BNP’s delayed accounts reveal financial disaster zone

The British National Party’s treasury department appears to have “lost” nearly £90,000 of funds belonging to its local groups, according to the party’s 2009 accounts, released today.

The BNP’s national and regional accounts were submitted to the Electoral Commission on 6 January, two days before the fines for their late submission would have doubled to £2,500. They reveal the full horror of the disaster area that is the BNP’s treasury department.

Even Griffin could not deny it. “The patchiness of our professionalisation programme inevitably produced internal stresses and gaps, including in due course the late submission of accounts,” he wrote in his introduction.

Clive Jefferson, the BNP’s fifth national treasurer since the start of 2009 – four are listed in the accounts, Jenny Noble being omitted – spoke more plainly. “From what I have been able to determine, the root of the problem was the inability of central treasury and accounting unit staff to implement new system adequate to cope with the massive increase in income and expenditure in 2009, compounded with the failure of professional accountants brought in to address the weaknesses they were expected to rectify. Both I and the party Chairman are frankly at a loss to understand why this was the case”.

It was not of course the moronic Jefferson’s fault. “I was appointed the Party’s Treasurer on 28th October 2010, which was subsequent to the records for 2009 being made available to the auditor. I can provide no information of any value regarding the accounts.”

The “professional accountants” were those supplied by Jim Dowson in Belfast, until late last year the much hyped fundraising and management consultant, until he fell out with Griffin and Patrick Harrington, Griffin’s old comrade from his National Front political soldier days, who now helps Griffin run the BNP.

The regional accounts, which bring together the income and expenditure of all the party’s local groups, similarly include an “I know nothing” claim by the new regional treasurer James Mole, who took over from David Hannam in mid September 2010. No doubt he is hoping not to be blamed for the dire consequences of the party’ inability to maintain bank reconciliations and account properly for its income and outgoings. A reconciliation of branches’ and groups’ balances on the very last page of the regional accounts shows that only £4,496 is available to meet the £93,579 the party supposedly owes its branches, which means that local units are only “entitled to 4.8p in the pound”.

No explanation is given for how this happened. But on 16 January, Eddy Butler, who last summer failed in his challenge to Nick Griffin for the party leadership, wrote: “I recommend that all local units open their own bank accounts … If you want to be able to hold on to your locally raised money it is vital, no it is essential, that you do this. …

“If you pay into the BNP bank account your hard earned money will be drawn out and wasted by Nick Griffin to pay for the court cases he has negligently embroiled the BNP in.”

That wastage is not yet apparent in the 2009 accounts, which show only £52,122 spent on “legal costs”. Far more can be expected in 2010, which includes the damages paid over the stupid Marmite copyright breach, and 2011. However, in his introduction to the national accounts Griffin gave full vent to his hate for the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which took legal action to force the party to end racial discrimination in its constitution. “Parallel to the officially sanctioned mob violence against us [a reference to the demonstrations against Griffin’s appearance on Question Time in October 2009], a campaign of ‘legal’ persecution was also launched,” wrote Griffin, an action “motivated not by genuine concerns about alleged ‘discrimination’ but by political malice”.

Griffin also reveals his continuing anger at having to admit ethnic minority members, who were “hitherto excluded primarily in order to provide at least one forum in which members of the indigenous community could discuss the problems inflicted upon them by the ruling elite’s policies of enforced multiculturalism”.

Griffin judges that 2009 was the party’s “best year ever” because of its European election success, but that victory held within it the seeds of the party’s subsequent decline. Admitting that the party’s activity had fallen off in the second half of 2009, Griffin ascribes it largely to the “energy that had to be expended at the top of the party getting to grips with the mechanics and responsibilities of representing British interests in the European Parliament”. In other words he accepts the criticism Butler has voiced recently that being an MEP means he cannot lead the party properly.

“Several new members of staff were brought in with the intention of avoiding this new focus leaving a management gap back at home, but by November it was becoming clear that this measure had failed and that clearing the problem up was likely to involve tough decisions and key personnel problems early in 2010,” Griffin continues. The results, in terms of legal expenses and settlements with former employees, will no doubt be revealed in the 2010 and 2011 accounts.

The audit report, by Silver & Co, who have audited the party’s accounts for many years, is surprisingly less devastating than the previous year, considering the admitted failures to keep adequate records, many of which are detailed in the accounts. Unlike in 2008, they consider that the financial statements “give a true and fair view of the state of the Party’s affairs as at 31st December 2009 … in so far as a full disclosure of the facts has been made in these accounts. But they cannot be classed as ‘true and fair’ under the usual definition of that term.”

Quite what that means is anyone’s guess, especially as the audit report goes on to state: “we have to accept that we cannot form an opinion as to the completeness of the financial statements, as we have had to base them on the information submitted, and controls were not in place to ensure the information on which these financial statements are based is complete”.

One suspects that the fudge of a report was the product of long and hard negotiations between Jefferson and the auditors to avoid a second wholly negative judgement and another investigation by the Electoral Commission of the party’s failure to comply with the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000.

As for the accounts themselves, they confirm that the party did indeed increase its income to nearly £2 million although only £1.3 million is shown donations, the result of the controversial appointment of Dowson’s Midas Consultancy. The figures may be way out, however, as “whilst details of donations made were entered into the membership data base that information was not reconcilied [sic] to the bankings”.

Membership income rose from £166,006 in 2008 to £626,180, although membership numbers only went up from 9,801 to 12,632. Noting the inconsistency, the accounts add: “The figure shown seems high and may include an element of donation income”.

Income from commercial activities is well down – from £130,000 to under £30,000. Partly that is due to the party apparently not being able to sell a single copy of its two publications, Voice of Freedom and Identity. Income from “merchandise” – books, mugs, t-shirts, etc under the Excalibur operation – is down because it was franchised out to Arthur Kemp, the party’s South African website editor, during the year.

Costs of commercial activities grew to £450,000, resulting in a huge loss. However a note admits that this is the result of the party not having systems in place to split the huge costs of printing, postage and delivery between commercial activities and election material. If that split could not be made, it must surely follow that the party’s return of expenditure for the European election, which showed £283,000, cannot be correct. The accounts themselves declare £271,000 spent on the European election.

The list of admitted accounting failures goes on. “A considerable amount of the ‘Trafalgar Club’ costs could be considered to be more to do with printing costs. The total cost covered is £23,900,” another note states, adding: “In the nominal ledger the ‘description shown’ is either ‘inv Held by D Hannam’ or simply ‘D Hannam’, indicating that the invoice is not available within the Party’s records.

Hannam was widely derided as incompetent at the time of the internal rebellion in winter 2007/08 when he was regional treasurer, but was promoted to national treasurer in February 2010 and in July boasted that everything was in place to ensure all financial statements were submitted on time. By October he was out of the job.

Simon Darby, the BNP’s former deputy chairman, also failed to account for expenditure, with “no documentation” available to cover a payment of £3,000 for “security costs” during the period while he was treasurer.

And in the first four months of 2009 a total of £37,450 was “entered in the Purchase Ledger as J A Walker payments” for which “No documentary evidence was put through the records to show what these payments covered”. John Walker has held various jobs in the party, including national treasurer, and is currently on the staff of the BNP’s MEPs, paid out of European Parliament funds. The unexplained payments to him occurred while Noble was treasurer, but the accounts for some reason avoid mentioning her name.

The accounts also show the party spent £168,000 on additions to its vehicles, equipment, fixtures and fittings, much of it the result of appeals during the year. Such an investment might be expected to stand the party in good stead for the future, except that “The Treasurer is in the process of reviewing the schedules which back-up the schedule above, which the auditor has provided, both in terms of what assets were in existence at 31 December 2009, and after the current re-organisation of the Party and the closing of certain offices”. In other words the BNP has no idea whether its assets still exist or ever existed, and many have been scrapped because the party has closed most of its offices, including the Belfast call centre, which was under the control of Dowson.

Writing off the doubtful assets in the 2009 accounts would of course have increased its loss of £57,202 for the year, a far cry from the profit the party has at various times claimed it achieved in the year. The loss increased the party’s net insolvency to £361,000, as a result of which it owed over £355,000 to suppliers and £37,000 to HM Revenue and Customs in PAYE tax and national insurance on staff wages and VAT.

Among those owed money was “Ad Lorries Ltd”, actually Adlorries.com Ltd. The accounts confirm what Searchlight revealed many months ago, namely that “a considerable amount of transactions were paid through and processed through” this company, which is owned by Dowson. The full amount the party was invoiced by Dowson’s company in 2009 was £741,290, which included £58,680 of management fees for running the Belfast call centre, part of the £162,000 a year Dowson was paid by the party. However even Dowson had to wait for his money. At 31 December 2009 the BNP owed his company £71,967, the accounts reveal.

The amount going through Adlorries represents a huge proportion of the party’s total expenditure of just over £2 million, justifying Searchlight’s accusation that Dowson virtually owned the BNP. Another accusation that the accounts prove correct is that the party massively inflated its payroll, providing jobs for those in Griffin’s favour. Expenditure on staff costs more than doubled to £660,000 in 2009, though this includes around £100,000 of consultancy fees paid to Dowson.

One person who always gets whatever he wants from the party is its chairman. During 2009 the party spent the huge sum of £33,519 on installing a security system for him. Andrew Brons, the party’s Yorkshire MEP, only merited £9,136, as did a person by the name of “Ms E Uttley”.

Jefferson states that a programme has been agreed with the auditor to ensure that the 2010 accounts are submitted on time and that “we are able to repair to a large extent any possible deficiencies in the operation of the Treasury department in 2010”. Deficiencies in the party’s finances will be harder to repair. The party ended 2010 unable to pay its printers, with staff waiting for their wages and mounting legal expenses from failed court actions and employment tribunal cases.

On 18 January 2011 Griffin was required to pay £45,000 into court as a result of having to withdraw a court case against four former employees. The total cost is expected to be £115,000. He failed to make the payment. And with donations drying up and demoralised members deserting the failing party, the BNP is unlikely to dig itself out of its deep financial hole.

Thanks to Searchlight / HOPE not hate by Sonia Gable

Edit The BNP's Statement of Accounts can be found here

The Truth Truck of Doom strikes again!

I'd be willing to bet that Nick Griffin frequently rues the day that he ever had the idea of conning the membership of the BNP into donating to the so-called Truth Truck appeal. Ever since it appeared, the truck has been nothing but trouble, only encouraging thick idiots like Clive Jefferson to disturb the peace by driving around while shouting incoherent rubbish at a bewildered public.

But that's been far from the worst problem - the main one being the question of who actually owns the bloody thing. Griffin raised the money on the back of a purchase of a new truck, apparently changed his mind (without telling anyone) and decided a decent second-hand truck would be better value for money, and has since been vilified for apparently leasing the truck from Dowson instead, rather than fulfilling his side of the bargain and buying one, second-hand or not.

One of Griffin's main problems is that he is a liar in a party of liars. It must be hard to be consistent (or indeed, coherent) in one's lies if everyone else is lying and changing stories all the time. Thus, at times, tales of fraud and incompetence within the BNP disappear into the ether not because they are untrue, but because they get lost in a swirling mish-mash of truth, lie, bullshit and ignorance. But just occasionally, a lie reveals a greater lie...

In a post on the BNP website in which Griffin refers to his intention to stand down as party leader in 2013 (assuming he isn't booted out or jailed before then), he has decided to clear the air about a number of things, among them the ownership of the Lie Lorry. He says;

'The Truth Truck is owned by the BNP, contrary to internet rumour-mongers, a fact confirmed in person by the BNP treasurer who paid for the vehicle, Jennie Noble.'

Fair enough. So why, on May 22nd 2009, was it reported that;

'...High Court Enforcement Officers attempting to seize the vehicle [the truck] to settle judgements on behalf of freelance journalist Mark Croucher were informed that the vehicle did not, in fact, belong to the BNP. This was confirmed in a subsequent letter from the BNPs solicitors, Gilbert Davies & Partners of Welshpool who wrote, “the goods referred to are registered in the name of another person who…has no connection with the judgement debtors”.'

If the Lie Lorry does in fact belong to the BNP, Mark Croucher was lied to and, incidentally, so were the BNP's solicitors, who would hardly have told Croucher what they did unless they believed it to be the truth. If the Lie Lorry does NOT belong to the BNP, the party is lying to the public and its membership, and Jennie Noble appears to be complicit in that lie. Either way, this whole Truth Truck/Lie Lorry scam smacks of fraud hastily and untidily being covered-up.

Heads the BNP is lying: tails the BNP is lying. Take your pick.

Image courtesy of this great thread on b3ta.

British National Party required to explain ‘inadequate’ accounts

The British National Party’s former treasurer could face criminal proceedings for delivering “inadequate accounts” to the Electoral Commission

The BNP’s 2008 accounts finally emerged three weeks before the fine for their late submission to the Electoral Commission would have doubled to £2,000.

Like the 2007 accounts, the latest financial statements do not give a true and fair view of the state of the party’s affairs at 31 December 2008 and of the year’s results, in the opinion of Silver & Co, the party’s regular auditors. However this year the BNP had no easy target to blame of the likes of Kenny Smith, one of the leaders of the party’s internal rebellion in winter 2006, who was used as the excuse for failings in both the 2006 and 2007 accounts.

In 2008 the party simply could not get its act together. As Nick Griffin, the party chairman, explained in his introduction to the accounts, soon after June 2008, when Jenny Noble took over as party treasurer from John Walker, it “became apparent that the task of maintaining central office accounts had become too big for any one individual”. So the job was “outsourced” to “an independent Chartered Accountant and Accounts Technician with the aim of presenting acceptable accounts for the accounting year 2009”.

In other words the BNP gave up on the 2008 accounts, though Griffin admitted lamely: “We recognize that it is not acceptable to present inadequate accounts”.

The failure meant that the accounts not only did not give a true and fair view but also did not “comply with the requirements of the Political Parties Elections and Referendums Act 2000 as adequate records have not been made available”. In 2007 the accounts did comply with the PPERA, despite not giving a true and fair view.

A spokesperson for the Electoral Commission told Searchlight that they had “a number of concerns” about the financial statements and the inadequate records referred to in Griffin’s report and have urgently requested more detailed information about the inadequacies from the party’s auditors. The BNP has until 8 January to reply, after which the Electoral Commission will consider what further action to take.

Under the PPERA 2000 the party’s treasurer on 31 December 2008, the last day of the accounting period concerned, commits a criminal offence by not complying with the regulations governing party accounts. Although the 2008 accounts are presented by Philip Reddall, he was appointed BNP treasurer only in autumn 2009. At the end of 2008 Noble was still the treasurer, until she was shunted out in April 2009 to run the Trafalgar Club, a task she appears to have performed with similar lack of success.

Her only defence, if the Electoral Commission decides to prosecute, would be that she took all reasonable steps and exercised due diligence to ensure the accounts were adequate, or that the failures were attributable to the period before she became treasurer and she did her best to put things right.

Despite the unreliability of the accounts, the figures are very interesting as they prove that the BNP has lied repeatedly to its members and donors.

The BNP started its main fundraising drive at the tail end of 2007 and built it up throughout 2008 with a number of appeals for objectives such as the launch of its provocatively racist Racism Cuts Both Ways booklet, the May 2008 election campaign and the notorious Truth Truck appeal.

The accounts show that the party did indeed raise more money than ever before. Income from donations and fundraising activities (the distinction is unclear) amounted to £688,764 compared to £221,456 in 2007.

Nevertheless the party ended the year with a loss of £82,642, an increase of £32,000 over the previous year’s loss. It was also a far cry from the £100,000 profit claimed in June 2009 by Jim Dowson, the militant anti-abortion campaigner behind the BNP’s fundraising efforts, who controls its Belfast telesales centre and other essential party functions. It was Dowson too who supplied the “independent chartered accountant”, John Thompson, who works for Dowson’s various business interests in Belfast, now charged with getting the BNP’s books into better shape for 2009.

The loss left the BNP bankrupt to the tune of £168,233. While that may not be much compared to some political parties, it is a significant proportion of the party’s turnover of under £1 million and the latest in a trend of growing losses. To stay afloat the party continued to raid the funds of its branches and groups, stayed in arrears with its tax and VAT payments and relied on the advance payment of membership subscriptions for the following year.

Far from spending the increased income on campaigning, most of the money has gone to paying party staff and propping up the party’s lacklustre publications and its failed Excalibur merchandising operation.

The start of 2008 had seen Excalibur’s move, to great acclaim, into new premises with a “vast array of new equipment”. At the end of the year Excalibur was out on its ear after Searchlight, in conjunction with Lancaster Unity and Wales Friends of Searchlight, had tracked it down to a Deeside Industrial Estate (click here for details).

According to the accounts, Excalibur’s stock, consisting of tatty, cringe-making and overpriced goods, including white mugs reading “I’m a white mug”, may have been worth £5,000 to £6,000 at the end of the year, but “the very nature of the stock raises questions as to its realisable value”. In other words, no one wants to buy them – even the BNP doesn’t have enough white mugs to buy its white mugs.

The total cost of the BNP’s “commercial activities”, consisting of Excalibur, Identity, Voice of Freedom and unspecified other printed material, amounted to £285,341 compared to income of £130,526, a loss of £125,000.

Staff wages and “professional fees” – a term that includes staff paid without accounting for income tax and national insurance – grew by over £100,000 compared to 2007. The accounts state there were 13 staff. Management and administration costs rose by £96,000 to £263,000. Rent and associated costs of the short-lived Excalibur unit undoubtedly pushed up this total.

Campaign expenditure was a mere £74,580, of which only £41,095 was on leaflets and £14,325 was the cost of fundraising. Back in March 2008 a BNP appeal letter asked for donations towards the 2008 London and local council election campaigns, promising that the London campaign would cost at least £80,000. That now emerges as another lie.

The party did buy £29,000 of equipment, far less than it made out when it moved into the Excalibur unit. It also spent £19,550 on buying vehicles. The figure does not include the “truth truck”, an advertising vehicle and trailer better known as the lie lorry. Contrary to statements in fundraising appeals that the lorry was “bought and paid for”, Searchlight established that the party was renting it from Dowson’s Adlorries.com business. The accounts do not refer to the “Truth Truck” by name but state that the party leases one vehicle under an agreement that does not give “rights approximating to ownership”.

The accounts also reveal some interesting non-financial details. The Young BNP was “defunct” during the year, “with the failed head being removed at the end of the year and replaced by a new team”. The reference is to the summary dismissal of Danny Lake and his replacement by Mike Howson, a man in his mid-forties, after Lake raised concerns about the “psychopathic” behaviour of Mark Bulman, an erratic and alcoholic teenage YBNP member who was also treasurer of Howson’s BNP branch.

The BNP’s security department is described as responsible for running party events “correctly to ensure the health and safety of all those attending”. This is the bunch of thugs who surround Griffin wherever he goes and have scant concern for the “health and safety” of those on the receiving end of their activities.

The South African influence remained strong, with both Arthur Kemp and Lance Stewart on the party’s 15-strong Advisory Council. Kemp is the BNP’s website editor and during 2008 was also in charge of Excalibur dispatch and “developing Voting Membership educational material”. Stewart, a former high-ranking officer in the South African Police, heads the BNP’s “Intelligence Department”.

BNP members, of whom the accounts state there were 9,801 at 31 December 2008, will not understand or care about the shambolic state of the BNP’s finances revealed in these statements, the potential criminal charges faced by the former treasurer or the proof that the party’s fundraising appeals were a pack of lies. They will not doubt go on pouring money into the bottomless and unaccountable pit that is the racist BNP.

Hope not hate

Treasurer shifted and more financial chaos as cash disappears into BNP black hole

• Main bank account down to rock-bottom
• Local accounts plundered to make up shortfall
• Continuing anger over Spanish jaunts
• Treasurer sidelined to BNP post office job
• Begging letters get more hysterical
• Panic over £30,000 gamble

There's more chaos in the British National Party this weekend as branches reel from the news that once again their accounts have been rifled to prop up an incompetent and extravagant party management.

Furious fundholders have been in touch with us to complain that their local accounts have been raided again because head office has disastrously overspent and can no longer manage to balance the books without thieving from the branches. Another fundholder with a direct line to the treasury has revealed that the main BNP account has hit rock-bottom and stood at less than £3000 a few days ago - not a great deal for a so-called 'major' political party.

BNP head office has often rightly been accused of mismanagement and worse, and the party's former treasurer John Walker (replaced yesterday by former Solihull organiser Jenny Noble) has been rumoured to have hit the bottle heavily as the party's financial situation continues to worsen. Having the incompetent moron Dave Hannam as his second in command can't have been a lot of help either.

Perhaps Walker can relax a little now as he seems to have been put in charge of the equivalent of the BNP post office, becoming the party's National Dispatch and Logistics Manager, a sinecure that looks more like a job that's been created in a hurry to keep him quiet and amenable rather than a job that could be done by any office staff who happen to be on duty.

Oddly, in the article on the BNP website explaining Walker's new job, this little gem appears:

'After months of growth and part way into a major restocking, it has become clear that the Excalibur and Great White Records merchandising operations (now under the same roof), together with the huge mail outs of BNP bulletins and publications, has become such an undertaking that a full-time National Dispatch and Logistics Manager is needed at our Deeside industrial unit.'

As neither Excalibur (the BNP's increasingly tatty merchandise arm) nor Great White Records (GWR) produce accounts that can be perused by the public (presumably because any such accounts would show the excrutiatingly low turnover of each operation) it's hard to know how busy Walker will actually be. Certainly he won't be run off his feet by Great White Records - we're told that sales rarely hit ten a week. But what makes the paragraph above more than usually interesting is the mention of Great White Records being part of the BNP's merchandising operation, when it was our belief that GWR was wholely and solely owned by Dopey Dave Hannam, though the BNP membership forked out £50,000 for the creation of the company. Do we assume that GWR makes a payment to the BNP for the use of its premises and/or its newly-installed National Dispatch and Logistics Manager? After all, the last accounts that were submitted to the Electoral Commission showed £9,618 paid to GWR by the BNP for 'sound assistance at venues'. Is this reciprocal or does the money flow just the one way? We suspect the latter.

Incompetence in the BNP is endemic but nowhere is it more evident than in the treasury. The File on Four programme, broadcast by Radio Four back in February, produced a whole raft of accusations of mismanagement, skullduggery and incompetence against Walker and his merry band of idiots, including the revelation that the BNP is behind with its PAYE payments (that is, the tax it takes from employee's wage packets that it is then supposed to pass on to HM Revenue and Customs). Naturally, the party still hasn't paid the bill and part of the reason for the sudden attack on branch funds was that Her Majesty was getting a tad ratty about the lack of revenue coming from the BNP. Not that the raid helped all that much - last month alone, the party paid out nearly forty thousand pounds on wages, expenses and part of the debt to the Revenue plus a further part-debt to Royal Mail. There's also a big question mark over exactly how much was taken from one place and how much actually made it to its rightful location. The current rumour is that £36,000 was lifted from the branches but only £24,000 made it into the appropriate account. We have no idea how true this is but all further information would be welcome.

Three further financial matters seem to be exciting our fundholders at the moment - the peculiar case of the RentSmart computers, the management jaunt to Spain and the £30,000 gamble. The RentSmart deal is small but peculiar (a bit like Dave Hannam) so we'll tackle that first.

It seems that the BNP signed up to a deal with a company named RentSmart a while back to purchase a number of computers and allied goodies for its operations (including no doubt the ones it claimed were pinched by Sadie Graham and Kenny Smith). Apparently whatever deal the party got eventually cost it around £1,000 per month, an astonishing amount considering that RentSmart examples a Toshiba laptop from only £3 per week on its web page! The RentSmart deal includes a brokerage fee and a commission on the insurance that the rentee (?) takes out as part of the agreement, and if we consider the claims we've heard in the past that all key personnel were issued with laptops and that the new operational base in Wales has been fully equipped with PC World's finest, the £1,000 a month doesn't seem quite so unlikely after all.

Nevertheless, a thousand pounds a month is a lot of dosh and questions are being asked about the intelligence of a three-year rental contract that costs more than it would to pop along to the average computer store and buy something off the shelf, incurs brokerage charges and is for something that most party members consider extravagant to say the least. As one of our correspondents pointed out to us; 'If you haven't already got a computer of your own, you probably don't need one. And if you have, you've already got one and you don't need another one'.

Bad feeling seems to be rife in the BNP at the moment and a lot of it is still revolving around the management jaunts to Spain back in March and April, in that crucial period just before the elections. It was noted that it was Griffin's chums and favourites who went off for their holiday in the sun, and the weak explanation that it was 'cheaper to send people there than to hire suitable facilities in Britain' continues to rankle with a membership that feels it is constantly being harassed with increasingly bizarre and amateurish begging letters (see the tatty Truth Truck begging letter on the left) that are less effective each time a new one is sent out amid continuing claims that the members need to provide just a little more cash for that one big push that just never seems to happen. We've received a number of emails referring to the Spanish management training trip over the past few weeks, a few of which make the perfectly valid point that Griffin's barn was renovated at enormous expense out of BNP funds for precisely this purpose but never actually seems to be used by anyone.

Perhaps the greatest concern of our correspondents is the £30,000 bill that the party could be lumbered with for taking Sadie Graham and co to court - a huge gamble of Nick Griffins which even his closest allies find hard to explain away. It's clear to everyone in the party who knows anything at all about Sadie Graham that she has no money of her own and even if the party wins its High Court case against her, the bill it will still be liable for is going to be enormous - the estimated £30,000, which Griffin told the judge is what it had cost to bring the case against the so-called rebels. Gilbert Davies, a firm of lawyers at Welshpool used by Griffin for this action, are in a rather better position to sue than the average creditor but what seems to really be worrying our correspondents is whether the costs are for Griffin to pay or for the party itself. If the latter is the case, it could well be that the end is nigh - unless some mystery benefactor suddenly shows up with a large wodge of cash.

It has been suggested that Griffin is going to go all out to win the North West seat in next year's Euro election in the hope of bailing the party out of its financial mess but this will require some serious fund-raising beforehand which the branches are not likely to welcome, and a couple of additional problems are emerging that might complicate things next May. The England First Party is busily raising money to stand against Griffin, as is former BNP rebel Bev Jones/Scott, who is planning to stand against him as an Independent.

Things are not looking good for the BNP - again. And once again, it looks like financial incompetence is at the bottom of all the party's woes. But then that's what often happens when you give a former bankrupt and chancer the keys to the safe.