Who will save me from a Nazi plumber?

I NEVER thought that when defending freedom of speech, thought and action, it would be the fascists I would be sticking up for.

I don’t know how many people spent Wednesday searching that leaked BNP membership list for people they knew or who lived locally. I certainly did, and was massively disappointed to find my plumber on there. Do you know how difficult it is to find a good plumber these days? What do I do now? Find someone else or live with the knowledge that the man rhythmically thrusting his plunger up and down my toilet bowl is probably humming Send The Buggers Back to keep time?

Already similar ramifications are spreading. At the time of writing, a serving Merseyside police officer is under investigation after his name appeared on the list and a TalkSport radio DJ has been effectively sacked. No doubt more will fall by the wayside in the days to come.

And here’s my problem. The BNP is a legal political party. Anyone who wants to be a member can be, without fear of prosecution - never mind persecution. And that’s the way it should be in a democracy. Yes, you’d have to worry if your children’s teacher was on there, and we already know that the police are banned from being members for fear of accusations of racial discrimination. But what about soldiers, and prison officers, and social workers? Since when have they been disenfranchised?

What about this chap: “Retired teacher. Diploma in Education. Commission in Territorial Army (Infantry). Adjutant of regiment's Old Comrades Association. Member of Yorkshire County Cricket Club. Hobbies: landscape painting, gardening.”

Yes, you probably wouldn’t want to sit next to him at a dinner party, but then we all know people like that.

Then there’s this lady: “Nurse (District. Sister). State registered nurse. Orthopaedic nursing Cert. & Diploma in Nursing. Hobbies: walking, caravanning, cross-stitch & knitting, helping people in need.”

Helping people in need of sending back where they came from, no doubt, but who are we to say that she shouldn’t keep her job?

Coming on top of the moral witch-hunt sparked by the Brand/Ross affair, I fear that we’re now facing a full-scale outbreak of McCarthyism. We are living in a control freak society, and it’s not going to get any better any time soon. Fear your kids, say nothing to your neighbours, guard your thoughts, because you never know when the six o’clock knock is going to come (apart from it being at six o’clock, of course).

LIKE DRUNKS scuffling for tab ends in the gutter, the big department stores have launched into their Christmas advertising offensives, and offensive is the word. We’re still the best part of five weeks off and yet if I hear It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas once more, I swear I’ll put my foot through the 42-inch plasma. Neither do I want to see Take That pretending to enjoy a country house celebration with Twiggy and that bird in a bikini off last year’s I’m A Celebrity. Richard Hammond? Stay in the Arctic, you supercilious little toe-rag.

And meanwhile the third most important news of the day on the BBC’s Six O’Clock bulletin, ahead of the BNP story, was the fact that an ageing political reporter had stepped down from a reality dance show. What have we become?

THE ONE thing worth watching on television at the moment – IACGMOOH apart - is the advert for those personalised stamps featuring the dancing cat. Very funny and technically excellent.

But one thing occurs to me: ever the subversive, I’d quite like to get a picture of the Queen’s head and use that as my personal Christmas greeting.

THE PROBLEM is, the way things are going we might only be left with commercial channels to watch. The poor old BBC, through its inept handling of the Brand/Ross affair, has opened a Pandora’s box which may eventually fundamentally change the way it is funded.

Charles Moore, former editor of the Daily Telegraph, has been complaining bitterly for months in the pages of The Spectator about how the TV licensing storm-troopers, employed by that model of common sense, Capita, refuse to believe that he doesn’t have a television at his London flat. He’s regularly in receipt of threatening letters with dire warnings that detectors vans will catch him at it (even though they now contain nothing more technical than a man turning a bent coat hanger pushed through the roof).

Now, spurred by Manuelgate, he’s now refusing to pay his licence fee at his country home (the posh git) while Jonathan Ross is employed by the BBC. Unfortunately for the Beeb, he’s had letters from hundreds of other viewers who have similarly held back their telly tax – seemingly without the fear of prosecution. This ended up as a full page in the Daily Mail, and that’s when you know it’s getting serious.

The theory is that Capita, aka the BBC, is afraid to prosecute big-name conscientious objectors, fearful of making them martyrs, but is instead happy to persecute impoverished council estate scrotes with impunity. So what would happen if the middle England readers of the Mail refused en masse to cough up? The jails certainly couldn’t hold them, even if the political will was there to further criminalise the voting classes.

This could get very, very interesting. Watch this space.