Question Time BNP Bingo

Tonight's much-hyped Question Time, featuring the fascist BNP leader Nick Griffin, is geared up to be must-watch TV for anyone with a passing interest in politics.

However, I fear it may turn out to be a particularly tedious event.

So, inspired by Dick Puddlecote and Independence Home, I have decided to knock up a print-out BNP Bingo card to help keep your interest in proceedings. It contains lots of words and phrases that often crop up around the inevitable debate around immigration, multiculturalism and its bedfellows.
Download BNP bingo PDF
Let me know if you intend on playing along, and predict a total score. Mucho kudos will go to the person who makes the closest guess!

I'll also be taking part in live chat at Mark Reckons during the broadcast.

UK Border Atrocity

The UKBA has begun the scientifically flawed, blatantly racist DNA profiling of asylum seekers to determine their ethnicity *ahem* 'nationality'.

73% of children held at UKBA detention centres are developing mental health issues during their captivity. (More than half of these children won't even be deported).

The UKBA is adding extra inconvenience for those claiming asylum by requiring them to attend in person to submit information, and those who can't make their asylum claims during port entry will need to travel to Croydon to make their claim.

Anyway, back to life in civilised society.

On the Horizon 12/10/2009

Welcome to the first in what will be a regular selection of some of the best blogging of late.

Mark Reckons - Surely the Lib Dems should be doing better than this? - Mark feels that a golden opportunity is being missed. Excellent comments thread.

Richard Wilson - The Parliamentary Question Carter Ruck and Trafigura don’t want you to see - The Guardian are being silenced. Find out what they aren't being allowed to report.

Byrne Tofferings - Welcoming Tony Blair as President - Thomas clarifies what exactly Blair would be President of, and would welcome his appointment (I have reservations).

The New Look

Well the feedback from my poll on my blog's colour scheme was universally negative. Therefore I've changed to a new template from Marzuki Jalil. I have kept the yellow colouring (personal preference/Lib Dem allegiance), but the main text is on a white background now.

So hopefully your eyes won't try and jump out of your head when reading my headblurts from now on.

No doubt I'll be tweaking things as time goes by. hat black space at the top is crying out to be filled with an image of something...

Rags to Riches

It is normally the formula for social acclaim: from a humble background, a young man uses hard-work and ingenuity to make a success of himself, and becomes a multi-millionaire. His story shows that in our society, through motivation and dedication, anyone can achieve prosperity. It is quintessentially the American Dream, and is a prevailing ethos throughout Western culture.

Normally.

But Curtis Warren made his fortune from drugs. Today he was convicted of smuggling cannabis, and faces a jail sentence of up to 14 years.

Meanwhile, Ken Clarke, the former head honcho of a rival drug-dealing network, is the Conservative Shadow Business Secretary.

Panorama "Migrants: Go Home!"

Last night's Panorama looked at the route taken by African migrants and asylum seekers into Europe and the UK. It followed the "chain" of movement through Libya, Italy and France that is being "pushed" back by the authorities. Along the route, migrants experience highly dangerous transportation, cramped, squalid living conditions and political oppression, simply for having the will to move away from violence and extreme poverty.

Phil Woolas justifies these actions as the means to drying up the market exploited by human traffickers:

We call it pushing a chain. It's very difficult to push a chain, but we're trying to push a chain back down the route so that when the people traffickers say 'come this way, you economic migrants, come this way to France or to Germany or Sweden or Britain', we can show that the route is closed.

However without the border controls that produce such stringent limitations on people's ability to move, the traffickers would have no market to exploit. Immigration controls are basically the prohibition of movement, and like all forms of prohibition, it creates far more problems than it solves.

I also can't ignore the Woolas's horrid term "you economic migrants". This is the sort of 'us and them' language that sows the seeds of division and derision.

In particular, anyone who has seen District 9 should watch the show (and anyone who hasn't seen it should; I refer you to Charlotte Gore's spot-on review). The stark similarities between the themes of the film and the documentary show that the film was not just about South African apartheid but also about the way that brutal way humans treat anyone seen as outsiders.



(Handy BBC iPlayer embed code from http://upyourego.com/pip/)

AV Smoke and Mirrors

So Gordon Brown has pledged to have a referendum on voting reform if* Labour wins the next election.

But hold your horses. The voting system up for grabs would be Alternative Vote. AV is not proportional, and is not really any better than the current FPTP system.

No independent body is suggesting a change to AV, so for Brown to choose this system for a referendum is simply trying to distract the genuine debate over making the result elections properly represent the way the public voted. Indeed, UnlockDemocracy has come out firmly against:

Parliament will remain as unrepresentative – and subsequently unresponsive – as ever. There is no demand amongst the wider public for this change and it is hard to see how a referendum on the subject will actually motivate people to come out and vote.

And Channel 4 News's Gary Gibbon sees right through this ploy:

if AV (alternative voting) had been used in the 2005 general election it would have given Labour an even bigger majority – 86 seats rather than 64 on Electoral Reform Society projections

The Lib Dem spokespeople need to get out there right away and trash this gerrymandering hoax.

* That's a big if, by the way.

Labour Steal BNP Policy

In his final conference speech as Labour leader, Gordon Brown has announced that teenage parents are to no longer be given council houses, but to be placed into supervised homes instead.

Greg Stone, Lib Dem PPC for Newcastle East, made an excellent spot: this sounds just like the policy of a rival political party... the BNP.

...there be no council flats and no welfare benefits available to unmarried mothers... Instead they will be placed in ‘mother & baby homes’. Here they will receive academic education as well as parenting classes, plus courses covering all aspects of their social development. The homes will be run by ‘matron’ type figures. The homes should not be ‘institution’ like, but at the same time there will be rules which must be adhered to; such as a curfew of approx 9pm, a dress code which states skirts must come to at least the knees & no cleavage to be on show. Failure to comply with the homes’ rules will result in the mother being sent to prison, and the baby being taken in to care.

The BNP's policy was thoroughly fisked by Unite Against Fascism, and Charlotte Gore had a good rant about Labour adopting this idea.

My Colour Scheme: Vote!

A few passers-by have commented on the colour scheme I use for my blog. Feedback has ranged from "beautiful colours" to "it has given me epilepsy".

So what do you think? A poll has popped up in the right-hand column of this page. Let me know what you think.

If the consensus is it needs changing, then I'll have another look at it at some point.

So what are you waiting for? Get voting!

...and feel free to use the comments if you have any specific objections (or compliments!)

Will People Vote For A Change?

The 'Vote For A Change' campaign is writing to David Cameron asking him to support a referendum on electoral reform. Cameron supports the existing first-past-the-post system, however reformers (like me) argue that this system doesn't properly represent the will of the electorate. The graphic shows the result of the 2005 general election was distorted by first-past-the-post. Labour gained far more MPs than their vote should allow, and the Lib Dems and others gained far fewer. Cameron wants to keep the current system as it is highly likely that the Tories will get the same unfair benefit at the next election that Labour enjoyed last time.

However, what their letter calls for is a referendum. I question whether this is the best strategy to get what we want.

The most likely scenario that a referendum would come about in the foreseeable future is if Labour call for one to be held during the general election ballot. Senior Labour figures have been openly raising speculation about whether it will happen. They have every reason to be considering it. In the polls, Labour are lagging behind the Tories by 16+ points, suggesting they are heading for a crushing defeat at the next election.

But the reason they are considering it now is the very same reason why a referendum could go horribly wrong for those of us who want reform. Labour will be painted by the Tories as using their last breath of power to desperately fiddle with the electoral system just to give them more power. And their assessment would be correct. If Labour were serious about reform they'd have made good on their promise years ago. Given Labour's unpopularity, many people may vote 'no' as a vote against Labour. If the result of a referendum was 'no', it would be devastating for the cause, probably putting it back half a century or more.

I want electoral reform. There needs to be a referendum on it (the public must have their say on such a fundamental change). But if Labour call for it now, isn't there a real risk of the Tories using Labour's unpopularity to get their way?

The counter-argument is this: if not now, when? The Tories are opposed to reform, and will never call for a referendum. Assuming they get in, it may well be over a decade before the Tories are out out of governemnt, and it pains me to say it but it currently looks more likely to be Labour rather than Lib Dem who will take over. Recent history has shown can't trust Labour to hold the referendum while they are popular.

However this is all speculative. Five years is a gigantic time in politics: there could be a hung parliament; the Tories might only be popular for one term; a Lib-Lab pact may be formed to oust them in 2014/15. A referendum under these circumstances would be far more winnable.

So I have my concerns over a sudden referendum. What do you think?