What We Don't Hear

More and more, I find myself becoming disillusioned by the providers of "news" in this country.

What has my goat today is the United Against Fascism demonstration planned today in Harrow.

This came to my attention while I was having a chat online last night with a friend. I've certainly heard of the growing racist parties such as the BNP, the English Defence League and related Nazi extremist groups with anti-Muslim and racist vibes.

Certainly, it has always made me think of JG Ballard's Kingdom Come with a macabre rising of "public" policing of society, complete with St Georges crosses and British Bulldogs.

However, I am genuinely shocked by how little news coverage these potentially dangerous and implicitly uncivilised clashing of extremist groups receive.

I appreciate that too much media presence provided to the horrendous groups like the English Defence Plea would have the effect of inciting further membership and publicity, akin to having Nick Griffin on Question Time.

But that does not mean that riots around mosques where little is done to protect civil liberties is not news.

All perhaps it is an example of journalists protecting Middle England from the nastiness beneath the surface?

(To digress on that, imagine a novel based around Neil Gaiman's Neverwear where the underworld of society is not a sublime fairylike kingdom but rather a bitter combination of all that is wrong with human nature. Actually, that would make an interesting take on A Midsummer Nights Dream)

Discrimination Masquerading as Politics

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague."
Cicero

I am looking forward to Nick Griffen on Question Time

Once Upon A Time...

There was a woman who went to be judged on her death and her sins and good deeds were equal. So she was given a choice between Heaven and Hell. She went to both for a day. Heaven was glorious, there were friends, scenary etc. When she went to Hell she was surprised to find this was also lovely. There seemed to be nothing to chose between them. In the end she chose Helll as she knew more people there. When she opened the gates she saw the worst suffering and torture imaginable. She asked, regretfully, why it was different. The devil replied, "we were recruiting then".

This is a good analogy for the BNP and UKIP.