It’s difficult to know quite what to make of the news that George Ashcroft, a Tory local election candidate in Telford, was at one time the Midlands regional organiser for the National Front, albeit that he was known in those days as Wayne Ashcroft.

Mmm… what is with Tories and changing their name to George?

For one thing, it seems to have taken the Tories rather a long time to uncover the connection between ‘George’ and ‘Wayne’ - not only has he been a member of the Conservative Party for five years, but unless there’s another Conservative activist named George Ashcroft in the town - and the electoral roll from Telford shows only two individuals of that name - the candidate formerly known as Wayne has stood, unsuccessfully, for election to the Borough Council as a Conservative on at least one previous occasion (2003); coming fourth of six behind two Labour candidates and an independent.

MADELEY [2]
David Davies Lab 826
Gillian Green Ind 728
Arnold England Lab 682
George Ashcroft C 533
Jeremy Haigh C 473
Patrick McCarthy Ind 438

And, as the BBC report notes, he is also currently a Conservative parish councillor in Madeley - as is evident from this set of Parish Council minutes from April 2006, which record his apologies for the meeting.

Once one becomes aware that George used to be Wayne, evidence of his past involvement in far-right politics is not difficult to come by, as in the case of this article on the subject of the National Front joining forces with the BNP, which dates from July 1998:

Wayne Ashcroft : We are undertaking discussions about unity with the British National Party. Keep an eye on us.

Englishmen advancing with new people and fresh ideas

LONDON - The National Front, once the arch-nemesis of communism, is making a startling comeback. Begun in the Eighties as a rebellion against alien immigration, The Front rapidly took on a pop-culture mystique in Britain. The infusion of Skinheads, who the press derided as “yobs” or hooligans, boosted The Front’s numbers and influence. Fronters battled Reds in the streets and came out bloodied, but triumphant. However, growing pains ensued. A staffer was discovered to be a homosexual. A bandleader quit in a row over money. Rivalries broke out between officials. The biggest schism took place over whether the group should adopt rehashing World War II or being active in modern-day politics.

As correspondent K. Schmidt observed, “Nationalists in Europe seem to make better use of their organizational skills. There is more urgency in their actions than in America.” The Front reached its pinnacle in 1989 when it hosted delegates from the English-speaking world and signed the New Atlantic Charter, pledging Anglo-American unity. Shortly after, Chairman Ian Anderson bolted to form the National Democrats, which tried to distance itself from the “rowdy” crowd that congregated in pubs and mixed it up with the Left in the streets. The lilly promptly lost its gilt. The rival British National Party took up the slack, even electing Deron Breckon to a city council post. But critics noted that the party seemed mired in ante-bellum issues and personality clashes.

Forced into Exile

Leading speakers Martin and Tina Wingfield left the country in disgust and took up residence in France, where The National Front of Jean LePen has made exceptional strides and now holds the balance of political power. Rising stars James and Paul Nash quit altogether, while Lady Birdwood, the most revered rightist activist in England, cut short her activism as she celebrated her ninety-second birthday. Enter Wayne Ashcroft, a youth fired from his job for opposing immigration, who is now organizing marches and demonstrations. “We are undertaking discussions about unity with the BNP,” he says. “Keep an eye on us.” Ashcoft credits The Front’s chairman, John McAuley, with making new strides. He, also, invites stalwarts to his annual meeting in October. Ashcroft has been beaten twice by immigrants, but remains undaunted.

And this from June 1999

Despite Hoax, Ashcroft Keeps Stiff Upper Lip

Combat-18 affair hurts National Front web site

LONDON - The long-suffering National Front, plagued by leader ship squabbles, a hoax and policy gaffes, has shut down its Internet site. Sys-op Wayne Ashcroft reported that his Directorate was hopelessly mired between the Old Guard, which resisted new technology, and younger members who championed newer, more activist, methods.

Ashcroft was repeatedly threatened with dismissal for conducting Internet broadcasts which criticized Front programs. His work was many all the more difficult by the leftist Tony Blair regime, which hauled rightists off to court for criticizing minorities and communists. Former youth leader Nick Griffin was convicted of violating the Race Law, but his summoning of Negroes in his defense further splintered his supporters, many of whom disdained any complicity with non-Englishmen. Departure of the talented Kelvin Sanderson, who directed overseas operations, took its toll, as well.

Shadowy Figure Looms

The Front was blamed for bombings which rocked alien neighborhoods. Reporters also put blame on Combat 18, a shadowy outfit some claim was launched by a man called “the Rabbi,” which had been vying to challenge the Front. By the time links to the Front were proven a hoax, many Fronters had quit.

Meanwhile, a key ally of the Front, the Freedom Front of South Africa, caved in to aboriginal violence and shut down. Many of its leaders joined the Afrikaner Resistance Movement, headed by Eugene Terre Blanche. Mark Cotterill, a Front organizer, moved to America where he has attempted some independent, anti-immigrant activity. The British National Party has reported gains, however, fielding a full slate of candidates for Parliament for the first time in its history. “I will keep working for the cause,” said a harried but undaunted Ashcroft.

Carroll Blackledge

All seemingly very damning, then.

I expect many of my regular readers may already making predictions about where this is going, and that I will shortly be getting around to lambasting the Tories in Telford for admitting a fascist ‘ringer’ into their midst - and they would be right…

…but only so far the bit about lambasting the Tories is concerned - Ashcroft, himself, may be a rather different matter.

You see, for all that there may appear to be a slight temporal discrepancy in Ashcroft’s account of his leaving the National Front; he says 1998, the article above was published in June 1999, (although is does appear on a US-based website and the story, itself, is undated, so it may be that this discrepancy rests with the website rather than Ashcroft), we are still talking about events which took place 8-9 years ago when he was 20-21 years old. He’s now 30 years old and much can change in the space of 8-9 years.

Before condemning Ashcroft for past misdemeanours, as local Tory leader, Andrew Eade, seems intent on doing:

The Telford and Wrekin Tory leader Andrew Eade told the BBC Politics Show that Mr Ashcroft should go.

The Conservative Party said it was investigating the matter.

…one should at least make some effort to ascertain whether Ashcroft is genuine in stating that he is ‘deeply ashamed’ of that period of his life and has moved on in his political views to something rather more moderate.

Yes, he has changed his name in the intervening period, and may well have not disclosed his past associations to his Conservative Association. That, if it is the case, may look a little suspicious, but it may also have been no more than necessary step taken in order to leave behind his past completely and make a fresh start - the earlier of the two articles above does suggest that his political views, at the time, cost him his job on at least one occasion. Ashcroft may well have taken the view that the stigma attached to his identity as Wayne the NF organiser made it impossible for him to get on with his life without a change of name.

Before condemning Ashcroft for his past, therefore, one should first make some effort to establish whether or not his views have changed in the intervening years, or have some evidence to show that they haven’t, and here’s where, if one takes the time to look, one comes across a rather curious thing.

In 2000, it appears that Wayne Ashcroft, as he then was, turned up at Warwick University’s library and deposited an archive consisting of 0.412 cubic metres of documentation relating his role as National Front organiser, covering a period from 1995-1999, plus an extensive range of far-right publications and literature dating back as far as 1939.

This archive includes a considerable number of private internal documents including internal correspondence, membership records, agendas and minutes of meetings and even two years worth of financial records - information that may well have been highly damaging to the NF at the time, not to mention that the mere act of placing this documentation in the public domain could easily have exposed Ashcroft to the risk of revenge attacks from the remaining members of the party.

Notes on the archive do, in addition, clear up the uncertainty as to the date of his departure from the National Front as the archive includes his letter of resignation from June 1998, although it does note that he remained involved to some degree in a revived Worcester branch until mid-1999 - the only documents in the archive that date to after his resignation are, however, merely newsletters and newspaper clippings, which does support the view that he was effectively out of the loop from 1998 onwards and operating only at the fringes of the movement.

This, to say the least, is a very unusual turn of events.

Its certainly not unknown for ex-members of far right group to go ‘walkabout’ with some of the paperwork on leaving due to falling out with their party, but it is very unusual for such documentation to then be deposited in a University library - the more usual use for such documentation is either for extracting a measure of revenge on former party ‘colleagues’ or to facilitate the formation of a breakaway party. However, so far as one can see, Ashcroft’s decision to deposit this documentation appears to mark a complete break with the far-right, there being nothing after this point to connect him, either as Wayne or George, with any far-right political activity until recent interest is his past surfaced in the last few days.

This does, therefore, seem to suggest that Ashcroft may be genuine is stating that he regrets his past association with, and involvement in, the National Front, in which case, given the amount of time that has lapsed, it would be unduly harsh of the Tories to hold his part against him out of nothing more than a bit of blatant electoral expedience.

Ashcroft’s past does, in the circumstances merit some investigation but, at the same time, his actions in 2000 in placing into the public domain, a substantial quantity of confidential documentation relating to the internal workings of the National Front would seem to count in his favour and support his contention that his political views have materially changed over the past 8-9 years. Only, I would argue, if evidence emerges either of a continued association with the far-right since joining the Conservative Party or that he continues to harbour unacceptably extreme views on questions of race and ethnicity - which may still not be the easiest determination for the Tory Party to make - would there be any justification for his removal as a Conservative candidate or, worse, his expulsion from the party.

The fair thing to do in this case, is to permit George the opportunity to give his side of the story and then allow the electorate to decide whether they believe that, on this occasion, a one-time leopard really has changed his spots.

Certainly, unless local Tories possess adverse information about Ashcroft’s character or behaviour since joining the party, information that is not, as yet, in the public domain, then the reaction of Andrew Eade, in calling for his removal as a candidate - and maybe even from the party as Eade is reported to have said only that Ashcroft ’should go’ - smacks more of panic in the face of assumptions as to how news of Ashcroft’s past may impact on the party’s electoral prospects this week than of any intent to afford him a fair hearing. On that basis alone, and with Eade already having set himself up as a de facto judge, jury and executioner, I would hope that Conservative Central Office will step in, if they have not done so already, and afford Ashcroft a fair and unbiased hearing, especially when there is evidence, in the form of the documents given to Warwick University, to suggest that Ashcroft may have genuinely repented of his past political misdemeanours.

At the very least, Ashcroft is entitled to both to due process and to a fair hearing, for all that these concepts appear rather lost on Andrew Eade.

All credit to Jeremy Kite, Tory Leader of Dartford Council, for taking the time to give his side of the story after I picked on a story in the Evening Standard about a website he’d set up which purported to stop voters being ‘bothered’ by canvassers in the run to this weeks local elections.

In replying to my own post, Jeremy makes the following comment:

Now, I know a blog like yours owes no favours to a minor local politician but I do hope there’s a streak of fairness in there!!

Well, actually Jeremy, there is a streak of fairness here.

For starters you’ve been afforded an unfettered right of reply, and whether you believe me when I say this or not, I would be no less inclined to highlight a story like this had it been my own party (Labour) or any other party that appeared at fault.

Fairness also dictates that, following your remarks, I go back and re-examine the story as much as possible to see if there is anything more conclusive to be gleaned from it, either way. So, here, in full, is the text of the article that appeared on page 16 of the London Evening Standard on Friday.

TORIES ACCUSED OF CON WITH PHONEY WEBSITE

THE Conservatives have been caught apparently trying to make voters disclose their voting intentions to a phoney website.

Members of the public have been duped by a website called VoterChoice.co.uk that promises to stop them being bothered by canvassers.

But those who register are then asked to complete the process by revealing which party they intend to vote for in next Thursday’s local elections, an Evening Standard investigation found. The website resembles an independent free service to stop unwanted callers.

Only a careful study of the small print revealed that the glossy site was set up in the name of local Conservatives in Dartford, where crucial council elections are being fought. People who register are asked for personal details, including name, postal and email addresses. Then they are asked: “How will you vote on May 3” and told to choose from a list of parties fighting locally.

At the end they are given a “validation number” which purports to be unique. But the number is clearly meaningless because no matter how many times people log on using different names or computers, they get the same three digits — JD6.

Respondents can then download a Do Not Disturb poster to put in their window. The site implies that the organisers will contact political parties and ensure they do not bother any householder displaying the poster. It states: “We ask campaigners from ALL parties to respect your wishes and give your house a miss until polling day.”

Other parties said they had no record of ever being contacted in such a way.

Labour chairman Hazel Blears, who condemned the site as “the political online equivalent of the Nigerian letter scam”, today said the party was asking the Electoral Commission to investigate.

“ The Conservatives have t o answer three questions. Are they going to apologise to the voters they misled? Are they going to recycle all their election literature which has this on? How widespread is this — is this happening throughout the country?

“The Tories have resorted to a con trick to try to snatch people’s personal information. David Cameron needs to stop this grubby tactic.”

When challenged with the Standard’s findings, the Tories said they would scrap the website immediately. A spokesman said Mr Cameron’s officials had nothing to do with the site. The site no longer works.

And now, by way of comparison, here’s Jeremy’s own description of the site:

What we tried to do is reflect the fact that whilst some people like to see political types turn up on their doorstep three times a night and have a good old discussion about politics, there are some who just find it a real pain in the derriere to be disturbed just as they’re sitting down for tea or Eastenders. During the last election, I actually saw THREE separate parties canvassing the same street at once, knocking on the same doors just a couple of minutes apart. Have a pop at me if you like but I’m just trying to make things a bit more dignified for people who may not be as worked up about local elections as we are.

So, we set up a website, entirely openly, that lets people tell us they’d prefer that political canvassers didn’t disturb them. The website looks professional, not because we’ve modeled it on anything, but because I like good looking website. It’s got three pages.

t asks people to register and write three digits on the back page of our (very blue coloured) CONSERVATIVE manifesto which then turns into a DO NOT DISTURB notice which they display in their window. The only reason we ask residents to register and write the 3 digits is solely to stop us confusing genuine requests not to call with manifestos that have just been idly discarded in windows or visible in porches.

We’re not using, storing, processing or manipulating the data in any improper way. It arrives as an email and we make a note of the voting intention. That’s it. As Tim Worstall says, it’s EXACTLY what every party does when their on the doorstep. We don’t send emails, clever little tailored messages, texts or anything. Strange as it may seem, we just leave people alone.

As Hamer quite rightly says, the issue is whether we’ve been open about what we’ve done. Well, here’s the facts (missing from the Standard’s story, natch) …

1) the ONE and ONLY place we promoted the service was on ONE WHOLE PAGE of our 12page Conservative manifesto that - as you might expect from a manifesto - is plastered with Conservative logos. The DO NOT DISTURB notice voters display is actually the back page of our manifesto. I actually think it’s virtually impossible for ANYBODY (except Hazel Blears by the sound of it) to reach a conclusion that it was anything other than a Conservative initiative. We haven’t promoted the website in any way, other than in our huge, bright Tory blue manifesto. Honestly, it just defies belief to say we’ve set out to con anyone.

2) The FRONT PAGE of the website contains just TWO prominent links. One takes you to REGISTER, the other takes you to ‘IMPRINT’. The page it takes you to has no other content but the following words in normal sized type (none of your .5 point, grey on black!) in the middle of the page which says “Promoted by Keith Ferrin on behalf of Dartford Conservative Candidates, all at ….(then the Dartford Tory address)

As for Data Protection, well I’m told we are a registered data keeper in relation to our normal work as a local Conservative Association. We’ve not gathered any information that we don’t already store. Like every other party we have a electoral roll system that stores Voting intentions gathered from canvassing (doorstep or online)

We took the site down because, quite frankly, if Labour and the other parties aren’t going to take any notice of the request to leave people alone, there ain’t much point to it.

Okay, so there’s an obvious disparity in the two accounts. The Standard alleges that the site resembles an ‘independent free service’ and that one has to examine the small print to ascertain that the site was set up and run by the local Tory Party, while Jeremy provides a description of the site that, if 100% accurate, would leave the reader with little or no doubt as to who was behind the site.

And to complicate matters, the site was taken down straight away - and before it could be cached by Google - leaving yours truly with no means of verifying the accuracy of either account.

Mmm… how should one judge this situation?

On reflection, I think benefit of the doubt has to go to Jeremy on the basis the overall impression one gets from reading both accounts is that of a cock-up rather than a conspiracy - it just has that aura of being the kind of thing that ’seemed a good idea at the time’ without having been thought through properly, rather than a deliberately contrived attempt to put one over on the voting public.

On that basis, a bit of adverse publicity and embarrassment is a fair outcome and it would be unduly harsh, and not a bit ridiculous, to take the matter as far as an official complaint to either the Standards Board or Information Commissioner unless something concrete emerged, by way of evidence, to cast serious doubts on the veracity of Jeremy’s account.

There is the germ of a good idea in all this, if approached in its proper context.

While I’m broadly in agreement with Alex’s point that it ill behoves any politician to actively encourage voters to disengage  from the political process, there is something to be said for the possibility of a scheme for vulnerable people that would either permit them to opt-out of visits from canvassers or provide canvassers with properly accredited identification, provide, of course, that such a scheme has the full support of all local parties and operated through the proper channels - that would mean, in this case, via the local authority, which would have the added benefit of enforcing a strict political neutrality on the scheme as a whole.

It is worth stressing that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with political parties canvassing opinions and trying to identify supporters at election time, the only ‘fault’ in Jeremy’s scheme - as it was reported by the Evening Standard - was that the impression was given that the website failed to adequately disclose its links to a specific political party.

More than I cannot say, simply for lack of conclusive evidence one way or another - one salutary lesson for Jeremy in this is that the rapid removal of the site in question did create an initial impression that appeared validate the Evening Standard’s story while, at the same time, preventing bloggers, like myself, from checking the story for accuracy. Had I been able to access the site - and assuming that it was as described by Jeremy - I would have been just as inclined, if not more so, to shoot down the Standard for misrepresenting the content of the site as take a pot shot at him for producing it, were that still merited.

That, on the information to hand, is about as fair as its possible to get, I think, other to note that if Jeremy wishes to provide screen-shots of the site in question to back up his account, then I’m more than happy to append them to this post, and let people judge for themselves whether the Standard misrepresented the content/presentation of the site.

Every once in a while, Polly Toynbee manages to spring a surprise on bloggers and come up with something that’s really rather good…

Now Lily Allen is to join Sir Elton John and the rest at Wembley stadium for Diana’s birthday concert. But there is something creepy about celebrating the 10th anniversary of her gruesome life and death.

Meanwhile, the interminable and ill-fated inquest into her unmysterious end staggers on like Jarndyce v Jarndyce, costing God knows what, its mountainous paperwork and thousands of legal hours destined to show that she was indeed killed in a crash by her lover’s drunken chauffeur.

What is being celebrated? The bulimic life of a sad neurotic who was abandoned by her mother to a hopeless father and a step-mother from hell. Far too young and silly, she made the awful decision to marry a much older, selfish Prince who was under instruction to deliver the requisite heir and a spare.

She was beautiful, spoiled and brainless. She could have brought down the monarchy, but only wanted the crown to skip to her son. It is a true tragedy for children to lose their mother, but that doesn’t make her a national tragic heroine. Her wish to be “Queen of Hearts” in her Panorama interview was a toe-curling insight into a celebrity who believed her own hype.

It took the genius and charm of Helen Mirren to rescue the royal fiasco of her death and re-invent it as an entirely new national myth to warm the people to their sour and unmotherly Queen.

How must the palace feel, ten years after? Blessed relief and no doubt only too glad to party, if that’s what the princes want. The royals must ask themselves daily where Diana would be at 46, in what trouble, giving what interviews, spending what fortunes on grooming, with more men of the Dodi and James Hewitt variety?

Diana nearly cooked the monarchy’s goose - though it would have been a constitutional irony if the crown had fallen over a public spasm of celebrity worship of the very kind the monarchy thrives on. Her death marks a brief moment when it was just possible the whole absurdity might have come tottering down. No wonder the palace are all celebrating their survival.

Nothing much to disagree with there, although I will say that I think that the concert being held at Wembley Stadium is an absolutely brilliant idea…

What better way to completely fuck up any residual shreds of dignity, mystique and ‘cool’ that might still surround the neurotic clothes-horse and her over-privileged fuckwit offspring than by holding a concert with a line up that reflects her ‘taste’ in music (and that of her sons) that consists, so far, of…

• Elton John
• Bryan Ferry
• Status Quo
• Rod Stewart
• Duran Duran
• Lily Allen
• Status Quo
• Joss Stone
• Kanye West
• Natasha Bedingfield
• the Feeling
• James Morrison, and
• Orson (wasn’t he the pig in the cartoons by the guy who did Garfield)

Fuck me. Chuck in James fucking Blunt, Black Lace and copy of the Birdie Song and what you’ve got there is not so much a concert as a  shit wedding DJ.

That’s why I love the idea of this gig… because it’s going to prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that neither she nor her little Chuck-Spawns-from-Hell possess(ed) any fucking taste at all! Just look at that line up and tell me that any lingering reputation she might have had for having style is not already in its coffin and waiting only for the addition of Chris de-fucking-Burgh to the bill to finish nailing down the lid.

All that crap about how beautiful she was and how brought glamour to the royal family - all a load of bollocks. Even Jade Goody could manage glamorous from time to time if she had a special flunky just to slap on the yoghurt every time she got thrush.

Think about it for a second - can anyone really think of anything that would do a better job of fucking up they way she’s perceived by the public than this concert…?

Other than, perhaps, the sudden appearance of a home video marked ‘Diana Does Sandhurst’.

And while we at this - can anyone out there honestly say that when all that Wills & Kate split bollocks was all over the news, they didn’t see the stuck-up twat give that poxy little snort when Nick Witchell asked whether he’d be getting married, while he was on the skiing trip, and think…

Fuck me! It’s Tim Nice-But-Dim!

Go on, be honest… you did, didn’t you.

FFS, the guy went to university to study the history of art and left with a degree in Geography. How the fuck did he manage that?

You can imagine the conversation is the vice-chancellor’s office can’t you?

Errr. we’ve got a bit of problem?

Yes.

It’s Prince William… he’s… he’s… well not to beat around the bush, he’s fucking useless.

Ohhhhh shit! If that gets out my knighthood’s fucked for starters. What do you mean useless, exactly?

He’s useless. Knows absolutely fuck all about art - think’s Leonardo was the speccy kid that used to get sodomised twice a week by old Squiffywhatshisface at Eton.

Bollocks! Must think… quickly… got it! Is there anything he does know?

Well he knows where Buckingham Palace is…

Right, well that a 2:1 in Geography, then. Problem solved… Now is it the left knee or right knee first when you kneel before the Queen..?

Then there’s this crap about whether Harry should go to Iraq. Fuck him, he wants to go, so put him on the fucking plane.

The guy clearly knows the score. The deal was for an heir and a spare and he’s the fucking spare, so why should we give a toss about him - it not as if the government give a shit about sending anyone else’s kids out to Iraq, so why give Charlie Windsor’s youngest brat an easy ride.

What are they thinking? That’s his last name’s Bush or something.

As long as William’s not a Jaffa, then where’s the problem?

So what if he could get himself killed - it’s only going to saving him from ending up like any of the other spares of recent times.

You know, like Uncle Andy the junket-king or what’s his name, you know, the disappointment - the one who’d rather sing than get married and live in his dad’s castle in the swamp…

… no, fuck! That’s ‘Holy Grail’ isn’t it? The disappointment is the one who couldn’t hack it in the marines, so he fucked off to work for Andrew Lloyd Webber…

Ah bollocks - it amounts to the same thing either way.

Centuries of (in)breeding - you just can’t beat it.

Regular visitors will, I’m sure, understand perfectly well why I was intrigued, to say the least, by this post at Ridiculous Politics…

Tonight’s London Evening Standard has uncovered a Tory Party internet scam - Tories have been caught trying to get voters to disclose their voting intentions with a phoney website.

Members of the public have been duped by a website called VoterChoice.co.uk that promises to stop them from being bothered by canvassers. But those who register are then asked to disclose which party they intend to vote for next Thursday.

The site has been deliberately branded to look like the independent free service to stop unwanted callers. At the end people who register are even given a meaningless “validation number”.

Labour’s Chair, Hazel Blears said: “This is an absolute con, the online equivalent of the Nigerian letter scam purporting to offer something that it clearly does not.”

Leaving aside Hazel’s failure to cite the correct type of online scam - what is described is more of a phishing scam than a 419, this is a story that’s certain worth a closer look, and so…

First port of call, naturally, is the site itself - www.voterchoice.co.uk - which appears to have been hastily removed and shows only a 403 error page from its hosts Freeola.net.

Not to worry, because the next port of call is, of course, Nominet’s WHOIS service, in order to identify the owner of the domain name, which turns out to be a Mr Jeremy Kite of Longfield, Kent (near Dartford), who registered the domain on 18th March this year…

Actually, I’ve got that name slightly wrong…

…its not Mr Jeremy Kite

…because his full title is Councillor Jeremy A Kite, the Conservative Leader of Dartford Borough Council and member for the ward of Longfield, New Barn & Southfleet, and here he is on is his official Local Authority web page, on the Dartford Council website.

Loathe as I am to say this due to my disdain for the body in question, this is clearly a matter the merits investigation by the Standards Board for England, not to mention, from the description of the website, a flagrant breach of the Data Protection Act.

To compound Tory embarrassment, Kite’s exposure as the owner of a scam website comes a mere nine days after a visit to the town by Tory Leader, David Cameron, who was pictured taking part in a flytipping clean-up that opposition members alleged had been deliberately staged as a photo opportunity…

And who was it that was called upon to defend Cameron?

Jeremy Kite, the leader of the council, vigorously denied the suggestion that the rubbish had been planted, but admitted that council workers had collected rubbish from a 20m radius on the same site and piled it in a heap before Mr Cameron’s arrival. “But I can tell you 100 per cent that the rubbish was on that site and was not brought in,” he said. “In fact, we left it there a day longer than it should have been because we knew Cameron was coming.”

The Times, April 19 2007

I wonder if Kite found the time to show Cameron his new website as well?

Both Bob Piper and Tom Watson have picked up on the forthright views of senior - in every sense - Sandwell Tory councillor Bill Archer, who is less than complimentary in his assessment of David Cameron’s leadership.

“He’s just totally out of touch with the law and order issue” said Archer.  “It’s the number one concern.  People want to see the punishment fit the crime.  We don’t exploit that,” he said.

“We had the Shadow Attorney General Dominic Grieve down the other week, and he said that if we get back into power we’ll build more prisons.

“I told that we wouldn’t need more prisons if the conditions were so harsh people didn’t want to go there in the first place.”

Archer’s old-style views on crime – and immigration too – hark back to the kind of traditional right-wing Tory party the current leadership is attempting to distance itself from, but they are fashioned by years of experience.

Fashioned by rather more than years of experience at the moment from what my sources tell me as Bill, whose daughter is standing for re-election in Wednesbury North - and one or two other local Tories have had rather an unpleasant surprise this year…

…for the first time since their reappearance on the local scene in 2003, the BNP are running candidates in wards with a sitting Conservative councillor.

In recent years, Labour supporters in West Bromwich West - and even over the border in West Bromwich East -have noted one or two rather curious coincidences come local election time.

The BNP, who’ve based their local election strategy exclusively on targeting white working class areas, particularly those with council estates, have seemed until this year, to have something of blind spot when it comes to a couple of choice loca\l wards in which the local population would seems to just the kind of voters they’re trying to attact - Wednesbury North is one such area, Charlemont and Grove Vale in West Bromwich East, is another - and the only thing that these areas seem to have in common, other than the demographics of their population and lack of a BNP challenge is that they both have sitting Tory councillors.

Funnily enough, at the same time that BNP have been studiously ignoring these areas, the Tories have experienced a rather embarrassing inability to find candidates to put up in some the BNP’s key target wards. In 2004, and with all three seats up for grabs, the Tories (and the Lib Dems, to be fair) failed to put up a single candidate in Tividale, leaving local people with a choice of three councillors from Labour candidates and a single BNP candidate.

And only last year, in Great Bridge, the Tories, again, failed to find anyone to fight a key BNP target ward, giving a clear run to Sandwell’s premier holocaust denier, Simon Smith, who picked up the seat from Labour.

By now, one might be inclined to wonder if something a little suspicious might have been going on, were it not for the fact that this year the BNP have rediscovered the existence of both Wednesbury North and Charlemont with Grove Vale, as well as Blackheath, which still has one Labour councillor but has seen Tory gains over the last two local elections.

Obviously, with the BNP now putting up candidates against sitting Tory councillors and in what must the Tory’s main target ward for this election, there can be no question that everything that has gone before was mere coincidence… even if, during that time,  one unsuccessful Tory candidate did put  out an election leaflet in which they were pictured shaking hands with an ex-BNP West Midland organiser ,who’s wife was once deputy leader of the BNP until both had a major falling out with Nick Griffin, and there several people I know of who will swear blind that they saw a senior local Tory sat in a car, deep in conversation with a current BNP organiser.

Or there would be no such question were my sources in and around Sandwell’s Council House not reporting to me that one or two Tory councillors have suddenly taken to referring to the BNP as ‘bastards’ of late - i.e. since nominations for this upcoming election opened - and to mumbling words like ‘deal’ and ‘renege’ whenever they think that no one is listening.

As a result, rumours persist that up until recently the BNP and certain local Tories may have been ‘going easy’ on each other - although I should stress that Bill Archer’s name has not come up in this context, he’s always been on the right-wing of the Tory Party as is saying nothing that would be inconsistent with his long-expressed political views - well, those he expresses when he’s not visiting one of the Mosque’s in his ward, but that’s another story entirely

Clearly, however if any such ‘arrangements’ did exist they are no longer in operation, much to the alleged consternation of local Tories.

And to think, some Tories moaned about their party cutting deals with the Lib Dems over running Greg Dyke for Mayor of London…

The video is self-explanatory…

Iain Dale seems to be suffering from short-term memory loss.

Here he is introducing a typically vapid commentary on female voting habits in today’s Torygraph…

Here’s something for Polly Toynbee to ponder on. It’s a startling fact that if women had never had the vote, Britain would have had a continuous Labour government since 1945.

And here’s Polly Toynbee, writing for the Guardian/Comment is Free on November 10, last year…

David Cameron owes his lead in the polls entirely to women’s votes. Without them he might have a rebellion in the ranks by now. Does this augur a reversion to old voting habits? It is women who have kept Conservatives in power for most of the time since the suffragettes first won the vote. British women are odd: traditionally, in France, Germany and Italy women lean to the left and men lean rightwards; but in Britain the right only ever won on the women’s vote. The suffragettes’ achievement made the last century the Conservative century; are women about to do it again?

What rather more interesting, however, is the very different presentational take that La Toynbee and Dale have on what it will take to capture the crucial female vote at the next election.

Both point to the need to engage women in the political process:

Dale:

He [Cameron] has delivered on his pledge to select more women candidates. The Conservative Women’s Organisation is now more likely to be found huddled in policy meetings with shadow cabinet members than making jam for the bring-and-buy. The establishment of Women to Win, the Women’s Policy Group and the Conservative Muslim Women’s Group are clear signs that the party is changing.

Toynbee:

What Labour needs is a high-profile woman campaigner who never lets go, to make sure the policy reviews push these things high up the agenda. If women voters just don’t get the message about what Labour does for women, that’s because the wrong messengers at the top fail to convince. Mothers listen to mothers: to win, Labour needs its women up front.

And both pick the same basic policy issues - although only of a sort in Dale’s case:

Dale:

Cameron is promoting family-friendly policies, talking about work-life balance and putting childcare at the top of his agenda.

Toynbee:

Life is still hard for mothers, and they know it. When I spent time with a New Deal adviser last week, he despaired at trying to persuade employers to offer jobs to suit mothers’ hours: there were none in supermarkets, offices or anywhere. If employers were forced to offer all jobs part time, mothers’ prospects could be transformed. And that’s the case right up the career ladder; highly skilled mothers find no part-time jobs advertised either. Why not have a fight with the CBI about it, so women get to hear? Also fight it to raise the minimum wage so women can earn enough to keep their families. Why should women’s jobs be so undervalued? Make extended schools work, with brilliant activities from 8am to 6pm for free. Make childcare affordable; it isn’t for most families. Abolish the “provocation” defence for jealous men who kill their wives.

But notice the very obvious difference in tone here…

Dale’s validation for Cameron’s presumed appeal to women is presented as:

Count the number of features in glossy magazines on Cameron. In 15 months, he has out-scored his three predecessors added together.

Toynbee sees the kind of appeal that Labour need in very different terms:

America wakes up to a bright day for women in politics: the remarkable Nancy Pelosi takes over as Speaker of the House of Representatives; Hillary Clinton is riding higher than ever; numbers of women in both houses nudged up, as did women governors. Women’s political profile has never been stronger.

Dale sees political advancement for women in terms of the Tories putting up more women candidates, including an author of third rate chick-lit and a TV presenter, Debi Jones, who has the distinction of possessing an even more embarrassing website than Adam Rickett - her website is well worth a visit, by the way, if only for the photographs which serve as object lesson in the importance of being sparing with the gaussian blur filter in Photoshop. You may even recognise here from the telly…

…if you’re the kind of saddo who spends their life in front of the home shopping channels on Cable TV.

By contrast, Toynbee’s talk is all of women in real positions of authority, both in the US (Pelosi, Clinton) and UK…

What Labour needs is a high-profile woman campaigner who never lets go, to make sure the policy reviews push these things high up the agenda.

Dale talks of Cameron backing ‘family-friendly policies’ but what policies? All that he’s had to offer so far is the restoration of the Married Couples’ Tax Allowance - and you’ve got yourself a ‘ball and chain’ to get that - and a bunch of vapid rhetoric about social responsibilty.

Toynbee’s arguing for policies with substance, and while you might agree with the specifics of her ideas at least she has some specifics to talk about. And more to the point, the drive behind her should, she suggests, come from women themselves - never mind sucking up to the menfolk in the hope they’ll provide, get out there and take care things of yourself.

If the key battleground for the next general election is to be for the female vote, then it seems apparent that women will be faced with a clear choice.

If you prefer to patronised by a dull, vapid toff with a nice smile while reading Hello magazine, vote Conservative.

If you want to get involved in politics and do something for yourself, then its Labour you should be voting for.

‘Stand by Your Man’ or ‘Sisters are doing it for themselves’ - it’s your choice.

Personally, I fucking hate Country and Western… and patronising arseholes.

(Published first at Guido 2.0)

Tim has already done a fine job of chronicling the scurrilous and largely anonymous bullying directed towards John Hirst (see posts here and at Iain Dale’s Dairy) who blogs as Jailhouse Laywer and, on occasion, pops in comments at my main online home, the Ministry of Truth.

The full background to John’s personal history is best explained in this article, which appeared in the Guardian in November 2006 - I’d recommend that you read it all but a brief summary of the salient points of John’s past is that in 1980, he was convicted of the manslaughter of his landlady on the grounds of diminished responsibility and was give a life sentence with a minimum term of imprisonment of 15 years. On being sentenced, the trial judge, Mr Justice Purchis, said of John:

“I have no doubt you are an arrogant and dangerous person with a severe personality defect. Unfortunately, this is not suitable for treatment in a mental hospital.”

John actually served 25 years in prison before paroled, not because he continued to be a threat to the public long after his initial tariff had passed, but because of his tendency to ‘buck the system’ and challenge authority while in prison. While inside he also got an education via the Open University and now blogs at http://prisonersvoice.blogspot.com/.

John recent came to the public’s attention after mounting an effort to challenge the laws that prevent prisoners from voting while in prison - you may have your own views as to the validity of his arguments, but its an argument he is entitled to make and have put to the test in law.

More recently, as Tim has documented, John has come under systematic attack by a small clique of right-wing bullies whose modus operandi is, perhaps, best illustrated by these comments from Paul Staines’s ‘blog’:

Guido Fawkes Esq. said…

Actually, it seems you are correct for once. Calling Guido a liar for skim reading a Google alert that arrived (late) this morning seems a little harsh.

A correction will be made.

You are still a granny killer, that can’t be corrected so easily.

3:50 PM, April 25, 2007

-

crackers said…

Hirst you axed a defenceless old lady. You do not regret your killing. You call it manslaughter. You know it to be killing in cold blood. Murder to us.You show no remorse. You are the lowest form of vermin. Of this I am 100% sure. Stay in your dung heap and shut the fuck up. Your pretentious self serving ramblings are utter bilge. Like you, scum.

4:27 PM, April 25, 2007

Irrespective of the validity of any argument John may advance, to these bullies his arguments can be automatically gainsayed by mounting ad hominem attacks that describe him as a ‘granny killer’ and/or ‘axe-murderer’.

Neither epithet is correct, as John will point out - his victim (in 1979) did not have grandchildren and he was convicted of manslaughter, not murder, little that seems to matter to those who take pleasure in baiting him, for whom his failure to show remorse for his crime is taken is ‘proof positive’ that he should be regarded as a murderer who killed ‘in cold blood’.

Staines’ above all others, should be well aware of the importance, if not necessity, of placing a correct interpretation on someone’s past actions. That was, after all, the sole premise on which he threatened a number of bloggers with the the prospect of a libel action when evidence of his own past misdemeanours resurfaced earlier this year. Who knows, perhaps Staines’ comments might not have been quite so harsh had Hirst used his time in prison to pester the trial judge for a personal testimonial to support his contention that he did not commit murder, rather than on obtaining an Open University degree.

They bullies wrong in their libels, not just legally and factually, but also because they, like Andrew O’Hagan, the journalist who wrote the Guardian article linked to above, fail to recognise or appreciate the significance of a single salient fact that is staring them in the face. One that the article explicitly mentions here:

He [Hirst] says he wasn’t uncontrollable; he was suffering from Asperger’s Syndrome, though that was only diagnosed much later.

The personality ‘defect’ to which Justice Purchis referred on passing sentence in 1980 is Asperger’s Syndrome, an autistic spectrum disorder that is often referred to as ‘high functioning autism’.

On the key symptoms of Asperger’s Syndrome - and other forms of autism for that matter - is something commonly referred to a ‘mind-blindness’ - they lack a functioning ‘theory of mind’ due to their condition and this severely inhibits their capacity to engage in common social interactions that most people take entirely for granted.

Our ability to relate to other people and engage effectively in social interactions with other human beings relies extensively on our capacity to perceive things from another individuals ‘point of view’ both intellectually and emotionally. It is this that enables us to judge the ‘mood’ of others from their ‘look’ in their eyes, their body language or tone of voice and make judgements about whether what one is about to say or do is appropriate to the social environment in which you find yourself at a particular time and assess how that may affect or impact on others and how they might react to us as a result. It is also central to our ability to empathise with others and appreciate/understand how they feel and how their experiences may affect them - and, by way an ironic twist, this ability is also essential if one is attempting conceal one’s own feelings, or tell a lie, dissemble or deceive others.

The ‘mind-blindness’ one finds in Asperger’s Syndrome and other autistic spectrum disorders, rob those who these conditions of this capacity to relate to and undertand others, particularly on an emotional level.

An individual with Asperger’s syndrome is typically blunt to the point of brutality in their honesty - one of the key diagnostic traits that psychologists look for when assessing an individual for any autistic spectrum disorder is a pathological inability to tell lies or conceal their feelings and opinions which is typically coupled with a tendency to ’speak as they find’ with any seeming consideration for how that impact on others. This frequently results in their being perceived to be rude, abrupt and disrespectful, not because that their intention but because they cannot read the kind of visual/social cues that we take for granted as indicators that we may be ’speaking out of turn’ or behaving inappropriately.

This inability to read social cues can often result in their developing a social phobia. Although they cannot ‘read’ the kinds of non-verbal cues that others give out as warning signs that their behaviour may be innappropriate, individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome can, and do, develop an intellectual understanding of their propensity for making social errors and may be highly self-critical on becoming aware of their mistakes, with the result that they may come to shun social interaction with others for fear of making such mistakes and their inability to deal with them adequately. It also impairs their ability to interpret the actions of other correctly, particularly in relation to whether actions are carried out with deliberate intent or merely accidental; this commonly results their experiencing feelings of paranoia

O’Hagan’s article includes this observation about meeting Hirst:

It is obvious within seconds of meeting Hirst that he is probably neither a monster nor a model citizen, but he presses his Open University learning on you without ever knowing that the overwhelming sense he gives is not of educated reasonableness but of chaos and vast insensitivity. This is just an observation: he makes a case for himself very persuasively, but everything he says makes you wonder whether this man is totally in control of himself.

Intellectually, Hirst may be, and almost certainly is, very much in control.

What he cannot control, due to his condition - or rather ‘manage’ which is better term - is his social interaction with O’Hagan because his condition means that he cannot pick up non-verbal signs from O’Hagan that would indicate that he has made a comment that O’Hagan finds abrupt, or insensitive. Hirst’s ‘problem’ in his interaction with O’Hagan is simply that his condition renders him incapable of observing the usual ’social niceties’ that Hagan expects to encounter as a routine facet of everyday life.

A little further on, O’Hagan comments:

It has to be said that Hirst has a slight tendency to pathologise his victim. “She’d had six or seven ex-offenders living there,” he says, “and they couldn’t bear her. She was unbearable. She stole our food. It was as though I was her carer, and I was so fragile it was unbelievable. I was like a walking time bomb. She claimed she had been in a concentration camp. She was trying to control my life and … wanted to be waited on hand and foot. I had my own life to lead.”

And a little later still…

I wonder if Hirst knows how callous he sounds. It is difficult to avoid seeking a connection between the coldness of his descriptions of what he did - “It was like swatting a fly that’s buzzing around you” - and the question of whether he is truly reformed. Sitting in his living room, I begin to feel afraid of John Hirst. He would say such fears were stupid, because the stupidity of other people’s doubts about him are self-evident to John Hirst, but something in him seems amoral and the self-control he often speaks of seems teetering in his case. When he stops talking about how he killed Mrs Burton, he stands up and returns to the kitchen. I look again at the CCTV showing the space outside and wonder if I could handle him.

If you’ve understood my description of the effect that Asperger’s Syndrome has on John’s ability to interact socially, then you will understand the he did not know how callous he sounded to O’Hagan and that this something that O’Hagan himself would have understood had he appreciated the significance of John’s condition.

O’Hagan states that there is something in Hirst that seems ‘amoral’ - this, ironically, is not an unfair observation.

John is not a moral man in the conventional sense, because his condition robs of him of the capacity for emotional subjectivity and introspection upon which our practical sense of morality is based - Hirst does not ‘feel’ the difference between right and wrong in the way that most people does. However, Hirst may be, and almost certainly is, an ethical man; one who possesses a keen intellectual understanding of right and wrong, albeit one that would appear rather abstract to most of us.

This explains the very matter of fact way in which he talks about the crime he committed more than 25 years ago and the events since. Intellectually he accepts, fully, that his actions were wrong and that the punishment he received was just retribution for his action - more than just, in fact, in the sense that he served ten years longer in prison than the period specified in the sentence handed down by the trial judge. What he cannot do is engage with that understanding in any meaningful emotional sense - it is something he knows and knows to be true, a series of unquestionable material facts, but not something he feels because his condition renders incapable of engaging with those facts in an emotional way.

I should point out this is not to say that John is without emotion and feeling - far from it - rather that he lacks the capacity to understand and rationalise what he feels in way in which he can find meaning. What he cannot do is externalise his emotions, project them outwards in a fashion that would enable him to rationalise what he feels.

This is crucial to understanding John’s evident lack of remorse for his actions, as evidenced by this exchange with O’Hagan:

“But do you want to be forgiven by her?”

“Honestly, I don’t give two fucks,” he says. “That might sound callous, but it isn’t. Her being in the court brought home to me what I’d done. Here’s someone now before me who hasn’t done anything, and I was feeling for the daughter, but all I could see was her anger and bitterness coming back. She probably wanted me to be hung, but it still wouldn’t have brought her mother back … I’ve satisfied retribution. I’ve satisfied deterrence. I owe society nothing now.”

All the hallmarks of Asperger’s are there to be seen in this passage, if only one knows what to look for.

John can ‘feel’ for the daughter because, at an intellectual level because he can understand how the death of her mother would, or perhaps should, have made her feel, but he cannot empathise with how the daughter feels as he perceived those feelings in the court room, nor can he understand or appreciate how the emotions she expressed towards him at the time of the trial - anger and bitterness - relate to and stem from her feelings of grief at the loss of her mother.

Hi comments are, therefore, typically blunt and to the point and his emotional appreciation of that situation is limited, lacking in nuance and based only on what he could perceived as being clearly evident from the daughter’s reaction to him. What he saw from the victim’s daughter was anger, bitterness and resentment, emotions that would all too understandable to most of us but which to John, with his limited if not existence capacity to empathise and understand them and how they rooted in other feeling not obviously evident but present nonetheless- grief, loss, sadness - those feelings served no purpose. As John says himself, nothing that the daughter could do, say or feel, and nothing that the court could do to him, even had the death penalty have been open to the court - could change what had happened and bring her mother back.

To feel remorse one must do more than simply understand that the wrongness of one’s actions, one must also form an emotional connection with the victim and the victim’s family. One has to empathise with them, understand on an emotional level how they feel, feel a sense of grief and loss for their grief and loss and for having been the cause of those feelings.

John feels none of that, because his condition - Asperger’s Syndrome - precludes his forming the very emotional connections necessary for him to feel remorse.

He can no more express remorse for his crime than a blind man can see or a tetraplegic can step out of their wheelchair and walk across the the room. His lack of remorse is neither a matter of choice nor proof that his crime was pre-meditated - the necessary condition for a murder conviction - it is merely a function of his condition.

John has a disability - although whether he sees his condition in that way is another matter - and it is that disability that prevents him from feeling or expressing remorse for the crime he committed more than 25 years ago.

That does not absolve him from responsibility for his actions. He committed the crime and served the sentence that he was given by way of punishment for his actions - more than the sentence in fact. But, as John rightly points out, neither the crime itself, now his lack of remorse, makes him a murderer or a ‘cold-blooded killer’ - nor, to my mind, does it justify the callous and ignorant behaviour of a few anonymous on-line bullies who seem to think that they can safely gainsay any argument he cares to advance merely by labelling him an ‘axe-murderer’ or ‘granny-killer’.

If John is sometimes rude, abrasive, disrespectful or merely - to some - a nuisance by way of his persistence in pursuing a line of argument, his behaviour can be explained and understood. It is not something he does by choice but is, rather, a consequence of his condition, his disability.

What excuse or explanation is there one can advance to justify the actions of those who take pleasure in hounding him. Those who are rude, disrespectful and abusive towards him by concious choice?

None whatsoever.

Those who refuse to engage with John by way of intellectual argument, who choose not to address his comments, consider the points he advances and challenge his opinions are not just cowards and bullies but the kind of bullies who - by their consciously chosen behaviour and attitudes - would seem to think nothing of persecuting a physically disabled man by kicking his crutches our from under him.

That is what the character of their behaviour amounts to. The abuse they direct towards John is directed towards his condition, his disability, and ignorance, in this case, is no excuse. The bullies cannot claim to be unaware of his condition, it is there referenced in black and white in Andrew O’Hagan’s article, and any of them who might claim not to have read that article, who may have joined in the hounding of John Hirst simply to ‘follow the crowd’, they are the kind of ignorant scumbags whose conduct is beneath even contempt. Which is worse, the bully who ‘kicks a cripple’ because they can, because their victim cannot fight back, or the bully who joins in just to be part of the crowd?

John Hirst may have killed a woman, more than twenty-five years ago and spent most of his adult life in prison as a result - but he is still a better man (or woman) than any of those cowards and bullies could ever aspire to be.

Fiona from London writes: (see the comments)

So the rest of you think we should help the world. Britain is full to the brim with EU migrants. They have taken our places for GP surgeries, and now our Catholic schools are turning away British children in favour of our Polish and other EU next door neighbours. Time for radical action. Labour Government must stop the influx until the birth rate calms down. We pay tax and have to pay for a private nursery education, but these immigrants get treated with free places for their offspring and leave our communities without a school to go to. London Borough of Richmond has a big problem with admissions to primary schools for 2007/8. My child has lost out to these immigrants from the EU and we pay council tax and cannot even get her into one school and turned away from many others. It has got out of hand. Charity begins at home not POLAND, MOLDOVA, CZECH REP, LITHUANIA, SLOVAKIA, ROMAINIA, and the world by all accounts.

Unity replies:

You are actually Catholic, Fiona?

You’ll excuse me for asking but I couldn’t help but notice your suggestion that the UK should limit migration for predominantly Catholic EU accession states ‘until the birth rate calms down‘, which is hardly in keeping with the Catholic Church’s doctrinal position on contraception and birth control.

To answer your point fully, it would be useful to clarify the precise nature of and background to your complaint regarding primary school admissions in the Borough of Richmond.

Are you complaining as a Catholic parent who has failed to get you child into a Catholic primary school due to a shortage of places, or an a non-Catholic English parent who objects to the Catholic Church educating members of its own faith, irrespective of their country of origin, ahead of English children of all faiths and none? If its the former then you may have cause to take the matter up with the relevant diocesan authorities… if its the latter then I’m afraid the answer is tough.

Catholic schools are responsible for, and manage, their own admissions policies even though LEAs assist in the administration of Catholic school admissions by collating applications on behalf of such schools before forwarding them to the school for consideration.

As one can see from supplementary admissions forms in use by Catholic schools in your area - see this example - the Catholic church places great emphasis on evidence of active participation in the church in assessing applications for places at Catholic schools. On that basis, and providing that such school admission policies are applied as specified then the primary reason why Catholic migrants from EU accession states are obtaining school places ahead of other Catholic families - if that is actually what’s happening here - is that they’re simply better and more devout Catholics.

I say ‘if’ above largely because you complaint does not appear to reflected in information from Richmond Borough Council committee reports on school admissions.

A report submitted in 2004 did propose the creation of a new Catholic secondary school in the borough - but that report was dated 15 May, a matter of two week after Poland, and other states, formally joined the EU. Hardly enough time, therefore, for an influx of migrants to appear on the horizon and take up all the Catholic school places in the area.

And more generally, when it comes to primary school places, a report last year proposed an expansion in the intake at six primary schools in the borough in order to accommodate increase demand for places…

…although the funny thing is that none of the schools in question are Catholic primary schools and the increasing demand for places at the borough’s schools was attributed directly to the high positions occupied by many of the borough’s in local and national league tables. By the same token, a report to the Borough’s admission’s forum on admissions policy for 2008 makes no mention whatsoever of any problems or issues related to admissions to Catholic primary schools - there is an issue regarding admission to secondary school from a one particular Catholic primary but nothing tpo suggest that local Catholic primaries are struggling to meet the demands of Catholic parents.

Coincidentally - I might add - I did happen to notice that the six Catholic primaries in the borough all perform better than the borough average in these league tables, and considerably better than the national average as well.

Oh, almost forget - according to the local authority, the greatest demand for school places in the borough is centred on Central and East Twickenham and Teddington/Hampton Wick.

I have to wonder, therefore, quite what kind of Eastern European migrants are being attracted to the area - the average house price in Twickenham is £375,000, in Hampton Wick its 386,000 and in Teddington its £390,000…

As for some of the other matters you raise, yes you do pay income tax and council tax… and so do migrant workers.

The most recent official statistics - which cover the period to June 2006 - show that across the whole of the UK there were a mere 28,000 migrant workers from EU accession states with dependent children under the age of 17 (i.e. requiring a school place) out of total of 427,000 registered migrant workers from those states. That’s across of the UK, and of those entering the UK to work, with dependants, the average number of dependants was 1.3 - which rather blows a hole in the your remarks about birth rates.

So far as nursery places go, all parents have been entitled to provision of 38 weeks free pre-school education for children of 3-4 years of age (at 12.5 hours per week) since April 2006. If you need more than that you have to pay the additional costs, although you may get financial assistance with this if you are entitled to Working Families Tax Credit.

Whether you choose to take up your free entitlement is entirely your decision -if you choose not to make use of the free nursery provision on offer or make use of a private sector provider that’s your decision.

The only constraint on any of this is that you are entitled only to a free place in your area, not to a place with a specific provider, which from your general tone may, I suspect, be the real problem here.

Based on the information I would suggest that if you wish to pursue the matter of your inability to obtain a place for your child at the school of your choice then you should address your complaint to:

Pope Benedict XVI, c/o St Peter’s Basillica, Vatican City, Rome.

Via Bob Piper I find Fat Man in a Bathtub struggling to find a suitable candidate for a BBC Poll on the best British film of all time (Bob has some good suggestions, btw):

The BBC is conducting a poll on the best British film of all time, and  I am struggling to come up with one. There is Last Orders, which is gentle, tender and funny and would probably bear repeated viewings, there is Kes, there is Nil by Mouth, there is Distant Voices, Still Lives but I am really struggling to come up with anything that can compete with the best of the US or France or Italy, or Japan or just about any country you can think of; British films just seem terribly parochial, and, worst of all, of their time; few  seem to transcend the era they were made in and I can’t think of one that I would have as my “desert island” film. It’s quite shaming, really.

My Life as a Dog just popped into my head, a great film, better than any British film I can think of, but a film which would get nowhere near my top ten films.

Part of the problem here I suspect is the difficulty one often has is determine precisely what can and cannot properly be considered a British film.

In the case of Japanese, French and Italian cinema - and indeed films originating in any country in which English is not the primary language, then language itself typically creates a clear delineation between what should and should rightly be considered to the output of that country’s native film industry. The very fact that films are produced in a language other than English for a non English-speaking market naturally creates a film industry in these countries that is far more self-contained in almost every aspect of film production than is the case in Britain - the French film industry, to give but one example, makes films in the French language in French studios using French actors, writers, directors, technicians, etc, financed by French money for distribution by a French company in the French market.

By contrast, a ‘British’ film may quite easily - more often than not, in reality - have been financed with American money and be distributed by an American studio. It may have American actors in its cast, even in leading roles, an American producer and/or director, American scriptwriters, American technicians. It may even have been filmed in America, be set in America and be targeted primarily at capturing the American market.

To compound matters even further, the same may be true of the American film industry, which makes extensive use of British actors, technicians, directors, studios, scriptwriters, stories and settings and even that disregards the complications arising from careers that span and move between both industries - Hitchcock is, perhaps, the classic example, having directed films such as The Thirty-Nine Steps and The Lady Vanishes, that are rightly considered classics of the British film industry, and films such as Vertigo, Psycho, The Birds, etc are accorded equal status in history of American film-making.

Perhaps the best one can genuinely say is British films are impossible to define fully, but you know what one is when you see it.

I disagree with FMIAB’s contention either that Britain has little to offer to match the output of America, France, Italy, etc or that British films are necessarily ‘parochial’.

It would certainly be true to say that Britain’s film industry excels in certain clearly defined genres that have a definite connection to British culture - no other country quite does period drama, especially around themes of social class, quite as well as we do, and in the work Ken Loach and Mike Leigh we can rightly say that we’re near the top of the pile when it comes to themes rooted in social realism. And, of course, Britain has traditionally had a very distinctive - and very British - approach to comedy, from the classic Ealing comedies to the Carry On films right through to Monty Python, which may well reinforce the impression that the one truly definable characteristic of British film-making is its parochialism.

That’s a view that, to my mind, sells British film-making at its best woefully short, especially by comparison to the output of other countries.

Is the epic sweep and cinematic beauty of David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia not more than a match for Kurosawa’s Ran - which is, itself, merely Shakespeare’s King Lear transposed to feudal Japan.

What of the all-American action hero? Doesn’t it tell you something that even the best and most profitable US efforts in this genre - think of Die Hard, for example - are good for what? Three, perhaps four movies at best?

How many Bond films are up we up to now?

What about the ‘caper movie’ - which would you rather watch, Oceans’ 11 (12 and, soon, 13) or The Italian Job? (and not the god-awful American remake, either).

Exactly!

Think about it - is Life of Brian a less funny film than Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday or Blazing Saddles?

Of course not - not least because simply by naming a character ‘Biggus Dickus’, ‘Life of Brian’ executes the single greatest and most painfully funny sustained knob gag in comedic history, and all without recourse to an apple pie as a crude prop.

I’ve already listed a fair few films that I think easily rank alongside the best that any other country has to offer, even America, and I’ve barely begun to scratch the surface of our own film industry’s output over the years.

If Lawrence of Arabia doesn’t grab you, then what about one of his other classic films -say Bridge on the River Kwai or his adaptation of Dicken’s Great Expectations?

If Life of Brian doesn’t tickle your funny bone; how about The Ladykillers, Kind Hearts and Coronets or The Lavender Hill Mob.

You want gangsters? Try Get Carter or The Long Good Friday.

You want a thiller? Try The Third Man or the Ipcress File.

Black humour? How about If… or maybe Withnail and I.

Science fiction? Just try finding a better piece of dystopian SF than Brazil…

You know, perhaps the hardest thing about coming up with the best British film of all time isn’t a lack of quality at all but rather that we’re really spoiled for choice