Imported Labour Votes

This article, in today's Telegraph, explains why this country has five million plus more people, born and brought up overseas, living in Britain now than in the year 2000.

And this statement from the report tells us all we need to know about why Labour opened the national floodgates:

Voting trends indicate that migrants and their descendants are much more likely to vote Labour.

No Ellis Island, birth of a nation altruism here. Vote rigging? Social engineering? Well, yes, and much worse than those two evil practices - this is just another example of the straightforward corruption perpetrated by the most utterly corrupt and morally bankrupt government ever inflicited on this country.

Vote them in again, and watch your country - and your democracy - vanish. We only have one chance of ridding ourselves of them. Don't blow it, tempted as you might be, by voting for someone other than the Conservative Party. For all the Tory Party's frailties, do not lose the focus (ridding ourselves of Brown Labour). All sane folk must vote for Cameron. Not to do that is to invite catastrophe out of mere self-indulgence.

Do that - vote for someone other than the Conservative Party at the next GE - and we might just end up with more of the same, which would, quite literally, be an absolute catastrophe for what's left of the United Kingdom. Get it?

So get a grip (especially Kippers)!!

Isaby On Grassroots Scrutiny

I wish Jonathan Isaby had written something like this a while ago. It's the first really sensible article on the subject of grassroots Conservative frustrations about the limits placed on their role in the selection of PPCs, which has been highlighted by the recent Liz Truss affair, that's been written. As I said before, I have absolutely nothing against Miss Truss and wish her well in her fight in Norfolk, so I agree with Isaby's first sentiment. But David Cameron, among others, should read what comes after that very carefully.

I am glad that Liz Truss’s status as Conservative candidate for South West Norfolk has been confirmed and trust that this draws a line under the matter.

There is a lesson to be learnt from this whole sorry saga, however. What we have witnessed in the constituency is indicative of a wider malaise and frustration in many local parties about the way the candidate selection process has been changed to restrict the choice of local associations.

Conservative HQ allows just six candidates from a likely field of about 200 in a “safe” seat to be shortlisted for the nomination and would prefer if all six went through to a final selection meeting.

In days gone by, the process would have meant a field of 20 shortlisted candidates whittled down to three or four over a period of weeks, encompassing several interviews. This gave local parties ample opportunity to get to know the people aspiring to represent the constituency in Parliament as well as allowing would-be candidates to establish whether they had “clicked” with the association.

For constituencies selecting a candidate in a seat where an incumbent Conservative MP is standing down, a relationship is beginning that might well last for decades. It is essential that local parties do not feel short-changed when it comes to making that choice.

What is especially disturbing to many at the grass roots is the proposal that in any seat where a sitting Conservative MP announces their retirement after January 1, the association will be given a centrally-imposed shortlist of only three names from which to choose.

Such a step will only breed further dissatisfaction and frustration among the activist base and should be reconsidered.

Furthermore, every sitting Conservative MP should make their intentions clear before Christmas to avoid the scenario where the members who have loyally worked for them over the years have that restrictive shortlist foisted upon them.

There's that phrase "foisted upon them" again. It's slightly disappointing that Isaby does not mention open caucuses (though that is a separate issue, I suppose), but his main points and explanations about an ever-more centralised system of selection that runs a real risk of riding roughshod over the wishes of local associations and their membership and general supporters are powerful and, I submit, should be addressed.

Some kind of reassurance from the almighty Central Office at the very least would be nice.

Spending Our Children's Money

My current, and I hope brief, 1992 fixation continues with this interesting presidential election debate from the day. How, on the strength of this performance, Clinton won that election is beyond me. Having said that, I recall watching it all on TV with an American friend of mine from Boston when I was at uni. and that I was as elated as she was when it became clear that Bill Clinton had triumphed. Political naiveté is the indulged privilege of callow youth, I guess.

The best part of this thing, though, is the Ross Perot explanation of the necessity for a gas tax to help to pay down the deficit. It was a great idea - for Americans - but it was ignored. A decade or so before this debate, when I was an American, gas was 48 cents a gallon. So Perot was right: there was room for relatively painless tax levies on gasolene and had been for years. Unlike in Britain. Petrol has always been expensive here, especially during Labour years, so hiking taxes on petrol even further to deal with a debt crisis has never really been a serious option for us - (until Brown!).

The real point is, though, that Ross Perot was a decent, patriotic old man who was rightly worried about debt levels in the US economy in 1992. No one listened to him then and his predictions have all come true now - in America and in Britain. For him it was morally wrong to "spend our children's money" to service our own or our government's economic incompetence and excesses. And he was dead right.

But we in Britain, thanks to Brown, have mortgaged our children's futures. Lunatics like him have made absolutely sure of that, for whatever ideologically, politically perverse reason.

The upshot is that in 2010 we now have a clear choice: either we try to limit the damage to our children's futures that Brown has caused and choose a period of conservatism (and Conservatism), or we risk burdening our children to the point of their despair by choosing Labour.

I made my mind up a long time ago. I went with the rational choice.

To eject this catastrophic Labour government, I pray that enough other people make the right choice too when the time comes - and choose Cameron.

Labour Disasters Don't Come Cheap

We are running out of money, especially the kind we're borrowing.

We're even running out of the money we're printing!

Thank Gordon Brown, thank Labour, for the worst economic crisis this country has ever faced.

And just remember, if you were stupid enough (like I was - in my youth) to be taken-in by "New" Labour's reformist lies at the start of this slowmotion train-wreck, that the last Tory government handed-over an economy in rude health - a genuinely "golden legacy".

Labour/Brown has squandered that Tory dividend ten times over - and more.

Socialists are fond of dumb counterfactuals when they feel like attacking all those who dare oppose them, especially "evil Tories". Well, I have one of my own: the current recession and debt crisis would have been nowhere near as severe if for the past ten years Tory spending levels and programmes had been strictly adhered to by that arrogant incompetent, Brown. Better still, had a Tory government followed its own spending programme from 1997 to now, instead of a medicated, economically illiterate, unbalanced, mediocre Scottish historian's twisted version of it, Britain would have been guaranteed a quick and relatively painless recovery from what is, after all, a "global crisis" (or so we have been told ad nauseum by Brown Labour). Britain would have been better off under the Tories, in every way.

We live and learn.

Fact is, my Tories would never have allowed things to get this bad and, had they been in power, would have managed any downturn from a position of absolute economic strength.

At the end of the day, in these "difficult times", Tories are just much, much less expensive than Brown and his incompetent Labourists. That is the devastating truth for Labour; a straightforward reality for the rest of us. A Tory recovery will be far more effective, far faster and far less painful than a Labour one. Labour only does spending; "recoveries" are beneath it. Sickening.

Brown himself is one of the main causes of Britain's deepest of deep recessions. Let no one ever forget that.

They Know How You Vote

"They" meaning this government (naturally) who, for some reason, quietly decided to end secret ballots at some time during its tenure between 1997 and now. Established by Gladstone in the Secret Ballot Act, 1872, (and reinforced with the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Act of 1883) it goes without saying that the motivation for the legislation was to solve the problem of intimidation or bribing of voters and/or to ensure that no data could be gathered about individuals' voting choices within constituencies by central government, guaranteeing any vote is genuinely free.

But a letter to the Mail today pointed-out to me by a family member casts serious and shocking doubt on whether that guarantee is still in force. A member of the public in High Wycombe (a town very near my childhood stomping ground, incidentally but irrelevantly) brought to our attention that ballot papers for the recent local and EU elections were each identifiable by a unique number which was then ticked-off against the voters' individual polling cards by an official. I have to admit, I didn't even notice this when I voted last week but apparently it is now national practice. Previously, there was no way polling cards and ballot papers could be connected whatsoever - the vote you cast was anonymous because ballot papers were identical with no distinguishing marks. Why is that not the case now? Why should the government know (or even want to know) the names and addresses of the people who vote for them, or, more sinister, of their political opponents? Not so long ago, this was illegal.

The letter-writer makes the point about this fresh assault on our fundamental liberties quite well:

This subtle change, apparently introduced in the underhand manner to which we have become accustomed since 1997, compromises the secrecy of the ballot and spells the end of British democracy as we have known it since 1872. I was not reassured by being told that my vote could not be divulged without a court order. Public servants have a poor track record in confidential matters.

This is, of course, true - there is ample evidence to support the view that the government cannot be trusted with extremely sensitive information. But that's not really the point of principle. The point of principle is that no official, elected or otherwise, should possess or have access to the private, secret vote cast by individual members of the electorate. That there could be a database of such information is truly chilling. It suggests we have not had a secret ballot possibly for years in this country and that your government quite possibly now knows how you vote. Today, there is no such thing in Britain as the secret ballot. Labour has compromised the very soul of British democracy: the free vote.

I didn't know anything about this. Perhaps you did. If so, forgive my ignorance. But if this was known widely and I somehow missed it, then why aren't people up in arms? Where are the protests? My suspicion is that hardly anybody realises just how compromised liberty and democracy have become in Britain since Labour took power. Now we have an unelected Prime Minister clinging on to office without a popular mandate surrounded by unelected peers parachuted into government, lawmaking without legitimacy. We have demanded the general election - God knows, I have enough times here - but now we can't even guarantee it wouldn't be rigged even if those demands had not fallen on deaf ears. How? Well, if they have information on a database about who voted which way in previous elections, in a general election in, say, key marginals (which means just about every Labour seat now) how hard can it be to delay the posting of polling cards to what are deemed 'anti-Labour' households, for instance?

I know, I know: paranoid! Well, I'm not suggesting a desperate Labour party led by what amounts now to little more than a demagogic tyrant and faced with the prospect of total wipeout in the next election would resort to such banana republic measures. No, really, I'm almost convinced they wouldn't.

All I am saying, and this is the key difference between 'Before Labour' and 'Since Labour', is that if they really wanted to, now they could.

(If anyone has any more information about the piece of Labour legislation that ended the secret ballot in Britain, I'd be grateful to hear about it.)

Update:
Interesting exchange recorded on Freedom of Information helpsite WhatDoTheyKnow.com. The key part for me was this reply from the Electoral Commission about vote tracing:

James Pack
Electoral Commission

3 April 2009

Thank you for your query,

By vote tracing I take it that you mean occasions where a ballot paper
cast at an election has been traced back to the elector who is supposed
to have marked that ballot paper. This can only occur on the order of a
court.

There is no central database of such applications or cases however we
are aware of some cases where this has occurred.

Two of these related to election petitions that have involved the
scrutiny of ballot papers by the Court in camera where electoral
malpractice is alleged to see who the allegedly fraudulent votes were
cast for. We are aware that it was done in the Slough 2007 election
petition as it allowed the court to show that fraudulently registered
voters had cast their vote for one particular candidate. We are also
aware that it was done following the local elections in Birmingham in
2004 where postal votes that had been fraudulently applied for or
completed were checked to the same effect. The third case was where West
Midlands Police obtained the necessary court order following a failed
election petition relating to the 2007 local elections in Coventry. One
person was subsequently convicted of two cases of Personation at two
separate polling stations.

Kind regards,

show quoted sections

Senior Adviser (Electoral Practice)

In other words, the Electoral Commission only knows about a couple of cases of vote tracing taking place for whatever reason, and these both happened in the last five years. Curiouser and curiouser. It's 'unaware' of any others because there is 'no central database' (ie: no central file) of occasions when these (new?) powers have been used. The whole letter implies, however, that it is possible to trace any voters from 'their' ballot papers, which is outrageous given this government's record on security and its abuses of anti-terrorist legislation etc. This kind-of confirms my previous point: if Labour wanted to shaft Britain in a general election, they definitely could.

Still no joy on the new law which over-rode the Secret Ballot Act, 1872 and permitted this parlous state of affairs to emerge. Anyone know anything about it? Guess I'll have to keep looking...

Update 2:
The Electoral Commission's advisory document for the design of ballot papers in 2003 makes for very curious reading on the subject of vote tracing. For instance (and sorry it's such a long quote):

4.5 The human rights organisation Liberty has argued
that the use of serial numbers or any mark whereby
vote-tracing can take place after an election should
be stopped. They also point out that other countries
manage their elections without the use of vote-tracing
mechanisms. Liberty’s concerns are based on the fear
that some voters have that security services can trace
their votes; they acknowledge that while the fear may
be unjustified it is an understandable one. Liberty also
recognises that a consequence of the discontinuation
of the vote-tracing provisions would be the need to
re-run an election where personation was proved
where the number of personated votes was greater
than the winning candidate’s majority. However,
Liberty argues that this happens extremely rarely.
4.6 Liberty takes the view that vote-tracing does not help
to deal with allegations of personation, rather it merely
enables the result to be corrected afterwards if personation
is proved and that the discontinuation of vote-tracing would
make no difference to the prevention, detection or proof of
offences of personation. In its opinion, a real safeguard
against personation would be to require voters to provide
some proof of identity when they go to vote and Liberty
has expressed its support in principle for such a measure.
4.7 The Commission acknowledges the concerns that
underpin the case put forward by Liberty and others
against the use of serial numbers. However, we also
recognise the arguments that vote-tracing can prove, and
has proved, a valuable instrument in tackling electoral
fraud. We believe there have been six cases where vote
tracing has been ordered by the courts in the last 10
years. The key judgement is whether the benefits drawn
from the ability of the courts to trace a vote outweigh any
possible concerns held by some electors that security
services may be seeking to identify individual voters’ ballot
papers to ascertain for whom they have voted. In making
this judgement, we also recognise the wider issues of
principle about the use of serial numbers (or any other
mechanism). Many international observers of UK election
practice are astonished at the use of a mechanism
designed to allow – even in controlled circumstances –
for a link to be made between a vote and an individual.
These issues need to be considered in relation to both
traditional voting processes and the new electronic
voting methods being tested through pilot schemes.
The Commission will consider separately the wider issue
of whether providing for the possibility of vote tracing in
the event of allegations of fraud is a necessary feature
of our electoral system, given the anxieties of some
voters over the possible misuse of serial numbers to
trace their vote.
4.8 As long as the present system continues, it is clearly
important that polling station staff are able to explain to
any concerned voters how the serial numbers are used,
and the exceptional circumstances in which any link
might be made between the ballot paper issued...

Fine. So here we have a mystery about "six instances of vote tracing" between 1993 and 2003. The Commission apparently declined to comment on the 'six instances'. They haven't a clue about them, in other words, presumably because cases specifically where serial numbers were used to trace votes didn't exist before 2003. Why? Because serial numbers, as my mother (who's voted for 40 years too, anon in the comments) quite clearly recalls, were not in use. She also remembers, as she says in her email to me "saying to your father in 2005 after voting in the general election that there were numbers on the ballot papers. There were never any numbers on them before, so far as I remember."

Dan Hannan: Brown GO!

EU Election Results: England and Wales

North East:
North West:Yorkshire & Humber:
East Midlands:West Midlands:Eastern:
South West:Wales :) :)South East:London:EU Wide:Graphics (c) BBC, Sky

So that's it, then. Labour wiped-out in most of England and Wales - and two seats for the BNP national socialist villains. Incredible, really. Could there have been a more complete and damning indictment of Brown's total, utter failure in everything he has ever touched? The country is now in a far, far worse condition, politically and economically, than it was when Labour took power in 1997.

The Golden Legacy Labour inherited has been well and truly destroyed, perhaps permanently, by Brown. The body politic is in a state of febrile volatility, thanks to Brown. The socioeconomic and democratic health of the nation is now so bad, frankly anything could happen - if Brown stays. If he goes, as he surely must, there is just a chance the damage can be limited and then repaired. If he clings on, Terminator-style, as Dan Hannan said, then things can only get much, much worse.

We're into real high stakes politics now. David Cameron better step-up, for all our sakes.

Gains For Far Right Across Europe

Dutch newsblog NRC Handelsbad, released their Euro results yesterday, well before the official release time which is, apparently, 10pm tonight. The right wing, anti-immigration party of Geert Wilders, PVV, (second from top), shocked the Netherlands by coming from nowhere to gain 4 seats and 16.9% of the popular vote. These results are reliable judging by the website and by what it says about them:

[Above] are the unofficial results from the European parliament elections in the Netherlands. Officially, member states are not supposed to release results until the last polling station closes on Sunday evening, but the Dutch government says transparency is equally important. The Netherlands narrowly escaped a lawsuit after releasing unofficial results during the 2004 EU elections.

Across Europe there have been reports of increases in the vote share of far right parties which suggests that there is a possibility the BNP could be heading for gains in Britain. Confirming the Dutch result, the Telegraph tonight says:

Geert Wilders and his far-Right anti-immigrant party won second place in the Netherlands, behind the ruling Christian Democrats, taking 17 per cent of the total vote. In Austria, two anti-immigrant parties won an unprecedented 17.7 per cent.

Austria's eurosceptic parties also did well, winning 17.8 per cent of the vote at the expense of the ruling coalition. In Slovakia, a turnout of just 19.4 per cent was expected to propel at least one ultra-nationalist into the European Parliament for the first time. Hungarian far-right parties were also predicted to make gains.

While I'm pretty comfortable with the socialist and centre-left parties in Europe getting the kind of kicking they richly deserve, especially the Labour party here, I'm absolutely not looking forward to BNP gargoyles benefiting from the vast dollops of European gravy potentially coming their way so they can redouble their poisonous efforts.

I tell you what, though, the message should be hammered home that if the BNP do win Euro seats tonight, it will be the fault of Labour, not least for successfully demonising the Tories for decades in the targetted areas. Well, that kind of hate politics has now come to bite Labour, and Britain, on the backside. I hope they are happy with their 'achievement'.

More later!

==Update==
Sky is reporting that Nick Griffin has won a seat in Manchester. Scenes there of socialist worker protests preventing the fatty blackshirt from entering the town hall.

==Update==
According to ConservativeHome, the Tories have top polled in Wales! If that's true, that's just incredible.

==Update==
According to Iain Dale's radio coverage (see link box in sidebar), the BNP is doing very badly in areas they'd expected to advance, such as East Riding in Yorkshire where they've been battered down into fifth place. Is the panic over, then? Let's hope so. More amazing Tory results coming in all the time - especially in Wales, where they've just come first in Cardiff South which is (was) a rock solid Labour seat (Alun Michael's, no less).

==Update 11.28pm==
According to the Beeb, the BNP have taken a seat from Labour in Yorkshire and Humber. Incredible - and could be the thing that finally buries Gordon Brown. They only have themselves to blame for opening this country up to fascism for the first time since the 1930s. Appalling news. Humiliating.

Labour China Syndrome

If the results from Lincolnshire are anything to go by, Labour is facing its biggest defeat of all time. The link for the Lincs results can be found here.

Labour have been wiped out. And the story in Staffordshire so far is no different. There is mounting evidence that Brown is facing an unprecedented meltdown in support nationwide. And the fringe parties have not benefited as much as was expected.

The really titanic outcome of the vote appears to be the massive shift from Labour to the Lib Dems. While the Tories have made more or less the gains their upside estimates predicted, the Liberals appear to be overtaking Labour in a way that indicates a serious identification change in the minds of people who, it had been assumed, were dyed in the wool Labour loyalists.

Early days yet, but these results suggest a collapse in support for the party of government on a scale never before seen. Astonishing.

Beeb Goes Into Bat For Brown

It's pathetic, really. The BBC has made scant reference to today's Euro and local elections (unlike Sky). In its two online articles on it, one talks about the folded ballot papers that have apparently hurt poor old UKIP, although Guido seems to think there's been other dirty tricks by Labour activists. The Beeb then poo-poos the idea of a high turnout in its second article (a high turnout would be bad news for Brown).

At the last European elections in 2004, turnout in the UK was 38% - across Europe the average was 45.5%. There have been predictions turnout this time it could be as low as 28%, while others believe it could be up to 50%.The Press Association says 52 people out of a possible 2,255 voted in the first two hours at a polling station in Streatham, south London, which it says suggests a turnout there of less than 25%.

Un-be-lievable. Top analysis, that. No, really. Its TV coverage is, if anything, worse.

But the worst bit of abject politicking for Labour by the Beeb is found in this article about Lord Mandelbum of Spin's desperate attempt to head-off the growing backbench rebellion threatening to unseat his doddery benefactor and source of his bread and butter, Brown. Entitled, ridiculously, "Allies of Brown go on offensive", it reads like a threatening message to party dissidents rather than a piece of independent, informative journalism.

But the real scandal in its coverage of the elections, buried away as it is in its Politics section, is that on the front page not one story out of 25-odd makes reference to any of the challenging parties. There are one or two general, technical bits. Nothing else.

So, according to the BBC narrative, there will be a low turnout in some not-very-significant elections, Brown's allies are in charge and Brown is out of the woods and carrying-on. Well, I for one believe that however they try to play things down, with the help of Auntie Beeb of course, Labour are in for an epic shock come the count.

Am I being paranoid? Probably - a little bit. And if you think so, click on the links and form your own opinion. Just remember, the BBC has real form for this kind of thing, as first rate Beeb debunkers, Biased BBC, will testify - at length. If you lived off a diet of pure Beeb bullshit, as many do - worryingly - you would be left with the distinct impression that life under Labour might be a little bit tricky right now, but is basically absolutely wonderful. A bed of (red) roses, no less.

Earth to Beeb: We don't want Brown-Labour any more. Or its media outlet - you!

Owned

I hate the term 'owned' because I'm too old to appreciate it and because I'm a snob. It's just too bloody YouTube for a cricket and rugger man like me. But there's simply no pithier term in current linguistic circulation to describe the total annihilation of Gordon-sodding-Brown and his royally pathetic journey to political Coventry by Matthew Norman in today's Independent.

Click through and enjoy it, I do implore you. But if you can't be arsed, here's some top tasters.

On Blears' damp failure to oust Brown:

Rats are smart and terrifying little vermin, however, while the only fear you'd feel on finding yourself in Room 101 separated by a flimsy wire mesh from Hazel Blears' gob is that she'd use it not to gore or gnaw, but to bore you to death with her cretinous "sunny optimism". The self-righteousness in yesterday's crude assassination attempt (technically, letter of resignation) suggested an excommunication order issued against his useless, dithery bishop by a cleric about to be unfrocked for choirboy interference.

On the causal connection between Brown's woes and Cherie Blair's shopping habits:

Onto even the most joyous of vistas the odd drop of sadness must fall, the one here being that no one will be loving Gordon's torment more than Cherie Blair – the half woman-half supermarket trolley mythological hybrid whose fill-your-boots avarice did so much to create the culture of greed that has all but destroyed him. The lone shard of poignancy flying forth from his shattered administration, meanwhile, is that the PM is so uniquely ill-suited to take what comfort the vaguely normal would extract by way of gallows humour.

On why Gordon is no tragic hero:

The days when pretentious gits like me invoked tragedy in a Gordonian context have long since passed. Tragic heroism relies upon a certain largeness of spirit, or at the very least a sudden moment of self-knowledge so acute that it induces intolerable psychic anguish. Ajax slaughtered his sheep when made aware of his fatal flaw, Oedipus put out his eyes when faced with his. Despite his ocular head start in that direction, Gordon is as nugatory a figure as Nero, fiddling with ritualistic lines at yesterday's PMQs while his government self-immolates.

On why Brown deserves his inescapable fate:

It's the smallness of the man, the lack of grandeur in his dreams, the pathetic dressing-up of rank self-interest in the translucent cloak of dutifulness, that makes guilt-free schaudenfraude less a temptation than a moral obligation. For this has become a morality play – specifically, the first morality high farce in politico-theatrical history - about a system so deranged in its complacency that it gifts such power to one whose personal ambition is surpassed only by his lack of talent, without any mechanism to remove him once that power has drained away.

There's quite a bit more of this rich ore seam of an article even though it might seem to some that my barefaced, copyright-busting comprehensive lifting dressed-up as quotation suggests otherwise. Well, you know, there's a little bit more.

But in my defence I've done this not just because I'm utterly lazy and devoid of original thought, but because in its own way, it's one of the best, most entertaining and most damning pieces on Brown's total unsuitability for the power and office he grabbed I've ever read.

I guess the 21st Century junk-thought but totally apt term would be: "epic pwnage". Or something. Today's elections will reveal just how deeply that reality has seeped into the popular imagination. "Totally", I would hazard.

Left, Right, Left, Right: HALT!

Curious thing. I dislike extremists intensely but very occasionally, and like an awful lot of other ordinary people no doubt, I'm tempted to agree with them. Only tempted, mark you. (For example, I'd prefer to see the ginger chipmunk Blears and her epic failure of a government kicked out of office through an immediate General Election rather than hounded out by the threat of arrest, pleasant though that sounds!) But if I were to contemplate voting for an extremist party and all I had to go on were their campaign posters, which would I choose I wonder?

This poster (right) from loony left rag, Socialist Worker seems to capture the underlying mood for national retribution if nothing else. Maybe that's what it's for. There is a difference, though, between the metaphorical currency of, say, a Guido Fawkes ('blood is spilt'; 'political beheadings', 'snouts in the trough' and so forth) and the call for summary imprisonment here, or the BNP invective below. While centre-right bloggers are trying to make a point with humour (and usually failing in my case), these guys actually mean it. So the resemblance the socialist worker poster bears to the BNP campaign, who have also gleefully jumped on the populist version of the anti-sleaze bandwagon, is startling - and not superficial, murderously loathe each other though they genuinely do and always have.

While there certainly are differences - the nationalist extremists' target appears to be the whole of mainstream politics and their main rivals, UKIP, whereas the socialist extremists, at least in their minds, are attacking Labour from the Left - there are distinct similarities,too.

Both appear to seek arbitrary punishment for those who have been found guilty in that old chestnut, the 'court of public opinion' (Harriet Harman should be ashamed of herself). Both in reality are exploiting an issue which has deeply offended the electorate to further their hazy, extremist agendas. Both seem to want to 'do away' with the 'old order' - rather than reform it - presumably in favour of some vague 'new' one, as yet undefined.

I know, I know, it's just a couple of posters, so there's not really that much that can be gleaned from them. But both are very recent and both you will see quite a lot of in the run-up to the Euro and local elections, the BNP 'piggies' one in northern Labour-held town centres and the socialist worker 'chipmunk' one outside student union buildings across the nation.

Above all, both are very similar because both 'movements', beneath all the hyperbole and the posturing, are too. That's worth bearing in mind if you're ever tempted to vote for an extremist party: you never know what it really stands for - or where you stand. Dead in the middle, usually. Like Poland.

PS: If you're interested and want to know more than you ever could reading my stuff, Donal Blaney wrote a great piece sort-of on this theme a few days ago.