You are here: Home > Message Board > News & Politics > Topic
October 31 2024 10.50pm

This page is no longer updated, and is the old forum. For new topics visit the New HOL forum.

ukip (LOCKED)

Previous Topic | Next Topic


Page 132 of 311 < 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 >

Topic Locked

nickgusset Flag Shizzlehurst 21 Nov 14 4.15pm

Quote Johnny Eagles at 21 Nov 2014 1.10pm

Quote nickgusset at 21 Nov 2014 1.09pm

Quote Johnny Eagles at 21 Nov 2014 12.53pm

Quote nickgusset at 21 Nov 2014 12.30pm

Quote Drivethrough at 21 Nov 2014 10.37am

Quote Willo at 21 Nov 2014 9.09am

The majority was far less than was expected. I am confident that the Conservatives will win the seat back at the 'General Election'. Certainly NOT the resounding victory which UKIP expected.

Edited by Willo (21 Nov 2014 9.11am)


Really, 3,000 is quite a lot in my book. Tories had a 10,000 majority prior so a 13,000 turnaround is very impressive and UKIP will smash the tories in the GE.

So Reckless turned a 10'000 majority for Reckless into one of 3000. Did well losing himself 7000 worth of majority


Edited by nickgusset (21 Nov 2014 12.31pm)

You do realise he defected to another party since the previous election?

Der...

Is that a 'yes'?

Your comment was either facile or ignorant, I just wasn't sure which.

You need to learn what means

 

Alert Alert a moderator to this post
Seth Flag On a pale blue dot 21 Nov 14 5.46pm Send a Private Message to Seth Add Seth as a friend

Quote nickgusset at 21 Nov 2014 4.15pm

Quote Johnny Eagles at 21 Nov 2014 1.10pm

Quote nickgusset at 21 Nov 2014 1.09pm

Quote Johnny Eagles at 21 Nov 2014 12.53pm

Quote nickgusset at 21 Nov 2014 12.30pm

Quote Drivethrough at 21 Nov 2014 10.37am

Quote Willo at 21 Nov 2014 9.09am

The majority was far less than was expected. I am confident that the Conservatives will win the seat back at the 'General Election'. Certainly NOT the resounding victory which UKIP expected.

Edited by Willo (21 Nov 2014 9.11am)


Really, 3,000 is quite a lot in my book. Tories had a 10,000 majority prior so a 13,000 turnaround is very impressive and UKIP will smash the tories in the GE.

So Reckless turned a 10'000 majority for Reckless into one of 3000. Did well losing himself 7000 worth of majority


Edited by nickgusset (21 Nov 2014 12.31pm)

You do realise he defected to another party since the previous election?

Der...

Is that a 'yes'?

Your comment was either facile or ignorant, I just wasn't sure which.

You need to learn what means

Dear old Johnny's been in Germany a long time, and you know what they say about the German sense of humour

 


"You can feel the stadium jumping. The stadium is actually physically moving up and down"
FA Cup MOTD 24/4/16

Alert Alert a moderator to this post Edit this post
jamiemartin721 Flag Reading 22 Nov 14 3.28pm

UKIP are just another bankrupt political party spouting rhetoric and popularist bollocks in order to push their agenda, they'll be no more benefical to the people of the UK than Labour or the Conservatives, their agenda will be those of big business, with meaningless gestures to the masses.

 


"One Nation Under God, has turned into One Nation Under the Influence of One Drug"
[Link]

Alert Alert a moderator to this post
Seth Flag On a pale blue dot 22 Nov 14 4.29pm Send a Private Message to Seth Add Seth as a friend

I know a lot of people on the right don't like Owen Jones, but his piece in today's paper is worth reading for his analysis of UKIP's rise, Thornberrygate and what it tells us about modern politics:

Rochester byelection: beliefs of Ukip voters are soaked in leftwing populism

As working class voters flock to a party of the hard right, is it possible for Ed Miliband’s Labour to reconnect with them?

If the seemingly irresistible rise of Ukip teaches us anything, it is that sentiment all too often trumps reality and mere detail in politics. The party is a self-described “People’s Army”, now emboldened by a victory in Rochester and Strood it hopes will bring renewed momentum. Its voters are disproportionately working class.

Polls suggest they support renationalising rail and energy and want higher taxes for the rich and an increased minimum wage. According to research by the academic Matthew Goodwin, 81% of Ukip supporters believe “big business takes advantage of ordinary people”; a slim majority want the government to redistribute income; and they overwhelmingly agree “there is one law for the rich and one for the poor”.

These are beliefs soaked in leftwing populism; and yet those who subscribe to them have flocked in droves to a party of the hard right. Ukip’s leaders now defiantly, unapologetically present themselves as a people’s insurgency against a contemptuous establishment.

“The radical tradition, which has stood and spoken for the working class, has found a new home in Ukip,” declared the triumphant Mark Reckless, claiming – with no little chutzpah – to stand in the tradition of the Levellers, Chartists and the suffragettes. Here are movements that defied the powerful and attempted to build a more equitable order. And yet Ukip is led by a privately educated ex-City broker; one of their two privately educated ex-Tory MPs worked in the City, the other in asset management; and they are bankrolled by ex-Tory multimillionaires.

Their policies are erratic, but their leading lights have pledged support for slashing taxes on the rich, privatising public services and repealing basic workers’ rights.

Sentiments, though. Just 36% of voters believe that Nigel Farage was privately educated, even though he was schooled at the prestigious fee-paying Dulwich College; over half believe the same for the state-educated Ed Miliband. Farage has successfully effected an everyman appeal, complete with the almost compulsory pint of bitter at every photographic opportunity. He doesn’t sound scripted, but rather talks in the language of common sense; he presents himself as the outsider against the machine. In a world of relentlessly on-message, professionalised career politicians, it takes little to shine.

You can see why Ukip are an attractive prospect to Tory MPs. The Conservatives are in long-term decline; they haven’t won a general election since 1992; they are unable to win over working class voters in many communities where they once prospered. The baggage of Thatcherism and de-industrialisation drags them down.

Ukip are not associated with this baggage: perversely, given their leaders are really unabashed ultra-Thatcherites. But, again, it’s all about sentiments: Ukip present an entirely fabricated chasm between them and the Tories. In both Clacton and Rochester, voters were frequently reported to be voting for Ukip because the incumbent Tory had done nothing for them.

And sentiments bring us to perhaps the most infamous tweet ever issued by a British politician: Emily Thornberry’s picture of a terraced house adorned with St George’s flags and a white van parked outside.

Over the last generation or so, working class identity, culture and community have faced a relentless battering. Many of the old skilled jobs – back-breaking and male-dominated as they could be –gave people a sense of pride, but were stripped from the economy. Industries that were once the focal point of communities disintegrated. A sense of solidarity, sometimes cemented by a strong trade union movement, was eroded.

In some working class communities, a sense of Englishness filled the vacuum. I grew up near the centre of Stockport: publicly displayed English flags were not uncommon. “I am here, and I am proud,” was the implicit, defiant cry. The rise of Scottish national consciousness has only accelerated the process.

Anything that seems to impugn this sentiment can be seen as the ultimate insult: but if it originates from the political elite, it can be particularly explosive. Politicians are deeply unpopular in modern Britain. They are generally regarded as privileged, self-aggrandising, out-of-touch, and in-it-for-themselves.

In the case of many MPs, some or all of this is unfair. But what is true is that the political elite is deeply unrepresentative of the British people. Parliament is dominated by white middle class professional men; just 4% are manual workers by background; and, in a revealing indication of how professionalised politics has become, while just 21 MPs worked in politics before their election in 1979, it had jumped to 90 by 2010. They don’t look like us, many voters think; they don’t understand us; and secretly, they probably have contempt for us and sneer at us. Any evidence that this sentiment is indeed well founded is as politically explosive as it gets. If there were more prominent MPs from working class backgrounds, the problem would be less acute. But then again, Emily Thornberry was one of the few Labour frontbenchers to grow up on a council estate.

There have been many generalisations in the course of this incident that should surely be challenged, though. A damning subtext of the response to this whole episode is that the working class is a homogenous group, all with the same set of identities and beliefs.

As a general rule – whatever our class – the English do not tend to flaunt the flag apart from, say, sporting occasions. In the US and France the flag is commonplace, but it is associated with those countries’ revolutions and a sentiment of popular sovereignty.

The flags of Britain do not have the same connotations of “the people”. For many non-white people – including working class people on council estates – the St George’s cross is dripping with whiteness in every sense. To a sizeable proportion of the population, flaunting the flag sometimes seems territorial and exclusive, perhaps even intimidating.

And there are double standards at play. British politicians all too often demonise or caricature entire swathes of their own people and get away with it. Senior Tories have characterised unemployed people as “skivers” and “shirkers”; George Osborne spoke of the “closed blinds” of those “sleeping off a life on benefits”. Lord Freud spoke of disabled people who were “not worth” the minimum wage, and remained in post. The Sun is fanning the outrage over Thornberry’s tweet, yet a court was told this week that their reporters referred to their own readers as “plebs”. A Daily Telegraph blogger berates Thornberry, and yet once wrote a piece suggesting that the murder of an Iranian immigrant “has exposed the other side of working class Britain. The intolerance. The suspicion of distinctiveness.” Demonisation is rampant, all too conveniently justifying policies that hammer working class people.

But what lessons for those who resist the Ukipisation of British politics? Easy to feel mortified, depressed, despondent about the direction the country is heading down. But lessons have to be learned. The debate over the future of Britain will not be won by facts and mere details. We now know that sentiments matter. If a populist-minded left would learn these lessons – well, perhaps the rise of Ukip would not seem quite as irresistible as it seems today.

[Link]

 


"You can feel the stadium jumping. The stadium is actually physically moving up and down"
FA Cup MOTD 24/4/16

Alert Alert a moderator to this post Edit this post
Mapletree Flag Croydon 22 Nov 14 4.46pm Send a Private Message to Mapletree Add Mapletree as a friend

Quote Seth at 22 Nov 2014 4.29pm

I know a lot of people on the right don't like Owen Jones, but his piece in today's paper is worth reading for his analysis of UKIP's rise, Thornberrygate and what it tells us about modern politics:

Rochester byelection: beliefs of Ukip voters are soaked in leftwing populism

As working class voters flock to a party of the hard right, is it possible for Ed Miliband’s Labour to reconnect with them?

If the seemingly irresistible rise of Ukip teaches us anything, it is that sentiment all too often trumps reality and mere detail in politics. The party is a self-described “People’s Army”, now emboldened by a victory in Rochester and Strood it hopes will bring renewed momentum. Its voters are disproportionately working class.

Polls suggest they support renationalising rail and energy and want higher taxes for the rich and an increased minimum wage. According to research by the academic Matthew Goodwin, 81% of Ukip supporters believe “big business takes advantage of ordinary people”; a slim majority want the government to redistribute income; and they overwhelmingly agree “there is one law for the rich and one for the poor”.

These are beliefs soaked in leftwing populism; and yet those who subscribe to them have flocked in droves to a party of the hard right. Ukip’s leaders now defiantly, unapologetically present themselves as a people’s insurgency against a contemptuous establishment.

“The radical tradition, which has stood and spoken for the working class, has found a new home in Ukip,” declared the triumphant Mark Reckless, claiming – with no little chutzpah – to stand in the tradition of the Levellers, Chartists and the suffragettes. Here are movements that defied the powerful and attempted to build a more equitable order. And yet Ukip is led by a privately educated ex-City broker; one of their two privately educated ex-Tory MPs worked in the City, the other in asset management; and they are bankrolled by ex-Tory multimillionaires.

Their policies are erratic, but their leading lights have pledged support for slashing taxes on the rich, privatising public services and repealing basic workers’ rights.

Sentiments, though. Just 36% of voters believe that Nigel Farage was privately educated, even though he was schooled at the prestigious fee-paying Dulwich College; over half believe the same for the state-educated Ed Miliband. Farage has successfully effected an everyman appeal, complete with the almost compulsory pint of bitter at every photographic opportunity. He doesn’t sound scripted, but rather talks in the language of common sense; he presents himself as the outsider against the machine. In a world of relentlessly on-message, professionalised career politicians, it takes little to shine.

You can see why Ukip are an attractive prospect to Tory MPs. The Conservatives are in long-term decline; they haven’t won a general election since 1992; they are unable to win over working class voters in many communities where they once prospered. The baggage of Thatcherism and de-industrialisation drags them down.

Ukip are not associated with this baggage: perversely, given their leaders are really unabashed ultra-Thatcherites. But, again, it’s all about sentiments: Ukip present an entirely fabricated chasm between them and the Tories. In both Clacton and Rochester, voters were frequently reported to be voting for Ukip because the incumbent Tory had done nothing for them.

And sentiments bring us to perhaps the most infamous tweet ever issued by a British politician: Emily Thornberry’s picture of a terraced house adorned with St George’s flags and a white van parked outside.

Over the last generation or so, working class identity, culture and community have faced a relentless battering. Many of the old skilled jobs – back-breaking and male-dominated as they could be –gave people a sense of pride, but were stripped from the economy. Industries that were once the focal point of communities disintegrated. A sense of solidarity, sometimes cemented by a strong trade union movement, was eroded.

In some working class communities, a sense of Englishness filled the vacuum. I grew up near the centre of Stockport: publicly displayed English flags were not uncommon. “I am here, and I am proud,” was the implicit, defiant cry. The rise of Scottish national consciousness has only accelerated the process.

Anything that seems to impugn this sentiment can be seen as the ultimate insult: but if it originates from the political elite, it can be particularly explosive. Politicians are deeply unpopular in modern Britain. They are generally regarded as privileged, self-aggrandising, out-of-touch, and in-it-for-themselves.

In the case of many MPs, some or all of this is unfair. But what is true is that the political elite is deeply unrepresentative of the British people. Parliament is dominated by white middle class professional men; just 4% are manual workers by background; and, in a revealing indication of how professionalised politics has become, while just 21 MPs worked in politics before their election in 1979, it had jumped to 90 by 2010. They don’t look like us, many voters think; they don’t understand us; and secretly, they probably have contempt for us and sneer at us. Any evidence that this sentiment is indeed well founded is as politically explosive as it gets. If there were more prominent MPs from working class backgrounds, the problem would be less acute. But then again, Emily Thornberry was one of the few Labour frontbenchers to grow up on a council estate.

There have been many generalisations in the course of this incident that should surely be challenged, though. A damning subtext of the response to this whole episode is that the working class is a homogenous group, all with the same set of identities and beliefs.

As a general rule – whatever our class – the English do not tend to flaunt the flag apart from, say, sporting occasions. In the US and France the flag is commonplace, but it is associated with those countries’ revolutions and a sentiment of popular sovereignty.

The flags of Britain do not have the same connotations of “the people”. For many non-white people – including working class people on council estates – the St George’s cross is dripping with whiteness in every sense. To a sizeable proportion of the population, flaunting the flag sometimes seems territorial and exclusive, perhaps even intimidating.

And there are double standards at play. British politicians all too often demonise or caricature entire swathes of their own people and get away with it. Senior Tories have characterised unemployed people as “skivers” and “shirkers”; George Osborne spoke of the “closed blinds” of those “sleeping off a life on benefits”. Lord Freud spoke of disabled people who were “not worth” the minimum wage, and remained in post. The Sun is fanning the outrage over Thornberry’s tweet, yet a court was told this week that their reporters referred to their own readers as “plebs”. A Daily Telegraph blogger berates Thornberry, and yet once wrote a piece suggesting that the murder of an Iranian immigrant “has exposed the other side of working class Britain. The intolerance. The suspicion of distinctiveness.” Demonisation is rampant, all too conveniently justifying policies that hammer working class people.

But what lessons for those who resist the Ukipisation of British politics? Easy to feel mortified, depressed, despondent about the direction the country is heading down. But lessons have to be learned. The debate over the future of Britain will not be won by facts and mere details. We now know that sentiments matter. If a populist-minded left would learn these lessons – well, perhaps the rise of Ukip would not seem quite as irresistible as it seems today.

[Link]


Thanks Seth. Very interesting article. Isn't it amazing how people can't be bothered to look properly at what is going on around them, e.g. the policies of UKIP versus the rhetoric. However, Thornberry was just pure wrong. She was belittling exactly the group of people that she should have been converting. She can't choose who gets to vote so she should go with the flow, even if the good people of Rochester may not fit in with the way of life in Islington.

 

Alert Alert a moderator to this post Edit this post
Johnny Eagles Flag berlin 24 Nov 14 9.59am Send a Private Message to Johnny Eagles Add Johnny Eagles as a friend

The performance of UKIP MEP Louise Bours on 'Any Questions" was almost enough to put me off UKIP forever.

The most brainless and shouty moron I've heard on that programme in a long time.

As my junior school headmistress used to say, "empty vessels make the most noise". Very true where Ms Bours is concerned. The woman is a awful.

 


...we must expand...get more pupils...so that the knowledge will spread...

Alert Alert a moderator to this post Edit this post
nickgusset Flag Shizzlehurst 25 Nov 14 6.04pm

[Link]

Telegraph has UKIP spot on.

 

Alert Alert a moderator to this post
Stirlingsays Flag 25 Nov 14 6.18pm Send a Private Message to Stirlingsays Holmesdale Online Elite Member Add Stirlingsays as a friend

Quote nickgusset at 25 Nov 2014 6.04pm

[Link]

Telegraph has UKIP spot on.


It's a biased nonsense piece......It's the usual fear mongering.

A politician makes a slip up and no matter how many times it is stated that the slip up isn't policy people like this piece writer and anyone else against UK restate the same crap again and again.

It's very clear Nick.....read these words.

No one is going to be repatriated who is legally here.

 


'Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.' (Leslie Nielsen)

Alert Alert a moderator to this post Edit this post
Stirlingsays Flag 25 Nov 14 6.19pm Send a Private Message to Stirlingsays Holmesdale Online Elite Member Add Stirlingsays as a friend

Quote Johnny Eagles at 24 Nov 2014 9.59am

The performance of UKIP MEP Louise Bours on 'Any Questions" was almost enough to put me off UKIP forever.

The most brainless and shouty moron I've heard on that programme in a long time.

As my junior school headmistress used to say, "empty vessels make the most noise". Very true where Ms Bours is concerned. The woman is a awful.


An awful what?

 


'Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.' (Leslie Nielsen)

Alert Alert a moderator to this post Edit this post
nickgusset Flag Shizzlehurst 25 Nov 14 6.24pm

Quote Stirlingsays at 25 Nov 2014 6.18pm

Quote nickgusset at 25 Nov 2014 6.04pm

[Link]

Telegraph has UKIP spot on.


It's a biased nonsense piece......It's the usual fear mongering.

A politician makes a slip up and no matter how many times it is stated that the slip up isn't policy people like this piece writer and anyone else against UK restate the same crap again and again.

It's very clear Nick.....read these words.

No one is going to be repatriated who is legally here.


Reckless said the policy was changed on Wednesday

 

Alert Alert a moderator to this post
Stirlingsays Flag 25 Nov 14 7.14pm Send a Private Message to Stirlingsays Holmesdale Online Elite Member Add Stirlingsays as a friend

Quote nickgusset at 25 Nov 2014 6.24pm

Quote Stirlingsays at 25 Nov 2014 6.18pm

Quote nickgusset at 25 Nov 2014 6.04pm

[Link]

Telegraph has UKIP spot on.


It's a biased nonsense piece......It's the usual fear mongering.

A politician makes a slip up and no matter how many times it is stated that the slip up isn't policy people like this piece writer and anyone else against UK restate the same crap again and again.

It's very clear Nick.....read these words.

No one is going to be repatriated who is legally here.


Reckless said the policy was changed on Wednesday


Reckless isn't the loudspeaker of Ukip policies.....He's only just sodding joined them.

Once again Nick.

There has never been a policy of repatriation of legally resident people from Ukip.

Verbal slip.....But you lot are the very picture of swiveling eyes over it.

You and many others are just fear mongering......Which considering you all hate the Daily Mail so much is a tad hypocritical.

 


'Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.' (Leslie Nielsen)

Alert Alert a moderator to this post Edit this post
nickgusset Flag Shizzlehurst 25 Nov 14 8.06pm

Quote Stirlingsays at 25 Nov 2014 7.14pm

Quote nickgusset at 25 Nov 2014 6.24pm

Quote Stirlingsays at 25 Nov 2014 6.18pm

Quote nickgusset at 25 Nov 2014 6.04pm

[Link]

Telegraph has UKIP spot on.


It's a biased nonsense piece......It's the usual fear mongering.

A politician makes a slip up and no matter how many times it is stated that the slip up isn't policy people like this piece writer and anyone else against UK restate the same crap again and again.

It's very clear Nick.....read these words.

No one is going to be repatriated who is legally here.


Reckless said the policy was changed on Wednesday


Reckless isn't the loudspeaker of Ukip policies.....He's only just sodding joined them.

Once again Nick.

There has never been a policy of repatriation of legally resident people from Ukip.

Verbal slip.....But you lot are the very picture of swiveling eyes over it.

You and many others are just fear mongering......Which considering you all hate the Daily Mail so much is a tad hypocritical.

'You lot' Who does that refer to? The telegraph?


I'd have thought if someone is going to stand for a political party, then they'd need to be au fait with the policies.

 

Alert Alert a moderator to this post

Topic Locked

Page 132 of 311 < 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 >

Previous Topic | Next Topic

You are here: Home > Message Board > News & Politics > Topic