Glass Houses

Interesting to note another couple of visits to the site from Associated Newspapers today. What's it like to be despised Mr Doughty?

As pointed out by Claude @ Hagley Road to Ladywood, the Mail's hypocrisy knows no bounds.

The Mail is outraged that there may be a concerted, organised attempt to cause mayhem in London tomorrow at the G20 summit.

• Protesters plan to use Google Streetview and the micro-blogging site Twitter to cause mayhem at next week's G20 summit in London.

Ah, the disgusting internet.

Then there was the attack on Fred Goodwin's home:

• Ian Bone, (of Class War) wrote on his blog: 'Top f****** work comrades!'

• The concern is that anti-capitalist groups will copy the tactics of animal rights militants by directly targeting individuals they hold responsible for the credit crunch.

So, it comes as a bit of surprise (quel) to read this in the same paper a few days earlier:

• This is why we must stand outside their homes throwing rocks through the windows until they do.

Max Hastings meet Ian Bone, fellow anarchist. Those without sin..........

A Real Common Purpose

After reading a laughable attack on Eric the Fish, (apart from my mother) I thought I'd use some time off to visit a part of Merseyside that hosts what I believe to be the greatest memorial to those who laid their lives down for this country. Not one of the dead ever declared that they wanted Britain to be a white nation, yet the odious BNP constantly seek to evoke this. Their use of Churchill's image (denounced by grandson, Nicholas Soames), John Lennon, and Vera Lynn shows how low they will go. The fact that they used a POLISH regiment in the BNP celebration of the Battle of Britain shows how history is secondary to propaganda. Der Sturmer eat your heat out.

Anyway, I was moved to pay my respects at the memorial seen in the photo. Near to this is a garden with a memorial to those who were killed at Hillsborough. Far in the distance (for those visiting this jewel in Merseyside's crown) is the Lady Lever Art Gallery. This was also a celebration of death (in honour of his wife).

As we near the 20th anniversary of Hillsborough, it becomes even more important to remember, and to ensure that the past mistakes are never repeated whatever the circumstances.

From the Merseyside BNP site:

• INFORMATION COMING THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE ERIC THE FISH THE LEFT WING KIPPER HAS BEEN DENOUNCING THE BNP VIA THE STINKY PHILLIPS RADIO SHOW TODAY. BOTH STINKY AND FISHY HAVE BEEN VISITING THE BNP WEBSITES. THEY ARE UPSET WITH THE COMMON PURPOSE VIDEO THIS IS TO BE DISCUSSED IN TOMORROWS (27TH MARCH) RADIO PROGRAMME ON RADIO MESERYSIDE (sic) BETWEEN 12 AND 2PM. THIS DESERVES OUR ATTENTION

And your point is?

It is hoped that a local spokesperson for Common Person will be available. I must say that I am always a bit sceptical of of all these New World Order theories (David Icke step forward) but I'm also cynical enough to be less than satisfied that every grouping does not have a purely altruistic approach. That's why I'm asking people (who know somebody) to join my Circular Stonebreaker Institute Cabal (CSI Calderstones) and listen to these people on the radio. SEND ME MONEY NOW (that was subliminal).

Remember what the fallen were fighting for and against. For our friend from Brighton who visits this site every day: Tranmere Rovers will show you the way to victory on Saturday (I hope).

I'm also sure that the media are far too busy to entertain your crazy conspiracy theories.

The Thick Blue Lyin'

When the BNP list was leaked online, alongside the beautiful irony of the Fascists calling upon the very human rights legislation they wanted to abolish, we saw a deliberate tactic of denying membership. So proud were these nationalists that they did not wish to come out of the closet of shame.

We now have the spectacle of sacked policeman Steve 'I thought it was a golf club I was joining' Bettley announcing that he wishes to appeal. So be it.

The Liverpool Daily Post has raised the hackles of the media starlet and erstwhile animal lover (not in the literal sense you understand), Simon Darby with a stinging attack on the hatemeisters:

• A HEARTY well done to Merseyside Police for their swift and decisive response to the case of PC Steve Bettley. Bettley’s name was on a document which listed 12,000 people who were alleged to be members of the unsavoury British National Party. Over the weekend, Merseyside Police announced PC Bettley had been dismissed from his position.

Of course, Darby shows the real contempt that his party has for workers who may be threatened with losing their jobs in the current economic downturn. On a day when massive job cuts were announced by the BNP's favourite uncle, The Daily Mail Group, he raises the possibility of the same outcome at the Post and Echo, saying, "Couldn't happen to nicer people is my opinion."
Next time the BNP turn up on picket lines claiming to support workers let it be known that they are really only interested in stirring up trouble and anti-immigrant feeling.

I know it is lazy to continually use the Nazi motif when judging the BNP, but the similarities remain despite them trying to align themselves with spitfire pilots and Churchill. Further evidence if needed comes in one of the daily outpourings of anti-Semitic bile on the Merseyside BNP site. Nobody questions this so the silence speaks volumes. The latest example was a lengthy post in support of Holocaust denier, Horst Mahler, recently jailed in Germany:

• If one realizes, as I do, that the "Holocaust" Religion is the principal weapon for the moral and cultural destruction of the German nation, then it is clear that what is at stake here is nothing less than the collective right of self-defense, that is, Germany's right to survive.

The real voice of the BNP.

The challenge is to make support of the BNP as socially unacceptable as buying The Sun has become on Merseyside.

PC or Not PC

Following yesterday's story about The Sun and Hillsborough (I don't often set foot in that darkened place but fortunately septicisle at The Sun Lies has this patrol) I've not received a response from the journalist responsible for the piece. No surprise there.

Also here on Merseyside, Steve 'Not a Racist' Bettley has been dismissed from the police force. The Police Federation and the Black Police Association disagree as to the decision. Cue BNP shouts of 'why isn't there a white police association'.

Rather interestingly, the Mersey BNP have this to say:

• Bernard Hogan Howe, chief Muppet and puppet of Merseyside Police is an absolute disgrace along with the Black police federation who would have been banging their drums (I cannot say Bongo drums here because of political correction)wanting Bettleys blood and sacking.............

What's that Ted? Not a racist? Might help if you knew the actual name of the organisation you seek to make comments about. Another failure from the local bigots.

Sorry........sort of

Not perfect but an interesting case study in damage limitation comes in the form of The Express apology over its Dunblane story.

• THE Scottish Sunday Express has enjoyed a long love affair with the people of our nation.

But now we've just got the test results back from the clinic and one of us has got the clap. I think it was that Murray woman who posts drunken pictures of herself on Facebook.

Damn those pesky bloggers. If it weren't for them, we'd have gotten away with it!

On another note, The Sun, vilified on Merseyside, seems to have lifted quotes from the forthcoming documentary on Hillsborough to create the impression that Kenny Dalglish, Bruce Grobelaar and Tranmere demi-god John Aldridge have spoken to the paper. I'd find it very surprising if this is not the case.

America's Least Wanted

Remember those nutters on Louis Theroux? Yes, I know most were but these were special: the God Hates Fags zombies. Far from being a 12 step help group for smokers, they are the kind of purveyors of hate that make the BNP look sane and rational.

As The Guardian points out, they are now planning to protest against a school in London,which - in their world view - promotes sodomy.

• The group's founder, Reverend Fred Phelps, was barred from entering Britain last month to stop him spreading "extremism and hatred". He had intended to picket a play about a homophobic killing.

Down with this sort of thing! Careful now! (He won't get the Father Ted reference but there you go).

• A message on the group's website announcing their plans said: "God hates the UK"

However, apparently we're in good company as He (or she) also hates Sweden and Obama. Not too keen on the Romans either, but Mr Mugabe is probably seen as a great visionary.

Germany also comes into the equation. The vile group aims to picket the memorial service for the victims of Winnenden on March 21st. Their crude poster states, "Thank God for the shooter and 16 dead, fag-infested Krauts." Even The Express would have thought twice about publishing that one.

Should they be banned? Or is it better to just let these loons make fools out of themselves? They'll certainly get a shock in the capital: it's definitely not Kansas, Toto.

Death in the Sun

The closing weeks of the 1988-89 football season produced a mixture of emotions for me as Tranmere's automatic promotion to the old Division 3 was tempered by the Hillsborough Disaster on 15th April 1989.

Much has been written since and today's article in The Observer is a powerful piece coming as it does a single month short of the 20th anniversary of that day in the sun. It tells of a Liverpool fan shunted into the Leppings Lane end of the ground despite having a ticket for the Nottingham Forest end - he was with his Forest-supporting brother - and the ensuing crush:

• Within feet of me people were standing dead, bolt upright. Three men had long stopped breathing and were now staring, with a fixed, almost disinterested expression, into the distance. Their faces were bleached white, but turning blue, their lips a cold violet.

My memories of that day have not faded much. Tranmere were playing away at Hartlepool, Everton in the other FA Cup semi so I plonked myself down in front of the TV with a can of Guinness. News started filtering through of problems at the Liverpool game and television pictures began to show the stark reality of what was unfolding: fans with makeshift stretchers purloined from the pitch side. As Ian Prowse sang,

• Yorkshire policemen chat with folded arms
  while people try and save their fellow fans

The other results - so important to us all each weekend - became meaningless. I had to look up the TRFC result as it had become lost in the ether. I do, however, vividly remember a long-standing Evertonian slumped on the bar of the Stork in Birkenhead, having discovered the news on the way back from his team's victory, and the normal quick banter replaced by knowing silence.

The Prowse song begins with the words,

• Mckenzie's soul lies above the ground
  In that pyramid near Maryland

It refers to Liverpool folklore: James McKenzie,a wicked man who gambled and lost his soul to the devil.

Liverpool has another soundex soulman: Kelvin MacKenzie.

For those of you unfamiliar with this reprobate's role in the history of the matter, he was Editor of the Rupert Murdoch-owned titfest, The Sun at the time and was forced into a grovelling apology for printing a story headlined 'The Truth', which falsely claimed that drunken, ticketless fans stole from the dead and urinated on their bodies.

It took until 2004 for a full apology to surface as scum is wont to do in an attempt to rebuild circulation figures for a paper whose name is dirt. Mackenzie - in 2006 - though remained unrepentant:

• "I was not sorry then and I'm not sorry now," Mr MacKenzie told his audience. "All I did wrong there was [to] tell the truth."

This man is still used by the media as a spokesman on newspaper issues. Sky have him reviewing the papers, and yesterday Channel 4 had him lamenting the slow death of local newspapers and said that without them 'liars would get away with it' without any hint of irony!

So, the memory lingers. Nothing has changed over at Murdoch's empire. The Sun routinely prints lies - see The Sun Lies - and the campaign for justice continues.

Further reading can be found as a zip file at The Kirkby Times

Littlejohn's BNP Texas Hold 'Em

Given Richard Littlejohn's residence in Florida, perhaps the title is a bit out. Still, if we thought the Express had a hit a new low with its Dunblane debacle, today's Littlejohn ejaculation takes no prisoners either. Or rather it does.

He does not deserve much of a metaphorical kicking for fear of making him a martyr. Not that stops him inciting hatred and violence today.

One of the Luton protestors works at an airport. Luton Airport I was less than surprised to hear.
Cue knee-jerk reaction from the real jerk.

• Airport officials insist: 'He would be in a supervised environment at all times.'

  Somehow, I doubt that's the kind of 'supervised environment' most of us would like to see him in. That would involve orange jumpsuits, armed guards, razor-wire and large dogs.

Yes, the man who routinely lambasts the Government for preventing freedom of speech would, in a move which dog whistles to strange bedfellow Simon Darby, that the ante is upped, see citizens guilty of no crime sent on rendition flights. I see your put them on a plane to Afghanistan and I'll raise you Guantanamo Bay for British citizens and chuck in some racial profiling.

• It's the same warped mindset which sees groups of young Muslim men, accompanied by faceless women in burqas, waved through airport security without so much as a cursory glance, while old-age pensioners from Tunbridge Wells on their way to a long weekend in Madeira are subjected to the full Spanish Inquisition and a humiliating strip search.

That'll be Disgusted from T. Wells? Sigh! He's been watching old reruns of Not The Nine O'Clock News where the bandit with guns and ammo gets through the metal detector but the vicar gets the full treatment. Good to see the BBC getting royalties from ex-pats in Florida, Rich!

• The Royal Anglians would have been forgiven had they fixed bayonets and charged. If these Toytown Talibandits consider themselves part of the global jihad and think killing British soldiers is a way to behave, let them step up to the plate - not hide behind a police cordon.

So protesting automatically makes you a warrior or suicide bomber? The small number of the extreme group were clearly misguided in their protest, but given some of the atrocities committed in our name in Iraq, having a triumphant march past was not the greatest idea either. These soldiers are volunteers and whilst it must be a difficult situation to be in (one that neither I nor Littlejohn truly understand), they have not just got back home from the Somme.

'Going Home' seems to be a policy Littlejohn now shares with his BNP brotherhood. As Rule 5 of the snazzily-titled BNP Languages and Concepts Discipline Manual 2005 makes clear,

• We make no secret of the fact that we are an ethno-nationalist party or that our ultimate goal is the orderly, lawful, humane and voluntary repatriation of the resident foreigners of the UK.

So over to you Simon Darby. Looking to fold? Or waiting for The River (of Blood)?
If Littlejohn continues in this vein and the bigots get their way, there will be different types of soldiers marching in the streets. And when freedom of speech really does vanish, surely even Littlejohn - from his Florida hideaway - will have a tinge of regret that in the real poker game, when the stakes were high, he was helping to deal the cards.


Post Script:

I seriously thought of giving this Mail/BNP bashing a rest but LJ was just there spoiling for the fight.

PPS

Anton has already done a fuller job linking other aspects of race in The Mail. Read 'em (it) and weep.

PPPS

A lot of poker puns above. I can't play to save my wife so don't point out any glaring errors. I had enough bad luck at Cheltenham today. Still Tranny beat Leicester on Wednesday!

Express Massacre

There may be a slight hiatus here for a while. There was a horrific car crash here which killed members of our family so obviously the inclination to rant declines a bit.

However, I was struck by news today of a shooting in Germany:

• A teenage gunman suspected of shooting dead up to 15 people, including 10 students at his former school in southwestern Germany, has reportedly been killed during a shoot-out with police on Wednesday.

• The teen – which the Germany’s biggest tabloid newspaper Bild has identified as 17-year-old Tim Kretschmer – prompted the authorities to seal off the small town of Winnenden after he fled from the bloodbath at the Albertville vocational school.

• Germany has been shocked by a number of fatal school shootings in recent years.
  
  In February 2002, a 22-year-old gunman killed the headmaster and seriously injured another person in a vocational training centre he attended at Freising, near Munich.
  
  Two months later, 16 people were killed at a high-school in Erfurt in eastern Germany, by a 19-year-old former student, who then killed himself.
  
  In November 2006, a former student at a vocational school in Lower Saxony in northwestern Germany went a shooting spree in the establishment, injuring 37 people before turning his gun on himself.

I remember the Erfurt incident, having visited the city (in the former DDR) and having a friend who attended the memorial service.

Of course, we in the UK had our own tragedy at Dunblane in 1996. The memories of this massacre have been tainted by an horrendous piece of gutter journalism by Paula Murray in the Sunday Express in Scotland. Anton covers the shameful story here.

It now appears that the story has been pulled and families have complained to the PCC but JobseekerX has helpfully flagged up a cached version here.

In short, the sewer story was based on survivors (now over 18) doing teenage things (drinking, swearing, getting tattoos and having Facebook chats). Apparently, this - in Murray's words -

• shamed” the memory of their dead peers (because)...... . in the days and months that followed the survivors, then aged just five and six, were the subject of overwhelming worldwide sympathy.

The Excess then quotes an MSP as criticising the teens when in fact she was only asked about social networking sites in general.

Obviously, the tabloid press are still smarting from the lack of stories about the killers of James Bulger in Bootle misbehaving as the injunction preventing publication of their details still stands.

UPDATE: 12th March

Please read the reply from the Sunday Express Scotland to Tim Ireland at Bloggerheads here.

Also, as the Express has taken down the story from t'internet, a Pdf of the front page is available here.

Of further interest is the statement of the PCC in 1996, shortly after the Dunblane murders.

• Memo to national newspaper editors on Dunblane
  
  

  There is a shortage of suitable adjectives to describe the horror of the events in Dunblane on Wednesday morning.

  The Press Complaints Commission joins with Parliamentarians, Church and community leader sin offering the very deepest sympathy of all its members to those mourning the innocent victims of this inexplicable slaughter of children.

  The press has a legitimate role to play in relaying both information about these shocking events to an audience nationwide and the unanimous sympathy of the British people to all those grieving.

  As ever, the Commission appreciates there is a fine line to be drawn between public ineterst and private suffering.

  The Commission has received no formal complaints about the behaviour of print journalists in this matter. Nevertheless, in view of the special circumstances I would like to remind all editors that they and their journalists (including freelancers) throughout the UK are bound by Clauses 4 (Privacy), 8 (Harassment), 10 (Intrusion into grief or shock) and 12 (Interviewing or photographing children) of the newspaper and magazine publishing industry’s Code of Practice.

  In particular, Clause 10, with my own emphasis added here, states that ‘in cases involving personal grief or shock, enquiries should be carried out and approaches made with sympathy and discretion.’

  I would ask all editors to remind those responsible to them about the terms of this Clause, and to be especially careful about respecting it when dealing with the unique and horrible events in Dunblane.

• 15 March 1996

Of course, as The Express and others have shown, once children reach the magic age, they're deemed fair game. As guilty as Ms. Murray and her paper are, those who buy into the celebrity culture and press intrusion minutiae are just as culpable.

Plane Fascist

If anyone is in any doubt what would happen to free speech, dissent and multiculturalism under a BNP government, let them read what Simon Darby, Deputy Leader has to say about those demonstrators in Luton:

• Since the British National Party cannot really have any direct impact on Government policy at present, although indirectly we certainly do, I'll have to provide you with an image of what would have happened if this act had taken place on our watch. After viewing the BBC video, which you can find by clicking on the graphic below, imagine a supplementary thirty or so seconds of video tagged on the end. That material would have been shot at nearby Luton airport where every single one of those "demonstrators" would have been filmed boarding a military aircraft, placards still in hand. That plane would then be filmed taxiing on the runway before its four giant turboprops propelled it off the ground on its journey towards some fly-infested desert in Afghanistan.

Regardless of whether you think it is right to target soldiers obeying orders or whether there is a difference to the anti-war protests in London, this shows us how Darby's henchmen would deal with protests by non-whites without trial, without checks as to whether they are British or not, and without shame.

On a similar note, the Mersey BNP site of hate has a lovely posts from Anon. Not sure if it's the moron from Brighton who posted on here but there you go. Whilst the BNP may say that they don't necessarily share the views of posters, it is their failure to either delete as offensive or distance themselves from such comments which is illuminating. The comment appears on the story of the Asian police officer suing over comments made about his beard AND race (he alleges he was called a Fucking Paki and referred to as inferior). The BNP's strange bedfellow Richard Littlejohn made light of the matter in his bi-weekly gibberish so obviously this Mail diatribe finds its way into the site run by the Two Petes:

• Like most right thinking Britains who can be traced back for generations who fought to preserve this country's heritage and western civilization, we have allowed aliens with dual loyalties to instigate and make laws against the indeginous white Britains............................

• I will vote for any party who will ship him and his family back to their place of origin, I dont care if they are born here they are not the indigenous people. The white British traitors who have had even the smallest part of the rapeing of our heritage I would advocate hanging them and their families as a punishment and deterrant for treason.

Leaving aside the fact that this moron cannot use English very well (which is why I suspect the Brighton Bigot), it doesn't actually make any sense from a logical or rational standpoint.

Liverpool Cathedral

I visited Liverpool Cathedral the other day and went up the tower for the first time. One thing I didn't relise was that the cathedral's architect, Giles Gilbert Scott also designed the red telephone box.

Some photos including the Catholic Cathedral and University.

The trip up the tower is via two lifts and 108 steps and costs £4.25.

There is no bar at the top which is a bit of a blow but there you go.

Spit and other dogs

Simon Darby of the BNP says of the spitfire debacle:

• As it happens, although there is a real issue with the way Britain's labour market has been allowed to be systematically raped and violated, I don't harbour any real resentment towards Polish people at all

No real resentment. Nice one. Also good to see the use of non-inflammatory language - raped....violated....-

• The BNP isn't anti-Polish, it's just that our people have to earn a living

So, Simon Darby, define 'our'.

Then the BNP rewrite history.

• The British National Party loves Europe but hates the EU, said Nick Griffin in a special tribute message to the Polish Spitfire pilots who served in the Royal Air Force during World War II.

  “We have deliberately used a Spitfire from the RAF No. 303 Polish Fighter Squadron as our backdrop in the ‘Battle of Britain’ road show for the European elections,” Mr Griffin said.

  The BNP leader made the remarks while speaking to a Polish TV crew who came along to film the first road show event in Coventry last Saturday night. Mr Griffin went out of his way to point out to the TV crew that the image used on the backdrop was a Polish piloted Spitfire.

See? We're all conspiratists against this nice young graduate's real aims: to highlight the contribution of non-British people to the war effort. Next month - instead of White History Month - Nick will undoubtedly use a picture of some Afro-Carribean soldiers who gave their lives in WW2 on his next poster. There is more likelihood of of seeing To Kill A Mockingbird on DVD in The Mail On Sunday.

The Mail try to walk away from the BNP but let's look a bit closer and see how Griffin - a man who denied the gas chambers at Auschwitz in Poland, tries to use this as propaganda:

• Mr Griffin said that no self-respecting nation would allow its own working people to be overwhelmed by workers from another country.

  “Poland would be very upset if a million Vietnamese came to that country, working for a bowl of rice a day and took a million jobs from Polish people,” Mr Griffin said.

As us 'meaningless' bloggers know, we are spitting in the wind, although it is interesting that the likes of Associated newspapers come here every so often. Same with The Guardian.

Daily Mail Watch

Just click will yer!

NEW MAIL WATCH

Roasted On The Spit

Two quickies before the football calls. The Daily Mail has picked up on the Polish spitfire story I covered on 25th February in an attempt to distance itself from the BNP. Interestingly, Associated Newspapers visited here today too. Maybe, it has something to do with the coverage of their third generation immigrants debacle.

Secondly, there is to be a lobby of Parliament next Thursday (12th) in support of Ricky Tomlinson and the Shrewsbury pickets. Guest speakers are Jeremy Corbyn, John Hendy QC and maybe Arthur Scargill. There are coaches from Liverpool. Further details here.

More Harman Good

There is a bit in 'The Reader' where questions are raised by Bruno Ganz's lecturer character about the validity of retrospective laws and morality. The same dilemma arises over Harriet Harman's 'on the hoof' policy of using 'the court of public opinion' to justify grabbing back Fred Goodwin's RBS pension.

As Michael White points out in The Guardian, her intervention was clearly an exam howler but equally, the Tories should be in the dock for supporting similar populist programmes.