Nigel Farage

GOB wrote:

All that UKIP are asking is that proper checks are made to ensure that those entering the country are not criminals before they move into the house next door.

Labour and the Conservatives don't seem to like the idea of that.

I know where my vote is going!

Farage didn't say anything about criminals living next door though, did he? He specifically said "Romanians".

No matter how you cut it that implies that all Romanians are criminals and that obviously isn't true. So it is obviously a racist slur.

It also singles out Romanians as being worse than some other, implicitly every other, nationality. Which is also a racist slur.

If Farage wanted to focus on "criminals" why not use the word "criminals"? Is a Romanian criminal in some way worse than a British one? If I get burgled by a Romanian is the disruption worse, for some reason, than if I get burgled by a Brit? No, of course it is not. What, exactly, does nationality have to with it? I'm sure we're all fairly anti-"criminals" and it would be both popular and accurate to specify "criminals". But he didn't. He said "Romanians". It's a strange thing for somebody avowedly anti-racist to say; it's much more understandable as a slip of the tongue made by a clever racist who is a little off his guard.

At the heart of this, looking at the border control aspect, lies yet another contradiction; maybe even paradox. As I understand it UKIP is essentially Thatcherite in its economics. It abhors red tape, it wants to set the entrepreneur (is there an English word for "entrepreneur"?) free, it's all against restriction of trade and is strongly pro-free market (see their privatisation agenda for the NHS as an example), strongly-pro low taxation and anti-public spending and yet it wants to scrap all of that with regards to control of our borders.

UKIP would like to have everybody checked, double-checked, finger-printed and have irises scanned and checked against a bio-passport, presumably, in order to wheedle out those "criminals" at every single point of entry to the country. (And if they do not then how can they expect to achieve the control they demand?) How much will this cost? How many border control guards would it take? How much regulation and bureacracy would it need? How long would it take to pass through an airport? How long would the queues be? UKIP like to paint itself as libertarian but this would be the most totalitarian peacetime policy this country has ever seen.

So the policy is illogical, unenforceable, expensive, bureaucratic and inherently paradoxical but it lies at the core, the very core, of everything UKIP stands for and everything it ever says.

Back to "criminals". Britain, by choice and not under duress at all, long ago signed the Schengen Agreement. The Schengen Agreement effectively allows for the free movement of people and goods within the EU. If you go to mainland Europe you can travel through a country, Belgium usually but not exclusively, without even realising you've been through it. Mainland Europe doesn't seem to be collapsing under this horrendous commitment to red tape abolition, stimulus to the entrepreneur and opening up of distant markets (all good free trade Thatcherite stuff, remember) but UKIP wants to abolish it all as far as the UK is concerned. Why? How will that help us? In fact introducing such controls, given Schengen, would probably be illegal meaning that their introduction would immediately criminalise those attempting to keep the criminals out. It's all a bit like the Central Scrutinizer (Iggy'll know what I mean) whose job it is to enforce all the laws that haven't been passed yet. What about potential criminals, eh? Romanians, perhaps, keep them out but let somebody else born within shouting distance on the other side of a border through? It's just madness.

And if there are genuinely organised criminal gangs trafficking God knows what God knows where then they'll just ignore any controls and by-pass them because that's what they do. That's the problem with illegal immigrants, as well - they just don't care about the rules and come anyway.

"500m Europeans could come and live here" says UKIP. They haven't though, have they? And they could have done so by now if they wanted to. So UKIP stokes up the fears of this imagined flood of foreigners, many of whom are likely to come over here and marry our political leaders just as has happened to Messrs Clegg and Farage, but to what end? Why? What of the millions of Brits living abroad... should they be compelled to either fully emigrate or come home? No. That'd be barmy. But it is what UKIP wants to happen in the other direction.

And so it goes on and on all through their policies, such as they are. Do you like paid holiday? UKIP doesn't. Maternity pay? Minimum wage? UKIP doesn't. Sick pay? UKIP doesn't. Unions? UKIP doesn't. The NHS? UKIP doesn't. Elephants? UKIP doesn't.

But for my part none of this is party-led, regarding Labour, Tory or LD, and I am pandering to no conspiracy. I just see UKIP as a party rent asunder by ideological inconsistency that makes me think that they are lying to me. It makes me question what it is that they really want but haven't yet plucked up courage to say.

And it isn't the many crackpot utterances of their minions who at various times have called women sluts who belong in the kitchen, said that gay marriage (their professed libertarianism doesn't stretch quite that far either) caused the winter flooding, employ Irish actors to depict Romanians coming over here to steal our jobs, hire illegal immigrants to work in their restaurants and deliver their election literature or any of the many other frankly barmy gushings that some see as "slurs", and others see as simple reporting of comments that were always bound to attract attention, that I have mentioned on this thread - it is UKIP's policies (and Farage's bottle which went noticeably missing at Newark).

Most of which nobody seems keen to discuss other to say "Labour did such and such...". Well fine. As I suggested earlier if you want to start a thread discussing Labour, or anybody else's politics then feel free to do so just as I did about Farage and, by obvious extension, UKIP.

In many ways I hope UKIP perform strongly in the elections because they'll split the right-of-centre vote just as the SDP once split the left-of-centre. The SDP opened up the country to years of Tory landslide; voting UKIP will do the same for Labour.

Which is not an endorsement, by me, of or for Labour. I don't think they are much cop, to be honest. Less bad than the other major parties is about as enthusiastic I can get for them.

I like the "chose the wrong Milliband" line though. Very good. Didn't matter which one won, really, does it? And if neither had you could've said "should've chosen a Milliband". Excellent.

I am happy to accept that he meant Romanian criminals in context from a judge's comments of an unwillingness of the Romanian authorities to pass on details of criminal records of people travelling to the UK.

Of course you are.

There, that's that all sorted.

This is one of the reasons why UKIP will be getting my vote and provides a different slant.

UKIP 'nasties' outed by the Press

Anti-establishment?

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Right then SFD, It's the eve of the euro-elections.
After three weeks of UKIP sniping are you finally going to tell us who we should vote for & why ?

No. I wouldn't dream of it.

If I was a racist, homophobic, mysogynistic, islamophobic, paranoid xenophobe with a strong Little Englander streak and desperate to prove it I'd vote UKIP. Hell I might even join the party! I'm pretty sure there'd be enough like-minded people there for me to feel right at home but I'm not any of those and, since they are the only reasons I can think of for choosing them, I won't be voting UKIP.

For my part I think UKIP are a dreadful option, just about the worst possible, and quite what their role is in local politics defeats me completely. I tend to agree that the EU is sadly lacking in many ways but resigning from it won't alter a damned thing and the consequences will be horrific on top of which, like Norway, we'd have to meet all their regulations or be forbidden from trading with Europe so it would only move us from having little say to no say whatsoever. Hardly progress.

I think the various scares about immigration are nonsensical and mostly baseless. UKIP is trading on a fear that it has created itself and that is desperately worrying.

Here's a song that puts the case against the immigration hysteria pretty well.



I fully understand the desire to register a protest though because we have been horribly let down and taken for granted by the major parties ever since I've been old enough to take notice of what was going on. I feel it too. There's very little that I can say positively about any of the parties. For me it's a choice of going for the least bad option to, hopefully, keep the worse ones out or voting Green which has little chance of winning.

Ideally, if I had the choice, I'd probably vote SNP despite not wanting to see the UK break up (no party is perfect). But I don't.

Just make sure you do vote - even if you only spoil the paper. Many good men have died so that we can have our say - whatever it is. Not voting at all sits worse with me than voting for a party I wouldn't support.

But who you vote for, even if you spoil your vote, is up to you and your conscience alone.

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

Anti-establishment?

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Hell yeh, Huntings illegal you know. He's going to drive home drunk after the meet and hopefully run over some immigrants before donning his white cape and pointy hat and having a BBQ with his mates.

Have we got a Standing at the Back Dressed Stupidly and Looking Stupid Party like they did in Blackadder?

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You know what? I think we do...

Iggy wrote:

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

Anti-establishment?

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Hell yeh, Huntings illegal you know. He's going to drive home drunk after the meet and hopefully run over some immigrants before donning his white cape and pointy hat and having a BBQ with his mates.

If only that was implausible!

Foxes... elephants... who gives a feck, eh?

Thinking about voting UKIP? Maybe this willl help?

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Surprised by the number of people who have told me they are voting ukip today. General consensus is that they've lost patience with the three main parties.

Pafcintheplace wrote:

Surprised by the number of people who have told me they are voting ukip today. General consensus is that they've lost patience with the three main parties.

They have all been working the gravy train for so long that the voters needs have been forgotten....they all need a wake up call....UKIP could do us all a favour.

COYG!

SFD.......'I like the "chose the wrong Milliband" line though. Very good. Didn't matter which one won, really, does it? And if neither had you could've said "should've chosen a Milliband". Excellent.

A gut feeling at the time and now confirmed, in my mind at least.

General elections are won and lost more often than not on the wider publics' general perception of party leaders.

IMO Ed's voice alone, is enough to sway voters away from him. It really is that simple for millions of people.

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

For my part I think UKIP are a dreadful option....

If only you'd made that a bit clearer from the off, we'd all know where you stand...

There is going to be a landslide for UKIP in red neck land judging by the posters around here. I may buck the trend of abstaining from the voting procedure and have my protest vote, may be UKIP may be green, any feckin thing other than the sleazy scum bags in the lib/lab/con/dem disaster that politics have become in this country. The support for UKIP, who lets face it are one very good politician trying to hold together a rag tag bunch of misfits and lunatics with a smattering of lower echelon county councillor types, says it all. Politics is fecked in this country, has been since Maggie Thatcher the milk snatcher made it possible to bend the whole country over and feck them up the arse, it's become the norm now and accepted by every cnut called jack who is wealthy enough to pull their ladders up.
Long live the revolution!

I hope whoever gets in will find time to renovate my duck pond.....some are quite experienced at it I believe.

PS.......on expenses of course.

Tringreen wrote:

SFD.......'I like the "chose the wrong Milliband" line though. Very good. Didn't matter which one won, really, does it? And if neither had you could've said "should've chosen a Milliband". Excellent.

A gut feeling at the time and now confirmed, in my mind at least.

General elections are won and lost more often than not on the wider publics' general perception of party leaders.

IMO Ed's voice alone, is enough to sway voters away from him.  It really is that simple for millions of people.  

"Ed's voice alone..."?

I hope that that isn't true and it's rather pathetic if it is. He can't help his voice any more than he can help the colour of his eyes.

I have rather more confidence in the common sense of millions of people, obviously.

No. This is a line trotted out by people who would never have voted for him anyway. It's akin to all those "I'm not going to Argyle while Fat Dan is in charge" types. Dan has long since gone and now it's "I'm not going because..." of some other reason. There'll always be another reason but they'll always be there for a Wembley occasion should one occur.

Milliband will never be the worst party leader around. Not until Clegg is replaced anyway and I have my doubts about Cameron, who doesn't appear to be terribly popular in Tory circles, too. By this measure alone Farage is by far the best.

Ed's just a loser....and must be getting used to people spelling his name with two L's ..... 

Farage (from his auto-biography) on John Lennon's Imagine:

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And your point being?

Some Romanians turned up at a UKIP rally.

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I'm voting UKIP as I am utterly sick of people like mothers on maternity leave stealing from the hard working landed gentry in this country.

There's a fair amount of scaredy-cat xenophobes on ATD and that's why UKIP will get votes - people seem to think they're an alternative - they aren't as they have absolutely no policies, no real ideology and absolutely no purpose other than getting their swivvel eyed mugs in the local and national media.

Yes but the Tories and the new Tories steal all our tax money to share out amoung their mates, they let their mates get away with tax dodges because they are rich, they get lobbied by big business representatives to pass polices that are against the interest of 99% of the population and get rewarded with jobs when they leave government. Blair sat on the boards of I think eighteen companies when he left office but didn't actuall do f a for them in actual work it was rewards for favours and Blair should be I prison for the Iraq war! By the way his mates have made sure that the inquiry into this has been stalled for three years so it can't be published yet, this is why loonies like UKIP are so appealing FFS! None of them represent us the working people of this country and haven't since the seventies.

Btw I am no good with gifts but there are a couple of good UKIP ones the one with Farage and the band foreigner made me chuckle.