I don’t think breaking up BNP press conferences is a good way of seizing the moral high ground. It makes anti-facsists look like violent, ignorant, elitist thugs, and gives the BNP credibility.

They have the same right to freedom of speech that we do.

I hope it won’t happen again.

YouGov did a huge opinion poll just before the Euro elections (sample size: 32,268). The full report is a 15 page pdf full of tables of responses broken down by European voting intention (Con / Lab / LD / Green / UKIP / BNP). (The BNP got over twice as many votes as the SNP and Plaid Cymru combined, so YouGov won’t have got a large enough sample for SNP/PC.)

• Peter Kellner of YouGov wrote an article about it for Channel 4.
• Anthony Wells then wrote about it for his UK Polling Report site.

My thoughts:

• (p3) Wells says that BNP voters are disproportionately likely to come from Labour-voting families (47%, against 42% overall). More interesting to me is that while 42% of the country comes from a generally Labour-voting family, only 27% come from a generally Tory-voting family.

• (p6-7) BNP voters (and UKIP voters to a lesser extent) are much more likely to feel insecure in their everyday lives. The standout for me is that half of BNP voters don’t feel comfortable going out in their area, but they’re also more likely to feel pessimistic about their economic situation (which Kellner highlights).

• (p7) Apparantly white people are the most discriminated against group in the country. 40% think white people suffer unfair discrimination; only 19% think non-whites suffer unfair discrimination. (Kellner goes into more detail on this.)

  I know people are much more likely to notice discrimination they and their friends suffer than discrimination people they don’t know suffer, but even so.

• (p8-9) There’s a clear pecking order seen in journalism standards:

  • BBC journalists: TRUSTED by Green, LD, Lab, Con, UKIP; DISTRUSTED by BNP
  • broadsheet journalists: TRUSTED by Green, Con, LD; DISTRUSTED by BNP, Lab, UKIP
  • mid-market journalists: TRUSTED by no-one; DISTRUSTED by at least 2:1 for all parties
  • red top journalists: TRUSTED by no-one; DISTRUSTED by at least 5:1 for all parties

  But note how much less likely BNP supporters are to believe what the traditional media are telling them.

• (p10) ²/₅ of UKIP and BNP voters think the EU should set environmental policy! (As do clear majorities of the other parties’ voters.)

• (p14) It’s only 12%, but BNP voters are still much more likely to get their news from a political website than are other parties’ voters. (Which ties in with their greater distrust of traditional news media.)

TfL say

Oyster pay as you go will be accepted on all National Rail journeys within Greater London on Wednesday and Thursday, just show your Oyster card at station gate lines.

That’s not what the train operating companies are saying. For example, SouthEastern says

Southeastern has agreed to accept valid tickets for the Underground … on services that mirror Tube routes on our network. …

• Brixton to Victoria
• Elephant and Castle to Blackfriars / City Thameslink
• London Cannon Street / Waterloo East / Charing Cross

This BBC news story was earlier parroting the TfL line that oyster payg could be used on all national rail journeys within Greater London, but it’s now been updated to include this quote

National rail operators will accept Oyster cards on rail routes “that mirror Tube journeys” in Greater London on Wednesday and Thursday, a TfL spokesman said.

So why haven’t TfL corrected their website? Why didn’t TfL get it right on their website in the first place? What are they trying to do, sting everyone for penalty fares?