All in the garden not so rosy
There seems to be a fair bit of hypocrisy around about the possibility that BNP leader Nick Griffin could turn up at a Palace garden party.
I hold no truck with the BNP but you can't have it both ways. You cannot say they are a legal political organisation on one hand and try to ban them from everything afforded to every other party on the other.
We have already had feathers ruffled because Richard Barnbrook turned up at the World Cup bid launch. He happens to be a BNP Greater London Assembly member and as all members were invited to the launch he was entitled to be there. He convinced enough people to vote for him in Barking to win last May's election which made him a GLA member - that is what democracy is supposed to be about.
He was there as an assembly member not as a representative of the BNP and if everyone had accepted that then the BNP would not have had any publicity whatsoever - does anyone even know if any other GLA members were there?
Now Barnbrook, plus guest, is expected to be invited, along with all other GLA members, to a Palace Garden Party and he has said he will take his leader, Nick Griffin.
I suspect neither would be within several thousand pages of the top of the Buckingham Palace list of people the Queen would like to see pinkies raised sipping Jackson's of Piccadilly fair trade blend by the shrubbery - even I am probably in there above them - but the Palace are not inviting Barnbrook, they are inviting the member for Barking.
But once again the BNP are afforded front page headlines they hardly merit and the Palace is placed in an impossible position. Now if they carry on with the invite to the GLA the Queen will be accused of inviting or even endorsing the BNP which is hardly fair.
It is not as if this is like the Queen holding a barbie in the back garden with half a dozen mates who arrive in flip flops with a six pack - we are talking 8,000 guests a time here and it is not beyond the wit of man, or at least the security services, to ensure Griffin and Barnbrook don't get within a mile of photo op range of the Queen.
Barnbrook turned up at the World Cup bid and announced he was taking Griffin to the Palace because he knew the media would lap it all up and, less than a month before local and European elections, the BNP would be all over the news for free and with no scandal attached. And the media duly obliged.
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Roger Clarke - Birmingham’s very own Grumpy Old Man on what gets right up his nose.
At last a well written fair and balanced view of recent events if only we could see some more of this from the left wing rags which keep wheeling out the same old rubbish about the British National Party. I appreciate Mr Clarke is not supporting the party but at least he can see the hypocrisy surounding the event.
Too true I am not supporting the party but my views on the BNP are not the the point. When you start to discriminate against one political group for whatever reason then it is democracy that is under threat.
Richard Barnbrook is playing the system in a rather crude and obvious way and we are all obliging by giving him a game. Two people in a crowd of 8,000 is hardly significant - particularly if no one advertises the fact they are there.