Come on London! Don’t let this happen!

Karma police, arrest this girl, her Hitler hairdo, is making me feel ill
And we have crashed her party
This is what you get, this is what you get
This is what you get, when you mess with us
Radiohead, Karma police

For reasons that may (or may not) become clear, the Daily Mail made me think of these lyrics today. As it has done through the years, thankfully a mite more critically this time, the paper has done a piece on the fascist du jour Richard “Dick” Barnbrook. The main revelation which I did not know was that he is in the final stages of divorcing a woman he met during his “Derek Jarman gay porn” years. Not terribly impressed with his politics, she says:

“In a way, I wanted to join the police to redress the karmic imbalance in the world caused by my husband’s views.”

Barnbrook has also been in the News of the World this week for two-timing his ballerina fiance with a nurse from Finland. I have to admit I am rather disappointed that NotW failed to use the headlines “a kick in the Balkans” or “Finns ain’t what they used to be”.

Possibly the most disappointing thing about the state of British fascism (apart from, of course, the fact that they are racist, violent thugs who are improbably gaining electoral support at the moment), is their sartorial inelegance. Oswald Mosley may have dressed his blackshirts up like Doctor Who villains, but at least they knew what a fucking iron was.

One thing you can say about Barnbrook is that with his brown suit and already suggestive fringe, at least he makes it easy for people to caricature him.

Frankly though, I prefer these fellers.

Yesterday, I kept getting twitter messages about “Boris and Torche on tour.” Naturally, I assumed this meant that in order to avoid the homophobic brush, Mr Johnson had been going round Soho with members of the Tory Campaign for Homosexual Equality (which appears to have folded given that I can’t find any evidence of their existence other than an archive). However, it turns out to be a couple of punk bands. Who knew?

Long time readers of this blog will be aware that Quaequam Blog! is a great friend of the English Nationalist movement (and indeed nationalism in general). So it brings me great sadness to have to report to you that a schism has emerged between the English Democrats and their candidate for London Mayor, Matt “fathers4justice” O’Connor:

The problems O’Connor discovered were that there was no party machine in London as promised, no advertising budget as promised, and they were economical with the facts about whether we’d be funded by backers. His recent party election broadcast which he organised also had amendments made without his knowledge.

He also struggled with an organisation that didn’t share his ideas and vision as evidenced in the difference between O’Connor’s official www.voteenglish.org site and the main party site.

On one occasion he was called racist and anti-Semitic by a senior member - a claim O’Connor described as ‘absurd’. He is also profoundly disappointed that they are now deliberately trying to smear him whilst at the same time the party was happy for him to stand.

Said O’Connor this morning, ‘It is sad but inevitable that they are trying to cover up their own internal problems. They did not deliver on their part of the agreement. It is extremely regrettable that this happened at this stage but I cannot stay in the party where people say things like that or where we have no sensible funding. I also had a clear vision to raise the issue of an English Parliament which they didn’t share.’

Nadine Taylor, Matt’s Campaign Manager resigned several weeks ago because she could not work with the level of incompetence within the party. O’Connor recognises now “that I should have listened to her advice”.

‘Descending to abusing somebody who campaigned in the Anti-Apartheid movement would be laughable if it were not so offensive. I am truly sorry for the good men and women in the party that this happened and while I wish the party every success, my record speaks for itself. Fathers 4 Justice has existed for the same amount of time as the English Democrats and F4J is a household name, with more members and wider recognition. The reality is that my resignation may generate more publicity for them than they achieved in the last six years.

‘Later this year I will launch a new campaign to raise issues like Tartan Taxes. Awareness is everything and they would probably stand to benefit from it.’

English Democrats Leader Robin Tilbrook was quick to issue a stern rebuttal:

I am obviously very disappointed that Matt O’Connor has issued this statement but I have to admit, not entirely surprised. What I now say is in sorrow, because Matt has done the cause some good but, contrary to what he now claims, Matt approached the English Democrats Party to put himself forward to be our mayoral candidate. In January he came to our National Council meeting in Leicester to urge us to select him and promised to “give the campaign 110%”!

During several discussions, he was made fully aware of the problems confronting a candidate for a smaller political party which is challenging the Establishment Parties - not least the problem of raising sufficient funds to fight an election campaign especially given the lack of media coverage of non Establishment candidates.

Within the bounds of our limited manpower and financial resources, Matt has been given 100% support by the English Democrats and many of our London members who have campaigned for him, and for England’s cause. Day in and day out, for many weeks the English Democrats have paid for all the campaign expenses that have been incurred. At no time has any funds been received from Matt.

Unfortunately - and this is not a subject I would have wanted to air publicly had it not been for the statement released by Matt O’Connor this morning seeking to blame us - it became apparent that there were problems with Matt’s candidacy arising from his own personal problems, not least following his disappearance from the campaign for several days, to the extent that I advised him to seek professional counselling regarding alcohol abuse, which he did. Matt did not disclose this problem to us when he urged us to select him as our candidate.

Despite this counselling, Matt again went missing last Saturday; - neither his office nor his partner seemed to know of his whereabouts and he could not be contacted at home. Indeed the Party prepared a statement last night raising concerns at his disappearance, as we were becoming genuinely worried for his safety.

Now, he has stated that he has resigned, although he cannot, of course, at this late stage, remove his name from the ballot paper.

This is all a great pity for Matt personally - he obviously has personal issues that he needs to address - but it also a pity for English Democrats’ candidates standing for the London Assembly - of which we have a full slate. They feel badly let down by Matt - but the campaign for English Democracy goes on!

The assembly campaign is running well and we have great hopes of getting a candidate elected, particularly on the party list, to campaign against the Establishment’s discrimination against London and England. The campaign for fair spending for London, an end to the Tartan Taxes, and real democracy and freedom of speech, will go on.

So I urge the people of London to give their vote, particularly their list vote, to the English Democrats. England’s cause is far bigger and more important than any one individual!

To lose one Mayoral candidate is unfortunate, but to lose two smacks of carelessness. Taking sides in this debate is like choosing between my children, but it has to be said that O’Connor brought with him a slickness that the English Democrats will miss. Whether that slickness was an unambiguously good thing however is another matter. Their recent PEB was a bile-filled attempt to resemble will.i.am’s homage to Barack Obama “Yes We Can” which ends up looking more like “Careless Whisper” by George Michael. And not in a good way. Can you say David Brent? Yes we can:

Sarcasm aside, it is hard to feel sympathy for a party and candidate whose sole objective seemed to be to piss off the Scots as much as possible, making exaggerated claims about “Tartan Taxes” and claiming that the only things the Scots ever gave to the world were “deep fried Mars Bars and Irn Bru.” The English Democrats also managed to cause me great amusement earlier this year by getting apoplectic about the SNP’s suggestion that Berwick might want to come back to Scotland, forgetting the fact that one year earlier they stood in the Welsh elections on a platform to do exactly the same thing with Monmouthshire. This is the disease of nationalism; the inability to see how bloody ridiculous you are being.

Readers may recall me mocking the Ham and High a couple of years ago for condemning the Labour party’s “flying pigs” advert on the grounds of anti-semitism. Words therefore fail to learn that the same paper has allowed the BNP to take out paid advertising on their pages.

The paper appears to have confused the two concepts of “freedom of speech” and “suckee suckee - one dollar!” - to be fair, many people who lack a moral compass do. But does anyone seriously believe that if this advert had been anti-jewish as opposed to anti-muslim they would seriously go ahead with it? In that part of North London?

I’m still trying to be on my best behaviour by not commenting here on the London elections, but I can’t let this comment by Lib Dem Voice’s resident troll Laurence Boyce go unchallenged:

Please allow me to provide my own advice for London voters.

First preference: State your first preference for Mayor of London.
Second preference: State your second preference for Mayor of London.

Because it really is as simple as that.

I didn’t comment on Laurence’s previous advice on electoral politics as he was clearly on a massive wind up. After noon on 1 April, it ought to have had a “don’t feed the troll” neon sign hung above it and can be summed up thus: “me, me, me, me, me, me, me.” I don’t however question that his opposition to proportional representation is genuine. It is however one thing to oppose any electoral system that would prevent tactical voting; quite another to claim - as he has done today - that it is an irrelevance.

The May 1997 election would not have been as spectacular as it was were it not for tactical voting on an industrial scale. This isn’t the eighties (don’t be confused by Laurence’s designer stubble); tactical voting is no longer a controversial electoral tactic. All parties encourage it or discourage it according to what happens to be to their personal advantage in every election. The electorate intuitively understand this and exercise their preferences accordingly. Of course, all this negativity has a corrosive effect on our political system, but it is a product of the system not something individuals trying to make the best of a bad job ought to feel particularly guilty of. If you hate it so much, change the system, don’t whinge.

To claim then that the SV system is as simple as giving your ideal two choices a first and second preference vote is somewhere between laughably ignorant and criminally misleading. As an opponent of electoral systems that would dispense of such tactical voting, Laurence simply can’t be allowed to have it both ways.

Opponents of PR like to accuse its proponents of being anoraky. Anyone who has spent more than five minutes at an Electoral Reform Society AGM can hardly disagree, but when the debate moves beyond the merits of individual systems and instead focuses on broad principles, it is the other side who start to sound distinctly hairy palmed.

I might prefer STV as an electoral system but I’m really not personally that fussed so long as it achieved three things:
1. The overall votes cast should broadly reflected in Parliament. A minority party with 35% of the vote should not be sitting pretty on the government benches with 56% of the MPs.
2. Voters should have a choice of candidates, not just parties. I’m realistic that in most cases the electorate will simply vote on party lines but bad eggs should not be unaccountable simply because they are high up on some closed party list.
3. Voters should not be forced to choose between stating a genuine preference and having their vote count, or between voting positively for a party and voting negatively against one.

Any system which achieves those aims is fine by me and I will happily refrain from getting too bogged down into the details. Yet when I talk to opponents of PR, they bombard me with weird arguments about why Parliament should reflect the popular vote, why the public should be denied a choice of candidates (a feature of the first past the post system - which is just as much a closed list system as the one used for European Elections) and either that tactical voting is an irrelevance or some beastly thing that people should somehow be prevented from doing - and ultimately the only way to achieve that would be to outlaw any political party beyond the first two.

All those arguments are intensely complex and downright weird. They genuinely involve patiently explaining the logical equivalent of black = white and that all swans are purple. Terribly clever these fellows, far far too clever for their own good. Blessed with exceptionally flexible spines and neck muscles, they can disappear up their own sphincters on a whim. They are capable of the most obscurantist argument the collective membership of ERS can only dream of.

Asking the most hardcore electoral reformers to focus on broad principles rather than detail is an exercise in futility, but the next time some Tory calls you an “anorak” simply for believing that votes ought to count for something, ask them why and hand them a raincoat.

Finally, back to Laurence for a second, it is probably a good thing he isn’t a Londoner. A committed atheist, it is hard to see how, out of principle, he could vote for any ticket other than Unity for Peace and Socialism.

I’ve been sitting back and enjoying the show that is the ongoing farce of the Chinese Olympics. I have two main reasons for not taking a stand. Firstly, I’m quite ambivalent about the Olympics in general and so singling out China feels a little hypocritical. Secondly, I’m acutely aware that in a sense both sides are right and both sides need each other in order to progress.

Simply put, if the Olympics were not being held in China this summer, the profile of Tibet would not be as high as it is now (higher than it has been at any point in the past 12 years in my view). So is this a case of the pro-Olympics people being right - that the Olympics is raising these issues? Well yes, up to a point. But if it wasn’t for the protesters opposing the Olympics these issues would not be getting an airing.

One thing in particular though that does amuse me is this constant hailing of “Olympian values”. What are these exactly? I get the whole world coming together thing, but is there really anything noble in a bunch of athletes doggedly competing with one another to see who is best? These pressures lead to athletes taking performance enhancing drugs; the Russians and the Chinese have traditionally taken this to extremes, hothousing athletes in order to wave their medal successes around as a status symbol proving their political ideologies are superior. Hitler tried the same trick, only to be made to look like a fool. What is so great about all this global willy waving?

And if there is something noble about the Olympics, how come the IOC don’t insist that countries who host the games must abide by, for example, minimal human rights criteria? If you want to join the EU, the price you have to pay is to sort out your human rights record. As a result, Turkey is actively doing so. What is stopping the IOC from doing the same? One can only infer that egalitarianism isn’t an Olympian value.

Arguably, the truth is quite the opposite. One thing the IOC do insist on is that host nations pass laws to stop companies from being able to use the word “Olympics” in order to promote themselves unless they are official sponsors of the events. Freedom of speech comes second fiddle to worshiping at the altar of capitalism. This is a price which China had far less of a problem with paying than the UK.

Olympian values then seem to be rooted entirely in body fascism, ruthless competition, vainglorious pride and the worst excesses of monopolistic commercial practice. These are the values that the Olympics variously inspires and insists upon. If supporters of the Games wish us to treat them as anything other than a political football, then perhaps they should get their own house in order first?

UPDATE: One thing I forgot to mention here was the comment by the police chief in charge of handling the Olympics protests yesterday who made the extraordinary claim that under the law, if you supported the Olympic torch on Sunday you were not regarded as a protester and vice versa. Apart from the fact that under the strict letter of the law this is balls, think about it for a second. If you are a supporter of freedom and democracy, the government considers you a potential enemy of the state. If you are an apologist for a repressive dictatorship, the government considers you to be friendly. Good night.

At some point this week I may have a rant about Sandra Gidley’s extraordinary (and frankly ridiculous) co-option by LighterLife, a company which last month was caught out “conning” MPs (their words) by running a dummy charity (which has now, curiously, wound itself up).

But first, it is my duty to inform you, dear reader, that another Lib Dem MP has been caught promoting a product. Ann Widdecombe’s pasta peddling has nothing on this.

Yes, spotted at my local tube station, one Vince Cable can quite clearly be seen flogging unsuspecting old people Freedom Passes on a bizarre advert that looks like a seventies cross between On the Buses and Pigeon Street.

Well, okay, it’s an illustration, but it’s clearly Vince. Not only are his trademark bonce and eyebrows clearly on display, but the man is ballroom dancing.

Michael Martin may be palming off air miles, but this guy is giving millions of grannies free travel - at taxpayers expense! Why this isn’t on the front page of every national newspaper is beyond me.

How the mighty have fallen.

UPDATE: Being called McCarthyite for suggesting that the SWP might possibly be communists is one thing, but now as a result of this blog post I’m being accused of sadism! Boy, people take this blog way too seriously.

Cameron’s Conservatives have taken their broad church to new limits this week by recruiting a former RESPECT councillor in Tower Hamlets.

Ahmed Hussain, who is also a Muslim and a member of the Socialist Worker Party was welcomed into the fold by “four jobs” Bob Neill. His defection makes the Conservative Group the official opposition on Tower Hamlets council. Furthermore:

…his move comes as a bitter blow to council leader Denise Jones and Poplar & Canning Town MP Jim Fitzpatrick, both of whom are understood to have written glowing references to London party chief Ken Clark.

This is another chapter in the crazy world of Tower Hamlets politics, but it does seem remarkable for the Conservatives, of all people, to jump into bed with a socialist jihadist quite so merrily. Nor is this simply a little local difficulty. According to Respect Renewal (admittedly not the most impartial of sources), Cameron himself is due to put in an appearance next week.

How long can it be before Cameron is shown shaking hands with the Tories latest defector from the BNP? Does he have a bottom line?

Following on from a conversation I had with a friend the other day, I thought I’d mention this idea here.

I’m sure it has been proposed before, but why aren’t London parking meters made a part of the Oyster network? The advantages would appear to be legion:

1. Per minute billing would encourage people to vacate the space as quickly a possible.

2. It could be easily integrated with residential parking passes (just as Oyster is already used for complementary travel).

3. Traffic wardens would have less of an incentive to hover around parking meters waiting to pounce on anyone who outstayed their welcome.

4. Instead of issuing fines, you could just have an automatic billing system whereby the first hour cost X per minute while after that it went up to 10X per minute - people couldn’t use the network until they’d cleared any backlog on their card.

5. It would encourage motorists to acquire Oyster cards - and thus make greater use of public transport.

There are obviously civil liberty concerns about the being able to use the system to track people’s movements, but those concerns apply to the Oyster system anyway. They are solvable, by scrapping the RIPA for example. Either way, London is the most CCTV riddled city in the country.

It seems to me it would offer tangible benefits to the motorist, while encouraging efficient use of parking space at the same time. What are the disadvantages?