WHY all the furore because the BNP wish to appear on BBC1’s Question Time? Surely this is not an illegal political party, so therefore they are entitled to express their opinion. If they do not get their opinions across favourably, then that is their problem.

But let’s look at the people who are objecting to their appearance. We have a set of politicians from all spectrums who have lied, cheated and stolen from the public purse to favour their own ends, and as yet nobody has faced criminal charges.

We have a Government run by an unelected Prime Minister who has taken the country to the verge of bankruptcy, creating the biggest recession since the 1930s, with millions unemployed.

This Government has have taken us into two illegal wars which have cost the lives of scores of our service men and women, and also thousands of men, women and children in the war zones.

They treat us like criminals through their covert spying, unless you are a criminal, and then you get all the very best that money can buy to make you comfortable in your cell.

They have virtually dismantled the hereditary part of the House of Lords, yet there was more knowledge of politics and diplomacy than these people could ever dream of.

We have students leaving school with exam results that are supposedly passes, yet most employers say they are not worth the paper they are printed on.

And if you do go to university, your start in life is a big debt thanks to the people who had all the free education they needed.

We are saddled with the worst set of politicians in history.

TJ Ryder, Priory Gardens, North Lane, Dringhouses, York.


* YORK BNP organiser Trevor Brown, fresh from an emphatic rejection by the voters of Heworth, takes time out to attack your columnist Julian Cole (Readers’ Letters, September 15).

Ironic that he chooses to quote George Orwell, unaware that Orwell was a life-long anti-fascist, even travelling to Spain to fight in the Republican cause in the 1936 civil war against the fascists.

Perhaps Mr Brown and his BNP cronies might wish to reflect on this quote from another Orwell article: “Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.” Wise words indeed.

Ben Drake, York Unite Against Fascism, c/o UNISON, Mill House, North Street, York.