The British National Party

[C0ckney]

i think that all but a tiny handfull of people don't see the BNP as a party they would ever want to govern them, but rather as a protest vote against the inability of the main parties to tackle issues like immigration and the EU.

[Derekrage]

Caligastia - The BBC always refers to the BNP as far-right which is is false. They also do not have link from the BBC web pages that mention the BNP, to their website. Which is their practice for every other political party. This denies the reader to see the BNP point of view on the news story and instead rely on the BBC article.

[Bosh]

Originally posted by Park Avenue

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/3619035.stm

All negative. They'd never have a story like this about another political party.

Its covering the NUT denunciation of the BNP and in covering that it includes um, the NUT denunciation of the BNP. The horror!

[Caligastia]

Originally posted by Park Avenue
And the BNP, far right? No, many of their policies are quite left-wing or centrist/populist.

It's funny how any party that recognises race in any of it's policies is considered "far right". I don't think consideration of race is something exclusive to the left or the right. I also see some of the BNP's policies as being left-wing. Specifically wrt trade.

[Derekrage]

Boshko, when any other political party or organisation is attacked they usually put in a response or comment from the attacked party, the BBC and indeed most news sources never put the BNP point of view across.

[Solly]

"Its covering the NUT denunciation of the BNP and in covering that it includes um, the NUT denunciation of the BNP. The horror!"

Fine, quote the negatives. But then explain why the children are carrying the leaflets and what the issues are.

"No whites allowed" areas are getting more and more common apparently.

[Caligastia]

Originally posted by Derekrage
Caligastia - The BBC always refers to the BNP as far-right which is is false. They also do not have link from the BBC web pages that mention the BNP, to their website. Which is their practice for every other political party. This denies the reader to see the BNP point of view on the news story and instead rely on the BBC article.

True. It seems only fair that the reader be given access to as much information as possible, especially if this is standard practice for news stories that mention political parties.

[Solly]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/3524882.stm

A lot of attacks on the BNP, but none about what would be deemed a racist attack if the roles were reversed.

[C0ckney]

from the article PA linked to:

The BNP said the aim of the visit is to ease tensions.

[Whaleboy]

There is no Britishness?

The only possible idea of “Britishness” is the notion of inclusion, tolerance of others and a welcome mat at the door.

So what? Mistakes in the past do not excuse mistakes in the present.

The “British people” the BNP claim to support are a conglomerate of peoples of immigrant backgrounds. If we consider the last 10’000 years (give or take) a mistake, then you are effectively saying that the only true Britons are those humans of Basque origin who first populated parts of the West country and Wales. They number in five figures these days. No dice.

Maybe the BNP prefers the snapshot of community that was enjoyed before the recent waves of immigration, which are amongst the largest this land has ever experienced.

You mean the post-WWII economic hellhole? I may like the romanticised idea of pre-Roman iron age Britain, but I don’t base a political theory on a pipe dream. Turning the clock back isn’t an option and immigration has far more beneficial effects than it does currently.

A fairer answer would be for each generation to pay - either privately or via the state - for its own retirement, rather than cross-generational subsidy.

Kiss goodbye to reasonable interest rates! . This fairer solution of which you speak will lead to economic collapse for the generations paying for that (assume ~£150’000 pensions bill for my working life), the equivalent of a volcanic rise in taxes, and inflexibility for a future and possibly fluctuant economic climate.

There is a problem, but bringing in hordes of immigrants to sort it out is not the first-best, or fairest, solution. If the immigrants pay for someone else's retirement, who pays for their own? Or do they have to pay both? You're really fair on immigrants aren't you.

Immigrants should pay the same tax, with the same working rights as the rest of us. It really isn’t that difficult to understand. It makes far more sense, and it is fairer on the generations paying the tax to support it. The more paying that tax, the better.

Tell me, if 5 million more immigrants wanted to come here every year to work and "fuel the economy", would you support it? Why (not)?

5 million is a completely different figure to a couple dozen thousand per year. As for the housing concerns, it requires investment and I am not suggesting that Britain can currently cope with it without environmental damage, but with a little more re-thinking (brownfield development and affordable housing, common sense stuff) and it is certainly plausible that Britain can cope with many more. Nonetheless, unless we are at saturation point, it does not constitute a sufficient reason to kick immigrants out.

How would you know when to decide that too many were incoming?

If we are talking about housing and a nations ability to keep them housed? When demand outstrips potential supply. That has not occurred yet, and I can’t see it occurring.

Nowhere did they say they would do away with this. What they might just do away with is the possibility of someone having committed 72 offences (ie, one man crime waves) and still being on the street every night.

That person deserves the right to be free if he has paid his debt to society. If, however, you can call him a present threat to other people, then you can lock him up or section him, but that requires more than a list of previous convictions, since that is speculation. To deny one his freedom requires more than speculation, one needs evidence that he is a present threat.

Why is it erroneous?

Does it serve any purpose? Is it conducive to a fair and reasonable recompense? Will it lead to a proportional punishment, or rehabilitation? No to all of course. It will ease the victims feelings of violation, by violating in return. Net violation increases, whereas justice aims to reduce that. Revenge in other words. It is therefore erroneous as a system of justice.

Not if they live in their mansion far away from reality.

If you are independent to the case (i.e., not a victim of the crime or not the perpetrator, with no vested interests in either), then you are more objective. One assumes an understanding of the sociological situation and legal issues, but a man who drinks himself to idiocy every weekend is not necessarily a better judge than a man who “lives in a mansion” but capable of performing that objective role. Where the man on the street would have his biases, a trained member of the legal profession perhaps would not. Conflicting lifestyles do not make someone less able to perform the role of judge or arbitrator.

Not at all. You're using the slippery slope argument here.

No, the informal fallacy slippery slope requires no “engine” to continue down that slippery slope, pardon the semantic flaws in that analogy. I have that engine here in the presumption of “victims first”. Like I said, it sounds good, and its probably a vote winner, but logically speaking, it is ridiculous.

What on earth is this pompous rubbish? We need to return to a decent society where we actually punish people rather than sending them on trips to Florida or watch Man United.

Pompous rubbish? I suppose you’re going to call me an ivory tower leftist . You use the term “decent society” with little or no explanation of what that is, what defines “decent” beyond the familial sense, which is woefully insufficient for an explanation of a political theory. You like the notion of punishment by default it would seem, whereas I am saying we need an intelligent system whereby we determine what would yield the most constructive result. Why increase misery when you can help society by not having the burden of a harsh penal system, and help the criminals become productive members of society and help to increase prosperity. The victims should be materially compensated where appropriate of course but emotional suffering does not equate to material or associative harm.

What is meant by native Britons is white people who's family have lived here for generations, who all have a common christian and western/european heritage. We have not had large scale immigration for nearly a millenium so do you not agree that a common British culture had emerged and any immigrants that arrived in Britain quickly adopted the "British way of life".

On my fathers side, I am a 2nd generation Portuguese-Indian immigrant. On my mothers I am a 5th and 4th Polish and Dutch respectively. I guess that makes me white. What if I am 1st or 2nd generation African or Pakistani? As far as you are concerned, reading this on an internet forum, that is irrelevant, you are reading my words, you know that I am educated well in speaking English, I am a productive member of society. I have no Christian or recent Western European heritage but tell me, what does that matter. I consider myself British though I still have strong Jewish and Indian influences upon my own way of doing things (you might say a culture were it multiplied). I used to go through patriotic phases when I was growing up, my family support the national team in rugby and football and they consider themselves as British as tolerance itself. So pray tell why does one have to fit your definition of a person in order to qualify as being British? I’m a little puzzled there.

Oh, and there was more immigration between the beginning of the 18th and end of the 19th century than there was during the Norman era (11th-12th centuries). Those were people coming from all over the world, in large numbers over an extended period who did not quickly adopt British culture but were largely tolerated. Also consider the great number of European artisans, merchants etc that came to Britain between the renaissance period to the beginnings of empire.

Regarding the British way of life, when you have people being persecuted, how do you think they are going to react? By adopting the culture of their persecutors? Hardly. For people that are suffering for the same cause, they are going to develop their own culture. We see this throughout history and ethnicities that are or have been oppressed by the numerical majority, and then it is the persecutors that accuse them of not wanting to integrate!

The problem with the current mass immigration is that most of these people are not being assimilated into our culture it is just like picking a street up out of the middle east and planting it in the middle of one of our cities. This leads to a segragated society and "no white zones" in our cities where people who have lived there all of their lives find that they are no longer able to walk down some streets without fear of being attacked because they are white. We have seen where this can lead with the race riots a few years ago.

I am not going to deny that there are communities of immigrant peoples of shared origin living in areas in the North especially. Assume them to have not been suffering oppression. You place a white family in that neighbourhood. Are they automatically going to suffer? Of course not. The problem occurs when they feel persecuted and attacked and thus naturally are going to react to someone invading the only area they feel safe. It is the fault of those that should have been welcoming and not rejecting that this situation has developed. It is perhaps indicative that both peoples, “natives” and immigrants are equally fallible .

What is the benifit of multi-culturism? kebabs? I am not claiming that this isn't rascist according to the liberal elite but all multi-culturism has brought is conflict and problems.

Not really. Given time, people will learn aspects of all cultures. A number of white people are converting to Islam, and adopting Eastern philosophical ideas into their own lives, myself included. Some black people and some Asians are assimilating into the same beer drinking, loutish, undereducated delinquent behaviour that has long afflicted the poorer areas of Britain, whatever colour!! At the other end of the scale, businessmen, taxi-drivers, and other hard working individuals are helping the economy by working their arses off. Multi-cultural influences are integrating into art, language, literature, music and fashion. It is known in sociological circles as a post-modern “pick n mix” or conglomerate. I don’t deny that there are problems with multi-culturalism, most of them stemming (according to that recent article I can’t be arsed to link to) from attempts to encourage assimilation and not naturally mutual integration but even now, and over time, it will be clear that it is worth it, and has a beneficial effect upon the economic and intellectual landscape of the UK.

Eventually all those young workers you brought in will retire, and also burden the pension system. If you solve that problem by again importing more workers, the cycle repeats. Evenually there just isn't any room left to bring in new people. Then what do you do?

You assume them to reproduce at a lesser rate than the workers already here. While that isn’t necessarily the case, it seems that it may well be, so what you are doing is buying time, about 30-50 years in this case to address the cause of lower birth rates.

It would be far more sensible to encourage more self-reliance wrt saving for retirement. If government pensions were phased out and replaced with individual savings then aging populations would surely be less of a problem.

As I said, that would play havoc upon the economy of we are saving significantly more of our paycheques.

Cali - left-wingers = short-term, ill-thought out "solutions".

The left doesn’t work? *Goes to find another ideology* jk

Pray tell exactly how that works, beyond tarring all of your opponents with the same brush (seeing as how practically everyone is to the left of you (note the warning sign)).

we would need to raise our population to around 85 million to support the 'baby-boomers' when they retire.

Nowhere did I claim that immigration was the only solution. Only a fool would propose one solution to a complex problem, but increased immigration is part of the solution.

From what I've seen, Britain is pretty packed already. Not that I've seen an awful lot mind you. I've seen a fair amount of London, some of Dorset, some of Cornwall, and a little town up north called York.

Hence the need for rethinking our housing policies.

However a vote for the BNP is a vote for Nazis. Its all very well sounding oh so reasosnable and sticking up for the poor oppressed 90% majority, but what exactkly would happen if they got into power, just read a book about German history circa 1933 and you will get a good idea.

A vote for nationalist fascists which is more of a cousin to Nazism. Same techniques to a great extent, just different victims.

The BNP are a democratic party that works within the political framework of the country there is no evidence to suggest that they are anything like the nazis. I believe they are the only political party to promise a bill of rights in their manifesto - (taken from the BNP website)

The Nazis were exactly the same (democratic process) up until 1932. Indeed the similarities to the BNP at that point are terrifying. A bill of rights is somewhat empty, I mean, go for it if it means something but I don’t see how that is exclusive to the BNP. What is so special about a Bill of Rights that law by statute lacks? That escapes me.

"We will implement a Bill of Rights guaranteeing fundamental freedoms to the British people. We will ensure that ordinary British people have real democratic power over their own lives and that Government, local and national, is truly accountable to the people who elect it."

There are members of the BNP that would like to see a Nazi like party in Britain but I assure you they are a very small minority and there are surely people like them that are members of the 3 main political parties.

I can tell you for a fact that in my several years of involvement with the Lib Dems that I have met no-one like that. I know people involved with the Conservatives too and there are no Nazi elements, and one expects the number of Nazi influences to increase proportionally to the degree to which a party is on the right.

because they do speak for the man on the street

Tell me, if we assume that the political classes are not in it for themselves (and since politicians aren’t the richest aristocrats in the nation any longer that is a safe assumption), what is to say that the view of the political elite (among whom many/most have been trained to a high degree in the issues that concerns the nation) are less valid than that of the man on the street, whose training and education probably isn’t related to those issues. The nobility of the masses? How communist .

All this demonising of the BNP as if they want another Hitler is just a joke though, usually perpertrated by the media (such as the BBC) who survive on the whims of the political elite and those brainwashed by them,.

And I suppose you believe that I shot Kennedy as well

I agree Park Avenue the amount of propoganda that the BBC, who are supposed to be an independant organisation, spew out against the BNP is unbelievable. Unfortunately a lot of people do believe it.

If the BNP didn’t have such idiotic policies, perhaps they would attract more respect and a better light. They don’t get a good light by default, they need to earn it.

And the BNP, far right? No, many of their policies are quite left-wing or centrist/populist.

Economically, I have to agree. The BNP seem more communist than the actual British Communist Party!!

i think that all but a tiny handfull of people don't see the BNP as a party they would ever want to govern them, but rather as a protest vote against the inability of the main parties to tackle issues like immigration and the EU.

Agreed, after all, the media do have to tell people what they want to hear, and the majority think the BNP are idiots .

[Caligastia]

Originally posted by Park Avenue

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/3524882.stm

A lot of attacks on the BNP, but none about what would be deemed a racist attack if the roles were reversed.

The story doesn't really say whether or not the attack was a result of racial tensions, only that five asian men were involved. Unless there is evidence that the attack was racial in nature I'd tend to assume it wasn't. Unfortunately racism on the part of whites is usually assumed whenever whites commit a violent act against another race.

[C0ckney]

...but I don’t base a political theory on a pipe dream...

Agreed, after all, the media do have to tell people what they want to hear, and the majority think the BNP are idiots .

the BNP are idiots, but i'm not quite sure what you are getting at here?

5 million is a completely different figure to a couple dozen thousand per year.

it is, but i wonder where the 'couple of dozen thousand' figure comes from? (we get a damn sight more than 24,000 immigrants and asylum applicants each year...)

and on the pensions thing, how many more immigrants do you think the country, in particular london and the south east, can absorb?

and when you say re-think our housing policies, what are you getting at?

sorry for all the questions but i'm just trying to get a better idea of what you are saying

[Whaleboy]

The British National Party

[Caligastia]

Originally posted by Whaleboy
You assume them to reproduce at a lesser rate than the workers already here. While that isn’t necessarily the case, it seems that it may well be, so what you are doing is buying time, about 30-50 years in this case to address the cause of lower birth rates.

Low birth rates are not a problem if everyone is held responsible for their own retirement.

As I said, that would play havoc upon the economy of we are saving significantly more of our paycheques.

Your paycheques would be significantly higher if you were given the money that the British government takes for your pension. The extra money in your paycheque would more than cover the cost of saving for your retirement yourself.

Why is having an aging population a problem for govt pensions? The answer can only be that the money that was put aside from these people's wages over the years has been mismanaged or diverted to other government programs. Returns would be much higher in a private savings account, but the British people are not given that option.

[Derekrage]

Whaleboy, note that I said native Britons. You cannot compare the immigration of the past to now. Some studies have predicted that the 'native' British population will be a minority in Britain within the next hundred years, you have to see that this will not be acceptable to certain 'native' Britons including me. This will inevitably lead to violence. I do not ever want Britain to be in the position where there is a majority muslim population, I do not want their values to be forced onto me or my children. This is a western country and we should keep it that way.