Hopeful signs from Barking & Dagenham

STILL fragile today after a poor night. I'm taking antihistamines and steroids and despite feeling better for short spells, the rash and swelling comes back again, especially at night time. You would have thought that whatever it was would have passed through my system by now. I had been hoping for a weekend in the garden but at present (lunchtime on Friday) I certainly don't feel up to it.

When you are not well, you tend to be disagreeable and all the news items of interest this morning have an irritating angle.
Reports on the Dambusters 65th anniversary today are all full of a new film on the raids by Stephen Fry(!). Well, I could be wrong, but I would like to bet that his version of events will differ considerably from the 1954 classic which starred Richard Todd as Guy Gibson . . . and I bet Guy's dog will have a different name. A few years ago we had the farce of the voice of Richard Todd being dubbed out whenever he mentioned the dog's name when the film was shown on terrestrial TV - thankfully the last time I saw it on SKY it was the full version.

The Ripley & Heanor News advises us this morning that a decision on whether to allow live music and alcohol at the British National Party's annual festival in Denby will be made on June 10th.

"Amber Valley Borough Council's licensing panel will meet at Ripley Town Hall to consider whether music can be played at the event, hosted by Codnor Denby Lane resident and BNP member Alan Warner.
"The festival is scheduled to take place between August 15th to 17th.
"Last year the event was given a license by the council despite objections from local residents. The festival passed off without incident and the BNP has vowed it will return this year bigger and better than the previous one."

Following the report, there was a good 'comment' from Nina from Nottingham who wrote:

"The Red White and Blue Festival is a fantastic weekend for all the family in beautiful surroundings in the English countryside. This is all a fuss about nothing, blown up by the media and lefties on the local council. What is so offensive about celebrating our culture, heritage and history as we have for thousands of years? It is disgusting that we do not celebrate it regularly nationwide and any British person that thinks it is offensive to do so should hang their heads in shame."

Some good news to finish off with. This week I received an email from Wayne McDermott who has been number crunching the GLA results. He reports just how squeezed all the other parties were in this election by the BIG TWO and how well the BNP did to get Richard Barnbrook on to the Greater London Assembly.

Apparently even on the London List Vote, people still saw it as LAB vs CON contest. The Lib-Dems were well and truly pushed aside and won just THREE wards across the whole of London. A shocking performance from a party of its size and with its easy access to good media publicity.

The winners of wards on the 627 wards on the London list vote were:
Conservative: 330
Labour : 285
British National Party: 8
Liberal Democrats: 3
Green Party: 1
Others : 0

The BNP won in Alibon, Goresbrook, Heath, Mayesbrook, Parsloes, Valence, Village, wards that are all in Barking and Dagenham and in Gooshays ward in Havering.

Wayne's analysis of this is:

"The big squeeze hit everyone although, as expected, Barking and Dagenham still looks very good for us. We won 7 wards, Labour won 8 wards and the Tories won two wards. There were some close encounters and it looks like we still have a great chance of taking that council in 2 years time. Using the GLA list vote as a guide we would have 21 councillors to Labour's 24 with the Tories on 6."

That's excellent news for the British National Party and shows that after two years with twelve councillors on Barking and Dagenham Council, the BNP are still as popular as ever in the borough.