SATURDAY 15TH DECEMBER POPE IS NOT A CATHOLIC: DUCKS DONT LIKE WATER: BEAR DID NOT S**T IN WOODS

Sometimes newspaper headlines grab your attention not because they are shocking or unusual, but because they are just down right surreal. The Gazette’s “Policies are not racist say BNP" is such an example. Highlighting the coverage received by their recent leafleting exercises in the Primrose and Jarrow Ward, local BNP officials have denied they target deprived areas. They also state “The BNP do not have a single racist policy”.

For the record, the BNP are a far right and racist party. They encourage violence along racial lines and have Nazi sympathies. Many of their members have police records for race related crimes, and they operate a policy of using their members along the lines of ultra paramilitary groups. When seeking election, many of there policies are abhorrent and have no place in an open democracy and ethnically diverse society. They seek to divide and rule, creating fear alongside repression. They are politically bereft of any coherent policy which does not incorporate a racial element.

Somehow, I feel better just typing it. It would feel absolutely ecstatic if the leaders of local Labour, Liberal and Conservative Parties within the full council would actually put pen to paper and submit letters to the Gazette condemning the policies of local BNP activists. It would further be a case of “drinks all round” if they would actually go as far as to have the political and moral foresight to issue a joint statement deploring the views propagated by this group within the South Tyneside Borough.

On this issue, political unity would be publicly commendable and morally correct.