is speaking down the road on Thursday at a pub. I'm gonna go and watch him and listen, and see if I'm actually a BNP man or if I'm actually not one.
Am I racialist?
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As long as you don't willingly accept everything he says as fact
then you should be alright.
I do think it's pretty funny he's speaking at a pub though.
i hate the BNP
don't care what people say, but the nazis started on the same lines. my book tells me so! i'm up to about where hitler makes the first concentration camps (everyone should read it, it's called "the third reich; a new history" by michael burleigh)
okay i will
a) stop being so retarded tonight, i promise and
b) stop talking about hitler.
The Burnley Beer Hall Putsch
hehehe!
i walk past where the putsch happened loads, and when i have friends over i always tell them. they never care :(
why would nobody care
all that pre WWII nazi stuff was the best part of GCSE history
EXACTLY.
the Putsch happened in Leeds?
sorry i'm confused.
That's revisionism for you
(i'm a student of leeds uni)
on a year abroad in munich... i should really take the leeds thing down, but home is where the heart is and all that.
What's that part opf the world like?
I'm thinking of teaching english for 6 months in Augsburg at some point next year.
ohhh
some german guy i dated last year is from there!
munich is stunning, would you like some photos? it's really nice, the weather is a lot more extreme (summer is hotter, winter is colder), but the buildings are so impressive, the public transport is amazing, the streets are clean, the people are nice and the dentists are better than in england. what kind of age will you be teaching?
munich suxxxx
:)
shut up :(
it's like the millionth best german city!
after what?
berlin?! that's so international it's practically not german.
oh and frankfurt suxxxx
hamburg is alright, but cold and wet.
my list:
Berlin
Cologne
Hamburg
Düsseldorf
Munster
Bonn
Bremen
Dortmund
then probably Munich
Stuttgart
Frankfurt (it really is rubbish).
then you've got Leverkusen and Gelsenkirchen and Essen which are complete dumps.
Dresden is probably quite cool but I've never been. dunno about Leipzig or Hannover.
^very bored.
munich > düsseldorf
for sure. when did you visit munich?
loads of times
the last time was in 2005 though, I think.
I will not hear a bad word about Dusseldorf! :)I recently decided to move there.
oh!! when are you going?
my friend lives in hamm, which is nearby. she hates it, but i think it's too small for her really.
hamm is lovely.
like really really annoyingly lovely in a middle class tea & biscuits way. there is an amazing ice cream parlour there.
I dunno when, how or why I'm going, I've just decided to. I want an adventure. and I love dusseldorf.
you know an awful lot about germany!
i like it :)
my friend is finding it hard to make friends in hamm, and the place she works at isn't so great apparently either. i like bavaria, even though loads of people wear lederhosen and also i'm now addicted to brezen. i had 5 today... 5!!!
I think I want to go back
mainly for the kolsch. I was dangerously close to alcoholism thanks to that!
Dusseldorf and Dortmund are shit!
The only good thing about Dortmund was the abundance of skatespots.
Nordrhein-Westphalia in general is a bit zzzzzzzz.
I agree with Berlin, Hamburg and Koln though.
Yay pics please :)
Munich looks really nice from my friends' visits. My cousin lives in Augsburg and teaches at a sort-of college which is all ages, the thing she's recommended is attached to the same college, pays loads and gives free german lessons on top which would be amazing!
most of these are nymphenburg
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2260958&l=cacac&id=197801889 munich ones are on the end! also salzburg for more scenery stuff, if you do go... you have to visit...
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2303055&l=15ca3&id=197801889
german isn't so hard to pick up and most people can speak basic english so you will be fine!
It's pretty scary that the BNP get's 1 in 5 votes in Burnley.
1 in 5 from a turnout of how many?
5?
4
just wrightlew.
I've no idea. I think they got just under 10,000 votes. The population's around 70,000. Assuming that three quarters of those could vote it's a pretty significant number.
the bnp won in the next electoral ward to mine last week
the fuckers are closing in. i can almost imagine dad's army style markers advancing over an aerial photograph of the potteries.
Its not just the potteries
we've got one in Hertfordshire now!
Why do you think it is?
Do you honestly think people are becoming more and more evil or stupid?
Or will you ever bother to address the problems that see them getting seats?
I think its great that right wing politics is getting popular in the UK. I hope that by the time I'm an adult they've got a firm grasp on the country.
Not really.
Its pretty odd they don't get more. They've done a great job locally.
What have they actually done?
beat up a few Asians.
resulting in a 65% drop in hard drug sales.
- N. Griffin, 2003.
a bit of cleaning up....
*shakes head*
^ I love this sort of 'everyone who votes BNP is a moron' attitude.
You obviously don't believe it. If you did, you wouldn't go on your laughable marches, trying to convince everyone they're taking over etc.
actually
I was tip-toeing round a racial-cleansing joke. Of course I don't think they're idiots, in fact what scares me is how well organised they are compared to the general shambles that is the left these days.
Don't worry about it.
Whilst kids like myself are still being taught that the left is good and the right is bad in schools, you've got absolutely nothing to worry about.
but what if
most people are moronic enough to vote for the BNP? i think people are scared of that perhaps more than anything else in relation to them.
for the record, i don't go on such marches and generally don't see much point to them.
I don't think being a BNP voter makes you a moron though.
But I'll make my mind up on Thursday.
A basic example would be the local parks.
They used to be overgrown rape dens, but they've all been cleaned up into beautiful places with lots of new benches and events going on, encouraging people around here to go and watch them and meet eachother, like brass band performances etc.
They've spread spending out. It used to be focussed on scum areas, regardless of what the main race living there was.
If they took the main seat, they probably would have been able to stop the closure of our A&E. Our nearest one is now half an hour away.
Hitler built some bloody good motorways
Stop.
Seriously. Study the Nazi party before you ever even think of comparing them to the BNP again.
I have studied the Nazis in some depth
and if I had realised we were having a proper discussion about these things (which is never my first approach to matters raised on the internet) then I would definitley have not made the above remark. There are few comparisons to be drawn, and of those that could be the historical settings of the two parties are obviously incredibly different. I would say they are *perhaps* similar in the fact that they are both gaining support from groups which have found their traditional parties failing them, and have both come from a more extreme background either to accept the need to work within the current system to achieve their goals or make a good effort of convincing people that they have done so, although I would say that the bnp have done more to actually change and so perhaps have made more real party-attitude change than the Nazis did (although they do still have rascist principles which I find unacceptable and essentially ridiculous in a country which has thrived because of not "in spite of" its mixed up bag of ethnically backgrounds). However, again I highlight the fact that the historical context of the matter complicates things to the extent that essentially no comparison can be made.
Thank you for your time.
I don't understand this 'thrived on immigrants' shit.
We've never, in the history of the universe, had as many immigrants as we are currently receiving.
Historically, this mysterious theory that we somehow became the most important country in the world entirely from the help of foreigners is a little baffling.
Sure, we exploited them, but I'd hardly say our entire heritage as a nation is built on the help we receive from immigration. In fact I'd go as far as to say that's utter bullshit.
This may surprise you.
But I was reading somewhere (I forget where but it was a reliable source) there were more immigrants in pre-World War One Britain than there are now. And much looser immigration laws too. Not sure how that affects the rest of your argument but this isn't actually the peak of immigration in Britain.
fuck heritage
what does that even mean?
Well
there were figures recently stating that although immigrants make up 8% of the population they contribute to 10% of the GDP. Obviously this is debatable and either side of the argument can probably be proved using whatever figures you use. However, I don't think you can really quantify the benefits of immigration through simply looking at economics, over time the social benefits are clearly of importance, how you go about quantifying that sort of stuff is beyond me!
And I bet people were fucking delighted about it.
The bottom line is that most people will vote for the party that serves their own interests the best and will do the most to improve their lives, regardless of most consequences to others. The business owner votes for his tax cut because it gets him a tax cut, even if costs his workers more money. The working-class socialist votes for better public spending at least partly 'cos it looks after his interests better and won't cry too many tears at the business owner paying more tax.
We can sit here calling the BNP a bunch of racist bigoted obnoxious bullies, and probably be correct when we do so, but ultimately I suspect a lot of people will predominantly care about them improving parks, spreading spending out and keeping A & Es open.
So these kind of things are relevant and, whilst I see where you're coming from about Hitler and the motorways, and you're undoubtedly correct, it is important to look at what the BNP do when they do get into areas if you want to figure out why they're getting votes and how to stop them getting votes.
Definitely.
I don't know any other liberals with your screwed-on approach to politics. You should go and preach to them all.
opposing the BNP
doesn't make you a liberal, y'know.
I am arguably a Liberal though.
Probably more a Socialist. Defintiely somewhere on the left.
True.
But my point still stands. Anti-BNPs are just as moronic as BNP nazilovers.
Both are ignorant, close-minded and totally unwilling to work out any sort of compromise.
extreme anti-bnp people
as in those who seem completely obsessed with opposing them - well, yes,
Thing is it does the left's attitude to the BNP does piss me off.
It horrifies me that so many people are turning to extreme politics but it also annoys me how many people try to address the problem from the wrong angle (i.e. campaigning against them on the grounds the BNP are a racist party. I mean I myself would agree that I believe them to be a racist party but the fact that, despite these protests, their vote is going up shows that this isn't an effective way to stop people voting for them.)
The connection I think too many people miss is that the BNP's trick isn't attracting middle-England xenophobic Daily Mail Conservatives but filling the gulf left behind after the Labour Party abandoned Socialism and became "New Labour".
Ultimately since then there've been no political groups that have taken much interest in working class voters (who are, let's face it, a pretty sizable voting number). Every single party is chasing the middle-class middle-England vote and neither Labour, Conservative nor Liberal Democrats make more than a token gesture to working-class communities.
As a result people feel abandoned and when a political party comes along that does show them attention their tempted to vote for them, even if in the past they'd have baulked at voting for an extreme right-wing party. They'll feel so abandoned and let-down by mainstream politics that they'll even let themselves believe the BNP's claims that they're not a racist party.
None of this is supposed to excuse the BNP of course. But any political party trying to combat the BNP without attempting to win back the working-class vote is basically doomed to failure.
Eeeeeeeeeexactly
Couldn't be righter.
this is very true
very very true.
That's a sound point
and basically the Jon Cruddas point of view, leading to policies such as the need to build new and better quality council housing.
Of course that doesn't mean there is any less of a need to expose the rumours and misinformation spread by the party to get elected (e.g: Asians are grooming your daughters for sex, non-whites all get preferential treatment for social housing) or to challenge their representatives in power. Just that more fundamental attention is also required.
Why is the BNP so prevelant in Burnley?
You've said before that there's not a really significant Asian population there, so why's it a big issue, or have i answered my own question?
I haven't said that before.
We were talking about black people. You said 'are you telling me there are no blacks in Burnley?' and I said 'yes'.
I didn't realise that you were one of these geniuses who files every member of any ethnic minority under the term, 'black'.
^ massive lols.
^
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2002/may/03/localgovernment.uk
There is indeed a very significant Asian population
One of the incidents Burnley is unfortunately most renowned for is the infamous race riot of 2002.
I'd say the fall out from this was probably partly to blame for the steady rise of the BNP in Burnley.
Definitely.
I think people could see what was going on, and were incensed at the way it was being reported by the local media.
Absolutely.
The way the press dealt with that incident was horrendous, particularly when linking it to previous riot in Bradford. As far as I have been able to ascertain, there is no common link between the two incidents.
Yes,
what have they actually done? I can use an example from where I live where there is one BNP councillor who does not attend meetings, doesn't vote on issues and generally lets down the people that he is supposed to be representing.
Surely you wouldn't need to go and see
him to find out if you were a BNP man?
You would already know.
I actually don't.
First of all because I'm not sure about them. I don't know how they conduct themselves. I want to experience them first hand, so that I acquire a personal opinion based on fact, as opposed to an opinion based on what my middle class Uni friends have told me.
I'd like to get a look at the sort of people that support them too. At the moment I'm under the impression they'll probably all be skinheads with tatoos and other such scumbags.
I'd like to see what their main focus is on. Obviously nationalism will be important, but I'd like to know more about their economy and crime policies etc.
Well, thats fair enough, and I can see why you want to go along.
But my point is that most people would find the BNP, as opposed to the BNP finding them - so to speak.
In saying that, it would be interesting to know the stats of how many Labour/Tory/Lib dem voters they have converted to BNP
voters.
I'm not really old enough to be
found by a party yet though, if you get me.
I know that certain councillors have done wonders for the town, apparently, mainly Lib Dems and BNPs.
But I want to spend this year learning what to think. I want to listen to them all. Apart from Labour maybe, because they just seem to dodge everything and sit on the fence.
Post a thread once you have been.
It will be interesting to hear what was said.
you should
have some convo's with the supporters and see what they have to say after a few drinks...
The inner cadre of the BNP
are white supremacists.
That's not the "middle class take" on it, it's a statement of fact.
Of course we should be able to have a non-hysterical conversation about their successes, but I'm not going to lose sight of that central fact because I don't like being taken for a fucking mug.
You're obviously right but their vote is going up.
So, regardless of the fact that that is a statement of fact, it's not in itself a solution to the problem.