Your Support Needed

WEDNESDAY, MAY 20, 2009

Your Support Needed

No chaos here

1. Frank Field For Speaker

Frank Field has long been one of BOM's heroes (see many previous posts eg here). And now amid the wreckage, he stands as one of the few MPs with the experience, the character, and the moral stature to take over as Commons Speaker.

Clearly, we voters get no direct say in this: our MPs see themselves not as meredelegates, there to do as we say, but as representatives, there to do as they damned well please until we find out.

But we can certainly make our views known. And another of BOM's old friends, Henry De Zoete, has set up a Facebook group specifically to support a bid from Frank.

You can sign up here and may we urge you all to do so.

(You will need a Facebook account, but it's free).


2. Anti-BNP Petition

As regular readers will know, we are seriously concerned about the scale of immigration we've seen over the last decade. Contrary to government propaganda, it hasn't made Britain richer (in terms of GDP per head), but it has imposed huge strains on our public services, and it has cranked up social tensions (see many previous blogs). Which is why we want to see an Aussie-style annual limit.

Now we're in recession, the chickens are coming home to roost. And one of the major beneficiaries is the BNP.

Now, I must confess I don't know a great deal about their detailed policies, and Ido need to find out more.

But what I already know I don't like. "Voluntary resettlement" for all immigrants is a euphemism straight out of 1930s Germany.

We are where we are, and one of the reasons we need to take decisive action onfuture inflows is precisely so we can work on the integration of those already here.

There is no way we should suppress or ban the BNP: we rather need to engage in an open robust debate with them about migration (and some of their other worrisome policies, like establishing a Bennite-style siege economy).

But we can certainly register our concern right now, which is why I urge you to put your name to the anti-BNP petition you can find here.

(And see this post for the difficulty of discussing immigration without appearing to support the BNP).

PS Does anybody outside the Labour Party believe we don't need an election soonest? Does anyone other than our increasingly unstable PM believe that an election would mean chaos? It is outrageous that in the midst of our huge economic crisis, we have to suffer another 12 months of such rudderless gutless deception. It is no comfort that Brown and his fourth-rate "colleagues" will go down in history as even worse than all the other Labour governments we've suffered.