Tolerance

This is a photo from a friend’s private collection. I hereby dedicate this scan to all the little Hitlers of the world.

Bless them, their ickle jackboots, their adorably unsteady goose-stepping, and most of all their dream of not only annexing the sandpit, but (one day) the entire playground.

MINI-UPDATE – see also: The Daily Quail – Why the BNP hate Britain

The BNP decided last night that they would (finally) broadcast their policies instead of riding the expenses scandal. Meanwhile, they’ve urged all of their activists to share their policies push the ‘protest vote’ message wherever they go.

Today I’ll mostly be on Twitter and spreading the word that #theBNParetwats – but I will also be adding to this post as the day goes by to show you what really lurks behind the BNP’s published policies.

Email or message me if you’d like to contribute to the fisking of these ’10 reasons to vote BNP’, or simply share the love on YouTube with the Billy Brit trilogy box set:

http://bit.ly/billybrit | http://bit.ly/billybrit2 | http://bit.ly/billybrit3

Also, if you’re on Twitter, please consider changing your profile image to something suitably anti-BNP and RTing this message.

And now, on with the fisking of ’10 Reasons Why You Should Vote BNP’ (be warned that relevant links go direct to the BNP website):

Reason to vote BNP number 1: Workfare not Welfare – BNP Housing and Welfare Policy.

NCCLols takes a closer look at this; one thing he highlights is the oft-repeated myth of a housing crisis driven by immediate handovers to ‘illegal asylum seekers’ and the like. As many people struggle to understand, the BNP are calling for radical change to reverse/correct something that isn’t really happening.

I’ll field this one a bit, too; they oppose what they describe as “social engineering” before proposing their own social engineering scheme (a theme they often return to), and the entire policy is unworkable without their casting off or cutting off large numbers of brown people regardless of their willingness to work. So you’ll get your welfare improvements after Johnny Foreigner is out on his ear and “utterly bogus asylum seeker and immigration swindles” are done away with. Maybe.

Reason to vote BNP number 2: British Soldiers Defending Britain – BNP Defence Policy.

Sim-O has this covered. Some spectacular isolationism from the BNP, who are at the same time trying to make gains on the backs of an near-to-infinite number of grandfathers who died in WWII.

(see also: Foreign Affairs Policy)

Reason to vote BNP number 3: First Class Health Service for a First World Nation – BNP Health Policy.

To be fisked.

Reason to vote BNP number 4: Nurturing the Genius of Our Nation’s Youth – BNP Education Policy.

Bookdrunk reveals at its core; “a bold policy of sweeping away citizenship lessons and replacing them with.. uh.. a compulsory citizenship organisation for young people”

Reason to vote BNP number 5: Restoring the Rule of Law – The BNP’s Crime and Justice Policy.

Justin McKeating has this one covered. In a disgraceful ad hominem attack that’s certain to enrage non-racist* debating expert Phil Hendren, Justin points out that the authors of these policies are a bunch of crooks. (I might also add that they lie about crime rates and even specific crimes.)

[*MINI-UPDATE - This is a private joke about the perception/portrayal of due criticism as ad hominem attacks in some quarters. 'Non-racist' is not meant to be taken as sarcasm, but to clarify that Hendren is only relevant as far as any discussion of ad hominem attacks goes. I do not regard Phil Hendren to be a racist. Happy to make that clear.]

Reason to vote BNP number 6: Preserving British Identity – The British National Party’s Immigration Policy.

Five Chinese Crackers – BNP Immigration policy – something* tells me it’s not just about immigrants

[*Actually, that would be Nick Griffin, wouldn't it? ;o) ]

Reason to vote BNP number 7: How the BNP Will Rebuild Britain’s Economy.

To be fisked.

Reason to vote BNP number 8: Britain First – The Simple Logic of BNP Foreign Affairs Policy.

Irritability Incarnate: The BNP – on a different planet? points out where “the BNP’s position on foreign policy is somehow incredibly simplistic yet remarkably contradictory and confusing at the same time.”

Jamie Sport offers: “‘Simple’ is the operative word in the BNP’s ‘Foreign Affairs Policy’, which actually just consists of not having any affairs with foreigners. This is classic BNP non-politics; policy which proposes nothing, relying instead on simply doing the opposite of whatever it is the mainstream parties would do. BNP policy is devised not by formulating plans or generating ideas, but by taking current strategy and saying ‘Nah’. This is anti-politics, anti-integration, regressive and harmful to our country, and betrays an inability to seriously run a political party, let alone a country. Mr Griffin and his cohorts have not the faintest idea of how Europe or indeed any international relations work, evidenced by their pie-in-the sky, unworkable soundbite policy points (all *cough* four of them)”

Reason to vote BNP number 9: The BNP Is Britain’s Most Democratic Party.

Five Chinese Crakers – It’s not a baying mob – it’s democratic tells you everything you need to know about the BNP’s commitment to democracy, which goes about as deep (and lasts about as long) as the first layer of cloth in a cheap suit.

The Pickards – The Most Democratic Party? is a completely thorough fisking, and well worth your time.

Reason to vote BNP number 10: The BNP is Britain’s Only True Green Party.

To be fisked.

[Psst! To hear more about their unpublished policies, check out this video of Nick Grfiffin speaking to his American Nationalist and Klu Klux Klan buddies.]

[MINI-UPDATE: 'Dizzy' really wanted to help, but thought it more important that you 'learn' the BNP are really left-wing. For true.]

Original video and background if you need it.

In this video, I immediately deal with the what-passes-for-history debate currently in progress under the original video (apparently it’s really important to some people that we ‘prove’ that St George was white) and move on to address the 29 million pamphlets distributed by the BNP:

Billy Brit II – the BNP pamphlet

Link, share and enjoy if you want one more before election day. Cheers all.

[I wrote this last night and found out this morning I was scooped by Newspeak who also confirm stock status of the doctor and the soldier. Forgot all about the excellent Tineye. Oh well. Here we go anyway...]

The night before last on Twitter I linked to a few images from istockphoto.com that the BNP had helped themselves to without permission (watermarks and all) to make campaign material. The relevant Flickr account has since been removed for reasons unknown (spotter: Jim Barker).

I am yet to confirm if all of the images involved have been used without permission (I’m still stalking chasing people), but in the meantime I have just seen a scan of one of their pamphlets (from a reported pamphlet run of 29 million) and know enough to ask;

1. Are the BNP really so short of genuine supporters that they have to use stock images?

I ask because the doctor looks like a stock image and I know for a fact that the mature couple and the mother and daughter are stock images.

2. What am I to make of this?

The mature couple are a top search result for ‘retirement’ at istockphoto.com, which appears logical given the text the picture needs to match, but the mother and daughter image took some finding; they didn’t turn up in the first few pages for anything I looked for until I remembered what I was dealing with. This image turned up in the top row on the front page for… ‘white mother’. Bingo.

(Psst! BNP peeps! Next time, take a tip from Conservative MP Anne Milton and use members from your campaign team to pose as ordinary work-a-day voters. This only leads to trouble if you’re running in a constituency with an obsessive in it. And by ‘obsessive’ I mean someone who doesn’t appreciate being push-polled and then lied to about it. Anyway, while I’ve got your attention, I love the reassuring ‘data protection secure’ logo in the bottom right-hand corner. Still stings, does it?)

-

UPDATE (15 May) – After some discussion and a day of stalking chasing, I can now confirm that some of these images have been paid for, however, I have also been informed by iStockphoto that this use of these images (i.e. assigning a political opinion to the models, imposing on them an endorsement they have not made and few would wish to be associated with) is NOT permitted under the terms of the licence. It is also quite likely that use of a model’s image in this way amounts to an offence under the European Parliamentary Elections Act 2002.

Here’s an extract from the Parties, Candidates and Agents Guidance book:

3.29 Candidates may wish to use canvassers to help with the election campaign. It is, however, illegal to employ paid canvassers for the purpose of promoting or procuring a particular result at an election before, during or after the election…

3.30 The legislation describes canvassing as: … by word, message, writing or in any other manner, endeavour to persuade any person to give or dissuade any person from giving, his vote, whether as an elector or proxy

Watch the comments over at Newspeak for developments or follow me on Twitter.

(Psst! Long-time readers of Bloggerheads may be interested to know that paid agents of any party who are sock-puppeting for or against any party or candidate may also be guilty of an offence under the European Parliamentary Elections Act 2002, as this too appears to qualify as paid canvassing.)

-

UPDATE (16 May) – A company spokesperson for iStockphoto has issued the following statement (much earlier than today, I should note; the email granting me permission to publish it bounced during a server outage):

“In regards to the use of imagery in conjunction with testimonials, this certainly falls outside of our license terms as users are not permitted to impose these endorsements onto models featured in our artists’ content. In response to BNP’s use of iStock content in conjunction with testimonials, we shall be contacting them to clarify and address the matter.”

So, to make that absolutely clear, even if money did change hands over these images, the BNP did not and do not have permission to use these images in this way… so please speak up if you are aware that they are still distributing unaltered pamphlets like this or this without, for example, obscuring these faces with little white stickers.

Oh, and a big ‘thank you’ goes out to the good people at the Telegraph, who have picked up the story and given a platform to some of the victims. If someone slapped my face next to a positive testmonial in a BNP pamphlet, I’d be more than a little peeved myself.

[Psst! Don't forget to scan and upload all of the electoral pamphlets you get to thestraightchoice.org, folks.]

UPDATE (20 May) – The ‘British jobs for British workers’ builders are from Oregon, in the US. The soldier exploited by the BNP had the temerity to call the BNP and complain… they told him to “f**k off”. The family picture on the front is genuine; the only genuine picture in most if not all versions of this pamphlet, in fact. The picture is of candidate Nick Cass and his family (this article also points out that; “the BNP’s chief designer is one Mark Collett of Leeds, a man widely derided in the BNP as incompetent”).

IMPORTANT – All of the victims of the BNP’s creative approach to campaign material have now been identified and notified. There is no need for you to re-notify them, as much as the thought/effort is appreciated.

Cheers all.