Dogwash

I have just been listening to the excellent John Waite in an episode of Face the Facts on the steam wireless. The subject under investigation on this occasion is residential caravan sites, or mobile home parks as they are apparently known.

Apparently the law protecting tenants on such sites is pretty feeble, consequently attracting some of the more "creatively entrepreneurial" site owners into the business. Waite is investigating reports of Rachmanesque intimidatory practices intended to induce residents to sell up at a ruinous discount. He is interviewing a couple of site owners (from memory so not guaranteed absolutely verbatim) :-

— Waite: So what were those men doing on site carrying baseball bats and wearing balaclavas?
— Owner: It was very cold.
— Waite: (Splutters).

News International's London weekday afternoon freesheet, thelondonpaper — sorry, thelondonpaper — is to close.

Why is this good news? From my point of view, not simply because it's a serious contender for the title of world's most execrable freesheet, which it undoubtedly is, but because it will be possible once again to walk the streets of central London in the afternoons without having to run the gauntlet of their hander-outers*. Traditionally, freesheets have been left in piles or in little hoppers at locations like railway and tube stations. You could pick them up or ignore them as you preferred. With the advent of thelondonpaper and London Lite came the introduction of the hander-outers, irritatingly enthusiastic young people who blocked the pavement with their little wheeled hoppers and giant umbrellas and would thrust their publication at you as you passed. I have always been unfailing polite, acknowledging their presence and indicating my refusal courteously. Even so, some have become more aggressive and insistent of late — perhaps there's some kind of target culture in play and they're under pressure.

Recently they have begun working in pairs, one from each of the two competing freesheets position themselves across the width of the pavement creating a narrow gap through which to funnel their victims customers.

None of this would be more than a minor irritation if the buggers weren't everywhere. Instead of being concentrated at termini and other major points, they are ubiquitous. In some busy streets you literally can't go more than 30 metres without negotiating your way past another pair. The other day, walking a distance of 50m past Farringdon station, I fended off four freesheet hander-outers and two chuggers.

I exaggerate only slightly here; News Int. and Associated have, for whatever reason, really blitzed central London with these folk, and they really are a Fukien nuisance. (Well, perhaps not; most of them seem to be Indian.)

It remains to be seen what the fate of London Lite will be. Much the better of the two papers, it is hard to understand the business model. London Lite is a sort of Janet & John version of the Standard, with shorter versions of the same stories and more pictures, but all coming from the one newsroom. Apart from the occasional Gilligan feature on the dastardly doings of Lee Jasper, why would you read the Lite and then fork out actual cash-type money for the grown-up version of the Standard later on?

Perhaps Associated will take the opportunity to ditch London Lite as well, or failing that scale it back to a less intrusive scale and method of distribution. That would be nice. Walking in central London will be back to avoiding collisions with the kamikaze solipsist civilians.

Of course, now I've given up buying paid-for newspapers altogether, I must be careful to secure supplies of newsprint for its proper purpose — wrapping potato peelings and similar tasks. But I find that copies of Metro and The Wharf fill that need perfectly well, and they're quite good papers too.

______
* There must be a word for what these people do. It's not distributor, that's the people in the vans and/or the companies they work for, and it is not really vendor, because they're not expecting you to hand over any moolah. I guess hander-outer will do for now. I could think of some more colourful terms.

That's the fifth police vehicle, blues and twos ablare, that's gone by in the past twenty minutes on its way onto the estate. I wonder who the customers are this time: could it be the Nigerians (fraud and forgery), the Vietnamese (specialist urban agriculture) or the Somalis (drugs and general thuggery)?

Ah the joys of diversity.



Enough of this sedentary dilatoriness. I'm off across the river for a quick Hate.

Irredeemable and unsavoury thug that I am, I read not only Lancaster Unity but also Stormfront Britain, while taking neither at face value.

The latter forum carries a report of a spot of bother in Luton over the weekend. The following newspaper report apparently appeared only in the print edition of the Sun, presumably yesterday, but I can find no other MSM references to it on-line.

Race riot 'cover-up'

A police force slammed for being politically correct tried to COVER UP a weekend race riot.

More than 60 Asians were said to have stormed a quiet pub where families gathered after a football game.

Several people were beaten up as terrified women and kids fled.

But Bedfordshire cops, who sent in 100 officers, said the Luton attack "did not warrant comment."

Steve Dann, 26, who was hit by a bottle in the incident, said: "There was blood everywhere."

Earlier this year cops stood by as Muslim fanatics abused hero British soldiers on a homecoming parade in the town.

(Image of newspaper article from Stormfront site)

A separate source identifies the pub as the White House. I don't know Luton. Does this refer to the Wetherspoon?

Does anybody know any more about this incident? If the report is accurate I for one would be disinclined to agree with the police comment that the attack "did not warrant comment." I would also find myself wondering, albeit for no more than a couple of milliseconds, why the incident has not received much wider coverage in the mainstream meeja.


Update

(Yes, yes, I know I should have read the thread properly before rushing to post.)

It does seem to be the Wetherspoon in the town centre. One of the Stormfronters offers this second-hand "eye-witness" report,

[My mate] was down there about 7pm, a load of pakis (he didn't think as many as 60) came down and tried to kick off, a load of guys in the pub offered them out and gave a few of them a kicking, this turned into running battles outside the pub. The police were there in numbers (again he thought less than 100) with dogs-a-plenty and it was eventually broken up. His mates know some 'pub fighter' types around town who were not fazed and said that these guys had come down looking for a fight....and got one!

So perhaps not quite as dramatic as the newspaper report suggests, but still significant enough IMAO to warrant wider coverage. Now if large groups of "Asian" lads are prowling round looking for a fight with their White equivalents like this, one does wonder if harmonious race relations in Luton are really marred only by a handful of bearded men in frocks who are rightly shunned by the majority of peace-loving Muslims, plus a sprinkling of hateful NF/BNP knuckledraggers out to cause trouble, as the meeja would have us believe. Just how much of this sort of thing is going on unreported across the country?

Surely this piece in the Mirror (via the ever-entertaining Lancaster Unity) must be a contender for the most desperate bit of barrel-scraping journalism of the year.

Apparently Julian Leppert, BNP councillor in Redbridge and one-time London Mayoral candidate, drives a car (and you may want to have smelling salts handy before reading on) with the registered number

NA51 ZCY

Tireless Mirror newssleuth Nick Owens brings this to our breathless attention in a piece snappily entitled

Exclusive: BNP member Julian Leppert causes outrage by driving car with number plate that looks like 'Nazi'

Who, I wonder, is outraged by this tenuous optical illusion, best viewed I suspect by standing on one's head and looking at the number plate through the wrong end of a telescope, preferably with both eyes closed. Not, presumably, the 17,000 other people driving cars with the NA51 prefix, issued in 2001/02 by the Newcastle-upon-Tyne DVLA office, if I understand how the system works. (Think of it, 17,000 Northerners driving round not realizing they're Nazis. Terrible, innit?)

Step forward Cllr Veronica Cole:

"When I first saw the number plate on his car I couldn't believe my eyes. It is sickening and appalling.

"It beggars belief that even a BNP councillor could think this kind of behaviour is acceptable."

Hmm! Four years doing a linguistics degree really ought to have equipped me with the lexical resources to encapsulate this little episode succinctly. Ah yes, I have it. The very word. Ze mot juste:

Bollocks!

The article is even more desperate than this earlier News of the Screws piece, published shortly after the Euro elections, which brought us the shocking news that a one-time BNP local council candidate (or "failed councillor" as the NOTW puts it) still lives in the parental home ("lives with his mother") at the age of 25, and also brings us this curious photo:


which purports to show a BNP notable giving a "Nazi salute". (I wonder what he's looking at.) What's worrying about this picture is that I made a very similar gesture yesterday afternoon, and to a Black man, too. I do hope he won't report me to the police. After all, I was only trying to indicate that I would be pleased if he would stop his bus momentarily so that I might board. Honest, officer. Ouch! No I won't just sign this confession so I can go. Ouch! What do you mean the duty solicitor doesn't represent fascists? Ouch! No I don't know either of Nick Griffin's dogs personally. Ow!

What's interesting about all this — well the word really cannot be bettered so I'll use it again; no monologophobe am I! — what's interesting about all this bollocks is the ongoing desperation it clearly implies. You will recall that in the run-up to the Euro elections, the state commandeered pretty well all of the mainstream newspapers in the country for a sustained and intensive anti-BNP smear campaign co-ordinated through its Searchlight operation. It was certainly the most single-minded national campaign I have seen in my lifetime.

The campaign was in the end only partially successful. At a rough and uninformed finger-in-the-wind guess I would suggest that the campaign, together with the availability of UKIP as a sump for the "respectable racist" vote, may have reduced the number of BNP MEPs from 4 to 2. Unfortunately for the Establishment, it now has to deal with the fact that the BNP will have elected representatives at supranational level for at least the next five years and must be treated with the corresponding level of seriousness and respect. So the smear campaign continues to tick over, in order to chip away steadily at the credibility of the BNP ready for a fresh campaign in 2014 to ensure that Griffin and Brons or their successors are not reelected. Clearly some of the co-opted journos are finding it hard going, even at a much reduced "background" level.

Fascinating stuff. It suggests that the political establishment are terrified of the rise of the BNP. Unfortunately it's a genie out of the bottle and they are going to have to confront it and deal with its "demands" more directly. Thatcher dealt with the rise of the NF in the 1970s by apparently taking on board some of their policies. She was lying of course but the NF were succesfully neutralized. NuLabour is tentatively trying the same response. It's not working. It's not working because it's half-hearted, reluctant, unco-ordinated and above all because nobody believes these bastards any more. Let's face it, would you believe any of the "main party" politicians if he told you he was going for a crap and he'd be back shortly? You know damned well he'll be climbing out through the shithouse window and doing a runner.

Interesting times, eh?

Interesting times, indeed. One watches with equal interest the developments arising from the recent Luton confrontations and the little débâcle in Brum at the weekend. That, I suspect, is another manifestation of the same genie.

I keep seeing angry references in comment threads to a political ideology called facism and to apparently deeply unpleasant people called facists, but I am unable to find an explanation of these terms anywhere.

Perhaps someone could help me. Would I be right in concluding that Muslim women who wear the niqab are antifacists? Are they dangerous?