Podcasting

A simple way to prevent a BNP MEP being elected by accident in June would be to maximise the turn out of those who wish to vote for mainstream parties. This is important because if the same low level of support for the BNP candidate in last week’s by-election in this Ward was reproduced across the whole Yorkshire and Humber region this would actually be about enough first preference votes for proportional representation to deliver an MEP.

I hadn’t meant to return to this topic so often or so soon, but three different things have prompted me to do so, beginning with the West Yorkshire churches putting out resource material which makes just this point.

So I picked this up when recording a podcast for the diocese of Lincoln on Tuesday. The diocese has just started to put a new podcast on its website each week and is making this available in other ways. The first of the weekly series is a slightly pedestrian effort by the priest who it was announced yesterday is to be the new Archdeacon of Lincoln. It is up now, and the Bishop of Lincoln’s Easter reflections will follow next week. And, for reasons best known to the diocesan communications team, I was asked to do the third one, which will go up straight after Easter. I used the material about Martin Niemoeller and the BNP which I blogged on 16th March. I linked it to the initiative of the West Yorkshire churches.

This all coincides with the BNP launching a poster campaign casting itself as the champion of real Christian values and as much a victim of persecution by the church as Jesus was of the religious authorities of his day. ‘What would Jesus do?’ they ask. ‘Voted for the BNP,’ they opine, no doubt just as he would have called for proper punishment of the women caught in adultery and the deportation of the Good Samaritan.

I suspect they are making a major tactical error in seeking to increase their Christian vote in this way. Faced with this level of public misrepresentation lots of Christian leaders who might have fought shy of following up the West Yorkshire lead (and, like me at the time of our Council by-election, make no public statement) will feel impelled to do something.

Meanwhile, having included in the last two posts pictures taken from beside the road opposite St Nicolas' which show how trees limit the view from the north east and from the east, the picture this time completes the set from the south east. I'm meeting the local authority's Trees and Woodlands Officer there tomorrow to see what might be done, but he wouldn't want us to touch the most significant trees and we don't ahve any spare money to do work on the others.