Guilty Until Proven Innocent In Telford...

Telford Town Park was given to the people of the town with covenants protecting it as a park with free and open access for all in perpetuity.

says Wonko.

But Telford and Wrekin Council have a different view - they believe they are the "land owners" and if they want to harrass people distributing leaflets or people without children simply walking they can:

In the case of distributing leaflets in the Town Park, we ask that individuals or organisations wishing to do so request permission by completing an application form and supplying us with necessary supplementary documentation. This information will give us, as Land owners, the reassurance that the activities requested by outside groups will not compromise our duty of care to young people and the more vulnerable.

Note: "Land owners". The council isn't maintaining the locality as elected representative of the people it believes it owns the land!

And this seemingly fascist organisation preys on fear with a heap of pious twitterings to try and justify its stance and get people on side:

I make no apologies for putting the safety of our children and young people first. Unfortunately there are people at large in our society who are unable to be trusted in this context and we have had unfortunate incidents in the Town Park which we have had to deal with very sensitively. If this means that we have then to take precautions which some people feel are “over the top”, then so be it. We would prefer in these instances to be as safe as possible beforehand, rather than sorry afterwards.

So, if you are without children and want to walk in the park, you can't. And if you want to dress up as a penguin and distribute leaflets on climate change in the park you can't. At least not without a CRB check and various restrictions being imposed.

Sounds like Telford is sleep-walking into something quite terrifying.

Rather like the rest of England.

If you use the park, or simply value freedom, join the protest - Wonko has the details here.

Our Kingdom Is Thrilled!

I had to smile when I read this on Our Kingdom. How thrilling for its priggish, anti-English/England writers that a film apparently depicting skinheads in the 1980s has made best "British" film!

"YES! Well done, Shane!" Quick, file under England, fascism...

You can just imagine the writer, almost pooing his usually pristine geeky knickers to get that online.

A couple of points:

The skinhead thing was up and running well before the 1980s as was football hooliganism - fans were being penned in in the early 1970s.

Old Labour voter, that was me, hated Thatcher, but this constant priggish nonsense about the 1980s is very wearing. Just for a change, couldn't it have been set in the just as grim 70s?

The other point is the constant anti-English bias of "Our Kingdom". The makers of the "This Is England" film were, I suggest, very ignorant in trying to portray English nationalism in this light in the modern day and age.

This is the age of the West Lothian Question, a non-representative PM ruling England, health apartheid, etc. It would be refreshing to see something set in the modern day, highlighting the current forms of English nationalism and the reasons for it.

We have a government which habitually discriminates against every man, woman and child in England, valuing Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish lives far higher than ours.

And yet some film makers and "Our Kingdom" are anxious to promote English nationalism as it was in the 60s/70s/80s.

Great.

I do not recommend "Our Kingdom". Sometimes I suspect that the people behind it are all clones of Tristram Fourmile.

Actually, it strikes me that England was used as a negative (remember "Oi! For England"?) and Britain as a positive even back in the '80s. UK PLC brainwashing was obviously up and running. But, after the devolution scares of the '70s, nobody was going to examine Scots' racism. Which is great. And probably contributes to the way the arrogant, non-insightful likes of Gordon Brown strut around Westminster now.

And other little things.

Like health apartheid.

Our Kingdom: The Trouble With Fascists

The mind boggles. “Our Kingdom”, which has published some of the most ghastly, anti-English drivel known to humankind, has moved to smack a pathetic fascist on the nose with the headline English fascist.

Of course, the e-mail writer was wrong, but if we published articles about every drop of anti-English drivel we receive at WENAP, it would run and run. There would be about two dozen articles on this blog entitled "Scots/Welsh Fascist" and a couple entitled "Cornish Fascist". We have received e-mails about how pure the "Celts" are and how mongrel are the English!

Nobody should condone fascism. And yet publishing material about how England doesn’t deserve equality because it apparently has no moral vision and articles presenting its history in a purely negative light is all fine and dandy for those lovely upstanding folks at Our Kingdom.

Our rights to make decisions about how our country is governed, to have equality in health care, democratic representation, etc are poison to Our Kingdom. We have been stunned at some of the material they have published.

And what's all this bizarre waffle about the "Celts" and "Celtic nations" which the site happily lets pass? Surely, English, Welsh and Scots are nationalities, not races/pure ethnicities?

We thinks there are more than a few British anti-English/England fascists behind the scenes at Our Kingdom. It shocks us that they cannot see their own faults.

Two wrongs don’t make a right!

Drew and Fiona (in Chris Abbott's absence)