Church votes to support BNP ban.

THE Church of England has voted in favour of banning clergy and some lay staff from joining the far-right British National Party.

Members of the General Synod voted to back a motion by Metropolitan Police civilian worker Vasantha Gnanadoss, calling bishops to formulate a comparable policy to the Association of Chief Police Officers' ban on police membership of the BNP.

Miss Gnanadoss, who received support at the General Synod from former Met Police commissioner Sir Ian Blair, said passing the motion would make it "much more difficult" for the BNP or other similar groups to exploit the claim they had support within the Church.

She said: "If supporting organisations like the BNP is inconsistent with Christian discipleship, it seems obvious clergy and others who speak for the Church should not be members."

Recovery teams moving into burnt-out towns in Victoria state found charred bodies on roadsides and in wrecked cars, grim signs of futile attempts to flee the raging wildfires fed by 60mph winds, record heat, and drought.

Mr Rees, Victoria's country fire authority chief, said yesterday: "The clear evidence is that the most dangerous place to be is on the road."

Authorities defended their preparations and actions during the fires that swept south-eastern Australia on Saturday, saying the extreme weather conditions made catastrophe almost inevitable.

But they agreed the "stay and defend" policy, under which homeowners remain to protect their properties from fire, needed to be reviewed. "It is the application of that policy and a lack of an alternative we need to work on," said Mr Rees.

In Victoria, there is no formal alert system to warn of approaching wildfires, though the country fire authority distributes advice and updates on its website and through radio broadcasts.

One expert suggested Australia's shifting demographics could be partly to blame for the scale of the tragedy.

Mark Adams, of the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre, said many urban-dwellers who moved to city outskirts had no experience with wildfires and relied wholly on the fire service. But families who had lived in the area for generations were prepared to fight blazes themselves, he said.

Police suspect some fires were started by arsonists and a sketch would soon be released of a suspect in one of the fires, which killed 21 people.