He agrees with Nick

This is David Cameron. Unfortunately, he's the Prime Minister. He's campaigning against the Alternative Vote electoral system. He says it will let in extremist parties like the BNP, Britain's Nazis.

This is Nick Griffin. He's the leader of the BNP. He's campaigning against the Alternative Vote system too. He probably thinks it's foreign.

This is Paul Uppal. He's not campaigning on anything because he's got money to count, but if he was, he'd be supporting his leader and the racist BNP because he does what he's told without the teensiest hint of mental activity behind his eyes.

Personally, I tend to think that the Conservatives are wrong about everything. When they're agreeing with the British National Party, they really need to reconsider their ideological positions.

Choosing sides

I agree with Nick. For my overseas readers, this is an ironic echo of the 2010 UK election, in which the Labour and Tory leaders found themselves using the phrase every time Nick Clegg, Liberal Democrat party leader, said something reasonable. This was before it turned out - to everybody's surprise - that the multimillionaire financier was just another smooth-tongued liar. But that's another story.

I agree with Nick about the upcoming referendum on the UK's voting system. The choice is between the current first-past-the-post (meaning that if there are three candidates in a close race, you can get elected with 30% of the vote) and Alternative Vote, in which you list the candidates in order of preference. If nobody reaches 50% on the first go, the last place is eliminated and his/her voters' second choices are counted. And so on.

Nick described AV as a 'miserable little compromise', which is true. We both want Proportional Representation, as they have in the Scots and Welsh parliaments: it gives you a house of representatives exactly matching the wishes of the electorate.

However, AV will do for now. Anything that the Tories oppose is a good thing, I find. David Cameron's wandering around shouting that extremist parties will win big with AV, which is a lie. We can test this.

What side are the Nazi British National Party on?

Oh dear. Seems like they agree with the Conservative Party on this, as with so much else. If you ever want to know whether something's a good idea or not, see what the BNP are doing, and vote the opposite way.

Freedom of speech. Islamic fundamentalists need not apply.

Nutcase irritants Islam4UK and al-Muhajiroun are to be banned from Thursday. Hooray, many of you may be thinking: they're opposed to everything that the UK currently appears to represent - sexual equality, religious freedom, liberal values.

But. These tiny groupuscules aren't terrorist organisations. They utterly reject and despise so-called Western values, and want to found a European Caliphate. So what? I can think of a much larger political party which rejects liberal values and often uses violence and confrontation to achieve its ends. It's called the British National Party.

I don't understand the difference in the way they're treated. Either you're pro-free speech in which case both these organisations should be legal (the argument that bad policies wither under scrutiny is a persuasive one - and proscribed organisations can get away with more than an open one can) or neither of them should be. Both are potential gateways to violent extremism, and both are hostile to mainstream values. Neither, however, are terrorist organisations. I worry about the arbitrary nature of this decision, which seems to rely on the Daily Mail readership's inherent racism and the group's tiny membership for justification.

Al-Muhajiroun, rightfully, have few friends: but this means that none of the usual liberal voices will stand up for their right to be as offensive as they like. The BNP has a couple of elected MEPs, and so there will be voices raised in their defence if proscription is suggested (this government's disgraceful way out of that particular Gordian knot was to pressure the BBC to refuse access to the airwaves for Nick Griffin while not banning the party).

I guess all this means that I'm actually a liberal. If I were a proper Trotskyist, as I often fondly imagine I am, I'd be all for the arbitrary exercise of power. Only liberals worry about equal rights and freedom of speech. Damn.

Cassette Boy meets Nick Griffin: who will win?

The Downfall subtitlers have been busy too (other satires are available):

Question Time - how was it for you?

Frankly, I was a little bored. Griffin occasionally let his tightly-controlled facade slip with some very silly comments (indigenous 'British' = those descended from the ice age inhabitants! I'm not sure when the Celts turned up, but the Romans, Saxons, Danes, Normans, Dutch etc. all fit Griffin's preferred racial characteristics and arrived a lot more recently than that) and defended his meetings with David Duke of the KKK with the words 'almost entirely non-violent'.

The other guests were pretty weak. They'd all looked up Griffin's past comments and turned every single question towards the BNP's racial policy - to which Griffin had similarly well-planned responses. If the BNP want to be a serious party, they need to have policies on everything, from water metering to agricultural run-off levels - an opportunity was lost to expose how narrow and limited the BNP is. Because they all went over the same ground repeatedly, it became a sterile debate.

I was a bit annoyed about the Churchill debate though - surely someone could have pointed out that he wouldn't have joined the BNP, Tories OR Labour, because he fully supported a United States of Europe (his words), founded the European Movement and received the Charlemagne Prize for his efforts in that direction.

The only person on the show to come out of it well was the playwright and British Museum director Bonnie Greer, somewhat predictably: she was calm, witty, authoritative and didn't hector. Churchill was half-American and got to be PM: let's get Bonnie Greer into Parliament!

I watched the programme while eating a curry, which seemed appropriate. Then this morning I went to the pool and shared the water with immigrants! To whom I then chatted! What a race traitor I am…

After that, I had the immense satisfaction of shouting 'scab' at some postmen. Griffin and his jackbooted fantasists belong in the lowest circle of hell, but scabs will be sitting close by. I should have stuck a stick through the spokes of the one on a bike. I've very few principles (obviously), but one is to never cross a picket line, and it's served me well.

Thursday conundrum

Will you be watching Question Time this evening (for non-UK people: it's a debate show with politicians, pitching up in a different town each week to answer questions from the audience)? Should the BNP be on, and how should the panel treat Nick Griffin?

I think the BNP should be there. There's no point blaming the BBC for giving airtime to fascists: the population has elected two of these lizards to the European Parliament and many more to local councils. The BBC has a duty to impartially give airtime to all shades of legal opinion. I don't think the BNP should be a legal party, but it is, so the political class should spend less time critiquing the BBC and more time destroying the BNP's arguments. It shouldn't be that hard, as they're dumb arguments. Pulling tricks or finding weaselly ways out of confronting the BNP and persuading its supporters that there are better philosophies is cowardly. Face them, argue with them, demonstrate their errors. Don't treat them like bogey men: bullies like it when you show fear.

Springtime for Hitler…

Another BNP membership list has been leaked, so you can check out your friends and neighbours. Amusingly, the BNP is trying to look bigger than its current 35,000 by adding 100,000 to all new membership numbers!

Their leader, Nick Griffin, is on Question Time this week, leading to much soul-searching about whether he should be on there and how to deal with him. I take an unfashionable line for the left on this: he's an elected MEP and there are a lot of fascists out there who've voted for a legal party. For government figures such as Peter Hain to threaten the BBC with legal action is shameful because it's an abdication of political responsibility. If the BNP are that dangerous (and I think they are), the party should be banned. If they're legal, the BBC has a duty to feature their elected representatives proportionately.

Further to that, exposure can only damage them. They aren't very bright, though they are getting the hang of dog-whistle politics. I hope the other guests pursue them by means of boring, important politics. I suspect that Griffin has no idea about the PSBR, or quantitative easing, or waste directives etc. etc. etc. He can't blame Islamists for obscure financial decisions, so let's show him up as a one-issue demagogue.

Mmmmmarmite

Morning blogfans! I'm in meetings again today, but at least there are sandwiches provided. I'll do anything, frankly, for a free buffet. Quality isn't even important.

My shopping trip was less than successful. Determined to dress as a thrusting young blade, I ended up buying black DMs in a softer leather, and the plainest (though most expensive) black trousers I could find. The problem was that everything else I looked at made me look like an idiot out on a permanent stag weekend. Part of the problem, of course, is that despite doing a lot of swimming, I still have the corporeal equivalent of suburbs. I believe my navel has a separate postcode.

So I ended up with DMs and some rather nice Ted Baker trousers - I know nothing about labels, and unpicked any identifying marks.

The greatest bit of the evening was going to Malaysian Delight down by Chinatown. I eschewed the Coca-Cola wings, but opted for the Marmite Chicken main course. It was amazing. If the BNP take over, we'll never be able to eat this kind of fusion cooking. It was massive chunks of crispy chicken marinaded in sesame seeds and Marmite, served with wonderful rice and veg. I sat there for hours, reading Giles Foden's Turbulence and savouring the meaty, tangy goodness. I must ask them how they do it.

Bore the BNP to death

Here's what to do about the BNP. Everybody knows they're smelly racist bastards, including people who voted for them.

So let's try a different approach. They're not just racist, they're morons and they're lazy. Whenever they win council seats, they fail to turn up, don't do the work (being a councillor is both boring and difficult) and get angry. My suggestion is that we tax the new MEPs with details. Ask Griffin where he thinks the PSBR should be set, how he feels about set-aside, whether gilt auctions are currently under-subscribed, or PFI penalty clauses: all the really boring, massively important things that you need to know about to be a decent political party. He can't blame Jews/Kosovans/homosexuals for any of those things! It'll show them up utterly because they've no ability to conceptualise the world in any way other than identity politics.

Today is shrouded in gloom

I won't be around much today - 2 four-hour meetings to check every student's grade. What joy that will be.

Meanwhile, contemplate this: that the British people have largely chosen the landed aristocracy, followed by petit-bourgeois racists in the form of UKIP, and a significant chunk have voted for racial violence, holocaust denial, pigmentation-based discrimination, Nazism and moronic anti-politics.

You'll soon find out that the Tories can't blame the poor for everything, UKIP can't blame Europeans and the BNP can't blame black people, Muslims and Jews. When they start cutting public services and handing them over to thugs and wideboys (I accept this process is already under way), just remember this: you voted for it. (Not my regular readers of course).

We're doomed to a miserable, reactionary, racist, capitalist future

I'm hating the election results. BNP won a seat (I won't be holidaying in Yorkshire/Humber, Lancashire or Stoke), the Greens haven't broken through, and WALES, of all places, has gone Tory: the country which had its language mocked and often banned by the Tories, the birthplace of Labour, the home of trades unionism and Chapel radicalism. I used to be so proud of Wales's previous status as a Tory-free zone. It's ashes now.

Ireland's the only country which has gone left. One amusing detail in Spain though: Alternativa Espanola, the fascist party which has strong ties to the British Conservatives, managed 0.12%. Let's do the same to the Tories next time.

A quick plug

For two events: Cruel Brother (named after an old ballad, or the mirror of Pentangle's 'Cruel Sister' album, or Rachel Unthank and the Winterset's album of the same name?) and the Deer Friend are performing this weekend, at the Chindit on Friday night, and supporting an ex-member of Fairport Convention at the Newhampton Inn on Saturday. Highly recommended folk/rock stuff, everybody. I'll hopefully be at the Chindit, depending on whether I have to go to Cardiff that day or early on Saturday.

Before that, however: please vote tomorrow. As long as you aren't planning to vote UKIP, Tory or BNP. If you are, the elections are on Friday. I always try to vote at 7 a.m. so that the Tories are losing straight away.

UKIP's poor relations also caught cheating

Merciless Public picks up on the story that the BNP's latest leaflet turns out to feature lots of happy smiling white people who aren't, well, British - or even British resident. 'Why we're all voting BNP' headlines some headshots of, amongst others, an Italian photographer's parents - and they aren't fascists. The images were from a stock photography site. Presumably the BNP couldn't find any supporters proud enough to pose - or any without a swastika tattoo on their foreheads. Two Americans feature, as well as an unfortunate British soldier who told the press that the BNP are 'scumbags' and 'I wouldn't vote for them in a million years'.

A few weeks ago, I objected to UKIP using Churchill to oppose the EU, despite Winston's keen support for a United States of Europe. Now, a BNP campaign seems similarly deceitful. It claims, much to the fury of religious leaders, that Jesus would vote BNP and quotes this legendary figure: 'If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you' (John 15:20). Presumably they couldn't find a biblical reference for 'wogs out'.

Are they really claiming that a Jewish asylum seeker (his parents fled to Egypt as soon as he was born, if you believe all this stuff) would identify with the BNP, who seem to me to be the likely persecutors? Clearly this Jesus bloke didn't have a problem with Arabs (unlike Israel now) and would no doubt be defending Muslim families from the BNP in Stoke, Blackburn, Gaza and elsewhere. I seem to remember that Jesus's people didn't exactly thrive in various countries in which the BNP's friends came to power.

I note that they've chosen a horrible sentimental Caucasian-style image of Jesus, of the kind that abounded in my Catholic schools. Perhaps they don't know where he was allegedly from.

Poor Adolf

He's discovered that he's on the BNP membership list…

BNP - the party that keeps on giving

This BNP membership list just gets more and more fun by the minute. I've checked my area, my friends' hometowns and old schoolchums I've long suspected. Now the Guardian (or should that be theguardian?) has posted an interactive map of where these scum live. 

Which brings up an interesting question - about the role of newspapers and blogging. The papers have to be very careful about this stuff. And those impeccable liberal souls at the Guardian have declared that 'The BNP has rights too' which is all very well but they certainly don't want to extend rights to Guardian readers. Bloggers presumably have the same legal duties and responsibilities as newspapers, but we're very unlikely to be sued - I've only got 1 reader. Those blogs which are prominent enough to be closed down are treading very carefully: Slugger O'Toole has listed the numbers in various places in Northern Ireland, but moderators and posters are being very careful to keep names out of it. 

So the major blogs are behaving like the newspapers - both groups are using the BNP material in interesting ways, but are desperate to keep on the right side of the law (or of our lords and masters at blogger.com - hence the only place I've found the full list after the initial burst of joy yesterday is still wikileaks. This may be the making of that site - I've dropped in occasionally but only today have I seen the site made unavailable due to heavy traffic. 

The whole thing suggests that there's a place for 'citizen journalists' outside the legal system - we can chance our arms because we have very little to lose (a 5-yr old laptop, in my case). We can move faster and we probably won't get caught. On the other hand, nobody's going to see this, so it's little more than self-satisfied, consequence free, electronic masturbation.

Fascists out -and in

Yesterday, some mischievous blogger posted the entire membership list of the BNP: names, addresses, phone numbers and occupations in many cases (oddly, workshy bigot wasn't one of the categories, but I assumed that those names without an occupation listed were in this category). 

I was going to link to this brave individual's site - it's the kind of thing that bloggers can do rather better than skittish, lawyered-up newspapers. We could all have paid a courtesy call to the fascist nearest our own homes, and had a 'quiet word'. 

By this morning, however, the blog had been closed down - presumably by blogger.com. So much for free speech. They don't seem to mind hosting all sorts of Nazi material because the US has a freedom of speech presumption, so why not in this case?

Thankfully, those nice people at Wikileaks have come up with the goods again, and they're very much out of reach of plod and Britain's courts.

A quick trawl reveals a shameful number in Wolverhampton (including a vicar), a disgusting 100+ in Stoke, and 40 in Shrewsbury.