While the Haiti earthquake is terrible, the winter death toll in Britain will be similar. No aid here though.

Hmm… from the Times on Jan 7th

Weather-related death toll rises to 22 as Britain braces for coldest night yet

From the BBC web site

Tuesday’s earthquake has left as many as 45,000-50,000 people dead.

45,000 to 50,000 is about the smallest estimate I have seen.

Of course, it is possible that Dick-I-beg-your-pardon-Nick Griffin is unable to distinguish between large numbers; he may have a counting system like several remote tribes are reputed to have that goes “1, 2, 3, many”.

[Thought I posted this the other day, but it ended up in the drafts.  Must have done it just when my internet connection went down.]

The BNP denies that increases in hate crime are related to its activities and blames the rises on increased immigration. Bob Bailey, the party’s London organiser said: “This is due to an increase in the ethnic [sic] population. There are more people who are prepared to go to the police complaining they are victims.”

He stops short of saying “if only they would all bugger off back to where they came from there would be nobody to hate any more” which is just as well because

1. Most of ‘them’ come from here anyway
2. The BNP will always find someone to hate.  It is part of their nature to always find a scapegoat.  If the non-whites magically disappeared it would be gays in the firing line, and then trade unions, then the disabled, and so on.

That would be hilarious, and I think I would be up for that, but isn’t the BNP HQ miles away in Wrexham or somewhere like that?

Griffin shot himself in the foot so many times he probably had to be carried home afterwards.

I don’t think I have enjoyed Question Time so much since Robin Day was in the chair, although to be honest I haven’t really watched it much since Robin Day was in the chair, and hardly at all since the panel was increased to five.

And then something stopped me in mid laugh: the realisation that this idiot managed to get enough votes to be elected and represents Britain in the EU parliament.  There might be foreigners seeing him speak somewhere who think he actually speaks for us.  Its a bit like the feeling I got when Boris Johnson was at the Olympics handover ceremony, but more sinister.

Spare a thought for the casualty departments in the North, which are probably creaking at the seams with injuries from people kicking themselves and slapping their foreheads that they stayed at home on polling day and let it happen.

I’m sure there will be the usual accusations of ‘dirty tricks’ from the BNP, but this is good old-fashioned satire and as the feed itself points out “we’re a legitimate mainstream party now, son. that means we’re fair game for satire”

In the spirit of looking on the bright side, it occurs to me that with all the frequent flying between Britain and Brussels/Strasbourg the chances of Nick Griffin being involved in a plane crash have just multiplied several hundred times…

I turned up a little bit early in the pouring rain to find several police vehicles in the car park – like three vans a couple of cars and a motorbike.  Rather than loiter about getting conspicuously soaked I browsed in B&Q for a while: not to get ‘tooled up’ (although it would be the perfect place) but just to pass some time and get some last-minute Christmas shopping ideas.

When I came out the rest of the protesters were starting to arrive and, miraculously, it stopped raining.  The crowd grew, as did rumours about what was going on with the BNP.  It turns out that the venue for their party had become aware of the nature of the event and had cancelled the booking, although nobody knew exactly when that had happened.   Later on we heard that the BNP had managed to find another venue in Berkshire so for the third time in a week they had been prevented from holding an event in Sussex.

This all turned the gathering into more of a celebration than a protest and we could have just gone home, but if somebody has taken the trouble to bring a bullhorn along there is no way you are not going to get some speeches.  The first speaker was our local MP, Laura Moffatt, followed by a representative of the Wealden UAF.  That turned out to be me, because when asked who was going to speak all the others used the tactic of pointing at me and hiding.

Normally crowds are spoken to by the chair of an organisation, or a president, or something like that.  This may be the first time that such a duty has fallen to the webmaster.

Having successfully completed the trifecta of thwarting the march of fascism in Sussex, most of the crowd repaired to the nearest pub.  Jayne and I snuck off home to put the kettle on.