It's the West Cumbrian way

I went to Cockermouth on Thursday, just to take stock of the situation and speak to some local people.

Clive Jefferson, who lives in the town, and Eddy Butler, who was there on a fact finding visit for Nick Griffin MEP, were with me as we walked down the main street talking to residents and members of the emergency services.

We did a bit of filming for BNPtv away from where people were trying to salvage what was left of their belongings and down by the river. The strength and height of the Derwent was still very worrying, although the weather had improved and level of the river is said to have dropped.

We visited the home of a BNP voter and he told us the harrowing story of the night and how events unfolded. It all happened so quickly. One minute he was watching television and the next his car had been washed away and his lounge was knee deep in water.

He was busy cleaning up and getting on with life. And that seems to be the way of things. It's the West Cumbrian way.

Football at Borough Park this afternoon where there will be a minute's silence for the brave Bill Barker who lost his life saving the lives of others just a few yards from the ground. Borough Park itself was just six inches from being swamped but the double bank that protects the ground from the Derwent held firm and withstood the raging torrent.

Not the time for showboating or scoring political points

MORE rain, gale force winds and power cuts last night . . . and that's here in Wigton which is around 15 miles from Cockermouth and Workington.

Nick Griffin MEP yesterday submitted a written question to the European Commission seeking the position on possible financial help for West Cumbria from the European Disaster Fund.

Gordon Brown was right to come to West Cumbria and right to immediately offer aid, even if it was only a fraction of what is paid out by the Government in Foreign Aid.

The Health and Transport Ministers were right to come to West Cumbria to assess what needs to be done to help alleviate the problems arising from the current situation.

David Cameron shouldn't have come. All he could offer was empty soundbites and he was only here to 'showboat' and score political points. It is not the time for this.

Nick Griffin will be coming up to West Cumbria when the media circus has gone and it has become much clearer where help is most needed. There is a fund that has been launched by the Cumbria Community Foundation called the Cumbria Flood Recovery Fund, and unless there are more specific projects in need of funding, I shall be suggesting to our MEP that this is the fund which he supports.

Those readers of this blog who want to donate to this fund can find it here.

Taking each day at a time

I WAS on the telephone to Nick Griffin for around an hour yesterday lunchtime.

He was traveling to Strasbourg and wanted an update on the situation in West Cumbria and to discuss ways in which, in his role as the region's MEP, he could help.

The situation has improved and water levels have dropped but not before the Calva Bridge was damaged beyond repair. That bridge, along with the now disappeared Northside Bridge, were the only means of getting into Workington along the coast road coming from Carlisle, Wigton and Maryport. Now to get to Workington you have to come in from the east via the road from Cockermouth.

Photo shows Borough Park bravely resisting the flood water.

Tonight and Tuesday are the next key days of weather and at the moment for the people of West Cumbria it is all about taking each day as it comes and just hoping that there is no further destruction.

Stunned

WEST Cumbria is in a state of shock this morning after the events of the last 48 hours.

The tragic loss of Bill Barker on the bridge in Workington, just by the Reds football gound, has left everyone stunned.

Clive Jefferson reports that Cockermouth is virtually under seige from rising water and there's the worry that the renewed onslaught from the weather, which is forecast for today, could have further devastating effect.

On Thursday when the storm hit us, at one point it seemed as though the roof of our constituency office might blow off. I was crawling around in the eaves with buckets trying to catch the leaks as the rain came down in sheets.

There are floods everywhere but thankfully the office has survived so far and Tina and I live on a hill so we should be OK.

Today's FA Trophy tie against Solihull has quite correctly been postponed - not because the pitch is waterlogged - apparently it's quite playable - but because of the tragedy at the bridge.

I spoke with Nick Griffin at length yesterday as he wanted a complete briefing on the situation in Workington and Cockermouth. He wants to help but said that we must wait until the emergency services have done their work and the media circus has left the area. Then we will see how we can be of use by utilising Nick's English Fair Fund to support any local projects helping the stricken community.

Tina's off the Carlisle this morning to do a bit of shopping by has strict instructions to be back by mid-day when the next round of weather is due to hit. At the moment the sun is shining and there's not a breath of wind . . . . the lull before the storm?

34 years ago there was "Publish it Not"

Day off today - but there's no relaxing as I'm decorating.

I promised my two daughters that they would have a new bright lounge to greet them when they come home from Uni at Christmas, so I have to get cracking.

Last night I watched Peter Oborne's expose of the power of the Israeli lobby within British politics and the media. Shock, horror for Peter and some other ostriches who have had their heads buried in the sand for the past quarter of a century, but not for me . . .

Back in 1975 I read a book called Publish it Not by Michael Adams and Christopher Mayhew which said everything that Oborne was saying, only 34 years earlier. Thousands of politicians and journalists over the years have known what is going on but have stayed silent, and anyone who did voice concerns, like me, were branded an anti-semite.

I often get irritated by Hugh Muir's Diary in The Guardian, but not this morning. It even made me chuckle. If there was a contact email for him I would have sent him a 'thumbs up'. Take a look at the last paragraph, I'm sorry my laptop doesn't seem to want to link to it.

And finally never let Andrew Gilligan become an army general. According to his article in the Daily Telegraph this morning, Nick has made a mistake in choosing to stand in Barking because it is being ethnically cleansed much too quickly. Gilligan thinks the BNP should retreat from the immigration frontline back to Dagenham where there are more traditional Brits.

If Gilligan was our commander-in-chief, by the 2020 General Election our retreats would have taken us back through Hornchurch, Romford and Grays and our back would be against the sea at Southend.

Annual Conference over for another year

BRILLIANT weekend crowned by Nick's selection as our candidate for Barking.

I have been number-crunching the votes in Barking this morning and it's all rather exciting. You can see the outcome of my deliberations on Nick's EU website.

Delighted with the vote on the membership criteria, not because of what it will mean to our Party, but because everyone accepted that there was no other alternative. One of the best speeches came from Richard Edmonds - someone who I would describe as a 'hardliner' - he succinctly summed up the situation we face and the road we must take.

Here is a photo of the historic vote.



My selection as the British National Party candidate for Workington made the newspapers on Friday and you can read the report here

I wasn't "unavailable for comment", I just don't speak to the newspaper. At the elections this June, the bias against the BNP was appalling. Time and again they published lies about the British National Party and all my press statement and letters were ignored.

I certainly won't be speaking to the Times & Star again unless I get a commitment from the editor that there will be free and fair coverage of the election campaign. I won't need any publicity from the newspaper because I shall be going direct to the voters with my leaflets, covering the constituency over the next five months as well as using the Royal Mail for the distribution of my election address.

My main campaign issues will be getting our troops out of Afghanistan, stopping the windfarm juggernaut in Cumbria and the regeneration of the region's manufacturing industry.

Anorak Time

I shall be standing in Workington at the General Election next May.

I am delighted to have been selected and excited by the prospect. I have promised Allerdale British National Party that I shall be pulling out all the stops to get the best possible result.

Let's take a look at some figures.

Back in May 2005 this was the result in the Workington Constituency.

Tony Cunningham (Lab) 19,554
Judith Pattinson (Con) 12,659
Kate Clarkson (Lib-Dem) 5,815
Mark Richardson (UKIP) 1,328
John Peacock (Ind) 381

The votes at the County Council Elections in June for the electoral divisions that include the 25 borough wards that make up the Workington constituency were as follows . . .

Conservative 7,278
Labour Party 6,865
Liberal Democrat 2,091
British National Party 1,336
Green Party 861
BNP Percentage: 7.2%

That would be a saved deposit for us and no mean feat on the stats considering we only contested 10 of the 25 wards that make up the constituency.

The cumulative votes for these ten wards were:

Labour Party 4,041
Conservative 1,666
British National Party 1,336
Liberal Democrats 892
BNP Percentage: 16.8%

Now that is a very useful vote share and I'm confident that it can be built on over the next six months.

Work is already underway on the campaign strategy and I'm jotting down ideas for the literature. First job next week is a newsletter to our considerable enquiry and membership list within the constituency to start geeing people up for the hard slog ahead.

Elections . . . I just love them!

Is there a daily newspaper with our name on it?

THE establishment are scoring some huge own goals and the repercussions will reverberate throughout the body politic of Britain.

I can't say too much at the moment as all these issues are ongoing, but suffice to say that the Labour Government and its cronies might have been able to deny the British National Party its legal rights before we had our two MEPs elected, but since June 4th it is now a very different ballgame.

There are six specific issues currently under scrutiny where the representatives of the British National Party have been deliberately discriminated against, when trying to fulfill their duties as members of the European Parliament. Legal advice states that it is against the "spirit of constitutional law" what is being done, while a political correspondent, one who has no sympathy with the BNP, has described the actions as "outrageous" and "sure to enhance the BNP's victim status in the eyes of the public."

Watch this space!

I was particularly pleased to note a comment made by one Nick Durst in the Sunday Times after the report on the British National Party's growing support in Blackburn, Stoke and Leicester. He wrote:

"If the BNP are growing then the first media outlet to give them a fair hearing will grow too. The public are interested in the British National Party and want more honest and unbiased reporting about their policies, rather than the lies printed in most newspapers which is designed to discredit the BNP. "

I'm hoping to see many more of these types of comment in the future. It will take a brave newspaper to make such a stand, but as support and the media profile of the British National Party continues to grow, such a move might become a distinct possibility.