5th Meeting of the Turkey Assessment Group

This promises to be an interesting meeting in the European Parliament today.

For further information on the speaker, Professor Binnaz Toprak, see http://www.usakpedia.com/content/Binnaz_Toprak.

The report, "Being different in Turkey", which will be the vantage point of the meeting, can be found here: http://www.aciktoplumvakfi.org.tr/pdf/tr_farkli_olmak.pdf.

More Progress for the Front

Well done to the Front National for underlining its position as France's third political party in the second round of the country's cantonal elections that were held yesterday in which the party enjoyed its first ever victory at this level.

The turnaround in the fortunes of the Front National of late should give hopes to patriots everywhere. It does not seem too long ago that the FN was smashed by Sarkozy in the 2007 presidential elections and written off as a political force. Their recent revival, which seems to have accelerated considerably since the election of Marine le Pen as party president, shows that rumours of the death of nationalist movements can often prove to be rather premature.

Liberals and the Battle of Marathon

I was intrigued when I saw this poster in the European Parliament recently.

I specialised in ancient Greek history at university and I love reading about the ancient world.

When one must churn out assignments and sit exams at regular intervals the wonder of a particular subject can be suppressed somewhat as practical considerations framed by a strictly defined academic syllabus take precedence.

As my only reading on this subject nowadays is done for pleasure rather than out of necessity, I have the luxury of being able to take my time reading the words of the historians of the ancient world. I fascinates me to think that I am reading the words of men who lived in what in human terms seems to be such a long time ago.

It is not strictly true to say that I am reading the actual words of such men of course, as what I am actually reading is a modern English translation, which ensures some degree of unfortunate but unavoidable stylistic sacrifice of the original work.

I am in awe of anyone with a mastery of ancient Greek and/or latin who can read the original works of Herodotus, Xenophon, Tacitus et al (et al is about the extent of my latin unfortunately) and I imagine that the pleasure derived from reading such works as their authors had intended can only magnify the joy of the experience in the reader.

I find it highly ironic and something of a cheek that this event has been organised by the ALDE and S&D groups in the European Parliament, to which the Lib Dems and the Labour Party respectively belong.

The battle of Marathon is one of the most famous battles in the wars fought between the ancient city states of Greece and the Persian empire. The Greek (mainly Athenian) victory repulsed the invading barbarian hordes of Darius I and constituted an overwhelming David vs Goliath victory that is rightly revered to this day.

It is said that following this great victory a runner, Phidippides, was dispatched to Athens to deliver the good news, and it is this legendary run from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens which has inspired the modern running events of the same name.

The Persian defeat at Marathon was a huge propaganda blow to the vast Persian empire which king Xerxes, the son of Darius, attempted to avenge a decade later through his own invasion of Greece.

This campaign, and particularly the battles of Thermopylae, Salamis and Plataea, have passed into legend. The Battle of Thermopylae in particular has taken on something of a homeric status throughout the Western world and has been given new life in the recently movie 300.

I enjoyed this film and it inspired me to dig out my old copy of Herodotus and read the relevant book (book VII). I then found myself reading the other books that make up his monumental (if not necessarily historically accurate) work.

This is all well and good, but what are liberals and socialists doing commemorating the Battle of Marathon?

The Greek victory in the Persian wars allowed Europe to live. Had the Greek city-states succumbed to oriental barbarism then Rome would most likely never have prospered and the whole history of Europe would look very different. It is not for nothing that Marathon is regarded as one of the key battles of world history.

Modern Persia poses no threat to Europe, quite irrespective of what warmonering neo-cons in our traitorous government may claim, but there is a state that currently occupies some of the same territory of that former empire that poses a very real threat to Europe.

I am referring, of course, to Turkey.

Turkish incursions into Europe have occurred throughout the centuries and have been repulsed famously at the Gates of Vienna in 1683 and elsewhere. Such barbarism has continued into the modern age and can be witnessed, for example, in the invasion and occupation of northern Cyprus in 1973.

Nevertheless, on the whole, attempts to add territory to the Turkish state have been kept largely at bay for the past few hundred years.

The aforementioned liberals and socialists are doing all they can to open Europe to a modern deluge from the East, however, by working tirelessly to try and bring the state of Turkey into the European Union. Turkey's accession to the EU would have a deal a huge economic and, more importantly, demograhic blow to Europe from which it would be very hard to recover.

There is significant opposition to the proposed accession of Turkey, and, luckily for us, Turkey still seems to be regarded by some as too backward in areas such as respect for human rights, freedom of the press, civil liberties etc. (not to mention the question of their illegal occupation of part of Cyprus, a state which is now in the EU and will therefore have a veto on Turkey joining) to be ready to join anytime soon.

Nevertheless, the accession of Turkey to the EU remains a dream of liberals and socialists and various other assorted sickos, including, it would appear, the leadership of the UK Conservative Party.

Such politicians will always champion any cause that they feel will undermine the nations of Europe of course, so none of this should be a suprise to us. But such politicians have no right whatsoever to act in such a disgraceful way towards Europe while in the same breath celebrating the victory at the Battle of Marathon.

Were such individuals alive at the time of the Persian wars I suspect they would have been far more likely to have played a role similar to that of the Greek traitor Ephialtes, who is said to have informed Xerxes of the Anopaia path, thus enabling the Persian forces to overwhelm the remaining Greeks around the Spartan king Leonidas and finally bring this legendary stand-off to a conclusion.

History tells us that there have always been traitors willing to betray their people. The difference is that in the ancient world such people generally had to abscond and find a foreign paymaster to serve. Their modern equivants are simply elected to high office as representatives of one of the main political parties.

I had not thought about it this way until now but perhaps this is one of the reasons why I enjoy escaping from the modern world and immersing myself in the tales of Europe's ancient past.

Hebburn Meeting and Election Results from Today

I attended a good meeting in the North East today organised by former regional organiser Ken Booth. Speakers included Richard Edmonds, Eddy Butler, and Nick Cass.

A full report will appear on Eddy's blog later.

I have just been informed that the NPD have narrowly missed out on getting anyone elected to the Landtag of Sachsen-Anhalt in the elections that I mentioned here. It seems they got 4.7% of the vote. 5% is required to enter the parliament.

On a positive note ,the results of the French cantonal elections are still coming in and the Front National appears to have done rather well, as the above graph taken from nations press.info shows, with the FN currently in third place just behind Sarkozy's UMP.

Elections in France and Germany

Two very interesting elections will be held on Sunday in the two leading founder member states of the European Union.

In France, the first round of Cantonal elections will constitute the first big electoral test for our friends in the Front National following the election of Marine le Pen as party president.

The second round will take place the following Sunday (27th).

There is a real buzz in the ranks of the Front National at present, with opinion polls suggesting that Marine Le Pen could win more votes that incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy and top the poll in the first round of next year's presidential elections.

The significance of a potential Front National victory next year can hardly be overstated.

In Germany, all eyes will be on the NPD in the elections to the Landtag, or state parliament, of Sachsen-Anhalt. A victory here would mean that the NPD (now fused with the former second-place patriotic party, the DVU, don't forget) will have representation on three of Germany's regional parliaments (Sachsen-Anhalt, Saxony, and Mecklenberg-Vorpommern), underlining their status as Germany's dominant patriotic political party.

5% of the vote would do it, and opinion polls suggest that this is achievable. 8% plus would be regarded as a very good vote indeed.

I will report on the results as soon as I get them.

An English Nationalism

A few years ago I wrote an review of Tony Linsell's An English Nationalism which appeared in the February 2007 issue of the now seemingly defunct magazine Identity.

In it I concluded that to my mind, An English Nationalism is the best book ever to have been written about our struggle.

My views on some things have inevitably developed and changed over the years. I am not so arrogant as to claim that I will never change my views, and I welcome free and fair debate with my opponents.

If evidence proves my previously held views to be wrong I will admin my mistake and modify my views accordingly, though it should be noted that the degree of implausibility inherent in my opponents claims is directly proportional to the amount of evidence that would be required to convince me.

This is how I aim to behave in any case, and no subject should ever be regarded as taboo in my opinion.

One thing that has certainly not changed is my view that this is the best book that anyone who seeks an insight into our struggle can read.

To quote from my earlier article;

An English Nationalism contains arguments framed in a very different way to many of those seen in nationalist periodicals and books in the past, and the type of language used in this book needs to be appreciated and used...at every opportunity.

An English Nationalism teaches us how we need to use the language of multi-culturalism to our own ends, and this approach has been vindicated by the Labour government’s current transition from a position of encouraging multi-culturalism, now acknowledged to have failed, to abandoning this in favour of forced intergration and assimilation...

The best thing about using the language of multi-culturalism is that it bewilders our enemies and they find it hard, if not impossible, to counter. It is much better to promote our ethnic identity than to oppose the promotion of other ethnic groups, the latter being a position that will be interpreted as proof that we are a party that is more interested in being negative and against other groups than in favour of our own, and in many cases is illegal anyway.

The Race Relations Act was designed to stop any kind of discrimination against non-whites in any way whatsoever. Yet the English are also recognised as a distinct ethnic group by this act, and are protected under it. I would urge everyone reading this to remember this fact, and make this clear to anyone mocking the idea that there is such a thing as an English ethnic identity. Simply by claiming that there is no such thing, they are breaking the law and falling foul of the Race Relations Act.

Nationalists would not be silly enough to publicly question whether or not Irish Travellers or members of the Jewish community really constitute a racial or ethnic group (both are protected under this Act), but our enemies often are stupid enough to claim this of the English.

Only recently have legal moves on our behalf begun in this area, and we will be hearing much more about this in the years to come. Until we are in power and every last trace of the sickness of Liberalism-Marxism has been swept away, we must use the apparatus of our enemies to our own advantage at every opportunity. And in any case, the only thing that will sustain our people through the tough days to come is an appreciation of our own ethnic identity and culture, and an understanding of why it needs to be saved. This is essentially a ‘pro-us’ as opposed to an ‘anti-them’ position.

The legal moves to which I referred above have not had the impact that I had hoped they would at the time of writing this article, and there is still much work to do in this regard. Which is all the more reason why people should read this book.

To buy An English Nationalism please send a cheque/postal order for £18.99 (inc. p&p to the UK - please enquire for overseas p&p costs) made payable to 'English Democrats' to us at:

Leeds English Democrats,
PO Box 116,
Leeds,
LS27 9WW.

UPDATE 17/5/11:

Buy An English Nationalism via paypal by clicking here.

New Blog Features

As my eagle-eyed readers will have noted I have been playing around with some of the features on this blog of late and added a few things that I hope will improve the site ever so slightly.

This includes;

Popular Post section

When I discovered this feature I was intrigued to note that my Interview for Leeds University students article is by far the most-read article on this blog, and has received more than double the number of views than the next most popular article.

I have no idea why this is the case but there you go. Had I known this would be the case I would possibly have put some more thought into the answers but I don't think it was a bad interview as far as such things go.

I have been told on a number of occasions that I am far too honest to ever get anywhere in politics. I suppose it remains to be seen if that proves to be the case.

Free Stuff section

Nothing to get too excited about for most people (e.g. those who have stumbled upon this blog by mistake after googling 'Leeds University students' or suchlike, who may be party responsible for the obscene degree of popularity enjoyed by the aforementioned article), but I hope that this section will be appreciated by my fellow politicos, or at least by those on this side of the fence.

I intend to expand this section as and when I can.

I will continue to update this blog as often as possible, and I welcome all sensible and constructive comments.

This blog also receives some truly deranged and hate filled comments from my opponents which I take as a vindication of what I do so I would encourage the posters to keep those posts coming through too.

Stick at it and maybe I will even publish some one day!

Census Controversy

Pictured; Anakin Skywalker. The 2001 Census revealed that there are over 390,000 Jedi residing in the UK.

I felt the following informative and thought-provoking article by Ashley Mote was worth reproducing in full here.

Problem with the 2011 UK Census?

In view of widespread and understandable concerns about the intrusive nature of the census we in the UK are asked to complete on 27 March, may I offer a few observations and a few relevant facts?

What Does the Law Demand?

Census Act 1920.

SCHEDULE

Matters in respect of which particulars may be required

1 Names, sex, age.

2 Occupation, profession, trade or employment.

3 Nationality, birthplace, race, language.

4 Place of abode and character of dwelling.

5 Condition as to marriage, relation to head of family, issue born in marriage.

6 Any other matters with respect to which it is desirable to obtain statistical information with a view to ascertaining the social or civil condition of the population.

How Safe is Our Information?

Unlike in Northern Ireland and Scotland, the absolute confidentiality of personal information is no longer guaranteed by law in England and Wales. This was abolished by Nu-Labour in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007, section 39.

Census data collected in England will be treated as ‘restricted’, not ‘confidential’. Our forms will be processed by some 1300 temporary employees at an 800,000 square foot warehouse in Manchester. The Coalition government has provided no convincing assurances about the vetting of these temporary staff, nor the security being imposed on them and the data they handle, neither during nor after the process.

Data gathering in 2011 has been contracted to a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin – the US arms conglomerate. Eighty percent of LM’s work is for the US defence department. It assists more than two dozen American government agencies and is involved in surveillance and data processing for the CIA and FBI. It has provided private-contract interrogators to the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and Guantánamo Bay in Cuba.

All US-based companies are subject to the Patriot Act, which allows the US government to have access to any data in the company's possession. In other words, the US government will have legal access to detailed and highly personal data on the UK's entire population.

The Census website boldly states, without qualification, that “completing the census online is straightforward, convenient and secure”. Each census form has a 20-digit “personal” internet access code. Describing it as “personal” when it is addressed to “The Occupier”, and accessible to anyone who happens to see the form lying around, is absurdly irresponsible.

How could bureaucrats with a long history of failing to keep data secure contemplate any such thing? If amateur hackers can break into the Pentagon’s computers, there can be no credible guarantee that the British government could guarantee better security – especially given their appalling track-record.

The losses of personal data by the British government and its civil servants have been enormous in recent years. Remember the 400 laptops and memory sticks 'lost' by the Ministry of Defence? And that was just one incident.

Worse, there have been no government guarantees that criminals will be prevented from gaining access to raw census data. How can it, when all our personal data will be available to the police, the intelligence agencies, immigration authorities, tax inspectors, DWP investigators, foreign governments, the EU, and to private sector and academic 'approved researchers'?

The Office for National Statistics’ claim that this data will be safe is worthless. Far too often the UK government has failed to secure and protect personal records in digital format. We have no credible reason to believe them this time.

Intrusive Role of the European Union

In 2008 the European Parliament approved a Census Regulation requiring the harmonization of outputs from member states’ censuses of population and housing. It is now law in the UK. The regulation requires that information collected in the UK is passed to Eurostat, the EU’s statistics institution, which was totally discredited for fraud and corruption amongst its own senior staff in a major scandal over many years.

(I know – I was there. And I was involved in exposing serious criminality, which did my already strained relations with the EU’s ruling elite no good at all!)

Statewatch, the civil liberties body that monitors the EU, has discovered that Brussels wants law enforcement agencies in member countries to build lists of political activists as part of a 'systematic data collection'.

Civil servants in the member countries charged with this duty have been told to collate information on what the EU chooses to call 'agents of radicalisation'. They have been sent a list of 70 questions to answer about each ‘suspect’. They want to know about family members, psychological traits, religious affiliation, activities, economic status and, significantly, 'oral comments' - presumably via phone taps - on political issues. The extent of this EU trawl for potential political opponents was confirmed in The Guardian on 8th June 2010.

No doubt the 2011 census will provide a good starting point.

Invasive Questions and Wrong Assumptions

Who is expected to respond? The census is addressed to “the occupier” – singular. Yet there is space for answers relating to six people, and visitors. The preamble makes it plain that “the occupier” is legally liable for the accuracy of answers relating to all the others.

The government ‘justifies’ the need for the census by claiming that, amongst other things, it is required to plan the provision of education, health, transport, policing, housing and so on. Apparently we are expected to believe that these services are today being managed on the basis of the census taken ten years ago. It’s demonstrably ridiculous.

Such services are demand led, and rightly so. The use of census statistics to plan and deliver them is at best highly marginal and rapidly out of date.

Unlike previous censuses, people are expected to state their employer's name, their main activity, their address, and the full postal address of the location where that individual works. This applies to everyone, whether they work for Tesco or the intelligence services. Even people who are supposedly in a witness protection scheme after giving evidence at a criminal trial must provide this information.

The first question on employment provides nowhere for a retired person to state that fact. The assumption is that he or she should have been looking for work in the previous week, if not actually working. The chance to declare that they are retired comes later. Volunteers who work for nothing have nowhere to say so.

There are far more intrusive questions on ethnic origins than 10 years ago, unsurprising after the torrent of foreign nationals allowed to live here over the last decade. Answers are mandatory. Questions on religion are not. However, despite there being over 390,000 self-declared Jedi recorded in the 2001 census (more than there were Sikhs or Jews) there is no tick box for Jedi.

Even the reasonable voice of Charles Moore, former editor of The Daily Telegraph, complains (12 March) that the intrusive questions on ethnicity will be used by government and others to exploit the race and culture wars which bedevil us. They reinforce divisions.

So, I might add, does the expensive provision of census forms in over 50 other languages. How better to reinforce the divisions in today’s fractured British society? Those of us meeting the cost of such indulgence might reasonably ask foreigners who have chosen to live in the UK to adopt our language, culture and way of life, at least outwardly.

Legal and Constitutional Protection

In 2001 over 1.5 million households failed to complete the census, but only 38 were prosecuted. But that was 10 years ago.

The Human Rights Act and the Data Protection Act provide us with protection against an overbearing state. Well, that’s the theory anyway.

Several other aspects British and international law are also relevant.

Both Magna Carta, 1215, and the Declaration of Rights, 1688, were contracts made directly between the Crown and the people. Both were and still are beyond the powers of parliament. Any repeal of statutes leaves the original contracts untouched. (References: Speaker Betty Boothroyd, Hansard 21 July 1993, and a letter from the House of Lords Archives Office to me in September 2000.)

Magna Carta recognises the rights of subjects of the Crown to hold government to account. This is sometimes described as the right to ‘lawful rebellion’, and was specifically confirmed in the oath sworn by Henry III at his coronation on 28 October 1216.

The Bill of Rights went further. It explicitly forbids the recognition of power over what is now the UK by any “foreign person, prelate, state or potentate”. In other words our joining what was then the Common Market was unlawful, and our membership of the EU remains unlawful. Most certainly passing information to Brussels to assist their governance of the UK is illegal.

Our constitution is fragmented but clear. It provides that the state answers to the people. We, the people, do not answer to the state. There is no such legal entity as a British state.

We are a sovereign people and we elect individuals for a maximum of five years to look after our best interests. And any future parliament has an absolute right to repeal any Acts passed by previous governments. Thus, they answer to us.

Several clauses in the 1948 UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights defend our right to privacy.

3. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

12. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

18. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

19. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

So Where Does That Leave Us?

A census is only possible with the general consent of the population. In some countries this no longer exists. Germany has not taken a full census since that planned for 1983 was postponed until 1987. The Netherlands has not had a census since 1971, following a high level of refusal previously. Both these countries, and Denmark, now use alternative data sources based mostly on housing registers and sample surveys.

The UK government has made no secret of its irritation at having to carry out the 2011 census, which was put in train by Nu-Labour before the election last year. It will cost almost half a billion pounds.

The Coalition has initiated work on data-collection alternatives, so that the 2011 census proves to be the last of its kind.

Meanwhile, what to do?

All the basic information about each of us is in the public domain already. That is – name, address, age, sex and marital status.

If you plan to complete it at all, you might consider …

(a) providing the legally specific information required only, and

(b) posting it.

By the way, the Royal Mail admits to several million letters a year not reaching their intended destination.

Think on…

You can sign up to receive Ashley Mote's email updates via his website here.

Last Days of the Gaddafi Front?

I have been watching the ongoing events in Libya with great interest, and I am sure that this will be true of a great many of the readers of this blog. How fascinating it is that the downfall (or reassertion of absolute power) of such a wretched dictator is unfolding before our eyes.

I read this weekend of a number of Gaddafi's thugs who had been given tanks to use against the local civilian population of Zawiyah, a town just 30 miles from the capital Tripoli. Some of these soldiers were captured by local people and held captive. They had to be kept under secure conditions, not just to prevent their escape, but to prevent them from being lynched by local people, the long-term victims of the tyrant Gaddafi, who at last have been given a sniff of freedom and are rising up again the hated regime and its henchmen.

The henchmen of hated regimes everywhere would do well to consider the as yet uncertain fate of their equivalents currently being held in Zawiyah.

It is not just within Libya that tumultuous events are causing a shifting of the political tectonic plates and pushing people towards an as yet uncertain new order.

The nationalist movement here in Britain is experiencing a period of flux from which it could emerge as stronger than ever or which could destroy it forever.

As I pointed out in my article regarding the Barnsley Central by-election here, a significant number of people in our country are increasingly willing to vote for parties regarded as being on the 'populist right'.

We may argue that there is a world of difference between us and, say, UKIP, but most voters do not view the differences as being particularly significant. Numerous academic studies have proven what we all know from our own experiences on the doorsteps to be true; we essentially share the same voter base with parties such as UKIP and the English Democrats, and voters will switch between these three parties fairly casually depending on factors that we political folk may regard as being far less important than ideological fundamentals.

My fellow European parliamentary assistant Eddy Butler has argued that we should strive for some form of unification of the patriotic political forces mentioned above, and as unrealistic as this may sound, it is a worthy goal that is always worth keeping in mind.

Eddy identified the following key areas as key ideological standpoints that should be used to unify patriotic forces, and I will quote this section of his article in full here (in italics);

The party that gains real political success needs to be a broad church that covers all the bases but obsesses about none of them to the exclusion of others.

• It needs to be opposed to Britain’s continued membership of the European Union but not obsessively and to the exclusion of everything else.

• It needs to be against further immigration into Britain and favour deporting illegals and bogus asylum seekers, without seeming to be obsessed with race.

• It needs to favour traditional Christian values without being antagonistic to those who chose not to share that viewpoint.

• It needs to favour a tougher stance on law and order without coming across as a mouth frothing hanger and flogger outfit.

• It should favour a devolved Britain with an English Parliament without antagonism towards the Welsh and Scots.

• It should uphold our traditional values, culture and freedoms but not to the extent that it becomes a twee historical society.

We can all think of individuals whom we have met over the years who were completely obsessed with one or more of the above issues to the absolute exclusion of all the others, and it is certainly better for our movement to have a well-balanced and sensible nationalistic ideology that is not viewed as a 'cranky' or based on a single-issue.

I welcome discussions of co-operation with other patriotic groups, despite the difficulties that this presents. It is unrealistic to expect all patriotic activists to end up in the same organisation but it is something worth striving for.

A open and conciliatory approach to members of other organisations costs nothing and can only help to move us closer to where we want to be politically.

Yet we must also be wary of the dangers to our movement posed by those who seek to spread discord in our ranks and who use any opportunity they get to attack members of our party and the wider movement.

A number of my colleagues have done some very good work to expose a certain individual who is a senior member of the joke 'National Liberal Party'; a party that is hostile to the British National Party and fields spoiler candidates against us in elections. A known misfit and supporter of Colonel Gaddafi and the IRA, this person is a long-term enemy of our movement who most people had thought we were well and truly shut of, but that seems not to have been the case after all. I will not lower the tone of this blog to discuss any more about this individual as this is covered more than adequately elsewhere.

Current events in Libya and within the nationalist movement here in Britain show us that in politics change can happen very quickly once events take on a certain momentum.

To quote my colleague Eddy Butler once again, the future can be bright, and it is up to all right-minded nationalists to ensure that we come through the current difficulties that we face stronger than ever, and that the traitors and arch-enemies of our cause are defeated so comprehensively that they are never in a position to do harm to good nationalists again.

Tonight's Morley Town Council Meeting

100% Attendance Record: Cllr Joanna Beverley

Tonight the final full meeting of Morley Town Council of this electoral cycle was held. The next one will be held after the local elections on May 5th, when the make-up of the Town Council is likely to be rather different.

One item on the agenda tonight was a proposal to introduce monthly council meetings. They are currently held on a bi-monthly basis.

I can see some merit to the introduction of monthly council meetings, as alot can happen in a month, let alone two, although the cost implications must obviously also be taken into account.

This issue raises the related question of councillors attendances. Considering the risible attendance records of some of the Morley Borough Independent Party councillors, as was highlighted on this blog in the article entitled; Morley's Worst Councillors Exposed (which, much to my amusement, is one of the most-read articles on this blog), what would such comedy characters do if they had even more meetings to miss? Clearly their attendance records would be even worse!

Alas, this issue was withdrawn from the agenda so this is a debate that will have to take place on another occasion.

Not all Morley's councillors treat the electorate with contempt, however, and Councillor Joanna Beverley's attendance at tonight's meeting was her last full council meeting of her first four-year term as a Morley Town Councillor, during which she maintained a 100% attendance record.

What's more, this has been achieved despite the fact that she was the single opposition councillor on a council otherwise consisting solely of Morley Borough Independents, some of whom did everything in their power to bully and intimidate her and make her time on the council as miserable as possible.

Her perseverance in defiance of such a wretched bunch is admirable and I think it is fair to say, although I may be somewhat biased in this regard, that she has done our Cause proud.