BNP in my town today.......

[northerner]

There I was minding my own business when I saw a group of people, lots of England flags and they were giving out pamphletts and stuff. Lots of people stopping to chat with them.

Is this a sign of the times?

i think so.

its sad but i think that many people have become frustrated at the current government inaction with reagrds to terrorism, immigration etc and so they turn to those like the BNP.

they have had a bit of a make over ecently and i guess some people beleive the hype. its sad

grr.

I hope not, but a frightening number of friends and family of mine have lately started coming out with crap like "of course english people can't get council houses any more because they give them all to the Portuguese" (wtf?? they SOLD all the council houses remember? at least, they did in the town I'm talking about).

So I guess it may be a sign of the times in that there has been a lot of immigration recently in areas that previously didn't have any immigrants to speak of (like Norfolk). That creates tensions, and the BNP have tried to take advantage of that. It'll get better hopefully.

...yeah, the terrorism thing probably doesn't help. as if the bnp had the answer to that.

They leafletted our road for the Council elections. Some people came out and thrust the leaflets back at them. I went out into the street and took pictures of them in a (probably misguided) attempt to make them feel uncomfortable.

Frighteningly our contituency - of the 6 in the city - got the highest BNP percentage at the 2005 GE - around 7%, twice the national average. And this is a "Nice" area!

, northerner

Although 6% is bad, it's hardly scary.
Bizarrely, as an Irish Celt, I find myself classed as "indigenous" by the BNP now.

By luck and design our political system is harsh on minor parties. As the LibDems say often, you can get 30% of the national vote and get 5% of the seats.

PR isn't all good...

But we must remember the point of democracy. It's tempting to see it as some morality, which it may be, but is in fact a way of getting people to contend for power without killing each other.

Thus we need to keep them inside the tent.
That incudes scrupulous fairness in electoral matters.
Also the BNP may have unintened consequences.

A lot of people don't bother to vote in local elections which is part of the reason councils are so crap.
Also ethnic minorities often don't vote. Whatever their reasons for this, a BNP candidate will give them some good reason to vote.