OK this may be the only blog before the election where I actually focus fully on it but one of the main reasons I wish to do so is the BNP leaflet I received along with a number of other party election publications. I felt I had to say something about it as there may be some of you who don’t receive one.

‘Asylum is making Britain Explode’ declares the provocative headline and underneath a picture of some asians burning a Union Jack (it doesn’t look like the picture is actually from England tho’ I could be wrong)

They then have their bullet points

  • Terrorist Time Bomb -which starts with the word ‘asylum’. and includes ‘asylum-bombers’
  • Asylum Time Bomb -yes you guessed it asylum is in there too.
  • EU Time Bomb – This talks about borders in its 2 line preamble before talking about how 75 million potential migrants can now live in Britain at our expense. 97% of all asylum applications are bogus the BNP claims.
  • Financial Time Bomb – First word ‘asylum’ again and how apparently £4 billion of taxpayers money is being spent on asylum seekers rather than schools hospitals etc. etc.
  • Housing Time Bomb – Which you won’t be surprised to learn starts with the word ‘asylum’ again. Apparently the government is planning to build 5 giant cities the size of Birmingham to house 5 million new immigrants. [Redbaron comment -They don’t mention where the other 70 million potential immigrants are going to be housed!]

So that’s the first page of it, inside there is a tirade against Labour, Tory and Lib Dem then a page devoted to Nick Griffin under the banner SAFE -Stop Asylum For Ever.
Griffin claims that his party will make

  • Safe Borders
  • Safe Streets
  • Safe People
  • Safe homes
  • Safe country

Griffin ends with the words “The BNP says: Britain is our country. People can love it or leave it.”

On the back page it refers to the BNP being the newest and fastest growing political party. [Redbaron comment -interesting claim, Respect were founded in January so I think we might get the mantle of newest if nothing else.] The BNP claims that a poll in the Mail on Sunday stated that the BNP support was 16%. [Redbaron comment -I would be staggered and deeply concerned if this were to be true, I suspect it more likely that 16% of Mail on Sunday readers are pro-BNP and if I were them this would be disappointing!]
Then you have a picture of one of the BNP candidates with his family with the caption “My Dad isn’t a racist”. [RB-Leaving aside the fact that Mr Bruce Cowd looks as if he has been no stranger to ‘paki-bashing’ in his past and that the photo makes it look suspiciously like he is wearing a black shirt, his 2 children look like rabbits caught in the headlights, at an estimate the oldest looks no more than 6. I doubt he’d even be able to understand the word ‘racist’ let alone tell whether his Dad is or isn’t one.] The text says “The BNP is not racist. Our argument is not with other people [RB-!!!!!!!!!] but with the politicians who are destroying the country.”

It goes on but I tire of quoting it. Anyway that was obviously not especially conducive to breakfast. So the question was where to start picking it apart -no let’s be initially objective, I could be wrong all the points might be valid -this could be my damascene conversion to fascism!

So let’s look at page 1

  • Terrorist Time Bomb -Ah yes the well-known ostrich approach -as long as the terrorists aren’t actually in our country the problem will go away. It’s rather like the adage if a tree falls in the woods and there is no one to hear it does it make a noise. The BNP appear to apply the same principle to terrorism, if a bomb goes off but no British person is involved then we can’t hear it.
  • Asylum Time Bomb -oh the old chestnut about our public services being pushed to the limit because there are too many asylum seekers, wake up it’s because they’ve had no fecking money for the last God knows how many years. Bearing in mind European birth rates have fallen in fact the asylum seekers only go to make up the numbers had birth rates continued growing and the government should have laid contingency into their public service spending policy to account for shifts in birth rate, thus the asylum seekers are only testing out how good the last 20 years governmental policy has been. We see the result -woefully inadequate.
  • EU Time Bomb -So the BNP want out of Europe, well if the BNP were to get elected I think Europe would be more than happy to oblige them on that one. 75 Million potential migrants eh? Well that’s less than the potential migrants since 1973 and I don’t see us overrun with French, German or Italians so what’s the problem. Oh sorry yes these are poor people, I forgot we don’t want somebody else’s scum but we’ll welcome you from any country if you’re flush -after all who needs to be an EU citizen if you’re loaded? Ask Mohammed Al-Fayed.
  • Financial Time Bomb – £4 Billion spent on asylum seekers eh? Now on this point I quite agree this is ridiculous, if even half of that was spent giving unconditional aid to the countries haemorrhaging people to rebuild the infrastructure etc. there wouldn’t be an “asylum problem”
  • Housing Time Bomb – So 5 new cities eh? That’s a good one that, of course it interests me in the current setup that with houses so expensive that even the middle-classes are struggling to buy a home the BNP believe that asylum seekers are going to be populating their own cities. What a crock of shite. The likelihood is that some new “affordable housing” will be built which is affordable only to the people who already live in mansions. They will then lease out these properties charging exorbitant rents to students and asylum seekers and those too poor to buy a house alike. So in fact whilst I am opposed to all this as a committed anti-capitalist you would think this would be right up the BNPs street as it will not only generate lots of income for the rich but it will also rip off Johnny Foreigner. If they are so against this, are they campaigning for the homeless on the streets no of course they aren’t because if they were to get rid of all the asylum seekers the homeless and the disabled would be next. You don’t see anything about either group on BNP literature -funny that.

    So onto the second page. Well, I’m not going to defend the Labour party nor the Tories or Lib-Dems but the BNP only attacks them for immigration policies. I would also like to attack their immigration policies, I think they are not integrated into financial aid and they are too stringently anti-poor, I don’t think that’s entirely the direction the BNP are coming from.

    The Chairman’s address page. Nick Griffin- “Tonight Matthew I’m going to be………. Oswald Mosely!” Forgive me but I see something of a contradiction thinking about fascists and ‘safe’ in the same breath. There is something about fascists that makes me feel very unsafe indeed. Phrases like “The British National Party will put our human rights first” and “our own people will have preference in schooling, jobs and housing.” hardly do much to put me at ease. What the BNP never seem to make clear is who we are. I have already gone into the issue of race see ‘What are we as a race?’ and I have my doubts as to the sincerity of the BNP description of British because I suspect it means WASP. Furthermore the BNPs policy of bringing in a ‘Tony Martin law’ in my view is cynically populist and extremely regressive. It once again re-establishes the legal precedent to protect property above the rights of a human being. I am no friend of burglars and have suffered it once very recently I would like to stop it but I am not prepared to shoot someone because they are in my house, no possession is worth that much.

    Finally on to the last page. The Patriotic Majority! I know I couldn’t resist having a go at the candidate Bruce “Thuggo” Cowd earlier so that’s covered that part. Other than that it talks about the Dutch election situation where the LPF dictated immigration policy to the larger parties as a result of their share, regardless of whether or not one wishes this country to go down the road of allowing one extremely rich person to dictate his personal policy to an already right-wing government, one has to look at what happened in Holland after that election. The LPF lost vast support and are no longer an electoral force.

    So the BNP in this election -a Euro election don’t forget stand purely for withdrawing the country from Europe at which point any Euro MPs they have would be rendered obsolete so their whole asylum program falls apart because they have control of the legislature neither at regional, national nor continental level. And looking at the lunacy of their election pamphlet one has to say damn good thing too.

    What worries me most of all is that now in this country the fascists feel that they don’t have to hide anymore they can come out with their foreigner-scapegoating policies because the mainstream political parties have allowed this form of discussion to be on the agenda. No-one seems to actually follow the arguement through and say OK what would actually happen if immigration stopped? What would happen if we repatriated people not born in this country? What would happen if we imposed cultural values on people? What is this British of which we speak? Think about these questions for a minute, think of the ramifications. The problem is that most people are not taught to criticise and analyse they don’t equate that Chicken Madras with ‘foreign’ they don’t look at the absolute permeation of cultural diversity down the centuries to such an extent that it is difficult to know what may have been here before it. The language, the people, the cuisine of this country are hybrid amalgamations of various different cultures some of which have had influence over this country and others this country has had influence over. This multiculturalism pre-dates the British Empire by over 1500 years. So what do you actually want to do fascists? Go back to living in mud huts in the only age before Britain had any outside influence? Well, be my guest, to be honest FUCK OFF we, the current occupants of Britain, the Irish, the Indians, the Afro-Carribeans, the Italians, the Chinese, the Pakistanis, the English, the Scots, the Welsh and the asylum seekers from wherever they come are all better off without you. I know who’s company I’d rather keep.

    Original Comments:


    Katie made this comment,
    Come on then, tell the story you can’t leave me hanging like that
    Visit me @ http://screamtoasigh.blog-city.com

    comment added :: {ts ‘2004-05-26 02:39:23’} GMT+01

    haywood made this comment,
    yo von baron, can i get the log-in info for the LBA site?
    Haywood
    cjh9999@mailblocks.com

    comment added :: {ts ‘2004-05-26 14:09:27’} GMT+01

    Jennie made this comment,
    Sarin Find Leaves U.S. Restless, But Cautious
    No Injuries Suffered As Round Explodes, But Discovery Raises Concern
    POSTED: 11:00 a.m. EDT May 17, 2004
    UPDATED: 6:34 p.m. EDT May 17, 2004

    BAGHDAD, Iraq — A roadside bomb containing sarin nerve agent exploded near a U.S. military convoy, but there were no casualties, a senior U.S. military officer said Monday.

    EYE ON IRAQ
    Likelihood Of Request To Leave?
    Release More Abuse Images?
    Taguba On ‘Lack Of Leadership’
    Kimmitt On Court Martial
    Background: The Taguba Report
    Rumsfeld: Text Of Statement | Bio
    Slideshow: Comments On Abuses
    Timeline: Saddam’s Life
    Military Glossary
    Res. 1441 Text
    Interim Iraqi Constitution
    INTERACTIVES
    Iraq Maps
    Iraq History
    Discuss: Iraq
    BAGHDAD TIME
    4:41 p.m.

    Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the chief military spokesman in Iraq, said there was some minor exposure but no injuries. But, he said, soldiers who transported the round showed some symptoms consistent with low-level nerve agent exposure.

    Kimmitt said the device exploded before it could be destroyed and “a very small” amount of sarin escaped because the shell’s chemicals didn’t mix properly. He said the explosion occurred a couple of days ago, adding that the military believes the insurgents who set the bomb didn’t know it contained sarin.

    “The Iraqi Survey Group confirmed today that a 155-millimeter artillery round containing sarin nerve agent had been found,” Kimmitt said in a Baghdad news conference. He said the round was rigged as an “IED,” or improvised explosive device.

    In a news conference Monday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was cautious about drawing conclusions. He said the first step is to conduct further testing on what was in the explosive.

    Rumsfeld said it is too early to draw conclusions froma “field test, which is not perfect.”

    A U.S. official said there’s worry that other sarin-filled shells from Saddam’s former regime may still exist.

    Officials believe the shell was an experimental munition that predates the 1991 Gulf War.

    Saddam’s former government had acknowledged testing of “binary type” sarin weapons. But there was never a declaration that any such weapons still remained.

    The round was discovered by a U.S. convoy, Kimmitt said.

    Saddam claimed to have destroyed his chemical and biological weapons. The United States based its case for war on the presence of banned weapons.

    A single drop of sarin can cause quick and agonizing death. But, Kimmitt said, very little of the nerve agent can be dispersed in a device such as a roadside bomb.

    Blix Weighs In
    Former chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix is taking a wait-and-see approach on news that a roadside bomb containing sarin exploded in Iraq.

    Blix said it is too soon to determine if the shell was from the past or part of a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.

    Blix reported before the beginning of the war in Iraq that his teams were unable to locate proof of deadly weapons. But his inspectors did find 16 warheads that were tagged as being used for containing sarin. They were empty.

    Military: Mustard Gas Detected Earlier This Month
    Some trace residue of mustard agent was detected in an artillery shell found earlier this month in Baghdad, the U.S. military said Monday.

    The shell, found in a street, was believed to be from one of Saddam’s old stockpiles and was not regarded as evidence of recent weapons of mass destruction production.

    Related Story:
    Today: Head Of Iraq’s Governing Council Dies In Bombing
    Distributed by Internet Broadcasting Systems, Inc. The Associated Press contributed to this report. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

    BET YOU DIDN’T READ ABOUT THIS. NO WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION HUH????

    [Redbaron responds -Ah Jen good to have you back -I did wonder bearing in mind your whole blog appeared to be wiped after our last little encounter! What ever gave you the idea that I didn’t think there were any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? I wasn’t sure there were any left in 2003 but I know why the US was so positive that Saddam had some because they had fucking sold them to him! The issue with the war was that Saddam and Iraq did not constitute a new threat as the US was attempting to portray. It even states in your report that the weapon predated 1991 which means it was for use in which war exactly….? Oh yes the Iran-Iraq war where Saddam was funded by the Americans. So in fact your military found one of its own weapons, well done you must be very proud!
    BTW Jen when copying and pasting an article in it is advisable not to paste the bit in that proves you have infringed the copyright. Just a thought! Thanks for stopping by even tho’ your comment had nothing to do with my post! Next please.]

    comment added :: {ts ‘2004-05-26 15:51:53’} GMT+01

    Katie made this comment,
    Quote from todays guardian “why I love… TV listings”
    typical listings in Morning Star
    “19.30 Watchdog: Ineffectual consumer reportage with too little emphasis on comodity fetishism and too much emphasis on value in pension plans for the cake-fed classes. With Comrade Robinson
    20.00 Eastenders. Opiate for the masses
    20.30 Pride and Prejudice: Jane Austin’s classic vile propagandist tale of romance, family obligation and bourgeois scum”
    He he he
    Visit me @ http://screamtoasigh.blog-city.com

    comment added :: {ts ‘2004-05-26 19:23:40’} GMT+01

    Jimmy Sunshine made this comment,
    anyway, back to the blog entry…
    i got the BNP leaflet this morning, and what was most noticable to me (apart from being delivered at 5am by mr big brave anonymous facist) was that it could’ve been a tory flyer, a uk independence party flyer, or shame of all shames, the labour party flyer. they all sound the same now. and that’s not the BNP becoming more centrist – the only reason they get heard at all is because tony has retuned the political frequency to ‘jerusalem fm’ – the green and pleasant lands rejoice to the sound of various shades of rightwing. if it hadn’t been for george galloway, i may have had to vote lib dem in the euro elections, who sound to me like the only mainstream voice of reason at the moment. and since as a conscientious anarchist abstainer (that’s easy for you to spell) what a tragedy to use my first ever vote on the liberals. thank the secular society for respect.

    Visit me @ http://jimmysunshine.blog-city.com/

    comment added :: {ts ‘2004-05-28 15:19:11’} GMT+01