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

NO way I have had to just call 999 for an ambulance for a friend who was on the floor almost unconcious almost passed away, and helped the crew sort things out give all his details etc, that is when my old nurse training comes back, you never bottle things my darling--x--

Despite promising to mount “a positive and clean general election campaign”, Farage has tried to cash in on the child abuse scandal in Rotherham. He turned up there to “cut the ribbon” on the campaign office of the UKIP candidate and planned to do a walkabout in the town, but he was trapped in the office for two hours when protestors, including a number of breastfeeding mothers, demonstrated outside. (Farage has previously criticised what he called “ostentatious breastfeeding” and said that mothers should perhaps “sit in a corner”. He opposes this natural and harmless practice, but if he had his way we’d all be subjected to his second-hand smoke in public places.)

Farage’s so-called clean campaign has also seen him attack Sarah Champion, Rotherham’s MP, as “a disgraceful woman”, after she described his visit to the town at this point in time as “rubber-necking”.

Meanwhile, the Plymouth branch of UKIP posted this now-deleted tweet: “South Yorkshire police says PC Hassan Ali who was under investigation in relation to child abuse in Rotherham has died in a car crash. KARMA!” Ali died in hospital on 6 February, nine days after being struck by a car in Sheffield. A spokesman for UKIP said the person who sent the tweet had been “disciplined”, whatever that might mean.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/feb/07/nigel-farage-slates-rotherham-mp-despite-promising-positive-campaign

http://www.itv.com/news/story/2015-02-06/farage-event-pulled-in-rotherham-after-anti-ukip-protests/

boatlady wrote:That Nigel Farage - he'll say anything but his prayers

Then he whistles them boatlady

Society's acknowledgment of The dignity of work has never been properly recognised by exploiting employers. That's why Trade Unions were created, and the reason why the movement should received greater support from working people generally - otherwise the Toffs will remain in charge of wealth creation, and keep most of it for themselves.

Every chance I get, I tell people they should join a union

boatlady wrote:Every chance I get, I tell people they should join a union

That agreat advice boatlady everybody that is in & out of work should belong to a Union I am sure there is speciaL rates for those unemployed.

Even I'm in a union - and I've been retired 6 years - they'll have anyone

Some people been trying to ‘big up’ the resignation of Harriet Yeo from the Labour Party and her intention to vote for UKIP in May. Harriet who? According to ‘The Telegraph’ she’s a “top Labour figure”, while ‘The Evening Standard’ describes her as “senior”.

So who is she? Although nobody seems to have heard of her, she was the chair of Labour’s national executive committee in 2012-13. She’s resigned from the party after been removed as leader of the small Labour group on Ashford council in Kent for non-attendance at council meetings and a failure to undertake council casework, and then being deselected as a candidate for the 2015 local elections. Yeo states her reason for leaving as Labour’s failure to offer a referendum on our EU membership, a policy she would have known about for ages.

If Yeo is that lazy she will fit in well with UKIP, whose MEPs have the worst attendance record of all the parties in the EU Parliament. She hasn’t actually joined UKIP yet, but her daughter has and stood unsuccessfully for the party in county council and district council elections in Kent.

It sounds like a case of sour grapes (“if I can’t be a councillor, I’m not playing with you any more”) and also political illiteracy (it’s quite a leap from Labour under Ed Miliband to far-right UKIP). As a Labour spokesperson said: “The truth is UKIP are a party of Tory people, Tory policies and Tory money: they are more Tory than the Tories.”

http://labourlist.org/2015/02/former-chair-of-labours-nec-leaves-party-to-support-ukip/

Membership of UKIP seems to be what Ernest Hemingway described as "A moveable feast".

They come, and they go, like ships in the night.

Going by the title of this thread no matter how many times we look at Ukip you will always find the same TRIPE with there racist candidates have any of them lasted longer than a week in situe ??

It's the night of the UKIP Spring Gala Dinner in Margate. No doubt old Nigel will be having a drink for a change! Don't the party hats look a bit small? Shouldn't they be white, with holes for eyes?  


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B-3y7VmWwAAxN3O.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiryTUCtLNA

Got off to a lovely start

Got off to a lovely start

It sure did....  


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B-2X4X9UsAA6aa1.jpg

And then a raving loony met a bloke with a megaphone....


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B-8EtpeW8AAnCsE.jpg

What larks!

Three striking characteristics of the typical UKIP member - old, white and male.  


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B-9EdUmXAAESfuF.jpg

Mourning their lost youth - when most of them had free school milk, free further education, and a choice of employment with union protection - so to bring back those halcyon days they want to destroy the welfare state and evict all the foreigners


There's a lack of logic there that makes me wonder if any of these bozos actually benefitted that much from all that free milk and education

For some reason, I keep confusing UKIP with the Monster Raving Loony Party.  Why is that?





Is someone playing with Nigel's photo opportunities?

I’ve long been convinced that UKIP stole the identity of the Standing at the Back Dressed Stupidly and Looking Stupid Party, which featured with the late Vincent Hanna in ‘Blackadder the Third’:-


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bnsz-txCMAAhMSg.jpg

You could very well be right

Nigel Farage: UKIP Policies Not Racist
The UKIP leader insists preferential treatment for British workers is not a racist policy during an interview with Sky News.

http://news.sky.com/story/1247188/nigel-farage-ukip-policies-not-racist

Is there a difference between Racism and Discrimination?

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948. It states that:" Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status."

According to the polls Ukips popularity is on a downward slide, can anybody imagine Farage representing the UK around the world we would end up the laughing stock.

In a private election broadcast on BBC Radio 4 "Today" this morning, Nigel Farage indicated he was hoping for support from voters who abstained in 2010.

That's a lot of potential. If he got them all he'd surely be the next PM!

oftenwrong wrote:In a private election broadcast on BBC Radio 4 "Today" this morning, Nigel Farage indicated he was hoping for support from voters who abstained in 2010.

But they are mostly people who Blair thought had no other choice than Murdoch-worship and grovelling to the rich, so I think he'll have to move a long way left to fetch many of them in

I hope you are right Penderyn because I get chivers thinking that Farage would be running this country, which would run this country further into the ground.

I have hesitated to share this story, because UKIP are such a soft target recently - don't like to mock the afflicted

Recently, some people from Hope not Hate have been in our town doing a bit of door knocking and leafleting for their cause of exposing UKIP nastiness. One of the things they have been doing, I understand, is to knock on the doors of people who display UKIP posters asking them to discuss their political affiliations.

At the last council meeting, which I (randomly, I thought) attended as an observer, there were regrettable scenes as the UKIP leader in the council accused Labour members of inviting an 'extremist political organisation' into the town to 'bully and harass' UKIP members. A UKIP councillor challenged a Labour councillor to a fight - very high passions altogether and a most uncomfortable atmosphere for the rest of the meeting. Ironically enough, the UKIP leader referred to the European Bill of Human Rights as the basis of her complaint against Labour.

Later in the week, a UKIP councillor went to the Hope not Hate temporary headquarters and after being asked to leave assaulted one of the members, who has since received a stream of homophobic threats via social media.

I'm thinking two things
1) UKIP seem to be getting very desperate - apparently even asking them questions now is unfair
2) Politics is a dirty business - I have the uncomfortable feeling this whole issue may have been deliberately created by people I know to show up UKIP in a bad light

When I saw Farage making his final appeal at the end of the leaders' debate, I felt he came across as a sincere, if sadly mistaken, individual, as perhaps are many rank and file members of UKIP.

I'm just feeling a bit disillusioned here

QUOTE: "Politics is a dirty business - I have the uncomfortable feeling this whole issue may have been deliberately created ...."

Well, Boatlady, there you have it. Politics IS a dirty business. Billions of Pounds of Taxpayers' money is controlled by Parliament, and MPs have a lot to say about who gets some of it. Patriotism is too often replaced by patronage in such circumstances.

Don't feel disillusioned, it is twinges of conscience which identify an honest person upon witnessing corruption.

There are unscrupulous people on the hard left who will behave as badly as those on the extreme right, making trouble in the hope that it throws bad light on their opponents. However, I don’t have any sympathy for foolish people who have been brainwashed by right-wing tabloids into thinking that UKIP is the answer to all our problems. I’ve had to block dozens of them on Twitter who posted gratuitous abuse and in some cases made filthy and often libellous remarks. When they’re not doing that, they parrot “we want our country back”, “LibLabCon” and “EUSSR”, while quoting the gross (rather than the net) cost of our EU membership and taking no account of what the much bigger cost would be if we left.

I found the personality cult which developed around Farage to be frightening. How this public school educated, millionaire and former City trader has hoodwinked so many into seeing him as ‘a man of the people’ is beyond belief. His followers perceive him as ‘different’ from other politicians, even though he and other UKIP MEPs rarely turn up to Brussels to represent their constituents, yet they justify milking EU expenses as they are called 'allowances'.

I don’t think Farage is sincere. I think he saw UKIP as a way of getting into the hierarchy of the Tory Party (of which he used to be a member) - and maybe becoming deputy PM if he had enough MPs to prop up a Tory government. I don’t think someone who really saw himself as ‘a man of the people’ would be so keen on abolishing workplace rights and even the minimum wage, and that’s before we talk about human rights.

However, have you noticed that Farage seems to have lost his mojo recently? His supporters thought he would shine in debates and give UKIP a surge in the polls, but he hasn’t, and attacking an audience just made him look desperate. I have a theory – and I may well be proved wrong – but I think Farage is ill and is keeping that fact quiet until after the election. He’s said that he will quit if he doesn’t win Thanet South, and Suzanne Evans has been tipped to become the next leader of UKIP. I don’t of course wish illness on Farage (I reserve that dream for Iain Duncan Smith), but my suspicion is that his life of chain smoking and heavy drinking may be catching up with him.

IMO

UKIP will fade into insignificance after this election, and much like the BNP have done in previous elections, most notably when the BNP lost their Euro seats at the last Euro election.

It seems like the Nigel chap will lose in Thanet anyway and in that event he's said that he will step down from the leadership. What is UKIP wthout Farage, yet more racist and homophobic loons. Farage can string a sentence together where the rest bleat on about muslamic ray guns etc!

Who the eff is Suzanne Evans!

Duncan Smih should banished to live on his wife's estate! He is the worst scounging scum on the planet!



...And YES! It's very bad to say but he's worth being on a assasination list for the utter despair that he's caused.

Let's not forget though, that Churchill won WW2 whilst pissed as a newt for the most part of it.!

If you're answering the most recent message on a thread, there's no need to re-post it. We don't want to read it twice, and if we all did that each new message would become as long as the thread itself!

Suzanne Evans is the deputy chairperson of UKIP, as a Google search soon reveals.

Churchill's mouthing of a few soundbites didn't win the Second World War. It was won by thousands of ordinary servicemen putting their lives on the line, not hiding in a Whitehall bunker drinking and smoking. You could justifiably argue that the Russians and Americans won the war with us hanging on their coat tails, but that's for another thread:-
https://cuttingedge2.forumotion.co.uk/t229-is-winston-churchill-grossly-overrated

I do think Farage seems a bit lack lustre lately and I welcome the signs that indicate UKIP may be losing some of its rank-and-file following - certainly the UKIP politicians we have in this town seem to be a bunch of unsavoury and ignorant chancers, employing immigrant labour to deliver their leaflets and completely ignoring their constituency work (local councillors this is)

On the whole, they seem to be elderly, or else a bit stupid, or even both - it just seems a bit unkind, I guess, to try and entrap them in the way it was done recently - if that's politics, I think you can count me out.

Having said all this, I will still be voting Labour, for sound pragmatic reasons.

For myself, I'll just stick to changing the world one act of kindness at the time

Just to let you all know Nigel Farage is on BBC1 tonight at 7.30pm for an interview, let us see how he gets on the interviewer who is a bit of an ogre IMHO.

He will get slaughtered tonight Redflag, oh what fun to watch, Farage going well well well eh err er.

Ivan wrote:If you're answering the most recent message on a thread, there's no need to re-post it. We don't want to read it twice, and if we all did that each new message would become as long as the thread itself!

Suzanne Evans is the deputy chairperson of UKIP, as a Google search soon reveals.

Churchill's mouthing of a few soundbites didn't win the Second World War. It was won by thousands of ordinary servicemen putting their lives on the line, not hiding in a Whitehall bunker drinking and smoking. You could justifiably argue that the Russians and Americans won the war with us hanging on their coat tails, but that's for another thread:-
https://cuttingedge2.forumotion.co.uk/t229-is-winston-churchill-grossly-overrated

You are suggesting that the quote button isn't used? What is it there for then?

Ok, so perhaps my wording was a bit out but he the man in charge of the country at the time.

Phil now stop being picky please as you know the rules,you use the quote button on the ones before the last one/previous one to one that you are answering.

No, I'm not suggesting that the quote button isn't used. It's there to quote an extract from earlier messages on a thread - not the most recent one - in order to respond to a specific point.

If you're having a conversation, you don't have to repeat everything the last person has said before you respond to it. I'm sure nobody wishes to read the same post, however erudite, two, three or even more times.

Ok that is fair enough Ivan. First time that i've ever been pulled up over that one though and i've been using forums for many years

Did anybody watch the interview I mentioned in an earlier post, I did IMHO the interviewer went very soft on Nige not the same as he had went on Ed Miliband he was like a fox raiding the chicken coup, but then it was BBC1 shower of bias P***Ks.

Not sure any of the conventional news media are being very balanced Red.
As it goes, I didn't watch it - the less I see of that braying jackass the better for me I think