Daily Bale's UAF turtle-killer hoax

Let's get this out of the way first: The Daily Bale (short for "Britons Against Left Wing Extremism") is a hoax site. Pretty much everything it's posted about has been aa hoax.

It has been investigated by the police at least twice. This blog has a running count of the Daily Bale's many lies. RationalWiki also has an article exposing several of the site's hoaxes.

With that in mind, it should surprise nobody that a recent story on the blog about our fine city of Norwich was mostly rubbish:

Sickening images of an innocent mother turtle having had it’s shell smashed in went viral last week and a man hunt to find those responsible ensued. After the Daily Bale led a campaign to find those responsible for this sickening crime, 22 year old UAF man. Gregg Saunders was arrested for this horrific deed.

The female turtle who was looking for a place to harmlessly lay her eggs entered onto bawburgh golf course in Norwich where she was met with pure evil by 22 year old Saunders.

Gregg Saunders who is a regular of the Bawburgh golf course had just turned up to play golf after a meeting at the Norwich UAF headquarters on sunday. After seeing the turtle approaching him, Saunders raced towards it and struck it 7 times in the back and head with his club.

Saunders was then reportedly seen to raise his golf club in the air and laugh hysterically to himself before running back to the changing rooms and leaving the course.

The turtle died of it’s injuries later that day.

First on the scene and golf club worker Jen Astley had this to say, “Never in my 20 years of working for Bawburgh Golf club have I seen something like this. As an admirer of all animals i was shocked to find the female turtle lying in the middle of the course with these horrific injuries, we were all shocked; it was simply terrible”.

Gregg Saunders is currently awaiting sentencing on the 22nd of September at Norwich magistrates court.

Article by Steven Sodholmy

First, the true parts. A badly-battered turtle was indeed found at a golf course last June, having apparently been attacked with a gold club. However, the person responsible has not been found.

What's more, the golf course is in Wisconsin. The Daily Bale claims that the turtle's killer "had just turned up to play golf after a meeting at the Norwich UAF headquarters"; this seems hard to swallow, given that Norwich and Wisconsin are hardly within walking distance of each other.

The Daily Bale says that it identified the attacker after launching a campaign. We are expected to believe that a site which is dedicated to condemning left-wingers in Britain launched a campaign to find an unknown man who killed an animal in America... and entirely by coincidence found that the culprit was a UAF member. Right.

Meanwhile, quick Google search turns up no evidence of UAF having a member or supporter named Gregg Saunders. This was actually a surprise - the Daily Bale's usual practice is to implicate real people in its smear attempts. Perhaps the owners are lying low after the police investigations.

St George's Day

St. George's Day has been and gone. I hope everyone enjoyed themselves: for my part, I celebrated by eating some lovely crumpets. I would've had a cup of tea in the morning too, but it was a tad too warm. Had some dandelion and burdock instead.

With the day came the usual debates about why it isn't as widely celebrated as the national days of Scotland, Wales or Ireland. BBC local radio had a number of vox pop interviews with people who mostly seemed to agree that St. George's Day should be bigger.

Back in 2004 Pub landlord Tony Bennett, who runs the Otter in Drayton, campaigned to have his opening time extended for St. George's Day. Amongst those who joined Bennett were James Tumbridge, the Conservative candidate for Norwich North in 2001, and Julia Howman, whom I have written about before.

I believe that this was before Howman became involved with the BNP (she stood as a candidate for the English Democrats in the European parliamentary elections of that year) and so I certainly do not mean to imply that Bennett, Tumbridge or anyone else involved in the campaign shared her far-right views.

James Tumbridge, Julia Howman and other St. George's Day campaigners in 2004.

One wonders what Howman would make of the thoughts on St. George's Day expressed by fellow English nationalist David Starkey during an edition of Question Time:

If we decide to go down this route of an English national day it will mean we have become a feeble little country, just like the Scots and the Welsh and the Irish. Once upon a time, England was a great country. Remember: we're distinguished by the fact that we don't have national dress. We don't make a great fact about Shakespeare, like the Scots do about that deeply boring, provincial poet Burns and we don't have national music like the awful bagpipe.

What the Scots and the Welsh are, are typical small nations with a romantic nineteenth century-style nationalism. Do you want English national dress? There was a very serious proposal for it in the late eighteenth century - it would involve us turning up at Merrifield wearing Van Dyke costume, in other words little velvet knickerbockers and little lace collars... do you just want to be a little country, rather than the great one which we once were?

Norfolk County Council Elections 2013

When the elections come round, I always enjoy seeing which fringe parties are being represented. Any far-right ravers or radical-left loonies? Any new parties that no-one's ever heard of before?

Alas, the Norwich division is lacking in this area. Beyond the big three, pretty much all we find are the medium two: the Greens and UKIP. A couple of the Labour candidates are also representing the Co-Operative Party, but that's about it.

If we look at the other divisions across Norfolk, however, we see a couple of minor parties: the Christian Peoples Alliance, represented by Chris Olley (Dereham South), Mark Clamp (The Brecks) and Carl Clark (Thetford West); and the United Peoples Party, represented by Shaun Wright (Yarmouth Nelson and Southtown).

The website of the Christian Peoples Alliance can be seen here; it appears to be a generally centrist party, with (as the name suggests) a heavily religious outlook.

The United Peoples Party, meanwhile, is a relatively recent outfit founded in 2009 by one Andrew Stott; it advocates "a non-xenophobic form of nationalism which is compatible with the liberal values of equality and individual rights".

Nick Lowles of Hope Not Hate highlighted the UPP on a list of problematic parties running in the election:

Ok, a couple of people have asked me for a list of far right candidates. we are still waiting for half a dozen councils to announce but this is what we have so far:

Far right
67 British National Party
3 British Democratic Party
3 National Front
1 Patria

Right-wing English Nationalists
29 English Democrats
2 New England Party
2 United People's Party

The UPP was not happy with being lumped in with the far-right parties:

I'm not entirely sure what Lowles' problem with this party is.  The English Democrats made his list because, while an ostensibly moderate party, it has attracted former members of the BNP and other extremist elements. Does UPP have a similar problem? Unfortunately, I'm none the wiser here.