‘Make BNP expenses public’ call

A Euro MP has challenged BNP leader Nick Griffin to make his expenses claims public.

Liberal Democrat Chris Davies, who represents the North West in the European Parliament, says that despite an allowance of £14,000 a month for the payment of staff, Mr Griffin lists only three employees, one of whom is part time and one of whom also works for Yorkshire MEP Andrew Brons.

Mr Griffin is the only one of the eight North West MEPs not to provide financial information at all on his website.

The Electoral Commission is currently investigating the BNP for a breach of regulations after its own auditor refused to sign off the 2008 accounts.

The Bolton News

BNP leader Nick Griffin criticised for Haiti remarks

People dig for bodies in Port-au-Prince

Claims by BNP leader Nick Griffin that the UK winter will cause as many deaths as the Haiti earthquake have been condemned by the leader of Labour MEPs

Glenis Willmott said fellow MEP Mr Griffin was trying to "stir up racial hatred" in his comments, made on social media websites on Thursday. She said: "How can anyone not look at those horrific pictures from Haiti and not feel compassion?"

In response Mr Griffin described UK aid to Haiti as "stinking elite hypocrisy". Mr Griffin's original postings, on Facebook and Twitter, said: "While the Haiti earthquake is terrible, the winter death toll in Britain will be similar. No aid here though."

About 45,000-50,000 people have died since Tuesday's 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince and 300,000 have been made homeless, according to UN estimates. The Pan American Health Organization has estimated that the death toll could be as high as 100,000.

Ms Willmott, Labour MEP for the East Midlands, said: "Yes, people will die here this winter, even though the Labour government set up a welfare state that spends billions to help prevent too many deaths."

She added: "Our government and local councils are quite rightly funded to do all they can to help everyone suffering from the cold. But I am also proud that our government will do all it can to help the people in Haiti and I totally support all the work done by the charities to get supplies out there as soon as possible."

Mr Griffin, MEP for North West England, responded with another Twitter post, saying: "Individuals should give whatever they feel appropriate, but Britain is bankrupt. Fifty thousands pensioners will die...of cold this winter. Boys get blown to bits because we can't afford to armour their Land Rovers.... Sending aid to rioting ingrates while our own people die is stinking elite hypocrisy."

Asked about Mr Griffin's comments, BNP deputy leader Simon Darby criticised the government's £6m contribution to the aid effort in Haiti. He said: "I'd rather see that £6m that we spent keeping our own people alive. You look after your own first. If they've got surplus money to give away to Haiti - how many people have died because we didn't have the infrastructure to grit the roads?"

BBC

>>>DEC Haiti Earthquake Appeal<<<

Copenhagen climate conference: Nick Griffin calls world leaders mass murderers

BNP leader Nick Griffin at the Bella centre

The leader of the British National Party and MEP is at the international summit as a representative of the European Parliament. But he said global warming was a “hoax” designed to impose tax increases on the citizens of the world through putting up the price of energy.

He said world leaders and advocates of action on climate change such as Al Gore are “mass murderers” by supporting biofuels. He said land for growing food is being taken to grow fuels for crops and it will cause starvation greater than the famines caused by Russian dictator Stalin during the 1930s and Chairman Mao in the 1950s.

"It is a crime against humanity which in future will be seen as an enormous man-made famine. Under Stalin 20 million people died, under Chairman Mao 30 million died. This will be the third and the greatest famine of the modern era and I regard that as a crime.”

However Mr Griffin’s own party would not give more money to the third world.

“Britain is bankrupt. We cannot afford to go giving money to the third world,” he said. Mr Griffin has no official role at the conference but will be speaking to delegates in an attempt to “stop the juggernaut”.

“My message is stop and think before imposing the most outrageous tax increase on people ever proposed by a group of nations on the basis of an unproven theory that is contradicted by an increasing number of scientists,” he added.

Ben Stewart of Greenpeace said Mr Griffin will bring nothing helpful to the talks.

“Mr Griffin’s conversion to the causes of the developing world is as surprising as it is cynical,” he said. “In reality the environmental and development groups he has been disparaging have been in the forefront of concerns about biofuels. Griffin’s claims that climate change is a hoax is one of many curious things going on between his ears.”

Daily Telegraph

Taxpayer foots bill for BNP minder

Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, has put his personal bodyguard on the European Union payroll as his party becomes the latest to exploit the political expenses system.

A dozen senior figures from the party make up a BNP entourage of publicly funded assistants. As MEPs, Griffin and Andrew Brons are entitled to claim a combined £382,000 a year to pay for their colleagues’ salaries.

Martin Reynolds, a 20-stone bodybuilder who is head of security and Griffin’s bodyguard, said he “honestly didn’t know” why he was justified in being paid by the taxpayer. He said of his job: “I just do the security side of it and personal assistant stuff and generally looking after him and making sure things are done for him.”

Griffin and Brons are also channelling payments to other “assistants” including Simon Darby, the BNP’s deputy leader, Eddy Butler, its national organiser, Emma Colgate, its national administration officer, and a number of regional organisers and councillors. Some have not been openly declared as working for either MEP and others have unsavoury backgrounds.

Martin Wingfield, former editor of the BNP’s monthly newspaper, Voice of Freedom, is being paid as an assistant by both Griffin and Brons. He served a three-month prison sentence in the 1980s for failing to pay a fine following convictions on two counts of inciting racial hatred with election literature.

Adam Walker, head of Solidarity, the BNP’s supposed trade union, is being paid through Brons’s funds. Walker had to resign his teaching post in 2007 after being accused of posting anti-Muslim comments on the web using a school laptop.

All the BNP hierarchy’s new salaries, which go up to £25,000 a year, are allocated out of a personal £191,000 a year “assistants’ allowance” to which every MEP is entitled. EU rules state that assistants must justify their taxpayer-funded salaries by doing work which is “directly linked to the exercise of a member’s parliamentary mandate”.

John Walker, the party’s deputy press spokesman, confirmed that he was being paid £18,000 a year in taxpayers’ money. He also receives £6,000 a year from the party.

“I am expected to do two days a week for Andrew and two days a week for Nick. And then the other day . . . is for the party,” he said. Walker added that the BNP was “sensitive” to the fact that the rules emphasise all work must relate to the MEP’s role and not the party.

When Reynolds was asked what “specifically” he does for his EU salary, he said: “I honestly don’t know.”

He added: “I never got paid before, all our security was done for no payment whatsoever. I was an electrician.” He declined to say what his pay is now. He said he was not sure if he also received a salary from the party: “I don’t know the ins and outs of my finances, my wife sorts all that out.”

John Thompson, the BNP’s accountant, said the party’s MEPs were using about half their full allowances and explained that the level of salary varied. “The top level might be £25,000 and the lowest £8,000,” he said.

Walker said: “I suppose we are going to publish the breakdown [of taxpayer-funded salaries] but whether they will go as far as individual remunerations I don't know.”

Times Online

BNP wades into Nortel redundancy row

The controversy surrounding this year’s job losses at Nortel’s UK operation has taken a bizarre turn after the far-right British National Party waded into the row.

In an open letter to the administrators, Ernst & Young, party leader Nick Griffin claimed he was “under no illusions about the root cause of this disgraceful episode lies [sic] in the global economy”.

"Your company still have the power [sic] to assert human morality against the imperatives of the financial machine,” he railed, proclaiming that he would “free Britain from this global system before it ruins not merely the lives of individuals but the life of the planet as a whole!”

Ernst & Young has come in for considerable criticism over the handling of approximately 380 redundancies at Nortel’s UK operation during 2009, facing allegations that employees were let go without consultation or redundancy pay, whilst the North American operation was finding the cash to pay hefty retention bonuses to key executives.

In a previous statement sent to MicroScope, Ernst & Young defended its policy, saying: “Redundant employee claims are treated in accordance with insolvency law which sets out a priority of payments and the Joint Administrators, as officers of the Court, will comply with this fully.

“Redundancy, pay in lieu of notice and other benefit claims are unsecured and these claims must be treated equally with the claims of other unsecured creditors as specified by UK legislation. The Redundancy Payments Service [has] paid the statutory element of claims for non-payment of notice and redundancy pay. No consultation took place as it was not reasonably practicable to do so; and employment legislation recognises that there are situations in which swift action needs to be taken and it is not reasonably practicable to consult,” the statement concluded.

Griffin, who was elected as MEP for the north-west of England in May 2009, has no known connection with Nortel or its laid-off employees, most of whom are based outside his constituency in Northern Ireland.

Radical support has also been forthcoming from the other side of the political spectrum, with Irish anarchist groups lending their support to picketing Nortel workers.

Ernst & Young stood by its previous comments, and at the time of writing had not dignified the BNP’s statement with a response, while a Nortel spokesperson declined to comment.

MicroScope

Caption Competition: Idiots at the EU

Yes, it's that time again. We're entering the dog days of summer, our MPs are hiding themselves away from a critical public, bankers are laughing themselves stupid at us and the BNP is doing absolutely nothing at all - though that's not that unusual.

This time we have a picture of the biggest BNP bozos - MEPs Andrew Brons and Porky Griffin. Unleash your (not too offensive and definitely not libellous) captions...

A realistic sense of super-scale

The wonderful village of Britain

Yesterday's Independent carried an interesting item about how we view statistical information such as the fact that this month's estimate of global population is 6,790,062,216 - a number so staggeringly huge that it's almost meaningless.

Traditionally, statisticians convert such numbers into something more familiar to allow us to get a grip on the figure. Thus we end up with the global population being scaled down to 75,445 Wembleys or 2,341 Wales'. Any better? No, I didn't think so.

The genius of the article lay in the super-scaling: in fact, converting Britain's population of 61 million to a single community of 100 people. Britain, the village. And some of the figures have a direct bearing on the lies that the BNP perpetually attempts to pass off as fact.

Britain is overcrowded

Britain is, in fact, far from overcrowded. If Britain were a village of 100 people, and its land mass were scaled down by the same proportion as its population, the village would cover an area the size of 99 football pitches. Agricultural land would occupy 20 football pitches (run by a single farmer), while London would cover just over half a football pitch. All built-up areas and gardens would occupy the equivalent of six football pitches.

This occupied land rounds out at just 26 football pitches, leaving a phenomenal 73 going spare - presumably as woodland, moorland and land in private ownership (by people like Nick Griffin).

The two BNP MEPs were democratically elected

If Britain were a village of 100 people, there would be 74 voters but only 26 of those voters would have gone to the polls at this year's European elections. Far from the mandate from the British public that Griffin would like us to believe he got.

Britain is overrun by other cultures

Not so. Ninety-two of our villagers would be white. Two would be black, two Indian, one Pakistani, one of mixed race and two would be of other races (which presumably could be pretty much any colour from a well-tanned Robert Kilroy-Silk to a pale Lenny Henry).

Muslims/Jews/whatever are taking over the country

Again, untrue. Seventy-two people would identify themselves as Christian (although only 10 people in the village would go to church regularly). Fifteen people would say that they were not religious, while there would be two Muslims, one Hindu and 10 people who practised other religions (including the BNP's favourite lunacy Odinism, and paganism). Whatever bizarre cult the BNP's fake vicar Robert West belongs to, wouldn't even get a look in.

The BNP is growing fast

Not according to Tina Wingfield, the BNP's membership secretary, who claimed back in June that the party had achieved 10,000 members, a drop from the 12,724 that appeared on the released membership list. If my maths are correct (and they're probably not) that should see the BNP membership of our village standing at about a six-hundredth of a normal person, which sounds about right.

While these figures are outrageously simplified, they do help to put the BNP's droning about the state of the nation into perspective.

We are neither overrun nor overcrowded, though clearly more homes are definitely needed and it handily appears that we have plenty of spare land on which to build them. In fact I can think of a decent plot of land in a reasonable location that might be going spare fairly soon (if the rumours we've been hearing of late are true). It's in Wales, down in a place called Welshpool...

EU elections: BNP's Nick Griffin wins seat in European parliament

Furious scenes at Manchester town hall when Tory MEP describes BNP as 'aberration' and condemns Griffin's success as sad day for British politics

Protesters prevent BNP leader Nick Griffin from entering Manchester
town hall for the European parliament election results for the
North West tonight. Photograph: Manchester Evening News

Nick Griffin, the leader of the BNP, was today elected to the European parliament.

The far-right leader won a seat in the North West region. Earlier Andrew Brons, another British National party politician won in the Yorkshire and Humber area. It is the first time the party has had an MEP elected.

Griffin's victory was only confirmed shortly before 2am after a two-hour cliffhanger over the last of the North West's eight seats saw the Greens fall narrowly behind the BNP and Ukip just failed to pull ahead enough to win a third seat.

There were furious scenes at the declaration when the highest polling candidate, Sir Robert Atkins, described the BNP as "an aberration" and condemned Griffin's success as sad day for British politics. He was followed by Labour's Arlene McCarthy, who came second in votes cast and told the crowd at Manchester town hall that the BNP was "a party whose members include convicted rapists".

Both won loud applause – but also jeers from BNP supporters in the Banqueting Hall who shouted "Get back to the trough!" and "It's democracy – you're already insulting the voters again."

When Griffin's turn came to speak, all the other candidates took the unprecedented step of walking off the platform in protest. The BNP leader laid into a "liberal elite which has built a dam, a wall of lies which has grown ever taller and ever thicker over the years to stop ordinary people protesting about the removal of their freedom."

He added: "Well tonight that wall has been broken down in the North West and Yorkshire by hundreds of thousands of voters."

Brons's victory in Yorkshire saw the highest BNP poll, 9.8%, with Griffin getting 8%. The party polled 8.9% in the North East and 8.6% in both the West and East Midlands, but the share was not enough to win a place in those regions.

They polled 6.1% in the Eastern region, 5.5% in London, 5.4% in Wales, 4.4% in the South East and 3.9% in the South West.

Brons took a seat that was previously Labour's second in Yorkshire, as the expenses debacle and internecine warfare in Labour turned traditional supporters away in droves. The Labour vote crashed from 45% to 25% in Barnsley, where the BNP share climbed from 8% to 17%.

Griffin welcomed the victory as a vindication of the party's claim that "we're here to look after our people because no one else is". He said that feelings were particularly strong in Yorkshire, where former pit communities felt "at the bottom of the heap".

Pointing to other big rises in the BNP vote to 15% in Rotherham and nearly 12% in Doncaster, Griffin said: "This is ordinary decent people in Yorkshire kicking back against racism, because racism in this country is now directed overwhelmingly against people who look like me."

Griffin, who had to reach Manchester town hall for his own count in a police van after anti-fascist demonstrators blocked his convoy and hurled eggs, said immigration had become harmful to Britain, particularly with the spread of radical Islam. "Take Bradford – it isn't immigration that's happening there, it's colonialism," he said.

His own evening was one long lurch between advances and retreats for the BNP as declarations came in from the North West's 39 counting areas. In a reverse effect to Yorkshire's, support fell in areas where the party had done well in the past. In Burnley, where they won one of their first English county council seats on Thursday, it dropped from 17% to 15%.

But the slump in Labour's vote was common to the North West and Yorkshire, leaving the battle for the last of the region's eight seats open until the very end. After the Conservatives had won two, and Labour, Ukip and the Liberal Democrats one each, the BNP and the Greens were at level pegging for the final two hours of counting.

Brons said after the Yorkshire count in Leeds: "The onslaught against us has been more than against any other party in recent times, but somehow we've overcome it. Despite the lies, despite the money, despite the misrepresentation, we've been able to win through."

A dapper, besuited figure who adopts the low-key approach encouraged by Griffin, Brons retired last year as a politics and government teacher at Harrogate College. He then re-entered active politics for the first time since standing five times for the National Front in the 1970s after a brief spell as its leader, which ended in internal quarrels. He joined the British National Socialist party as a teenager.

Guardian

BNP MEPs would not serve full term

A British National Party Member of the European Parliament would have to stand down after four years of the five-year term and hand the seat to the second person on the BNP candidates’ list, the BNP has said. The requirement, revealed at a meeting of the party’s Advisory Council on 25 January as its candidate selection process was getting under way, shows that the BNP does not take the role of an MEP seriously.

It is unclear whether Nick Griffin, the party leader, would also have to comply with this rule in the event of his election in the North West, where he heads the BNP candidates’ list.

MEPs play an important role in the European legislative process, and thereby in the creation of national legislation in the 27 member states of the European Union. They have an important say on European Commission directives and regulations, international treaties and legislation on many issues, such as the free movement of workers, the internal market and consumer protection.

The European Parliament also shares equal responsibility with the Council of Ministers for the EU budget and exercises supervision over the Commission and management of EU policies.

BNP members elected to a local council commonly take months if not years to understand their function. Learning the ropes in Strasbourg and Brussels would be far harder. The party’s insistence that its MEPs should stand down just at the point they have a chance of actually doing something is bizarre.

The idea that this allows the second person on the list “to gain experience” before the next European election is nonsense. Would the originally elected MEP then not stand again or does the BNP realistically think it will get two MEPs elected in any region in five years’ time?

The truth is that the BNP has no interest in taking part in EU government. All it really wants is the salary and expenses that come with an MEP’s job and the opportunity to further its alliances with extreme-right parties in other EU states. MEPs will have to give 10% of their salary to their party region and “submit their expense claims for full Party audit” – presumably to make sure they claim enough for the party’s benefit.

The Advisory Council, which meets only every three or four months, also decided to appoint an “inner cabinet” to oversee the election campaign. Its members are most of the party’s main national officers together with “Midas Consultant” Jim Dowson, the man responsible for the party’s fundraising over the past year and providing management training for party officers in sunny Valencia.

Dowson’s contribution to the election campaign seems to consist largely of copying Searchlight’s HOPE not hate campaign, though not very well. Several recent BNP campaign initiatives, such as sending out regular campaign emails and encouraging supporters to sign up as activists, are poorly executed copies of HOPE not hate tactics.

But it would be wrong to underestimate Dowson. His fundraising campaign has brought in more money than the BNP has ever enjoyed and it expects to have a turnover of £1 million this year, according to the AC minutes.

Another member of the “inner cabinet” is Mark Collett, the head of publicity. Collett should have received a severe dressing down for wasting a large chunk of Dowson’s money when he printed 700,000 “Euro warm up leaflets” without an official imprint, which meant they could not be distributed. But “golden boy” Collett can do no wrong in the eyes of the party leadership. He apologised and offered his resignation, which naturally was refused. “You stupid boy!” as Captain Mainwaring might have said.

BNP units were offered new leaflets with the imprint or a 33% discount on the illegal one plus free “overlay stickers” containing the imprint. BNP groups around the country are no doubt busy organising “sticker parties”, probably in pubs, at which activists will take time out from campaigning and peel off thousands of small stickers to place on the leaflets. Voters will be able to spot the leaflets done later in the evening by the wonky stickers and beer stains.

Although the party leadership acted quickly when the imprint’s absence was spotted and told units not to distribute the leaflets, some may have got out. York BNP held a day of action in Ryedale in January and distributed an anti-EU leaflet, which it reproduced on its blog. Strangely the part of the leaflet where the imprint should be was cut away, making it impossible to see whether it was there or not.

HOPE not hate