News & Views Archive: 

The BNP vote - 11/05/06

Disassemble the Yorkshire & Humber Assembly - 04/05/06

Local Police being phased out in Bradford - 23/04/06

Bradford Council's 'Hall of Shame' - 26/03/06

Losing our talent - 03/03/06

Education Segregation - 07/02/06

The end of local police - 29/01/06

First for price increases - 03/01/06

The BNP vote

I would like to reply to David Barnett's column of 2/5 ( >>> ), "So... why would you vote BNP?".

Let me first say I am certainly no supporter of the BNP, though as leader of the UKIP group in Bradford, I believe I am in a good position to comment on why people voted for them.

David Barnett claims people voted for the BNP because they are either racist or stupid, I would concede that many people who voted for them were not fully versed in all their policies but I would not class these people as stupid, if his claim that all these people are racist is to be believed then we are in serious trouble in Bradford, their vote was huge in some seats.

Many sections of the community in Bradford feel totally isolated by the old parties, New Labour is no longer concerned with the workingman, Blue Labour (the old Tory party) has trashed all their traditional policies and is no longer concerned about issues such as Immigration. The old parties continue to abuse us with their policies, violent prisoners are released early from prison to terrorise innocent people, and mass immigration is destroying our NHS. When people try to speak out against this they are gagged by the modern day shackles of political correctness and if they will not conform then labelled as racist.

People voted for the BNP because of two reasons, Tory Blair's New Labour and David Cameron's Blue Labour. Mr Barnett's dismissal of BNP voters as racist will just continue to swell the far right parties ranks.

In my experience the support of the BNP is born out of frustration rather than racist kinship. In the absence of another free speaking party the BNP will continue to thrive. Thankfully for the electorate, that other party will be on the ballot paper in 2007.

Jason Smith

11 May 2006

Disassemble the Yorkshire & Humber Assembly

John Prescott's vision of Regional Assemblies hit a brick wall in the North East on 4th November 2004…

The question the deputy prime minister asked electors in the region was
    'Should there be an elected regional assembly for the North East region?'

To me there was always a question over the actual question which asked should there be an "elected" regional assembly. If the electorate voted no, then would the people then receive a Regional Assembly that was not elected…. uhmm

There was of course, no question of the result, the electors answered quite categorically, with 78% of the electorate saying NO!

Prescott packaged the Assemblies, as devolution for England when in fact what we were being offered was another tier of government, and an un-elected one at that. Prescott of course was the delivery boy but regional government is a EU project of governing the UK through 9 regional governments. The EU would be able to deal directly with the Assemblies, essentially bypassing our democratically elected national parliament (which is virtually redundant anyway) and local governments. Democratically elected bodies have always been a bugbear for the EU!

The Government had said that if a majority of voters voted no, an elected regional assembly would not be established. To me 78% is a pretty big majority.  The North West Regional Assembly lives on. Just like the EU constitution, it was rejected but somehow it lives.

On November 8th 2004, in a statement to Parliament, the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, confirmed that the postponed referendum in Yorkshire & the Humber had been cancelled.  You've guesses it, the Yorkshire & Humber Regional Assembly also lives on. This is how the EU and it's UK salesmen do business, if they get a referendum result they don't like they ignore it. If an initial referendum is embarrassing, they shelve the rest.

So we didn't get to vote on it, we undoubtedly would have rejected it, but we've got it anyway, and like everything EU, we're paying for it! Many people I spoken to didn't even know we had a Regional Assembly let alone were paying for it. The Yorkshire & Humber Regional Assemblies budget from 2004/2005 contains £772K from the local authorities in subscriptions, which comes out of our council tax.

Unsurprisingly the Yorkshire & Humber Assembly has an office in Brussels.  The Assemblies Newsletter states that Yorkshire Forward funds their European office.

There official website highlights the fact that "Yorkshire and the Humber will benefit from Structural Funds and Common Agricultural Policy £2.5 billion worth of funding from Europe in the years between 2000-2006. This money will help communities and economic projects across the region."  What they fail to mention is that this was our money in the first place. We give them (the EU) billions of pounds each year and they give our Regions a little of it back, under the proviso that the regions advertise there schemes as 'EU' projects.

Membership of our Assembly consists of 1 representative from each local authority, this is normally the leader of the Council, in our case Margaret Eaton but they can choose to nominate another individual. Other members consist of leaders in the business sector, normally the chief executives and representatives for the environment, trade unions and ethnic minorities etc. All have one thing in common; they are not elected (the leaders of the Local authorities are elected as councillors but not as members of the Assembly).

Our very own Margaret Eaton (Conservative) was the Chair of the Yorkshire and Humber Association of Local Authorities for 2004-05. She represents the Local Authority on the Assembly, is also on the Assembly's Executive Board and is a full member of the European Union's Committee of the Regions. Yet another Tory with her snout firmly in the EU trough.

The question is how do we get rid of the latest branch of EU government? The Regional Assembly has it's own constitution, Article 21 concerns Dissolution:

Regional Assembly Constitution
21. Dissolution
        I. A motion for the dissolution of the Assembly must be approved by three quarters of the local authority Partners of the Assembly and three quarters of the social, economic and environmental partners

So three quarters of the local authority partners and three quarters of the other partners must vote to dismantle the Assembly. As we have seen in the European Parliament, most members will do anything to keep their cushy jobs so I suspect we will never hear of this motion being proposed.

It's down to the people then. Support our campaign to get rid of the Yorkshire & Humber Regional Assembly. We weren't asked about it and we don't want it!

Why not contact the Assembly and ask them what they are doing with your money?

Jason Smith

4 May 2006

Local Police being phased out in Bradford 

It was good to see MP Philip Davies (Telegraph & Argus 19/4) preparing to challenge the Assistant Chief Constable to explain why they are proposing to close police front counters in Shipley and Bingley, Mr. Davies wonders if there is a hidden agenda.

The agenda is not hidden; it’s just not getting much publicity. This is the beginning of the government’s police force merger program; our local stations closing down will almost certainly follow the announcement of front counter closures. If anybody was still caught in New Labour’s “We Need Regional Forces” spin then it’s time to wake up to the reality of their program.

With all his good intensions, Mr. Davies is not going to overturn this decision, just as he will not be able to halt the impending closure of local police stations. The decisions have already been made in Europe to regionalise our Police forces; it’s been nodded through and rubberstamped by our parliament. Mr. Davies’ ‘Blue Labour’ colleague Clive Richardson accepts this in his role as Vice-Chairman of West Yorkshire Police Authority, and with David Cameron’s pro-EU stance, Mr. Davies will have to sit back like all the Labour nodding dogs and watch our local police forces being dismantled.

Jason Smith

23 April 2006

Bradford Council's Hall of Shame

I would like to induct Mr Khadam Hussain (Conservative councillor for City ward) in to the Bradford Council's 'Hall of Shame'.  

Mr Hussain had not attended a single council meeting since September, mainly due to the fact that he wasn't actually in the country. During his time of inaction, councillor Hussain still managed to draw an allowance of £5,000, which the council are unable to reclaim. Mr Hussain has decided not to stand for re-election in May, obviously concerned that he might not be able to make it to the elections office to collect his election forms.

Mr Hussain joins his former Conservative colleague, Intkhab Alam (Conservative councillor for Great Horton ward) in the Council's 'Hall of Shame'. Mr Alam was jailed in 2005 after pleading guilty to killing a Leeds man in a hit and run incident, a very tragic incident made even more tragic with Mr Alam only receiving a 2 years and 4 months prison sentence.

26 March 2006

Losing our talent

3 March 2006

Segregation in Education

The government's new education 'reforms' are set to increase segregation in our city with the increase of state funded faith schools.

In the aftermath of the riots in Bradford, Oldham and Burnley, academics sited the segregation of different communities/faiths as the biggest challenge to the city. A post riot report called for more initiatives to bring communities together, not as easy as it sounds as human nature shows us that 'birds of a feather flock together'. There was at least one area where children of different faiths could still interact and gain a appreciation of other cultures, that environment was school.

So why is the government now legislating for segregation in our schools?

The governments school reforms will make it easier for faith schools to set up new schools or apply to take over existing schools, the governments claim is that faith schools will raise standards but this claim is not backed up by facts. Bradford's education league tables show that the two secondary schools with the worst results are Anglican schools.

You have to wonder what is the government's real motivation behind this policy. It is certainly not a vote winner in the country as a survey commissioned after the July 7 bombings concluded that 64% of people opposed the expansion of faith schools. Interestingly though, a study by the Islamic Human Right Commission showed that many British Muslims wanted their children educated in faith schools. I believe this ill conceived policy is nothing more than a concession to British Muslims for the government's invasion of Iraq and subsequent murder of 100,000 people.

The experts in the field are not behind the government either. Teaching Unions have commented that the government has made a grave mistake paving the way for more faith schools. While the report of David Bell of Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education) makes grim reading for faith schools, the report stating that some Muslim schools were not passing on a British "common heritage", and were failing in the teaching of citizenship. He also pointed towards the need of all schools to prevent the demeaning of "women or people living in non-traditional relationships".

It seems Bradford is going to be the countries guinea pig as we are to have the UK's first Islamic Academy. We do not know which failing school will be transformed but one school in the frame could well be my former school, Wyke Manor Upper which is currently in the governments "special measures" due to it's failing record.

Whether we the public, like them or not, more faith schools are on the way and we as taxpayers will be paying for them.

Jason Smith

7 February 2006

The end of local police

Key Points:
o A regional police force would have little or no responsiveness to local issues.
o Regional forces will inevitably lead to job cuts.
o Government says Police Authorities will have to borrow money to pay for mergers.
o West Yorkshire Police Authority has stated they do not want to merge.

New Labour is proposing to merge our police forces, which would reduce our police forces from 43 to 12 creating regional or sub regional forces. It is hard to understand how a more centralised police force will help anybody but the government claims it is necessary, as they claim all forces must reorganise to meet "21st century problems including organised crime and terrorism". How many times has the government used 'terrorism' to justify an unpopular and pointless policy?

In reality what this policy will do is create remote regional headquarters for our police force, which would inevitably affect their responsiveness to local issues, in fact in the next few years we can expect the government to phase out local police stations altogether. With centralisation there will inevitably by job cuts, a Union spokesperson in Wales has stated that if the four Welsh Police Authorities merge as the government has suggested then this will lead to approximately 1000 job loses in the force.

The government has given our Yorkshire force two options, a single regional force for Yorkshire & Humberside or a merger to 2 strategic forces, one for West Yorkshire and North Yorkshire; another for South Yorkshire and Humberside. So the option of no merger doesn't even seem to be on the table. The government has also made it clear that the Police Authorities will have to borrow money to meet the merger costs, which would almost certainly lead to a cut in services. In an attempt to bully and bribe Police Authorities, the government offered extra money to any authority that was willing to volunteer to merge their forces on 23rd December 2005.

The West Yorkshire Police Authority along with 14 other authorities has made it known that their preference is to stand-alone and not merge with other forces. As the government is committed to the EU policy of regionalisation it will be interesting to see if the government will force the merger, effectively putting the wishes of the EU above the needs and safety of the British people.

Jason Smith

29 January 2006

First for Price Increases

As the New Year rolled in, so did the First Bradford Bus fleet and their latest price increases.  This was quite a shock to the wallet, as we had already had to deal with massive increases from First in June 2005, when fares were increased between 6% and 12%. 

From January 2006 bus fares in Bradford rose up to 20p.  Even the so-called ‘saver’ tickets (*) fares rose again, a FirstDay ticket rising 12% from £2.50 to £2.80 while a FirstMonth Ridercard rising 7% from £42.00 to £45.00. 

I have always championed the use of public transport due to the consideration of reducing both congestion and pollution, but I am finding it increasingly difficult to bat for buses.  Not only are their prices now intolerable but also First’s obsession with single-decker buses have created a service where a good percentage of commuters pay for a area of the floor to stand in and for the privilege of being knocked about by other commuters and erratic drivers.  In the few services that still sport double-deckers the top decks are invariably off limits to none smokers who do not want to secondary smoke and to people who do not enjoy listening to the latest chart sounds from children’s mobile phones. 

Even though First Bradford is a private company the council could, if they wished, threaten to not renew their contracts if they did not reduce their fares or at the very least freeze their charges.  Bradford Council have documented that when they operated the buses and increased fares, each time the number of passengers would drop by 2.5%.  So the council cannot claim ignorance, if they want our roads free from congestion they have to ensure public transport is affordable and comfortable, which at the moment it isn’t.

Jason Smith

3 January 2006