I realise this is a Reading forum and the European Elections are a national issue, but some local MPs really don't "get" it either, so I'll lay it out...
Thursday 22nd May is the only time outside a general election when EVERYONE eligible to vote gets a say. And I really, really hope everyone takes that chance, whoever they vote for.
But I’ve seen an alarming amount of ignorance about the process, including an small but significant number of people who think it’s a general election, or cannot distinguish between the concept of voting for local councillor vs a representative in the European Parliament.
They are also likely to be the noisiest and emptiest barrels; unable to distinguish between immigrants and migrant workers, GDP vs GDP per capita, religion vs race, the continent of Europe vs the political European Union, understand very little about how government finance works and so on.
And they are also the most likely to be vociferously anti-UKIP with their endless cries of “racist” or “swivel-eyed-loons”, also reliably misspelling “rascist”[sic]and “facist”[sic], proving that they can barely spell the words, let alone know the meaning.
Things often said about UKIP:
“They’re all racists”
OK, so about 10 of the 2,300+ UKIP local election candidates have said some unsavoury things, and were promptly kicked out.
Here’s a fun game to play next time someone says “This bloke doesn’t like Lenny Henry therefore all UKIP are racist”.
Double check with them that they believe that the views of an entire movement can be extrapolated from the comments of less than half a percent of that group. They’ll inevitable say “they’re all the same”; now watch the fear and confusion on their faces as you ask:“If one represents all, doesn't that mean you think all black people are muggers and all Muslims are terrorists”?
Also ask about Labour's Nazir Ahmed, who Labour allowed to remain for several years, despite multiple anti-Semitic remarks AND a prison sentence for killing a motorist while he was driving and texting.
What about Labour councillor Trevor Maxfield, who was once the BNP’s Blackburn branch organiser, and was associated with Blood and Honour, National Front and Combat 18?
Ah, that’s all “different”, apparently….
The difference is, UKIP kick the bad 'uns out straight away - the parties above welcome them into the fold.
UKIP’s membership rules specifically require that “I am not and have never been a member of the British National Party, National Front, British Freedom Party, British People's Party, English Defence League, Britain First or the UK First Party.
The National Black Police Association won't let you join if you're white. Hmmm.
NONE of the three main party leaders will call Nigel Farage “racist” when asked to. I wonder why that might be?
Migrants to the UK must learn English and respect our way of life,
Sajid Javid, The Culture Secretary and the UK's first Asian secretary of state. Mr Javid criticised migrants who had lived in Britain for many years but still could not speak the language.He also said there was no place for Sharia law in the English legal system.”
Also Labour’s Jack Straw said that
"Muslim women should abandon wearing the burqa because it was a visible statement of separation and difference".
He asked women to remove their veils at meetings in his constituency office and called for new laws on the wearing of the veil in court.
He was attacked, but never called a racist.
When Ukip proposes the banning of any face coverings in public, they are attacked as “racist”.
And Labour's Trevor Maxfield, who was once the BNP’s Blackburn branch organiser, defected to the Labour Party late last year, and has now been selected by the Labour Party to fight Darwen’s Earcroft ward in the upcoming local council elections.
Maxfield has a long history in right wing/nationalist politics and was associated with Blood and Honour, National Front and Combat 18
Green issues
I believe we should live less wasteful lives and reduce fossil fuels and carbon emissions, but, like environmentalist George Monbiot, I don't believe in transferring wealth from poor to rich, so, like UKIP, I'm against the solar PV subsidy which does just that.
I believe in public transport but I don't believe that £80bn will be well spent on a vanity project based on a completely flawed analysis of working, like HS2.
Immigration.
Here’s a typical misleading quote:
According to the Adam Smith Institute, GDP could more than double with the free movement of labour. There's no denying immigration is a positive thing.
Actually, I’ll leave it to the comments in that Guardian article:
Well, someone at The Adam Smith Institute does.
Even he freely admits that not many others do. It's not just the free movement of workers but the free movement of goods and capital globally too, i.e. removing ALL trade and work barriers.
I fail to see how (to quote) A taxi driver who might expect to make $1,500/year in a city in (say) Benin might be able to make $31,000/year in New York City by doing exactly the same thing. is a success story that can be replicated by everyone everywhere at the same time.
I realise this isn't a total zero sum game but in order for GDP to rise somewhere under this scheme it must surely fall in the place where the workers have emigrated from?But that comes as a package together with a smaller state so that potential migrants select themselves on the basis of what they see is there potential rather improved healthcare cover and housing.
Complete movement of people with a welfare state (tax credit, child benefit et Al) will probably mean 2-4 million+ of people moving to the UK per year and very low wages for the lowest paid workers. The population of the UK would increase significantly over the space of 5 years. I'm just not sure it would work really.
Without the welfare state it might work, but that would be a huge hit for much of our population.
Andrew Neather, a former adviser to Tony Blair, Jack Straw and David Blunkett wrote:
"The huge increases in migrants over the last decade were partly due to a politically motivated attempt by ministers to radically change the country and "rub the Right's nose in diversity"
The expression "rubbing your nose in it" is from the practice of housebreaking dogs by rubbing its nose in its own faeces. What does that tell you about how Labour really see "diversity"?
“Limiting immigration in the way the rest of the world does will cost every child £3bn because uncontrolled unskilled immigration benefits the UK so greatly”.
...or some other oft-chanted nonsense.
The figures never stand up to scrutiny.Here’s the widely respected[url="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03qfzgx"]BBC Radio 4 More or Less from January 2014[/url]. Worth a listen.
Summary:
“If you look at the figures for the whole of the period under study, 1995-2011, immigration has been a drain*on the public purse. To the tune of about £95bn.”
“UKIP is racist because it seems to be more interested in UK nationals”
From The Guardian comments section:
I see minorities constantly organizing themselves politically and advancing their interests and those of their race, through immigration reform and such.
Yet, when white British people do the same and start calling for an end to illegal immigration, suddenly they are evil racists. I am seriously interested in hearing how you reconcile this in your heads.
What is wrong with British people who want to preserve their culture?It is easy to point the finger and scream racist, but the fact is that these people don't do it necessarily out of hate.
They feel their culture and way of life is under attack. They see their schools being overrun with Muslim administrators conspiring to force their religion down the throats of British school children, they see muslims becoming a majority in various locations across the country, and they just want it to end.
They don't want to live in a country which isn't even recognizable to them anymore.How is that racist? Colored people want to be around other colored people too. They say it all the time here in America. "How come my teacher doesn't look like me?" etc.
It is a common complaint from minorities here in America, but if white people try to make that same complaint, they are shouted down and silenced.
Can somebody please explain to me why I am so wrong on this issue? Why is it "ignorant" for whites to do the same things minorities do?
Also
Yet another tired and tiresome diatribe insisting on using the 'racism' card, knowing full well that it has no bearing on the immigration issue at all, which is about uncontrolled NUMBERS, not race, creed or political beliefs.
Most other countries operate some kind of limits to immigration, so why is there so much agitprop when a political party in the UK wants to do the same ?
It seems not a day goes by without the daily/guardian running a 'UKIP eat kittens' story, makes me more earnest to vote UKIP, not less. If UKIP were so marginal, so unimportant, then surely no tabloid would be giving them the time of day.
But all of the main parties liblabcon and their flunkies The Daily Shame and The World Morality Guardianista, seem to run a story of how evil, evil UKIP is.
Strange, one could almost assume UKIP were challenging the old tired formula of rule by the minority privileged for the minority privileged.
Europeans are the same race as us. How can limiting immigration from Europe be racist ?
We currently limit immigration from Africa and Asia, but not Europe - isn't that racist ?
In another article in the Guardian, the columnist says that a UKIP candidate who criticises a certain non-Christian religion is "racist". He is criticising a religion, not a race.
How can this be racist ?
Calling someone a racist is the new McCarthyism.
If someone criticises EU policy or a religion, just call them a racist - its dead easy.
What is racist in being concerned about longer NHS queues. more congested roads, higher house prices & rents due increased demand?
What is racist in being concerned about no longer being a self governing nation?
Either Europe as a land mass is a race, or it isn't. Clue: it isn't.
As so many critics appear to be so intimately familiar with the UKIP policy documents and manifestos both for Europe and the Local *Elections, they’ll be fully aware that UKIP border and immigration policy is pretty much the same as the rest of the world: it's about what you do, not your colour or who you are.
Same as Australia, New Zealand, the USA, India, Canada...shall I go on?
Current policy is skewed in favour of those from Europe, those who are predominantly light skinned and fortunate enough to have been born into the "correct" geographical area.So can someone tell me when discriminating by your talents, not your place of birth, become a bad*thing?
(Incidentally, talking of racists, irony officially died at 7:15pm on Monday night on Channel 4 News when UKIP were declared to be racist by… Diane “White people love playing divide & rule” Abbott. Seriously, you couldn’t make it up.)
The Roma issue:
On Radio 4’s World tonight last Friday, UKIP's Paul Nuttal came out with some referenced stats about Roma crime. NONE of the other three politicos on the panel said his figures were wrong. Two said that saying it was “unhelpful”, one said “well that’s what we have a European police force for”. Is UKIP right?http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-romanian-crimewave/18207 found he was accurate on ⅔ of the claims, and concludes:
“The Ukip leader is not plucking these claims of criminality out of thin air. They are based on real statements put out by various police forces, some of whom have real concerns about the activities of Romanian wrongdoers.Met figures show that Romanians are disproportionately more likely to be arrested compared with the citizens of many other countries.And Ministry of Justice figures similarly show that while the number of Romanians in UK prisons has fallen slightly over the last year, the number still remains large as a percentage of the likely total Romanian population.”
So does that mean that when anything is politically awkward and “unhelpful”, debate should just be shut down?
Can you imagine if that happen with, say, child abuse cases? We’d have the kind of situation where people were warning about widespread organised gangs for years only to find the problem swept away as a “cultural issue”, only for it to finally come to a head 15 years later when it was too late for the hundreds of children, targeted for being white and then drugged and raped by gangs of old and *exclusively Pakistani men.
Wow - imagine that. What kind of society would allow THAT to happen? Best not rock the boat, eh?
This week, a Romanian refugee on Channel 4 news said herself she would
"not want to live next door to a bunch of unruly Romanians - they have very bad habits of treating their women and children. My argument is not about race, it is about being civilized. Britain is the most civilized country in the world, and if people come here they should be civilized".
The next night (Tues 20th) on Channel 4 news, a UKIP carnival was interrupted by some protesting “Romanians” holding a banner calling UKIP fascist. When the interviewer turned the mic on then, it turned out they were actors, and their excuse after being rumbled? “Well we are all Romanians today”.
Er. OK.How desperate is that? How low is it to use the deaths of millions of Jews across Europe to attack the democratic process itself?
Incidentally, David Blunkett's warning that an influx of Roma migrants could lead to riots in Britain was taken very seriously. Yet when Ukip talk about it, it's classed as “racism”. http://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2013/11/13/comment-blunkett-attacks-the-roma-so-why-are-only-ukip-calle
Homophobia
Around 2.5% of people are gay, a fraction of those will want to get married. It’s true that The Tories introduced gay marriage rather than Labour, but Labour would have done the same in addition to getting involved in 2 incredibly costly wars. Whereas UKIP wouldn’t have. I bet a helluva lot more children have lost parents under Labour’s wars, than gay adults have wanted to get married.So, what's worse - not getting married, or not growing up alive or with your parents bombed?Incidentally, in a Guardian poll, 0% (literally, zero surveyed) Muslims found homosexuality acceptable and more first-generation Afro-caribbean migrants think there should be less immigration than white people. Those inconvenient truths, eh?
“UKIP want to enforce marital rape/close the borders/punch kittens/kill Muslims”.
You’re not even trying now, are you?
So, who will I vote for?
Labour?
Didn't inequality increase under the last Labour administration?What about Labour's bedroom tax, the one that came in in 2008 for most folks and 2003 for the lucky few in Labour's pilot areas?And the food banks that started to explode under Labour?And the NHS that Labour flogged off through PFI and contracts that gave private sector suppliers preferential treatment?And, yes, however much you shout about it being the Tories, sorry, but it WAS Labour who ended free university education.Labour, the "nice" party who brought us 
Disregard for the rule of law by joining a (probably) illegal invasion of Iraq based on lies and deceit, in order to please the USA
Disregard for our children's education in order to please the teaching unions
Disregard for our health in order to please the health service unions
Disregard for the long term unemployed by feeding them the drug of welfare instead of help to find work and self-respect, and disregard for the taxpayer who has to fund it
Disregard for common justice by secretly implementing a life-time amnesty for NI terrorists while our troops are prosecuted.
Just stop and think about that last one - Tony Blair signed a backroom deal which guaranteed permanent immunity from prosecution to murders who slaughter mothers and children, and members of his party called Farage “disgusting”?!
And if you believe the “Labour were doing the right thing but were just in the wrong place at the wrong time” narrative, then you are so utterly hopelessly politically and historically naive, I’d stay away from a voting booth. And have your memory checked, too…
I realise I shouldn’t judge the actions of Labour’s shameless, sleazy and damaging past by its current leadership. So here’s Ed Miliband being interviewed by Damien Green for ITV - please, watch it all, “enjoy” it in full: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCem9EZb-YA.
Yeah, seems MUCH more open and honest than previous Labour leaders.
So that’s a no for them.
The Tories?
It’s true that Cameron was basically handed a turd on a plate by Labour and have done a reasonable job of polishing it. But Cameron lied out the European referendum, and almost worse, his name is on the list of signatories to violent, fascist anti-democracy group UAF. Vote? Not a hope in hell.
Greens?
Probably lovely people to have a cup of camomile tea with in a yurt, but politically naive.
Lib Dems?
Ahahahahahaaaa! No, really? You’re hilarious!
Incidentally, Channel 4’s Fact Check also ran checks on the leaders debates and found that while both had exaggerated their cases, Farage was far, far closer to reality than Clegg, who was found to have been fearmongering without basis about the loss of jobs if we pulled out of the European Union.
Only 2 weeks ago another survey found that there was absolutely no gain from EU membership, and the widely respected Channel 4 Factcheck blog said the following:
http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-what-happens-to-the-economy-if-we-pull-out-of-the-eu/8376
Britain would still be able to trade with countries in Europe, even if it wasn’t a member of the EU club.
More than 20 countries including two of Europe’s richest nations, Switzerland and Norway, have negotiatied free trade agreements with the bloc without signing up.
A key study by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) found that “there is no reason to suppose that unemployment would rise significantly if the UK were to withdraw from the EU.
Withdrawal could cause disruption to the economy, but it is most unlikely that export sales to EU markets would cease completely”.
Surprisingly, the British government has never commissioned a cost-benefit analysis of our continued membership, and there are relatively few politically independent studies around.
The Verdict:What is fairly clear though, is that while Clegg’s right about the number of jobs dependent on TRADE with Europe, he should be VERY wary about suggesting that those jobs are automatically at risk if Britain’s relationship with the EU changes
.
According to the people who did the research, talk of mass redundancies if Mr Cameron goes for a European exit strategy is just scaremongering.
Lib Dem councillor Councillor Stephen Fenwick was convicted for racially aggravated assault in Charing Cross station in central London on January 4. He was involved in an altercation with a barman and called him a migrant and told him to go back to his own country.
Lib Dem councillor Colin Rosenstiel, was charged with assaulting and beating a 7 year old child. He is still standing in this month’s election, the Lib Dems think he is still a suitable person to feature on the ballot paper, despite being on police bail for this nasty and cowardly charge.
Those "nice" Lib Dems...
In summary...
I believe in a fairer immigration policy based on skills, not where you happen to be born.
That makes me a racist, apparently.
I agree with Compassion in World Farming,The British Veterinary Association, the RSPCA, Denmark, Poland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland who say that are opposed to halal and kosher meat production, both because of the severe pain experienced at throat-cutting and unnecessary suffering.
That makes me a racist, apparently.
I'm just as opposed to pinning down a prepubescent girl and slicing her clitoris and labia off with a knife so she may never feel pleasure, as I am to mutilating a baby boy's genitals. As a parent, I cannot even begin to get inside the headspace of how a parent could be that cruel. Perhaps I should be in favour of it, like feminist Germaine Greer who said that criticism of FGM was “culturally insensitive” and that “one man’s mutilation is another man’s beautification”. But I don’t think mutilating children is right.
That makes me a fascist, apparently.
And I think £55 million a day could be better spent than waste, fraud, scandals on the squanderous palaces of opulence of the EU.
And for those reasons, and all of the other reasons above, I will be choosing UKIP to represent my voice in the European Parliament on May 22nd 2014.
And finally, who WAS it who said:
"You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life".
Statistics: Posted by digitaltoast — 21 May 2014 10:55