30,435 people illegally in the United Kingdom were removed or voluntarily departed from the country, including 2,550 foreign prisoners. The latest figures also confirm that a total 67,980 people were removed or voluntarily departed in 2008.

Individuals seeking asylum in the United Kingdom has remained broadly at the same level over the past four years. It is less than a third of the level when it peaked in 2002. Applications for asylum in the second quarter of 2009 were 6,045 compared with 5,830 in quarter two 2008. The Home Office is now concluding 60 per cent of new asylum cases within six months.

Numbers reducing dramatically with magnificent progress on removals. Keith might even consider reducing his medication at this rate.

Source - UK Border Agency

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 11:34 AM

Gervase @ 11:24

I agree totally and have posted here many times that there needs to be an honest debate about the real figures, the real problems and the real reasons why we need immigration any why it is sustainable, subject to ironing out issues like refusals and removals.

People who have been fed the lies deserve the truth and deserve the opportunity to take that on board and rethink their assumptions.

But I will continue to hold in contempt any person that goes out there actively looking for lies or misrepresenting information in order to assert, reinforce and propagate the lies in order to mislead even more folk.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 12:30 PM

Gervase @ 11:24

I just want to check you didn't misunderstand my earlier post, because I could have chosen my words better;

You correctly calculated that between 1945-1970 there were an average of 37,000 immigrants each year.

That made the 2007 figure either 6 or 9 times greater than any one year 1945-1970. At least that is the correct assertion I had in my head while I was typing.

However, I wrote that 2007 was 6 or 9 times the whole period 1945-1970, which is something quite different and quite wrong. That would indeed by quite a shocking statistic.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 01:19 PM

Do you mean me Royston?
I think I preferred the insults to these insinuations.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 01:25 PM

Keith gave you half the truth about marriage-related immigration policy and half the truth about asylum and work-permit entrants. You just need to ask yourself why he keeps doing this. This is what the BNP do. They insinuate things, they tell half the truth.

Nasty insinuation and smear.
I posted the exact page part containing the figures Gervase asked for.
No selection at all.
Notice the paragraph numbers.
Here is the page http://www.migrationwatchuk.org/what-is-the-problem

Will I get an apology this time from the new no insults Royston?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: ButterandCheese
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 01:26 PM

Who tells the truth? Who tells the lies? Those are the real questions, the hard questions.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: jeddy
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 01:27 PM

thanks for being patient with me royston. like the majority of people i have no head for figures, mainly due to a teacher who made me feel stupid for getting too in front of the class doing maths when i should have been doing english.

i do not agree with misrepresenting the facts, but these figures are very easily confused. i am willing to give keith the benifit of doubt,i do wish instead of getting into willful arguments maybe we should be talking about what those figures actually mean and how to get this info out there into the public to reassure them.

i have had enough information to make me think that we are clearly not in danger of being swamped.
we are not in danger of being the minority in our own country.

you all don't have to get into the ' i am right' thing. although i understand the temptation.

name calling, on whatever side only makes who you are arguing with more likey to dig their heels in and to be more and more inflamatory back.

take care all

jade x x x x

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 01:29 PM

Paragraphs 12 to 14 posted intact.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 01:34 PM

Butter and Cheese, just look at the page I linked to.
My cut and paste started with the heading to para 12, and continued to the end of para 14.
I added "Briefing notes supplied by Migration Watch" at the bottom.

It is a lie that I selectively edited.
Now do you know who tells the truth?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: GUEST,jenny brampton
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 02:02 PM

Don... " Go to Google Maps, and choose the "Satellite terrain option". You will see the British Isles as seen from an orbiting satellite. Zoom in until the shape and size of the towns is just discernible." Google earth pictures are at least 5 years old, and out of date. Have you not noticed?

JB

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 02:03 PM

That is exactly my point Keith

On a subject about which you clearly know nothing, you go to the website of an anti-immigration website and clip a sentence that sounds good to your prejudices and your viewpoint.

You told people that "The government changed the rules in June 1997 to permit marriage to be used as a means of immigration."

When that statement is completely incorrect and you only had to go to a more factual and impartial article by a third-party adviser on the same website - that is to say you only needed (as I did) actually to read the related briefing notes - to discover that your information was a lie.

I accused you of going out on the internet looking for lies to bring back and propagate to others.

That accusation stands proven.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: ButterandCheese
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 02:08 PM

I'm not pointing the finger Keith A of Hertford, not at you, not at anyone, I'm simply asking the questions Who tells the truth? Who tells the lies?
Why should I believe you and not someone else and why should I believe someone else and not you?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 02:18 PM

B and C

Figures from the Office for National Statistics or the National Audit Office are authoritative. Likewise the UN and the OECD. This list is not exhaustive or exclusive.

Anything in the newspapers is an opinion and is tainted. You need to take it under advisement. If an article quotes sources, go and check the sources and read them thoroughly then take a view. This applies to the Telegraph as much as the Guardian. If it's in the Daily Mail or Expresss then it is never truthful.

Think tanks, pressure groups, research foundations are ALWAYS selling their own position and are never ímpartial. That said they do some good research and analysis at times and you need to examine anything they say and ignore the opinions and seek out the facts; again by diligently checking their quoted sources.

Take the immigration watch thing. It is pressure group. Keith never got the first page which is basically "Why we hate immigrants".

Subsequent briefing notes have some useful information, like the briefing note about marriage/immigration law which was written for them by a legal academic.

I am happy to take people on in their own terms of reference - like exposing the lie that Keith found by reference to another part of the same source. Generally I prefer argument based on NAO, ONS, OECD and UN data.

My sources today have been the ONS and NAO (oh, and the UK Border Agency) and I have provided all the links.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: jeddy
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 02:29 PM

thanks for mentioning the word sources.
alot of people get their info from newsparps, tv news or even friends who have read this or that.
while we may remain sceptical about the things we hear, it often sticks somewhere in our heads and after a period of time we forget our waryness and start to think of it as fact.

this is where is starts getting dangerous, if we admit to ourselves that we have got things wrong, it also means that the person who told us this stuff have got it wrong.
we cannot abide the thought of being lied to, or being taken in by liers so we discount everything else we hear, tus the head in the sand.
alot of people haven't got time to go rooting for the truth, or are like me and just can't be bothered.

so thankyou to you all for making the effort to educate me and others.

take care all

jade x x x x

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 03:15 PM

Totally off-topic, I know, but as an example of the shit we're forced to swallow every day by papers and pressure groups, remember how we all *know* that the EU legislated against straight bananas?

Well it was always bollocks. The EU set down how "Extra Class" bananas (for which traders were charging the public more money) had to be perfect examples of the species without abnormal shape or curvature. Class 1 could be a bit ragged, Class 2 a bit more shabby, Class 3...etc.

There never was a law against the poor old bananas. But eurosceptics have used it for years to bash the EU. All anyone had to do was read...Reg 2257/94

I always say to anyone; if something you read or hear really gets you wound up and pissed off, just do some research - it often turns out be untrue or not so bad.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 03:35 PM

Thank you for the admission Keith. You started off about "unprecedented immigration". If that wasn't fear, what was it?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 04:25 PM

""I note that Keith has not accepted my invitation to reject one of the troll's expression of respect effected principally because Keith is British. That is somewhat disappointing.""

Check again Richard, and I believe you will find a post in which he unequivocally rejects not just one, but ALL.

I don't think I was hallucinating......

Don T

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 04:38 PM

Thanks to EmmaB for initiating it, and other intelligent and informed contributors - including 'Devils Advocates' like Gervase - this is becoming for me, the least frustrating and most interesting and informative of the "BNP" threads to date.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 04:40 PM

""Google earth pictures are at least 5 years old, and out of date. Have you not noticed?""

Is it then your contention that in the last five years it would have been remotely possible to put more than a minute proportion of that green under houses, And, had it been possible, how come we still have a housing shortage?

Your posts started out ridiculous, and have gone downhill since. Please don't interrupt the grown-ups until you have some sensible comment.

The level of intelligence of BNP supporters is abysmal.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Emma B
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 04:44 PM

Good to have you 'on board' too Crow Sister
It's good to have an open discussion about controversial subjects

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 04:45 PM

Is no one shocked at what Royston has done?
He has falsely accused me and is using it as evidence that I am a devious BNP mole!
Anyone who cares about the truth please look back.
07.06AM gervase asks for figures.
07.50AM I post with a simple, unedited cut and paste that provided them.
The paragraphs are numbered and anyone can see that I am being honest.
Here is the page link again.
You can see why I chose paragraphs 12 to 14.
They provided the figures requested.
http://www.migrationwatchuk.org/what-is-the-problem

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: ButterandCheese
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 04:48 PM

so you've given us all these statistics, now what?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 04:50 PM

Keith,

I didn't accuse you of fasely editing anything.

I accused you of setting out to find lies or half-truths that you like the sound of and bringing those lies and half truths here in order to mislead people.

That accusation stands proven.

You went, you found lies and half truths and you brought them here.

Simple as.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: ButterandCheese
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 04:53 PM

proven..your case wouldn't stand up in court. Proven, more like your point of view

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 04:54 PM

Richard,
" You started off about "unprecedented immigration". If that wasn't fear, what was it? "

It was an observation Richard.

What was my "admission" that you thanked me for?

Thanks for that stuff about my lantern jaw and steely eyes BTW.
I did not think they showed up on my Mudcat pics.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 04:57 PM

I do not get it.
I found some figures that someone asked for, and posted them as found.
Which of those actions was wrong?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 05:00 PM

No B and C

Keith found two claims.

1. The government changed the rules in June 1997 to permit marriage to be used as a means of immigration.

That is not true. At best it is a half-truth. The real truth is even on the same website, but Keith preferred the lie.

2. That 2007 Immigration was 25 times greater than at any point in our history.

Keith repeated the 2nd lie and he was very happy about that one. But even in earlier evidence from Keith (from the BBC), we saw that the truth was that 2007 levels were at the most 6 or 9 times greater than the annual average 1945-1970.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 05:09 PM

"I accused you of setting out to find lies or half-truths that you like the sound of and bringing those lies and half truths here in order to mislead people"

Lies? The site gives sources for all the figures.
Half truths? Just the whole of paras 12,13,14.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 05:12 PM

What was wrong Keith, is that somebody asked you for facts.

You went to an anti-immigration group and you found their lies.

You didn't check the lies because you liked them, they suited you.

Then you delivered them here and, no doubt feeling proper chuffed with yourself, you presented them to others as fact.

You are wrong on so many levels.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 05:21 PM

Keith said "Norman,Sam and similar Guests, do not even try to ingratiate or associate yourselves with me.
We have nothing in common.
You are not welcome here"

I do not see that as an assertion that Keith does not wish to be respected for being British.

Is it, Keith? Is it true that on its own, being British is not ground for being respected?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 05:24 PM

Royston, I can clear this one up.
You posted
2. That 2007 Immigration was 25 times greater than at any point in our history.

Keith repeated the 2nd lie and he was very happy about that one. But even in earlier evidence from Keith (from the BBC), we saw that the truth was that 2007 levels were at the most 6 or 9 times greater than the annual average 1945-1970.


The lower BBC figure was for the year 2000 not 2007, and only accounted for asylum seekers. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/uk/2002/race/short_history_of_immigration.stm

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 05:28 PM

Yes Richard, it is true,IMO, that being British alone does not deserve respect.
Happy?

Royston, your whole complaint against me then is that you regard Migration Watch figures as lies?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Gervase
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 05:41 PM

Richard, do pipe down - you're becoming tedious and have added little of substance these past 50 posts.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 05:48 PM

Keith,

The point is a small one, but the figures aren't cleared up by your recent post. The figures are wrong and can't be cleared up. We are only talking about BBC figures 1945-1970 -v- Immigration watch's 2007 numbers.

Yes, my complaint against you is that Immigration Watch propagate a mish mash of lies and half-truths and that you fall for it and are complicit in spreading them, when it only takes 5 minutes and a simple act of will to scrutinise the claims and see them for what they are. My general complaint is that you have failed to question a lot of things that you *think* you know. You're not alone.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Azizi
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 05:59 PM

As an interested lurker on this thread, with all due respect, I think that you, Gervase, should speak for yourself (regarding your opinion as to whether Richard Bridge or anyone else has added substance to this thread).

I particularly liked Richard's 29 Sep 09 - 08:31 AM post, especially these sentences:

"Additionally, he posted as if we were one of the most densely poulated areas in the world - but in fact produced a skewed comparison by weasel wording. Normally as a lawyer I would respect the talent if not integrity of a fellow weasel, but here it was both transparent and unworthy."

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: GUEST,MBSGeorge - New web connection
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 05:59 PM

At risk of starting all the hassle against me again, I would just like to state that I have been on the receiving end of more fascism from certain contributers here because of my BNP membership than I have seen within the BNP.

If you expect people to side against the BNP try being less fascist yourselves.

Personally I am NOT racist in any way, shape, or form. I cannot and WILL not speak for others.

MBS George

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Azizi
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 06:02 PM

It's interesting that my post came at the exact same time as George's.

George, if you are "Personally...NOT racist in any way, shape, or form", why were you a candidate for a party that IS racist, and why have you not publicly disavowed yourself from any association with that party?

As a Black person, I'm more than casually interested in your response.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Lox
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 06:03 PM

"I have been on the receiving end of more fascism ..."

You mean opposing viewpoints.

You have never been on the receiving end of fascism.



"I cannot and WILL not speak for others."


Except when you represent the BNP in an election. At that point you speak for the BNP and for the people who vote for them.



All you have to do is educate yourself about the facts.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: MBSGeorge
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 06:07 PM

Azizi

Any party has to change as it grows and I believe that the good bits will stay and the not so good bits will be phased out. I was purely interested in housing, benefit, childcare and employment. None of the other parties had anything covering these and still don't.

MBS George

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Emma B
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 06:07 PM

who watches Migrationwatch?

"Oxford university students have challenged demography Professor David Coleman.
Coleman is co-founder of the anti-immigration pressure group Migration Watch, and a long-term member and sometime office-holder in the Eugenics Society and its successor the Galton Institute (thus renamed because the word eugenics, unsurprisingly, shocks).

Coleman's figures on the many millions of immigrants who might come to Britain are catchy, clever PR stuff.
They are, of course, gleefully picked up by the British National Party and by the tabloids.

The BNP's website, to "end on a cheery note", refers to "our friends at the immigration-reform think tank Migration Watch" and describes Coleman as "a very distinguished demographer whom we trust".

Migration Watch also penetrates into more respectable parts of the media. Both Coleman and his co-founder Sir Andrew Green make frequent appearances in the media, including the BBC. Green was even one of three "expert witnesses" to a parliamentary investigation into the removal of asylum seekers.

The students' aim is to bring out into the open the nature of Coleman's opinions. Coleman, until their intervention, did not refer to his membership of the Galton Institute in his media appearances on immigration. The Migration Watch website contains no mention of eugenics or its founder, Sir Francis Galton."

Migrant InfoSource

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: MBSGeorge
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 06:10 PM

Lox if you call being told where i can and cannot go within this country by certain contributers not fascism get your head read! I am a single mother and having myself and my child threatened is certainly not my idea of fun!

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 06:16 PM

At the risk of profound reductionism, it strikes me that anxieties about the commonly perceived detrimental social and economic effects of high levels of economic migration, tend far too often be automatically conflated with racism and antipathy towards people of other races.
I see this as a wrongful presumption.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 06:20 PM

Bum, I was composing a longer post, but buggered it up. Eh oh.. Bed time.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Azizi
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 06:29 PM

George, I consider your attempt to miminize what you euphemistically call the "not so good parts" of the BNP is shameful.

The BNP is a RACIST organization that is aligned with other racist organizations worldwide.

Have you not watched this YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04QolIvfQEw "Griffin + KKK Terrorist" and read this summary:

"BNP chairman Nick Griffin speaks to an audience of American Nationalists alongside convicted fraudster David Duke of the blatantly Nazi American terrorist group the KKK, who have been responsible for dozens of savage killings and hate crimes in the USA.

In his speech Nick Griffin confirms that BNP strategy is to re-package and "sell" BNP ideas to British voters. Nick Griffin confirms that, instead of using traditional far-right slogans about terror, hate, authoritarianism and violence, the new BNP strategy is to use "saleable words" like "freedom, security, identity, democracy" instead, while reassuring his (small) pro-KKK audience that the BNP's secret and real beliefs are still "your ideas too".

Nick Griffin admits that the long-term BNP goal of forcibly expelling all non-White Britons from the their homes is, for the time being, best served by "being rather more subtle" - because in the short-term, the BNP being HONEST about their real beliefs would get his party "absolutely nowhere". BNP chairman Nick Griffin dreams of a day when the BNP will "control the British broadcasting media", and when British people will (as a result) have been tricked into electing the BNP. In other words BNP chairman Nick Griffin dreams of a day when HE will control the British media, and when British people will have been tricked into electing HIM."

-snip-

Even if it were true-and I don't think it is-that "none of the other parties had anything covering housing, benefit, childcare and employment and still don't", to align yourself with such a hate full party is beyond naivete, and selfishness.

If you align yourself with racists, and support what they are doing, than you are a racist.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Lox
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 07:02 PM

"Lox if you call being told where i can and cannot go within this country by certain contributers not fascism get your head read! I am a single mother and having myself and my child threatened is certainly not my idea of fun!"


George.

I am a single parent.

I live at a confidential address because my ex partners drug dealers threatened to come and get me if I didn't give my daughter up.


Fear of actual violence is a horrific thing.


As a single parent living in inner city London and having lived in the midlands, I know for a fact that Single parents are looked after well in this country.

We are given every opportunity to change our lot and if we don't wish to we will be supported until such time as we do unconditionally.

For the record I have chosen to change my lot and I am not on income support but changing my life with superb frontline support from the state.

Its the same for all of us.

"Lox if you call being told where i can and cannot go within this country by certain contributers not fascism get your head read!"

A few empty threats from a bunch of old folkies is not fascism.


You've been shown piles of evidence about who the BNP are, including videos of the BNP leader saying we should use the Navy sink the boats of refugees in the med, as well as of him denying the holocaust and teaching the KKK how to lie and make racism look acceptable so as to fool voters.


I don't know why you are ignoring it.


There are none so deaf as wwill not heaar, nor so blind as will not see.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Azizi
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 07:13 PM

I feel the need to clarify the last sentence of my post to George:

George, when you align yourself with racists you are supporting what they do, and -in so doing- you are therefore a racist yourself.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: ButterandCheese
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 07:45 PM

Threatening someone (I don't care who it is) on the internet is so sad and so pathetic. I wonder how these people who do issue threats would stand up face to face? I may not agree with what you say, but I won't stand by and have you threatened either, no matter who you are.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: GUEST,Peace
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 09:46 PM

"Personally I am NOT racist in any way, shape, or form. I cannot and WILL not speak for others."

When you decided to run for public office as a BNP member you agreed to speak for others. That's why folks vote. They vote to have a voice. The BNP people who voted for you voted figuring you were on board with that idea.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: jeddy
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 09:49 PM

good point crow sister,
i wonder whether there would be uproar if the population of northern town had to move down south to find work, or the other way round?
if that were to happen, would people be worried about the housing? would they be worried that whoever it was that was coming in would get better wages?
would there be this paranoia that the invaders were getting all the jobs?

i would like to think the reaction would be exactly the same as they are towards the migrants.

who the fuck do you think you are coming here, taking all the housing, our benefits, our jobs. swapping parts of our towns with 'your lot'.

just to expand on an idea.

night all

jade x x x

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Gervase
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 02:24 AM

Sorry, who's being threatened here? I see Azizi and anyone who is black, homosexual, disabled or just 'different' in the UK being threatened by the neo-Nazi bile of the BNP. George, on the other hand, has merely been called a racist. Which - given the fact that she stood for election for the BNP - is probably true. No-one has threatened her.

As for lacking guts; I would like the opportunity to talk calmly and rationally with her, face to face, to find out just why she feels the need to identify with racists, and why she refuses to condemn racism and criminality within the BNP. To that end I've asked her questions that she consistently refuses to answer. That's gutless.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 03:04 AM

Royston,
I posted those figures in good faith.
You say they are lies, but you are quick to use that word.
I have only ever made to statements here, and for them you called me a liar and much else.
I said that current levels of immigration are unprecedented.
You now only dispute whether it is by 7 times or 25.
And I said England was almost the most crowded country.

You, like Migration watch, have said there should be a limit, so that can not be racist can it?
You only differ on what that limit should be.
They advocate a balance between inward and outward migration.
Is that racist?

I have found no racist statement on the site.
Have you?
Can anyone please?
http://www.migrationwatchuk.org/

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: theleveller
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 03:31 AM

"If you expect people to side against the BNP try being less fascist yourselves."

George, your futile attempts to turn the tables are truly pathetic. People are siding against the BNP and in large numbers - as your Fuehrer Griffin has admitted. And what is his solution? To offer anyone taking out life membership of the BNP a limited edition signed photograph of himself. LOL! I expect it will be a very limited edition.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 03:32 AM

Thank you Keith.

To turn now to immigration.

1.   Even if it was at unprecedented levels in mid 2007, is it not true that it is now NOT at unprecedented levels so that the projections referred to in the Telegraph article linked to are thereby undermined?

2.   Discrimination comes in two kinds, direct and indirect. Direct discrimination is (for example) "This job is for men only". THat is direct sex discrimination. Indirect discrimination is the application of a criterion that is less likely to be capable of satisfaction by the discriminee - for example "Must be capable of lifting a full barrel of beer above the head" (unless that is a genuine occupational requirement).   Therefore the statement "there are too many immigrants" is indirectly racially discriminatory in itself, and teh burden of proof that a restriction on immigration is not racially discriminatory lies on the discriminator. It is accordingly for MigrationWatch to show that it is not tending to discriminate on racial grounds.

3.   The BNP list of places that it would automatically put on a stop list is directly discriminatory.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 03:57 AM

Please read my posts more carefully Keith.

I said that we have limited and restricted immigration to this country - we have always had limited and restricted immigration - so you are wrong and you are lying when you continue to say that we need limits. We already have them.

I also explained that we now operate a points based system whereby only migrants who are (a)necessary or beneficial or (b)have family ties to this couuntry AND (c) can support themselves and their families. In that system there is no limit on total numbers, and that it is a good thing.

Do, it is a lie to say or suggest that there are no immigration controls in this country. To say we need controls is to suggest that there are none at present.

It is a lie to say that immigration is increasing, it is falling and falling dramatically.

It is a lie to keep pointing to those 2007 statistics and to claim that they indicate what is happening now and what will happen in the future.

When did I ever say that it was racist to talk about immigration and how we control or regulate it? It is only racist to say, as does the BNP, that black or brown skinned immigrants will be denied entry whilst white skinned africans (like their child-murdering friend Lambertus Nieuwhof) will be invited to join the new apartheid state in Europe - of the BNP should get power.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 03:59 AM

Richard
1 There has been a drop in net immigration this year, probably due to recession so probably temporary.
If down it is not unprecedented because it was bigger last year.
(Am I going too fast?)
It is still bigger than it was in the 50s or earlier..

2 If it is not discriminatory to say that there should be a limit, how can it be discriminatory to say if that limit has been exceeded?

3 I am not and do not defend BNP

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 04:03 AM

Royston, I have not lied.
I know that there are controls and limits.
It is just that some people think the limit should be reduced.
Migration Watch and Balanced Migration think there should be a balance.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 04:06 AM

Keith,

You really need to stay off the Migration Watch website. Do you never learn?

I said - read my posts - that they are an anti-immigration pressure group which uses lies and half truths to "prove" their own agenda.

I did not say that you would find racist comments on their website, that is the point, they use subtle lies. Evidently too subtle for you, old chap.

As Emma pointed out, the person behind Migration Watch is a senior figure in the Eugenics movement - 'Eugenics' is a belief system that says certain racial and genetic groups are inherently superior to others and that natural evolution needs help - social policies that promote the 'master' races and that limit or reduce or hold back the 'lower' races.

Hitler was a Eugenicist. It was what motivated the 'lebensborn' projects and the holocaust.

That is all you need to know about Migration Watch's agenda.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 04:40 AM

One of the things that does tend to annoy me about people who do complain a lot about immigration, is when asked:

"How do immigrants affect your life negatively?" or,
"Where do you see all these immigrants?"

They have nothing to say.

For myself I just don't see them and they don't affect my life at all - apart from at a couple of car wash set-ups (which never existed before), and a small isle at the local Tesco.

There may well be certain areas or lower income groups, which *are* more affected than others. But when I've asked those people that *I know* who grumble about immigration the above kinds of questions, I've never had a satisfactory answer.

My conclusion is that the vast majority of people who complain about immigration, have never actually been affected by it at all.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 05:00 AM

Keith:

"1 There has been a drop in net immigration this year, probably due to recession so probably temporary

But that is the point Keith. Immigration mushroomed 1997-2007 because we were, rightly or wrongly - and gawd don't we know how wrongly now - we were in the middle of the strongest economic boom (bubble) in modern history.

We needed those workers and they came, worked and paid loads of tax. It was marvellous while it lasted. Are we still going too fast for you?

That's why, in the same period we got all those immigrants, the UK unemployment figures fell every year. Because we had the jobs. Companies went on recruitment drives in Eastern Europe because there weren't enough workers in this country to fill the lower-paid agricultural or industrial or services jobs.

With the recession, obviously, migrant workers are not coming here in the same numbers and a lot are going back home. I still don't understand why you are trying to claim there is a problem which, if it existed at all, is now correcting itself with the assistance of a new points-based set of controls.

When the recession ends then I'm sure that more migrants will apply to work here and they will be assessed and allowed in if we need them and we have the jobs for them. I just don't understand you Keith.

Keith, are you content that immigration is no longer proceeding at an unprecedented rate and that is is reducing?

Do you accept that the government has introduced, in 2008, a new system that screens work permit applications to ensure that people are needed here and that they will be contributors to our society.

I am not going to continue to debate 2007 or 2004 or 1950 figures with you. Let's talk about now, today. What concerns you now?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 05:39 AM

One thing at a time.
First Professor David Coleman
In this article we get his side of the story.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23387534-hounding-of-the-don-who-dared-to-speak-out-on-migrants.do;jsessionid=9123FA5

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 05:46 AM

Not such a monster, but a world class expert in migration.
I will not ignore Migration Watch just because of him.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 06:09 AM

Keith,

I said that Migration Watch does some useful research and provides some useful briefing papers.

I pointed out that, outside of their academic work, they tell lies and half truths, and I proved that assertion by comparing a part of their polemic to a matching part of their own academic work.

I pointed out, rightly, that their founder is a Eugenicist who believes in directing human evolution by limiting the 'lower' races.

I pointed out, quite rightly, that you need to know the agenda of a person or of a group so that you can keep an accurate perspective and judgement about what they say.

Basically, you need to learn to recognise facts from opinions or polemic; because the three are blended together on the Migration Watch website.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 06:53 AM

And immigration is not now "unprecedented" - thank you for the retraction.

As of the last statistics it was still falling.

For what it's worth I have a number of clients who are either immigrants or born here to immigrant parents, and they seem just fine to me - and mostly integrated with UK foibles to the extent at least of giving alcoholic presents even though teetotal themselves for religious reasons.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 07:50 AM

Royston,
"I pointed out, rightly, that their founder is a Eugenicist who believes in directing human evolution by limiting the 'lower' races."

No he does not.
Why do you say that?
Beware of not hearing the message because you are prejudiced against the messenger.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 07:51 AM

Richard, you sound surprised that they are nice people.
What did you expect?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 08:36 AM

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1544898/Academic-hits-back-in-migration-row.html
This is a better piece and written by Coleman himself.
He is Professor of Demography at Oxford.
He answers all that stuff about eugenics, and some views on immigration that Royston would find challenging.
Here is his academic profile.
http://www.spsw.ox.ac.uk/staff/academic/profile/details/coleman.html
Not a man whose views can be dismissed.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 08:38 AM

Look I've been really patient but I don't think Keith is worth the effort.

Does anyone else think that I am being impatient with him?

Does anyone I think I need to explain in more detail why a life long member and a present fellow of the 'Galton Society' (renamed in 1988 from the 'Eugenics Society' whose founder was ) can be accurately described as an Eugenicist?

Does anyone else think I need to explain, rather than point Keith to an encyclopaedia, that Eugenics is the belief that human evolution can and should be directed by controlling 'less worthy' populations and races?

Does anyone else think that a group founded by a Eugenicist should have its opinions (not 'facts, just its opinions) questioned somewhat, rather than just taken as some kind of truth?

Does anyone think Keith will ever join in a conversation about present day immigration issues and concerns? I see no evidence of this being likely.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 08:50 AM

So you have not read linked pieces then.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 08:53 AM

Here is the relevant extract for you, but you should read it all.
I am much more puzzled about the fuss relating to my life Fellowship of the Galton Institute, formerly the Eugenics Society.

I find it difficult to believe that those behind the petition know anything about 'eugenics', or about the Institute or about me.

I suppose 'eugenics', a rather retro word little used nowadays, remains a boo-word for those looking for Dr Mengele under the bed.

Indeed I have come across 'Eugenics watch' on the web, which I commend to all afficionados of paranoia.

In it Dr Mengele features prominently. The Galton Institute does not do 'research on eugenics' and neither do I.

Four substantial demographic publications edited by me, with others, have appeared under its aegis, mostly published by Academic Press and Macmillan.

The pre-war British eugenics 'movement' was innocent of Continental excesses, although like many 'meritocratic' ideas it was afflicted by the simple-minded understanding of heredity at that time.

The Institute aims to promote knowledge of human heredity, discussion of its moral and ethical aspects and its consequences for human well-being. The academic distinction of its Council will be evident from a glance at its website http://www.galtoninstitute.org.uk/.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 09:12 AM

This is my last attempt with you Keith.

I have read them.

Facts are facts.

Conclusions and opinions even if based on facts, are also influenced by beliefs. That silly true for me, you and Coleman.

Motivation; why someone does something like say found an anti-immigration pressure group, is totally a product of beliefs and values.

I did not say coleman should be disregarded, I said that you have to put his opinions in the context of his beliefs and the same for his motivations.

If you can't grasp that concept then you will always be someone else's sock-puppet.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 09:16 AM

ugh, typing on a blackberry.

In my last post I didn't want to say

'that silly true...'

I wanted to say

'that is true...'

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 09:20 AM

Do not give up Royston.
I think that we are getting closer to some kind of co existance, though we will never agree.

You said,
"I said that you have to put his opinions in the context of his beliefs and the same for his motivations. "

I agree and I do.
Also yours.

No need to avoid an interesting site just because of Coleman's involvement. You agreed that there is not a racist statement on it anywhere.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: theleveller
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 09:26 AM

"For myself I just don't see them and they don't affect my life at all"

Well, all I can say is thank god for Polish plumbers and electricians - they don't yet seem to have mastered the British tradesman's art of teeth-sucking and prevarication.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 10:29 AM

No, Keith, not surprised at all. Merely responding to posts above, and in such response pointing out happy integration, and the fact that in my experience the potential discriminees who I knew did not seek to insist on imposing their religious or cultural values on me.

Guest Steve - my tax returns are done every year, and are none of your business - or were you trying (incorrectly) to announce that you knew my age or to threaten me (pointlessly) with being reported to HM Revenue and Customs?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: ButterandCheese
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 12:32 PM

GUEST_Steve, your comment might have more credibility if you were to join Mudcat as a member. Though, as Richard says, his and anyones financial business is none of your business...

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: jeddy
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 01:34 PM

in rural derbyshire we are not exactly surrounded by immigrants here.
our kick arse doctor is indian, and our wonderful dentist is irish.
and of course we also have the carwashers at tescos. but that is about it.

i have a story to tell you all...a few years ago the doorbell buzzed.
i opened it and got a card pushed towards me, this card said hello, i am polish and cannot speak english, i have to admit that was as far as i got. he was selling the most wonderful drawings door to door.   at first my reaction was to buy one, but thinking about it, decided that if we did, he might be round every day, so said no.

he left. no hassle, no drama.

but as we turned to come back upstairs( we live in bed) it occurred to us that maybe we should tell the authorities that he was doing door to door, in case something happened to an elderly person.

we didn't in the end, but the fact we thought of it in the first place worries me.

would we have thought that if it was an english person going door to door?......the answer.. i think we wouldn't and i am ashamed to say it.
unless of course the person looked very dodgy.

so there is my confession.

take care all

jade x x x x x

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 02:46 PM

I know the feeling Jade.
Almost certainly as innocent as can be, but whatever the nationality a stranger is a stranger.

Richard, so you expected us to be surprised that they were nice!

I must ask you, why did you ask me if I respected anyone because they were British?
Was it a cunning cross-examination to expose me if I was BNP?
Hint 1. I could have lied.
Hint 2. Even BNP don't respect everyone who is British. They have been disrespectful on this thread even.
Are you really a lawyer Richard?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 03:00 PM

Jade, You were quite right to be careful. Could be that, had said person spoke, it might have been with a broad Derbyshire accent.

Here's a story of my own. About a year ago I too answered the door. Caller handed me a card saying she was dumb and could't speak, but would I like to buy one of her drawings ? This was on Merseyside, BTW.

I didn't buy one but I had no reason to believe that she was anything but genuine. However, I'm now wondering if there's a factory somewhere printing drawings for people to hawk from door to door, claiming they've drawn them. But why the silence gag?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 03:28 PM

Or possibly to ask you to deny the principal plank of the BNP troll's thrust.

I suppose rather than find the post yourself, you want me to find the post I was responding to.

You are so silly.

Fred - yes there are and the silence is so that questions cannot be asked - well, not to get replies to.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 03:46 PM

I think I have found the principal plank Richard.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: ButterandCheese
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 04:14 PM

Fred it's not the pictures the factory prints it's those litte cards, the one the so-called hearing impaired person hands to you...it's so easy to get hold of a batch of the cards it's not funny, so, yes beware anyone like that when the come a'knockin'

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: jeddy
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 04:51 PM

ah this one was hand written, i think.

it never occured to me that it could be a scam, we have to be so careful now,though ihate being suspsious of anyone.

my last thought on the subject of immirgation.

has anyone ever known the gangs that go round frightening people to consist of migrants? i haven't.

all the trouble on the streets that i am aware of is locals.

example. in bulwell in nottingham, when someone has set fire to something they have to send two fire engines to the scene.
one to tackle the blaze while the other one looks after the first engine. otherwise the smartarse little shits have a crack at the engine that could one day save their lives.

although these gangs of kids include all colours, it is mainly kids that have been brought up here.

just an observation

take care all

jade x x x x

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Lox
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 07:46 PM

Hey - if you like the pictures and you want some then buy them.

If you don't then don't.

The whole point of such schemes is that they are about the disabled being enterprising and empowering themselves.

If it's a "scam" then you've bought a card you like - if you don't like it then you shouldn't have bought it.

It's no big deal

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 03:11 AM

Royston said,
"Does anyone think Keith will ever join in a conversation about present day immigration issues and concerns? I see no evidence of this being likely. "

Now that we have all calmed down, I think perhaps we should try.
A non racist discussion for and against balanced migration

Since the level of "debate" here may have driven away many members who would find that interesting, I propose to start a new thread.

Anyone unhappy with that?
keith.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 04:43 AM

That might be appropriate Kieth, as I think the broader 'immigration' question is a Red Herring on what is supposedly a thread about the BNP.

I think what this thread has reminded me, is the fact that the BNP *rather than* simply proposing greater restrictions on economic migration - on the grounds of it having a negative social and economic impact on the UK's poorer communities (in fact I'd still quite like to know more about this: if it's true, and if so - how it aught to be addressed politically) - are actually proposing restricting migration from specific races who they deem to 'pollute the pure English ethnic stock'.

Simply put, they only really give a crap about the colour of people's skin in the UK. And want to return that colour to pre-40's Britain by keeping out Brown people from elsewhere (all the "honourable" working-class loyalty stuff, is bullshit intended to garner votes), turfing out Brown people from elsewhere who've already settled here, and (I believe) STERILISING those Brown children born here of mixed race parentage that they can't just turf out.

These two matters, while both broadly relating to immigration, are actually quite utterly different and need strictly extricating from each other, for the broader voting public. And, the *exclusively racial agenda* of the immigration policies (which is simply another manifestation of their racial purity policies) of the BNP is something that possibly needs to be brought home far more clearly to potential BNP supporters, who might otherwise be swayed by social and economic anxieties during an economic crisis.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Bryn Pugh
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 04:49 AM

"Who watches Migration Watch ?"

Quis custodiet ipsos custodientes ?

To whom it might concern : Richard Bridge is indeed a Lawyer, and quite an eminent one at that.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 05:01 AM

Ah, Bryn, once upon a time...

But thank you.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 05:22 AM

Richard Bridge. I suspect you're right. If you can't speak you can't answer awkward questions, like 'what inspired you to draw this one'.

"Fred - yes there are and the silence is so that questions cannot be asked - well, not to get replies to."

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 05:25 AM

From the BNP website. They don't come large enough for Nick Griffin I see.



"Overwhelming popular demand has forced Excalibur to re-introduce the famous 'It's Cool to be White' T-shirts.

Available in short and long sleeve versions, these fun T-shirts featuring a Polar Bear transmitting a humourous — but important message — were highly popular when first launched nearly five years ago by Excalibur.

Stocks eventually ran out and the T-shirt was not reprinted, with other designs taking precedence. However, continuing inquiries and demand from all over the world has now reached a point where the design has been brought back to life.

The T-shirt joins the more than 40 other designs which are stocked by Excalibur and can be ordered online by clicking here. Sizes available: S, M, L, XL, XXL."

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Owen Woodson
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 06:29 AM

Richard, I expect you qualify for the XXL size, although I can't imagine anyone ever persuading you to wear one.

Here's a nice bit of spin, which you as a lawyer might appreciate. An 82 year old man has just been brought up before the courts, charged with damaging 10 cars over a two week period. All the cars belonged to local Muslims, yet this person claims that his actions were not anti-Islamic. Yet strangely enough, this creep is on the BNP membership list.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: jeddy
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 08:21 AM

crow sister makes a good point, i don't think the BNP would be that bothered by poles coming over to work, but black or brown people we certainly don't want.

i am not sure how greeks and italians would fit into their sterotypes as they are often darker without being black.

what she has reminded us, is that the immigration policies of the BNP are likey to be based soley on colour not skills.
we have been trying to look at this subject with facts and common sense. LOL that is so where the BNP are coming from!!!!!!

the sterilization of the 'mongrel' people is one of great concern. how on earth can they think that is going to happen, but then look what hitler accomplished.

it is one thing to say lets send them all home, it strikes a chord with all those who have been frightened by the immigration lies.
but another entirely when it comes to people who have every right to be here.
of course half caste people would only be the begining of horror, the starting point.

disabled.
gay.
single mothers.
fat.
anyone who speaks out.


we could all be in trouble.
have i missed anyone out who could be on the extinstiction list?

take care all

jade x x x x

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 08:35 AM

If fatties *do* eventually end up on the list, then folkies really need to watch it!

I can't remember the precise genetic qualifications necessary to be "White" enough to allow you into mix with the pure Aryan breeding stock, but I don't Eastern Europeans are included.

On a slightly ironic tangent, anyone recall Hitlers (I think secret) programme of grabbing blue-eyed blonde Polish children in order to improve the idealised Aryan *appearance* of Germany though?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 09:13 AM

I've just realised that virtually no-one I know is ethnically "English".

I'm half Irish, my partner's half Scottish, best friend is half Russian Jew (as is another friend), Mothers long term partner was half German and part Indian, Fathers partner a mix of Black & Irish, another friend half Greek. There probably are a couple of people close to me that have no 1st or 2nd generation non-English genetic stock, but they would definitely be in the minority.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 09:32 AM

3XL I need, and Barden probably 4XL - and FaF don't sell them that big!

I've never bothered to check (it really doesn't matter that much, I think) but AFAIK I'm several generations English on both sides.   Other people used to tell my father that he looked Jewish but he used to say not and it never mattered enough to me to check, but his mother's maiden name was Brain and she and her sisters were Alice Maud and Grace. I suppose Brain could have been an Anglicisation of Braun.

Quid me anxius sum?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 10:34 AM

"I'm several generations English on both sides."

We too have tales of strange little villages rather like that out on the muddy peninsulas of East-Anglia.. The sort of places they still have annual "cat stoning" holidays for all the err "family" (there's only the one).

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: jeddy
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 10:51 AM

i think there was a programme where hitler kidnapped children.

they measured every aspect of the kids including the space between eyes and nose.

my facts actually come from a programme, waking the dead. where they look into cold cases.

aparently when they were satisfied that the children were superior in every way, they would adopt them out to couples. i maybe wrong but i think the whole 'family' were then used to go undercover.

that is if the historians on the programme were right.
there was even a book that was covered in human skin!!!!!

some might say we are overreacting to the threat of the BNP but we have to remember who their role model is and the ideals and atrocities he brought forth.

on that cheery note.

take care all

jade x x x x

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: jeddy
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 10:53 AM

PS before anyone says it, yes i am well aware that the programme if fiction. however as in alot of fictious prgrammes alot of the history or medical stuff is based in fact.

j x x x x

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Azizi
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 11:16 AM

It certainly may be "cool" to be White, but using the polar bear implies that Whites are cold and not cool.

Besides the word "cool" (when used to mean "hip"* has its roots in African & African American colloquial expressive speech.

But I suppose the BNP doesn't mind using African & African American culture when it suits that group to do so.

* Ditto for the word "hip".

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: ButterandCheese
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 12:07 PM

Hitler's Children

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 02:00 PM

The programme you're talking about Jeddy seems to have been based quite accurately on Himmler's Lebensborn project. I referred to it earlier in this thread.

For an overview you could look HERE or just google Lebensborn and see where it takes you.

This is an example of the Nazi practice of Eugenics. I do not accuse David Coleman of being a Nazi eugenicist. Modern Eugenicists believe in voluntary sterilisation of women and other birth-control methods as well as immigration restriction as ways of promoting what they regard as genetic purity.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Owen Woodson
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 02:30 PM

Jeddy. "disabled. gay. single mothers. fat. anyone who speaks out. we could all be in trouble. have i missed anyone out who could be on the extinstiction list?"

My God, you've only just started. Anyone who's less than 100% Aryan, travellers, the congenitally disabled, the congenitally hard of hearing, trade unionists, Liberals, Socialists, Social Democrats, Communists, autistics, spastics, anyone who doesn't like fascism, members of religious minorities. The list is so long that if they ever get to the end of it, there might just be nobody left.

Oh, and I forgot to mention women. I never heard of any fascist party with plans for exterminating the female sex. But the traditional fascist view is that women belong firmly in the kitchen, in the home, and under the control of their lord and master, AKA husband.

So if you know any women who are stupid enough to support the BNP, and thank God I don't, you might point out that a BNP government would set back the cause of gender equality by at least a century.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 02:44 PM

Are you saying that professor Coleman believes in "immigration restriction as ways of promoting what they regard as genetic purity"?
If so do you have any evidence for that?

Are there any such "modern eugenicists" who believe in that?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 03:06 PM

Keith, I'm not getting shirty with you over this again, but I think it is reasonable for me to suggest to you that you should read up on Eugenics yourself and then come back if you think I've represented the movement wrongly in any way.

I am saying nothing about Coleman's personal beliefs but I am highlighting the absolute fact he is a leading modern Eugenicist.

The principles of Eugenics are well known and you can go and look them up yourself.

I am a socialist. It is reasonable that people should form views about me from that statement.

The same applies to Coleman.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 03:38 PM

There was a discredited pseudo science of genetics.
That disappeared half a cetury ago.
It has nothing to do with anything Coleman has ever been involved in.
Now, are you making things up about him or can you support what you are saying?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 04:06 PM

Piss off Keith,

I said Coleman is not a Nazi Eugenicist. I said that to avoid winding you up again. Jeddy asked about Eugenics (Lebensborn), I answered and went to lengths to keep Coleman out if it.

You go and read about modern Eugenics. Anyone can. Coleman can crawl up his own arse, or yours for all I care.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 04:26 PM

Why must you be so unpleasant?

Now, that eugenics is old history, so why associate it with reputable scientists and academics working today on genetic councelling, genetic profiling, transgenics etc.
They are all worthwhile and beneficial studies with no racist overtones, even though they are correctly called eugenics.

It is you that needs to read up on it Royston.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: irishenglish
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 04:55 PM

MBS George, you said-'Any party has to change as it grows and I believe that the good bits will stay and the not so good bits will be phased out. I was purely interested in housing, benefit, childcare and employment. None of the other parties had anything covering these and still don't."


If what you wrote is true, why is the language of the BNP so focused on the not so good bits? If you feel so misunderstood, and resentful of a racist tag because you were only interested in housing, benefit, etc, why did you not get involved with a party that may not have been adequately covering your concerns....but does not come with the baggage of the BNP? Doesn't make much sense to me..then again, the BNP makes no sense to me whatsoever, and whatever they may speak of as a genuine legitimate concern (which I personally doubt), is masked with a pervasive racist tone. I'm sorry-call this an attack if you want to, but joining up with this particular party, and then claiming oh its only because....but its not because of....is quite frankly, weak, when you have as Emma stated, an organization-"wholly opposed to any form of racial integration between British and non-European peoples" and believes in restoring "the overwhelmingly white make up of the British population that existed in Britain prior to 1948".

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Gervase
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 05:21 PM

I dunno, I'm sure some people joined the Nazi Party because they hoped it would make the trains run on time (They were wrong - Mussolini couldnt' really manage it either, but the Deutsche Reichsbahn under Hitler was particularly chaotic. Another illusion shattered...)

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 05:57 PM

Jesus wept Keith, just go to the front page of www.eugenics.net.

Out of their own mouths.

If you don't immediately recognise most of the titles they cite you have done less homework than [insert suitable expression].

If they don't horrify you, they should.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: jeddy
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 10:39 PM

thankyou royston, when you were on about it before, i didn't know what it meant! i assumed (wrongly)that it was something to do with all the statistics that i didn't understand fully in the first place.

when i think about all the poor kids lives being turned upside down, being prodded and probed and tested, then to watch half their class being led away never to be seen again, i could cry.

i am just about to look into this colman person, and the modern version of this, eugenics stuff.
but please, let us not get bogged down by one person.
ths thread is so much bigger than that.

everyone is entiltled to their point of view and as far as i can see, everyone making a contribution to this thread deserves to be heard and thought about.

take care all

jade x x x x

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: jeddy
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 11:40 PM

that should have been evryone is welcome to express themselves.....except trolls, but i thought that went without saying.

the had second thoughts for although you all know that, the trolls don't and i really don't want them to think of me as their friend or champion.

j x x x x x x x

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: GUEST,Tina Edwards
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 04:46 AM

Express themselves yes, but getting tormented on Facebook is another matter.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 05:10 AM

Richard, you have directed us to the site of an American far right racist wacko!
Marian Van Court, "The Cosmic Mother of Transhuman Eugenics"
Why did you?
How does it relate to our discussion?
They are natzi eugenicists. Even Royston concedes that Coleman is not.
Are you suggesting Coleman approves of ANYTHING there?
Please answer clearly.
You are using Natzi tactics. You can not match a brilliant man's arguments, so you seek to discredit him with lies and smears.
Contemptible.
You only call him eugenicist because of his association with this charity.
http://www.galtoninstitute.org.uk/ Can you find one thing wrong with it?
Can you associate Coleman with one, single, discreditable statement, idea or theory?
If yes please say so clearly.
No lawyer's weasel words.
If not, listen to Jade and leave this great man alone.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 05:21 AM

Oh very clever Tina. Not. ROFLMAO - at you. Nobody from here is tormenting you or any of your cretinous friends (well, left hand, right hand) on facebook.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 05:34 AM

It's really quite fantastic how stupid the BNP are. They really seem to imagine that anyone will believe their invented stories about FaF members sexually harrassing their slightly OTT imaginary women profiles on Fakebook are true, or that anyone will believe that the pictures (from several years ago) of now FaF members that they have lifted off various web-pages and hosting sites, and photoshopped, really do show FaF members consorting with the BNP.

Keith, I sent you to a eugenics site because it's about eugenics.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 05:39 AM

Richard, it is not about Coleman though is it?

Can you associate Coleman with one, single, discreditable statement, idea or theory?
If yes please say so clearly.
No lawyer's weasel words.
If not, listen to Jade and leave this great man alone.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 05:49 AM

Keith,

I specifically excluded Coleman from my discussion with Jeddy.

Richard said

"Jesus wept Keith, just go to the front page of www.eugenics.net.

Out of their own mouths.

If you don't immediately recognise most of the titles they cite you have done less homework than [insert suitable expression].

If they don't horrify you, they should."

Which has no mention, reference, or implication concerning Coleman.

Why have you such an abnormal obsession with this man? I think the two of you should get a room, soon!

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 06:09 AM

Thanks Royston.
I take it then, that you find no fault with the man though you oppose his views.
Fair enough, again thanks.

And you Richard?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 08:05 AM

Jade, how are you getting on with all that stuff on eugenics?
Before you waste too much time, remember it was only brought in to the thread to smear David Coleman.
It was brought in by Emma b on the 29th Sept.at 06.07pm, and then by Royston on 30th at 04.06am.
The both were trying to link bad eugenics with poor David.
Royston has now said that there is no link to him.

So Coleman does not support it, no one on this thread does, and BNP have probably never heard of it!

I just don't know why it keeps getting brought up.

keith.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 08:10 AM

Oh, I see, Keith. Coleman is good eugenics, and the rest are bad eugenics? Do me a favour.

THe BNP's views would appear to draw strength (if that is the right word) from both.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 08:24 AM

Coleman IS NOT EUGENICS!!!!!!
He is demography.
WHY DO YOU KEEP SAYING HE IS???

I ask you again
Can you associate Coleman with one, single, discreditable statement, idea or theory (eugenic or otherwise)?
If yes please say so clearly.
No lawyer's weasel words.
If not, listen to Jade and leave this great man alone.

NOW ANSWER PLEASE

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: mandotim
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 09:33 AM

'Demography of Immigrants and Minority Groups in the United Kingdom: Proceedings of the Eighteenth Annual Symposium of the Eugenics Society, London 1981
by D. A. Coleman, Eugenics Society (London, England)
Softcover, Academic Press, ISBN 0121797805 (0-12-179780-5)'

I would assert that this publication suggests that Coleman is associated with the field of Eugenics, since he consented to the publishing of his work by the Eugenics Society, of which he was a member at the time of publication. The subject matter is demography, the context is Eugenics. It's never a good idea to let hero-worship get in the way of objectivity.
Tim

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 09:52 AM

The Eugenics Society is the previous name ot the Galston Institute.
It changed its name because of the misuse of the word to mean only the evil type work of the Nazis.
The Society never did support or promulgate any discreditable stuff at all.
You can not judge it because of the name.
This is the same society.http://www.galtoninstitute.org.uk/

There is nothing wrong with it or Coleman.
If you can find one single thing then please share it.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 10:11 AM

Mand Tim, I did link to the Galston just a few posts down, and Coleman himself talks about it and its name on the piece I linked to 2 days ago.
Here again http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1544898/Academic-hits-back-in-migration-row.html

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 10:23 AM

Coleman on the Galton Institute.

Four substantial demographic publications edited by me, with others, have appeared under its aegis, mostly published by Academic Press and Macmillan.

The pre-war British eugenics 'movement' was innocent of Continental excesses, although like many 'meritocratic' ideas it was afflicted by the simple-minded understanding of heredity at that time.

The Institute aims to promote knowledge of human heredity, discussion of its moral and ethical aspects and its consequences for human well-being. The academic distinction of its Council will be evident from a glance at its website http://www.galtoninstitute.org.uk/.

Its President is Professor Steve Jones of UCL, one of the country's foremost geneticists. Most of the Galton Institute's research fund at present is spent on a big reproductive health project in Ethiopia.

The pressing need to help women in the poorest countries such as Ethiopia to avoid unwanted childbearing was emphasised very recently in the report of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Population and Development.

In the past it was associated with the pioneering efforts of Marie Stopes to help women avoid unwanted childbearing.

It attracted membership from across the political spectrum, including Arthur Balfour, Sir William Beveridge, Julian Huxley, R.A. Fisher, Bertrand Russell and other notables.

Among its Nobel Prize winning members included John Maynard Keynes, James Mead and Lord Rayleigh. Its Galton lectures have been delivered by such notables as J.D Bernal, A.H. Halsey, Josiah Stamp, Sidney Webb and Havelock Ellis.

It helped to 'invent' demography in Britain by funding the Population Investigation Committee at the LSE in 1936.

My own doctoral supervisor at the LSE, the eminent sociologist D.V.Glass, a prominent member, became the PIC's first Research Secretary in the 1930s.

One might suppose that a left-wing Jew would not have been inclined to associate with anything tainted.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: jeddy
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 10:34 AM

still wading through so much info.

i have a major pronlem with one of the

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: jeddy
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 10:40 AM

EH? i was happily typing away and it did this!!!

yes.. very worried about the sterilization of mentally ill women.

i understand that although, most of the women talked about would not make great mothers, it is unfair to term all mentally ill people with the dribbling wreck brush.

also, instead of protecting their bodies from becoming pregnant, how about trying to stop, the disgusting and deprved men from violating these women in the first place?

it feels like the egincis society is saying that it is ok to rape these unfortubate women as long as it doesn't end in pregancy!!!!!

i am rather disgusted.

take care all

jade x x x x

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 11:13 AM

That was the Nazis in Germany Jade.
The Eugenics Society, a British charity now called the Galton Institute, has only ever done good things.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Azizi
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 11:43 AM

As background to the discussion about contemporary eugenics, some here may be interested in this document that I found about the British & United States Eugenics organizations:

http://www.bun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~suchii/eug.01-30.html
Eugenics becomes popular (1901-1930)

Here are some excerpts from that document:

"Notice that the eugenic policy may be divided into two: "positive eugenics" which aims to foster more prolific breeding among the socially meritorious, and "negative eugenics" which intends to encourage the socially disadvantaged to breed less or not at all. (see Kevles 1985, 85)

[Organizations]

The vogue of eugenics derived energy from the organizational efforts of its advocates. In 1907, inspired by Galton, a national Eugenics Education Society was founded in Britain. ... Branches of the society sprang up in Birmingham, Cambridge, Manchester, Southampton, Liverpool, Glasgow, and Sydney, Australia. Local eugenics groups sprouted across the United States, ... Eugenic themes diffused into groups devoted to sex education and sex hygiene, and were evident in the baby-health competitions that spread to some forty states before the war. Various efforts ... were mounted to organize eugnics on a national basis, along the lines of the British society; they culminated in the formation in 1923 of the American Eugenics society, which rapidly spawned twenty-eight state committees and a southern California branch. (Kevles 1985, 59)

[Eugenic contests]

The Fitter Families contests had started in Topeka, in 1920, at the Kansas Free Fair. Under the aegis of the American Eugenics Society, they were soon being featured---together with eugenic exhibits---at seven to ten state fairs yearly; ... Local publications gave front-page attention to the competitions and their winners. At the state fairs, the Fitter Families competitions were held in the "human stock" sections. ... Any healthy family could enter. Contestants had only to provide an examiner with the family's eugenic history. All family members had to submit to a medical examination---including a Wassermann test and a psychiatric assessment---and take an intelligence test. At the 1924 Kansas Free Fair, winning families in three categories---small, average, and large---were awarded a Governor's Fitter Family Trophy, ... (Kevles 1985, 61-2)


[The movement spread]

After the turn of the century, eugenic efforts---often called "race hygene"---had also developed in Sweden, Norway, Russia, Switzerland, Germany, Poland, France, and Italy; in the nineteen-twenties, the movement spread to Japan and Latin America. (Kevles 1985, 63)

[Wide spectrum of supporters]

..."Eugenics enthusiasts in the United States and Britain were largely middle to upper middle class, white, Anglo-Saxon, predominantly Protestant, and educated. The movement's leaders tended to be well-to-do rather than rich, and many wer eprofessionals---physicians, social workers, clerics, writers, and numerous professors, notably in the biological and social sciences. ... Fully half the membership of the British eugenics society consisted of women, and so did about a quarter of its officers...

**


[Racism]

Racism---in that era racial differences were identified with variations not only in skin color but in ethnic identity---was a feature of both British and American eugenics. ...

[Intelligence tests]

Like Francis Galton, whom they took as their patron saint, eugeniticists identified human worth with the qualities they presumed themselves to possess--the sort tha tfacilitated passage through schools, universities, and professional training. They tended to equate merit with intelligence, particularly of the academic sort. ... the idea of systematically measuring intelligence had captured the attention of the French psychologist Alfred Binet, an acolyte of Galton's quantifying aims, if not of his particular methods.

[Eugenics and mental tests]

Whatever their prejudices, American and British eugenicists were alike distressed over the trend in their respective nations' intelligence. Before the First World War, eugenicists like Karl Pearson and Charles Davenport had warned that excessive breeding of the lower classes was giving the edge to the less fit. The growth of I.Q. testing after the war gave a quantitative authority to the eugenic notion of fitness. For the voque of mental testing did more than encourage fears regarding the "menace of the feeble-minded." It also identified the principal source of heedless fecundity with low-I.Q. groups, and it equated national deterioration with a decline in national intelligence. (Kevles 1985, 84)

[Eugenics and birth-control]

Eugenicists were generally against the feminist movement and the birth-control; but some people such as Margaret Sanger combined eugenic ideas with birth-control.

Women were said to expect sexual fulfillment in marriage without fear of pregnancy. Birth control had come to stay, and so, it seemed, had a steady decline in the birthrate of the upper classes. As Margaret Sanger put it, the sensible eugenic response to the differential birthrate was to make available to lower-income and less educated groups the contraceptive knowledge and opportunities enjoyed by others. Before the war, Sangar had linked birth control with feminism. Now, like her British counterpart Marie Stopes, she tied contraception increasingly to the eugenic cause. In 1919, she wrote: "More children from the fit, less from the unfit---that is the chief issue of birth control." (Kevles 1985, 90)"

-snip-

Italics added by me to highlight that phrase.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Azizi
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 11:49 AM

Also, some here may be interested in reading this article which is titled "A Weapon of Eugenics: Sterilization as a Means to Better the Race"

http://www.umw.edu/hisa/resources/Student%20Projects/Cincinnati/students.umw.edu/_ncinc5ce/eugenics.html


Here is an except of that article:

"It was no coincidence that modern sterilization procedures were developed as the science of eugenics emerged in Western thought. Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, coined the term "eugenics" in 1883. This pseudo-science, an outgrowth of social Darwinism and Gregor Mendel's laws of inheritance, stressed that heredity was law and that those with good genes should be harnessed while those with "defective" genes should be eliminated. Positive eugenics was the science of nourishing those fit to reproduce while negative eugenics developed methods to eradicate undesirable elements. This elitist science, which targeted the poor, the mentally and physically handicapped, and certain racial groups, found fertile ground in the United States where upper and middle class professionals feared "race suicide" among the fit. Indeed, the United States shaped and transformed eugenics into a movement which was mimicked all over the world—including in Nazi Germany.

The mid to late nineteenth century was a time when birth control knowledge and use was still very taboo and very illegal, thus doctors were not interested in developing sterilization for middle and upper class Americans but rather for those elements causing "degeneracy." At a time when many American scientific and medical circles believed criminality, poverty, depravity, and mental illness were genetically inherited, a technique to prevent reproduction of these qualities was greatly desired. Sterilization offered the "surgical solution." With a perceived sense that defective Americans reproduced much faster than normal ones, eugenicists, like Ochsner and others, viewed sterilization as a panacea.Sterilization become an integral part of a population control system where eugenicists, doctors, and politicians worked together to ensure the sterilization of the unfit. Eugenic sterilization laws legalizing the involuntary sterilization of the mentally ill, criminals, and other defectives, came to being in close to thirty states with more than 70,000 Americans losing the ability to reproduce by the mid-twentieth century."

-snip-

All of this to say, Keith A of Hertford, that for what it's worth, I definitely don't agree with you that "The Eugenics Society, a British charity now called the Galton Institute, has only ever done good things."

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 12:00 PM

Your extracts do not seem contradict my statement that the British society only did good things.
Did I miss a bad thing or must I read the whole article?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: jeddy
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 12:18 PM

the thing i was talking about came from here.

http://www.eugenics.net/

in the Q&A section.


i am sorry we have gone slightly off point.
the nazi eugenics are important as this is what the BNP aspire to.

the new wave of the galton institue, does seem to want to hlep those who ask for it, i will say that i have only just been able to look at the news letters so i will wade through some of them when i get the chance.

i don't blame anyone for wanting to disassociate from the actions of others in the past, it is only fair i give them the benifit of doubt until i have read enough to make my own mind up.

however, if they are innocent of past crimes against humaity, they are being used by the BNP as much as immigrants.

this david coleman,may want to look at these thigns from a purely .. educational..no... scientific?..yes. point of veiw, but i feel like they are missing the fact that they are talking about people, feeling, thinking people.

take care all

jade x x x x

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 12:46 PM

Keith

Thanks Royston.
I take it then, that you find no fault with the man though you oppose his views.
Fair enough, again thanks.

No, Keith. My personal opinion of anyone associated with the Eugenics Society when it was called that and who continued their fellowship of the Galton Institute (idolising the racist founder of Eugenics) remains suspicious to say the least.

The Eugenics Society is to the Galton Instiute as Windscale is to Sellafield. You can change the name, you can never entirely remove the toxic contamination. My opinion.

But my point to you is that we are talking about Nazi Eugenics, modern Eugenics and BNP Eugenic beliefs. We are not talking about Coleman. Only you seem to want to keep talking about Coleman. Please, stop talking about Coleman.

And to answer a qestion you put to Azizi - yes, you do need to read a lot more.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Stringsinger
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 12:51 PM

The BNP represents the worst parody of patriotism. It relies on jingoism and a self-conscious nationalism that discriminates against outsiders. There is no conundrum here.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Azizi
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 12:55 PM

Keith A of Hertford, that you could read those excerpts from those two articles that I posted at 02 Oct 09 - 11:43 AM abd at 02 Oct 09 -11:49 AM and still think that eugenics is a good thing tells me all I that I need to know about you.

**

Royston, you have much more patience than I will ever have.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Azizi
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 01:03 PM

abd=and

I suppose followers of eugenics would say that people of higer genes wouldn't make typos or people of lower genes wouldn't be able to catch the typos that they made.

I'm trying to be light about this very serious matter. But there is nothing "light" about those who deny their racism (perhaps even to themselves) and/or hide their bigotry and beliefs in White racial superiority under pseudo-scientific covers such as eugenics.

Here's a modern day African American proverb (which I just made up)

"Stink still smells even when it's hidden."

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 01:03 PM

Marie Stopes - the legendary abortionist and birth control advocate with a foundation named after her that continues its sefless efforts to stop poor people and less worthy people reproducing all over the world - was a leading member of the Eugenics Movement. She was also, like all Eugenicists a great believer in racial "value" and racial "hygiene"

The Eugenics Society supported and funded her work. In fact Stopes was regarded as the military wing of Eugenics.

The Galton Institute continues to give cash grants to the Marie Stopes Foundation in support of its birth control and sterilisation programs in the developing world.

I am fed up with cut and paste. Go to www.galtoninstitute.org.uk and look through the newsletters. Loads of Grants to MSI. I'm currently looking at the June 2000 newsletter (section: The Birth Control Trust) but there are plenty of entries. Or just google "galton eugencis marie stopes"

Dr. Marie Stopes was a vile racist, classist and murderous harridan. She wrote love poetry to Adolf Hitler.

For starters you could go HERE to the telelgraph website, not known for its left-wing spin or tendencies.

You see this is what taints Galton's followers, whatever they choose to call themselves this week.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Azizi
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 01:05 PM

Ha!

And I hadn't read that "guest" 02 Oct 09 - 01:02 PM
post before writing and submitting my 02 Oct 09 - 01:03 PM post.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Azizi
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 01:15 PM

Ah. Another typo.

"higer" means "higher" and does not rhyme with you know which racial slur.

I tend to make typos when I'm upset. And "Yes" this thread upsets me. But then again, I have no excuse. I knew that this thread wouldn't be a comfortable read given its title.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 01:45 PM

Azizi, you misjudge me and it hurts.
I do not "still think that eugenics is a good thing "

It has been misused for evil by many people in many places, but least of all by that British society.
You extracts identify plenty of nasty historical stuff, but do not accuse the British society, and that was a hundred years ago.

The eugenics issue was only brought in to the thread to discredit Coleman.
I am not defending the evil misuse of eugenics, only the reputation of one man.
I find him blameless.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: mandotim
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 02:36 PM

Keith; a polite enquiry. I think you need to be a little more specific when defending the Eugenics Society, in Britain or elsewhere. You use value-laden descriptors such as 'good', 'bad', 'blameless' etc. Since I may or may not share your definitions or perceptions of these terms, perhaps (from your reading) could give some specific examples of what you mean by 'good things' etc. in the work of Coleman and the Society, so that I and perhaps others can engage more meaningfully with your arguments? At the moment this all seems a little circular, as there are no points of common locus in the argument.
Thanks
Ps a small point; do try to get the names of your fellow contributors right, it seems disrespectful not to.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 07:49 AM

""I can't remember the precise genetic qualifications necessary to be "White" enough to allow you into mix with the pure Aryan breeding stock,""

Neither can I Crow Sister, but I do know that fat dark, ape-like Nasty Nick CERTAINLY DOES NOT POSSESS THEM!

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 07:52 AM

Mandotim,
A couple of days ago I had not heard of Coleman, and knew only of eugenics that Nazi Germany used it to justify sterilisation of handicapped people and extermination of Jews, Gypsies and gays.

Then it was brought up to discredit Coleman and through him Migration Watch.

I googled all I could find on Coleman.
As an Oxford professor of Demography, he is a leading authority in the world on poulation changes.
Because he believes UK immigration is too high he was a victim of a far left smear campaign to get him sacked.
It failed because it was found to be groundless.

Eugenics is the Science of using genetics to improve the human gene pool. The Nazis and others thought to achieve improvement by eliminating "inferior" races and people.
Modern eugenics seek to do it by preventing the spread of inherited diseases by genetic profiling and counselling.
The word eugenics is rarely used because of the association with evil practices.

I found that the Galton Institute does no research, but organises lectures and seminars on the ethical use of genetics. They also have a trust that funds family planning help in poor countries.
Its president is a professor of genetics at Universty College London.

In Hitler's time the Jewish left wing sociologist Glass was invoved with it, which shows the gulf betweeen it and the nazis.

When I posted to Jade I remebered that she hates wading through figures and long explanations. I said the Galton only does good things.
Though simple, I have been able to find nothing that undermines that.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: jeddy
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 10:33 AM

thanks keith, i hadn't heard of him before either, and as much as i have been looking i haven't found that much about him.
i have yet to look at the newsletters, so i might get somewhat of a shock.

this thread shouldn't be just about david colman though, he is not really the issue.

as in the case with george though, the galton institute,if in league with people who are racist and facist with regards to women, they are as culpable as those who think that way.

you cannot stand up and say one thig while befriending those who you say you dissagree with.

george, you know this was not meant as a dig at you, just to show a point. although i still do not fully understand your reasons for still being involved with the BNP, i do kind of understand what drove you there.

i think the reason we got on to eugenics in the first place was because once the BNP have doported everyone they can, they will then turn on the british people.

never forget that their hero is hitler. they want to recreat his vision and will go to any lengths, to make it so, if they ever get any sort of power.

take care all

jade x x x x

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 11:06 AM

I have checked Jade, and the Galton is definately not in league with racists or fascists, and I agree with everything in your post except one thing.
Helen B brought eugenics into this thread, and she did it to try to make Coleman look bad.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 11:07 AM

Sorry, Emma B.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: mandotim
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 11:34 AM

Thanks for that Keith, the clarification is appreciated. Perhaps I could just add something though; from my searches, I get the distinct impression that the Galton institute has formed a particular 'world view' in terms of what is beneficial to the human species and what is not. This judgement is indeed based on some rudimentary thinking about inherited diseases (the role of spontaneous mutation is never considered), but also has roots in the now completely discredited work on intelligence by Eysenck and others. Add to that the avowed intent to pursue a cause of curtailing population growth among those classes of people, nations or races it deems to be less beneficial, there seems to be a commonality of ends (though not of means) with earlier practitioners of eugenics.
I find this disturbing on a number of levels; the main issue for me is the attempt by those who are successful in the genetic lottery to stack the odds against those who are less so. I'm disturbed on a personal level too. I'm a senior academic these days, but I'm the first male member of my entire family who didn't earn his living from working with his hands. My family also carries a gene for hereditary blindness. Had the Galton institute been as influential in the 1950s as they would no doubt like to be, my parents would have been discouraged (via 'genetic counselling') from having children, and I might not be here. Put another way, judgement would have been passed that my life, and that of my younger siblings (a history teacher, a doctor and a professional musician)would not have been worthwhile.
The problem with Coleman and so many other scientists of his ilk is that they have tremendous intellectual gifts in their field, but a narrowness of focus that prevents them fully considering either the wide moral compass of their work or the degree of uncertainty that the real world brings to the equation. I find Coleman's work interesting on that narrow level in the same way that the work of Thomas Malthus is interesting, but the moral critique of Coleman's ideas is far more convincing than the ideas themselves.
Thanks again for the thoughtful reply, I hope I've done it justice.
Tim

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 11:56 AM

Thanks Tim. As you say there are major ethical questions about genetic counselling. Also the question of whether it is acceptable to abort a foetus because it has an abnormality.
That painful choice is now being offered to parents every day.

The Galton is not involved, except by encouraging debate on that and similar issues.

On birth control, would you deny people access to it?
The trust only offers it to those who could not otherwise afford it.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 01:11 PM

The Galton is not involved, except by encouraging debate on that and similar issues.

Except that via its division "The Birth Control Trust" and its outreach organisation, the Marie Stopes Foundation, it actively practices sterilisation and other birth control campaigns in the less developed nations and among the "less developed" races.

Imagine if all that brainpower and money were put into sanitation, agriculture, water and education in the same places. Healthy and educated people tend to make less babies. There is less need to reproduce when infant mortality rates are at Western standards. In mant parts of the world you have to have 10 kids just to be haf-way certain that one or two will make it to adults.

Nah, on second thoughts, screw that. Just set about them with the 21st century social equivalent of a jot of brandy and a knitting needle.

This is still not about any individual, it is about where Eugenics sits in the 21st century. A change of name and "voluntary" programmes, in the name of compassion.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 01:43 PM

Most people think family planning aid is vital to third world Royston.
World Bankhttp://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN18324165
United Nations http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6193

President Obama http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7848038.stm

womenhttp://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm?aid=3988

Me.

But not Royston

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 02:00 PM

Keith, you really are wilfully stupid aren't you?

I have worked with NGO's providing family planning in Afghanistan.

Family planning is barrier (condoms, coils, caps) and pharmacological (pills, hormone implants etc) contraception.

The Galton Insitute funds, and MSI delivers irreversible sterilisation programmes, as well as contraception.

If you can't see the difference between those then you are a lost cause.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 02:02 PM

In fact, Keith, I am concluding that from sitting on your 'A' in leafy Hertford, you know absolutely diddly squat about this world.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Peace
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 04:27 PM

"In 1928, the Province of Alberta, Canada, passed legislation that enabled the government to perform involuntary sterilizations on individuals classified as mentally deficient. In order to implement the Sexual Sterilization Act of Alberta in 1928, a four-person Alberta Eugenics Board was created. These four individuals were responsible for approving sterilization procedures. In 1972, the Sexual Sterilization Act was repealed, and the Eugenics Board dismantled. During the 43 years of the Eugenics Board, it approved nearly 5,000 individual sterilizations, and 2,832 procedures were actually performed."

FYI, Alberta was the first part of the British Empire to do this. It's disgusting.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Peace
Date: 03 Oct 09 - 04:28 PM

That was from Wikipedia. However, I researched it for a "Letter to the Editor" in the 1990s and unfortunately it's true.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 05:24 AM

Some of the work they have done in India.
http://www.galtoninstitute.org.uk/Newsletters/GINL0209/Birth_Control_Trust.htm
Let me educate you on something Royston.
Sterilization is the commonest form of contraception in some developed countries such as the USA where as many as 10 million are sterilized per annum, although a proportion (0.1 - 10%) subsequently regret the decision1. In most third world countries there is also an increasing acceptance2. The current population annual growth rate in Nigeria of 3% will, if continued, give rise to overpopulation in the near future3. The Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Lagos Teaching Hospital has provided a family planning clinic since 1980.http://www.galtoninstitute.org.uk/Biology_and_Society/BAS9009/Nigerian_Women.htm

You will probably be pleased to know that I have (voluntarily!) been sterilised after the birth of my third child some years ago.

Thirty minutes drive from "leafy Hertford" is a Marie Stopes clinic.
I have made that drive.
The young person I took had been referred by her GP, but they welcome anyone who needs help, and they give it for free.
I met some girls from Ireland there who dearly wished such help was available nearer to home.
I do not think that we were all victims of wicked eugenicists.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 09:26 AM

Keith, your vasectomy and the tube-ties on western women leave you, and them, reproductively intact. Some ops are reversible. If either western men or women change their mind then they just have to take the IVF or artificial insemination options that Western couples have,if they are rich enough.

Keith, if you can't see that Groups like the Galton Institute and Marie Stopes International - with all their dangerous and frankly evil histories - direct enormous resources at making sure the poor, 'ethnically undesirable' and disadvantaged don't or can't reproduce (rather than improving their environment) whilst others lavish every reproductive advantage on the rich and 'ethnically worthy'; and/or if that doesn't worry in the context of the awful histories of these groups then, Like Azizi I begin to suspect that you are not just stupid but something altogether more sinister.

Most NGO's are responding to infant mortality rates and reproductive health issues by working on midwifery, sanitation, post-natal care, barrier and hormone contraception as well as education.

You go and read the newsletter that you linked to. Look at the table and look how many sterilisation services Marie Stopes perform in India as opposed to other methods of contraception. Think about in the context of the history of Marie Stopes.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: GUEST,Keith A o Hertford
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 11:17 AM

Royston, as you yourself said, they offer all forms of family planning help.
Would you deny poor people a method that we find so helpful?
Why shouldn't they have choice too?
At a certain stage in a person's life, when they are done with having babies, that is the most apropriate method.
Whatever the race.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 12:05 PM

Yes, Keith. You are excellent at arguing their case for them. That is exactly what they say. But I am still looking for some sign, presently lacking, that you can actually apply your own reason to this matter and consider their comments, and mine or those of others in some sort of weighing of the case. No rational person could fail to look at the actions of such groups in a critical or questioning light, even if on balance one is minded to give them a qualified benefit of the doubt for the time being.

Of course I don't deny poor people choice and reproductive freedom, I've been on several of this world's social front lines. It's just that some organisations sell some options harder than others, and they do this for their own agenda.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 04:19 PM

Royston, re sterilisation.
Country reports from Bangladesh, Thailand, Indonesia, Mexico, Honduras, Tunisia and Sudan illustrate the activities of IPAVS under a variety of conditions. The evaluation team concluded that PIAVS has successfully met AID's objective of expanding acceptance of voluntary sterilization as a basic component of family planning and health service programs in the developing world. Recommendations in the areas of management, policy, performance standards, voluntary sterilization services, community education and information, physical facilities, equipment and supplies, and relations with national associations for voluntary sterilization and the World Federation of Associations of Voluntary Sterilization are therefore intended as indications of possible future directions that should be considered by IPAVS and AID to take advantage of new opportunities opened up by the increasing acceptance of voluntary sterilization throughout the world. http://www.popline.org/docs/0369/262935.html

Re Galton.
Even third world governments do not welcome agencies in to assault their citizens.
This is a world respected charity doing wonderful work with some of the poorest and neediest people in the world.
If you have something on them, tell us.
Otherwise I think you should shut up.
Front line hero or not.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 06:03 PM

I've been away from the weekend with only a 2G connection. This is grand. Keep digging, Keith.

However, Stopes did (I think, I have not checked) promote one great truth about abortion. It's the woman's choice, and one I have never known from any of the women with whom I have discussed it, to be taken lightly.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 04 Oct 09 - 06:22 PM

Thanks Keith, you've proven my point for me.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 03:10 AM

Royston, a truly pointless and pathetic response.
I invited you to tell us what you had or shut up.
You of course did neither.
Why am I not surprised.

Going back to that bigotted, ignorant put down you wrote about me,
"sitting on your 'A' in leafy Hertford, you know absolutely diddly squat about this world. "

I work full time with (ethnically diverse) troubled teenagers from deprived and chaotic backgrounds whose extreme behaviour has put them beyond the scope of mainstream education.
Our catchment area extends down to North London.
I reckon that puts me on the "social front line" as much as whatever it was that you once did.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 03:18 AM

Richard, marie Stopes was indeed a hero of the feminist movement.
A short biography is here http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Wstopes.htm
An extract
Marie argued that marriage should be an equal relationship between husband and wife. However, she had great difficulty finding a publisher. Walter Blackie of Blackie & Son rejected her manuscript with the words: "The theme does not please me. I think there is far too much talking and writing about these things already… Don't you think you should wait publication until after the war? There will be few enough men for the girls to marry; and a book like this would frighten off the few." Blackie objected to passages such as, "far too often, marriage puts an end to women's intellectual life. Marriage can never reach its full stature until women possess as much intellectual freedom and freedom of opportunity within it as do their partners."

It was not until, March 1918, that Marie Stopes found a small company that was willing to take the risk of publishing Married Love. The book was an immediate success, selling 2,000 copies within a fortnight and by the end of the year had been reprinted six times. Married Love was also published in America but the courts declared the book was obscene and it was promptly banned.

Marie's next book was about birth-control. She had become interested in this subject after meeting Margaret Sanger, a birth-control campaigner from America. Sanger had been converted to socialism, while working as a nurse in the slums of New York. She observed that many women died of self-induced abortions or raised large families in poverty.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 03:21 AM

Just a little more about her.

After hearing Margaret Sanger's story Marie decided to start a birth-control campaign in Britain. She knew it would be dangerous as several people in Britain, including Richard Carlile, Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant, had been sent to prison for advocating birth-control.

In 1918 Stopes wrote a concise guide to contraception called Wise Parenthood. Marie Stopes' book upset the leaders of the Church of England who believed it was wrong to advocate the use of birth control. Roman Catholics were especially angry, as the Pope had made it clear that he condemned all forms of contraception. Despite this opposition, Marie continued her campaign and in 1921 founded the Society for Constructive Birth Control. With financial help from her rich second husband, Humphrey Roe, Marie also opened the first of her birth-control clinics in Holloway, North London on 17th March 1921.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: mandotim
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 03:50 AM

Hi again Keith; thanks again for the reply. I think a comment on the idea of 'voluntary' birth control via irreversible methods might be useful. Looking at evidence from around the world (China might be a good example), there seems to be a sort of progression in how these programmes develop. It goes something like; 'Do this if you want to', then 'We will provide the means for you to do this if you want to', then 'It would be more socially responsible if you did this', then 'Most people are doing this, why aren't you?', then 'If you don't do this there will be penalties', then 'You must do this', and finally 'We have the right to do this to you'. This progression doesn't just apply to birth control, it can be seen in things like the environmental movement and any number of political initiatives. The problem comes when you have unelected agencies involved who lack the breadth of vision and the moral compass; they can run through this progression at a frightening rate without considering the wider or longer-term consequences. Their unelected nature makes them immune from the pressures of public opinion, and other democratic checks and balances don't apply.
I don't know if you've seen the stuff on population growth and economic dominance, but there is a comparison between America and India that makes interesting reading; because of birth rate differences, India has more Honours students than America has kids. Educational standards are evening out across the world, and so in a global economic environment dominated by knowledge workers, there is a vested interest for Western developed economies in lobbying for (or providing aid for) limited population growth in those economies likely to be rivals or even dominant players. Organisations like the Galton Institute at the very least give a cloak of respectability to this agenda, whether they intend to or not. 'Pulling up the ladder' I think is the term used. I'd be interested in your thoughts.
Tim

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 04:28 AM

I MAY have a US law firm that likes high profile cases interested in doing a pro bono job. THat's MAYBE.

Will all 'catters who are still being impersonated by the BNP on ANY of the social networking sites please PM me with email addresses for themselves? NB there will be identity checks.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Royston
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 04:35 AM

thanks Tim'

you are a lot more patient than me, I hope you get the answer this discussion deserves, but I wouldn't suggest you hold your breath.

Keith, anyone with any real experience of racial and cultural diversity in this country or elsewhere and/or with any witness knowledge of what havoc is caused in the third world by 'us' could ever spout the recycled bollocks that you do. For your trenchant refusal to consider even the most patient of debaters with real experience or cogent arguments, I hold you in utter contempt.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 04:47 AM

Back to the abuse then Royston.
Reasoned argument is not how you do things is it.
You just try to shout down,intimidate and bully into submission anyone who disagrees with you.

It has not worked this time.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 05:14 AM

Just in case everyone has forgotten who we are supposed to be opposing....

http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/news/article/1369/Violent-racist-runs-Penrith-BNP-campaign

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Owen Woodson
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 05:37 AM

SPB. Thanks for pointing that out. Eugenics is a pretty distasteful subject and some awful atrocities have been committed in its name.

However, whilst the topic is cartainly germane to discussion of a bunch of gentic fruitcakes like the BNP, I for one am heartily fed up with the way it has taken over this thread.

Would people who wish to discuss eugenics please do so on another thread?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 06:11 AM

The problem is that the idea is being promulgated that by Keith that even the "good" eugenicists oppose immigration, and the subtext is that the BNP have a point. I of course disagree.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 06:18 AM

Richard, on 2nd October I asked you for the final time,

"I ask you again
Can you associate Coleman with one, single, discreditable statement, idea or theory (eugenic or otherwise)?
If yes please say so clearly.
No lawyer's weasel words.
If not, listen to Jade and leave this great man alone.

NOW ANSWER PLEASE"

I take your silence to mean that you could find no fault, but that you lack the moral courage to admit it.

Why am I not surprised?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Owen Woodson
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 06:32 AM

Richard. So do I. The BNP are gene freaks and I have no doubt at all that they are planning to weed out the "inferior" members of our own society.

Indeed, it is my considered opinion that they, along with the other European fascist parties, are jointly looking to finish off the job that Hitler started. IE.,

to turn the whole of European society into a white Aryan master race by eliminating said "inferiors". I for one am not going to stand by and let that

happen.

However, this thread is about the BNP and, by implication, how we can best fight them. It's not about the merits or de-merits of eugenics theory. I can

only repeat. If people want to discuss that particular topic then they can best do so on a seperate thread.

Fraternally yours.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 06:40 AM

Owen, I agree about BNP.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Azizi
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 07:23 AM

Some here may be interested in this online article about Marie Stopes. That article and 20 letters in response to it were published in http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geraldwarner/5051109/Marie_Stopes_is_forgiven_racism_and_eugenics_because_she_was_antilife/ .

As an American, I know nothing about the political slant or the reputation of that newspaper or that columnist. I'm interested in knowing what posters to this thread think of the article and those letters. For the record, for the sake of this discussion, as well as for the sake of those on dial up Internet connection, and those who don't like to click on hyperlinks, I'll post an excerpt of that article in my next post to this thread. Also for those reasons, I'll post four of the letters-in whole or in part-as well as the letter that promoted this article in my next post to this thread.

My sharing this article and those particular letters does not mean that I agree with everything in that article and those letters. However, with regard to eugenics and Marie Stopes (as well as the other famous persons mentioned in some of the letters written in response to that article), I'll say this:

An individual may be very admirable and very despicable. Also, an individual may be right about somethings and wrong about others. Furthermore, an individual may advocate and do some things that are right-in certain circumstances-for very wrong reasons.

For instance, I believe that Marie Stopes was admirable and courageous in her advocacy for women's rights. However, I believe that Marie Stopes was very wrong in her admiration for and support of Hitler. And I believe that Stopes was very wrong in her support of child labor, and in her advocacy for sterilization as a means of reducing the populations of those people that based on the pseudo science of eugenics, she & others considered to be less desirable.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Azizi
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 07:27 AM

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geraldwarner/5051109/Marie_Stopes_is_forgiven_racism_and_eugenics_because_she_was_antilife/


Marie Stopes is forgiven racism and eugenics because she was anti-life

Gerald Warner, August 28th, 2008

"Is Marie Stopes really an appropriate icon for Britain's stamps?
Dear Herr Hitler, Love is the greatest thing in the world: so will you accept from me these (poems) that you may allow the young people of your nation to have them?" … were written in August 1939, just a month before this country went to war with Nazi Germany, by Marie Stopes, the "woman of distinction" who will ornament our 50p stamps from October.

Sending the Fuhrer a book of her sentimental poems was an appropriate gesture. This keen advocate of eugenics and subverter of family life had a long career of activity in the politics of human reproduction. In 1919 she urged the National Birth Rate Commission to support mandatory sterilisation of parents who were diseased, prone to drunkenness or of bad character. In 1920, in her book Radiant Motherhood, she demanded "the sterilisation of those totally unfit for parenthood be made an immediate possibility, indeed made compulsory". Her 1921 slogan was: "Joyful and Deliberate Motherhood, A Safe Light in our Racial Darkness."

As a letter writer to yesterday's paper pointed out, her organisation was called the Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress and her clinics were situated in poor areas, to reduce the birth rate of the local residents. Not that Stopes wanted the working class to stop having children altogether. On the contrary, she was also a supporter of child labour: "Not many years ago the labourer's child could be set to work early and could very shortly earn his keep… The trend of legislation has continuously extended the age of irresponsible youth in the lower and lower middle classes"...

In 1935 she was present at the International Congress for Population Science in Berlin, held under the auspices of the Third Reich. On her death she bequeathed her clinic and much of her fortune to the Eugenics Society. Today, Marie Stopes International has nearly 500 centres in 38 countries, performing more than half a million sterilisations a year, and is a major abortion provider…
Considering the hysteria nowadays attaching to issues of race, at first sight it seems extraordinary that Stopes should have earned commemoration on a stamp. To the PC establishment, however, even racist peccadilloes can be ignored to honour a pioneer who helped promote the anti-life culture and relieve women of the intolerable trauma of giving birth to a child with a cleft palate. Eugenic abortion accounts for an increasing proportion of the 7 million "terminations" in Britain since 1967. Poor old Josef Mengele was not eligible for a stamp, being a dead, white male. Perhaps in 2009."

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: jeddy
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 07:36 AM

thats just what i was thinking azizi.
people can be suprisingly thoughtful and right about one thing but still believe in some evil things at the same time.
should or does one cancel out the other?

however, in the spirit of trying to move this thread on from way back then ( sorry keith, i seem to have given up wading, i think i am stuck somewhere in the middle of the river bed, if i move now, i will lose my wellies. lol) maybe we should think if there are any modern day experts who the BNP have wooed. mind you it may be abit early for them to publicly admit it. due to the FACT they are NOT racist or bigoted in any way.

i have also forgotten what date the manchester demo is supposed to be. i haven't seen the news for yonks so it could have happened already.

more to come later when i have woken up abit more.

take care all

jade x x x

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Azizi
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 07:37 AM

Letter to editor:

Marie Stopes and the eugenic use of birth control

Sir – I was astonished to learn (report, August 23) that the Royal Mail is including a stamp commemorating Marie Stopes in its series to mark women's achievements.

Stopes was a notorious eugenicist and an anti-Semite who advocated the sterilisation of poor women to promote the welfare of "the Race".

Indeed her birth-control organisation was called the Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress, and her clinics were established in poor areas of London to control the numbers of the poor.

The majority of feminists ignored her campaign, not because they were prudish but because they feared that birth control would undermine women's rights to refuse unwanted sexual relationships.
-Ann Farmer, Woodford Green, Essex

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/3561743/Letters-to-The-Telegraph.html

-snip-
4 of 20 comments from readers of Gerald Warner's article about Marie Stopes:

"Surprise at your 20/20 hindsight vision on this one Gerald -you have been reading too much of the propaganda of the victors
H. G Wells and GBS were both in favour of the fashionable 20thc wheeze of eugenics to improve the racial stock so Hitler had many well placed admirers other than Ms Mitford..
Or in matters of eugenics how about this?

'The unnatural and increasingly rapid rise of the feeble-minded and insane classes, coupled as it is with a steady reduction of the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks, constitutes a national and race danger which it is impossible to exaggerate. I feel that the source from which the stream of madness is fed should be cut off and sealed uop before another year has passed.'
Adolf Hitler? NO!. Winston Spencer Churchill to Asquith in 1910.

So Ms Stopes is in very elevated company and hindsight is a wonderful gift is it not?
- davidjay on Aug 28th, 2008

**
"The most interesting part of this blog is missing: whose idea was this stamp? My guess is that great population reductionist and father of four, Prince Philip.

There is a slow, bowel-like movement in progress to groom the public to accept the reintroduction of eugenics and enforced sterilisation in the West, which was making such spiffing progress in the UK and US until Hitler gave the practice a bad name.
The movement never went away; it was just taken underground by the likes of Henry Kissinger and the Rockefellers. More recent additions to our globalist elite, such as technocrat Bill Gates, have given billions to population reduction "charities":

Enforced sterilisation is going on now in the Third World but its progress is hard to gage given the media blackout. Few know that Alberto Fujimori's government conducted a policy of forced sterilisation among women in poor areas of Peru. A policy of Western aid in exchange for population reduction by any means is in full swing. I'd be unsurprised if Western incentives are behind Mugabe's strange behaviour in Zimbabwe.

We can all expect to be subjected through school education, the media and Hollywood to slow, insidious indoctrination of the merits and necessity of eugenics, sterilisation and one-child families.

"The present vast over population, now far beyond the world carrying capacity cannot be answered by future reductions in the birth rate due to contraception, sterilization, abortion, but must be met in the present by the reduction in the numbers presently existing. This must be done by whatever means necessary".쳌
-rockefeller on Aug 28th, 2008

**
It is so easy to vilify people who are long dead says Canary Islander. But then it is also so easy to do the opposite.

I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but there are ways of thinking that are of their time or even fashionable. Even Darwin, a gentleman by birth and by nature, thought that the English were the peak of human evolution, and worried that they would be outbred by the Scots...

-hedgehogfive on Aug 28th, 2008 at 5:18 pm

**
Several years ago I spent a few months in Calcutta.. During that time I visited a home set up solely for rescued survivors of late term sex selective abortions.. In this home there were 152 baby girls and toddlers,from about 7 months gestation (i.e.recently rescued from abortion clinics having been aborted alive) to 2 years of age.. They were extremely well cared for and were destined to be adopted by Western families.. Along Chowringee,a major thoroughfare in Calcutta,and in other parts of the city there was evidence of only ONE abortion provider that advertised and promoted abortion as "Affordable" "Safe" and "legal" on large billboards and posters.. It was "Marie Stopes International".
-the_mahout on Sep 3rd, 2008
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geraldwarner/5051109/Marie_Stopes_is_forgiven_racism_and_eugenics_because_she_was_antilife/

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 07:43 AM

Does that answer your question about eugenics, Keith?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 07:49 AM

Er, I did not ask a question about eugenics Richard.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 07:52 AM

Oh FFS! The Galton Institute is the Eugenics Society with a new name (like the BNP is the National Front with a new name). Coleman is their leading light.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 07:56 AM

But he and they don't do eugenics Richard.
If you have anything on them, do tell us.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 07:58 AM

I see Guest Helen B came and went. She is probably the same as the BNP Helen Butcher on Facebook and so is soi-disant BNP. If she thinks that the adoption by the conservatives of a BNP policy (if they are so adopting) makes the BNP respectable or acceptable she is even more barking mad than I thought.

If, on the other hand one reframes it, if her input informs us as to the source of conservative theories beliefs and policies, then it serves as a valuable expose.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Azizi
Date: 05 Oct 09 - 09:39 AM

Owen Woodson,

I confess to adding those posts this morning before reading your comment requesting that people not post any more comments about eugenics on this thread.

While I believe that eugenics (or whatever present day followers of that pseudo science are calling it) is intricately connected to the subject of the BNP, I'll honor your request and I won't post any additional comments about eugenics on this thread.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Peace
Date: 06 Oct 09 - 01:08 AM

If the bloody BNP's parents had used conundrums we wouldn't have that trash around today.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 06 Oct 09 - 02:56 PM

Okay, so who's been phishing my email? I've just received the following message from the Canadian Pharmacy.

"A BNP MEDIA EVENT
Copyright © 2009 by BNP Media. All Rights Reserved
2401 W. Big Beaver Rd. Suite 700 Troy, MI 48084

You have received this notice because you are a qualified industry professional who subscribes to a BNP Media product. If you do not wish to receive business-related offers from BNP Media regarding information relevant to your industry, please follow this link to be removed from the list."

Turns out they're selling nothing more exciting than viagra at an 80% discount.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 06 Oct 09 - 07:31 PM

Fred McCormick, and Owen Woodson, there are BNP profiles using both your names on Facebook.

Owen Woodson the BNP member put a friend request to me, and I came within an inch of accepting it, then looked at his profile to find he is a BNP member.

If you open Facebook and go to the false Mudcat (the one with the picture of a mandolin), click on the logo, then when you enter the profile select the discussion tab.

There you will find all the old suspects from stupid Sam to Loopy Leah, and all the little twits in between.

They've put you in there fans folder, and are busy saying how much you are doing for the BNP.

They've got me down as doing free gigs for BNP rallies all over the country, just as I am stuck without transport, and waiting for a knee op.

You've got to admire that level of bad timing, not to mention the mindblowing stupidity of sending friend requests to a member of "Folk Against Fascism".

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 06 Oct 09 - 07:33 PM

NOTE TO SELF!

Use spellcheck
DT

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: GUEST
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 03:58 AM

Hi Don; I tried to find the fake Mudcat, but it appears to have gone. Good riddance?
Tim

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Owen Woodson
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 06:44 AM

I am most definitely not a member of the BNP!

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: jeddy
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 08:55 AM

we know that owen, welcome to the world of being cloned!!!

sorry to say folks that not only is the fake mudcat still there, sam hudson has come back.
now back to the real BNP.

things have been rather quite about them lately, does this worry anyone else?

has anything else been said about their policy court case?

take care all

jade x x x

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 06:14 PM

""has anything else been said about their policy court case?""

I don't know the length of the adjournment they got, to prepare their case, Jade, but nothing will happen till they re-convene.

Don T

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 06:29 PM

Not gone, I'm afraid, Tim.

Log in to FB and type Mudcat (not Mudcat Cafe) into the search window.

You will see a Mudcat profile with a red mandolin logo. It has 23 fans.

Click on the logo and open up view all fans.

Hoff Bridge, Don Thompson, Fred McCormick, Wysiwyg Thompson, and one called Norman Smith which has my home phone number plastered across a union jack.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: jeddy
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 06:36 PM

shit!!!!

thats really worrying don. surely facebook must do something about that. being cloned is one thing, but them, having and giving your number out are two very different things.

i wish you luck my friend.

lots of love

jade x x x

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: jeddy
Date: 07 Oct 09 - 11:51 PM

i am sitting here watching panrama, on bbc news 24.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00n6x4f/Panorama_Migrants_Go_Home!/

shocking video footage.

take care all

jade x x x x

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: mandotim
Date: 08 Oct 09 - 04:08 AM

Thanks Don; it was the 'mandolin' bit that trhrew me! It looks like a Gibson ES335 copy to me!
Tim

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 08 Oct 09 - 04:16 AM

Jeddy, "i am sitting here watching panrama, on bbc news 24. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00n6x4f/Panorama_Migrants_Go_Home!/shocking video footage."

I watched it a couple of nights ago. Horrifying. Who needs the BNP when people in supposedly legitimate authority act and talk like that.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Owen Woodson
Date: 08 Oct 09 - 09:33 AM

Hope Not Hate are sending a letter to the Daily Mirror deploring the fact that the English Defence League plan to demonstrate in Manchester on Saturday. They are asking people to sign it.

Youy can read the letter, and add your signature at http://action.hopenothate.org.uk/page/s/together

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 08 Oct 09 - 02:46 PM

Done.

Times three.

Don T

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Mr Happy
Date: 09 Oct 09 - 07:20 AM

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford - PM
Date: 27 Sep 09 - 07:47 AM

So anyone who has any reservations about an unprecedented scale of immigration is "scare mongering scum" and can only have been duped by BNP propaganda.

I do not think that I will join this debate.

keith.

**************

Judging by the number of your posts, your position's hardly credible!

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 09 Oct 09 - 07:34 AM

I did change my mind.
I was drawn in to the debate Mr. Happy.

Was that worth a post to point out?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Owen Woodson
Date: 10 Oct 09 - 11:33 AM

Police have reprotedly arrested someone on their way to the EDL demonstration, for carying cocaine and distributing racially aggravated material.

Let me guess. He's not a racist, he's not a member of the BNP, the cocaine appeared on him by accident, and the entire pig population has just taken wing and flown.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 10 Oct 09 - 03:07 PM

400

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 11 Oct 09 - 06:41 AM

Look what I found.

A fake Nick Griffin.

http://www.facebook.com/inbox/readmessage.php?t=1109113661570#/profile.php?id=1793358901

ROFLMAO

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 11 Oct 09 - 07:03 AM

400 again after deletions!

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 11 Oct 09 - 07:04 AM

So long as you knw it's fake, nameless guest.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 11 Oct 09 - 04:00 PM

Dead giveaway that!

"If you know Nick, add her as a friend"

Or is there something about Nasty that we haven't been told, and is that why he surrounds him/herself with thick ear musclemen?

It's going to take serious counselling to get rid of the mental image of that in a frock.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 11 Oct 09 - 07:51 PM

Yes, it did occur to me!

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 03:31 AM

An article from the Guardian. It contains a link to an abstract of the research paper discussed.

It seems that on average the BNP have the most stupid voters - or at least did in 2001.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2008/nov/03/greenpolitics-liberaldemocrats

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: GUEST,Den
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 03:52 AM

Maybe Richard, but when you compere facebook to here, which site has the larger audience ? It really is all about spreading the word.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Owen Woodson
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 05:11 AM

"It seems that on average the BNP have the most stupid voters - or at least did in 2001."

Sounds like nothing much has changed.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Smokey.
Date: 13 Oct 09 - 02:45 PM

but when you compere facebook to here, which site has the larger audience ? It really is all about spreading the word.

Casting a casual eye around Facebook, I'd say the majority of their users wouldn't know which end of the crayon to use in a polling station.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Owen Woodson
Date: 14 Oct 09 - 09:51 AM

The new edition of the Radio Times has announced that Bonnie Greer will be part of the panel 'fronting Nick Griffin, along with Jack Straw. The other two panellists have not yet been named.

BG is an interesting choice, in that she is a feminist, a Black American, and can be decidedly fiesty when she chooses. She is not going to take kindly to Griffin.

We may get a few fireworks after all.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 14 Oct 09 - 03:50 PM

Compere? What's that about IQ again?

Oh, yes, Fakebook. What's that? 1 million united against the BNP? Nearly 700,000 so far.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Peace
Date: 14 Oct 09 - 07:21 PM

The BNP is losing support. Keep at it, Richard. Shove a candle up their collective arse and light it.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Mrs.Duck
Date: 15 Oct 09 - 08:07 AM

BBC news just announced BNP have been instructed by the Equality and Human Rights Authority to open their membership to all regardless of ethnic origin. Could be interesting!

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Owen Woodson
Date: 15 Oct 09 - 08:35 AM

Mrs.Duck "BBC news just announced BNP have been instructed by the Equality and Human Rights Authority to open their membership to all regardless of ethnic origin."

The BNP's response has been to put it to an EGM. Since they want to stay in business, they will doubtless agree. The question will then arise, what tactics will they adopt in order to continue the ban informally?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Lox
Date: 15 Oct 09 - 04:31 PM

It probably won't happen, but I can't wait for 100,000 British Nationals of Asian and African origin to sign up and, in the interests of British Nationals everywhere, vote in a whole new set of policies.

I wonder what ideas for new policies folks on this site might wish to suggest.

My only idea so far is that the elected leader (Nick Griffin) be required to show BNP support annually for Gay Pride by leading the parade in a pink Mankini and leg warmers, surrounded by a crack team of transvestites.

He would then be sent on fact finding missions to the slums of Brazil, the Bronx, the shanty towns around johannesburg and the gaza strip where it would be his job to explain to the locals what issues he has spent his life supporting and why.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 15 Oct 09 - 07:18 PM

Beware: new members are not eligible for voting rights for 2 years (and still only get them if awarded) and in the meantime the BNP gets the additional subscriptions.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: jeddy
Date: 15 Oct 09 - 10:05 PM

ah, that puts a downer on an otherwise cracking plan.

just to keep yu updated it is next week that griffin will be on.

should they be allowed to go on question time?..i think so, let him show the world just how stupid and rude he can be.

take care all

jade x x x

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Owen Woodson
Date: 19 Oct 09 - 05:04 AM

I haven't been able to access Mudcat for a couple of days, so apologies if someone has mentioned this already. However, the Justice Secretary, Peter Hain, is threatening the BBC with legal action if they go ahead with the programme. His grounds for doing so are that the BNP is not a legally constituted party.

Richard Bridge. "Beware: new members are not eligible for voting rights for 2 years (and still only get them if awarded) and in the meantime the BNP gets the additional subscriptions."

Thanks for pointing that one out, Richard. Griffin has been touting the fact that anyone can stand for leader after five years, as evidence of the BNP's democratic credentials. Looks like you can only attain full membership on Griffin's say so.

BTW., do you have any information over what consitutes an "activist" in their eyes ? Unlike any other party I've come across, "activist" is a distinct status within the BNP, and you have to be awarded that status before you can do any work for them. Activists represent about 25% of the membership, by the way. Do they represent some sort of party elite ?

Re., the question of non-white people joining the BNP. I have absolutely no doubt that the mekon and his mates will find some ruse to keep them out. Perhaps they'll pull a similar stunt to states in the American deep south, where they were legally obliged to allow black people to vote, under the US constitution. I'm not saying what that ruse was in case it gets back to the enemy. But sad to say, prior to Black civil rights it was very effective.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Peace
Date: 19 Oct 09 - 06:48 PM

I'm sure the assholes in the KKK have passed that info on already.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 19 Oct 09 - 06:53 PM

I note that the BNP has started to smear the two non-white known members of Thursday's "Question Time" panel - one as a "positive discriminee" and the other as a "Black re-writer of history".

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 20 Oct 09 - 05:11 AM

I went to a lecture by Jonathon Porritt, the green activist, last night. A very good lecture it was too. During question time, the necessity of limiting world population came up. Porritt was in favour. After explaining why, he said something along the lines of, "You don't have to be a National Front or BNP nutter to believe that. I say that with some vehemence because the BNP took a quote of mine about population growth and pasted it on their website, saying that Jonathon Porritt agrees with the BNP.

"I BLOODY DO NOT!!!"

Needless to say he got a vigorous round of applause.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Gervase
Date: 20 Oct 09 - 05:42 AM

Oops - a new BNP membership list has appeared here. What a shower. Still only one Mudcat name that I recognise there, dear old BNP "I ain't saying nuffink" George.

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 20 Oct 09 - 02:08 PM

Jesus Christ Almighty.

At last the Meejah has caught on to what we have known for a couple of months.

The news today has featured, in EVERY bulletin, the story of the use by the BNP of the Spitfire, and Winston Churchill, to campaign for the Euro seats.

They also caught on to the fact that the Spit had a Polish pilot.

God, these guys are quick on the uptake, but only when four generals rub their noses in it.

If you or I booked into a back street hotel with Mrs Higgins at No. 27, it would be all over the papers in twenty minutes.

When they took the oily fat git to task over it, he had the nerve to say that, if Churchill was alive today, he'd be a BNP member.

And pigs might fly! (Hopefully the porker that runs the BNP will try, right off Beachy Head, where he can join the other Nazis who crashed there).

Don T

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 20 Oct 09 - 03:15 PM

Great, anyone got any freeware that will convert xlsb files to, say, xls?

Subject: RE: BS: The BNP conundrum
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 21 Oct 09 - 08:57 AM

What's the matter Guest, opposed to the freedom of lawful speech?

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Thread closed, since we're allowing only one BNP thread at a time. Please continue on the current BNP thread.
Thanks.
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