Election

The day before the Election and the papers show their colours:

The Guardian: Lib Dem
The Independent: Lib Dem
The Times: Labour (for a Tory-Lib Dem pact)
The Telegraph: Conservative
The Daily Mail: Conservative
The Express: Conservative
The Sun: Conservative
The Mirror: Labour

By-Election

Anyone who has walked past our house over the past few weeks will know who I am voting for today. I have never put an electioneering poster in the window before, but because the BNP has tried to grow roots in our ward, I took on the self-imposed social responsibility to show other voters who I won’t be voting for by showing who I will be voting for. And I thought I would do my bit to show democracy in action.

This has turned into a crazy by-election with six candidates, including UKIP. The BNP canvassed out house again last week. This time the pamphlet was slightly more sophisticated than the last one (sophistication relative to the BNP). They are really trying to push it. Hope Not Hate came around as well with the headline DON’T VOTE FOR SCUM on the front of their leaflet (not so hopeful a headline).

Anyway, away from the election mania, here is a picture I took of the bluebells in Wanstead Park last night (it was taken on a mobile phone). We bumped into a couple who said they had lived in Wanstead for 17 years and had never known about the bluebells! They may have been more excited about the blackberries that come out by the lake in the autumn, but we forgot to mention that.

British National Party Canvass Our House

Last night when I came home my jaw dropped when I saw an electioneering pamphlet from the British National Party on the table in the hall where our post sits. This, to my knowledge, is the first time they have stood for election in the ward where I live (we are having a by-election on April 23).

The headline for the flyer was a quote by a mum to a local newspaper: “My daughter seems to know a lot about Eid and Diwali, but if I ask her about Jesus, she looks at me like I am mad.”

The inference is that Christianity is exclusively western, that Jesus was Caucasian and Britain has a monopoly on him.

Jesus was Jewish, which is probably news to the BNP. He also taught people to love their neighbour as themselves.

The problem with refuting the illogical arguments of the BNP is whether it is giving them the publicity they so crave. I think that it is a judgement call to make depending on the circumstance. Holocaust denier David Irving debating at Oxford University in 2007 is a case in point. I agreed with the Union’s decision to allow him to debate because it would enable his arguments to be knocked down one after another in the chamber and the protests outside the Union would illustrate the strength of feeling against him. But he is not the kind of speaker who should be invited to debate on a privileged platform on a regular basis.

Using the vote to fight against extremism is certainly one reason to get down to the polling booth on Election Day.