British politics is reeling with the shock that the BNP have just gained their first representation in the European parliament. While this bunch of fascists, yobs, thugs, and white-supremacists have not really increased their number of votes, the massive dive in Labour voter turnout has yielded seats to them. However, extremist voters are much more likely to vote than mainstream voters, counterbalanced by the fact that fewer people meet the criteria to become BNP voters in the first place (requirements generally include low foreheads, an inability to count beyond three, bolts in necks, and a bib to catch saliva whilst shouting racist abuse).

Labour is meant to represent the working classes. But the working classes don’t associate with Labour anymore, and you can see why. Blair, Mandelson, and Campbell shifted the party to appeal to more affluent echelons of society. This worked for them: traditional Labour voters would still vote for them: partly due to loyalty; partly due to party smokescreens; partly due to a lack of any practical alternative. The new middle-class voters ticking the New Labour box were surplus to their old core vote.

Now Labour look self-interested, incompetent, and hopeless. Their middle-class appeal has gone, and they have severed themselves from much of their traditional voter base who are really suffering in the harsh economic climate.

While the statistics show that these disaffected voters have not all of a sudden become racist and voted BNP, they have mostly stayed at home, showing their complete lack of faith in politics, or gone and voted UKIP, again showing their complete lack of faith in politics.

This Labour vacuum has allowed the BNP an opportunity to air their nasty little opinions, and get some TV airtime. Nick Griffin has been venting his hilarious double-think, and repressed social intolerance with horrible preparedness. He tries to emphasise the BNP’s anti-immigration policies rather than their racist ideologies. But just look at the banner of their anti-immigration policy page:

It is pitiful and laughable how they couldn’t think of any more subtle way of suggesting a relationship between not being white and being a terrorist. The designer’s train of thought makes me shudder: the visual link between the Sikh turbans and the Taliban head dress is foul; the mythology of the queue of foreigners, ‘the hordes at the gates’, is a disgraceful misrepresentation of of ethnic minorities in Britain; and despite all their haranguing of Polish migrant workers, all the people in the image are non-white.  I wonder if the BNP got the image rights of the people in those queues… I hope they get sued.

The political freakshow  of the BNP would be funny if it were not so sad. It gets worse. What sort of a bunch of fucking halfwits thought that having a retarded, yobbo, Butlins-style mascot would be a good idea, ‘sumfing nice fer the kidz’:

I mean what the fuck!? Is this what skinhead children snuggle up to at night? Billy Brit looks like the sort of twat you see beating the shit out of his pregnant scally wife before vomiting all overhimself and nearby arresting officers.

However, I am not too concerned about this slag-heap of buffoons. It is sad, but there will always be ignorant people in all countries who blame minorities for their own failings, for the fact their lives have not turned out the way they wanted. Dealing with them on tv is simple. All you have to do is ask the BNP whether it is acceptable for non-whites to live on equal grounds with whites in Britain. If they say ‘no’, they expose the cess-pit of racism which underlies their party; if they say ‘yes’, they will the majority of their support.

Anyway, back to real politics. Labour needs to re-invent itself (again). They must re-connect with their voter base, and give the opportunity to their former votership to feel enfranchised once more. Surely they can’t do this with Brown at the top – he may be hard-working, but he looks like a bit of a prat who does not understand his party. The election of such unlikely dolts as Nick Griffin and Nazi afficionado Andrew Brons show how far he has lost touch. It must be pretty depressing for him today.

Ahh, the bullshit singers, the bullshit voting, the bullshit commentary on the bullshitness of the singers and voting. The joke is stale.

I love the name. It was obviously decided upon when television was all fresh and exciting, and using the suffix ‘vision’ made the contest seem fresh and exciting too. Now every eight year old has their own tv. The medium is about as exciting and ubiquitous as clothes. But you get the impression that the organizers still love the name for its connotations of optimism, its visionary idealism. And we think that is wretchingly cheesy, like the contest, so we are all happy.

But as a vision of Europe today, the competition  reveals some disturbing truths. Old habits die hard, and the old eastern-bloc lip-service to Russia seems to be getting stronger each year. Ten years ago, Russia was languishing. Now it is the petrochemical bully of Europe, and don’t we all know it. Russian oil millionaires are buying up high end real estate from Hampstead to Cairns. Putin’s aggressive economic expansionism seems to be increasing in momentum. He saw that Russia’s oil resources were the key to her resurgence as a European and world power, and it seems he was right. Now that is a vision for Europe

Anyway, tangent aside, I felt really sorry for the UK entry. If you know me, you know I loathe pop-dance music, but I was genuinely shocked at how good Andy Abraham was. He is literally the first ever act on the show I have ever seen that could sing professionally.

A good way to get rid of the slavish regional voting would be to have two rounds of voting. Divide Europe into regional blocks and have them vote for a regional representative act in the first round. Then in the second round would be the vote between the acts of eg. Western Europe, South Eastern Europe, Northern Europe etc.

It is all rather degrading isn’t it? Almost as degrading as writing so much about the fucking Eurovision song contest. I don’t care at all actually. Really.