Diary Date: On 29 October 2007 the National Post War War (etc etc) Memorial Has Open House

UNBIASED STORY: From the BBC. HAT TIP: Chicken Yogurt. It is worth noting that at the current rate of attrition this memorial at Alrewas in Staffordshire could last for 150 years, though it has been half filled in about 60. But at recent rates in Fallujah, Baghdad or Afghanistan local people could go through one of these once a year or more.

In Palestine/Israel/Lebanon I suppose one would last one or two decades. In the land of the free and the home of the brave they'd need one every two to three years for those killed on home turf by firearms. Everyone there can bear arms to defend themselves. But this is more than 20 times the rate in the UK where we cannot.

The main photograph above is not of this new memorial but rather of one designed by the artist Andrew DeComyn and unveiled in June 2001 to 307 Great War soldiers - men and boys - who were shot at dawn for "desertion".

The BBC site has this picture (right) of the splendid new memorial and indeed this link I'm told includes both QEII and a fly over film showing the site.

Alrewas in Staffs may be geographically the dead centre of England and Wales though as far as I know Scottish and Irish casualties are included. Not sure about Gurkhas and other Commonwealth Soldiers. And I'm going to check whether there is already an area at this rather comprehensive memorial arboretum for journalists.

ARITHMETIC: The memorial has 16,000 post war armed forces names on it. There is space for 15,000 more names.

BNP: Know Them by the Nazi Company They Keep

Above we have the convicted criminal Mr Nick Griffin (hate literature), leader of the BNP, the convicted criminal Mr Marc Abramsson (ABH and rioting), leader of the Swedish ND, and "Buff" Hoon's new friend and non-criminal Sadie Graham (Photo: Goteborg, April 2006).

This is an extract from the Nationaldemokraterna Wiki.

Ideology

The party describes its ideology as nationalist ("national democratic") and ethnopluralist. A broad outline of the party program:

* Defend Sweden by creating an ethnically white people. Non-white immigration should be stopped so that coloreds don't assimilate into the Swedish population. Cultural assimilation is by ND considered highly problematic and one of the main reasons behind high crime rates, poverty and declining moral values.
* The culture should be traditionally Swedish; thus, the National Democrats advocates a ban on mosques and "unhealthy artworks and buildings".
* No foreign institutions or companies should be able to own media.

ND also says that they want to "strengthen democracy" by limiting the right to vote. They say the most important requirement to be able to vote is to have a general knowledge of politics.

...

Homosexuality

The party holds that parents should maintain "healthy family ideals" and the nuclear family should be preserved. No "perverted" family forms should be allowed, for instance legalised homosexual relations. Homosexuality is generally accepted in Swedish society.

Prominent members of ND and its youth organization NDU were involved in a violent protest against participants of the Stockholm Pride parade in the summer of 2003 which resulted in a severe beating of one man and brief panic among parade participants. A number of NDU members, including the chairman of NDU, Marc Abrahamsson and ND's candidate for the EU parliament elections in 2004, John Andersson, were indicted for battery and rioting and were later convicted of it.

...

Campaigns and political ties

Campaigning before the 2004 European Parliament election, Nick Griffin of the British National Party visited Sweden and the National Democrats to give the party his endorsement.

A very popular and reoccurring part of ND campaigns target an alleged over-representation of immigrant groups in crime statistics with strong focus on sex crimes.

ND has also participated in several of the annual "Salem Marches" together with openly national socialist (NAZI) organizations such as the National Socialist Front, the Swedish Resistance Movement and Blood & Honour. ND has also participated with these organizations in annual marches honoring King Charles XII of Sweden on November 30 and a march in memory of the bombing of Dresden in World War II.

Their own English language description is all flat pack furniture and lingonberries. Happily they got only about 3,000 votes (0.06%) nationally in Sweden last time out.

But they march goosestep by goosestep with jack-booted Nazis. And Nick Griffin, Buff Hoon's new friend Sadie Graham and the BNP march with them.

Once again the answer to Mike Ion's question about Buff shaking this Sadie's hand is ... STILL NO.

Rugby World Cup Semi: Les Blancs, Nearly There

Encore un fois, encroyable! From 9-8 down to 14-9 up with two minutes to go. French line out. Final play of the game. Minute over already. Final whistle! Brrrrrrrrp!

Rugby World Cup Semi: Les Blancs, Nearly There

Encore un fois, encroyable! From 9-8 down to 14-9 up with two minutes to go. French line out. Final play of the game.

Rugby World Cup Semi: Josh Lewsey Try on One Minute

Encroyable! And Enjoyable.

Mike Ion: Was Buff Hoon Right to Go to BNP Meeting?

Labour Blogger Mike Ion asks whether Geoff "Buff" Hoon was right? Oh there's more. Right to attend a public meeting organised by a BNP councillor and organiser, name of Sadie Graham. Perhaps now resigned before she was thrown out. Though BNP elements were cock a hoop to have a member of the government at their meeting.

Even if it was only Buff.

Clearly the answer to Mike's question is an emphatic NO.

YouGov Britishness Poll: Plus PM Trust, Plus NHS

Speaking of polls, and national identity, and all that stuff there is quite a poll running at YouGov at the moment. Including loads and load and loads of funneling questions on Britishness.

Northern Ireland and Ireland incidentally are not mentioned at all whereas England, Scotland and Wales are. Interesting questions on trust etc re Brown
and Cameron.

And there's a corker (below) about moving house to a "good NHS catchment area" and how much would it be worth. Which good areas would probably have included Maidstone and Tonbridge for all I know before the debacle there.

Perhaps it still does when it comes to prescribing for some things? You'd have to know what treatments or drugs or services you were going to need to be able to judge which ones tick the right boxes. Which ones will get to trial the treatment you want.

Postcode lotteries we have known. If we decide to devolve choice to regional and local forces and local clinicians and local people they will make different decisions on priorities. Don't do it! I say. But if we do, and if unlike myself you support that principle, then you are picking up both ends of the stick.

The end that says freedom and choice and localism. And the end that says local rules, local choices and difference.

ANYWAY: YouGov pay an absolutely tiny amount for people to respond to questions great and small. From 50 pence to £2:50 a whirl. Mostly 50 pence for about five minutes. There are blogs from the likes of Mr Kellner hisself, and prize draws, and forums/fora. You can join here if you wish.

Green Day: Blog Action Day, We'll Smoke 'Em Out!

If nothing else I'm aiming to blog some comment on the Gore Nobelisation (Hitchens, C; Slate). What tosh that was! The Indie will have him down for President of the USA as his next trick, tomorrow (will change at midnight from misery about kids). LOL did a whole Green Day once. Ages ago.

Breaking News: ICM Poll for BBC Newsnight

Nick Sparrow's ICM has done an exclusive poll for BBC Newsnight. The questions that are being shown on the programme are leading ones one and all. And irony oh irony it's about spin this spun poll is. Brown has not had a good week. This is not a good poll.

SKIPtheatre: Gid's Glib and Dave's Not Forgetful

SKIPtheatre are looking for circus performers to perform at their club night \SKIP/ at The Amersham Arms on Tuesday 23rd October. "There is floor space or a stage to perform on. The night is about a collaboration between bands, dj’s and performance artists and is the first of an exciting monthly club night in New Cross." So says the blurb.

Please message Chloe at the first link if you’re interested. The act being promoted on the Amersham's site is Chas and Dave. They are due to perform ... six months ago in May 2007. Very retro and ironic I'm sure.

There is a rumour that I'm just starting that the unannounced special guests this time will be Gid and Dave.

Apparently Gid tells tax fibs 'til "he's glib in the face". While Dave memorises long and turgid texts. "The only good thing about what he says" confides a rather candid critic "is that he doesn't use notes". What? No notes at all? Wow!

Previous occurence of this night or SKIP or something is interviewed here. But Glib Gid and Memory Dave didn't do that one.

Scottish Parliament: Bye Bye SSP, Hello Snouts Nats

Mr Eugenides, the tartan Tory blogger points at MSP Expenses with the late lamented SSP's Frances Curran, Rosie Kane and Carolyn Leckie (above) topping the poll. Picture: Scotsman/Andrew Stuart

The Scotsman has more and some rollicking commentary. But Eugenides says it is one of the ruling snouts Nats causing most concern:

"The books put on expenses revealed an insight into the research of some of the MSPs. Jim Mather, the enterprise minister, right, spent money on Statistics for Dummies and Statistical Analysis and Excel for Dummies."

This could be to deal with his day job? Or perhaps to try and squirrel away the third of a million pounds worth of shares he has burning a hole in his credibility?

On Trigger Ballots: Grimmer Up North Now Likes Them

Grimmer Up North seems to like the trigger* system when a Blairite may face time's up. Almost as much as Grimmer Up North seems to dislike the trigger system when a Campaign Grouper was up. The real question will come if Laura in Crawley does face a contest. Have there been any candidates of the left working their socks off to get the nomination as Stephen Twigg did? If not why not?

* Under the trigger ballot the ward parties and affiliates in a constituency all vote yeah or nay on a reselection without a contest. If they vote nay there can still be a shortlist of one, the sitting MP. But there may also be a contest. In which case chance favours the prepared.

Question Time: Mackenzie and Spelman, Yeuch

That's it. In the subject line. Hughes not much better.

Same Old Cons: Chris Grayling's Jodie Dunn Moment

So soon after Damian Green agreed with misguided idiots to idiotically scapegoat migrant workers for house price inflation Tom Watson catches Tory Chris Grayling doing a Jody Dunn. Not just on a blog mind. Live and direct on your TV.

Shame Ed Davey wasn't there to put here right when the Lib Dem chancer, a "clever" barrister I think, blogged about Council tenants herself. With disastrous results. Sadly South Manchester's own newest Lib Dem chancer Paul Ankers didn't blog his overheard-by-a-Green "they're all bastards" remark.

Cynical Tory Strays: Pissing on All the Policy Lamp Posts

Brown Deserves His Kicking says Stephen Newton. Perhaps. The Mirror's editorial agrees with me that the Tories just look like yah boo thugees over it.

And goodness me this banner's justa tad annoying and continuously untruthful. Tory Fibs. For example on Inheritance Tax. Tories propose raising to TWO MILLION for couples, not ONE. Labour leave it - as it already is - at £600,000 for couples. So that pair of comparators is deeply dishonest at both ends and deliberately sets up fear and loathing by dog whistle.

The opposition can come up with any damn obvious policy or initiative they like. Some things are just in the air. Ideas whose time has come. Priorities whose time has come. Reviews whose time has come.

Oppositions can come up with 100s of generic or zeitgeist ideas. Is the government then supposed to be barred from doing anything similar? Even if it's the right thing to do? It is of course easy enough when a government does do such a thing to say you pissed on that particular lamp post first.

The Lib Dems have after all permed most combinations of tax rates, local tax, national tax, supertax, flat rate tax, rising tax, slashed tax, frozen tax, parish council tax. They've been there and done all of these and a whole lot more.

Whatever the government decide to do someone may have already mentioned it. And the fact they've mentioned nine other things seems to be overlooked.

Stephen is I think being a bit too hard on the Brown government on this one.

Tony Benn at 82: Still Laying into Parliament

And look people - No Notes! It's a miracle. Will there be three generations of Benns in the HoP? Has this generation game even been attempted before?
Hat tip: Bob Piper.

Cross Town Traffic: Every Day is Coleman Fool's Day

Good to hear that Tory GLA nincompoop, inveterate taxi hirer, ligger and police informant Brian Coleman has become a strange bedfellow of George Galloway in slagging off Crossrail.

Coleman's regular everyday lunacy is demonstrated frequently. Another day, another dopey pronouncement.

A proposal to build a multi-story car park on Potters Fields a particularly good example. Park and ride in Southwark for city boys anyone? Ride in a GLA account taxi, naturally. Coleman ran the meter to £10,000 as GLA chair, claiming it was OK as he went to 169 ligs during the year. Just under £60 per shindig. Goodness knows how much carbon puffed into Londoners' lungs. The other 24 members of the GLA (real link) only just managed to match him ... between the lot of them.

Not a man to be advising New Statesman readers on strategic public transport matters I'd have thought?

PHOTO: Sadly couldn't find a picture of Coleman helping with a cycling launch. So that's in fact Konnie Huq (top).

Disclaimer: Photo taken without permission of the Biased BBC. BC is pictured far right. Amazingly sleek considering liggage and reliance on cab-age.

Hat tip re Crossrail: Luke "he's anti-voting" Akehurst.

Moot: Should Real Journalists Behave Like Boy Bloggers?

Suggesting that he has a mole at the highest levels in The Mail, one that he's like to see sacked given as so many clues have been scattered, Iain Dale questions editorial decisions made by proper journalists on where PMQs should be ranked on the news agenda as Wednesday progressed and Thursday came.

Presumably he thinks it should still be at the top even now? I disagree and I can see why proper journalists at even right wing papers are of the same mind.

The Mail and Telegraph do not want to over-state some horrendous Punch and Judy yahhing and booing from the man who said he'd consigned that to history.

They had already covered the goings on over the election decision for some four days of certainty. These following a further few days where it was more or less the expected outcome. A week of it all told.

Covering the PMQ reflection of those goings on at any length is not particularly proportionate. Shadows of shadows on the cave wall of disembodied unreality.

And Paul Dacre is right. If The Mail - already seen as hugely and risibly right wing - tries to out-Guido Mr GuF and out-Dale Mr Dale on Brown- bashing they might as well give up and go home. They're better than that. Just about!

By not going down the route of media on media and front page headlines for something that happened almost 18 hours before most readers' outraged daily choke over their cornflakes they are of course doing the right thing.

Also incidentally doing Cameron a favour. This was not actually his finest hour. This session of pantomime PMQs will I think come to be remembered as rather more like the odious Harry Paget Flashman giving young Tom Brown a roasting than as bravura heroism to treasure.

Dave-id Cameron and other Tory Boy Bloggers - particularly any who praised or re-published - should re-read Mr Blaney's thoughtful contribution and reconsider their approach. Rule 2: Don't Be Arsey; Rule 3: Don't Underestimate Brown.

Wearing Tories Clothes (NOT): Stay Left Shep Stay Left

Over at the same bloody brilliant Akehurst post the man's mortal enemies in sectarianaria are trotting in to the crease and hoping to shatter Luke's middle stump with their deadly late swing.

But whereas even the dopiest economists in the Tory blogosphere cottoned on to this - sadly for them - NOT being the Great Clothes Robbery, some on the left have yet to catch on.

With a little Economics and a smattering of Mathematics in my education it took me about ten minutes to figure that Darling had not changed the world or stolen Gideon Osborne's albeit dapper-toff-tailored clothes.

Oh! Delete-name-of-comrade, Darling HAS NOT repeat HAS NOT appropriated Tory policy on IHT.

He hasn't in fact changed much at all. Except the perception in the country (among as many as 75% of voters allegedly) that they were going to be killed twice. By death itself. And then by death duties.

Before Darling's speech: Couple with good tax planning £600,000 equity before IHT. Rising to £700,000 under existing plans.

After Darling's speech: Couple without the expense or culture of tax planning £600,000 equity before IHT. Still rising to £700,000 under existing plans.

Before Darling's speech: Widows and widowers and civil partnership survivors would not benefit as above from the allowance.

After Darling's speech: Widows and widowers and civil partnership survivors do in fact benefit from the full allowance.

IHT will now be at more or less the same levels - affecting just 3-4% of estates - as in 1997. Being supposedly indexed that is what is supposed to happen.

Darling has done very little to change anything. It has however become apparent that Gid the Fib Osborne and Memory Man Cam intended for estates with equity of TWO MILLION not just ONE MILLION to escape IHT.

Providing some useful blue water in the 20-month build up to the June 2009 election that one or two bloggers have predicted all along.

Now, socialists can I think mount an argument for more progressive IHT. Not sure it will ever be listened to or that it is electorally prudent. But what Darling and Brown have in fact done is not take the Tory Clothes, on this one at least, but instead taken the Tory Dog Whistle and changed it from "Go Right Shep, Go Right" to "Relax Shep, Stay Left".

If polling shows that instead of 75% of the electorate only say 10-20% now misconstrue the scope of this particularly misunderstood tax that will have been a great day's work for the Chancellor.

Luke Akehurst: He's Bloody Brilliant! He Really Is!

Luke Akehurst is bloody brilliant! Don't get me wrong, I'm not approving of his take on things. It's just that he is so reliable in twisting the knife, extracting and reinserting the knife, finding a new knife and sticking that in, and blah de blah.

Tagged on the end of a sensible enough post about a recent Populus poll for The Times here he opines gratuitously and not at all gingerly:

One side issue - the last two weeks show conferences really are important in determining people's perceptions of the parties - even more reason why it was right to dump the annual contemporary resolutions slanging match.

Now the contemporary resolutions thing has fallen into disrepute in some ways with all sorts of dodginess being perpetrated by right-wingers, the stacked CAC (Conference Arrangements Committee) with their shenanigans, the flexibility of the definitions, the party staff, the MPs whipping delegates with untruths, the session Chairs picking on message "house" speakers and so on and so forth.

That much is true. But the replacement - a strengthened National Policy Forum - must be seen to be believed. That process too have never really been out of disrepute.

Luke's lot - the dirigiste, centriste, staliniste, topdown-iste, right-wing moderate-iste - have somehow got rid of contemporary resolutions. Time to stop harping on about them? NO! Just another twist or two for this sectarian monster.

Mr Akehurst has, consider commenters, undermined himself by showing a poll improvement even though we did have contemporary resolutions. Apparently that did not matter as there was no voting.

It is the voting that Luke is against! Which brings us back to where we started. Luke Akehurst is bloody brilliant!