A major part of Bradford’s Christmas programme has been cancelled already.
The German Market in Centenary Square was packed up yesterday – a fortnight earlier than planned.
What started out as a 40-stall event was supposed to last for a month, but some traders left last week and other traders shut earlier in the evening due to a lack of trade.
via Festive market snubbed by shoppers shuts early (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus).
More incompetence from Bradford council, and more spineless reporting from the T & A.
Andrew Brons has for the second time claimed to be working with a British Trade Union, this time the CWU:
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Yet again this would seem an unlikely alliance, as it was only a few months ago that the CWU were fully supporting its members who refused to deliver BNP literature due to a “conscience clause” in their employment contracts.
Yesterday I updated an earlier post, about the BNP’s supposed cooperation with the NUM, with an open letter from Ian Lavery in which he stated:
The BNP’s assertion on its website that they are working in anyway with the NUM is totally false and is an attempt to attach themselves to the good name of the NUM.
The NUM abhors the politics of the BNP and has a long and proud history of fighting fascism
Hopefully the CWU will respond in a similar fashion.
But as the BNP are not going to correct their false claims, and in fact as shown by the screen shot above go on to repeat them, perhaps it would be better for the Unions to vet their address books before sending out any further mass communications.
Still no word from Tory HQ about Philip Davies frequent associations with Hizb ut Tahrir. Although perhaps these seemingly odd bedfellows do not surprise them, after all Mr. Davies’ father, and co-campaigner against political correctness, has, like Hizb ut Tahrir’s Taji Mustafa, in the past very publicly declared his admiration of the Taliban.
Does Bradford council leader think Cameron’s apology “risks discriminating against a particular faith”?
Today in the commons David Cameron made the following statement:
“While the two Islamic schools I mentioned got government money while being run by people linked to the extremist group Hizb ut Tahrir, and while they did receive that money under a pathfinder scheme, it was not the pathfinder scheme concerned with combating extremism.
I am sorry for the error.
I believe when you get a fact wrong, you should put it right.
But I continue to believe that it is wrong that taxpayers’ money goes to schools run by extremists.”
As reported on here last week the Tory leader of Bradford council, and Conservative PPC for Keighley, Kris Hopkins believes this kind of language “risks discriminating against a particular faith”.
Wonder what he thinks to Cameron’s ongoing attacks?
Further turmoil for Yorkshire Tories; after revelations of their relationship to Hizb ut-Tahrir, it now turns out their MEPs are no longer on speaking terms.
(Report from BBC Politics Show Yorkshire)
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done
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Interesting, does this mean UKIP candidates will be standing as “Tory vote splitters” in key marginals?
Tories’ North-South divide on Hizb ut-Tahrir; call for their banning in the South, promote them in the North
This week in London David Cameron and the Tories launched an attack on Hizb ut-Tahrir and the Labour council who fund the Schools they are closely associated with.
But in Yorkshire not only has a Tory MP shared a debating platform with Hizb ut-Tahrir but a Tory council funds one of Hizb ut Tahrir’s favorite schools.
Davies speaking at a Hizb ut-Tahrir event
In Bradford Philip Davies shared a platform with Taji Mustafa of Hizb ut-Tahrir. In a debate titled ‘Has freedom gone too far?’ Mr. Davies appeared to share common ground with Taji Mustafa in decrying attempts to bring “freedom and democracy to the Middle East”. According to a Hizb ut-Tahrir press release “Philip Davies made it clear that he is opposed to the liberal interventionist export of democracy and liberal values by the gun, as supported by some in the West including David Cameron who supported the invasion of Iraq.”
After the debate Taji Mustafa, media representative of Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain, said, “David Cameron spreads lies about Hizb ut-Tahrir – hiding behind parliamentary privilege. However, his colleague Philip Davies MP was willing to share a platform with a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, for the second time, and debate issues.”
Mr. P Davies position seems some what at odds with that of Mr. D Davis and Mr. Cameron’s who have both made it clear that the Conservative Party will not share a platform with Hizb ut-Tahrir, and if in Government would outlaw them. But Mr. P Davies has a majority of only 500 and Hizb ut-Tahrir hold great sway in his constituency of Shipley, so perhaps he’s more forgiving.
Hopkins chair of The Open Madrasah Network
Meanwhile Mr. P Davies’ neighbour and colleague Kris Hopkins, leader of Tory controlled Bradford Council, sits on £550,000 of taxpayers’ money that has been allocated to The Open Madrasah Network.
By funding these Madrassas Mr. Hopkins believes that he is “reaching into the heart of the community and offering more people access to life-changing services.” But what life-changing services? One of these Madrassas, Madrassah Madania Tahfeezul Quran, has had a long and close association with Hizb ut Tahrir and the Hizb ut Tahrir dominated Bradford University Islamic Society and all three organizations have together been campaigning for a number of years for greater Madrasah autonomy and government funding. A campaign that has had little support from national government but recently found an advocate in Tory Prospective Parliamentary Candidate Kris Hopkins, who was able to secure the £1/2 million funding for the madrassas (one of these madrassas is in Keighley, a Labour marginal Mr. Hopkins is hoping to win at the next election).
When asked about fears that these schools would, in the words of the Express, “groom children for terror” Mr. Hopkins responded “Madrassas are not about indoctrination. What about Anglican and Catholic schools? Talking about religious instruction in that way risks discriminating against a particular faith.”
Talking about religious instruction in that way risks discriminating against a particular faith. A view that is clearly not shared by his party leader down south.
Interesting side note to this bizarre alliance, the majority of money Mr. Hopkins is distributing to these schools comes from Yorkshire Forward, an organization Mr. Hopkins is keen to see dismantled, perhaps he doesn’t want anyone checking on who or what he is spending money on.
This week has raised some interesting questions about the Tory party
- Does Cameron control his northern MPs, PPCs, and Council leaders?
- Do the Tories see Islamic schools as political punching bags; batter them when funded by Labour councils, praise them when funded by Tory ones?
- While the national party publicly calls for the banning of Hizb ut-Tahrir, are Tory MPs/PPCs in marginal seats where Hizb ut-Tahrir have greater influence seeking their support?
The TPA are not a Tory front, not in any way shape or form, no no no they have nothing what-so-every to do with Tories….
Press Release from the Tax Payers’ Alliance:
This week, in the wake of the Public Sector Rich List and our growing grassroots campaigns, two new organisers have stepped forward looking to set up TaxPayers’ Alliance branches.
The first is Shipley MP Philip Davies. He contacted me a week ago volunteering to become an organiser to help spread the low tax message and put his reasons for getting involved with the TPA fight for lower taxes as follows:
“I believe in lower taxes in principle because I fundamentally believe that people are better at spending their own money than the government are at spending it for them and that they should have the freedom to decide how to spend more of the money they earn. Low taxes encourage and reward enterprise and hard work creating a dynamic and successful economy. Finally, the government have overcharged people spectacularly over the last 10 years and routinely wasted taxpayers’ money. Enough is enough and the British people deserve some of their money back.”
(For those of you who don’t know Davies is a Tory MP; still, no connection there eh?)
UPDATE:
Thanks to Rhiannon (see comment below) for pointing out that the NUM have issued as open letter in reply to the BNP on this matter.
IAN LAVERY SENDS OPEN LETTER TO THE BNP
The National Union of Mineworkers makes it absolutely clear that when we circulated a letter to all Members of the European Parliament seeking support for Columbian trade unionists who are often murdered for their activities the British National Party (BNP) received the correspondence totally inadvertently.
We apologise unreservedly to all our supporters for this administrative error.
The BNP’s assertion on its website that they are working in anyway with the NUM is totally false and is an attempt to attach themselves to the good name of the NUM.
The NUM abhors the politics of the BNP and has a long and proud history of fighting fascism that goes back to the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s in which many miners gave their lives, and many others lost their lives in the fight against Hitler.
The BNP are not the friends of trade unionists and any suggested link between the NUM and the BNP is totally and utterly false and the NUM dissociates itself entirely from any such suggestion.
In the meantime I shall be writing to those individuals who are attempting to mislead people for their own political ends. The NUM never has and never will be associated with the kind of politics that the BNP represents and to complain forcefully about this blatant political stunt.
Ian Lavery
NUM President
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According to BMP MEP Andrew Brons’ website he is currently working with the NUM:
“THE Constituency Office of Andrew Brons MEP has written to the Business Secretary Peter Mandelson to ask that he raises the issue of the oppression and ill-treatment of trade unionists (left) and political opponents in Colombia.
The British National Party’s representative for Yorkshire and the Humber in the European Parliament was contacted by the National Union of Mineworkers to draw his attention to the EU-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) that is currently being negotiated.
Chris Beverley, the Constituency Office manager, responded to the NUM’s request:
“Mr Brons is happy to assist in this matter and he has written to the Business Secretary Lord Mandelson and asked for the issues you have raised to be investigated and if proven to be true, for the trade agreement to be used to dissuade the Columbian Government from its persecution of trade unionists and political opponents.
“Andrew Brons is pleased to see that the NUM is in favour of engaging with politicians from all the political parties including the British National Party. This is certainly not the case with some of the other trade unions, who misuse their members’ money to campaign against the British National Party rather than working together with us to help secure the rights of our workers.
“Mr Brons and the British National Party as a whole believe in free trade unions and in freedom for all people from violence and oppression.””
This would seem a strange alliance as it was only last May that the NUM published this graphic illustration of what the BNP stand for.
Full pdf here MINER17
This week’s award for “Ironically Titled Publication’s Ironic Headline” goes to Bradford Council.
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Philip Davie’s favourite propaganda rag, the already ironically titled “Community Pride” has described the progress of Bradford’s regeneration as “steady”. I would have to assume that this “steady” progress is the slow and certain atrophying kind of progress, more commonly associated with an old dog with stomach cancer, as opposed to the steady kind of progress one usually finds with, well, progress.
Interestingly the article doesn’t really cover much of this steady progress, instead it concentrates it’s reporting on a meeting that was held to discuss what has not been happening, saying:
“The conference last month was an opportunity for us to get together with leading businesses in the district, update them on the progress of key regeneration projects, share ideas and find solutions to the challenges ahead.
It followed three quarterly summits held throughout the year looking at specific regeneration issues.
Coun Adrian Naylor, Executive Member for Regeneration and Economy, said: “The conference was a good opportunity for challenging and influencing the regeneration policy for the district and identifying our plans and priorities for the coming months, as we continue to support the local economy.”
Key organisations which attended the conference included Yorkshire Forward, the Homes and Communities Agency, as well as members of Bradford Property Forum, Bradford Professionals Network and the Bradford District Partnership.
Developers Westfield also attended the conference and reaffirmed their commitment to delivering a shopping centre in the heart of Bradford once the economic climate improves.”
Then at the end they tacked on the line:
“There have been no discussions with the Council about buying back the site.”
Obviously this was in no way a political response to last months Inside Out report on the failure of Bradford Council to get developers to commit to the city, and was, of course, just Bradford Council doing it’s duty “to communicate information to residents in the district.”
So, is Community Pride nothing more than a quarter of a million pound propaganda rag after all?
Shit, apparently I live in a world where Philip Davies is right.
Hold me, I’m scared.
