Battle of Britain Appeal gets a plug

WHAT a publicity coup to launch our Battle of Britain European Election Fund.

On the very week that 20,000 Battle of Britain Appeal envelopes are popping through the letterbox, almost every single newspaper in Britain is associating the BNP with the White Cliffs of Dover song and even including a photograph of our national icon Vera Lynn as well.

Our donation lines reported "telephones ringing off the hook" yesterday, and with more publicity in The Sun this morning, the British National Party's Battle of Britain European Election Appeal has received a massive boost. One minute The Sun is calling us 'nazis' and the next it is claiming that we are evoking the British spirit of 1944 which defeated the Nazis - confusing for its readership or what?

As I have said before, and I will no doubt say again . . . politics is a lot about own goals - and not scoring them. For thirty plus years British nationalist political parties were prolific own goal scorers, our opponents had to just sit back and wait for us to hit the back of our own net. But not any more. Now it's our opponents that are making the mistakes - the persecution of our members after the leaking of the list, the CofE clergy ban, the scrapping of the St George's Day march in Sandwell and now exploiting Dame Vera Lynn. All campaigns designed to stem the growing support for the British National Party, but yet all doing the opposite.

There will be a litmus test on BNP support in Thringstone in Leicestershire, and Swanley in Kent, today when voters go to the polls in two by-elections where the local BNP teams are hopeful of gaining a 20% share of the vote. Two seats never fought before by the British National Party, so two seats where the voters will have their first opportunity to "Vote BNP" - you probably can't get a better test of public opinion as to how voters see the BNP.

And still on the Battle of Britain theme, I'm grateful again to Bob Cherrie for alerting me to the Forces Discount Scheme with which he is involved. Apparently many servicemen and women and their families are not aware of this scheme which was set up as a "thank you" by firms and organisations in the UK to personnel from all the services for their commitment to the defence of Britain.

Full details of the scheme is shown on the website here . . .

No, I don't want to talk about Solihull on Tuesday night. I have been a member of the Workington Reds Supporters Club since 1972 and you would have thought that with the number of bouts of depression that the Reds' performances have inflicted on me over the last 37 years that I would be immune to the odd setback or 500. But defeats still hurt, especially when expectations were so high, so please let me suffer in silence.