Hands-up anyone who believes the EDL is a human rights organisation...

Tommo Ashton and friend

Thanks to Everything EDL for the pic and TwitaReteeta for the heads-up

Police hunt racist thugs over attack in Manchester

Police are hunting a gang of racist thugs who attacked and robbed a door-to-door salesman in Greater Manchester.

The victim, a 20-year-old Asian man, was working on the Limeside Estate, in Oldham, selling digital television products, on the afternoon of Wednesday 5th January when he was assaulted. He was working around Walkers Road, Oak Road and Firth Avenue but throughout the afternoon, a group of five white men were walking around the estate shouting racial abuse at the victim.

At about 6pm, on Hollins Road, the group approached the victim, grabbed him, racially abused him and demanded his mobile phone and cash. They pushed him against a wall and patted his body for items. As they tried to grab his mobile the victim resisted and he was punched twice to the head by one of the offenders, who then intimated he had a knife. The group ran off with the phone.

The main offender in the group was about 5ft 6in tall of medium build with dark hair. He was wearing a lime green hooded top.

Police Constable Andrew Swettenham said: "This was a horrendous experience for this man, who was simply trying to do his job. The abuse that he suffered culminated in an attack where he was robbed. Someone on this estate will know who these people are and may even have witnessed this incident."

Anyone with information is asked to call police on 0161 856 9577 or the independent charity Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.

Click Manchester

Thugs are still out there

Amid the financial doom and gloom, and the ubiquitous focus on recession statistics, it's easy to forget there are dangers elsewhere. The government's higher education minister, David Lammy, warned last week that unless there's a sustained and organised fight against the British National Party, there's a real risk that, come the European elections next year, the BNP could win enough votes to become the British equivalent of Jean Marie Le Pen's Front National in France.

Lammy doesn't have a decent profile and it's no surprise, therefore, that his warning went largely unnoticed. Even claiming that Labour had to wise-up and copy the "grass-roots" strategy of Barack Obama's US presidential campaign, whilst emphasising that the would-be president and himself share Harvard credentials, Lammy's message was a tangential whisper in the party political clamour for economic credibility.

All of which must be delighting the manipulative thugs that continue to try to pass themselves off as a credible party. The BNP's latest bilge attempts to link the claimed reduction in high-level thinking among 14-year-olds to the rise in the ethnic make-up of British teenagers. There's no point in analysing the BNP's failure to understand simple mathematical correlations. Racist dunces often resort to statistics to "prove" their prejudices.

This time it's numbers from the Office of National Statistics on the Third World origins of immigrant children, linked by the BNP school-of-infant-adding-up to a study of teenage mental aptitude by Professor Michael Sayer of King's College London.

The BNP's conclusion? Because "white" pupils are now outnumbered (total junk maths) by Asian and black children, our precious imperial standards are falling.

Lammy saying Labour have "failed" to address white working-class concerns, I can understand. What I can't comprehend is why Professor Sayer isn't hugely outraged at the way the BNP have kidnapped his work, woven selective lifts from his study into its own numerical diarrhoea and, Goebbels-like, conjured up a racist myth.

So where is the measure of more short-attention television programming, computer games and the rest? Where is the multivariate analysis, the simulations and surrogate models that accommodate the dimensionality of what's being looked at? Hell, that sounds like a tough night in for the wooden tops at BNP headquarters.

So let's be careful out there. In between the FTSE and Dow Jones, there's the BNP. As Lammy says, pay attention.

Sunday Herald (Scotland)

Huddersfield attack press release

Kirklees Unity

Press Release
31st May 2008

FOR IMMEDIATE USE

The fascist BNP and their far right friends have stepped up their intimidation of trade unionists and political activists in Kirklees.

On Friday morning a young female student was attacked on her way to work by three armed members of the far right.

They pulled her to the ground, kicked her repeatedly in the ribs and slashed at her head with a knife. Whilst attacking her they called her “A Dirty Red” and “Filthy Lesbo” the latter being a reference to the victims sexuality. She suffered a fractured rib and severe bruising, but given the severity of the assault the injuries could have been far worse.

The attackers singled out this student because she campaigns on her campus to drive out the BNP.The victim is also a member of Unison and the NUS.
They knew her name and route to work, and deliberately targeted her to intimidate her and others campaigning against the far right.

The incident has been reported to West Yorkshire Police and they are currently investigating the attack.

The victim may be available for comment but will require anonymity in the media for fear of reprisal.

For further information regarding this press release you can contact Kirklees Unity at the following email address.

kirkleesunity@yahoo.co.uk

END