Wendy Alexander has resigned as Scottish Labour leader amid an ongoing row over donations to her leadership campaign – but who are the possible contenders to replace her?

Andy Kerr

Considered a front-runner for the leadership, Andy Kerr was a senior member of the previous Scottish government.

As health minister, he embarked upon radical reforms aimed at improving and modernising the NHS and tackling the issue of waiting lists – a favourite subject of the SNP in opposition – as well as problems with the NHS 24 helpline service.

As someone who has been waiting over seven months for an operation I can say that he failed.

Cathy Jamieson

Like Mr Kerr she was also a high-profile minister in the last administration and, during her time with the justice brief between 2003-07, she presided over high-profile campaigns to stamp out anti-social behaviour, remove drug dealers from communities and tackle Scotland’s so called “booze and blades” culture.

Failed on all counts!

Margaret Curran

She previously served as social justice minister, a post later renamed as communities, and oversaw the Labour/Liberal Democrat government’s flagship anti-social behaviour laws, which failed.

Ms Curran –admits to being a fan of BBC TV soap EastEnders!

Tom McCabe

Another veteran of west Scotland politics, Tom McCabe led the former Hamilton District Council before going on to take the helm of the South Lanarkshire local authority.

Mr McCabe’s problem with launching a leadership campaign is that he managed Ms Alexander’s – and was the person who had to admit that the £950 donation from Jersey businessman Paul Green was illegal.

With news that MSP’s are demanding a 12.5% pay rise to take them from £54,093 to £62,000 a year and bigger pensions we can do no better than quote Mark Wallace of the Taxpayers Alliance who said: “This just smacks of barefaced greed at a time when most people are having to tighten their belts due to souring living costs because of rocketing food, fuel and energy costs. With high salaries, expense accounts, whopping allowances and gold plated pensions they are already generously looked after by the taxpayer”. And he added: “This comes just before MP’s are having a vote on whether to give themselves yet more of our money. It is a disgrace and the public should not stand for it”.

With the growth in support for the BNP maybe they no longer will.

The grieving father of an amateur footballer who was stabbed to death because he couldn’t tell a thug the time has condemned Scotland’s soft-touch justice system.

John Muir, whose son, Damian was murdered last July, hit out at Holyrood yesterday in his fight for automatic jail sentences to be given to anyone who is caught carrying a knife.

About 16,000 people have signed the 69-year-old dads petition urging tougher penalties.

Barry Gavin who has been convicted of the murder was walking the streets despite having been bailed several times snapped when the IT worker was unable to tell him the time and stabbed him through his lung and into his heart.

Mr Muir said: “When Gavin was arrested, he told police officers that the reason he murdered my son was that Damian was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Well, no, actually, serial offender Gavin was out on bail for serious crimes involving knives at the time he murdered Damian. It was he who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, he should not of been out at all”.

This case is sadly echoed from one end of the country to the other. A youth is facing life in prison for the murder of a Highland teenager whom he picked on at random to stab to death in the street.

In an unprovoked attack Alan Dewar grabbed Joshua Mitchell from behind and knifed the 17 year old through the heart. Dewar then stood smoking as he watched passers-by rush to help Joshua. When arrested he admitted carrying out the attack because Joshua “had been in the wrong place at the wrong time”.

But the similarity of these dreadful crimes does not end there, it emerged in court that Dewar had been jailed for possessing a knife seven months earlier and convicted of assault late last year.

Joshua’s father said: “He should not have been out on the streets when this happened if the courts had done the right thing”.

Two innocent young men have lost their lives due to the refusal of this Government to lock up criminals, we back Mr Muir’s petition to toughen up penalties, as the Scottish Secretary outlined in his column recently the rights of victims and innocent law abiding citizens not to become victims must come before those of the criminal. It must surely be time to introduce a mandatory jail sentence for carrying a knife in public and one that measures in years not months.

Education Secretary Fiona Hyslop calls for the principals of Scottish universities to “work harder” to banish “elitism” from our higher education by discriminating against higher achieving applicants to our universities, favouring instead those who come from the poorer echelons of society and more alarmingly irrespective of their intellectual status.  This is blatant class discrimination which, were it racial, would immediately open the proposer to criminal prosecution.

The class war origins of this pronouncement reveal how anti-national the present nationalist administration here in Scotland really is.

It should not be forgotten by the thousands of voters who adhere to the Scottish National Party that they are supporting a political organisation deeply imbued with  equalitarian, neo-Marxist motives identical to those which fuel the Scottish Socialist Party and the Left at large.

From the mid 1960’s when the Marxist-tainted “liberal”comprehensive school system was introduced Scottish education has steadily been degraded leaving us with a “wasted generation” pitiably bottoming out in the European educational leagues. This national scandal is the result of the equalitarian obsession with denying human differences. The nonsensical dogma that, by exposing every child to the same educational level and tempo identical results will be the outcome, shows how far commonsense  can be subverted by a political creed. As a result of this liberal/left regime our nation has been denied the skills of the artisan class which once made us the front-runners of European manufacturing.

We need excellence wherever it can be found and from whatever class of our nation. The only discrimination we should make is in favour of talent and that should be pursued at whatever cost.

David Fordyce

Scottish Press Officer

Members of BNP Scotland celebrated the Summer Solstice with a wickerman bonfire and BBQ this weekend. The evening also included traditional folk songs and guitar playing that was enjoyed by all. It is hoped to make this an annual event, with over night camping on site, a chance for members from across Scotland to come together in a family friendly event (the start of our very own RWB?) a wickerman bonfire is spectacular and a wonderful example of our rich cultural history, special thanks to Carrick Crawford for hosting our Summer Solstice and creating a truly wonderful wickerman to enthral his guests.

The Wicker man by Carrick Crawford

The wickerman burning is based on an ancient fire festival of old Europe. Fire festivals were held in conjunction with the turning points of the solar year: Midsummer, Winter Solstice, the spring and Autumn Equinoxes. Fire festivals use fire to fulfil symbolic functions which mirror the effects of the sun-in particular the promotion of fertilization and growth.

The energy of fire is seen as connected with the sun which brings light, health and growth as well as the hearth fire of food and hospitality.

A Ritual of Transformation

Fire is invoked as the endless process of change and transformation that moves through all things. The collective energy and wishes of the community rushes upward with the flames, carrying the intention to heal and cleanse the earth. The fire creates a spirit messenger to connect the people with energies and powers which would ordinarily be beyond their control.

Today, farmers use chemical fertilizers to promote plant growth, but hundreds of years ago they used natural fertilizers such as manure or potash. After the burning of the wickerman, the people would gather up the potash it left behind and spread the fertilizer on their fields.

Sacrifice

Although no other ancient author confirms it, Julius Ceaser’s account of the druids in the Gallic Wars, he describes a ritual in which large wicker effigies were filled with grains, small animals and even human slaves, before being burned as sacrifices. Whatever the prehistoric truth may be, human sacrifice is no more implied in today’s wickerman burnings than it is in the ritual consumption of Christ’s body and blood in church. Both actions are symbolic of deep processes of transformation, both actions use the cycle of life-death-rebirth to represent them. Fire sacrifice involves releasing what is past, transforming energies in the present and invoking a new future. The dried stalks of last year’s growth must be burned and returned to the soil to prepare the way for new growth.

The Scottish Conservatives have suspended their candidate for the North Ayrshire and Arran constituency at the next General Election following media reports claiming that Philip Lardner, a primary school teacher had made racist comments.

At the weekend he was reported to have held up Ian Smith, the former leader of white rule Rhodesia as a hero, and also commented that Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech in a small way has come true.

Mr Lardner is a member of the right-wing lobby, the Freedom Association and is an outspoken critic of the late Edward Heath over his policy towards Rhodesia and taking Britain into the EU.

It must now be clear to all real conservatives that they have no place in Cameron’s blue-labour party, the statements made by Mr Lardner show the huge split in the Tories ranks, and like so many before him, I would urge Mr Lardner to join the party that is his natural home and one that would fully support these statements instead of condemning and then sacking him!

To this end I have written a personal letter to Mr Lardner inviting him to join us in the British National Party the only party proudly not cowed by political correctness. I look forward to reporting on his reply.

Once more into the breach, dear friends!

John R. Nicoll, whilst absolutely right in his assertion that “our catastrophic P.M. Gordon Brown” is railroading us into the E.U.S.S.R., which is what the E.U. exactly amounts to, gets a wee bit mixed up about the historical importance of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

In 1946, after it became clear that the West had been grievously out-manoeuvred at Yalta and Teheran by the combination of a satanic Stalin and a dementiac Roosevelt, voices were raised in protest against the penetration of many critical elements of American society and government by treasonable Marxist elements.

Senator Joseph McCarthy took the patriotic initiative to denounce these toxic organisms in the American media, Hollywood, the arts, the US legal system et al.

His robust denunciations were too much for the lily-livered liberals in the Democratic Party and in the subterranean Left and the united forces of Un-American Activities worked not unsuccessfully for his destruction.

However, his warning call was not wasted on the American people in general and the advance of the seditious liberal/Left was delayed for decades.

As far as can be observed today, apart from the British National Party and a happily growing number of influential journalists and writers, there are no voices in th Lib-Lab-Con Axis to duplicate Senator McCarthy’s crusade against the treacherous anti-British elements which are presently driving our nation to political, economic and moral destruction.

David Fordyce

Primary pupils were banned from making Fathers day cards in case it upset single mothers and lesbians, it emerged yesterday.

Schools in Glasgow, Edinburgh, East Renfrewshire, Dumfries and Galloway and Clackmannanshire introduced the ban.

Alastair Noble, education officer with the charity Christian Action said: “This seems an extreme and somewhat absurd reaction. I’d have thought that the traditional family and marriage are still the majority lifestyle of people in Scotland. To deny the experience of the majority does not seem sensible.”

How many fathers missed out on receiving a card made by their child because of this idiotic dictate we wonder, will the making of Easter and Xmas cards now be banned for fear of upsetting the followers of different religions or is that already in place?

The dead hand of political correctness is beginning to be felt in every corner of public life, imposed by nameless officials usually with the intentions of avoiding upset among minorities, the result 9 times out of 10 is that they achieve the exact opposite.

As Westminster becomes embroiled in expenses scandals its worth noting that our own MSP’s are not far behind for instance they have just voted on the amount to give themselves to cover staff salaries an eye watering £54,500 for every member. As we have 73 constituency members and 56 regional list members that equates to a staggering £7,030,500.

MSP’s did however agree to scrap the £11,400 package which helps members buy second homes in Edinburgh for use during the parliamentary week. This enabled some MSP’s to cash in on spiralling house prices. Now they’ll simply be able to claim for rent or hotel costs. Nothing to do with the looming property crash meaning they might lose money of course! How many will choose a B&B over a four star hotel we wonder?

Something else to ponder, the Scottish Government fleet has a remarkable 150 vehicles in its car pool. That’s 137 cars and 13 commercial vehicles for 129 elected members!

The gravy train runs a service from Westminster to the EU now calling at Holyrood it would seem, small wonder our taxes are so high.

Something for SNP supporters to think about, new official data on last years Holyrood election fiasco has once again drawn attention to Cunninghame North, where SNP’s Kenny Gibson beat Labours Allan Wilson by only 48 votes.

The data shows that 309 voters who backed Labour on the second vote spoiled their ballot paper, compared with 207 voters who backed SNP. If votes had been properly recorded Wilson would have won reversing the one seat victory of the SNP.

Now if Labour could only get their act together, finally accepting that they are the opposition and get stuck into an ever increasingly smug Alex Salmond, ending his extended honeymoon period (removing Wendy Alexander would be a great start) then all will not be lost for the Union, just one seat is all it will take!

The breakdown in law and order and the lost of faith in the justice system has been highlighted over recent weeks in the Scottish press, from the early release of hundreds of prisoners from holiday camp style prisons to thugs being fined just £300 for kicking an innocent man in the head resulting in his death after knocking him to the ground in the Scottish capital.

The media wring their hands as they report the country is going to hell in a hand cart always pointing out what they see is wrong with this country but more often than not offering little in way of what is needed to put things right. Of course if the right-wing media had any courage at all they would promote and support the polices of the BNP.

We are the only political party that is not strangled by political correctness or stifled by Orwellian speech, we say it as it is and have common sense polices to tackle many issues not only immigration and the creeping Islamification that is changing the face of Britain, we are also the real party of law and order the only party speaking for the indigenous peoples of Britain.

Only the BNP would restore the death penalty, reintroduce National Service, put real discipline back in schools, if prisons are so over crowded we will build more and make them places that no one would wish to return to. Innocent victims must come before any rights criminals may have, punishment must match the crime, we have to restore peoples faith in the police force and get officers out from behind their desks out of their cars and back on the streets.

The main parties will talk about combating crime from the Tories short sharp shock to Labours tough on crime tough on the cause’s of crime yet nothing seems to change, when the BNP say we will crack down on crime and enough is enough we mean it, we listen to the people whose lives are blighted by crime, we understand the anger felt by victims and victims relatives when out of touch Judges hand out soft sentences, a BNP Government would insure that the punishment outweighs any gain criminals think they can make by breaking the law. We live in an age where a young girl is murdered by a gang of youths stamping on her head and not one of them received a life sentence, and the reason for this murder, she dressed differently!

A sixteen year old who kicked a defenceless man to death as he lay on the ground in Dundee was sentenced to only four years at the high court in Glasgow this week, the victim’s angry family stormed out of the court as the sentence was passed.

In Stirling two thugs were convicted of scarring a man for life in an unprovoked attack, the victim was slashed across the face by one of them while the other punched and kicked him as he tried to stop the bleeding, the sentence? Again only four years.

The taking of life by violence premeditated or not is still murder and should carry the harshest penalty, as should any violent assault.

The mass media would have us believe that the country is under siege from its young people, this of course is untrue, the vast majority of British youngsters are decent caring individuals who will never have a brush with the law yet alone spend time in prison, the liberals bleating theory that all young people would in some way suffer from introducing our measures is like most of their thinking flawed, young people deserve to be protected, as do we all, from criminals of their age group or any other group, and they would be allowed to flourish under a disciplined schooling and a structured society who puts their rights before those of any criminal.

The British National Party is the party of real law and order.

The BNP will crack down on crime and restore public safety and confidence. We will free the police and courts from the politically correct straitjacket that is stopping them from doing their job properly. The liberal fixation with the ‘rights’ of criminals must be replaced by concern for the rights of victims, and the right of innocent people not to become victims.

We support the re-introduction of corporal punishment for petty criminals and vandals, and the restoration of capital punishment for paedophiles, terrorists and murderers as an option for judges in cases where their guilt is proven beyond dispute, as by DNA evidence or being caught red-handed.

On current demographic trends, we, the native British people, will be an ethnic minority in our own country within sixty years.

To ensure that this does not happen, and that the British people retain their homeland and identity, we call for an immediate halt to all further immigration, the immediate deportation of criminal and illegal immigrants, and the introduction of a system of voluntary resettlement whereby those immigrants who are legally here will be afforded the opportunity to return to their lands of ethnic origin assisted by a generous financial incentives both for individuals and for the countries in question.

We will abolish the ‘positive discrimination’ schemes that have made white Britons second-class citizens. We will also clamp down on the flood of ‘asylum seekers’, all of whom are either bogus or can find refuge much nearer their home countries.

We are opposed to the Single European Currency, and support the overwhelming majority of the British people in their desire to keep the Pound and our traditional weights and measures. At the same time, we are for the best possible relationship with our European neighbours and believe that the nations of Europe should be free to trade and cooperate whenever it is mutually beneficial, though without being forced into a political and economic straitjacket – political unification.

Accordingly, we stand for British withdrawal from the European Union. In place of the EU, we intend to aim towards greater national self-sufficiency, and to work to restore Britain’s family and trading ties with Australia, Canada and New Zealand, and to trade with the rest of the world as it suits us. Following our withdrawal from the EU, the BNP will use the £43 million per day net contribution Britain at present makes to the European Union to fund many far more useful projects at home.

Globalisation, with its export of jobs to the Third World, is bringing ruin and unemployment to British industries and the communities that depend on them. Accordingly, the BNP calls for the selective exclusion of foreign-made goods from British markets and the reduction of foreign imports.

We will ensure that our manufactured goods are, wherever possible, produced in British factories, employing British workers. When this is done, unemployment in this country will be brought to an end, and secure, well-paid employment will flourish, at last getting our people back to work and ending the waste and injustice of having more than 4 million people in a hidden army of the unemployed concealed by Labour’s statistical fiddles. We further believe that British industry, commerce, land and other economic and natural assets belong in the final analysis to the British nation and people. To that end we will restore our economy and land to British ownership.

We also call for preference in the job market to be given to native Britons. We will take active steps to break up the socially, economically and politically damaging monopolies now being established by the supermarket giants. Finally we will seek to give British workers a stake in the success and prosperity of the enterprises whose profits their labour creates by encouraging worker shareholder and co-operative schemes

We are against the ‘trendy’ teaching methods that have made Britain one of the most poorly educated nations in Europe. We will end the practice of politically correct indoctrination in all its guises and we will restore discipline in the classroom, give authority back to teachers and put far greater emphasis on training young people in the industrial and technological skills necessary in the modern world. We will also seek to instill in our young people knowledge of and pride in the history, cultures and heritage of the native peoples of Britain.

We see a strong, healthy agriculture sector as vital to the country. Britain’s farming industry will be encouraged to produce a much greater part of the nation’s need in food products. Priority will be switched from quantity to quality, as we move from competing in a global economy to maximum self-sufficiency for Britain. We will ensure a major shift to healthier and more sustainable organic farming. We are pledged to ensure the restoration of Britain’s once great fishing industry with the reimposition of the former exclusion zones around our coast.

We are wholly committed to a free, fully funded National Health Service for all British citizens. We will revitalise the Health Service by boosting staff and bed numbers, slashing unnecessary bureaucracy and by addressing the root cause of low recruitment and retention – low pay. We will see to it that no money is given in foreign aid while our own hospitals are short of beds and the staff to run them. More emphasis must be placed on healthy living with greater understanding of sickness prevention through physical exercise, a healthier environment and improved diets.

Our ideal for Britain is that of a clean, beautiful country, free of pollution in all its forms. We will enforce standards to curb those practices, whether by business or the individual, which cause environmental damage. “The polluter pays to clean up the mess” must become a fact of life, not an electioneering slogan. In towns we would work to replace the brutalist modernism of 1960s-style-architecture with a blend of traditional local styles and materials and ensure that developments take place on a more human scale.

The second meeting of Scottish Office and regional officials took place this weekend at Perth.

We were honoured to be sharing a hotel with members of the 51st Highland Brigade who were holding their annual dinner and veterans parade it seemed fitting to see BNP badges mixing with the medals being proudly worn by these brave servicemen who served Britain in her hour of need, we have put up these photos taken on the day that speak for themselves. We must never forget what British servicemen and women have gone through and still endure in our name, how could anyone fail to feel anything but pride watching that parade.

Meanwhile inside the hotel we were trying to do our bit for the country, reports were given from around the regions and the Scottish Office officials, all reported a general advance forward as we continue to improve the new structure.

A very well received presentation was given by our very own marketing PR expert which will lead to some real changes in the way we present our selves in future campaigns.

We have the talent, we have the commitment we have the people to carry us onwards now all we need is the funds, if you can donate to the BNP in Scotland please do so today send donations made out to BNP Scotland or Scottish Heritage and send to;

Secretary
PO Box 11815
Turriff
AB53 8WB