Defying the Sophistry of the Fourth Estate

THOMAS Carlyle first coined the term “Fourth Estate” in his 1841 book “On Heroes and Hero Worship” to epitomise the power of the establishment print media. 

For almost 200 years, this power has been unchallenged and has often framed the parameters of British politics.

During the last few months, the full power of the Fourth Estate has been intensely focused on a single objective - namely, to destroy the electoral potential of a small British political party.    Never before in British history have the print media displayed such unified intent or single purpose, and with the triumphant election of two BNP MEP’s, never before have the print media failed so dramatically to achieve their aims. 

As democratic nationalists, British National Party politicians can have no possible objection to rigorous scrutiny, tough questioning and critical comment.   But deliberate, calculated and malicious falsehoods are in a different category.  The increasingly hysterical lies proffered by the despairing print media over recent weeks have included the bizarre and baseless contentions that the BNP is determined to deport all Ghurkhas (The Sun), exclude Jewish people from the party in spite of having Jewish councillors (Daily Mail) and ban Italian restaurants, along with Spanish tapas bars and French bistros!! (The Sun again)

It is a tribute to the force of the BNP’s message that the establishment media dare not criticise the true policies of the party. The media barons are well aware that opposition to mass immigration and Islamification is immensely popular among voters.   Not even the most malevolent left wing rag has the courage to mount a spirited defence of the failed doctrine of multiculturalism, still less to argue that the ongoing programme of giant mosque construction contributes positively to the general welfare of the nation.  

All the media are terrified of any mention of the incontrovertible fact that the British peoples are destined to become an ethnic minority in their own country before 2075, unless there is a radical change in government policy.  The fear that Nick Griffin might speak this unspeakable truth during a live broadcast is what prevents the BNP chairman from being invited onto BBC 1’s Question Time, or Radio 4’s “Any Questions”.

Some of the media smears may even have worked.  Establishment commentators have seized upon the argument that the BNP vote increased by a “mere” 17% on a reduced turnout, from 808,200 in 2004 to 943,598 in 2009.  What torments the denizens of “Fleet Street” and Whitehall is the well-founded fear that the 943 thousand Britons who voted British National Party on June 4th 2009 might represent only the burnished steel core of BNP supporters.  The high priests of the Fourth Estate know full well that the brave 943 thousand are just the determined voters who were prepared to grit their teeth, ignore the avalanche of daily media lies and threats, and defiantly place their ballot cross next to the letters BNP.   There is a vast penumbra of millions more British folk who support BNP policies, but have so far proved vulnerable to dissuasion by contrived lie and carefully engineered social opprobrium.

Unfortunately for the proprietors of the Establishment media, their power is now decisively on the wane, eroded by technological advance.   It is ironic that the Fourth Estate has achieved this degree of unanimity in their opposition to the BNP exactly at the moment when the internet has forever undermined their monopoly of “truth”.  Old fashioned newspapers are shedding employees and closing offices the length and breadth of the country, and the British National Party has only just started to mobilise its internet power against them. 

In the years to come, college academics will no doubt study the newspapers’ united campaign against the BNP during 2009 as a singular phenomenon without historical precedent.   They will surely view the dramatic failure of that anti-BNP campaign as the moment in history when the awesome power of the print media was broken forever. 

Times are indeed changing.   The British National Party has proved well capable of using technology to address its audience directly. And henceforth, newspapers and TV stations who stray beyond fair and rigorous scrutiny to traduce the BNP can expect to be excluded from press conferences and subjected to well-organised boycotts and protest campaigns.

An above-averagely talented Sky News reporter admirably summarised the BNP’s remarkable resilience this week.  “Defiance”, he said, “is part of the BNP brand”.   And he was right.  The lies, smears and distortions of the Establishment’s Fourth Estate can perhaps inhibit and constrain the BNP’s growth.   But in spite of their titanic efforts, as Thursday’s European election triumph proved, they cannot stem the inexorable rise of our party.    The old media and their powerful scheming allies tried their level best - and they failed utterly.

On June 4th, the BNP’s softly spoken truth defeated a banshee chorus of media lies, and there was nothing the Fourth Estate could do about it.

 

It’s Time to Cleanse the Augean Stables

According to Greek myth, the fifth of twelve labours set for the hero Hercules was the stupendous challenge of cleaning out, in a single day, the giant heaps of dung which had accumulated in the stables of Augeas.

The task facing those who would cleanse the stinking mountains of corruption within Britain’s political establishment is of a similar Herculean scale.

It is scarcely possible to overstate the impact of the revelations about MPs’ expenses which are now emerging in the Daily Telegraph.   Here is incontrovertible proof of the BNP’s longstanding contention that the current British political class is institutionally corrupt, dishonest and self-serving.  

It is now abundantly clear that the Parliamentary expenses system has been systematically abused for years by MPs of all the Lib-Lab-Con parties, who have knowingly, repeatedly and dishonestly cheated the taxpayer for their own narrow pecuniary advantage.  

Who dares to deny that the gathering storm of public anger is amply justified?  That those who have perpetrated these venal crimes have masqueraded as selfless public servants and high-handedly lectured us on our own moral conduct further compounds the offence.

It is an outrage that elderly ladies huddled in front of electric fires and honest builders labouring in the rain have had their hard-earned savings stolen away, so that guileful government ministers could over-claim Council Tax on their second homes, or pay for mock-Tudor beams and hanging baskets from the public purse.  

This is not only a great moral betrayal; it ought to be a criminal matter too.   Some of the examples cited in the Daily Telegraph surely fall within the definition of criminal deception under the Theft Acts.  

A private-sector company which uncovered such deliberate abuse of its expense payments system would dismiss the employees concerned and call in the police, and this is the fate that these political fraudsters so richly deserve.

The Metropolitan police have indeed started an investigation, but, almost unbelievably, this will not examine the MPs’ fraudulent conduct, but will focus instead on an attempt to prosecute the upstanding citizen who drew these gross abuses to public attention.   Never have the British police been more out of step with the sentiment of the people they purport to serve.

In the ancient myth, Hercules fulfilled his labour in a single day by diverting a great cleansing river through the stinking Augean stables.  In our own time, June 4th is the day when British voters will have the chance to send a raging torrent of nationalist renewal coursing through Britain’s putrid corridors of power. 

 

 

Chancellor Darling: A Man Condemned by His Own Speech

Experienced economists, who have listened to countless budget speeches over coffee and canapés, all knew it.  Ordinary Britons listening at home knew it.  Even Alistair Darling knew it.   This was a budget speech without precedent in living memory, a speech which made history, not for any bold initiative, or innovative announcement, but for the sheer doom-laden impact of the catastrophic statistics which Alistair Darling reeled off in his dour Scottish monotone.

A year ago, Darling predicted that the British economy would grow by a healthy 2.5% in 2009; today he was forced to admit that he expected to preside over the fastest economic collapse since World War 2, a shocking 3.5% fall in Britain’s GDP in the space of a single year.  The International Monetary Fund is still more pessimistic, forecasting a colossal 4.3% contraction in the British economy. These are the grim statistics of financial meltdown, announced by a Labour government which once boasted about the abolition of boom and bust.

The scale of Britain’s economic woes under Labour can scarcely be overstated.  Unemployment has rocketed by more than 171,000 in three months to nearly 2.1 million.   Public borrowing is set to mushroom, and the projected budget deficit of 12% of GDP in 2010 is proportionally larger than in any other major economy - compared with 8.9% in the US, 6.2% in France and 3.2% in China. Total government debt will double in the next few years, and there is a growing consensus that it is unlikely to return to normal levels for more than a generation.

Set against this tsunami of economic woe, Labour’s countermeasures are extraordinarily puny.   In place of the radical budget required to address this huge government deficit, the Chancellor has merely tinkered with the tax system.

For example, Darling has broken his 2005 manifesto promise by introducing a new 50% higher tax band for those with incomes over £150,000.  This is supposed to raise £2.4bn by 2011.  In reality, it is highly unlikely to bring in anywhere near that much, as the rich exploit gaps in the taxation system, which under Labour has accumulated more holes than a Gruyère cheese.

Darling has refused even to contemplate deep cuts in wasteful spending on politically correct nonsense.  So the “overseas development” bonanza will continue, and Britain will be saddled with still more unrepayable public debt, just so that money can be poured into the Indian space programme and the gaping pockets of African despots.    We can also be quite sure that, whatever the level of public borrowing, there will be no shortage of funds for Labour’s race and “diversity” advisers, and their generous final salary pensions. 

Darling’s lame proposals to boost British industry are intellectually bankrupt.   He proposes a scrappage scheme to subsidise motorists buying new cars with a £2,000 discount if they trade in cars over 10 years old.  But thanks to the disastrous - or more precisely, non-existent - industrial policies of successive Tory and Labour governments, most new cars sold in the UK are now manufactured abroad.  In the absence of sound BNP protectionist measures to impose tariff barriers against the import of foreign vehicles, Darling’s scrappage idea is no more than a job creation scheme for German and Japanese car makers.

Paradoxically, the most chilling part of Darling’s shocking budget speech was not the litany of dire statistics cataloguing Britain’s economic implosion.   Those were at least expected.  It was the delusional quality of the Treasury’s growth forecasts which had seasoned economists holding their heads in their hands.  

If Darling is to be believed, the British economy will magically bounce back in 2010 and grow by more than 3.5% every year after that, conveniently mopping up the vast sea of public debt that Labour’s incompetence has created.  That is fantasy, of course, and nobody outside HM Treasury believes a word of it. 

The truth is, Labour have been lying to us for so long that they have utterly lost touch with reality.   It is ordinary British taxpayers, and our children, who will pay the terrible price of Labour’s grand failure for decades, and probably generations, to come.  

 

Labour’s Jacqui Smith Honours Muslim Graffiti Artist

Labour’s Home Secretary Jacqui Smith took time out from the ongoing row over her husband’s predilection for publicly-funded pornographic videos, to attend an awards ceremony for “unsung Muslim heroes”.

Among the prize winners, who seemingly exemplify the best and the brightest from Britain’s Muslim community, was Mohammed Ali, a Birmingham-based “graffiti artist” whose so-called “aerosol Arabic” is apparently influenced by both classical Islamic calligraphy and urban street graffiti. 

Other talented “winners” at the event included:

* Mohammed Mujahid Ali, an alternative therapist, for work “improving the wellbeing and mental health of black and minority ethnic people”, and 

* Reverend Gilleasbuig MacMillan, minister at St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh, for “welcoming Muslims to the cathedral”.

The editor of the Muslim News, Ahmed Versi, proudly said: “We began this event nine years ago because we believed that British Muslims have a lot to offer to British society.”

“The quality of nominations from our 150,000 readers show that British Muslims still have what it takes to be pioneering contributors to the common good.”

Jacqui Smith, who is currently facing a row over expenses claims that included two adult films, took to the stage to present the award and said: “Promoting dialogue and understanding is crucially important at a time when we see those on the extreme fringes of society peddling an empty ideology of isolation, fear and hatred.”

Of course there was a time, long ago, when a Home Secretary, even a Labour Home Secretary, might have been expected to express formal public disapproval of both “graffiti artists” and pornographic videos.   But that was before Jacqui Smith’s New Labour government turned reason on its head and elevated the utterly contemptible for public admiration and approval.

 

Churchmen Pile in to Prop up Collapsing Labour

In an act of political interference which is becoming a commonplace pattern whenever the Labour  vote seems in danger of collapsing, clergy from Christian churches, Jewish rabbis and Muslim faith leaders have piled in to support Labour’s faltering campaign against the British National Party.

Churchmen from the city proudly stood shoulder-to-shoulder at Manchester Cathedral with the Labour leader of Manchester City Council, Sir Richard Leese, who once called BNP supporters “scum” in a local newspaper, and Labour Councillor Afzal Khan, a leading supporter of the “UAF” organisation.

The cathedral meeting followed a prediction by the Bishop of Manchester, the Rt. Rev Nigel McCulloch, that the credit crunch and job losses will lead to a growth in support for the British National Party.

McCulloch has apparently just realised that the economic downturn could create resentment by British workers who are condemned to the dole queue by Labour’s tidal wave of mass immigration.

Seemingly oblivious to their own declining moral influence, and their dwindling congregations as churches are converted into mosques up and down the country, the Christian leaders signed a statement which read: “Let’s beware of making certain groups in our society scapegoats in the current economic downturn. It is untrue - and only adds to the suffering.”   The hypocrisy inherent in the statement, which obviously seeks to scapegoat supporters of the British National Party, also seems to have entirely eluded the churchmen.

Following the Archbishop of Canterbury’s recent fulsome endorsement of Islamic Sharia law, here is yet further proof that most leaders of today’s Church of England in particular, stand for nothing and believe in nothing, other than political opposition to the survival of the British way of life.   To a bishop, it seems, “thou shalt not vote BNP” is now the eleventh and only important commandment.

More disturbingly, it appears from the media reports that not one of the “Christian” clergy who participated in the Labour love-in at Manchester cathedral had the common decency to utter a single word of condemnation of the Labour-UAF claw hammer attack on a BNP activist at Leigh last Friday.   This is especially reprehensible in view of the role that the dehumanising rhetoric of establishment figures has played in promoting anti-BNP hysteria among some of the more violent Labour-UAF thugs.

Reacting to the clergy’s pro-Labour intervention, Manchester BNP organiser Derek Adams said: “It seems amazing - the church is supposed to give moral leadership, and Britain’s laws have been formed on that moral basis.”

“They’re fighting against the only party that stands up for Christian values. It’s no wonder people are leaving the church in droves.”

“They’re not giving any leadership. The clergy are meant to be giving moral guidance.”

“The churches are being turned into mosques and these so-called leaders are doing nothing about it.”

 

Fascist-Labour is Watching You

Fascist-Labour’s horrifying ambition to create an Orwellian surveillance state on British soil has taken another grim step towards realisation with the announcement of plans to monitor British citizens’ travel plans.

Anyone departing the UK by land, sea or air will have their trip recorded and stored by Labour on a database for a decade.   This draconian measure is being introduced under the usual Fascist-Labour pretext of “fighting terrorism”.   Of course, these plans will have no effect whatsoever on the ability of Muslim terrorists to enter and leave Britain at will, but will at a stroke remove the ancient British rights of free movement and association.

Passengers leaving every international sea port, station or airport will have to supply detailed personal information as well as their travel plans.  So-called “booze cruisers” who cross the Channel for a couple of hours to stock up on wine, beer and cigarettes will also be subject to the rules.

The new checks are being introduced piecemeal by the UK Border Agency. By the end of 2009, 60 per cent of journeys made out of Britain will be affected, with 95 per cent of people leaving the country being subject to the plans by the end 2010.

Labour is planning to force free-born Britons to use the internet to send their details each time they leave the country and will face a fine of up to £5,000 if they fail to do so.

Step-by-step, every grim facet of George Orwell’s 1984 nightmare is coming to pass under the malign rule of Fascist-Labour.   We already have ‘view screens’ being introduced into British classrooms in Manchester to monitor staff and teachers.   Within a decade or even sooner, the government will no doubt demand - in the interests of “fighting terrorism”, of course - the right to know where anyone is, at any time of the day.  

Let us hope that one day the freedom-loving anti-Fascists of the British National Party will be in a position to dismantle the edifice of Fascist-Labour’s surveillance state and consign its evil architects to the prison cells they so richly deserve.

Vote British National Party - the True Anti-Fascist Party

Exposed: Labour’s War of Attrition against the British Pub

Shocking new statistics have revealed the accelerating pace of pub closures in Labour Britain.  

In 2005, an average of two or three pubs closed every week.  That weekly toll has now risen to 39.  According to the Campaign for Real Ale, 2,000 pubs have closed during the past 12 months with the loss of 20,000 jobs.  Indeed, the boarded-up and derelict public house is rapidly becoming a characteristic hallmark of Labour Britain.

Over the past 12 years, Labour has introduced successive legislative changes which have steadily undermined the economic viability of traditional pubs.  The impact of the smoking ban on public houses has been well publicised, but Labour’s anti-pub measures have included increases in excise duties on beer, and an avalanche of petty regulations which mean, for example, that country pubs must process their own sewage and any pub with more than four bar staff must now offer a pension scheme.

At best, Labour has been extraordinarily reckless about the deleterious effect of these petty regulations on the pub industry.   At worst, there are dark suspicions that the wholesale destruction of British pubs is the intended policy outcome of Labour’s social engineering ambitions.

The traditional public house is the fulcrum of many traditional white working-class communities, and still provides a social focus in many English rural villages which have already lost their local shops and post offices.  

Labour politicians often obsess about the need for “social cohesion”, but in fact they have no political interest in ensuring the persistence of cohesive indigenous communities.   Atomised and fragmented groups are far less likely than resilient communities to offer organised political resistance to Labour’s malign purpose.  It is not by chance that most British National Party meetings take place in the function rooms of local community pubs, for public houses are often the only large public meeting spaces which are not susceptible to political control and interference.

Overall, Labour would much prefer that you stay at home, passively absorbing a diet of unrelenting televisual dross and broadcast multi-cultural propaganda, rather than discuss the issues of the day over a pint of bitter at your local.

The pub is a powerful symbol of the British national identity which is an anathema to Labour apparatchiks and their Establishment cronies.   From Stow-on-the-Wold to Sunderland, the public house is a shared icon of Britishness which is roundly despised by those who loathe every facet of our national heritage.  That is why the petrol-bombers of Oldham and Burnley targeted local pubs during the 2001 race riots.

As Labour and the Establishment have set their faces against every British cultural icon and institution, so the British National Party has adopted them as symbols of defiance.   British Nationalists should now uphold and defend the British pub as we have defended the Union Flag and the traditional British Christmas.  

So why not strike a blow for British freedom: go down to your local and order a pint with pride.

 

Labour To Favour Ethnic Groups in the Slump

Labour’s Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell has announced a policy of ensuring that ethnic minorities and other favoured groups will receive special treatment to protect them from the worst effects of the economic depression.   Of course, no such special consideration will be accorded to ordinary British people who have contributed to Britain all their lives.

Mr Purnell indicated that hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money will be poured into finding jobs for members of non-white communities.

Labour is to work with Trevor Phillip’s absurdly mis-named “Equality & Human Rights Commission” to assess the impact of the recession on ethnic minorities and other groups and to determine whether these groups are suffering disproportionately in the recession.

In fact, there is no evidence that the economic depression is disproportionately affecting ethnic communities, as Mr Purnell was himself forced to concede in his speech.  “In this recession”, he said, “the evidence so far is that its effects, however painful, are being spread across the population more evenly.  But we will not take any chances”.

Mr Purnell’s pledge of special aid for ethnic minorities came on Sunday in a speech to Labour’s “Black and Minority Ethnic Conference” in Leicester.    In spite of diligent research, we have been quite unable to find any indication that Labour intends to hold a parallel “White and Majority Ethnic Conference”.   Labour, of course, ceaselessly accuses the British National Party of ‘racism’ for having the temerity to provide effective political representation for the indigenous white communities which Labour nowadays so delights in belittling and insulting.

Mr Purnell’s intervention is more bad news for ordinary working people who have been so badly betrayed by the Labour party they originally founded to represent their interests.   It is yet further confirmation that Labour has abandoned any lingering pretence to represent the white working-class constituency, whose allegiance is now shifting irrevocably towards the British National Party.

 

 

Labour’s War Criminals Move to Conceal the Iraq Evidence

Labour’s war criminal Justice Secretary Jack Straw has vetoed the publication of minutes of the cabinet meetings held in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, which would no doubt provide evidence of the lies and deceit spun by that party in the runup to that war.

Straw, who was Foreign Secretary during the Iraq war, said he would use a clause in the Freedom of Information Act to block the release of details of meetings in which the war’s legality was discussed.

Defying the Information Tribunal’s ruling last month that the papers should be released, Straw declared that releasing the papers would do “serious damage” to cabinet government.

“The damage that disclosure of the minutes in this instance would do far outweighs any corresponding public interest in their disclosure”, continued Straw.

Of course, the only damage that release of the papers would really have done, would have been to the Labour Party and to Mr Straw himself.

Public disclosure of the Cabinet papers would surely have exposed the gross lies about weapons of mass destruction which Labour cabinet conspirators used to justify their illegal war against Iraq.

To use lies as the justification for a war which killed tens of thousands was a heinous crime by any yardstick, and posterity will surely come to regard the War of Tony’s Lie as an act of state malfeasance without precedent in modern British history.

Let us hope that Labour’s principal Iraq conspirators will one day face trial for their war crimes, either at the Old Bailey or, perhaps more fittingly, at the Hague.

These men may seem invulnerable now, but so did Karadzic and Milosevic in their pomp.  The tides of history ebb and flow and today’s arrogant, preening men of power will surely become tomorrow’s white-haired defendants quivering in the dock.   

Labour’s Iraq conspirators have good reason to fear the future and suppressing the release of a few cabinet papers will not prevent them facing Justice.

It must also never be forgotten that the Tory party also supported this war, and bear equal responsiblity for the crimes against Iraq and for the needless deaths of hundreds of British armed force personnel. A BNP government will make it a priority to put all these people on trial and seek the severest penalty possible. 

---

Former MI5 Chief Exposes the Fascism of Labour

The Labour Party and its allies have long been fond of levelling baseless accusations of ‘Fascism’ at the British National Party. Ironically, there is abundant evidence to support the proposition that the Labour Party itself is in fact the chief proponent of Fascist policies in this country, and Labour’s unwarranted tirades of abuse against the British National Party partly serve as a smokescreen to mask Labour’s own Fascist aspirations.

Not only has Labour wilfully participated in illegal wars of aggression abroad, but here at home the Labour government has also implemented one repressive and totalitarian measure after another.   Traditional British liberties have been progressively eroded as Labour used Muslim terrorism as an excuse to curtail freedom across the board.   Indeed, history may well judge the ’surveillance society’ to be one of the main legacies of twelve years of Blair-Brown misrule.

Nevertheless, influential establishment figures have now started to speak out against Labour’s totalitarian agenda. The latest of these salvos against Labour has come from the former head of MI5, Dame Stella Rimington. In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, Dame Stella accused Labour ministers of interfering with people’s privacy and playing straight into the hands of terrorists.

“Since I have retired I feel more at liberty to be against certain decisions of the Government, especially the attempt to pass laws which interfere with people’s privacy,” Dame Stella said in an interview with a Spanish newspaper.   “It would be better that the Government recognised that there are risks, rather than frightening people in order to be able to pass laws which restrict civil liberties, precisely one of the objects of terrorism: that we live in fear and under a police state,” she said.

Dame Stella became the first woman director general of MI5 in 1992 and was head of the security agency until 1996. Since stepping down, she has been a fierce critic of some of the Government’s counter-terrorism and security measures, especially those affecting civil liberties. In 2005, she said the Government’s plans for ID cards were “absolutely useless” and would not make the public any safer. Last year she criticised attempts to extend the period of detention without charge for terrorism suspects to 42 days as “excessive”, shortly before the plan was rejected by Parliament.

Dame Stella’s latest comments came as Home Secretary Jacqui Smith prepares to publish plans for a massive expansion of Labour Fascist state surveillance, with powers for the police and security services to monitor every email, as well as telephone and internet activity.

Far from being a totalitarian party, the British National Party is actually committed to extending direct democracy and to unwinding many of Labour’s worst Fascist proposals, such as identity cards, prolonged detention without trial, and Labour’s massive planned spy databases of citizens’ communication and travel patterns. The cohesive, mono-cultural society of the 1950s did not require Labour’s Fascist measures to maintain law and order and neither would a BNP Britain.

 

Domino’s Pizzas Fall Victim to Islamo-Pandering

As Britain slides from Multiculturalism into the even darker pit of Dhimmitude, the endemic appeasement of Islam is starting to affect every aspect of ordinary life.

In the latest reported example of Islamo-pandering, a Domino’s Pizza outlet has infuriated customers by becoming the first in the country to take pork off the menu and offer only halal food. The takeaway has told customers in the heavily ‘enriched’ area of Hall Green, Birmingham, that if they want ham or pork on their pizza they will have to go elsewhere.

According to the Daily Telegraph, Chris Yates, 29, a hospital worker, was told he could not have a ‘Meteor’ pizza, topped with pepperoni, sausage, meatballs, ground beef and smoky bacon.

He said: “It’s a disgrace, I can appreciate them having it as an option but to have it completely halal is just not on,” said Mr Yates.

“I’m all for racial and religious tolerance but if anything this is intolerant to my beliefs and discriminatory against me.

“Instead I had to travel two miles out of my way to another branch - I was appalled.  Hall Green is a mixed race area and should therefore cater to its multicultural make-up.

“In a society that promotes racial and religious integration, this sort of things only isolates people.”

Halal items on the Domino’s menu include halal spicy beef sausage, roast and tandoori chicken, halal pepperoni and halal cured turkey - all produced according to the Halal Food Authorities guidelines.

Masood Khawaja, President of the Halal Food Authority, said: “It’s good news for Muslims, with changing pallets, who want a bit of variety in their diet. This is only the beginning”, promised Mr Khawaja rather disturbingly, “we are delighted that Domino’s is participating in this trend.”

Of course, Mr Khawaja is speaking the truth; this is indeed “only the beginning”.  As the influence of militant Islam grows ever stronger under Labour’s tutelage, the very consumption of pork will soon become almost an act of British national defiance.   So we urge all proud Britons to do their patriotic duty: eat Great British pork with enthusiasm, enjoy sausage and smoky bacon and avoid Domino’s halal pizzas at all costs!

Banning of Dutch MP Exposes Yet Another Labour Lie

The courageous Dutch MP Geert Wilders has been refused entry to the United Kingdom to broadcast his film Fitna in the House of Lords. Mr Wilders has apparently been told that in the interests of public order he will not be allowed to enter Britain.  A spokesman for the Lords said that the invitation to show his film remained open.

Mr Wilders has received numerous Muslim death threats since the film exposing the evils of Islam appeared on the internet in 2008. 

The film demonstrates how Islam’s holy text is linked to violence and ends with a call to Muslims to remove ‘hate-preaching’ verses from the Koran.

The Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen has formally protested to British foreign secretary David Miliband about the decision to exclude Mr Wilders.  He said: “It is disgraceful that a Dutch parliamentarian should be refused entrance to an EU country.”  Mr Wilders himself said “Great Britain is sacrificing freedom of speech. You would expect something like this to happen in countries like Saudi Arabia, but not in Great Britain. This cowardly act by the British government is a disgrace. I was invited by a British member of parliament.”

Home Office sources have confirmed Mr Wilders had been refused entry to the UK saying “The Government opposes extremism in all its forms.  It will stop those who want to spread extremism, hatred and violent messages in our communities from coming to our country.”

Labour’s move to ban the pro-free speech Dutch MP gives the lie to Labour’s hypocritical claim that it is not possible to prevent EU citizens entering Britain.   It seems that Labour cannot prevent Latvian strawberry pickers or Italian construction workers entering Britain and taking British jobs, but Labour can intervene with startling alacrity to turn away a Dutch MP at the border in order to appease Muslim extremist sentiment.

Geert Wilders may not succeed in airing his film at the House of Lords.   But he has at least succeeded in nailing yet another Labour lie.

 

Goodbye Globalisation! The Case for Protectionism

The globalisation of the world economy was underpinned by a widespread acceptance, among politicians and economists alike, of the mantra that promoting perpetual movement of workers, goods and capital would also maximise wealth creation.  

Superficially that has been true; between 2001 and 2008, world trade grew rapidly.  But the governments and international corporations which recklessly inflated the globalisation bubble made several false assumptions and miscalculations which have condemned us all to a terrible reckoning.

Firstly, the reign of globalisation coincided with a period when energy and transport costs have been artificially low.  For years, energy prices have reflected neither the true environmental costs of burning fossil fuels, nor the dwindling of accessible oil resources.  So we have been treated to the unsustainable and absurd spectacle of heavy ornamental paving stones being fabricated in China and flown to Britain for sale. 

Secondly, the advocates of globalisation have failed to account for the immense human costs which have been incurred as globalisation dissolved the bonds of traditional communities and unpicked the fabric of societies across the world from Ningxia to Newport.   Lord Mandelson’s recent arrogant ‘advice’ to British workers that they should “take advantage of contracts and opportunities elsewhere in the EU” is stark evidence that his mind has been utterly corrupted by the virus of globalisation ideology. Indeed, the natural objective of EU and globalisation zealots like Mandelson is to create a listless world of rootless migrants housed in cheap labour transit camps at the mercy of global corporations.

Thirdly, globalisation has created an unbalanced world economy where whole nations have specialised in, and become dominated by, economy activity of a single type and thus been rendered extraordinarily vulnerable to any unforeseen change in economic fortunes. This applies equally to both “advanced” and “third-world” economies. Britain recklessly discarded its engineering heritage and its domestic manufacturing capability and placed its faith in the City of London and the provision of vacuous financial services.   Meanwhile, the Kenyan economy became wedded to tourism and the supply of fresh cut flowers flown to Europe.  Both nations now face disaster. 

It is time that economists appreciated that real economic growth is not founded on the tidal flow of cheap migrant labour, nor on the devotion of whole nations to economic frippery, nor on the frenetic flying hither-and-thither of everything from carrots to computers.  Ultimately, it is manufacturing which creates wealth, and scientific and engineering advances which drive growth.  In recent years, Britain has contributed precious little to either, something a future British Nationalist government will urgently need to address.

Of course, it is true that when a future British nationalist government, newly freed from EU interference, proposes subsidies for vital British industries and import tariffs and quotas on foreign manufactured goods, other nations will threaten to respond in kind.   The proper resolution to any disputes will be through a natural process of bilateral negotiation, whereby a truly independent British government will conclude individual trade deals with partner nations to promote the British national interest, not the interests of EU bureaucrats or global capitalists. 

Fortunately, the advocates of protectionism are now in the ascendancy.   The new, more enlightened, thinking is epitomised by the work of academics like the Korean economist Ha-Joon Chang of Cambridge University.  In his books Kicking Away the Ladder (2002) and Bad Samaritans: Rich Nations, Poor Policies and the Threat to the Developing World (2007), Professor Chang has demonstrated that most developed countries used interventionist economic policies in order to get rich and showed how unregulated international trade has very rarely succeeded in producing economic development, and indeed has a far worse record than interventionist policies.

At long last, the discredited globalisers are now in headlong retreat and even President Obama is giving protectionist signals. As the economic slump gathers momentum, the move to protectionism is being driven by powerful grassroots nationalist forces worldwide.   Even the most venal politicians will be unable to withstand these pressures and those who resist will soon be deservedly swept away.  The tide of history is flowing in our direction and the triumph of economic nationalism and protectionism is not only desirable, it is absolutely inevitable.

 

The Beam in their Eye: Hypocrisy and Moral Vacuity at the General Synod

“And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”  Matthew 7:3

The Church of England General Synod is poised to debate a decidedly unchristian motion aimed at driving clergy who support the British National Party out of their clerical vocation. The motion is being proposed by one Vasantha Gnanadoss, a civilian employee of the Metropolitan Police, and supported at the synod by Sir Ian Blair, the discredited former Metropolitan Police Commissioner.

The synod motion, which is likely to be passed, forms part of a broader political campaign, orchestrated by the Labour Party and the unions, to hound BNP members out of the professions and the public sector.  Similar plans are being formulated to conduct political witch hunts among teachers and civil servants.

During his highly politicised tenure as Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian vigorously promoted the Black Police Association, an ethnically defined organisation aimed at advancing the interests of black and minority ethnic officers.  Needless to say, no white police association was tolerated by Sir Ian.  Clearly, only those organisations which seek to defend the interests of indigenous British people provoke the ire of Sir Ian and his synod collaborators.

Seemingly oblivious to the hypocrisy inherent in his own words, Sir Ian sought to justify his stance at the synod to the Times newspaper by stating that both the Church of England and the Police “need to be able to welcome people from all backgrounds”.   In the light of his various failings as Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian might have been well advised to abstain from presumptuous moral lectures for a period and devote himself to quiet study of his New Testament, where he would find an especially apt passage in Romans 2:1.

“Therefore you have no excuse, everyone of you who passes judgment, for in that which you judge another, you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things“

Unfortunately, the left-wing institutional intolerance of the Church of England extends far wider than Ian Blair and Vasantha Gnanadoss. In recent months, Church of England clergy have placed themselves at the forefront of Labour’s increasingly desperate campaign to head off rising electoral support for the British National Party.  At a recent by-election in Greater Manchester, local clergy intervened directly in the election campaign on behalf of the Labour candidate who was the only serious rival to the BNP.   And we are informed that Church of England bishops in the North-West of England are also planning to campaign overtly in the forthcoming European election campaign.

The Church of England’s increasingly strident intervention in the electoral process has exposed to political scrutiny the hypocrisy and moral vacuity in the higher echelons of the established church.

Most Church of England bishops have carelessly cast aside their moral compass, along with any genuine belief in the tenets of their faith, to the extent that they now seem to regard voting BNP as the only remaining sin.  The prolonged absence of genuine moral guidance from such bishops is, of course, one of the main reasons why their pews are emptying, congregations dwindling, and churches are being converted into mosques across the length and breadth of England. 

Indeed, the Church of England deserves a significant share of the blame for the development of a spiritual and moral vacuum at the heart of our nation. Too often, it appears that the Church of England regards its prime role as that of managing the decline of Christian faith and easing the seamless transformation of the nation whose name they bear into an Islamic province.   It was, after all, no less a figure than the Archbishop of Canterbury himself who first argued that the anti-Christian code of Sharia should be enshrined in English Law.

Of course, there are still a few Bishops of exceptional spiritual calibre who deserve to be exempted from this moral opprobrium.  Ironically, the best example is provided by the Pakistani-born Bishop Nazir Ali of Rochester.  Bishop Ali has argued against the “moral and spiritual vacuum in which we now find ourselves” and the “newfangled and insecurely founded” doctrine of multiculturalism.   He even braved death threats for correctly warning that parts of Britain had become “no-go areas” for non-Muslims.  Bishop Ali may not be English, but he is clearly possessed of moral insight and a genuine Christian faith, qualities now sadly lacking among most of his English synod colleagues.

The British National Party needs no lectures on morality from Church of England bishops who should concern themselves with pondering their own manifest failings.   There is scant scriptural authority for the proposition that the British people should meekly accept the wholesale colonisation and expropriation of their homeland as those benighted bishops would wish.   Our forefathers, who professed a truer faith than the ciphers who lead today’s Church of England, would never have acquiesced in the destruction of our Christian culture through mass immigration and neither should we.  

To be a good Christian requires humility, moral consistency and the avoidance of hypocrisy, something that Ian Blair, Vasantha Gnanadoss and their synod collaborators would do well to remember.  Let them remove the beam from their own eye.

 

 

 

BNP Remains Undaunted by Harriet Harman’s Campaign Threat

The British National Party’s best electoral asset inside the Labour Party, ‘Equalities’ Minister Harriet Harman, has issued a blood curdling threat of a “vicious door-to-door campaign” against the BNP, according to The Guardian newspaper.  Some other newspapers have reported that Harman used the word “vigorous”.

Ms Harman told the ‘Progressive London Conference’ there was a very real risk that the British National party could make electoral gains at the European elections. 

“Labour will, with a vicious door-to-door campaign, not allow the BNP to peddle their pernicious lies that people have been abandoned by Labour”, said Harman, according to The Guardian and Labour’s Searchlight front organisation.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jan/24/harriet-harman-bnp-european-election

Last November, Harman’s colleague, Communities Secretary Hazel Blears mused that shouting “Nazi” was perhaps not a sensible answer to the BNP’s broadbased advance.  At the time, independent commentators interpreted this as a possible indication that Labour intended to move away from their habitual strategy of threats and abuse in favour of a more sophisticated approach, perhaps even including a serious attempt to engage with the pressing issues which have led so many voters to turn to the BNP.   Regrettably, it is now clear that there has been no discernible change in Labour’s anti-BNP strategy; if anything, the threats and abuse from Labour and their allies have intensified as Labour’s own electoral support has dwindled.

The Labour Party usually makes a token effort to keep at arm’s length the dirty tricks, abuse and threats which form the core of its anti-BNP strategy.   Labour prefers to work through a series of third-party organisations such as “UAF” and “Searchlight”, which has the advantage of circumventing statutory spending limits in elections, because each separate Labour front organisation has its own distinct budget to spend on anti-BNP smear propaganda.   While the “Searchlight” organisation concentrates on intelligence-led “black ops” against legitimate BNP political activities, such as their recent attempt to destroy the lawful BNP merchandising operation on Deeside, “UAF” focuses primarily on confrontational street thuggery and intimidation.

As we enter 2009, the intellectual hegemony of democratic nationalist ideas over those of the so-called “Labour Movement” has never been more starkly evident.  The modern Labour Party retains no vestige of ideological belief, other than a visceral hatred of the BNP and a narrow determination to retain power by any means possible.  As Labour has retreated from the battle of ideas, so it has ratcheted up the threats and abuse directed at BNP activists who, unlike Labour, have strong political principles and a coherent vision for the future.

One wonders how the giants of Labour history would regard the foul tactics of their unworthy successors such as Harriet Harman. Would Kier Hardy have threatened opponents with “vicious door-to-door campaigns”?  Would Nye Bevan have drawn up plans to drive opposition party activists from public sector jobs?  Would Clem Attlee have orchestrated Trade Union political witch-hunts against individual workers?  If there are decent people still lingering in the wizened husk of Labour, they should reflect upon the moral and intellectual decline of their movement, and hang their heads in shame at the misdeeds being done in their name.

As democratic nationalists, we in the BNP are firmly committed to free and open debate and indeed we warmly welcome the challenge and stimulation of reasoned opposition to our views.  Such is our confidence in the robustness of BNP arguments, that we are prepared to defend them in any sensible forum, at any time and with any opponent.   The same is demonstrably not true of Labour and its front organisations, nor indeed is it true of the Tories or Liberal Democrats either.   In any fair and impartial assessment, that very asymmetry immediately relegates Labour and its allies to a position of moral inferiority when compared to the British National Party.

The truth is that Labour and its allies have no viable alternative strategy for tackling the BNP; they are boxed into their longstanding habits of ad hominem attack, third-party intimidation, erecting false and preposterous “Nazi BNP” bogeymen, and then using these chimaeras to justify their own street thuggery and their violent rhetoric against the BNP.

Meanwhile, the British National Party will do in 2009 what we did so successfully in 2008.  We shall treat Labour’s “vicious” threats and abuse with disdain and we shall pursue our own strategy of winning the intellectual argument, and convincing the electorate by free and democratic campaigning.  We shall advance our case fearlessly, with dignity, defiance and resolution and we will trust the British people to judge who is right.

 

“Islamic Reading Room” Insults the Memory of William Gladstone

It has been announced that the bicentenary of the birth of the Victorian Prime Minister William Gladstone is to be celebrated by spending £500,000 on the establishment of an “Islamic Reading Room” in Hawarden, Flintshire.

The St Deniol’s Library in Hawarden, which is funded by the national lottery, houses Gladstone’s own collection of over 32,000 items.

Many of the books contain Gladstone’s detailed annotations and the Library houses most of Gladstone’s non-political correspondence, speeches and papers which are administered by the Flintshire Record Office.

According to St Deniol’s website, “a principal aim of the Gladstone 200 Campaign will be to build and resource an Islamic Reading Room at St Deiniol’s which will enable Christians and others to reach a deeper understanding of Islam and its place in the contemporary world. We want to increase the depth and scope of the collection so that it is a useful resource for Islamic scholars as well.”

As every school child once knew, in the days when British history was still taught rigorously in British schools, William Gladstone served as Prime Minister in four separate terms between 1868 and 1894.   He is credited with enormous achievements, including policies intended to improve individual liberty and promote political and economic freedom.  Gladstone is still regarded as one of the greatest British prime ministers, with Winston Churchill among those citing Gladstone as their inspiration.

It is hard to interpret the establishment of an “Islamic Reading Room” to celebrate Gladstone’s bicentenary as anything other than a lottery-funded insult to the memory of one of Britain’s most eminent historical figures.   For W E Gladstone was not only a great reforming Prime Minister, he was also a devout Christian and a learned and resolute critic of Islam.  Mr Gladstone once brandished the Koran in the House of Commons, announcing with great authority and prescience “so long as there is this book, there will be no peace in the world”.  On another occasion, Mr Gladstone referred to the Koran as “this accursed book”.

Indeed, Mr Gladstone made many other trenchant criticisms of Islam which were regarded as perfectly reasonable observations, even self-evident truths, in the climate of free speech which prevailed in Victorian England.  Tragically, even to quote some of the great Victorian Prime Minister’s other more incisive comments about the “religion of peace” is to risk prosecution for a serious “crime” of “hate speech” in our own benighted era of curtailed freedoms and institutional appeasement of Islam.    That very fact is persuasive evidence of the decline of our civilisation since the days of William Ewart Gladstone.

A British Nationalist View of the Obama Phenomenon

On the day of the inauguration of the first ‘black’ President of the United States, it is worth considering the effects of the Obama presidency from a British Nationalist perspective.

Without doubt, the Obama phenomenon will be used by Left-liberal commentators at home as a stick to beat British Nationalists.  The rise of Mr. Obama is already being portrayed as a vindication of American multiculturalism which should somehow be emulated in Britain.  This is, of course, nonsense and a moment’s reflection shows why.

Firstly, there are very significant differences between the demographic situation of the USA on the one hand, and Britain and Western Europe on the other.  Like Europe, the USA is subject to massive immigration and demographic change, but in North America, this predominantly originates from Latin American countries whose cultural and linguistic roots lie in Christian Europe.  The US is not threatened by mass Muslim immigration, there are no demands for Sharia and few inner-city Islamic ghettoes on the French or British model. Moreover, the USA is, and always has been, a country of immigrants.  Most African-Americans who voted for Obama, although not Obama himself, are the descendants of slaves who were brought to the country by force and whose claim to be Americans is as strong as any white Anglo-American, Irish-American or Italian-American.   Therefore, trite comparisons between the United States and Britain are unwarranted. 

Secondly, media coverage in the wake of Barack Obama’s election victory sought to give the impression that he had been propelled to the Presidency, almost by united acclamation of the entire American electorate.  A psephological analysis indicates that the truth is rather different.   In spite of all Bush’s patent failures, white Americans still voted Republican last November by clear margin of 55% to 43%, which would have been enough to put John McCain in the White House, if America still had the same population balance as it did 30 years ago.   A more startling statistic is that black voters supported Obama by a margin of 95% to 5% and Hispanics by 66% to 31%.   Far from demonstrating that race is no longer a factor in US politics, the Obama victory actually proved the pre-eminence of ethnic affiliation as an influence on voting patterns.  Indeed, it showed that the decline of white America has now made it possible for the first time to build a Hispanic/black-led coalition capable of seizing the reigns of power.  Whereas whites were divided during the presidential election, blacks were united in their common purpose of electing their ethnic champion.  The Obama victory is certainly historic, for it surely marks the beginning of the end of the USA as a predominantly white, ethnic-European country and in that sense, serves as a warning to British Nationalists.

Thirdly, there is the question of Obama’s heritage itself.  The media has unquestioningly followed Obama’s lead in describing him as black, when as the son of a white American woman and a Kenyan man; he is self-evidently as much white as he is black.  It is a clear demonstration of the extent to which the media in the USA, as in Britain, seeks to portray the white identity as a vacuum, which is automatically overridden and trumped by any competing identity.  It is as if being white is what is left over when there is no other identity to affirm.  It is interesting to speculate whether Obama would have won the White House if he had defined himself as mixed-race, or indeed white, and not been able to enlist the support of the newly-organised black block vote.

The Obama phenomenon has an echo of the triumph of Tony Blair in Britain at the 1997 election.   It was tempting to get temporarily caught up in the general euphoria of Blair’s first election victory, even in the full knowledge that adverse consequences were sure to follow.  There is no doubt that Mr Obama is a talented and able politician, which makes him just as dangerous as Blair.  He is young, eloquent and intelligent, and has none of the fake and affected sincerity which made ‘phoney Tony’ pall so quickly.  Neverthless, disappointment with Obama in the USA will probably ensue even more quickly than it did with Blair in Britain.  

In some respects, Obama’s decisive break with the policies of the tired Bush presidency should be welcomed by British Nationalists.   The era of reckless American military adventurism in every world trouble spot is surely over, even though American - and British - soldiers will continue to die in the lingering war in Afghanistan, which ironically, President Obama has pledged to continue and indeed ramp up.   Obama’s instinctively protectionist economic instincts may well be more to the taste of British Nationalists than the free market capitalism professed, although not always applied, by George W Bush.

Obama’s mixed cultural heritage could have provided the new president with a unique opportunity to strive for a lasting settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is at the root of so many geo-political problems.   However, in the present climate of economic collapse, it is unlikely that President Obama will have either the time, or the inclination, to take on this intractable issue in the short interval before his political capital starts to ebb away.

For President Obama’s fate is to inherit a toxic combination of undeliverable expectations and appalling economic conditions, the worst effects of which are sure to crystallise in the next few years.  His left-wing economic policies will quickly alienate the constituencies who still wield the real financial power in the land, in spite of the credit crunch.  Obama’s talent for soaring rhetoric will be of no use to him when hard policy decisions are required and the economic cupboard is bare.

No person of goodwill could deny President Obama the right to enjoy his inauguration and the political honeymoon to follow.  It just won’t last very long.

Unemployment will Reach 3.4 million as the British Economy Crumbles

2009 will witness a dramatic contraction of the UK economy on a scale not seen since the Second World War, according to the well-respected Ernst & Young Item Club.  Because the Item Club uses the same economic model as HM Treasury, their forecasts are highly influential among financial analysts.

UK Gross Domestic Product will shrink by 2.7% in 2009, with a further contraction of 0.5% expected during 2010, the think tank predicted in advance of the release of official figures this week.

In its quarterly report on the state of the economy, the Item Club also predicted that unemployment will rise to 3.25 million by the end of 2010 and hit 3.4 million in 2011.

Inflation and interest rates will both remain close to zero, helping some homeowners, but these conditions will do little to assist the housing market, which is expected to fall 22% more over the next 18 months.

The Item Club predicts that consumer spending will decline by 2.6% in 2009 followed by a further fall of 0.6% in 2010. For the first time in a generation, it will be the fear of being out of the work that drives consumer behaviour.

These appalling economic forecasts are further signs that Gordon Brown’s and Alistair Darling’s efforts to stimulate the economy are having little impact, with last autumn’s temporary 2.5% cut in VAT now being judged as a failure by many analysts.   According to the OECD, the forthcoming depression will hit Britain harder than any other major economy, a searing indictment of Gordon Brown’s flawed decision-making during his ten years as Chancellor of the Exchequer.  Brown’s pretence of financial prudence in the late 1990’s and his risible claim to have abolished “boom and bust” are now thoroughly exposed as just more barefaced Labour lies. 

 

Christian Cross is too “Offensive” for Coronation Street

Broadcasters and TV programme makers have long been at the forefront of the politically-correct drive to expunge every aspect of British culture which might conceivably offend Muslim sentiment.   But the makers of the ITV soap opera Coronation Street have now managed to plumb new depths of imbecility.

Granada TV tried to force the Rev James Milnes, of St Mary’s Church in Nether Alderley, Cheshire, to remove a cross from a church during filming of Coronation Street because they thought it would be “offensive to some viewers”.  Because the cross was bolted down, the soap’s producers hid it behind candles and flowers for Monday’s episode.

Rev Milnes said: “I can’t imagine how people would be offended. It’s a church - you expect to see a cross in there. You would expect to see the Koran in a film of a mosque, a menorah in a film of a synagogue and similarly a cross when filming a Christian church.

“If you’re going to film people getting married in a church, you’re going to come across the odd cross, picture of Jesus or a stained glass window.

“It’s this sort of stupidity that gives political correctness a bad name.”

Granada TV apparently chose St Mary’s because the script called for the characters of Molly and Tyrone to have a traditional religious church wedding service in a “quintessentially English” church.  Presumably Granada TV executives believe the crucifix should no longer be a feature of quintessentially English churches, which doubtless they would prefer to be converted into mosques, a fate which has already befallen countless churches the length and breadth of England.

Coronation Street already had a bad reputation for its anti-white and anti-British bias.  Three years ago, the programme was embroiled in a row over anti-white racism after an Asian character on the ITV soap likened another character to “white trash”.

“Short Selling” Set to Return as the Financial Services Authority Shows Its Contempt for Public Opinion

Scarcely a week seems to pass without the Canary Wharf-based Financial Services Authority adding to the already weighty pile of evidence that it is not fit for purpose as Britain’s principal financial regulator. 

 Indeed, the FSA has started 2009 much as it conducted itself throughout 2008: with an extraordinary display of high-handed indifference to public sentiment and gross failure to appreciate the real risks inherent in market mechanisms. 

2009 was only five days old when the FSA posted a statement on its website under the rather arcane title “FSA proposes to extend short selling disclosure regime”.   As with most of the FSA’s pronouncements, the title of this statement is utterly misleading. 

The true significance of the announcement only becomes clear further down, almost as an incidental aside, with the statement that “In addition, the FSA proposes that the ban on the short selling of stocks in UK financial sector companies will expire on 16 January.”    In other words, the FSA is delighted to announce that short selling is back!

Short selling is the pernicious practice whereby speculators – typically hedge funds — borrow and then sell shares in the expectation of being able to buy them back later when their price has fallen. The speculators therefore make a profit when the share price declines. This form of betting on share price falls has been widely blamed as a major contributor to the worldwide financial crisis, which is why the FSA was originally forced to step in to suspend short selling of financial stocks in September 2008.   Now that short selling is poised to resume with the FSA’s blessing, we can surely expect to see a recurrence of the sort of rumour-driven speculative attacks on major banks which so disgraced the City of London last summer.

The FSA’s latest error of judgement in reinstating financial sector short selling is by no means an isolated mistake. Since its inception in Gordon Brown’s first year as Chancellor, the FSA’s institutional failure to understand market risk and prioritise its own work effectively has been its indelible hallmark.  A financial regulator should be like a lion at the heart of the financial system, but the FSA has acted more like a skittish kitten, chasing in circles after every irrelevant mouse, but cowering away from the packs of city wolves that attacked longstanding British companies and defenceless consumers alike.

The FSA was happy to punish banks which scrupulously reported minor breaches of customer identification rules, but it seemed oblivious to clear-cut warning signs of the impending collapse of major institutions like Equitable Life and Northern Rock. Indeed, during 2008 the Parliamentary Ombudsman specifically accused the Financial Services Authority of maladministration in the final years leading up to Equitable Life’s collapse in 2000, when Gordon Brown was still Chancellor.

On a number of occasions, the FSA has gone out of its way to preserve the anonymity of firms involved in mis-selling activity, seemingly preferring to side with slippery spivs rather than their consumer victims.  Perhaps this is not surprising in view of the composition of the FSA’s ruling Board, which is now chaired by former CBI Chairman, Baron Adair Turner of Ecchinswell and staffed entirely by financial industry placemen, with no significant consumer representation whatsoever.

Anyone who doubts that the Financial Services Authority has utterly failed to discharge its duties as financial regulator should consider the FSA’s four statutory objectives under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000:

• maintaining market confidence;
• promoting public understanding of the financial system;
• securing the appropriate degree of protection for consumers; and
• fighting financial crime.

Not even the most deluded inhabitant of Cloud Cuckoo Land could believe that any of these objectives has been advanced by the FSA over the past 12 years.   In fact, market confidence has evaporated, public understanding of the financial system has faded, consumers have been ignored and left unprotected and, by common consent, financial crime is rampant. 

Surely the British public is entitled to expect that the regulatory body tasked with these objectives should be held to account for the self-evident failure to achieve any of them?  It is now time for a new stringent rules-based system of financial regulation, with the Bank of England at its heart.  The FSA is just another piece of residual New Labour flotsam which, like New Labour itself, deserves to be swept away on a tide of righteous public anger. 

 

Next Page »