cambgull wrote:Looks like we've found a Conservative then.
You are partly right about the two reasons UKIP have gained votes, but you have missed the third which is the steady increase of votes they have received the last couple elections due to the views drawing slightly more to the middle. You are also making the classic mistake of confusing UKIP with the BNP, which shows how much you're talking out of your backside, once again. The BNP are the ones who want to blame "Foreigners, blacks, Muslims, Jews and Gays" (such a middle class, detached from reality way of putting this, by the way). UKIP aren't about segregating certain societies who are already a part of Britain, it is about solving the problems we are currently having by stopping more from happening in the future, immigration being a prime example. The damage is already done by the Conservatives and Labour though, who have both spent too long bowing to political correctness.
If we don't stand up and actually make a change to the way this country is run, we will just carry on the same vicious cycle of picking the other party to the one we currently don't like. All that seems to happen at the moment is we are in a Conservative phase, where cut backs are made, taxes are increased and the focus is on increasing the money in the Government pot. Funnily enough, the only two good things in terms of money going to the general public's pockets are Lib Dem policies. Eventually though, we'll get fed up of oppression from the Conservatives so we'll end up with a Labour Government who will put the money back in the public's pockets. Except they'll totally screw up the country in the process and we'll end up with another Conservative Government who make cut backs and oppress the working class again.
Honestly, what is the point of doing this over and over again? It just shows how stupid and short-sighted our nation is. We're full of too many people who have no knowledge of politics and vote for the shadow party solely because they don't like the current incumbents and then we have too many people who vote for one party and one party only, because they've "always voted for that party". Despite this unchanging allegiance, they have no idea about any of the policies their party are standing for. Labour or the Tories could make one of their main policies the want to murder all of the working and middle classes and I bet you they'd still get a quarter of the votes from people who don't really have any interest in politics and wouldn't have a clue who or what they are voting for.
I'n not confusing the two at all, I am entirely aware of the difference. The BNP say what UKIP are thinking, and, on occasion, what UKIP say...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politic ... lieve.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politic ... emark.html
That was with all of 20 seconds and Google.
A look at the local council manifesto reads like the after dinner conversation at an old folks home. No more foreigners, more prison time for everyone convicted of everything, deporting foreign criminals, lower taxes but more services. Yeah, all sounds lovely, but there's absolutely no plan as to how they might go about achieving this.
Closing the borders to all but 50,000 people per year, yeah, lovely, until that means we can either have students or doctors or nurses or other professionals, rather than all of them. Sack off the students and we are relying entirely on British talent to drive us forward. Sack off foreign Doctors and nurses and we will have to ditch the NHS. Other professionals and we will have a massive shortage of scientists, engineers and thinkers.
Tax foreign lorries using British roads. Lovely idea, except, to make it viable and worthwhile (it will cost a fortune to administrate) the rates would have to be astronomical, which will simply deter companies from sending goods to Britain. Either that, or the companies which do choose to pay will simply pass on the additional cost to the customer. That lovely loaf of bread you bought for a quid this morning, if this lot have their way, will be a fiver. Lovely, excellent, at least our Prime Minister is a smoker and there's no NHS anymore, so with any luck, he'll be dead soon. But wait, there's more...
The reason we can't deport foreign criminals is the ECHR and our domestic equivalent, the HRA 1998. Sure, this legislation makes it impossible for us to deport a couple of people we might otherwise wish to get rid of (although, quite why we want to take a known* terrorist out of a British jail where we can keep an eye on him and give him to Jordan, where he is just as likely as not to "go missing" is beyond me). However, this is the same legislation which guarantees that no one here will be tortured by the State, prevents compulsory or forced conscription, prevents detention without trial, prevents the State being quite permitted to arrest anyone, for anything, without redress. Prevents what you said in your post (and what I said in mine) from being made into a criminal offence for which you may be punished retrospectively.
Now, of course, there is no guarantee that, should the HRA be repealed and our membership of the EU be forfeited, that any of these things would happen, but at least at the moment, if they do, those responsible can be stopped. It's a bit like having car insurance. Sure, it's expensive and the chances are, you won't crash, but if you do, on the off chance that it does happen, you haven't a leg to stand on, and that feeling is considerably worse than the alternative of forking over a couple of hundred quid a year.
The UKIP policies and promises have been laughed at by plenty of people who know. The numbers, even to someone who doesn't know seem simply ridiculous. They bang on about saving money by sacking all the council officials earning too much and reducing expenses, but these sums are trifling, they won't make the merest dent in the amount we already owe, let alone the money UKIP will need to hire all these extra policemen, border officials, prison guards, judges, CPS lawyers, people to assess the tax liabilities of foreign lorries, people to assess the viability and usefulness of virtually every single public sector worker or department in order to see if they can be safely scrapped, all the extra benefit payments to the millions of people who they hope to lay off as "red tape nobodies". Their 40% increase in the defence budget, for what purpose exactly? The military already spends 99% of its time sitting about waiting for a war which will never come. The other 1% is deployed in the desert, fighting a war which wouldn't exist if we simply came home and stopped sticking our noses into other people's business.
UKIP are just like the Lib Dems have been for a number of years, making all sorts of promises they have absolutely no hope of implementing because they are unworkable and unaffordable for our nation. Yes, it's a lovely idea, and yes, there are times when I see a piece on the regional news and wish that we did have a PM who would bring back hanging for happy slapping and yobbish behaviour and I do wish that we could tax everyone but me to within an inch of their lives so that I may have an extra few quid in my pocket, but in the real world, that simply isn't going to happen and it can't happen and that is right.
We have, over the years, dug ourselves a bit of a hole. I blame the NHS and, if it were up to me, I would adopt the American system of private health insurance. We, as a nation, simply cannot afford to run a welfare state and a National Health Service. Since it is impractical to scrap the welfare state, the NHS has to go. It would not only save the country enough money to see us back on a steady course, but it would make people more responsible for their behaviour. Want to cut smoking and drinking and stupidity rates, make people start paying their own health insurance and see how many people like cancer sticks enough to pay £500/month premiums.
Net migration into the UK is very small, if you take out the students who come here but do not settle permanently, that number is almost inconsequential. UKIP make a big noise about foreigners coming here and taking our jobs, but have a look at the Job Centre website and tell me there is a job shortage. A quick search on there right now shows 1815 jobs available within 20 miles of my postcode. Bearing in mind that 40% of that circumference is occupied by the Atlantic Ocean and we start to see that there really are an awful lot of jobs available. The approach being taken presently, under the Points Based System, alongside our obligations under the 1951 Refugee Convention means that only those who will contribute to the UK are being allowed in, alongside those who are here because their own countries are unsafe (predominantly because they are not offered protection under an ECHR/HRA style piece of legislation)
Matt.