Is it time that we took a closer look at UKIP?

First topic message reminder :

The UKIP vote in Eastleigh rose from 3.6% in 2010 to 27.8% in the by-election on Thursday. It may have been because the party is mopping up the mid-term protest votes which traditionally went to the Liberal Democrats before they climbed into bed with the devil in May 2010. It may be because many people – wrongly - feel that the three main parties in Westminster are “all the same”, a feeling which the Tories have helped to create by transferring so much real power from democratic accountability to unelected and unaccountable corporations as they privatise everything on which they can lay their grubby hands. What I don’t believe is that this bubble of support for UKIP is because of the party’s reactionary, right-wing policies, which aim to take us back to the 1950s.

The one policy which everyone associates with UKIP is withdrawal from the EU. UKIP has claimed that by leaving the EU, the UK would save over £45 million a day plus £60 billion a year, conveniently ignoring any EU rebates and regional grants. I’m not sure where it gets those figures from, since the Treasury says that the UK paid £8.9 billion into EU budget in 2010/11 (out of £706 billion of public spending). The European Commission puts the UK's net contribution at £5.85 billion.

The EU is the UK's main trading partner, accounting for 52% of our total trade in goods and services; if Britain went for a clean break from the EU, its exports would be subject to EU export tariffs. Millions of jobs could be lost as global manufacturers move to low-cost countries within the EU, and Britain's foreign-owned car industry might well shift into the EU. However, withdrawal from the EU was the issue which UKIP exploited and which put it on the political map. With his half-baked promise of a referendum at some point in the future, the idiotic Cameron has increased UKIP’s credibility by showing that he’s afraid of it.

Cameron also said that UKIP is “full of fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists", and perhaps on that last point he could now be right. The Eastleigh by-election showed that UKIP is appealing to racists, causing one person on Twitter to refer to it as “the BNP for the Notting Hill set”. UKIP may be more subtle than the BNP, but it wants to freeze immigration, pandering to the Alf Garnetts who see all foreigners as problems, and has even thrown in the contentious claim that “multiculturalism has split our society”.

In December 2011, the UK had 88,179 people in prison, more per head of the population than any other country in Europe, yet UKIP wants to double the number of prison places. UKIP says that the £2 billion cost of building new prisons is negligible compared to the cost of crime, but it hasn’t factored in the cost of keeping prisoners in jail, which amounts to at least £40,000 a year for each of them. Yet UKIP would refuse to accept European Arrest Warrants, which could well mean delays for the UK in extraditing suspects from other European countries.

The NHS would be no safer with UKIP than it’s been with the Tories, since the party believes that “other models are worth considering to see whether lessons can be learned from abroad”. On education, UKIP wants to bring back grammar schools, so that we can once again tell about 80% of eleven-year-olds that they’re failures, while at the same time giving parents education vouchers, which would be a way of subsidising private school fees.

The cornerstone of UKIP’s tax policies is to roll the employee national insurance and basic rate income tax into a flat rate of income tax of 31%. There would be no higher rate tax, since UKIP perpetuates the Tory lie that the 50% income tax rate cost the economy money; it hasn’t, it has brought in £2.7 billion a year. UKIP’s policy would be a massive tax cut for the rich, far bigger than the one that’s being introduced by the Tories in April. Even greater inequality would be created by abolishing national insurance for employers.

UKIP policies, like so many Tory ones, amount to an attack on our rights. UKIP would put an end to most legislation regarding matters such as weekly working hours, holidays, overtime, redundancy and sick pay, while leaving it up to each employer to decide whether to offer parental leave. It says it would also scrap most ‘equality and discrimination’ legislation.

If you need any more reasons not to vote for UKIP, it denies climate change and would make increased defence spending “a clear priority, even in these difficult times”. It opposes equal marriage, would hold a referendum in each county on ending the hunting ban and would allow smoking in allocated rooms in public houses, clubs and hotels. It’s no wonder that UKIP has been likened to “the political wing of a Home Counties golf club”.

You may not like the EU, and you may think that after 38 years it’s time to hold another referendum on our membership. However, before you vote for a party that makes that its flagship policy, look a little more closely at what else you would be voting for at the same time.

Sources used:-

http://www.ukip.org/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20448450

I doubt W if Labour would allign itself with Ukip under ANY circumstances, because in no way shape or form is Ukip a socialist party they are more than likely to allign itself to the Tory party. :yeahthat:

Politics makes for strange bedfellows, Redflag.

Remember the Alice Cooper song?

I'm your top prime cut of meat, I'm your choice
I wanna be elected
I'm your yankee doodle dandy in a gold Rolls Royce
I wanna be elected
Kids want a savior, don't need a fake
I wanna be elected
We're gonna rock to the rules that I make
I wanna be elected, elected, elected
I never lied to you, I've always been cool
I wanna be elected
I gotta get the vote, and I told you about school

Our British fascination with cult personalities is encouraged by the British Press because they're easy to write a story about, and can usually be relied upon for a quick quote on anything.  Farage plays the media like a violin.  He has accomplices, too:

A UK Independence Party councillor has said the recent bad weather is the result of legalising same-sex marriage.

David Silvester, who defected from the Conservative party in protest of David Cameron’s stance on the issue, said the country had suffered storms and floods because the prime minister had acted ‘arrogantly against the Gospel’.

In a letter to the Henley Standard he wrote: ‘The scriptures make it abundantly clear that a Christian nation that abandons its faith and acts contrary to the Gospel (and in naked breach of a coronation oath) will be beset by natural disasters such as storms, disease, pestilence and war.’

http://metro.co.uk/2014/01/18/ukip-councillor-blames-bad-weather-on-gay-marriage-4268102/?ITO-facebook

The Henley-on-Thames councillor said he had written to Mr Cameron in April 2012 to warn him about the ‘disasters’ that would come if he supported gay unions.

Surely you're joking OW what has Labour and Ukip got in common NOWT, the NHA party would have more in common with Labour than Farages Ukip party of SPIVS  :yeahthat:

UKIP is moving steadily ahead in the opinion polls - almost 30% say they would vote for it if there were an election this week, though Labour is still considered the default winner at Westminster.

We get more like America every day (and not in a good way)

Was discussing this very point this morning - if you have one basic message (like UKIP) and say it loud and long enough - backed up by the money to put the message out strong and clear, people are going to adopt your message as their default position and repeat the mantra - leading to more currency for the message.

In Norfolk, at the last local elections, UKIP sent out very few leaflets and did very little doorstepping - what they did do was to fund the display of large purple and yellow posters on practically every lamp post and telegraph pole in the county - achieving a respectable result in the local elections thereby.

Strong message, not many policies - a recipe perhaps for success in the popularity contest that is currently British politics. I do think Owen Jones may be onto something, pointing out the similarities between what UKIP voters as opposed to UKIP politicians want - if the Labour message focusses on those details of policy, maybe the UKIP day in the sun will be shorter

"Social mobility" has almost ceased to be, in the USA. Why do we always seem to follow their example?

A look  at UKIP HERE

According to a ComRes poll reported in the Sun, Nigel Farage has been voted "the country's second most popular party leader". It says he is "breathing down David Cameron's neck, after pushing Ed Miliband into third place".

Apart from the fact that I find it incredible that anyone voted for Cameron as a 'popular' party leader, this is a tad worrying. Ed Miliband does not have to have dynamite policies but he really does need to work on his charisma. This photo is quite a devious piece of business by the BBC (hopefully accidental but who knows!?) as it shows Ed drinking wine but 'Our Nige, man of the people' on the working man's tipple.

In February 2013 I went down to Eastleigh to help the Labour party with the by-election, and of course Nige was there with his side kick Nuttall and I had my meals in the local Weatherspoons Nige and his side kick were never out of the place, no matter what meal I was going in for Nige and his side kick were there or would turn up within minutes of my arrival, with a pint of beer in their hands so I hope your not suggesting the people of the UK want a beer swilling chain smoking PM bellatori.

I will agree it seems very strange anybody would vote for Davy boy as a popular party leader, maybe its because he is very good at telling whopper LIES to the voting public, whereas Ed Miliband wants to do what other politicians could not carry out that is "Tell The Truth" to the voters and the public. :yeahthat:

You have direct first hand experience of 'Man of the people, Nige' hence your post. Most people, of course do not, which is why even pictures like the one from the BBC have a subliminal message.

David Cameron is a slick character. I think he has lost the public's confidence and not just from the economy. As hard as he and his side kick claim we are all benefiting now from a recovery two things stand out to most and that is that the wealthy may be benefiting but the rest of us aren't seeing even crumbs and secondly he is palpably showing desperation by stealing other parties clothes e.g. power costs from Labour, EU issues and immigration from UKIP.

As for Ed telling the truth well a little voice keeps whispering in my ear the he IS a politician.  

I wonder how many more times I have to ask members not to copy/paste the previous message on a thread before answering it? Is that how you conduct a conversation? Repeat everything that someone has just said to you before you answer them?? It really isn't necessary.
   

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The good thing about UKIP is that most of the votes they gain come from the Tories, apparently. As an aside, I read recently that UKIP would probably need something like 24% of the popular vote to get an MP but 30% could, in theory, see them winning a general election.

The United Kingdom's European Parliament election is scheduled to be held on Thursday 22 May 2014. That date is probably marked on Nigel's wallchart as Shit or bust!

astrast1 Your caption should read "VOTE UKIP GET AN EX TORY LOONIE"   As it was shown at the weekend by the UKIP councillor opening his mouth and putting his big foot straight in, and I bet the Tory party will never admit they also have "Fruitcakes and Swivel Eyed Loonies" within the Tory party, although this Loonie gave up his Tory party membership last year  because that is where Farage gets his candidates for councill and MPs majority of them are Ex-Tory members.  :yeahthat: 

I wonder if UKIP didn't move to condemn the councillor because they thought the sentiments expressed might appeal to their target audience.

Dan Fante wrote:...they thought the sentiments expressed might appeal to their target audience.

It is a bit of damned if you do and damned if you don't. This is where the politician's ability to double speak is put to the test.

The guy concerned is a devout Baptist who has probably been reading too much Ezekiel. The disciple Paul speaks out against effeminacy and homosexuality and here is a supposed Christian Prime Minister supporting fornication. Lets face it Ezekiel shows that God has a bit of a temper.

So there you have it. You can be...

an un-christian godless heathen and support gay marriage at which point God will punish your nation for its sins with storm and famine and ... (UKIP counsellor's christian view)

or

rational. (My view, apparently the two in this case are synonymous)

Someone is bound to be offended. On one hand the religious bigots and on the other hand gays.

Statistically there is a steady 5-8% of the population is gay (personally I am merely happy   ) which means well over 2 million votes. I suspect the bigot population is rather smaller so a sensible politician would go with gay marriage. Having heard Farago on the news just now he's definitely read the runes and is on the side of gay marriage.

I wonder if the same person wonders why god chose the Phillipines (with it having one of the largest Christian populations) to face the full force of the most powerful storm known to have ever made landfall. I doubt they've thought about it that deeply though.

Dan Fante wrote:I wonder if the same person wonders why god chose the Phillipines (with it having one of the largest Christian populations) to face the full force of the most powerful storm known to have ever made landfall. I doubt they've thought about it that deeply though.

As I have said in a previous post Dan Fante "Fruitcakes & Swivel Eyed Loonies" is what this Tory led gov't is full off, that is why Farage goes looking for candidates in "Ex Tory Party Members"   

Boiling down all the news coverage of UKIP over the past couple of years, it might be fair to say that its worst enemy is its supporters.

In todays Daily Mirror there is a report that Farage got hit by a placard when he was being mobbed outside a Hotel in Kent, the person then presented themselve at the police station, so the people in Kent are following up what Farage faced a few months ago in Edinburgh people telling him they did not want his kind of politics in Scotland.

Just so you all know the Scots are a very shrewd race of people and do not vote Tory EVER,  this will help them when it comes to the Scottish referendum in Sept 18th 2014, but what this gov't is doing to all of the UK worries me in case these nasty cuts force Scots to vote Yes when that would be the wrong thing to do cutting off there nose to spite the face, because it is always England that vote Tory even after what Thatcher done to them regarding the Poll Tax.  

Neil Hamilton has been assigned to clean up UKIP's act. Some things really are beyond the reach of satire.

 

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Beky5EqCIAAscq7.jpg
 
After promoting UKIP for so long (26 appearances by Nigel Farage on 'Question Time'), the BBC must have received orders from its Tory Party masters to put this joke of a party back in its box. Here you can watch Godfrey Bloom hitting Michael Crick over the head, and then enjoy Hamilton's car crash of an interview on 'Newsnight' last night:-
 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03sc5h8/Newsnight_21_01_2014/
(start at 17:38)

It's surely a Tory dirty trick to install a double agent. As a strategy it appears to be one akin to appointing Jack the Ripper as a PCSO for the Whitechapel beat...     

Watching Hamilton on that ‘Newsnight’ extract makes me think he must have had a charisma by-pass operation at the same time as that awful bore Michael Fallon, but I don’t think he’s a double agent for the Tories. Apart from appearing in pantomines with his wife, Hamilton has joined his old mate Farage in UKIP and been appointed deputy chairman. There are no elections for such posts in UKIP, Farage just chooses who he wants.

However, the UKIP membership does have a say in the choice of candidates for EU elections, and Hamilton was rejected when he applied to be on the South West list. Not to worry though, Tim Walker reports that Farage has a plum ‘advisory’ role lined up for Hamilton in Brussels after the elections in May, a job in which he could easily make around £10,000 a month after tax. I wonder if they’ll hand it to him in brown paper bags?   

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ukip/10268970/Panto-star-Neil-Hamilton-is-to-be-given-a-top-role-by-Nigel-Farage.html

Isn’t it sad when brainless ‘Little Englanders’ who read ‘The Daily Mail’ try to tell you that UKIP is not like the mainstream parties – no cronyism, no cosying up to Murdoch, no dishonesty, no rule by public school boys and City traders. If they really want someone different, I say bring back that Old Etonian Baron Pearson of Rannoch! He was UKIP’s leader at the 2010 election, and he admitted that he’d not even read the party’s manifesto. You can't say that he was out of his depth because he wasn't even in the water. UKIP won 3.2% of the votes.

Its quite funny that Ukip are using Neil Hamilton to clean up UKIP party, do they really think they can hoodwink the UK public most of us will remember he was once a Tory Minister and was booted out of Thatchers gov't for allegedly taking money for questions.

Ivan most of Ukips candidates are disgruntled Tory MPs or councillors so how can Farage be giving the UK public something different I am afraid words fail me on this one.  

I've never understood why Hamilton gets ANY job - a more boring and colourless individual it would be hard to imagine, in my opinion. His wife has a kind of horrible charm - like Edwina Curry - but he appears to have nothing to recommend him - and he's dishonest.
I guess he's living proof that if you have the right mates you don't need talent or a good name

Well Huhne is one OW what do you think of Rennard and the L/Ds newest member of the pervert club ??

A somewhat damning critique of UKIP policies:-

Just part of the comment:-
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/19989

If you think UKIP's members are extreme, read its official policies

Nigel Farage has thrown out the latest UKIP member to provoke controversy through bigoted opinions. Farage says he wants to get rid of candidates with "extremist, barmy or nasty" views. But it is not individual candidates who are the problem. UKIP's official policies are extremely nasty, based as they are on an ultra-Thatcherite free-market extremism.

Earlier this week, I blogged about David Silvester, a UKIP councillor in Oxfordshire who attributed the recent floods to God's judgment on the legalisation of same-sex marriage (rather than the real sin of human-fuelled climate change). I have now lost count of the number of UKIP members that have been expelled due to racist, sexist or homophobic comments. Farage's insistence that there are bigoted individuals in every party is true but now wearing thin as an excuse for the number of them who appear to have joined UKIP.

You only have to look at the policies of UKIP to see why. They want to make even greater cuts than the Conservatives. They are committed to workfare (forcing people to work for benefits, instead of paying them a wage). They want to withdraw from the UN Convention on Refugees, meaning the UK could turn back people fleeing persecution. They would also remove the UK from the European Court of Human Rights, meaning it would join Belarus as the only other European country that is not signed up to it.

Despite slashing the welfare state, a UKIP government would increase military spending by forty percent and push ahead with the renewal of Trident. The party's education policy includes the promotion of a biased, pro-imperial teaching of history in British schools. They would not, however, teach about climate change, as they deny its reality. Their policies include investment in several new gas-fired power stations.

This quoted extract (from a copyrighted article) is too long and fails to show the name of the author, but it can stand on this occasion. Please read the contents of this board before making any further posts:-

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Thanks. Ivan.

However you describe UKIP, or however it describes itself, a "breakaway" movement will inevitably attract loonies and misfits.  British History, commencing with the motley crew attaching itself to The Crusades of the 11th. and 12th. Centuries, the British seafarers who singed the King of Spain's beard, Colonialists and Slavers, merely predecessors to Sir Oswald Moseley's Blackshirts of the 1930s, the Empire Loyalists in 1950, National Front, BNP and EDL.

http://www.dkrenton.co.uk/anl/trent1.htm

David Silvester, a UKIP councillor in Oxfordshire..

Note that it is being reported that he has been 'suspended' from Ukip .....Note that this is not the same as being kicked out or expelled...If suspended it means they would be allowed to return at a later date....once the dust has settled and the story has moved on.... Or is that just my take on things?

I think your spot on astradt 1 but it does bring to mind is this what will happen in the Lib-Dem party we know it goes on in the Tory party.  

Want to defeat UKIP? Then get more working class people into politics
 
Extracts from an article by James Bloodworth:-
 
"Nigel Farage is a former stockbroker and the leader of a party which represents the interests of the white and well-heeled. UKIP in power would abolish inheritance tax, charge people to see a doctor and ban the teaching of climate change from the National Curriculum. UKIP wants to give more money to the top 2% of the population and take it away from those who happen to get ill – however poor they are. Despite Farage’s matey, fag-and-a-pint image, UKIP represents the smirk on the corpse of cruel, reactionary England.

And yet despite this, the party attracts widespread working class support. In explaining the UKIP phenomenon, the media enjoys waxing lyrical about disillusioned right-wing Tory voters, but far more interesting is the class background of many of UKIP’s prospective voters: these are conservatives but with very little to be conservative about.  

If the left could get a few more ‘normal’ people into politics, then perhaps it wouldn’t be left to a Little Englander of the reactionary right to shake up the political establishment."
 
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/01/want-defeat-ukip-then-get-more-working-class-people-politics

The-man-on-the-Clapham-omnibus finds politics frustrating, because the game seems endless, like Monopoly. Little men have their little victories in Parliament, but it's all rather remote and ritual.

When people like Farage, Boris or Salmond introduce some knockabout farce, immediately people start to become animated. It's not a new trick or even a particularly good one either, but can lighten a dull day.

UKIP housing spokesman trousering a fortune renting to migrants on benefits despite party's policies
 
From an article by Nick Sommerlad:-
 
UKIP’S housing spokesman is making a fortune off migrant tenants on benefits – despite party leader Nigel Farage calling for a ban on foreigners claiming welfare. Multimillionaire landlord Andrew Charalambous has pocketed £745,351 in housing benefit from occupants, who he admits include immigrants. It will heap embarrassment on Farage and comes after Charalambous described immigrants as a “massive factor in the overcrowding of social housing”. Farage also demanded “priority be given to British families and those who contributed to the system”.

When Charalambous was asked whether he was a hypocrite over his massive haul, he said: “Not at all. We don’t want to get into any business of questioning where people come from. That would be totally unfair. We operate in an area that is largely a migrant population. From a commercial point of view and a human point of view, we are not concerned about what the ethnic origin of the tenants is.”

Asked whether he was profiting from immigration, Charalambous said: “Immigration has not only fuelled demand but has fuelled price. I think that’s true”.
 
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/ukip-housing-spokesman-trousering-fortune-3175130

I would guess that a more massive factor in the 'overcrowding' of social housing is quite simply the dire shortage of social housing

I wonder if any one can tell me why the public have not noticed that there is NO difference between the Tories and UKIP, if they only but checked the policies of the two of them, plus the people just have got to look at Farages back ground he was an EX-Banker who worked in the City of London and he is an Ex-Tory party member who left because they would not let him move up in the ranks so he left and joined up with The Swivel Eyed Loons.

Yet we have average Joe in the street saying they will vote UKIP at the next general election, Farage wants the UK out of the EU and still he has stood for election in the EU and is very happy to accept his salary, and no doubt he will be standing in the EU election in May 2014.  

".... the dire shortage of social housing."

.. is not an accident. It was an intentional component of Thatcher's Right to buy policy, which specifically forbade Councils to use the proceeds for building social housing. Fewer houses maintains a steady rise in the price of homes, producing fat pickings for mortgage lenders AND simultaneously the private landlord. Either/or. No escape for the plebs.

oftenwrong wrote:".... the dire shortage of social housing."

.. is not an accident.  It was an intentional component of Thatcher's Right to buy policy, which specifically forbade Councils to use the proceeds for building social housing.  Fewer houses maintains a steady rise in the price of homes, producing fat pickings for mortgage lenders AND simultaneously the private landlord.  Either/or.  No escape for the plebs.

i.e. class war. they hate our guts, and if they didn't live off us like lice they'd kill us all.