Nick Griffin Followers In Their Own Words

Some may have found my earlier article on Nick Griffin a little harsh. Pointing out that a significant number of his followers consider him a waste of perfectly good carbon may have created a negative impression of the chap. In the interest of balance I've decided to allow some space for the genuine fans of Nick Griffin to let us know a little about themselves.

Below are Twitter biographies and Tweets from his real supporters, unedited and untruncated. They say you can judge a man by the company he keeps. Start by judging how some of Nick's followers choose to describe themselves in their Twitter biographies:

Nick Griffin - Liked or Loathed?

Few can have escaped notice of Nick Griffin's decision to tweet the address of a gay couple and encourage his followers to picket their house, promising them in his own words "a bit of drama". Their crime? They recently won a discrimination case against Christian B&B owners who refused them service when their sexuality became apparent. After taking a moment to revise downwards my faith in humanity, I found myself wondering what sort of folk follow this lumbering buffoon.

At present he has 18,991 Twitter followers, a dozen or so having unfollowed in the hour it took me to do some data analysis. This represents but 0.03% of the UK population but still seems a distressingly high number. With that in mind I asked myself how many of these fine folk actually like Nick.

Examining nineteen thousand Twitter accounts is not a task to which I would leap so I took the approach of assuming that these upstanding citizens would be honest in their interactions with Nick. When someone tweets directly to Nick and says "your existence sickens me and your party is a shambles of epic proportions", I judge it reasonable to assume they do not see eye to eye with the goals of the BNP or the philosophies of its leader. Equally, should someone address a tweet to Nick saying something like "Nick, plz dont get soft. U need to affirm that Britain is 4 the White British ONLY" we can safely say that they are of one mind on political issues.

Spot The Difference

The Make A Wish Foundation in Ireland helped Joshua be a pirate for the day. He won a cutlass fight with the real John Sparrow. With their help, Erin trained as a knight and stormed a castle to rescue a dog. They've helped seriously ill kids meet Metallica, Ronaldo and Barney. It's hard to read their stories without moist eyes.

In an earlier episode I wrote some notes on a rather different group, the Make It Happen Foundation. A self described charity, the organisation is not on the Revenue's list of approved charities. The director and other members are refugees from Children To Lapland Appeal, an organisation stricken from the list of approved charities and wound up for failing to pay its suppliers.

Some of these munificent members hail from the same original travel agency, bereft of aviation licence for reasons perhaps too lengthy to recap. They earn their crusts by encouraging volunteers to take sponsored holidays. Funds raised are devoted to buying holidays for children, their families and their parents. If the conflict of interest in this rather inefficient model is not apparent I encourage you to read the earlier post.

A new member unconnected with previous enterprises has come to my attention: their marketing development executive, Brian Ó Súileabháin. I'll be spelling his name in Irish - I don't think errors made in the early stages of one's career should be the first thing Google returns, but you can see the English spelling above. Judging by the common spelling mistakes, retweets and times spent online he also controls their Twitter account. He received a rather irate tweet from Bath Marketing:

Guest Post - Christianity's Worst Enemy

Some time ago I was asked on Twitter what evidence I felt made the best case in favour of Christianity. In the same tweet I was asked what presented the strongest evidence against the faith. Mindful of the character limit I answered both questions the same: Some Christians I've met.

I've given perhaps undue focus to those who represent Christianity badly. This is not intended as a tirade against believers; flicking through my past issues I see a preponderance of faith healers and attackers of science. I think it's important to debunk these, but I'm starting to realise that this blog presents a jaundiced view of Christians in general.

With that in mind I'm happy to announce my second Christian guest post. I offered Roger the opportunity to write about the subject of his choice. He could have chosen to evangelise. He could have written counters to any number of posts I've written. He could have turned his focus on atheists in general: we are not flawless. Instead he took the opportunity to examine those who profess Christianity.

Roger says that there are few further apart than he and I on the spectra of religion, politics and societal matters. It is true, and that is why I enjoy our conversations - when we cease to disagree it means only that we have nothing left to learn from each other.

I hope you enjoy his post. Do consider following him on Twitter and checking out his blog.

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First let me express my gratitude to Geoff for this opportunity. I have only ‘known’ Geoff for a short time, but have grown to value his gracious and gentlemanly spirit and count him as a ‘friend’ already. I once said that I think there are very few things that Geoff and I would agree on, but I have enjoyed discussing the issues we have discussed.

You see, I am a Christian. I am not just a ‘Christian’ in the generic sense of the word but I am one of those ‘evangelical, born-again, Bible believing’ Christians. I doubt there are very many people who could be farther apart on the religious/political/social spectrum than Geoff and me.

When Is A Charity Not A Charity?

I've been considering using my powers more positively. I certainly don't regret exposing oddities through Twitter metrics and will likely continue to do so. But it would be nice to also build up as well as tearing down.

With that in mind I was happy to be followed by @MIHFIreland, a group who describe themselves as "a new Irish Charity set up with the sole intention of helping children Nationwide with serious illness [sic] & disabilities."

Broken link, inconsistent capitalisation and grammar aside, it seemed a worthy endeavour. I saw they had only 266 followers - perhaps if I ran some Twitter metrics I could help them get a wider reach?

With that in mind I started research. Their main focus seems to be taking children on a two day visit to Santa in Lapland for the princely sum of €999 per adult and €899 per child. Plus €150 registration, naturally. To fund these trips they encourage charitable-minded folk to raise €2,750 per person to take a holiday in the Philippines. Personally, if I sponsor someone, I expect them to suffer.

Curious to find out more I checked the Revenue's list of authorised charities for the Make It Happen Foundation and found them absent. My eyebrow raised in surprise I checked to see if their address was listed: perhaps they had changed names recently. No joy.

Islam, Ramadan and Irish Stereotypes

I remember sitting in an office in Dublin, chatting with an English colleague who had always been a bit of a joker. A few days prior he'd asked if I'd ever considered working in the UK. I'd responded that the Irish had already built the roads over there; we weren't planning on sorting out the IT infrastructure too. He'd laughed and probably told a similar joke HR wouldn't like but in a manner that made his friendly intentions clear.

It was the seventh of July, 2005, and as we talked about something else inconsequential whispered news reached us of bombings in London. James (let's call him James) quickly checked news websites and read the initial sketchy reports of what would later turn out to be four suicide attacks by Islamist terrorists in London.

He stood up, his face a little whiter, his arms braced on the desk for support and said to the assembled Irish team:

"I'm just glad it wasn't you lot for a change."

On The Flip Side

I mentioned in an earlier piece some suggested approaches when asking for a favour.

A Youth Defence fan demanded I run stats on @choiceIreland. Perhaps raised by wolves, he proved unable to form the bilabial plosive required to commence the word 'please'. Having allowed the better part of a fortnight for him to develop the requisite skills I find myself still disappointed.

As you can guess, Youth Defence have irked me. That said I recognise that they are not the entirety of the pro life movement, and I've encountered more decent folk than not on Twitter of late. @NaasPreacher is a fine ambassador for his faith. @IrelandsEar seems the sort of chap (I dare assume gender) with whom I'd enjoy about two pints and a good-natured disagreement.