BNP in electoral oblivion?

Whilst the top brains of the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats circle the wagons and decide on the best options open to them, other things are going on in domestic politics. The side show is The Sun getting steamed up about a 59-year old squatter in a posh London home. Getting further up the billing is the plight of the BNP. Most commentators have written them off as a joke. However, I think that is misplaced. We have now a form of multi-party politics. The BNP is a small player in this new agenda. What most forget is that the BNP can command the support of around one million voters if all UK voters get the chance to vote. On top of that my inclinination is to suggest that another two million let the possibility of supporting the BNP pass their minds. This is no insignificant part of the electorate.

So where are we now? The BNP is led by a man who is clever but prone to childish pranks, poses and postures. He also has rather an iron grip on the party. Most of the campaigning "skills" are his. This has led to a catastrophic result as far as seats are concerned, but votes have increased slightly. The party is in meltdown, though. The website is offline due to the fact there is a tussle between Griffin and the former webmaster Simon Bennett. The site was taken down because Bennett was landed with the legal mess due to Griffin's crazed campaign with and against Marmite. Council seats fell faster than the ten green bottles. Barking was skittle alley for Margaret Hodge. The anti-BNP coalition of oddball anarchists, self-righteous lefties and political streetfighters think they have won the war. I think it's no more than a battle at best. Probably a skirmish.

The BNP has been the most successful "far-right" political party in the UK. Such politics as it represents, that of nationalism and populism, attracts a percentage of the electorate. And it always has. However, it will never be a mainstream political choice. Margaret Hodge thinks the BNP will run off like a dog with its tail between its legs. I think she is wrong. This election never addressed the matter of the thoughts of people about immigration. They hear statistics and well-meaning phrases, but precious little understanding. Gordon Brown flew off the handle over "that woman" because he thought he heard her say racist things. He never attempted to understand where she was coming from, that is why her postal vote stayed where it was.

The BNP under Nick Griffin is not the answer to the questions that people want answered. Many say that when BNP councillors get elected they are hopeless at the job and this is mainly true. But some are not. I sense there may be quite a few who see a different leadership as being the BNP's salvation for future electoral forays. Time will tell. And that will be when we need to get serious about responding to the debate.

No wedded bliss under New Labour regime

In some ways the New Labour regime mirrors the US Episcopal Church as some kind of secular PC alternative. They are all for a bizarre idea of equality, thrusting alternative lifestyles at us in place of married bliss and generally failing to help the disadvantaged and the wronged because they have a blanket approach to it all.

New Labour heard that some sub-continental brides had been sold into marital slavery and abuse in order to obtain cash dowries for the grasping grooms. At first this was dismissed because no self-respecting New Labour apparatchik could bring himself/herself to accept anything untoward from the Asian community. Then they were forced to admit that forced marriages needed acting upon. Of course, being New Labour, they couldn't construct an act that dealt with the problem. No, they had to include every race, creed and human being possible into their law. So it is that totally innocent people get caught up in this legal minefield.

The Home Office is diligently applying the rules and regulations with vigour. British bride Amber Aguilar, from Friern Barnet, north London, faced the dilemma of having to choose between her career ambitions in the UK or living abroad with her Chilean husband because of the policy. The ‘heartbroken’ 18-year-old chose to live with 19-year-old Diego Andres Aguilar Quila, who had to leave the country recently after his student visa expired. The Home Office has been labelled heartless. I'd say they were just a bunch of jobsworths with a penchant for momentary lapses into jobsworthlessnesses (like losing computer data!).

It is not what Britain should be about. The sooner this lot go the better for all of us!

UK Border Agency plonkers bordering on the barmy!

You have to hand it to the UK Border Agency. They're a bunch of tender-hearted wonders, aren't they. As with most agencies working for the New Labour Regime, they interpret laws in the same way as Basil Fawlty interpreted menus. Because this government never thinks further than the end of the pen that's writing the stuff they enact into law, things go wrong.

It was a good idea to introduce a law to safeguard young Asian women against forced marriages. But the catchall nature of New Labour thinking includes every young woman, even Canadian ones. So it is that nineteen-year-old Canadian Rochelle Wallis who married her Welsh husband Adam in November 2008, two years after they first met and fell in love, is to be deported. Deported? What for? According to the UK Border Agency she falls under the scope of the Forced Marriages Act, which was passed in 2007.

To add insult to injury these plonkers told Rochelle that her deportation, until she is 21, is a mere "inconvenience". Naturally, she sees it very differently. "It's more than an inconvenience, it's ripping my marriage apart".

What I find so appalling is that we now have these agency staff who are quasi civil servants making decisions that would have pleased the leaders of the former eastern Europe no end. Every day that goes by, some agency or other cocks up big time or makes someone's life hell somewhere.

When are we going to say it has to end?

Sink immigrants' boats says BNP's Griffin

"Europe has sooner or later to close its borders or its simply going to be swamped by the Third World", says Nick Griffin, newly elected BNP MEP but isolated euro-politician. Nobody wants to play happy families with him, it seems.

However, the BBC has decided he is allowed to be interviewed. This is what he thinks of the Italian government's lacklustre approach to immigration. Hardly a novel approach, but coming from Griffin's mouth it appears sinister and deadly.

Weasel Woolas dumps on Gurkhas from a height!

Most people, I am sure, had been expecting some justice for the Gurkhas. However, it is not to be. Not totally unexpected, as this government is shameful when it comes to honour, decency and just plain humanity. Up to their necks in benefit cheating, spin and deception - the budget being the latest prize example - we just have to wait again.

Joanna Lumley, who has been a longtime campaigner for the Gurkhas, said the announcement made her "ashamed of our administration". Immigration Minister Phil Woolas is in high spin mode, suggesting that this is an improvement. Why can't he just come clean and admit he doesn't want them here.

The Gurkhas have fought bravely for this country without fear or favour always prepared to do what was asked of them. Their VC collection is testament to this. It is just their bad luck they should run into such a weasel as Woolas!

Immigrants get it from right and left!

You'd be wondering why so many would-be immigrants try so desperately to get into Britain. On the one hand (the right) they've got Nick Griffin sizing them up as potential "racial foreigners" and on the other hand (the left) they've got the hapless Jacqui Smith viewing them as potential terrorists and anti-social foreigners. Not much of a warm welcome there!

Most sane and rational people want a firm and fair immigration system. One that is palpably open to simple understanding and not bound up with so much red tape and regulations that "experts" have to decipher it all. The BNP has come up with some frightful tome called the "Language and Concepts Discipline Manual". This is apparently to keep the BNP faithful from straying into illegal talk but encouraging them to use words that convey the "message". Which is that if you have a skin colouring that is on the darker side of Robert Kilroy-Silk's you get to be put in the "racial foreigners" camp. A camp that may one day have barbed wire all around it.

This is a policy (well, not even a policy, really!) that is high on hatred and low on logic! Griffin has taken Humpty Dumpty at his word and made "racial foreigner" mean what he wants it to mean. All very distasteful.

Then we have the case of the twelve Pakistani students rounded up on terrorist charges, the very same ones that got Bob Quick to resign, only to find that the police can't charge them with anything. The whole thing appears to be a storm in a teacup. Or a cockup. Or worse.

Now that the police have done their bit, these students are still deemed unsavoury characters so have been turned over to the UK Border Agency. Jacqui Smith has become judge and jury and they are going to be deported. Nice one! If I were a Pakistani contemplating coming to study in England I'd have serious doubts running through my head. Because the way the expenses-cheating Home Secretary thinks, they are guilty just because they are Pakistani. This is utterly monstrous. She should have the guts to tell the Pakistan government that ALL their citizens are seen by the UK government as potential terrorists.

Some of them are protesting their innocence in court. It's the very idea that, because no charges were made, some other method needs to be used to "get them". This government is always spinning that they are fighting terrorism but mostly they are not. New Labour's bungling of security issues only feeds the very thing they are claiming to be against. Now Asians living in the UK are disturbed and upset by the thought that they are perceived as a trojan horse.

They must feel like they are in the Charge of the Light Brigade. "Cannon to right of them, cannon to left of them...."

Uncle Sam's got more paperwork!

Christopher Columbus only had to contend with crossing the Atlantic ocean. We on the other hand have to contend with crossing the I's and dotting the T's otherwise "it's on your bike, mate!" at the immigration lines.

On Monday, if you are travelling into the United States, you will need to have completed an Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) form, which will give the American authorities all they need to know about you.

According to the Daily Mail, the move to more form-filling is likely to frustrate holiday firms, travel agents and holidaymakers - particularly elderly travellers less at ease with computers. They expect chaos! The changes have not been widely publicised beyond the embassy website. So I'm doing my bit, although it's somewhat late in the day.

Rick Galbraith, of the customs and border protection office at the U.S. Embassy, said, "Esta will not be optional - it will be required before they get on that plane." Which will be they won't get on the plane if they haven't got it..

Travellers will have to state whether they have a range of communicable diseases - including some sexually transmitted diseases and TB - any mental or physical disorders, and whether or not they are drug abusers or drug addicts. I can't believe those suffering from a mental breakdown brought about by the credit crunch are going to admit it on a form. Kind of double whammy. And are all those suffering from "unmentionable diseases" going to admit to anything? I've not seen the form, but it's all a bit iffy in the knowledge department. I wonder if Al Quaeda operatives have any sexually transmitted diseases. Nutcases and fruitcakes, yes, but that is already known.

The rules state: 'If your admission is denied, you have no right to appeal.' Well, Big Brother speaks. He should set up home with Big Sister!