The shortlist of candidates for London's Mayoral election was announced today, giving voters the chance to make a final decision on who they want running their city for the next five years.
Let's hope it isn't BNP candidate Richard Barnbrook, whose partner in crime Nick Eriksen was revealed to be behind a blog that regularly advocates hatred and abuse against women. In the "Sir John Bull" blog, Mr Eriksen wrote: "I've never understood why so many men have allowed themselves to be brainwashed by the feminazi myth machine into believing that rape is such a serious crime...Rape is simply sex. Women enjoy sex, so rape cannot be such a terrible physical ordeal."
Eriksen goes on to say: "To suggest that rape, when conducted without violence, is a serious crime is like suggesting that force-feeding a woman chocolate cake is a heinous offence. A woman would be more inconvenienced by having her handbag snatched. "The demonisation of rape is all part of the feminazi desire to obtain power and mastery over men. Men who go along with the rape myth are either morons or traitors."
Quite aside from the dispicable implication that women 'enjoy' being raped and that any objection we might have at being forced into sex is an attempt at full domination over men, I'm not quite sure where Mr Eriksen got the idea that force feeding women was acceptable behaviour, but that's not massively surprising coming from a man who believes that:
"Mothers should never go out to work" and described career women as "unnatural and vile... it is a strange kind of woman who would want to invest [her] energies into her job rather than into a man."
The response from much of the feminist community has been to 'point and laugh', and in many ways I'm with them on that. The comments will have done a lot to damage the BNP's campaign, and it is clear that the true identity of 'Sir John Bull' was never intended to come out. But how worried should you be about what appear to be the rantings of a maniac from deep within the blogosphere? The reality is that if the BNP wins just two seats, one of them will go to Mr Eriksen and one to London party leader Richard Barnbrook. If you're a Londoner, the best way to ensure this doesn't happen is to do as I've just done and download this form and register to vote if you haven't done so already.
