Do I vote for some racists or some hippies or some nutters?

If you can block out the attention seeking, name-calling playground antics of the big 3 of Labour, the Tories and the Liberal Democrats, you may be able to hear the distant sounds of the smaller organisations trying, and most probably failing, to get themselves behind the desk of no. 10 Downing Street in a few days time, or a least win a seat or two in parliament. I decided to have a scan of the websites of some of these hopefuls, so I could make an informed decision about who to mark my big cross next to [if I were able to vote.... I forgot to register....]

• THE BRITISH NATIONAL PARTY.

Of all the smaller parties out there, the BNP are the ones who have arguably made the most noise the past few years. Their leader appearing on Question Time, winning seats in the European Parliament and steadily increasing it's seats across England. But have the BNP made gains significant enough to have a member elected to parliament? The short answer is probably not. As much as they protest otherwise, The BNP is still seen by the majority of the nation as a motley crue of far-right fascist imbeciles, and in my opinion, rightly so. Every time one hears or sees Nick Griffin deny he is at the helm of a racist party, one thinks back to his trial a few years ago when he was in the dock for inciting racial hatred. Or the time recently when he described East London as "like Nairobi" and expressed his disgust at mixed-race relationships ("they're part of the black tribe now). Or how the BNP were forced to allow non-white members into their ranks. I could go on and on. The fact is the BNP deny they are racists because it is not a vote-winner. Immigration, on the other hand, is. By nailing their flag to the immgration issue, the BNP have tapped into anxieties which many perfectly tolerant citizens (myself included) have regarding the flood of people entering this country. But to suggest that the solution is to remove every non-white person from our shores is at best misguided, and at worst disturbing. To suggest, as they do, that every Muslim is a terrorist catastrophe waiting to happen, and that every terrorist is indeed muslim, is utterly absurd. By focusing on the immigration issue, the BNP are roping supporters in without giving them the full story about what they are all about. This is, after all, a party born from the National Front. A party that in the not too distant past, promised that if they were to get into power would have every non-white female either leave the country or have a hysterectomy, preventing her from breeding any more non-white humans. This, maybe aboe all else, should tell you everything about the kind of people the British National Party are, and what we could expect in the extremely remote event that they gained the premiership of the United Kingdon.

• RESPECT

Best known for winning the Bethnal Green & Bow seat from Oona King and Labour in 2005, thus thrusting George Galloway back into his preferred spot, the public eye. Respect describe themselves as "The anti-war, anti-privatisation, pro-equality, pro-choice party" with an oppositon to privatisiation of public servies and to the war in Iraq, the war being one of the catylists for the party's formation. I am a big fan of Respect's policies regarding crime, in particular the focus on targeting the causes of crime and their idea to provide more help for drug users (as opposed to the BNP's policy of reintroducing the death penalty for drug users and dealers). I am also a big supporter of their policies regarding equality and the NHS. But the more i read through these policies, the less impressed I am. I find it hard to believe the claim that Britian is not overcrowded and we have ample room for people to come to the UK and use our services for free. They say we should "Give asylum seekers and refugees the right to food and shelter, plus access to education, health and social services." In Britain today we have a social system which is so overrun that social workers cannot spot that chidren are being tortured and beaten to death in their own homes by their own relatives, a system where people have to wait up to a week to see their GP, a system where people are forced to live on the streets because there are no council properties available. How will the social system manage with more work when it cannot handle the work it has at the moment? It simply would not work. Another issue I am struggling to get on board with is their plan to probide free education for all. In theory, this is an excellent idea, but in reality how will this be paid for? Well, a glance at their proposals of how all this free education and extra social work will be paid for tells me that they will scrap spending on our military interests. Now, what I'm thinking is that as a nation that has gotten itself involved with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, severely agitated Iran, and is seen as standing shoulder to shoulder with the USA, we are in no position to get rid of our means of defending ourselves if the shit hits the fan.

Respect mean well, but they seem to live in a "can't we all just get along?" land of harmony and peace, which is just not the way the world is. I would love to be able to say their way would work, but it wouldn't.

• NATIONAL FRONT

I don't really have much to say about the NF. Anyone who votes for these idiots is a psychopath. But I just felt it was worth mentioning this, from their utter HTML and grammar FAIL of a website.

"The NF is opposed to abortion on principle and would only sanction one where a mother has conceived as a result of rape, where medical opinion asserts that there is a genuine and serious danger to the health or life of the mother if the pregnancy is allowed to continue, or where medical opinion asserts that the foetus is seriously damaged or malformed"

The last bit..... Just completely batshit mental.

• MONSTER RAVING LOONY PARTY
  

A party that seemingly exists only to bring a degree of comic relief to what is a pretty fucking tedious general election. Their manifesto covers health (Child vaccinations to be scrapped and replaced by nurses with sniper rifles and tranquilizer darts), Crime (banning superheroes from using their powers for evil) and equality (Changing the Isle of Wight's name to the Isle of Mixed Races). If a Facebook group can get the public to go out and buy Rage Against The Machine songs, SURELY a Facebook group can get the Loonies a seat in parliament!