Earthquake!

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That is all.

Oh, and we did well last night. Your pals' demonisation of UKIP failed, thomas81.

From what I can see, they've got half the seats the Lib Dems did. The LIB DEMS. By all media accounts, everyone hates the Lib Dems, and everyone loves UKIP (by the coverage, you'd think the only people not prepared to vote for that shower were those already holding political office for other parties). So what happened?

There was an Assembly by-election just up the road from here in about August last year. Plaid Cymru absolutely soared, getting 60% - that's 60% - of the vote. UKIP came third, with 14%. Guess which party got the headlines, who the average viewer/reader would be forgiven for thinking had actually won the seat?

There's an epsiode of The Simpsons where Itchy and Scratchy introduce a new character, Poochie, to be voiced by Homer. Poochie is unpopular, but Homer thinks he has the answer: "One, Poochie needs to be louder, angrier, and have access to a time machine. Two, whenever Poochie's not on screen, all the other characters should be asking, "Where's Poochie"?"

It didn't work for Poochie, but it seems the BBC and UKIP have been happy to give it a go for Farridge and co.

Down 5% YOY is "doing well"? Even though this one coincided with a European election?
Also, loving the claim from UKIP councillor Suzanne Evans that they have trouble appealing to the educated.

Can you provide these statistics?

We gained 161 councillors from that night, whilst your lot lost over 307 councillors.

We stood in Preston for the very first time (the branch simply was not strong enough previously to do this). We got a very good mix of second and third places, and we attained a higher vote share than the Lib Dems overall (we got 23% v their 17%). One particular ward was a big surprise to me, considering we were unable to do anything there. The candidate for that ward was a former Conservative.

Talking of which, the Labour and particularly some of the LD politicians are not nice people. The LDs were personally abusive towards myself a number of times for no reason at all. One of the Labour councillors in a seat we weren't contesting oddly treated me as though I was mentally ret*d (he was pissed off that we shunted them far into third place in one seat!), for what reason I cannot ascertain. Some of the other Labour people were fine though and actually pretty friendly. (A lot of Labour voters are looking at UKIP these days.) The Conservatives were guarded but not hostile or abusive.

We did amazingly well in some very entrenched wards. People are angry.

Some of the press coverage was not favourable to us as we felt we had been stitched up by one particular story in one of the local papers. That cost us some votes, but I doubt we would have won a seat anyway. It would have been nice though. Plenty for us to build on. I think we'll make a start at the next meeting.

They're being very widely reported. This blog has a pretty graph.

You can simultaneously be down YOY and gain a lot of councillors because councillors do not serve one year terms. You are up on four years ago, but down on last year.


I initially misread this as you being called mentally ret*d and was going to apologise profusely on behalf of those strangers.
That Labour guy was probably just an idiot who picked up your autism and presumed you aren't as good at communicating as you are.

Nonetheless, those Lib Dems should not have been nasty towards you.


This story?
http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/ukip/ukip ... ebook-3791

This so called 'earthquake' will hardly be paradigm changing, and shouldn't be overstated. One thing that can't be overstated however, is the nauseating amount of exposure on television that UKIP has recieved, with the BBC continually blowing smoke up Nigel Farage's arse. It is hardly any wonder they did quite well. Once the UKIP project fails to deliver (which it will) the electorate will get bored of them and it will die off in much the same way the BNP did. Then those looking to take up where UKIP left off, once their intolerant bigotry is exposed for all to see (click), they will be forced to recoup farther to the left. In much the same way UKIP tried to carve a niche for themselves to the left of the BNP.

https://vine.co/v/Mw1V6BzT7ma

Indeed.

This letter in today's Guardian makes a vital point that has passed many commentators by. The culturally diverse and cosmopolitan areas like London, and indeed Bradford, are the ones that rejected UKIP. The less culturally diverse and less cosmopolitan areas are the ones that did not. This is a really, really important point to note, in my opinion. UKIP KNOW what they are doing. Appealing to those areas of least diverse population, telling them that their travails are everyone else's fault - the fault of the people who don't live where they do.

Last edited by thomas81 on 24 May 2014, 2:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Media coverage of UKIP is pretty negative, I have to say. I often hear the Greens go on about us getting all this TV coverage, but it's not positive. It's a smear campaign that we've suffered. We've had the BBC and Channel 4 have such relentlessly anti-UKIP voices that in the BBC's case they've been forced to apologise for the two of them that were discovered. Jon Snow the other night was a disgrace. If our policies were questioned honestly, then yeah, you might well find flaws in them.

I'm not objecting to bad people being exposed within UKIP, but on the same basis as any other political party. There are a lot of nasties in the three main parties (as well as the Greens) but we don't hear about them every single day.

If you want the kind of coverage we've been having, you're welcome to it. I think the Greens should be relieved that the media have constantly been out to get us as it means that when you are asked questions, you get a much easier ride.

I have read that the Greens are struggling to fend off infiltration from the extreme left at the moment. This isn't good as I think the Greens are absolutely batshit crazy but there does need to be a party for cuddly environmentalist types to vote for.



I don't think so. We're here to stay.



You see, I wouldn't mind voting for a traditional Labour version of UKIP. Anti-EU with a commitment to freedom from an honest, plain speaking centre-left bent. Indeed, traditional Labour voters are now our most diehard supporters (more so than shire Tories). It doesn't matter where it is on the political spectrum, and that position is one I have a lot of respect for.

The thing that you don't understand is this: the middle class left are all in favour of multiculti, but a lot of working class Labour are not. In any way. They are often more socially conservative than I am and they are angry. Really angry. Which is why the BNP did so well for a time. They're not raving Nazis, they are just ordinary people in working-class, often run-down, deprived areas an they have been neglected and urinated on for decades. They will vote for any party that allows them to show their discontent with mass immigration, with Islamisation, with what has been done to them and what has been imposed on them.

These traditional Labour voters are the people you despise, hate and fear. They're good, honest, hardworking people. Perhaps they can't speak right, perhaps they aren't educated. But they're there and they are sick of being treated like scum. And whether it is under the UKIP guise or that of another party, they will continue to show what they think of how they have been contemptuously treated by the political class and the metropolitan ruling middle class left.

Channel 4 is at best, loosely friendly to the Lib Dems so of course Jon Snow is going to give them a rough ride. I have to say I'm not a fan of their Piers Morgan brand of smug arsedness either.

I'd be willing to gamble that you can't find any green party members that have made the sort of homophobic or xenophobic gaffes that UKIP members have.

Coverage is a good thing, if you use it right. Its not like they don't get right to reply, I have since Farage and his henchmen on Question Time plenty of times.

'infiltration' from the extreme left is nothing as cancerous as infiltration from the BNP or similar, as UKIP has suffered from. I have no issue dealing with people from the communist party or Socialist Workers Party. I was a card carrying member of the SWP for a couple of years but left because of their methodology.



Thats not your decision to make, that will be decided by the electorate, in the years and decades to come.

The BNP thought they were here to stay too. UKIP will only be around as long as people haven't sussed that right wing and anti immigration policies won't solve their problems.



If you represent the contemporary UKIP member/supporter, the bolded part sums up all that needs to be said on your contempt for the average white van man.

As the snippet from the Guardian above says, UKIP have knowingly exploited a climate of ignorance for their ill gotten gains. Most people who have voted for them, simply don't come from these so called multicultural hell holes that UKIP want us to fear.

It also shouldnt be forgotten that a significant amount of people from working class areas haven't voted. Not because they disagree with the greens necessarilly. Precisely because they are conventional Labour supporters who feel betrayed at the party forgetting its left wing roots and because they genuinely feel that parties like UKIP don't represent them.

Last edited by thomas81 on 24 May 2014, 2:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

That is the same Guardian that made a deal with the Conservative Party is it? The deal that the Tories would give the Guardian (!) damaging information on UKIP as long as they left the Tories alone?

The Guardian can go to hell. It's a piece of disgusting, self-hating, antisemitic trash.



The Bradford that gained a UKIP councillor you mean? We didn't get any UKIP councillors in Lancashire. Perhaps the people rejected us?

As for London: well, that depends which London you actually mean. If you mean middle-to-upper class London or some - but not all! - of immigrant London, then yes, you have a point. But not the Afro-Caribbean community. London is a very different place than the rest of the country, as is Bradford. It is different even than from around its fringes. Consider that adjacent Essex was very strongly pro-UKIP.

Elated to see that dear old Ulster voted in three UKIP councillors by the way. The TUV did very well too.



That is not necessarily true. I think Rotherham is quite culturally diverse, thank you. (I'm so proud that Maureen Vines defeated the deputy leader of the council, by the way. Good work!)

I'm more interested in the point the journalist made rather than the integrity of her employers or any strawman or poorly grounded slander you choose to throw out.

Yes well my understanding is that Essex is also predominantely white-working class.

three out of how many? Ulster shouldnt be used as a yardstick of political rationality in any shape or form.

Some people at the BBC against UKIP =/= BBC anti UKIP. A badger can't sneeze without Farage being invited to comment on the matter by Dimbleby or Neil or the present hour's news anchor.

Exactly! You could put a badger in a suit with a rosette and nominate it for election, if you keep inviting it to question time and other soundbite opportunities it will do as well as UDIK.

The only difference is I would trust a badger more with our immigration, fiscal policy and diplomacy at Brussels.

Mostly reporting on Israel/Palestine from a Palestinian perspective is not anti-Semitic.

Plus it would allow for many puns about 'badgering'.

Reporting on the various racist and sexist and homophobic attitudes of a political party's candiates is not negative reporting. It is reporting on the negative. If your party draws in a lot of those with such 'negative' views, I'd recommend a bit of a think.

UKIP are unfortunate in that they haven't worked out the game yet: you pay lip service to the apparent liberal PC discourse, all the while pursuing policies that hurt those most vulnerable. This is the meaning and reality of political professionalism. So David Cameron's heart can be seen to bleed for the plight of the disabled, all the while his government are cutting back support and forcing those incapable into looking for work. What's more, in an act of actual political correctness - because when has mainstream politics been on the side of those with least? - you can call your hateful efforts 'helping the disabled back to work'.

All UKIP apparently have - all they seem to be happy to be known for - is an EU referendum and scaremongering about/slandering migrants in a view to strict immigration controls. That they're against workers' rights, and in favour of a flat tax, etc, they don't seem to bring up.

Calling any source that is even mildly sympathetic to the Palestinians anti semitic is an exhausted and opaquely desperate method by Zionist supporters to defuse and dismantle any criticism of Israel before any greivances can be examined in a fair and honest way.

That should be clear by now. On this forum, I regularly get accused of anti semitism for using sources such as electronic intifada or any website that even has a Palestinian flag or icon. Or anything which dares suggest that Israel might be less than morally infallible, or that the land being taken by Israeli settlers is rightfully the property of the arabs.

I guess its a case of throw enough mud and hope some of it sticks.

its also a method practiced by the usual suspects on this forum, ad nauseam. I even had a moderator PM me personally accusing me (wrongly) of anti semitism because of threads i have started on Palestinian advocacy. There should really be a rule on this forum against abuse of the anti semitism card. Not only is it intellectually dishonest and whitewashes crimes against the Palestinians, it does a diservice to jews as it insults holocaust victims and serves to undermine other genuine grievances against bona fide anti semitism.

There is no such thing as 'left wing' anti semitism which is a hideous non sequitur that I see liberally thrown around this forum. The right wing doesn't really care about Jews. Jews and Israel, is a stick that they like to get out whenever they are losing the argument. Sort of like when a riot cop beats a protestor. When it comes to opportunities to fight genuine anti semitism, against holocaust deniers and hitler worshippers like the BNP or NF, The right wing, especially UKIP and those like them have an absentee record. Where where the right of centre during the battle of cable street? Absent. Where were they during the Oldham riots of 2001 whenever the left stood against BNP members marauding the town? Nowhere to be seen. UKIP are more likely to recruit anti-semites than to expose their views.