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The EU elections are over. The Scottish result made no difference, nobody gained or lost a seat but Labour's share of the vote was down here as elsewhere. As far as share of votes went, overall Labour did exceptionally badly. No poll has shown them at 15% as far as I'm aware but that's all they managed to get. The decline is increasing in pace, and there's a year before a general election. Just think how low it could be next May.UKIP didn't win any seats here. That's probably because I voted for them. Sorry about that.So, Labour, lessons learned? Start listening to people? As they've said after every by-election, local election and opinion poll humiliation they've suffered, so now they must surely have decided to actually do something about it, yes?No.Their Righteous commenters persist in telling the nearly-one-million people who voted BNP that they should be ashamed, that they are less than human and still even now, that they are nothing more than knuckle-dragging racists. They speak about how they will fight the fascists with bricks and hammers, how they will make laws to prevent them existing at all (just like they did with guns and knives, and with exactly the same result). They squawk about fighting the BNP when that's what they've been doing all along. We've seen the results of that.These Righteous insist that votes for any other than the three main parties are protests and that they are all about expenses. The electorate have goldfish memories as far as the Righteous are concerned and vote only on the news of the last week. They cannot see how long this anger has been building. They see no objection to the billions wasted on the EU, money we cannot afford to lose. They see no objection to the thousands of petty laws and their application in ridiculous situations. They cannot understand that we have lost patience with stealth taxes and spin, because they cannot believe we've noticed them at all. No, the votes for other parties were protest votes about expenses, nothing more nor less, in the Righteous mind. They will learn no lessons. They will never listen.Commenters such as Guido and the whole of the Libertarian party are branded 'anti politics', which is ironic since all the main parties practise antipolitics every day. It's all they do now. All we hear from Labour is how terrible the Tories are and how evil the BNP are, and how all the other small parties are secretly just like the BNP after all, so the only safe choice is Labour. What Labour are going to do, they won't say. They want power. They want control. That is the sum total of what they want. There really is nothing else in their minds.The same goes for the other parties. They are obsessed with what their opponents might do, and none of them are above exaggerating, spinning and outright lying. None of them have any real idea what they want to do, other than to be in power and have control over us all. There really is nothing else in their minds.It's not politics. It's antipolitics. It's not 'look what we'll do for you.' It's 'look what they'll do to you.'People are voting for smaller parties because they aren't so obsessed with what their opponents are doing. You probably don't agree with the BNP manifesto, and neither do I, but they have one. They don't canvass on the basis of 'the other guy is worse'. The canvass on the basis of 'we will do this for you'.Nearly a million people voted BNP, not because we have a Neanderthal colony in our midst, but because the BNP promise to do something about the matters those people are worried about. All we hear from each of the Big Three is disparaging talk of what the other two are like. No promises to stop harassing smokers, drinkers, photographers or people who put their bins out on the wrong day. No promises to release us from the yokes of PC, health and safety or extraordinary paperwork. No promises to do anything at all, and even if they do promise, Labour have proved in court that those promises can be broken with impunity.We know the BNP are nasty. We know it. We also know the other parties are nasty. The BNP make no pretence, they have racist policies and they will give preference to white people. White people who vote for that are the same white people who have been cast aside in favour of multiculturalism and who have been derided as 'racist' for daring to complain. So calling them 'racist' some more is going to fix that, is it? Telling them they should be ashamed to vote BNP, when they have been told for a decade and more that they must be ashamed merely because they are white and British, is going to make them put their 'X' elsewhere, is it?Or will that approach produce the same reaction it always has - more and more angry people turning to the BNP on voting day?The way to 'defeat' the BNP is not to fight them at all. The way to win is to promise better things than they promise and let's be honest, it wouldn't be that difficult. The three main parties are in a position to fix all of the problems people complain about right now. They can defuse the BNP overnight with real equality, not this 'equality for those we like and the rest of you can go hang' we have at the moment.Stop all ethnic, religious, gender, sexuality etc monitoring, None of that is any business of government or of anyone else. Stop all special groups for any group at all. Nobody needs them. They are divisive, not equalising. Gay people, please, stop all this marching around. We don't care about your sexuality. Shouting about it just brings your detractors out of the woodwork. Muslims, stop shouting about how oppressed you are. You are no more oppressed than you want to be. Black people are no more or less educated than the education they accept. Stop the preferential treatment (and it's real, it's not somethng the BNP have made up, it's something they are capitalising on) and the white heterosexual Brit will have no cause for complaint. Then they won't vote BNP.Get all that out of the way and the BNP are gone. Then people can concentrate on liberty and vote for parties who won't try to control every muscle twitch and thought they have.Because at the root of it all is not racism, or immigration, or white supremacy, or jackboots and little moustaches. At the root of it all is a government which dictates who you can employ and what you can say, do and think. A government that dictates every detail of life from a Westmonster control centre. People don't notice that Mr. Patel in the corner shop is Asian unless you ram that information into them. They dont care about the skin colour, religion or sexuality of potential employees unless they are ordered to make special arrangements for them and disadvantaged if they don't fill quotas. That, in the end, is what the protest votes are protesting against. Control of every minute detail. You want to stop the protest votes? Stop giving them so much to protest against.Yes, there are real racists out there. Not as many as the Righteous want us to believe, not by a long chalk. Yes, there are some whose crimes are racially motivated but not every crime between different races is so motivated. Most crime is motivated by money. The real racists are lost in the shouted accusations that are now aimed at everyone who so much as mentions a colour or religion. The same goes for 'homophobes'. A lot of people don't like it, but few will do anything which would constitute an attack. Merely disliking something is not grounds for arrest and public humiliation. Attacking someone is.Is it possible that some small part of that will get through to anyone in the three main parties, one day? It doesn't look promising. They are so intent on attacking each other, they've forgotten about us. They have forgotten their purpose, which is to guard the best interests of the people of this country. Now all they want is power. We are simply voters, to be swayed with insults and rhetoric thrown at their opponents rather than promises of a better life and sensible policies. Those who don't vote for them are dismissed as racists and cranks. So they have no qualms about voting for anyone else who is tarred with that same brush. Nick Griffin didn't make the BNP successful. The Labour, Tory and Lib Dem parties did that. Unless they can recognise and accept their part in the problem, they can never solve it.As long as the current antipolitical regime holds sway in Westmonster, as long as the only parties with actual promises are those outside the main three (since the EU elections, perhaps that should be the main two and a half), the BNP will continue to rise.Look, Labour. You lost to Cornish separatists and the Monster Raving Loonies. Wipe the smug smiles off your faces, get off the Pompous Horse and try actually listening to people. Ask them what they actually want you to do, and do it. Stop telling us what we want and ask us instead.It won't happen. We know it won't happen.That's why, a year from now, the Labour party will be one of those political fringe groups they sneer at today.The Tories will be next.
I read in the paper today that voting is compulsory in Cyprus. Turnout was 59.4%. How does that work then?
Did you have a note excusing you like?
Dentention then. Joking apart, what's the point of a law you cannot enforce?
