Worth his salt

WHEN the first item on Radio 4's Today Programme this morning was about Britain's burgeoning population, I was expecting the usual 'smoke and mirrors' from the BBC.

Jon Humphrys first question gave no indication of what was to follow when he said: "Isn't our growing population down to us all living longer and having more babies?'

But enter Professor John Salt, of the migration research unit at University College London, who laid it out in no uncertain terms why the UK population grew by 408,000 in 2008 - the biggest increase for almost 50 years.

"No it isn't", was his no-nonsense reply. He then went on to explain that it was down to immigration, the birthrate of second and third generation immigrants and the birthrate of immigrants newly arrived in this country behind Britain's population explosion.

It seems that the only way the British population will stabilise is if native Brits emigrate to Spain and France at the same rate as immigrants give birth.

You can hear the report here.

The Guardian have latched on to the story of the Three Owls Bird Sanctuary with the expected jibe by Esther Addley in her Diary column. But we can live with that. It's more publicity for a very good cause and there's even a cartoon of Nick to accompany the report.

You can read the report here and the cartoon's below.

Something's in the air

AM I just being over optimistic or is change in the air.

Two events in the past few days have bucked trends that have been the norm since 2002 and probably long before.

Firstly, at the end of last week, we had the Chartered Institute of Journalists, stepping forward and issuing a statement that the British National Party should be treated in the media as any other legal political party with elected representatives.

Its statement was prompted in response to a meeting of the National Union of Journalists where the tactics of its members reporting on the BNP were to be discussed.

The NUJ deliberately encourages its members to doctor news to show the British National Party in an unfavourable light. It's a despicable policy but it has been in effect for over a decade and has never been challenged by anyone in the profession.

For another union to come forward at this time and issue, what is in reality, a condemnation of NUJ policy is very heartening indeed.

Over the weekend there was a call for BNP members to be banned from the teaching profession. The call was prompted by the Labour Party, the discredited Ed Balls in particular, but it was also backed by some members of the General Teaching Council of England.

Today, in The Guardian, the General Teaching Council of England distances itself from the comments of these Labour lackeys. Registrar Alan Meyrick writes:

"The five members of the General Teaching Council for England writing about teacher registration and membership of the BNP (Letters, 20 June) were acting independently of the GTC.

"As the regulator of the teaching profession, the GTC must carry out its responsibility - to hear cases of alleged unacceptable professional conduct, serious professional incompetence and relevant criminal convictions - fairly.

"Membership of any lawful political party cannot amount to unacceptable professional conduct. Council members, all of whom hear disciplinary cases, must not risk prejudicing themselves by expressing views that could be seen as predetermining the outcome of a case. We cannot regulate against the beliefs of professionals, only their actions and conduct.

"Where employers, such as the police, stipulate that membership of any particular political party is not permitted, this is a matter of employment contract rather than a matter for a professional regulator. For the GTC to take a position or advise government on this matter would be prejudicial to our position as a fair and impartial regulator."

There are also two other letters which buck the usual persecution trend when discussing the British National Party in newspapers like The Guardian, and they can be found here.

Blogging and the BNP

Quite often when I turn on my computer in the morning and my home page of British National Party 'news' searches springs up, there's a diary story from The Guardian at the top of the pile. The diarists on this newspaper seem to have a growing fascination with the BNP which is quite surprising since they purport to abhor everything we stand for - maybe it's our policy to nationalise all essential services and the railways that might be winning a few of them over?

This morning it's Hugh Muir who bemoans the fact that the BNP is using blogs to recruit supporters. He writes:
"At all ends of the political spectrum, the problem is the same. How to convey the message; how to engage. The problem is more acute for the far-right shock troops of the BNP, who know that most will refuse to read their unsavoury internet ramblings unless they are disguised to make them palatable."

Hugh goes on to quote Nick Griffin apparently lecturing potential bloggers on how to make the most of the service . . . ' the real power of this medium lies - not (in) the naked politics that turns off most of the population, but subtle 'independent' popular validation of our views and our party'.

Well if that's the case, I'm obviously off beam with the BNP Chairman's thinking on this. My blog is 'naked politics' under my handle of 'the editor of the British National Party's newspaper, Freedom.' I suppose I could have been not quite so 'in the face' with who I am, but I'm not keen on hiding my political light under a bushel.

I'm new to blogging, putting one's thoughts down on your own personal page, but I have been publishing my viewpoint, as such, for the last two years. First job in the morning was to trawl all the media outlets online looking for the sort of stories that I could comment on. National newspapers, local newspapers, magazines, news sites, nearly all of them provide some sort of comment facility to express your views on. I had great success with this, making sure that the BNP was mentioned and our policy on the relevant issues.

Then at the beginning of this year someone started 'tailing' me. They must have been using a similar search engine code. Whenever I posted a comment, they would be right behind with their posting which stated "Martin Wingfield edits the BNP newspaper and is being disingenuous in not stating this". Even when I dropped the 'Wingfield' and just used 'Martin from Carlisle', they were there stating who I was. The outcome of this was that suddenly my posts to the national newspapers didn't get published any more and then the larger regional newspapers followed suit.

So that's why I've started blogging. I like to start the day getting some views 'down on paper'.

When I was running my Books on Vietnam website I met hundreds of people online and debated the various issues concerning that country's history. The name Martin Wingfield didn't mean anything to most of them so I could have made that 'subtle 'independent' popular validation of our views and our party' and probably did. There was a lecturer at the London School of Economics who sussed me out straight away but despite differing viewpoints we had a long and interesting correspondence for nearly a year. And then there was a UNICEF official in Australia. We debated long into the night the merits and shortcomings of the Ngo Dinh Diem Government and at the end of our exchange of emails he wrote . . "You are either a geography teacher from Sussex University or a leading light in the British National Party. I hope it is the former, but I suspect it is the latter."

No independent popular validation achieved there then!