O/T

As an individual, I suspect I'd enjoy "doing lunch" with the tab-smoking, pint quaffing, plane crashing bad boy of British politics that is Nigel Farage. Who among us didn't secretly cheer at his EU Parliament lambasting of faceless grey men presiding over ineptitude, waste, democratic deficit and fraud? He's my kind of guy. Can you imagine going out for a few scoops with Milliband?

But, by heck, even he must've shrivelled to a currant upon hearing 'teh gays are causing floods' remarks from his own ranks; fuck me. Face palm doesn't really cover it.

Farage is a dick. I think if I was in a pub with him I'd burn the place down. A public schoolboy turned banker turned political leech, siphoning money from the EU and ignoring his actual supposed duties there. His economic policies stop fractionally short of slavery. He's about as far away from a man of the people as it is possible to get.

Mate, I only said I suspect I'd enjoy a pint with him, I'm no UKIP supporter as you know. Plenty (if not ALL) people I socialise and drink with don't agree with my politics but we get along just fine.

Just saying he seems more 'real' and a bit of a breath of fresh air as compared to carefully schooled politicians of today; a character at least.

DIFFERENT air I'll grant you, but 'fresh' is more subjective.

Like, a farmer may prefer manure and silage to centuries of stale gin and cigar smoke, but a desperately wealthy born-into-it toff of breeding maybe not so much.

Don't really know what else to say; I'd have a pint with him but would never vote for his party?

Anyway, public school jibes? Most of Labour's front bench went to public school and so do their kids!! At least Farage doesn't have that hypocrisy about him. Urgh.

Milliband: man of the people...? Lol.

I suspect I wouldn't.

[quote] Can you imagine going out for a few scoops with Milliband?
No.

Indeed, the same could be said for pretty much any career politician.

Yeah, sorry, he's one of my buttons and I'm off ill whilst feeling like shit at the moment, so am grumpy.

That must make doing your shirt up really annoying, no wonder you're grumpy.
Hope you don't have button flies, because thar would be the worst.

Ahahahaha what?
I can assure you they wouldn't. Unless they were fucking odd.

I think it's a metaphor.

Sorry to hear that mate, arses.

There was some fly on the wall documentary about Farage on TV last night, which I half watched; quite interesting.

I saw that. The only nice thing to say about him is that he seems quite consistent. Consistently a cunt, though. It was also abundantly clear that he is the acceptable face of a party made up of xenophobic old fuckwits. If he gains any more ground then he's going to have massive problems keeping a lid on the horrible views of all his colleagues in the party. People will soon see them for what they are.

Hmm, sorry, I can't help but feel that's harsh, Mark?

I'm from immigrant stock (ironically, Eastern European) and proud of it; I feel well-placed to pass judgement or otherwise in the matter. Clearly this thread isn't the place to do it (apologies to those concerned), but for the first time in a long time, I feel the need for a Beex political thread of my own coming on soon - about UKIP. I think we need to properly thrash this one out, as a collective.

I don't think so. I'm generalising about paid up party members, not just anyone who votes for them.

From personal experience, UKIPpers are BNP-lite. Immigrants are evil, basically. Oh the fun tea-break debates we have

I don't think they really know what they stand for. Even Farage has stated he doesn't know what policies are on his website as he doesn't agree with some of them when pressed. It's a joke of a party who will get protest votes like the Lib Dems used to get.

Although it is worth stressing that there's nothing xenophobic about being against the European Union and how it is structured etc. Sadly, most UKIP voters combine being aginst EU with being against foreigners, and end up taring all Eurosceptics with the same brush.

Absolutely not, even Nick Clegg who is the most pro-European of the senior politicians in any of the main three parties has said there are lots of things about the EU he doesn't like and would like to change. However, how can you change it by leaving it?

Quite - but they got "elected". Kind of.

Lib Dems were polling ABOVE Labour at one point before the 2010 election, but ended up losing MPs. People revert to type when they actually had to put the X in the box. A lot of people who say they'll vote Ukip now may find themselves hesitating with the piece of paper in their hand.

This. Despite what the metropolitan 'Islington classes' would have us believe.



Possibly true, but tarring people and/or parties because some nasty people vote for them seems a bit silly to me? Nasty people vote for all parties - and besides, being nasty doesn't necessarily mean you're wrong about something.

'Pro-Europe' = bends over and takes whatever crap thrown at us without resistance, even when demonstrably not in UK's interest. Not just pathetic and weak, but actually a dereliction of duty IMO.

No wonder why the LDs are polling a derisory 8% of the vote in forthcoming Euro election opinion polls. Eight percent, as compared to UKIP's 30% or more. Looks like they're going to win - democracy has a habit of exposing inconvenient, home truths?



As should be obvious, threatening to leave - when you're a net contributor and key European economy - will make people far more amenable to doing what you want (and gain respect), than supine weakness ever will. See above.

Aye, but Farage has all those seats in Europe and never fucking does anything other than play footsie with the proper far right nutters such as ones who condone mass murder.

I was reminding someone just earlier that you can agree with a person on one particular point without it meaning you implicitly agree with everything else they say about everything.

It's not even that hard to comprehend, but judgemental types are seemingly incapable of not conflating that important distinction with complete and absolute endorsement of everything that person has ever said or done.

I don't think I'd vote for UKIP, but I think their existence has served to force the rest of UK politics to give this whole EU project a closer look. Not a bad thing at all.

True, but also feeding largely misinformation about it doesn't help matters.

There's a politician that... Lies?!

I don't think the current government are idiots, I think they are corrupt.

UKIP has two main ideological 'planks' - the first plank being nationalist opposition to the EU based on them Foreigns all being foreigners and speaking foreign (it's no coincidence that UKIP sit in the far-right EFD group in the European parliament with explicitly nationalist and racist parties), the second blank being 19th century style economic liberalism, with most of their social/economic policies being a more extreme version of Thatcherism than the modern day Tory leadership would openly advocate. The first element gets all the media attention, the second… Much less so, for whatever reason. The second plank is actually a far more important factor in the UKIP's anti-EU campaign than most people realise - the EU provides social, economic and environmental protection that the likes of UKIP would like to see eradicated in pursuit of an American style economy and society.

Mods, would you be so kind as to split out all the UKIP/political banter into a thread in my name please? ("Cavey's Political Faff" or somesuch )

I'm sure Gilly doesn't want all this stuff in her important thread. (Sorry Gilly).

Many thanks.

Cheers Cras

Is there a way that I can change the thread title myself? May as well make it my repository for all things political (and keep out of other threads in that regard )

Yup, just edit the first post

I probably wouldn't advocate for the UK leaving the EU in the much-promised referendum, and I doubt the rest of the country will either. I think the asking of the question is an important demonstration of democracy that would not have happened if not for UKIP. Their relatively minor but widespread support shows the need to have these concerns addressed, even if it ultimately amounts to nothing.

To my mind, in the worst case we'll repatriate a few deferred powers from Brussels and the UK will remind the world it's not a sheep that'll cheerfully go along with the flow, just because that's what the rest of Europe is doing.

I think the public are too ill-informed on the workings of the EU parliament to have a strong enough opinion on it either way. Ask a man in the street 'What does an MEP do?', and I doubt you'll get a decent answer.

I have two degrees in politics from ('a university') and even I am uncertain about who is responsible for what. The legislation itself is more or less incomprehensible and the treaties (the EU's constitution) might as well be written in Klingon.
Hate the coalition government all you like, but at least we've a good idea of what's going on, who to lobby, and how to kick them out. I think good accountable government involves the ordinary person being able to answer those questions.

Growth in UK's economy 'best in G7' says IMF:



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26935148

Shame it's all on artificially inflated London house prices.

In other Political news, how the hell has Maria Miller avoided being barred from Parliament or generally cast adrift? If she was a poor person who had defrauded the country of that much money she's be put in prison.

The problem is that very few people are actually feeling any better off, because they're not.

Off the top of my head, real wages are still below where they were in 2008, there are hundreds of thousands of people on zero hour contracts, and god knows how many more 'underemployed' people who are on shitty part time wages when they want more.

You've got housing prices running away again when you've already got a generation who have no hope of ever owning so much as a shoebox, at the time that Osborne unlocks pension funds to unleash an army of buy-to-let pensioners on the country to fuck the housing market up even more.

Even the Torygraph commentators are saying it's the wrong kind of growth, backed up with very little of substance and being built on debt again, largely like Labour did - and a recent budget that pandered directly to the old people most likely to vote for them, and fuck everyone else.

The BoE daren't raise interest rates because they know it'll tip hundreds of thousands of families already on the brink into default and losing their homes, and you've got unprecedented numbers of middle class folks really feeling the pinch.

I'm not saying Labour were much good either, because they weren't, but the Tories are pretty much pulling the same shit again except this time they're beating up on the disabled and the poor whilst they're at it.

Um, I'd say that's just a *tad* disingenuous, especially considering the start point in May 2010. (And please don't give me the Ed Balls 'we were in growth' spiel mate, I could punch him repeatedly every time he trots that one out... a +c0.1% debt-fuelled, dead man's bounce after an unprecedented c.-10% Depression doesn't constitute "growth", you wide-eyed, red-faced dick).



Not following to be honest; is this another "fiddling expenses" type thing?

All London house prices...?
UK manufacturing up +4% this last year alone:



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26935155

My summary would be all political parties are basically shit, especially given the limited scope of the active electorate - radical pensioners who'll threaten to withdraw their vote at the merest hint of anything that might inconvenience them a bit, swing voters in a relatively small number of key constituencies, home owners who would probably kill a random stranger if it came down to losing their INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT ASSET or a bit of trivial murder, and so on.

Labour were crap in lots of ways but they did at least tip a large amount of cash into all sorts of social programmes, and weren't so class-warfare brutalist about trampling down the unwashed masses.

The Tories are crap again, except this time they've got that peculiar brand of snobby nastiness about them only that party can conjure up.

And the Lib Dems can burn in hell for enabling it all as far as I'm concerned.

Heh. I'm just bitter. They do have an impact though, and are higher now than before the last crash, which doesn't bode well.

There does seem to be some improvement in industry; the question is whether this will translate into anything meaningful for the average chap in the street. I just can't see it happening. Companies doing well will feel stung from the last hit and just funnel profits to shareholders while chasing down expenses and reducing wages by any meaningful measure. So the only people to likely see much benefit will be the already rich, big investors (and pension funds, which they're really gonna need, because that does not look great right now).

I'd just like to say what a good post this is. I have no idea what an MEP does, I am not convinced they are value for money because of that.

I see that Miller has resigned from the Cabinet (but not as an MP of course; can't stop riding that gravy train).

Her resignation letter, ostensibly blaming the press for it all, it basically shameless.

I'm just watching the documentary on Nigel Farage and re: Europe, what are his actual supposed duties there?!
I'm quite shocked at how little the MEPs can seem to effect things?

It's quite concerning seeing the support the party has mind you. I don't know that I believe that he himself is racist or anything like that and I can see why he appeals to people when he is nothing like the career politicians like Cameron and Miliband but the worrying thing is the views of the general membership of ukip. As well as the total lack of policies and weird hypocrisy of his views on an open global market vs immigration.

Is there an election soon? A pair of swivel eyed loons were flyering outside Leeds station this morning.

UKIP, was it?

Yeah.

It has occurred to me that the most efficient (and legal) way to remove the fat prick of the local mp (in private eye every fortnight, too) is for me to join the party and stand in his place. This, however, would be a six year plan.