Proposed march through Wooton Bassett

[FrozenNorth]

Here

Initially saw this on the BBC but this link gives a bit more detail. I support everyone's right to free speech but ... dear goodness, this seems to be exceptionally bad taste. My DH is an army doctor and, during his time in a free Afgan clinic for civilians run by the army, saved many Afgan lives. He's going out there again in January. I can imagine I'd be incredibly distressed if he'd lost his life in the conflict and somebody wrote to me explaining what he'd 'really' died for. Ugh. Maybe it's just my personal bias, but I can't help feel that the proposed march is sited to cause maximum potential for violent conflict and to cause maximum hurt to those who are bereaved.

Is it the job of political parties to change their policies to suit a minority of the electorate when they think they are wrong? I appreciate that it's pretty much gone out of the window, but surely politics is supposed to be about saying what you believe, and then trying to convince others that you are right and that they should vote for you. That's why the BNP have their right to say what they believe, and try to convince people to vote for them. And why people who oppose that should try to convince people in the opposite direction. That's what democracy is about, isn't it?

"many normal people who support the BNP don't seem to have thought beyond their perceived greivances with immigrants. I know my mother didn't until I pointed out what they say about women."

I agree Riven, I have read their 'family' policies and was disgusted by them especially the ones written by the man from fathers for justice (can't think of his name) but I think as with any other 'political' party you can never vote on a party line as a whole, people pick up on what they conceive to be the 'best' idea from where their viewpoint is.

A lot of people did not support the Iraq war and with very good cause as we are hearing now but they will still go ahead a vote Labour.

Riven...I don't know how a muslim can talk about womens rights and keep a straight face...

You must practice it well...

exactly Riven.

i have met a few quite reasonable people who say t hey are considering voting BNP, there only knowledge of their policies are around immigration.

unless they a re allowed a public platform from which to give full details of their policy and to have those policies challenged, people simply will not hear what they really think about the country and its female population.

in fact BNP "law" doesn'ty sound quite as far removed from Sharia law as you would think

I'm not a muslim DP. Explain it to me.

"Riven...I don't know how a muslim can talk about womens rights and keep a straight face..."

Also a very valid point.

Kind of skirts around the issue a bit though eh?

explain w hat?

not at all a good point. why can a muslim not speak on womens rights?

Is that to me Mamazon? I though DP was dodging Riven's point about the BNP's policies regarding women and families by making an issue about Riven being a muslim., So I thought I'd ask the same question...

To be honest I think anyone who wants to live under Sharia law should go and find themself a country who already has it.
This is a western, democratic nation in which the majority of people do not want to be a Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Shinto, Mormon, or even a Christian.
Why do some organisations find it so hard to understand that for the majority of people in this country, religion causes problems, it breeds hate, it gives an excuse to perpetrate the most dispicable acts of violence against other human beings.

In my opinion, which is humble, then if you dont like it here then go somewhere else and find the life you are looking for.
Stop trying to make this country something it will never be.

The people of Wooton Basset should turn up for the march and show their disgust by turning their backs, as one, as the scum walk past. In Silence.

ah right.

yes DP has dodged the BNPs female values questions by attemting to attack Riven for being a female muslim.

I don't think BNP policies are quite as unpopular as some of you seem to think - rather, it's the BNP itself which is unpopular.

This opinion poll suggested that a majority of people agreed with many of the BNP's policies. When people found out that the policies were actually associated with the BNP, they weren't quite so keen. In other words, it's the BNP that people don't like - rather than their policies.

(Extract)
"The survey found strong support for BNP policies on accepting fewer asylum seekers (supported by 77%, or 74% when associated with the BNP) and giving priority to British families in allocating council housing (83% support, or 77% when associated with the BNP). There was overwhelming support for making criminals serve their full sentences (91% and 87% support). The question of whether all immigration should be halted provided the strongest contrast ? 59% supported the policy, but when it was presented as a BNP policy support fell to 48%...

...There was however strong opposition to more extreme policies on race ? asked if they agreed that non-white people were inherently ?less British?, only 16% of people agreed, with 68% opposed. When identified as a BNP support dropped to 11%, opposition grew to 76%. A majority also opposed the government encouraging immigrants to leave Britain (52% opposed, rising to 58% opposition when associated with the BNP).

Finally, YouGov asked people if they would seriously consider voting for a party that supported all these policies. In the unattributed group, 37% said yes, 48% said no. In the attributed group the figure is lower, 20% say they would seriously consider voting for the BNP (a figure comparable to the ICM survey in JRRT report that found 18% of people saying they might vote BNP), 66% said no.

What does this tell us? Firstly some of the BNP?s policies ? particularly on crime and prioritising housing ? are very popular indeed. Despite that a majority of people would not consider voting for a party that allied these policies with the BNP?s stance on race and repatriation. If you actually mention the BNP by name, with all the negative connetations that come with it, the proportion of people willing to support it falls even further. "

personally i think anyone of the major faiths has real problems when they try to maintain a feminist viewpoint cohesive to their faith.

but then religion is not bound to make sense.

in what way have these extremists been accorded greater liberty than the BNP?

note: the BNp is largely unelected, they have a few elected individuals, though like other parties membership is by subscription not election. you don't have to have an elected representative in order to spout offensive shite though, nor should you have to.....

"In my opinion, which is humble, then if you dont like it here then go somewhere else and find the life you are looking for.
Stop trying to make this country something it will never be."

The only reason that we're the nation that we are is because people, be they immigrants or natives, set out to try and persuade people to make that country something that it currently wasn't.

It's not even been 100 years since women were fighting for the vote and men were complaining they were trying to change the country.

So protest, debate and change are all good things.

Even when they come from people that we detest like the BNP or Islam4UK. And debate is actually the best way to show up the historically ignorant woman hating muppets of all faiths and parties for what they are.

Conveniently missing out some other key BNP policies there scarletlilybug. Like the ones we're talking about at the moment for example.

What are the BNP's policies regarding women and families?

The only policy I missed out from the BNP opinion poll post was the one on Europe. Since I didn't commission the report, I didn't get to ask the questions.

Badgerspaw, yes I agree with what you have said but what I was trying to say is more along the lines of if you dont like living in a predominantly christian, western democratic country then dont!
Obviously within any country there are things that need constantly updating and changing but my impression of the Islamic/Muslim extremist viewpoint is that they want us to go back 1000 years and live in caves and worship God alone, and if you are a woman forget it.

I could be mistaken.

"Conveniently missing out some other key BNP policies there scarletlilybug."

Actually I find that information extremely telling, as I said before people do agree with some of the BNP's views and that's ordinary (not racist) people, which goes to show that a lot more people are, shall we say sympathetic, to the BNP, if the BNP were not the 'racist' group that they are how many more ordinary people would vote for them?

If they are now nearing a par with the lib-dems in some polls then they would probably surpass the Labour party (in theory).

Who would support Islam4uk if they were a political party? Most Muslims do not want to live under sharia law.

But the BNP don't just have those (more moderate) views do they atlantis. They have less moderate racist (and sexist) views as well. They are a racist group. If people want to vote for the more moderate views only, they should find a party without the racist ones as well, or start one perhaps? Otherwise they are inevitably, and not unfairly IMO, going to be associated with racism.

I did not miss out any of the BNP's policies covered by the opinion poll in my post (with the exception of Europe).

"But the BNP don't just have those (more moderate) views do they atlantis. They have less moderate racist (and sexist) views as well. They are a racist group. If people want to vote for the more moderate views only, they should find a party without the racist ones as well, or start one perhaps? Otherwise they are inevitably, and not unfairly IMO, going to be associated with racism."

Yes I agree, they are by definition a racist party which is why a lot of people will not vote for them, but it's also why as we were saying people do vote for them, not because they are racist but because they agree with these views, jobs, housing, immigration, extremists...

Im sure people are saying if only there was a party that held these views but didn't have the racial connotations, they would proabably be in government by now.

How could someone start a party like this? It takes years to gather grass roots support, and people see that they don't have years, they want change now, they want housing for their children, they want a job to feed their families, they want the borders to close ( they have wanted that since blair lied saying it would be 13.000 immigrants and it was millions) they don't want to see the likes of choudray and his ilk calling our soldiers baby killers and walking through WB, so they turn to the party that is offering them what they want.

"what I was trying to say is more along the lines of if you dont like living in a predominantly christian, western democratic country then dont!"

But we're only a Christian Country because foreigners came here with the explicit intent of converting us.

We're only Western European because the Normans were rather keen on immigrating to the country against the wishes of it's people, if they hadn't we'd likely be far more Scandinavian in nature.

At what point do you pull up the drawbridge and say "if you don't like living in this sort of society then be gone with you"?

Personally I deeply hope that we never see Sharia law here. However it's not right to tell those who put the idea forward to "get out" any more than it would have been right for Emily Pankhurst to have been deported.

So drifting back to topic Islam4UK should be allowed to have marches, as should the BNP, but the location of this one does make it debatable if they should be told to do it elsewhere.

Some of my friends that are Muslim have different levels of freedom/access to education .....however it depends on where the parents are from and their westenisation....

Lots of muslim women have good rights that are here, some families don't give the females in their families the same freedom as rights but they have the freedom to a degree to get away from there families here there is support for them!

I think your find that most british muslims where wezternised clothes and have the rights to work etc..