You know how, sometime, when you’re watching a film/TV drama or reading a book, it turns out that one of peripheral characters in the story ends up being much more interesting than any of the leading players?

Well, its seems that for the attention that yesterday’s investigative piece on the Playfoot Chastity Ring case has attracted, there may well be an element to this story even more bizarre than that of the UK franchise holders of a US evangelical chastity campaign using their daughter as a legal stormtrooper for god.

One of the more curious elements in yesterday’s story was the matter of the apparent partial unpersoning of Denise Pfeiffer, Silver Ring Thing’s erstwhile ‘Media Consultant’ on SRT’s website. As you may recall, SRT’s website displays a picture of Pfeiffer identifying her as their media consultant, but her text profile has been removed from the ’staff’ page, despite summaries from Google search spiders showing that this profile did exist and was once clearly on display.

Up to a couple of hours ago, the mystery of Ms Pfeiffer’s disappearing profile had been left hanging on a conjectural poin, which rested on the possible inconvenience of a photograph from a 2006 lingerie modelling photo-shoot that features prominently on Pfeiffer’s profile page on an on-line model agency website.

That was then, this is now and following several email exchanges and a fair bit of digging by both myself and Tim Ireland, it seems that there’s rather more to Pfeiffer than was initially apparent, very little of which is going to come as good news to the Playfoots (Playfeet? Hell I don’t know) or Silver Ring Thing.

First things first - let’s quickly dispose of any trace elements of ‘plausible deniability’ surrounding Pfeiffer’s involvement with the Silver Ring Thing franchise. She was directly involved in bringing the programme to the UK in 2004, at which time she was described as its ‘Assistant National Director’:

In 2004, SRT began expanding operations into the United Kingdom, with mixed results. While some teens in the UK embraced the message of abstinence, others rejected and even ridiculed SRT for being anti-sex. Critics have stated that it seems unlikely that abstinence programmes will attract widespead support in the UK but the group’s Assistant National Director for the UK, Denise Pfeiffer says there is a real need for such a movement in the UK to curb the ever-increasing rates of sexually transmitted infections and teenage pregnancies, both of which are the highest in Western Europe. (source)

Pfeiffer also appears to have handled much of the promotion for the first SRT ‘tour’ of the UK:

THE SILVER RING THING SET TO WIN UK TEENS FOR GOD AND CHASTITY

By Denise Pfeiffer

The Silver Ring Thing – a faith-based abstinence program which has been tremendously successful in the USA – isheading to the UK and Ireland for an eight-venue tour. The tour will take on the same format as previous hugely successful tours in the US, moving the chastity message out of the church or school health class and into a club-style atmosphere which will capture the young audience with its high-tech sound, lighting, special effects and comedy.

In addition to this, at each venue there will be a seminar for parents, which will inform and educate them on how the epidemic of sexually transmitted infectionsiscrippling teenagers. Every day thousands of young people are infected with a new STI. Parentsand teenagerswill learn how saving sex for marriage is the best and the only healthy, faithful and moral way forward for young people living in today’s society.

Source: pp7, Christian Voice newsletter (May 2004) - yes, THAT Christian Voice.

An article that also helpfully advises the newsletter’s reader(s?) that:

(The cost to purchase a silver ring in all United Kingdom Silver Ring Shows is £10. It is also recommended that students bring additional spending money for snacks and SRT merchandise.)

People are encouraged to organize and pre-register a group of 5 or more, to help confirm attendance quotasfor each area. 300 or more people must be pre-registered by June 1, 2004 for each scheduled location so the program can be confirmed.

ibid.

And she did the post-tour publicity as well - this time on the website of the ‘Christian Family Network’, in which she provides a touching tale of life on the road for the STR Tour Crew.

After all, it seems to many as though this can’t surely be hard work – travelling with those of a like mind to other countries and promoting a message you believe in. But hard work it had certainly been. Many would be surprised at just how hard these youngsters have worked to bring their message of self-restraint to the sex-obsessed British. Shows would finish at 9.30pm and it would take another two hours to clean, pack and, hardest of all, carry the equipment out of the building and onto the waiting lorry.

After that, they would travel in extremely cramped conditions, through the night to their next destination, arriving there in the early hours of the morning. Sometimes that end destination would be a comfortable room provided by a supporter of the cause, but on other occasions they would have to settle for something more basic such as a shared dorm at a youth hostel.

Early morning starts an essential requirement in a country where getting lost was all too familiar, the crew would often be surviving on less than four hours sleep per night. No surprise then, that early visitors to venues could find bodies curled up in sleeping bags whilst others stepped over them to set up the equipment. In addition to this, each of these youngsters or their parents have had to contribute at least $400 to their airfare. In fact, contrary to some reports, only a small proportion of the SRT’s funding comes from the Bush administration – most of their funding comes directly from donations.

Awww - most of the funding comes from donations… like the $400 a throw, these kids had to put up to come to the UK to work these shows. Pay to play is obviously alive and well in god’s own country…

You get the picture here? Whatever her current involvement (or maybe non-involvement) in Silver Ring Thing (UK), she’s in no sense a minor player in bringing the programme to the UK, nor indeed is chastity until marriage her only sales pitch - when she’s not flogging silver rings to teenagers, she owns and operates a website called Celibrate, which promotes celibacy in all its forms, as its aims and objectives make plain:

Celibrate aims to:

provide support, encouragement, advice, information and acceptance for everyone living without sex, whether a virgin, asexual, chaste or celibate, for whatever reason…

increase awareness about asexuality and endeavour to have it recognised as a sexuality in its own right.

And in case you’re still thinking that is all just more of the same religion-inspired professional virgin shtick, Pfeffer spells out her own position in this post at another abstinence website - ambrosian.org:

Did anyone see the article re: “I cant have sex” in Woman magazine earlier this month or the article “I Want to Stay a Virgin Forever” in the Daily Mail recently? If so, I’d love any feedback, since both were about myself and I would like to contact others who are asexual: Denise, PO Box 5054, Leicester, LE2 3EE.

This was posted by: Denise Pfeiffer, 25 (source)

Now I don’t know about you, but personally I find the idea of woman who’s big ambition in life is to win a Darwin Award lecturing teenagers about sex and sexuality just mite disconcerting, reproduction (and therefore sex) being, well, somewhat essential for the continuation of the species. She thinks asexuality should be recognised as a form of sexuality in its own right, others may see it as, at best, a phobia and at worst, a suitable candidate for a sectioning order - and if you’re a parent your view is somewhere between those option then the thought of letting Pfeiffer loose on a bunch of impressionable teenagers is just the kind of thing to give you the screaming ab-dabs.

Of course, no post dealing with asexuality would be complete without a reference to the Prince of Plastic Surgery, Michael Jackson, and sure enough Pfeiffer is bit of a fan of Jacko, as this spirited defence of the man (?) against the evils of Channel 4 documentary makers shows:

One of your criteria for complaints is that a programme is not impartial. This was not only devoid of impartiality, but seemingly also devoid of any human feeling towards a man who has not yet stood trial for the alleged crime. Those people chosen to put their views across were deliberately chosen because of their belief that Michael Jackon is guilty of child abuse - the former accuser’s uncle, the constant focus on the former accuser, Diane Dimond (reporter on Hard Copy who has been completely hostile with regards to Michael Jackson for the last ten years and has resorted to broadcasting many provable lies in order to blacken his character), a hostile psychiatrist, former ranch employees, people likely to be bitter because Michael is no longer in contact with them…the list goes on. DESPITE the fact that Emmanuel Lewis, Macaulay Culkin, Frank Cascio and all other boys mentioned say that absolutely nothing went on, the narrator constantly made suggestions throughout insinuating that Michael is indeed guilty.

(Source [second post in thread] - mirrored from MJCafe.net forum)

Personally, I like this bit…

This programme was tabloid junk in the extreme, and a case for the prosecution. It was prejudiced, biased, subjective and obviously deliberately shown to influence the public just before the trial begins. Therefore, it was also extremely insensitive.

“Therefore, it was also extremely insentive” - so there!!!

Of course, there are fans and then there are FANS:

Also in 1994, a British-born Michael Jackson fan, Denise Pfeiffer, was charged with making obscene calls to the father of the boy who accused the pop star of molesting him. (source)

So far as can be ascertained, we are talking about the same Denise Pfeiffer here - she was deported after this incident.

Pfeiffer’s next appearance in on-line dispatche, places her is even more curious company (no seriously), that of a Clive Potter, who like Pfeiffer lives in the Leicester area.

Several internet postings from 2000 onwards describe Pfeiffer as Potter’s girlfriend, which sounds ordinary enough until you also discover that Clive Potter is a senior figure in the British National Party, a former parliamentary candidate in Leicester East North-West Leicestershire, President (last year, at least) of its fake Trade Union, Solidarity and also President of the BNP’s religious front operation, the self-styled ‘Christian Council of Britain‘.

Most of the reports linking Pfeiffer to Potter date from around 2000, and come from anti-fascist activists:

RED LEICESTER

Leicester’s Mardi Gras event has been cancelled after Denise Pfeiffer, an ex Mickey Mouse saleswoman, NF supporter, fanatical Michael Jackson fan (since he became white) and former model told them to beat it. Denise Pfeiffer and the ‘Silent Majority’ tell us they are not homophobic, but are simply promoting family values. This is quite strange considering Denise Pfeiffer scaled a 8ft fence lined with spikes, entered a house and then proceeded to threaten the family of Jordy Chandler, who happens to be the boy Michael Jackson paid £15m after allegations of abuse.

Not everything in this situation is black and white, for instance, the ‘Silent Majority’ share similarities with the Jackson Five due to there being only five of them.

The plug has been pulled on the Mardi Gras after threats from the National Front and pressure from Leicester’s answer to Eva Brown. Leaflets printed by the NF proclaimed ’sexual deviants and perverts are coming to Abbey Park to promote their sick way of life’.

All is not lost though, Unity Against Prejudice believe that NF supporter Denise Pfeiffer is just forever blowing Bubbles and they are to stage an alternative Mardi Gras which, they believe, will be as easy as ABC. Denise, denies reports that ‘Billie Jean is not my lover’ although she freely admits ‘I’m bad, I’m bad, I know it’.

A starry eyed Unity Against Prejudice spokesperson told SchNews “we’re hoping for sunshine, moonlight, good time, I blame it on the boogie. - We’re sure it’s going to be a thriller. (source)

Obvious, usual cautions should be applied with unverified material, but the backstory to this, the cancellation of Leicester’s Lesbian, Gay & Bisexual Mardi Gras following threats of violence from the Far Right is backed up by this July 29th 2000 report from the Anti-Nazi League’s archives (scroll down the page) - although in this case Potter is cited as the main ringleader.

Quite what the status of Pfeiffer’s relationship with Potter might be today (and don’t all say ‘fucking frustrating’ at once) or even whether the two remain in contact is entirely uncertain, although as late at 2003 it looks very much as if Pfeiffer might have assisted Potter by helping him to get work as an extra on a short film production called ‘The Country Murders’ in which Pfeiffer (who’s also an actress) played the character ‘Gail Hope’.

CAST
Gary Roberts [James Allen]
Clare Hanson [Kate Beck]
Emma-Jane Redman [Jemma Moss]
Denise Pfeiffer [Gail Hope]
Teresa Hodson [TV gallery production assistant]
Michael Aggio [TV news director]
Darren York [floor manager]
Kenneth Huggett, Kirsty Morrison [couple]
Peter Hurley [driver]
Stephen Elliott, Andrew Hodson, Margaret Hodson, Val Kerrigan, Clive Potter [extras]

(source)

Details on Pfeiffer’s alleged flirtation with the Far Right are, admittedly, sketchy, but still one cannot help but picture the virginal Ms Pfeiffer and her beau enjoying a romantic, candlelit dinner before repairing to the piano to duet on a selection of tunes from Wagner (The Ring, of course) followed by a rousing chorus of ‘Tomorrow Belongs To Me‘ from Cabaret - none of which is particularly relevant to the main narrative here, but the Wagner gag does give me an excuse to throw in, for entirely gratuitous reasons, this YouTube video of the greatest cartoon of all time. What’s Opera Doc

Right, where are we up to?

We’ve done the celibacy bit, the Jacko obsession and the Nazi boyfriend - and we’ve killed the wabbit!

That just leaves Pfeiffer’s media consultancy thing, which on her now deleted Wikipedia page, stated that she works for a UK ‘media watchdog’.

What do think that means? OFCOM? Press Complaints Commission?

No, it means MediaMarch, which was apositely described by Nick Barlow as occupying “the part on the Venn diagram where Mediawatch and Christian Voice intersect” - visitors from Iain Dale’s blog who’ve been asking in his comments where the Muslim angle is in all this might like to note that Sir Iqbal Sacranie attended one of MediaMarch’s gigs, or they could just visit Harry Place, which has all the Muslim ‘angles’ you could ever wish for.

And that, as they say, is that, apart from noting that Pfeiffer appears to have found the whole civil partnership’s debate a tad confusing.

First…

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-1385792.html

Should cohabiting partners enjoy similar rights to married couples?

.NO

These proposals are the Government’s way of putting another nail into the coffin of the institution of marriage. The arrangements proposed would be open to abuse by those seeking to set up a home with a wealthy partner and then fleecing them in court later.

Denise Pfeiffer, Leicester.

And then…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,3604,1660497,00.html

The law will give homosexual couples the same property and inheritance rights as married heterosexual couples. But what of unmarried heterosexual couples? Is the government saying now that they have to get married to be afforded the same rights as homosexual couples? What about those who don’t feel it appropriate or necessary to get married, but who are still committed to one another?
Denise Pfeiffer

And, of course, a big thank you goes out to Tim Ireland for pitching in behind the scenes and unearthing a fair old chunk of the source material for this post. This post of Tim’s from 2004, on the US SRT operation, is well worth a read, as is this 2005 article from the Washington Post on the little problem they had with the messy business of the constitutional separation of church and state (also via Tim).

Now that really is your lot, and if I were you I’d go back and watch What’s Opera Doc again.

Th-th-th-that’s all folks.

UPDATE

This intriguing addition in the comments from the excellent Sue D’Onym:

Evening Standard (London)

May 25, 1994

Jackson stalker put on probation

BYLINE: Liz Hodgson,Pat Malone

A BRITISH Michael Jackson fan who was bailed out by actress Lynn Redgrave after being arrested for threatening the family of the boy who accused the star of molesting him has been put on probation.
Denise Pfeiffer, 24, from Hinckley, Leicestershire, did not contest charges of vandalism and petty theft, and was given three years’ probation.

Pfeiffer, who spent about £7,000 following her idol around the world, plans to return to Britain within the next month.
She was arrested last month after her self-styled mission to save the tarnished star’s reputation went sour, and was charged with spray-painting graffiti outside the surgery of Beverly Hills dentist Evan Chandler, whose son Jordy is at the centre of the abuse investigations.

She was also charged with stealing keys to the office toilets and making threatening phone calls. In a pre-trial plea-bargaining agreement, the phone charge was dropped.

After her arrest Pfeiffer was jailed in the tough Sybil Brand women’s jail until Lynn Redgrave, 51, offered to put up her £10,000 bail.

Former office worker Pfeiffer took a string of menial jobs in Los Angeles to stay in the same city as Jackson, and held vigils at the courthouse where a grand jury considered charges against him.

Together with Ms Pfeiffer’s attempt to make the lingerie shot in the previous post disappear, set me off on a little more digging around for information, which threw up a rather interesting little fact.

According to her modelling profile, Ms Pfeiffer is currently 27 years of age, and this seems to fit with her CV on Actors UK (PDF), where she appears as Denise M Pfeiffer (and as an youthful Esther Rantzen lookalike) which doesn’t give her age but has a work history dating back to a recording contract with a minor label - Gotham Records - from 1997 - 2000, which her modelling profile refers to as follows:

She has been writing lyrics since the age of 12, had a recording contract as a teenager, and continues to sing and write songs in between modelling and writing assignments.

And this also fits with this short profile from a Shortopedia page on pop singers:

Denise Pfeiffer (b. Leicester, 1980), is a model, freelance writer and advocate of chastity. Orphaned at the age of six, she immersed herself in her two great passions in life, music and writing. She released her first pop single at the age of 17, entitled Can You Feel My Love on Gotham Records. At twelve, she became a Christian and remains committed to a life of chastity and sexual abstinence. She is now press officer for a UK media watchdog and the Assistant National Director for the sexual abstinence group The Silver Ring Thing UK.

Yep, born 1980 would make her 27 now - but it wouldn’t have made her 24 years old in 1994, when she was nicked in the States for hassling Evan Chandler, give three years probation and then deported.

Oooh decisions, decisions - who’s right here?

Well, let’s do a Loyd Grossman and look at the evidence - 1994 at the claimed age of 14 years of age:

1. Pfeiffer has spent £7,000 on going to Michael Jackson concerts around the world on her own and without any parental supervision.

2. Pfeiffer is described as ‘a former office worker’ who took a string of ‘menial jobs’ in dear old Last Ass to stay near to Jacko.

3. The Evening Standard puts her as having spent time in the now closed Sybil Brand Institute for Women, which sounds like a right shithole - none of this cushy Paris Hilton scream-until-you-puke business for our Ms Pfeiffer:

The Sybil Brand Institute (in full, the Sybil Brand Institute For Women) was a famous county jail in Los Angeles County, California. The facility was named after Sybil Brand (May 8, 1899-February 17, 2004), a noted local philanthropist and civic leader.

It was built in 1963 as a minimum to maximum security facility and was the primary Los Angeles County women’s correctional facility. Though designed to hold 900, its peak occupancy was 2,800. It is located at 4500 East City Terrace Drive, in Monterey Park, California.

It is perhaps best known as the jail where Susan Atkins admitted to fellow inmate Virginia Graham, that she and other members of the Manson family were responsible for the infamous Tate-LaBianca murders. Another famous inmate was Susan McDougal, of Whitewater scandal fame.

It was forced to close in 1997 after sustaining extensive damage in the 1994 Northridge earthquake. It has yet to be reopened or remodeled due to persistent budget shortfalls affecting both Los Angeles County and the state of California.

In the meantime, it has become a popular location for filming, hosting two or three productions per month. Movies and TV shows that were shot here include the Johnny Depp film Blow, Arrest and Trial, Gangland, The X-Files, and America’s Most Wanted. As a women’s prison, the interior walls are pink and are usually painted over before filming.

Do we go with Pfeiffer’s claim about her age or do we think that the Evening Standard article points to a bit of creative accounting leading to a terminological inexactitude of ten years in the date of birth.

Mmm - it’s a toughie, but my money’s on the Evening Standard.

Oh, and before I go, if you’ve got Real Player (and a tin ear) then I can give you this fine example of Ms Pfeiffer’s efforts as a would-be 1990s pop diva, called, appropriately enough ‘Love is a Lonely Word‘.

‘Shite’ is a better one.

Via Bob Piper and The Stirrer comes news that the annual Mayor-making ceremony in Sandwell was rather more ‘entertaining’ than usual this year.

Two BNP councillors staged an impromptu walkout from Sandwell Council last night in protest at Sikh becoming mayor.  They claim his appointment breaches the Magna Carta  - but now face an enquiry by the local government standards board.

Simon Smith (who represents Great Bridge) and Carl Butler (Tividale) insist that they didn’t leave the chamber during the vote to appoint Gurcharan “Sid” Sidhu as first citizen – but Butler admits they did retire to an area close to the public gallery for a “coffee break”.

He claims that under the Magna Carta – which was written in 1215 and forms the basis of England’s constitution - “foreigners” are banned from holding public office.

Quite how this applies to “Sid”, who’s been a British citizen for 44 years – isn’t clear, but as Butler is happy to explain, he believes that even people who are born in this country should be disqualified from public life if they are of African or Asian heritage.

“That’s not racist it’s realist”, he told us.

“The Magna Carta states that no foreigner should take public office and that’s our view.  There’s no personal animosity, he just shouldn’t be mayor”.

Thus proving, as if such were needed, that if you vote BNP, you get a complete moron - or two for the price of one in this case.

You see, even if we ignore the fact that a mere three of the rights granted by Magna Carta* remain in force today and allow the full text, nowhere in it does it state the ‘foreigners’ cannot hold public office.

*If you’re wondering, the three rights in question provide for the freedom of the English Church, the freedoms and liberties of the City of London and, most important of all, the right of habeas corpus.

The closest Magna Carta comes to such a proscription is in clause 45:

We will appoint as justices, constables, sheriffs, or other officials, only men that know the law of the realm and are minded to keep it well.

Got that?

To hold public office one must know the law of the realm and be minded to keep it well - “Sid” has been a councillor for twenty years and the British Citizen for forty-four, so I we satisfy the first part, and as Bob notes, he’s basically a stand-up kind of guy, so that covers the latter.

There is no bar on foreigners holding public office under Magna Carta because such a proscription would have made absolutely no sense at the time.

King John was an Angevin (or Plantagenet if you prefer), a scion of the House of Anjou - in modern terms a Frenchman - although he was born in England (at Beaumont Palace, Oxford) and did spend considerably more time in this country that his more illustrious older brother, Richard I.

Of the Barons who held him to account at Runnymede, only one - William Hardell, the Mayor of London, has a surname of Anglo-Saxon origin. The rest were uniformly of Norman descent, with many holding estates on the continent.

England, at the time, was effectively still under Norman occupation and didn’t really settle down until the reign of Edward I - even John’s successor Henry II ran the country pretty much as a sub-fief of his continental holdings although unlike some of his predecessors, who weren’t much concerned with the messy business of ruling England properly, Henry did have good sense and foresight to lay the foundations of what is, today, the Civil Service, and ensure that the country was at least administered effectively.

It would have made no sense at all for either John, or the Barons, to disbar foreigners from holding office because, well, most their trusted retainers - the people who were being appointed as officials - were foreign… just like them.

One might therefore observe that if your are going to call yourself the British National Party, you might at least take the time and trouble to acquaint yourself properly with British history.

I’ve noted previously that one of our local newspapers, the Express and Star, appears to have developed a somewhat remarkable propensity for either ignoring or downplaying local stories that might reflect poorly on the BNP, hence the paper’s coverage of the closure of the Lagoon Public House in Tipton due to, amongst other things, the failure of its landlord to report serious violent incidents that took place in the pub and his subsequent refusal to turn over CCTV footage to the local police, complete failed to mention either that the pub, itself, was effectively the BNP’s local headquarters, or thats landlord, James Lloyd, was a local BNP councillor and leader of the BNP group on Sandwell Council.

So it is that I was hardly surprised to find that another little local interest story relating to this same councillor was, yesterday, quiet buried away in a single column at the foot of page five of the newspaper.

Before getting into the story itself, its worth reflecting on a couple of salient points.

First, in one looks at the BNP’s local election manifesto for this year, one finds that aside from its usual political incoherence - more of which in a moment - it makes the usual authoritarian play on the BNP’s claim to be ‘tough on crime’, albeit that this year’s rhetoric is somewhat more carefully crafted than usual.

We must have strict sentencing. We must support the victims of crime and be harsh with the perpetrators. We in the British National Party are not concerned with the rights of the guilty - they give up their civil rights when they commit crimes against innocent individuals, and hence also against the community. Knife crime and violent crime must attract severe sentencing. Life has become a cheap commodity - those that threaten or take life as a result of thuggish behaviour can expect to be treated accordingly.

Quite why the BNP have sudden come over all coy about their law and order policies - which includes hanging paedophiles and other sex offenders (again there’s more to come on this one) - is anyone’s guess but for all that they’ve taken to using a more euphemistic turn of phrase, then general intent is same as it always was, as was clearl evidenced by another of their sitting councillors and prominent local Holocaust denier, Simon Smith, when he said, that week, that he was ‘no apologist for white working-class scum’ who would be ’swept away’ by a future BNP government. And he may well be sincere in is opinions - he’s certain not prone to apologising from his own stupidity.

Be that as it may, their manifesto makes its usual pitch that the BNP will be tough on crime, hard on criminals and supportive of stiffer sentences, all of which brings me back to the Express and Star and the story that appeared in an altogether non-too-prominent position last night, which simply notes that a Ricky Lloyd, of Tipton, appeared before a local magistrates court, yesterday, on charges of dangerous driving and other motoring offences (expect the usual no licence, insurance or MOT) and was committed then to appear at Wolverhampton Crown Court because the magistrates considered that their powers were insufficient to deal adequately with the offence/offender.

What this amounts to is that magistrates have taken the view that Lloyd’s action, and his prior criminal record, merit a stiffer custodial sentence that could be handed down the magistrate, so they sent him to the Crown Court, where a judge can throw a substantially larger book at him.

Ricky Lloyd, so it turns out, is the oldest son of - yes, you guessed it - local councillor, BNP group leader and failed publican, James Lloyd, and judging on the strength of this story from December 2005, which tells how the same Ricky Lloyd had been committed for trial at Wolverhampton Crown Court on a charge of attempted robbery, its rather as if both the court and the relevant local prison might do well to install a turnstile and provide Lloyd with a season ticket.

Before moving off the subject of the BNP and crime - its a pretty extensive subject, after all - I should note that a rather interesting rumour has come to my attention which, if true (and we may well know either tomorrow or possibly Thursday if it is) will rather put to the test the BNP’s policy on dealing with sex offenders, as my understanding is that in the next day or two a national daily newspaper may well identify a BNP candidate, standing for election in the West Midlands, as having been convicted, some 12-15 years ago, of a serious sex offence - my informant suggests rape, although this is yet to be fully confirmed as the trial, apparently, was moved outside the local area.

More on this, naturally, as and when the full details of the story emerge.

Digging though BNP manifestoes is, of course, a rare treat and well as an excursion into the Twilight Zone in which real policies and common sense are but occasional and all too fleeting visitors - and this latest offering is much the same as ever.

There are a number of particular highlights…

The BNP’s plan to cut council tax by 50% is a lulu. The claim that they’ll be able to do this by removing education ‘budgets’ from local authorities to central government, who will then dispense funding to local areas to pay for schools from a central fund.

There are three obvious problems with this ‘plan’.

First they wouldn’t actually be removing education budgets from local authorities, as the funding they’d get from the central government pool would still be an education ‘budget’ - what they’re actually talking about is taking away the requirement for local authorities to raise part of their education budget from local taxation.

Second, and even more obviously, the mere fact of taking the raising of funds education spending away from local taxation does not mean lower taxes - it just means that you pay the tax somewhere else, so loathe I am to treat the BNP like a real political party rather than the bunch of low-grade moron they are, the question has to be asked as to which central government taxed they intend to raise in order to pay for this and by how much will they go up? In order to pay Paul, which Peter(s) do they intend to rob? Income Tax? VAT? Corporation Tax?

Or are they talking bollocks…

Problem number three follows on from number two - the suggest that council tax will be cut by 50% simply be removing education funding to central government rather presupposes that local authorities actually spend 50% of their council tax revenues on education in the first place. Is this true? Perhaps someone might take the time to either confirm of deny these figures.

The manifesto also includes is obligatory lies and misrepresentations when it comes to immigration:

A large proportion of the burden of paying for asylum seekers and other migrants falls directly on local authorities (as was candidly admitted in a recent report commissioned by London Councils and compiled by the London School of Economics) and this is another reason for the huge hike in council tax bills (which strange to say has coincided with the massive tidal wave of migration to this country).

Actually, the report - which you can download here - does not directly connect the alleged “burden of paying for asylum seekers and other migrants” with ‘huge’ increases in council tax bills, what the report does note is that local authorities do face increase costs in London arising from population mobility, some of which is directly attributable to immigration, some of which isn’t - the report takes in both mobility arising from inward (and outward) migration and internal mobility - people moving around within London and between London and other parts of the UK. In particular it is critical of the current inflexibility in funding arrangements for local government, particular in terms of the revenue support grant, which it argues prevents local authorities from reaping the full economic benefits for migration while leaving them to struggle with the costs arising from population mobility.

Taken as whole, migrants put more into the UK economy that they take out in services and support, the surplus from which pays towards the cost of services and support for what the BNP have taken to referring to as Britain’s indigenous population.

The problem this report highlight is that the overly centralised bureaucratic nature of the funding relationship between central and local government makes local government finance unresponsive to rapidly shifting patterns of demand, which is very different issue indeed.

It also makes the laughable point that:

Lastly local authorities are either obliged (through central government or European regulation) or they do it for their own treasonable politically correct reasons, to implement a whole host of costly schemes and grants to ethnic minority and multi-cultural groups, causes, projects and initiatives, including foreign language courses and interpreters which both drain away financial resources that could be put to much better use, and at the same time erode the social cohesion of the local communities.

Treasonable? WTF?

So far as I can recall, treason still requires that one be found to plotting, making or supporting an act of war against the UK, or the overthrow of the UK government - shagging the reigning monarch’s wife/husband might also still on the books as well - which rather raises questions about the BNP’s own plans as, according to a number of ex-members who’ve spilled the beans after being officially ‘unpersoned’ by BNP leadership, the real strategy of the party hinges on the idea that the BNP will step in and take power in the wake of rampant social disorder, which they believe will be the consequence of immigration - which does seem to suggest that they’re planning for the overthrow of democratically elected government in the UK, themselves.

That being said, its a rather strange and draconian view to take that sees funding creche facilities in a local Gurdwara as being ‘treasonable’ - all of which goes to show only that for all their efforts to present a ‘voter-friendly’ facade, they still cannot quite reign in their impulse for indulging a bit of good old-fashioned lunatic wing-nuttery.

Speaking of descents in complete madness, try this one for size:

We vigorously oppose the building of new houses on green belt land. Although there is a drastic housing shortage, we recognise that this is largely caused by the massive influx of bogus asylum seekers and economic migrants. Anyone who supports new housing schemes is indirectly facilitating the influx of these migrants.

Really?  Funny, I was actually under the distinct impression that the vast majority of green belt housing developments were being undertaken by the private sector, with the most of these properties falling well outside the price range of economic migrants and, especially, asylum seekers. In fact all the evidence I’ve seen, including that contained in the London Councils/LSE report that the BNP cite - incorrectly - as evidence for the cost of migration leading directly to council tax hikes, shows that the real housing pressure arising from migration is centred on the private-rented sector. Very few migrants arrive in the UK with the wherewithal to buy their own property and only those specifically seeking asylum have any entitlement to social housing, so it hardly follows that building £200,000 ‘Barrat ‘boxes’ on the outskirts of Ruislip is facilitating an ‘influx of migrants’.

If you indeed to place restrictions on housing developments specifically to inconvenience migrants, of all kinds, then what you legislate to prevent is not green-belt developments but the redevelopment of urban brown-field site and, especially, conversion of properties into flats/bedsits and the letting of single rooms - which is actually where you’ll find the majority of migrants. Unfortunately, stories 15 migrants crammed into a shitty two-up, two-down in Hackney don’t really fit the BNP’s lies about migrants getting a preferential deal.

By now, you should get the general picture, which as I said earlier, is that their election manifesto is a completely undeliverable litany of lies, falsehoods and bullshit. This is where, in one respect, the BNP do differ markedly from the German Nazi Party - before plunging Europe into World War Two, Hitler did manage to turn around the German economy and make the trains run on time, while the BNP, had they the remotest chance of taking power, would completely fuck the economy up in a matter of days.

To conclude, I cannot resist flagging up what the BNP have to say on the subject of ‘culture’, itself a rather alien concept to most the party’s members who remain firmly convinced that its some sort of naan bread.

Culture is a much neglected but very important subject. We wish to create a society of stakeholders where residents feel it is their community and that they are a vital part of it. Promoting the culture, the history, of a district is a vital ingredient in helping to establish a local community feeling. These local cultures developed over centuries of human interaction. The liberal regime has deliberately tried to destroy local particularism in a bid for conformity and dull uniformity.

So all the funding that goes to local history societies is a myth?

Local councils would be responsible for encouraging local festivals and officially celebrating events such as St. George’s Day, St. Andrew’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day and St. David’s Day.

St Patrick’s Day? But that’s an Irish holiday and Ireland hasn’t been part of UK since 1921, other than for the bit up north which is half full with the descendents of Scottish Presbytarians.

Oh well, I guess if nothing else we have some advance of notice of the first annexation - Dublin is new Sudetenland and all that jazz.

Local councils would also be expected to celebrate and mark traditional festivals such as Easter and Christmas. No public body would be allowed to officially celebrate or mark a non-indigenous festival or holiday.

Do think you could make your mind up here?  On the one hand you’re saying that council’s will have to celebrate Easter and Christmas, but you also say that they won;t be permitted to mark a ‘non-indigenous’ festival or holiday?

Just where the fuck do you think we got Easter and Christmas from in the first place?

Did my school use the wrong version of the Bible or something, as I’m pretty sure that it said that Jesus was born in stable in Bethlehem and died in Jerusalem, not that he was born just outside Newport Pagnell and crucified in the middle of Slough…

There is nothing ‘indigenous’ about Christianity whatsoever - it began as a messianic Jewish cult and arrived in Britain via the Church of Rome. If its ‘indigenous’ you’re after then surely you should be directing councils to erect replicas of Stonehenge all over the place and appointing their own local Druids to lead the annual summer solstice festivities.

Skipping on a tad, just because the next bit is rather dull and uninteresting, we come to this…

The schools, libraries, museums and civic theatres would all be expected to contribute in different ways all year round to the cultural health of our local communities. BNP councillors would actively encourage the development of living participation spectacles, historical re-enactments and pageants, particularly involving schoolchildren.

Fuck me, anything to try and justify putting kids into uniforms - all a bit unhealthy and fetishistic if you ask me.

What historical re-enactment do you have in mind here? Edward I’s expulsion of the Jews, perhaps? Or maybe we you’re looking for people to set up a local branch of the Kristnalnacht re-enactment society for those of us who fancy something a touch more contemporary.

No, tell you what. How about we go for re-enactment of the D-Day landings, the Battle of El-Alamein and the Liberation of Western Europe? What do you reckon? Good idea?

…although we will need someone to play the Nazis… any volunteers?

Hey, guess what? I’m just buzzing with ideas today, in fact I’ve come up with the ideal slogan for the BNP’s election campaign! Never mind all this ‘people like you’ crap, try this instead…

Vote BNP. Because stupid is as stupid does.

Perfect!

In my last post, I mentioned that Simon Smith, aka Cap’n Freedom - see the link in the last post to a selection of insane rambling on Stormfront - was interviewed the other day by the BBC - and here’s the interview, during which he made the following claim…

Immigration and crime are the same thing. In West Bromwich and Smethwick we have the highest crime rates. Where we’ve got a more indigenous population and in Wednesbury we have lower crime figures. Multiculturalism doesn’t work.

Unfortunately for Cap’n Freedom, not only is he talking bollocks but Sandwell Council has, by local government standards, a first-rate research unit with it own website called Research Sandwell, which makes it very, very easy to check the facts behind Smith’s remarks - which makes it stupidly easy to prove that he’s talking bollocks.

Let’s start with some very basic general demographics - at the last Census the demographic split between Sandwell’s white and non-white populations was 79.7% white, 20.3% non-white -for the purposes of this exercise, the detailed breakdown of the non-white population is of no real consequence.

Next, you need to understand a little about how Sandwell is divided up for administrative and statistical purposes. Sandwell is made up, administratively, of  Six Towns - ranging from the smallest, Tipton and Wednesbury, which comprise 3 local authority wards each, to the largest, West Bromwich, which is made of six wards.

In 2001, Sandwell also went through an exercise in defining, for statistical purposes amongst other things, 79 local neighbourhoods, the upshot of which is that one can get a very detailed picture of social and other conditions for areas of Sandwell at a much ‘lower’ level than the usual local authority ward - down to populations of between 1,000 and 3,000 people rather than the 9-10,000 that make up a ward. A ‘neighbourhood’ in this context is what you could consider a ‘natural’ community, a estate/area smaller than a ward that shares common amenities and common community life sufficient to define it as a discreet ‘district’ in its own right.

So thanks to this - and to the work of Research Sandwell -its possible to pinpoint everything from crime hotspots to unemployment blackspots to areas that are desperately short of amenities, and all at a very local level.

If you’ve followed all that then it should be clear that what we have to play with, in terms of Cap’n Freedom’s claims about crime and immigration in Sandwell, is an overall figure for the size of Sandwell’s white and non-white population and, for each of 79 neighbourhoods, the same breakdown between white and non-white plus the crime rate for each of these neighbourhoods, based on the most recent figures (which are for 2004 and were published in 2005).

Let’s start then, with the picture for the borough as a whole and, specifically, the 13 neighbourhoods with the highest crime rates.

What we find is that, of these 13 areas, four lie within either Wednesbury or Tipton - the areas that Smith claims have the lowest crime rates because they have the largest ‘indigenous’ populations - Harvill’s Hawthorn, in Wednesbury, has the 2nd worst crime rate in the borough, while Glebefields, the Tibbington Estate and Princes End - all in Tipton - are respectively the 9th, 11th and 13th worst places for crime in Sandwell.

With regards to Smethwick and West Bromwich, which are supposedly the high crime areas due to immigration, we find that Smethwick accounts for 2 of the top 13, and West Bromwich three of the top 13 - and its also the case that these five areas all show a much higher non-white population than the borough average, ranging from 44% right up to 72% in the case of Cape Hill - which is actually 10 minutes walk from where I live.

For starters, the raw stats here are that Tipton and Wednesbury, combined, make up 24% of the 79 defined neighbourhoods in Sandwell, and 30% of the top 13 neighbourhoods for crime - Smethwick and West Bromwich combined make 48% of neighbourhoods but only 38% of the top 13 for crime.

However, these five areas are the only areas in the top 13 to have a larger than average non-white population - in the case of all the other 8 areas in the top 13 from crime, it is the white population that is larger than the borough average, ranging from 82.9% in Black Lake South, West Bromwich to 95.5% in the Glebefields area of Tipton. In reality, 6 of 13 areas with the highest crime rates in Sandwell have a white population in excess of 89% of the total population of the area, and in the case of the three areas of Tipton in the top 13, all have a white population in excess of 94%.

What was that about crime and immigration going together, Cap’n?

Things become even clearer if we focus just on Tipton - the town in which Smith is one of three BNP councillors. Tipton is made up of 10 neighbourhoods, of which only two have a larger than (Sandwell) average non-white population, one of which is the Park Estate, which become known a while back as the home of the so-called ‘Tipton Taliban’ and has the largest non-white population in the town (44%). It also has the third lowest crime rate in the town, and ranks 52nd out of 79 neighbourhoods in Sandwell (1st being the highest crime rate, 79th the lowest).

Strange eh?

There is, from the statistics, no correlation whatsoever between immigration - as expressed by the size of the non-white population - and crime in Tipton. The four areas with the highest crime rates in the town; Glebefields, Tibbington, Princes End and Ocker Hill, are four of the five areas with the largest ‘indigenous’ white population, of between 94 and 95.5%.

The other area with white population in excess of 94% - Gospel Oak - actually has the lowest crime rate in the town, with the second lowest being Toll End, with a white population of 85%.

What makes these areas different to the four, overwhelmingly white areas at the top of crime rates for the town is, in fact stupidly obvious - Gospel Oak and Toll End have the lowest crime rates and the highest rate of two parent families, owner-occupancy, economic activity (i.e employment) and lowest number of households with no adults in work and/or in the D/E social class.

I’ll leave you with one last set of stats to chew over.

The economic demographics for the Park Estate - which has a 44% non-white population and rank 52nd in terms of crime are actually worse in terms of economic activity, households with no adults in employment and D/E social class than Glebefields, which is 95.5% white and has the 9th highest crime rate in Sandwell and the highest in Tipton.

I’ve not done much local stuff for a while but with local elections in the offing there are a few bits and pieces that are worth picking up.

We’ll start with BNP Councillor for Great Bridge, Simon Smith, who on last night’s news stated:

“Oh I’m no apologist for white working class scum” before go on to say that they would all be swept away by a BNP government.

Quite how they’d be swept away he didn’t specify, although I we’ll see Smith looking to bulk order Zyklon ‘B’ to do the job.

Zyklon “B” is not a fast acting gas. You are wrong. Even the article you link to refers to half an hour. The amount of Zyklon “B” used at the so-called “extermination” camps was no more or less than the other concentration camps. Cremation in 20 minutes is impossible. Germany wouldn’t be able to provide the coke for the crematoria for the number claimed.

Simon Smith, writing as ‘Steve Freedom’.

It’s worth reminding ourselves that Smith (who is unemployed, BTW) is the Councillor who thinks that Adolf Hitler had much in common with Jesus Christ and holds views such as this, when it comes to voting:

The reason why Blacks disproportionately don’t vote is that the frontal part of the brain associated with postponing immediate gratification is not so well developed as in other races.  I mean having to go all the way down the street and marking cross on a piece of paper doesn’t bring sex, drugs or the latest pair of trainers.

In other local BNP news, investigations are continuing into allegations of electoral fraud after a Mr Andrew Smith of Wednesbury claimed that his signature had been forged on the nomination papers for BNP candidate, Scott Dale, who is standing in the Friar Park ward of the town.

Similar allegations have been coming to light in Birmingham, where a Jamaican woman whose signature also appears on the nomination papers of a BNP candidate in the Handsworth and East Lozells ward also claims to know nothing about how their signature got there, while over in Aston, a Mr Abid Hussain has claimed that his father signed the nomination papers of a BNP candidate after being tricked into thinking that he was signing signing a petition.

And the BNP’s response to this?

Their regional organiser, Simon Darby, blamed the stigma attached to supporting the BNP for some of the stories, and suggested there should be a law banning the questioning of nominees, claiming that this amounts to harassment.

Picking up on another story that ran in The Stirrer, last month, I have been reliably informed that it is, indeed, local BNP group leader and failed publican, Jamie Lloyd, who is under investigation for having voted at Sandwell Council’s annual budget meeting despite being more than two months in arrears with his council tax, actions that could result is criminal proceedings and Lloyd being disbarred from office.

Lloyd’s excuse appears to be that he didn’t know that it would be illegal for him to vote at this meeting dues to his being in arrears, despite having been issued with a letter by recorded delivery reminding him of this. Lloyd claims that this did not arrive until after the meeting, an excuse that might just wash were this his first year as a councillor and his first budget meeting - except that it is isn’t, Lloyd was elected in 2004 and Sandwell MBC’s records show that he has previously attended an annual budget meeting held on 8th March 2005, although the following year (2006) he entered his apologies and did not attend the meeting.

Presumably Lloyd ‘forgot’ the two previous reminders he would have received, much as he forgot the identity of the men who shot up his former pub when asked for information by the police.

Word also reaches me that another BNP councillor may also be in difficulties over their attendance at this meeting, although for rather different reasons. Can’t reveal too much at the moment as investigations are on-going but the words ‘benefit’ and ‘fraud’ have been cropping in conversation rather a lot of late. Confirmation of this will be forthcoming as soon as I get it.

Finally, I can report that Alan Burkiit, the former Tory councillor convicting of trying to pimp his learning-disabled girlfriend (IQ around 50, apparently) has now been formally disbarred, although eh did cling on to his councillor’s allowance to the very last minute with the result that there will have to be a by-election immediately following the full council elections in May, where had he resigned at the time of his conviction, his now former seat could have been including in these elections.

I think its well established that far-right political parties have quite a bit of ‘previous form’ when it comes to taking a rather revisionist view of history.

Usually this takes the form of Holocaust Denial and ‘Hitler was just a bit misunderstood’ but if you look closely enough you’ll also find examples of the far-right being rather economical with their own more recent history, as is this (stomach) moving ‘eulogy’ to the closure of The Lagoon Public House in Tipton…

One night a handful of years ago, a young man telephoned John Salvage, the then Black Country Organiser, to express his anger, along with dozens of local people, in regard to children in Tipton, being expelled from school, all because they were angry, and showed it through words and playground tit-for-tat action, at the brazen, arrogant, and racist slurs being thrown their way.

Why, surely it cannot be that, the racism, and arrogant behaviour was carried out by Muslim children could it? Well, it could, and was… and all because these children were constantly shouting their support for the ‘’Twin Towers’’ atrocity that had occurred in 2001, and for ‘’Bin Laden and the Taliban,’’ Many of the Tipton parents had told the headmaster concerned that, this behavior was not acceptable, and that the local white, indigenous children’s torments were ignored. It made no impact, and certain numbers of boys did what came naturally, and through sheer anger and frustration, vented this anger on the perpetrators, in typical childhood fashion.

Soon, some of the local white youngsters were being expelled, and reprimanded for simply reacting to taunts and slurs, but the Muslim children were allowed to say, and do what they wanted. The young father, who’d telephoned John Salvage, was worried that it might all get out of hand, as the situation reached boiling point, and so, along with another activist, John went to an arranged meeting, the first ever in the area, as representatives of the British National Party.

It was thought that, the meeting was between local parents, and angry locals, and the BNP representatives. However, that night, in a jam packed, large room, there was literally red faced anger, at the lack of respect local Labour, Lib/Dem and Conservative politicians, Muslim leaders, and authorities had shown for ‘’their kids’’. After a marathon two and a half hour meeting, with many in the 200 plus crowd, saying that ‘’politicians were all the same’’, and that the BNP could do nothing to help, a hoarse voiced John Salvage and fellow activist, ‘’Budgie’’, proved that the spoken word, even in those heated circumstances, and heart-felt passion from a Nationalist point of view, did hold true.

Now, after many at that first meeting in that public house, have become dedicated activists, supporters and voters, the BNP has created a local ‘’spiritual home’’ in Tipton, and the pub itself. After the initial BNP victory, which saw Simon Darby win a seat in Dudley, and John Salvage and David Watkins in neighbouring Sandwell, many friends were made. Thus, a personal thank you from John Salvage and the BNP leadership in general, is forwarded to Stuart, the young father who phoned John that night, Rob and Tracy, previous landlords at the original meeting and many thereafter, and Jamie and Sandra, who are vacating, due to the pub and land, being purchased by developers.

Out of sadness, respect, loyalty, and to mark the end of this era, the Skull and Crossbones flag can be seen flying from the pub in the picture, thus bringing an end to five years of this central, almost mythical part of local BNP and community folklore. The other picture shown here of the remnant architecture of an old church, also signifies the end of an era.

Awww, what a shame… all a complete load of bollocks, of course, aside from the admission that The Lagoon was the local BNP ‘dive’.

That supposedly ‘first ever’ local meeting meeting of the BNP in Tipton, which took place at the Lagoon, was anything but a first local meeting - the BNP had been operating in the Tipton area for at least 2-3 years before, as noted in this BBC report from 2001…

By the end of 1999 the BNP membership had risen 2,000 of which 400 were active. The West Midlands becomes increasingly important, with local organiser Steve Edwards polling 17% in the Tipton Green ward in Sandwell.

This was before the BNP took up ‘residence’ in The Lagoon, but its still a lie to suggest that the BNP’s activities in the area began only on that mythical night in 2001.

So why are the BNP telling whopping great porkies here?

Well, for no other reason than that in 2000, the relationship between BNP Leader, Nick Griffin and the then West Midlands BNP organiser, Steve Edwards, his wife Sharron (the Party Vice-Chairman) and BNP Treasurer (at the time) Michael Newland, rather soured, resulting in an acrimonius split that, at the time of this report in Searchlight from October 2000, looked well set to hit the High Court.

Without going in to the full in and outs of the split, which eventually resulted in Edwards’ and Newland leaving the BNP to form the Freedom Party with London-based barrister, Adrian Davies, who represented noted Holocaust denier, David Irving, in his unsuccesful appeal against the loss of his libel action against Deborah Lispstadt (who had accused him of Holocaust denial), it carried all the usual hallmarks of far-right infighting; including allegations of financial irregularities, theft of membership lists, etc…

Last month Searchlight reported the £1,500 cheque paid to Lecomber out of party funds. It was initially claimed that this was reimbursement for a printing bill that Lecomber had paid on the party’s behalf. However, it now appears that it was no such thing, but rather a means of supplementing Lecomber’s income without declaring it to the tax and benefit departments. This true explanation was admitted by Griffin, with a degree of embarrassment, at the Advisory Council meeting in August.

Lecomber is believed to receive £120 a week from the BNP, which, when topped up with Family Credit, gives him a weekly income of almost £250. But Lecomber was unhappy to learn that Griffin received double his salary (£1,000 a month) and arguing his worth, protested a need for parity. The £1,500 payment, paid in two cheques, was disguised so as to avoid a comparable reduction in State benefits.

Further details have also emerged about the loan Griffin received from the party to build an extension to his house. It appears that Griffin took several thousand pounds from party funds to renovate a barn attached to the side of his house. He agreed to have a proportion taken out of his salary but decided to write off the remainder, claiming that the room was now available for party meetings and functions at no charge.

Many respected BNP members are beginning to voice disquiet over the leadership “gravy train”. One BNP organiser told Searchlight: “No one begrudges people getting a wage, but it seems to be spiralling out of control. No sooner have we raised money for the party then some in the leadership give themselves a pay rise, trips to the US and build extensions to their houses.”

Nothing, then, that the recently expelled Sharon Ebanks wouldn’t recognise - in fact the Lecomber allegations are still rattling around there even today, some 6-7 years on - except that in case there was an additional twist in the tail as it was strongly rumoured at the time that an impending by-election in the West Bromwich West constituency, arising out of the retirement of Betty (now Lady) Boothroyd from the office of speaker of the House of Commons, played a part in the rift, as Sharron Edwards, who’d previously contested council elections in the constituency, which includes Tipton, was unceremoniously shunted aside as the BNP’s parliamentary candidate, at first in favour of the BNP’s Birmingham South organiser, Lee Windridge, although it was actually Griffin, himself, who stood in the end, gaining on 4.2 of the vote - far less than Edwards would have secured has she been permitted to run.

Interestingly, the BNP’s Wikipedia page has almost nothing whatsoever to say on the subject of the period from 2000-2001, when this split was taking place and make no mention whatsoever of either or the Edwards’ or Newland - the Freedom Party’s Wikiperdia page, however, exhibits no such reticence.

This is not particularly surprising as the BNP routinely makes use of what it refers to as ‘proscription’ when dealing with former members, under which (supposedly) engaging in certain activities while a party official (including posting on Stormfront), or associating with or even speaking to proscribed ex-member may be treated by Griffin as grounds for expulsion (and proscription) from the party. Ex-BNP members, especially those who’ve had a falling out with Griffin or one of his his close allies are officially ‘unpersoned’ by the party, which is why the Edwards’ don’t get a mention at all in the eulogy to The Lagoon as well as speaking volumes about the all-pervasive culture of paranoia that runs through the far-right and their real level commitment to normal ‘democratic’ principles, such as freedom of expression and freedom of association - you can have both, but only when Nick the Fuehrer says so.

So the tale of how the BNP came to first meet at The Lagoon is a complete load of bollocks, including all the revisionist crap about 9/11 and local Muslim kids shouting their support for the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden, which no more than part of deliberate strategy on the BNPs part to reposition itself to exploit the so-called ‘war against terror’.

And how do I know this for sure - apart from talking to local people on the ground up in Tipton?

Well, I’ve also mentioned the 1999 local council elections and Griffin’s unsuccessful effort to win a by-election in the West Bromwich West constituency, which includes the whole of Tipton in late 2000.

So when we get to the General Election of 2001, held on 7th June, some three months BEFORE the attack on the World Trade Centre, what do you think we find?

This…

And there you have it - in fourth place with 1,428 votes (4.5%) we find John ‘never been to Tipton before in my life, honest guv‘ Salvage, Steve Edwards’ replacement as West Midlands BNP organiser.

The story I ran last week about the closure of The Lagoon public house in Tipton and its links with the BNP, which include it having been run for the last couple of years by Councillor James Lloyd, the leader of the BNP group on Sandwell Council, appears to have ‘legs’, as they say in the newspaper business, having found its way into the Sunday Mercury, yesterday (not online as yet) and poped up briefly on the this morning’s local news BBC news report (and, so I’m told, on Radio WM).

To make matters even more interesting, the Mercury has managed to add a little more depth to the story and, in doing do, offered an explanation for Tom Watson’s obvious puzzlement as to why it was that he wasn’t aware that an ‘assassination attempt’ had been mounted on a parliamentary candidate in the constitutency next door.

He didn’t know because neither the machete attack or the shooting that took place in the pub were actually reported to the Police by the pub’s licencee (Councillor James Lloyd) - the Police only found out about these attacks through what the Mercury describes as local ‘gossip’.

The Mercury also alleges that, despite apparently being the target of both attacks, Councillor Lloyd not only failed to report them to the Police but was also rather uncooperative when the Police did start to take an interest in these incidents, in the first instance by stalling when the Police requested CCTV footage of the incidents from the pub’s security camera and, a little later on, by refusing outright to assist the police with their inquiries.

Now, while I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to the existence of a school of thought amongst some Tipton locals that takes the view that if the BNP want to go around shooting each other then far be it for us to intervene, so far as one can tell from the media pick-up since I flagged up the BNP’s connection to this particular pub, it would seem as though the two individuals who tried to shoot Councillor Lloyd are still at large in the local area and still, one would think, in possession of the illegal firearm used in the attack - and Councillor Lloyd appears to be entirely unwilling to offer the police any support or assistance, whatsoever, in their efforts to apprehend his assailants and,, therefore, protect the local community from the possibilty that this firearm could be used in further criminal activity…

…and yet the BNP’s claim is that they are ‘Tough on the causes of crime - Criminals’

Not in Tipton, they’re not…

[UPDATE]

One quick correction to make, now that the Mercury article has appeared online - it seems that despite Councillor Lloyd’s lack of cooperation - he refused even to give the Police a statement - the Police did successfully manage to charge two brothers with affray after gun attack.

However, although the Police caught the individual responsible for the machete attack, they were unable to bring charges due to Lloyd’s refusal to cooperate:

The final straw for West Midlands Police came in November when they were tipped off that a man had threatened people in the pub with a machete.

The attacker was caught but no charges were brought because Mr Lloyd again refused to make a statement or hand over CCTV footage.

Police officers claim that he made numerous excuses about being unable to download the evidence - before refusing to release it at all.

And as is also revealed in the article, the Police had some choice things to say about Councillor Lloyd in their report to the licencing committee.

In a report to the licensing committee of Sandwell Council last week, the force stated: “West Midlands Police are seeking revocation of the premises licence.

“Jamie Lloyd, being both the licence holder and designated premises supervisor, has repeatedly failed to meet licensing objectives in relation to crime and disorder and public safety by not reporting incidents of serious crime and disorder as they occur and not supporting prosecutions by refusing to provide witness statements or supply available CCTV evidence.

“He appears to have little or no concern for the safety of his customers in general.”

Or, indeed, the local community whom he, ostensibly, serves as a councillor - remember the pub is (or rather was) in the same ward for which Lloyd was elected to Sandwell Council.

In light of this information, one cannot but agree with the assessment given by another local councillor, Derek Rowley, who hold overall responsibility for community safety:

“He has not only failed as a councillor but simply as a decent member of the public,” said Coun Rowley.

“The police had every right to object to his licence and the brewery had no option but to sack him.

“It was his duty as a licensee to provide police with the CCTV footage they required and he should have behaved as any other responsible citizen would.

“His behaviour has been outrageous and I think he should do the honourable thing and resign from the council.

“The people of Tipton will be glad to see the back of the place.”

Amen to that…

It’s often said of politicians that you know when they’re is deep trouble because it then that they become the story and not the issues.

I wonder if the same can be said for a newspaper?

On Monday of this week, I posted an article on the closure of The Lagoon public house, in Tipton, a hostelry that was well known, locally, as the de facto headquarters of the local BNP, in which I noted with some curiosity that the only local newspaper to pick up on the story, the independently-owned, Wolverhampton-based, Express & Star (which has no connection whatsoever with Richard Desmond’s Express and Star group, which published the Daily Express, etc.) completely neglected to mention the pub’s BNP connection; an omission made all the more curious by the fact that its licencee, named as Jamie Lloyd in the report, is, in fact, Councillor James Lloyd, the leader of the BNP group on Sandwell Council.

Strange, thought I (and quite a few others who’ve contacted my since I ran the story).

Even without the BNP ‘angle’, the mere fact that a councillor is to appear before a licencing panel of his own Local Authority because the Police has requested the closure of a pub of which he is the licencee as a result of violent incidents involving a machete and a semi-automatic weapon is something most would consider a matter of legitimate public interest, especially as the pub, itself, in situated in the same ward that the councillor represents. And its not as if the reputation of the pub and its regular ‘clientele’ is not common knowledge locally, nor is difficult to make the connection between ‘Jamie Lloyd’ and ‘Councillor James Lloyd’ either by way of his political affiliations or by a simple search on 192.com, which shows him to be the only James Lloyd residing in Tipton.

And yet the Express and Star appear either to have been unaware of these facts at the time of publication, or simply decided they were of no relevance to local people.

A puzzle, I’m sure you’ll agree, and that became rather more puzzling on my being alerted to an interesting little exchange that’s been taking place of late on one of Stormfront’s forums…

Okay, a quick ‘who’s who’ is in order here.

‘Ontology’ is former BNP member (and briefly a Birmingham City Councillor), Sharon Ebanks, who was expelled from the BNP last year following her unsuccessful efforts to retain, in the courts, the seat she had been ‘awarded’ as a result of a miscount in last year’s council elections. As to why she was expelled from the BNP, there are conflicting accounts - Griffin alleges an assortment of ‘misconduct’, including anti-semitism; Ebanks claims that the BNP welched on a promise to cover her legal costs, despite advising her to defend the election case, and got shot of her when she complained about it and demands they cough-up.

Ebanks has since set up her own political party, which she has been actively promoting on Stormfront, much to the consternation of those forum users who are still members of the BNP - think ‘Life of Brian’ and ’splitters!’ and you’ll get the general picture.

‘White Resistance’ is one of the BNP members with whom Ebanks have been having a few ‘running battles’ of late, frictions which culminated in the posts shown in the screenshot, in which Ebanks ‘outs’ ‘White Resistance’, identifying him as the BNP’s local organiser, Steve Haddon (pictured below with Nick Griffin - Haddon is pasty-looking guy on the left) and also as being a journalist in the employ of the Express and Star newspaper - the same newspaper that some would consider to have soft-pedalled the story of the closure of The Lagoon by omitting all references to its BNP connections.

Mmm… Curioser and curiouser, as Alice might say.

As the Express and Star does not ‘byline’ its stories in either its online or print editions, there is no obvious way to confirm whether the information about Haddon’s employment given by Ebanks is correct - although ‘White Resistance’s’ response to Ebanks remarks do appear to confirm both that she has correctly identified his real world identity and that of his employer:

I keep my job because people can’t be sacked from their jobs for being a member of political parties. The E&S would be rather hypocritical if they did sack me considering its past views on this very subject. Again, nice try though.

What can one say?

Well, what one cannot say is that Haddon (if the information supplied by Ebanks is correct) has had any involvement or influence over the E&Ss coverage of the closure of The Lagoon - for all one can tell he might just as easily be assigned only to the coverage of local Sunday League football.

And, yes, he (as ‘White Resistance’) is quite correct in noting that he cannot (legally) be sacked because of his political affiliations or membership of a far right political party.

But that does not mean that the possibility that a journalist working for a local newspaper may also be a local organiser for a far-right political party with a well dopcumented history of racism and anti-semitism, is not a matter of legitimate local public interest or that such an occurance, if shown to be true, will not cause many local people to harbour serious misgivings about the Express and Star, or to consider somewhat more carefully the editoral intent behind some its stories, such as this one, which attacks a fairly routine swimming initiative as if it were the arrival of the Barbarian hordes…

A swimming session for women and children from ethnic minorities in Wolverhampton has sparked complaints from regular bath users who say it is encouraging segregation.

The weekly session, at the city’s Central Baths on Thursdays between 7pm and 8pm, has been introduced to encourage groups who would not normally get involved in swimming.

But it has come under fire as “political correctness gone beserk”, with council bosses today admitting a number of complaints had been received from members of the public.

Blinds costing around £1,000, funded by Kellogg’s Swim Active programme, have also been installed to improve privacy.The sessions replace a former aqua aerobics class. Council chiefs say they are aimed at Muslims, Sikhs and any other ethnic groups “with religious or cultural issues which would otherwise prevent them from taking part”.

Does one hour a week for people - actually women - who because of their religious/ beliefs cultural beliefs would not be able to make use of open public sessions really merit this kind of vitriol? Is this really ‘political correctness gone berserk’ or ’small-minded reporting gone berserk’?

Or is there a more subtle and consciously divisive intent on display?

Who, outside the E&S, actually knows - as the newspaper does not byline its stories we cannot even say for certain which ones Haddon may or may not have worked on, let alone whether his political views ‘colour’ his reporting - in fact, if the editor of the Express and Star is aware of Haddon’s afilliations, they may even go so far as to actively keep him off stories where his political opinions could, if (or rather when) exposed, turn out to be something of a liability to the newspaper.

One thing I have pondered carefully since receiving the information that appears to link ‘White Resistance’ with Haddon, and Haddon to the Express and Star (props to Lancaster UAF), is whether it would be unethical, on my part, to make use of this information - and as you’re reading this now, it should be obvious I’ve concluded that it isn’t.

The balance to be struck, as always, is that between legitimate public interest and individual privacy - does the right of the public to know that a local journalist has been identified as a BNP organiser in the town in which he works trump that of the individual’s right to privacy - a tough call at the best of times and one made tougher by the fact that Haddon is at best only a semi-public figure in a fairly minimal sense and only by virtue of articles published on the BNPs own website.

But then Haddon (if it is him) does work for a noticably right-wing newspaper that does, frequently, take a rather confrontational line of matters of race and ethnicity’ and the newspaper does serve an ethnically diverse area in which recent electoral gains by the BNP have caused some measure of unease amongst local minority communities, who quite naturally see the active presence of a racist political party as something of threat to the area’s otherwise pretty good track record on tolerance and diversity.

On balance, and on this occasion, the public right to know shades the argument because that right will necessarily inform local people’s perceptions of the Express and Star - Haddon’s political views could, conceivably, introduce a measure of bias into his reporting of some stories, bias that may not be corrected editorially given that the newspaper, itself, is one that expresses markedly right-wing views on many issues. Knowing this to be a possibility permits the public to adjust its perceptions of the newspaper accordingly and (hopefully) take a rather more sceptical view of its contents that they might otherwise have done had they been wholly unaware of Haddon’s background - again assuming that Ebanks’ claims are not a complete dud.

You’ll note that I’m neither calling for Haddon to be sacked due to his political affilliations, nor advocating protests outside the offices of the Express and Star - the former would be unlawful, the latter rather ill-advised and a little silly - it’s better to keep the BNP in plain sight, where you can keep an eye on them and openly challenge their pruirient views and values than drive them underground.

No, to simply be aware of the possibility that a local journalist may also be a BNP organiser is sufficient in this case, given that there are some small uncertainties as to the accuracy of the information and that there is no extant evidence to suggest that Haddon is or has been using his position as a journalist to quietly introduce BNP propaganda into its pages - and given the editorial stance of the Express and Star one has to wonder who could reasonably tell for certain if he had?
If the information supplied is correct then this is rather a matter for the Express and Star to ‘manage out’ as it sees fit and a matter in which the public interest rests simply in the knowing and not in seeing any particular action taken against the individual in question, unless concrete evidence did emerge of unethical conduct on his part.

And with that, I’ll sign off after the manner of the great Hunter Thompson.

Res Ipsa Loquiter

UPDATE: 24 Jan 2007

Lancaster UAF have kindly ‘asked the question’ of the local NUJ Chapter and received this response:

‘As regards this Haddon chap, it was raised at a meeting of Wolverhampton branch last week and all the former and current E&S members present did not
know of this guy.

Next day I checked with their reception and no one of that name could be found at the company.

It seems to be a phantom at the moment but there is the possibility that this person might be on some far-flung weekly or using an alias…’

Possibly not a journalist then, although it should be noted that the BNP does have form for using aliases on its website and public communications to conceal the identity of members; such as its press secretary Stuart Russell (real name) aka ‘Dr Phil Edwards’.

Russell/Edwards’ claim to a doctorate is, according to the excellent Disillusioned Kid, rather dubious:

As an adjunct to the above, it might be worth briefly considering the provenance of the article’s author. “Dr Phil Edwards” is in fact a pseudonym adopted by the party’s press secretary Stuart Russell. Even his doctorate is dubious, he claims to have taught quantum mechanics at the University of Nottingham, although when I directly challenged him on the issue of his qualifications he dodged the question. Make of that what you will.

And, indeed, a search for evidence to verify Russell’s claim to have taught quantum mechanics turns up absolutely nothing, not even a single citation on a published academic paper, which is the minimum one would expect to find for a theoretical physicist with a doctorate - the only Stuart Russell who does turn up in a search, and then only be citation, is a highly-regarded Professor at UCL Berkeley and a specialist in artificial intelligence, and I can be absolutely certain this in not the BNPs Stuart Russell, not least because I’m already familar with his work.

Finally, on Russell/Edwards, the plot thickens even more thanks to this transcript of a Radio 4 science programme, ‘Checkup’ from July 2005…

MYERS

Okay, let’s take another call now. And we’ll go to Grantham and Dr Stuart Russell is there, hello?

RUSSELL

Yes hello. When I was involved with the Nottingham University Psychic Research Group we used to have an orthopaedic surgeon came to give a talk on hypnosis as used in anaesthesia, I wondered if - that was Dr Ian Fletcher - I wonder if as time’s gone by whether this has actually progressed at all?

WILKINSON

I think that’s a very, very interesting area Dr Russell and it’s an area where if you’re a keen hypnotist you’re trying to push it forward a great deal all the time and that the problem, as I understand it, with hypnosis or other things perhaps like acupuncture is that not everybody is as susceptible as the next person to hypnosis or say acupuncture…

I can find no formal record of a Psychic Research Group at the University of Nottingham, although Dr Alan Gauld, a former president of the Society for Psychical Research is a retired Reader in Psychology at the School of Psychology of the University of Nottingham - but then that’s still a hell of long way from teaching quantum mechanics and suggests, at best, that Russell may have spent some time at Nottingham University as an undergraduate - at worst he may just own a few of Gauld’s books and be leeching off his academic reputation as a backstory to this own doubtful claims.

None of this answers the question as to why the E&S failed to make the BNP connection with the closure of The Lagoon or discover/disclose any of the other information that journalists working for its local rival, the Birmingham Post & Mail group, seem to have had little difficulty in uncovering.

Nor, indeed, does it shed any light on why Sharon Ebanks thought ‘Haddon’s’ (alleged) employment at the Express & Star significant enough to taunt him with it - if Haddon’s just the teaboy or a newspaper packer, then what difference does his being the local BNP organiser make?

And then there are these two comments, from a poster in Wolverhampton…

Amazing! So the only people who work for a newspaper are journalists or paperboys/girls? How do they get by without management, advertising, sales, production, distribution etc etc?

I see no mention of the term ‘journalist’ in the ‘expose’

Steve Haddon’s job has no influence on the content of the paper, hence why the witch hunt ground to halt with the ’switchboard has no listing for him and enquires to journalists on the paper have resulted in ‘never heard of him’ responses.

Comment by Pasty looking guy on the left(Just in case you got him mixed up with Nick Griffin!) 01.19.07

and

‘If it shown that the information given by Ebank is wrong, then of course I’ll post a correction’

????

Comment by Pasty looking guy on the left(Just in case you got him mixed up with Nick Griffin!) 01.24.07

And post an update, I have, as soon as I had confirmation on information from ‘GeorgeP’ also posted on the 19th.

But then, why is ‘Pasty looking guy…’ getting quite so jumpy, here, just because a question or two is being asked?

Another conundrum…

Thanks go out to The Stirrer, who followed up my story on the impending closure of The Lagoon Public House in Tipton by speaking to its licencee, who I can now confirm is, indeed, Councillor James Lloyd, the leader of the BNP group on Sandwell Council.

The BNP councillor who runs one of the most notorious pubs in the Black Country has called time in his efforts to keep it open after fights on the premises involving guns and machetes – news that will shake the party’s claim to be tough on law and order.

James Lloyd who runs the Lagoon in his own Princes End ward in Tipton told The Stirrer last night that he probably wouldn’t even turn up at a meeting of Sandwell’s licensing justices today where it’s future is due to be discussed.

The police want the place shut, and Lloyd who has been the licensee for two years told us:  “I’ve only got 12 months left on the lease, and I’ve run out of steam with the place.”

He said that the pub wouldn’t re-open after closing time last night.

A nice, easy decision for the licencing panel that meets today, then, and welcome news for the local community.
None of this, of course, addresses the question of why the Express & Star appear to have soft-pedalled the BNP connection to this story, but its nice to see that at least one local journalist knows how to do their job properly.

It’s long been known, locally, that the Wolverhampton-based Express & Star newspaper is no great friend of the political left, so much so that it long ago earned itself the nickname of the ‘Excess & Swastika’ for the rather obvious right-wing bias of much of its content.

Even by the E&S’s usual standards, some of the omissions of fact in an article that made the front page of the print edition on Saturday, make one begin to wonder quite how far the paper is ‘leaning to port’ these days.

PUB FACES THE LOSS OF ITS LICENCE

A Tipton pub that was at the centre of a machete attack, shooting and brawls is set to lose its licence after a request from police to the council.

Nothing too unusual there, you might think. Most areas, after all, have at least one ‘rough’ pub that’s better known for the problems caused by its regular punters than for the quality of it beer.

This is just a local interest story, then… or at least that’s how it looks until you find out the name of the pub in question.

The Lagoon in High Street, Princess End, will learn its fate next Tuesday after police asked Sandwell Council to revoke its licence.

The Lagoon does indeed have a bad reputation locally, but its local notoriety stems from something rather more that simply incidents of violence on its premises - the pub is also what amounts to the local headquarters of the BNP in Tipton. It is (or was, as I’m informed that it is currently closed, pending Tuesday’s meeting) both the favoured watering hole of the BNP’s local ‘foot soldiers’ and the usual venue for its meetings, a fact that you might have thought that the Express & Star would have mentioned in its article, especially when one has read the report that Sandwell Council’s Licencing Panel is set to consider on Tuesday, which reveals that its actually the Police who are seeking the closure of the pub on the ground of ‘the prevention of crime and disorder and public safety‘.

Knowing that you might well wonder quite what would possess any licencee in their right mind to allow their pub to be used as the de facto local headquarters of a far-right racist political party, let alone one in which trouble is know to follow closely in its wake?

Well, the rest of the report, which details two of incidents about which the Police have expressed particular concerns, also provides the answer to that question, even if the newspaper, for reasons known only to itself, fails to make that answer explicit to its readers.

West Midlands Police has put together a report listing problems at the venue which will be considered by licensing bosses.

The document details incidents that occurred at the pub throughout last year.

It states that on June 2 a fight took place in The Lagoon between three customers.

The report said designated premises supervisor Jamie Lloyd separated two parties involved and allowed one man to leave. “The departing participant at this time had received what can only be described as a good beating, with loss of teeth,” police said.

The following day the victim of the attack returned to the pub with another man who handed him a semi-automatic weapon which was fired at and narrowly missed Mr Lloyd.

In November it was reported that people in the bar had been threatened by a man wielding a machete and that Mr Lloyd had again been the target of the attack.

Before moving on, I should correct on minor omission in the article, Jamie Lloyd, who is named as the designated premises supervisor by the Express and Star is also cited as the Licence holder for the premises in the report to Sandwell Council, but that omission is of little significance when compared to the other major piece of information omitted from the article, which relates to the activities of Mr Lloyd when he’s not engaged in running a pub.

Jamie Lloyd, so my sources in the area assure me, is none other than Councillor James Lloyd, BNP member, councillor for the same Princes End Ward in which the Lagoon is situated and current leader of the BNP group on Sandwell Council - an assertion that appears to be confirmed by several articles on the BNP’s own website in which Councillor Lloyd is routinely referred to as ‘Jamie’ . In fact, and by way of irony, this photograph (below) of Councillor Lloyd, which was used to promote his parliamentary candidacy at the last general election (in which he stood in West Bromwich West) has been identified by my sources as actually having been taken on the car park of The Lagoon.

Now I don’t know about you, but I can’t help being just a tad curious as to why the Express & Star appear not have made the connection between ‘Jamie Lloyd’, publican and licencee of a pub that is well known as the BNP’s HQ in Tipton and BNP Councillor James Lloyd, not least when a qucik scan of the local electoral roll reveals that there is but one James Lloyd listed on the electoral roll in Tipton.

Has the paper simply not done its homework on this story, or does it not think that the people of Tipton have a legimate interest in knowing that when their Council’s licencing panel meets on Tuesday, the question before is not simply a matter of the future of the pub itself - my understanding is that it is to be sold off by its owners for redevelopment as flats, anyway, but also whether a fellow councillor, one who sits on no less than ten different council committees as BNP group leader, is unfit to run a local pub to the extent that even his customers appear to have been trying to kill him?

As things stand, it seems doubtful that tomorrow’s licencing panel can arrive at any conclusion other than that The Lagoon should close, and the pub certainly will not be missed by its neighbour. But then spare a thought for Tipton’s other licensees who, on the closure of The Lagoon, now have the face the possibility of acquring the custom of a its former regulars (and everything that goes with such dubious company) - my local source suggest that the landlord on one Tipton pub, which has already had the doubtful pleasure of the BNP’s company since the closure