Naughtie's hankie

IT was the off button for the umpteenth time for the Today Programme this morning.


Now I'm certain that 2009 must be the fiftieth or hundredth anniversary of many acts of British heroism or times of great British achievement. Yet BBC Radio 4's flagship news programme chose to recollect the seventieth(?) anniversary of a boatload of Eastern European immigrants fleeing Germany and coming to Britain. The tenuous 'news' element to the story was that a book published in 1974 recalling the voyage, has been re-published.

Once the interviewer, James (Everyone must carry the guilt) Naughtie started slowing his voice down, so that his audience could dwell on the injustice of it all, and then his struggling for words with his voice starting to break up as he reached for his hankie appearing overcome by the courage and fortitude shown by the immigrants - I'm afraid I had had enough.

If the BBC had a spot to fill, then they should have found a story connected with the anniversary of something British. An act of heroism at a pit disaster or a British invention. Not something that has nothing to do with the British people apart from the fact that yet another boatload of immigrants landed up on our shores.

More predictions on how the British National Party might do in the European Elections in this morning's copy of The Times.

You can read the report here.

It appears that Glyn Ford has moderated his original prediction that the BNP would win seven seats, it's now down now to six seats. He's probably trying to keep more in line with Harriet Harman's one to three seat prediction in Friday's Independent newspaper.

Excellent meeting for our Euro candidates from the North West, North East and Scotland on Saturday. Dealing with a hostile media is something all our candidates must be able to do. The seminar was about those questions fired out at the begining of any interview which need to be got out of the way to enable our representatives to start talking about BNP policy. The day was very useful indeed and lots of good tips were picked up. There's more about the meeting and some of the literature that's going out in the North West on Clive Jefferson's blog which can be found here.

Email from Gary Tumulty this morning saying that there has been a brilliant response to the plea, put out on this blog on Saturday, for help and funds for the Irwell Riverside by-election in Salford just two weeks before the Euro Elections.

I can't stress how important this contest is, coming just two weeks before the big day on June 4th. The bottom line is that we must poll 8% or more to ensure that the final weeks of our campaign have the morale boost of knowing, in the North West at least, we are on course for an MEP.