Immature immigration numeration

I intend to take the lead on this new approach to debating which I fully intend to adopt after this post. The approach rests upon the assumption that I myself am hopefully clever enough and knowledgeable to rip apart an attack upon my person. An attack based on a legitimate view I hold with regard to government policy.

In polite circles everyone who even mentions the BNP in a comment piece is supposed to preface it with a condemnation of the party (Microsoft Word should create a programme for journalists that automatically types out “of course I loathe the odious BNP and everything they stand for…”). No one is obliged to write the same things when discussing the Socialist Workers Party or other similarly odious entities who have a very small support section.

This preamble is dangerous because it removes responsibility from the BNP and onto the person writing the comment piece. They never have to defend their polices because anyone who comments upon them is automatically supposed to say "bla bla bla, immigration is too high and I think we should reduce it BUT the BNP are racist scum". Enough already, we know that they are racist but for heavens sake focus on their polices; play the ball not the man.

If you start a supposedly probing piece on the BNP with the word "these crazy racists thugs" people will automatically assume that you are having a rant about the BNP and not the actual policies which compose the party. This has lead to the BNP being labelled a right-wing party when everyone knows, who has read their policies, that they are in fact a left-wing party. And this is the gist of the argument; few if any people have read their polices, they only know that a rather large man with a funny eye does not like immigrants and neither do his followers. Nothing is said about the increase in the state sector that would come with their highly unlikely government nor that they intend to give back Gibraltar if they win the election. Only the fact that they do not like immigration, which is why the media has (I reckon with some help from the current left-wing government) labelled them right-wing to distance the government and in particular the Labour party, from any embarrassing ideological connections with the BNP.

This is what it comes down to; drop all the prefaces and drop all the PC as well, everyone else is doing it privately and probably thinking the same things as you: lets control our borders sensibly. If you do not play into the media and government hand they will essentially be powerless since it will be very difficult to label the internet and more specifically the blogosphere, 'racist' even though, I am sure, they would very much like to.

New Labour's approach on immigration can be summed up as thus: A volcano in Iceland has done more to stop immigration in one week than the New Labour government has done in 13 years.

UPDATE: Word of the day 'lackadaisical.'