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True. Turnout in Yorkshire fell from around 42% to around 30%. The BNP fell from 126,000 to 120000 votes, Conservatives from 387, 000 to 290,000 and Labour rather hilariously from 413,000 to 230,000.
The papers and Twitter etc have been full of people all day whinging that Yorkshire is 'full of fucking morons' for 'voting in the BNP', the only morons were those that just didn't bother to vote at all.
I never said it was garnering more support. 120,000 sounds like support to me...
You can put their win down to whatever you wish and the fall in votes for other parties is certainly top of the list. What doesn't change is that the BNP have two seats at the Euro Parliament and have a continental forum to make their views known.
But proportionately, there has been an increase, because of the fall elsewhere. Democracy works on proportions of voters, not overall numbers.
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
- Edmund Burke
...
People have seen their factories bought up by foreign companies, asset stripped and then shut down, the jobs moving to Poland or India. The BNP are the only ones saying 'hang on, why are the Government letting foreigners sack British people?'.
People have seen their estates and their neighbourhoods go down the drain, with lack of investment and lack of interest. People then see the council spending £10m on a mosque, or on an ethnic community centre, down the road. The BNP are the only ones saying 'hang on, why do they get all the money and not the neighbourhoods that were already here?'.
I don't agree with anything the BNP stand for. The BNP are nasty thugs who skew people's genuine anger and try and turn it into something it's not.
But why should British companies be allowed to bought up and asset stripped by foreigners? You don't see it anywhere else in the EU.
so what? Even if you're right, does this mean it's okay to make fun of or insult people with mental illness?
I frankly I'd rather have someone as PM who might suffer from depression or tantrums than someone who claims he hears voices from the sky telling him to attack other countries. Who is the the more mentally ill there?
I do get the feeling most of the criticism levied at Gordon Brown is because he is the incumbent prime minister rather than actual real failings with him. But then that's just my feeling and I might be wrong.
Stargalaxy - I may or may not be right in thinking that if it were up to you, along with the lawyers, all the politicians in this country would be lined up and shot, yes? If we say that we have to have politicians running this country, and because of our political system it's going to be members of a political party, either conservative, labour or liberal democrat (at a long shot) - who is the least bad? I think ultimately after all the lies and slander and spin and scaremongering that's what it comes down to - who do you trust to do the best job / do the least damage?
Just by their track record (looking at it without paying attention to the media frenzy) labour have done a fairly good job, and I'm not confident that the conservatives or liberal democrats at this point in time would do a better job, or at the least wouldn't be able to minimise damage in the way labour has.
Yes, I do think it's OK to insult someone who is so poor at controlling his temper that he needs to be fed 'news sandwiches' and throws printers at people when he gets bad news.
He's not the only one with mental illness but the rest of us are professional enough to hold our tempers.
In another news, I see that Nick Griffin has been pelted with eggs and made to do a runner today outside the Houses of Parliament...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8091605.stm
What a bunch of utter fuck-wits Unite Against Fascism are. A travesty against both freedom of speech and the democratic process.
I always think that the authoritarian/libertarian scale is much more enlightening than the left/right scale.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8091727.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8091605.stm (half way down, Griffin's response)
It's scary that just from that, it is by far Nick Griffin who comes off as the reasonable minded politician and the UAF who come across as anti-democratic. How unfortunate and ironic.
Scary:
UAF Woman:
"We don't believe in free speech"
"He may be a legitimately-elected a politician, but he is actually a politician from a fascist organisation"
Ok the first one is taken out of context
She talks about the BNP advocating violence, yet condones her hippy mob who pelted with eggs. Irony, it would seem, as usual, is wasted on the left.
What I find annoying is the number of people, who rightly criticise this group for their hypocritical stance, but then seem to have fundamentally different opinions about each of these incidents depending on the opinions of the people carrying them out. Throwing eggs at Nick Griffin makes you a thug, but throwing slime at Mandelson is just a bit of mischief.
These idiots aren't doing their cause any good coming out with shit like that though. They should know the BNP love to play the victim card. Why do they think they chose to have a press conference outside of parliament where there's a pretty much permanent protester presence?
I thought she should have been prosecuted as well - however the difference was that she was on her own and wasn't trying to disrupt Mandelson speaking. This was a mob trying to stop someone practicing his right to free speech.
As an aside a tourist was injured (albeit treated in ambulance rather than hospitalised) when they were caught in the middle, so it wasn't completely harmless fun
Oh, and I think that slime woman was prosecuted for it. Dunno what with, but she definitely got arrested at least.
The BNP believes that British jobs should be for British workers. Aside from the nightmare of defining the word "British", if every single job in this country had to go to a British worker, people would soon complain. This would push up wage costs, meaning that life becomes more expensive. Who would feel the pinch from this first? Yes, the working men and women that voted for the BNP in the first place. Therefore, it can be argued that a BNP-led government would make you poorer. Sounds very Old Labour to me.
The BNP believe in centralised command and control, trade tariffs as outlined above) and nationalising large swathes of industry. They're essentially a traditionally Left-wing party with a racist wing. Iain Dale attempted to explain this on his blog a few weeks ago, to a mixed reaction. Protesters are never particularly imaginative when it comes to these things. They always end up throwing things like flour and eggs towards people. Those ingredients could help make a perfectly good cake to throw at someone.
I hear what Griffin was most angry about is that the eggs he was pelted with had their yolks. He only likes the whites.
The difference, for me, is democracy. Who voted Mandelson in?
Anyway, I think it's only right we allow him the freedom to speak, afterall that is far more damaging to the BNP than any other act we could take as the intelligent will see through the hate and the stupid are the stupid anyway.
I wonder if there are any straw poll studies of the amount of racist people in the UK today? Would be interesting. Anyone doing a PhD in sociology, perchance? Need research plz :cool:
Lol, well yes I am (in Oct) but my bigot-o-scope is broken, so I can't give you a definite stat
As I understand it however from comparative studies of race relations, particularly in the north, the way in which attitudes to 'others' harden is mainly around perceived (although in many cases not actual) inequalities in treatment, employment, housing etc.
The model of racial discrimination that sees physical difference as of primary importance (e.g: the Nazi eugenics model) is a far more marginal group than those whose discrimination is grounded in perceptions of unequal treatment or threats to culture.
At the risk of getting into an academic debate on the social construction elements of race and racism, there is also a huge class dimension to this. Historically (and very broadly), the operation of racism has been split on class lines - racisms of those more powerful or wealthy groups tend to be one of distance, distinction and in some cases in order to dominate other groups.
Racism of the less well off or powerful tends to be reactionary and protectionist, in the sense that it is more about 'threats' to job markets, housing etc. These threats are NOT usually backed up by the stats, but these kind of academic arguments are rarely very good at shifting entrenched attitudes.
It should be CRIED OUT however, that many studies in education, housing surveys and employment sociology that I've seen back up the fact that for all it's problems and newspaper headlines, our civil society is genuinely good at integrating new cultural elements.
Obviously not without problem, but compared to many other countries of similar economic profile we're not bad. For example: studies into Islamophobia perceptions amongst Muslim minorities, many of whom contain recent migrants from various parts of the world - while affirming problems and pressures to do with housing and employment, as well as cultural and ethnic tensions with other communities, time and again you get the comment, almost in the same words - 'But we are protected by law and able to practice our religion'.
Far from perfect but needs to be kept in perspective.
There are TONS of studies on this btw - just feed a question into Google Scholar and you'll get way more than you need.
The Queen's neither in the executive nor the legislature
She gets a bit of a bum deal really, having to be nice to all those boring politicians and 'pillars of the community'. Even Buck House isn't enough compensation for having to be nice to those people.