The BNP - laughing stock or genuinely scary

Despite their origins in the Nazi National Front, I had the idea that the way to fight the BNP was to take the mick. Take the following, which is based on something I wrote on Yahoo answers.

It's the mid 21st century and the country's yo-yo diet of boom and bust has led to an economic crisis so severe that the 20% of the population who still cared enough to vote have successfully managed to elect the BNP.

King William has reluctantly invited the ageing Nick Griffin to form a new Parliament. Let's jump to the first cabinet meeting. The Prime Minister is surrounded by a gang of identikit bowling-ball skinheads. The first item on the agenda is the deepening economic crisis. Prime Minister Nick wants some opinions so he asks - what are we going to do about it?

The question is a tricky one because it can't be easily framed in the language of immigration. As the PM looks round the room, his new ministers avoid his gaze.

Fortunately he has devised a brainstorming techniques for such an occasion. A young perfect aryan-style blonde personal assistant places play on a CD and it's time for pass the parcel with political hot potatoes. Griffin's favourite English fold, long disavowed by it's creators, blares out whilst then ministers pass a dud grenade from one to another. The PA presses pause and the holder has to keep the grenade. All eyes are upon him. How would he save the country?

Eventually an answer forms on his lips and he ventures forth.

'Can't we just print some more money?'

The problem comes when you hear what the BNP do plan when they might come close to power. The following material is drawn from the March 2010 edition of The Teacher, the monthly magazine of the National Union of Teachers.

Nick Lowles of Hope Not Hate described some of the plans made by the BNP opposition group in Barking Council in their alternative budget. Lowlights include

* Cancel all multi-cultural activities, and (illegally) not plan for redundancy payments

* Teach students with English as a second language in separate schools

* House vulnerable families in caravan sites

* Send children in care to boarding schools

* End all foster placements of children in the borough

It just gets scarier as the list goes on, doesn't it?

BNP - no laughing matter

Sugar, marketing and non-comedogenesis

I took a few faltering steps into the world of consumerism yesterday. What did I see?

Well, the sign in Sainsbury assured me that some new product from Pears (for the cleansing on one’s body) is non-comedogenic. New word to me –what’s that mean? No comedy will grow here? No comedy genes? Cannot be mocked on Mock the Week? I assumed it was this week’s latest attempt to sell beauty products with made up science. However, I did turn up this definition from www.skincareguide.com

Non-comedogenic cosmetics are products which have been tested on the oily skins of human volunteers or inside rabbit ears. These products are less likely to cause blackheads (open comedones) or whiteheads (closed comedones) in patients. However, no single product is non-comedogenic for everyone.

So there you go. Zit-free. Probably. Why didn’t they say?

I had a look at the ingredients of some lemonade (the stuff for secret lemonade drinkers everywhere). 3 artificial sweeteners and sugar. Why 3 – does each one taste so awful that it needs to be masked by the equally awful taste of 2 others to form some vaguely satisfying sweet taste. I had a can of tango orange a few months ago – the 1st one I’d ever had with artificial sweeteners (it’s been a while) – the once reliable intense orangy taste replaced by generic, cheap and nasty sweetener cocktail.

In fact on the subject of sugar, our bottle of still lemonade had this ingredient list

Water, Freshly Squeezed Lemon Juice (16%), Sugar, Lemon Pulp (5%).

No artificial stuff here, but note that they don’t draw your eye to the percentage of water in case you feel conned, or to the percentage of sugar (clearly somewhere between 5% and 16%). In fact the presence of water and sugar is understated by the shorter phrases. Fortunately there is a big red bar over the amount of sugar in the Nutrition information table to remind you that you will instantly die of diabetes if you buy this product.

On the subject of sugar, wouldn’t it be much easier to lose weight on a low calorie diet if they actually took the sugar out of Special K cereals.

Anyway enough food bashing. Cool sign in Pets at Home. It’s an advert that tells me to look out for their TV adverts. And the sign is up at the checkout. So they look to the people who have become customers to do some of the hard work of marketing the shop to themselves.

All that and a trip to Trago. Readers in Devon and Cornwall will understand the Trago mantra – if you want these low prices you won’t mind us treating you like criminals. Yes, they still check your bags and receipts when you leave. In fact, compared to everything else today, that strikes me as the most honest.