Showing posts with label Tina Wingfield. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tina Wingfield. Show all posts

June 11, 2009

Of eggs, invisible bricks and call centres...

60 Comment (s)
Griffin, tearful and overeggcited (and that's all the egg gags you're getting)
Just a few days ago, the BNP's Lancaster representative, Chris Hill, reported on the result of the new Poulton Ward parish council election in Morecambe. The candidate was one Julie Victoria Blain, who nobody had ever heard of, variously known as either Julie or Vicky. The title of his report was pretty clear;
'First time candidate gets 13% support in Morecambe.'
Pretty clear, but completely untrue. According to the results on the Lancaster City Council website, Blain took 172 votes out of the 4832 cast. I'm no great shakes at maths but even I can work out that her share of the vote is about 3.5%. While 172 votes for the BNP is 172 votes too many, 3.5% is still a damn sight better than 13%, which is presumably why Hill feels the need to lie.

Of course, Hill needs to bullshit all he can in an attempt to weasel his way back into the good books of the party. During 2007's December rebellion, he managed to announce that he was supporting the rebels, promptly backtracked when told off, then decided to stick to his priciples and support them anyway then, when the rebellion failed dismally, placed himself back in the loyalist camp. Clearly, never a man to be trusted.

Which brings us (rather neatly, in my opinion) to Nick Griffin.

Over the past couple of days, the media has been full of the egg incident, where the BNP's crowing 'press conference', called by the fraudster-in-chief Nick Griffin, was ruined by a sudden rain of eggs, one of which hit him in the back of the neck. I'm not too sure of the efficacy of using eggs on recalcitrant politicians, even vermin like Nick Griffin, and I'd be interested in hearing the views of our readers. Personally though, I thought it was bloody funny and it didn't do him any harm so what the hell.

Far from doing him harm in fact, Griffin has been given the opportunity to spout a few more lies to the media - many of which were reported verbatim without any qualification. Take this little gem, from yesterday's Scotsman;
'I think it's very sad that a hostile mob which is partly paid for by taxpayers and backed by Labour and the Conservatives is allowed to get away with mob violence on the streets of Britain in 2009'
Hostile mob? Mob violence? There were forty of them, vastly outnumbered by the media and Nick Griffin's Kray twin-lookalike security team and they threw a sodding egg, for crying out loud. It's hardly the collapse of civilisation as we know it. And paid for by taxpayers? Er, how?
'The police need to get a grip on these people and stop them throwing eggs and bricks.'
Bricks? What bricks? Who threw a brick? This is a particularly stupid thing to say and could have exposed this idiot as a compulsive liar had the statement been questioned. It wasn't, sadly.
'Like us or not we are a democratic party'
No, you're not. You're the least democratic party in the country, run by megalomaniacs and liars for racists and fools. But, like the long-established and well-practised liar that he is, Griffin saves what is arguably the best for last.
'He claimed the party has seen a growth in membership applications and said its call centre received 20,000 phone calls in the first 15 minutes after a BNP party political broadcast was shown on television.'
I watched a tedious puff-piece on the BNP website a week or two ago in which it was claimed that fifteen people were employed in the party's 'call centre' answering the zillions of calls that were pouring in daily. Let's be generous and up the number of call centre staff to twenty. According to my trusty calculator, 20,000 calls in fifteen minutes is 1333 calls per minute. Divide that by twenty call centre staff and they have to field approximately 67 calls each per minute. If there are only fifteen staff, that number goes up to 89 per minute. Each.

Obviously someone is talking bollocks - and that someone would be Nick Griffin. And, it turns out, Tina Wingfield, the BNP's membership secretary, who was also quoted in the Scotsman's unusually fact-free article, claiming that 2,000 people have joined the party in the last six weeks, increasing overall membership by about 25%.

Well, she should know - though this doesn't really tie in with the released BNP membership list, which showed a total of 12724 members, allegedly for 2007 and which was, so the party claimed at the time, inaccurate in that membership was considerably higher when the list became public than it was in 2007. Fair enough, but if that is true, party membership has in fact gone down considerably. A hell of a lot, in fact, because Wingfield's statement indicates that BNP membership just six weeks ago was around 8,000 and now stands at 10,000. Hmm...

The problem with telling porkies is remembering which ones have been told, who they've been told to and precisely what was said. The BNP, while it's happy to lie on any occasion, doesn't seem quite so capable at keeping track of the lies it's told.

The big problem the media has is itself keeping track of these lies and then challenging them at every opportunity - but the lies have to be challenged repeatedly and incessantly and should then be used to embarrass and humiliate the BNP whenever and wherever possible. In just a single article we were given an opportunity to challenge a half-dozen outrageous lies, none of which were questioned at the time. If the BNP is to be shown up for what it truly is, the media - and I include non-traditional media like us, must be ever-alert and ever-ready to demand truth rather than bullshit and bluster.

October 10, 2007

BNP invented excuse to expel Griffin rival

1 Comment (s)
Mike Easter, who acted as agent to Chris Jackson in the challenge to Nick Griffin's leadership of the BNP in July, has appealed against his expulsion from the BNP.

He claims that the reason given, namely that he failed to submit a return of Jackson's expenses in the leadership contest, does not stand up because there was no legal requirement to make such a return. His letter to Tina Wingfield, the party's membership secretary, makes some other interesting observations.

We reproduce the letter, as well as an earlier one to John Walker, the BNP treasurer, in the interests of keeping readers informed about the somewhat paranoid way in which Griffin is running what he claims is Britain's fourth political party, and the accusations that are going back and forth within the party.

Letter from Mike Easter to Tina Wingfield 10th September 2007

Dear Tina,

Re Your letter of 31st August 07.

I am sorry that you have been forced to write the above letter to me. It seems to many of us that Nick Griffin is getting totally unbalanced and believes that no-one should challenge him for the Leadership of the Party, despite the fact that the Constitution allows for such challenges. You will know that the Party has lost, by various means, several key members over the last few weeks. I believe this is due to Nick's refusal to run the Party openly and properly:

Andrew Spence, the very successful Sedgefield parliamentary candidate, praised all over the Party newspaper. He is alleged to have said, "He couldn't get on with the sleazy people close to Griffin."

Simon Smith, Sandwell Councillor and Black Country organiser. Left because he queried BNP accounts and expenses. Are the Party Accounts still overdue with the electoral Commission?

Clive Potter, President of Solidarity union. Expelled because he insisted on receiving the union accounts.

Scott McLean, resigned as Deputy Chairman and Chairman of the disciplinary committee, in particular, because Nick prevented him doing his job and disciplining Mark Collett. I understand that Scott has remained an ordinary member.

Jonathan Bowden, Advisory Council member, for similar reasons to Andrew Spence.

Before answering your letter in detail, I must point out, as any experienced person dealing with personnel matters knows, that proper reasonable procedures must be carried out. In this matter no steps have been taken. The expulsion came out of the blue.

In your letter, no doubt drafted by Nick Griffin, there is a reference to my relationship with John Tyndall.

Presumably, this is meant as a smear. Unfortunately for you that problem was resolved with a handshake between John and myself and the agreement, "That no dispute had occurred." You will need to delete this paragraph if this matter goes to Court.

In our recent Leadership Challenge, we refrained from repeating the very many stories that are around concerning Nick, for example, his relationship with Martin Webster and his continual incompetence with money. It seems to me to be very foolish of Nick to get into a slanging match when he, himself, is so vulnerable!

In your letter you make assertions that I have not complied with a request from John Walker for information concerning the Reform Group of the BNP. This is a blatant lie!

Please see copy letter attached to Mr Walker dated 7th June 06.

No reply to my letter was ever received. Also, I was working with John Walker for over 5 hours on Thursday, 23rd July 07 and he did not mention any problem to me. If there was a problem, "Is this likely?"

The situation has not changed from the 7th June, which is the Reform Group has never raised any money.

Again during the Leadership election, I neither received money nor any invoices.

There is no requirement to report such monies below £1,000. Please see confirmation from Electoral Commission attached.

Consequently, I believe without further comment that the whole basis for your letter collapses.

Please write to me by return that your letter of 31st August has been cancelled.

Please take this letter as formal notice of Appeal against the decision to expel me from the Party.

Yours sincerely,

M.D.S.Easter

Letter from Mike Easter to John Walker 7th June 2006

Dear John,

Thanks for your letter of 30th May enquiring about the "Reform Group" within the BNP. (I have been away and only just read it.)

As you can well imagine, I would need to consult with others before replying to your letter in any detail. However, I can say straightaway that there is no intention to raise cash, if at all, that would come under the Electoral rules.

Generally the Reform Group is concerned with getting the structure of the Party into a normal one for a society or corporate body. We want to get away from the current dictatorship system.

Also, and this is my own special area,* I would like to see the politics of the Party laid out once and for all and not, as now, changed every few minutes. In particular, and just as two examples, the current Party Leader has an obsession with Moslems, just as his predecessor had a similar obsession with Jews.

These obsessions have obscured the real aims of the BNP, one of which is the repatriation of all invading foreigners.

Religion does not come into it.

Again the Party is concentrating almost exclusively on 'grotty' northern towns, or areas closely affected by foreigners, and is making no real headway in the English counties.

Enclosed is a leaflet that has been produced to explore possible approaches to the English electorate outside the rundown northern towns. Why are we not fighting the Orpington byelection?

In my opinion, the current leadership has no idea of how to go about it and by default leaves the field open to UKIP and Cameron.

Remember the current Leader is Welsh and JT was Irish – perhaps we should have an English Leader!

Yours sincerely,

M.D.S.Easter

[As an addendum to this, NWN has posted a copy of a letter to Mike Easter from the Electoral Commission, which provides evidence that Easter has broken no rules at all. Letter reprinted below.]

Email received from the Electoral Commission 9th September 2007

Mr. Easter

I write further to our telephone conversation earlier today.

I can confirm that there are no reporting requirements to the Commission that result from the BNP leadership campaign.

There is a requirement that regulated donees provide details of donations received by them of an amount of over £1,000. Regulated donees include members of political parties that receive donations that relate to political activity, such as an internal party leadership campaign.
From the information discussed today and contained in your email it would appear that this threshold was not reached during the campaign and accordingly there are no reporting requirements arising.

I hope this information is helpful.

Regards

Jon Spillett
Compliance Manager

Stop the BNP