Democracy Is Served

Well it looks like democracy has been served and the electorate in the Lickhill Ward of Calne will get their say on who replaces the Calne Town Council seat left vacant by the resignation of UKIP councillor Jill Martin. The time isn’t a good one for elections as we have Christmas to cope with and unless our wonderful government decide to ban it in the next couple of weeks for fear it may offend someone, most people will be pre-occupied with that rather than local politics. Nevertheless, an election is going ahead on Thursday 31st January 2008. The announcement has been made in good time to meet publication deadlines for the local rag, The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald, so there may well be some comment about the election within its pages, as a by-election tends to attract a disproportionate amount of attention when compared with standard election coverage. Let’s hope that they retain impartiality and do not do what many papers do in picking their own particular favourites and reporting adversely on those not favoured. If they do report fairly I might even take out a subscription!

I am particularly looking forward to discovering which candidates will come forward, as when a by-election is rumoured to be likely, local politicians become rather coy suggesting they are not interested. Nominations aren’t due until Friday 4th January so there is plenty of time for things to develop. I can see I will have ample comment for my blogs as a result of this, certainly up to the middle of February anyway.

Having watched highlights of the National Service of Remembrance on BBC2 on Sunday evening I noticed that representatives from all religious denominations were present including a man who looked very much like Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, head of the Muslim Council of Britain. It may not have been him and I sincerely hope it wasn’t. It was Dr Bari who made comments on Saturday, likening Britain to Nazi Germany because of the way in which Muslims are being treated. Why Dr Bari chose to make these comments on the day before Remembrance Sunday is beyond me and he inevitably upset many war widows and veterans who fought the Nazis so this country could be free to allow the likes of Dr Bari to speak freely. It seems to me that Dr Bari’s grasp of history is somewhat confused and that he is seemingly wishing to cloud the issues regarding Muslims here. Yes, the Nazi’s did poison their society resulting in the hatred and totally obscene treatment subsequently received by the Jewish community but I don’t seem to recall the Jews took part in many terrorist atrocities that could have been used by the Nazi’s as an excuse for this treatment. I would like to be corrected if I am wrong, but since the demise of the IRA, haven’t pretty much all terrorist acts in the past few years been perpetrated by Muslims? Perhaps Dr Bari would be happier if we censored the news so that such activities were not reported. Dr Bari would be better engaged in preaching to his own community about the evils of terrorism rather than to us about how we report on the activities of Muslims. If Dr Bari feels persecuted then there is nothing stopping him travelling to a country like Pakistan where Islam is the main religion and the press are free to report about the benefits of Islam, oh, sorry I just remembered the press aren't free at the moment. I think he ought to remember that he is able to live here because Nazism was defeated, if he doesn’t like it he should leave.

Incidentally, if Dr Bari is head of the Muslim Council of Britain, who is the head of the Christian Council of Pakistan……?