What's Italian for 'kipper? Anti-migrant stunt goes awry.

[WinstonWolf]

zygalski said:

WinstonWolf said:

Nope, they thrive on giving the electorate what they want, a chance for a simple In/Out vote on our membership of the EU superstate.

This is simply a failure in understanding in terms of you projecting your own priorities onto the electorate as a whole.
Ask the person on the street if they think the EU should have more or less power & of course, most will say the EU should have less. That I would not dispute for one moment.
However, ask the same people to prioritise these:

NHS
Education
Jobs
Membership of EU
Housing market
Taxation

and most would put membership of the EU at the bottom.
Until this light bulb goes on in your head, I'm afraid there is little I can do to help you understand why UKIP will get no seats next year.

Now ask them if unelected bureaucrats in Brussels should set this policy.

Why bother with the smear tactics if you're not running scared?

If it's a foregone conclusion you're wasting your own time, why would you bother?

[anonymous-user]

Brussels does not set policy on most things. The UK is still self governing in most vital respects. I have yet to meet a 'kipper who has taken any time or trouble to study and understand how the EU actually works and how it doesn't. There is much about the EU to criticise, and I am undecided which way to vote if we get a referendum, but the EU's most vocal critics haven't bothered to research and understand the thing that they are criticising. They base their criticism fundamentally on the fact that the EU is "foreign", and that is what really trails the coat of UKIP and its benighted followers. UKIP is not so much a political party as a sort of quasi-religious cult, based on belief, not reason, and led by a typical cult leader: a charismatic fraud.

[zygalski]

WinstonWolf said:

Now ask them if unelected bureaucrats in Brussels should set this policy.

Why bother with the smear tactics if you're not running scared?

If it's a foregone conclusion you're wasting your own time, why would you bother?

I'm not scared at all. I'm just trying to help you understand why the UKIP bubble has or is just about to burst.
The simple fact is that UKIP won't get any seats next year. 11-12% share of the vote would be an exceptional result for them. Their support at least in the medium term is also set to decline steadily as the UK economy has stabilised & will now begin to grow again & most people will feel more content & less likely to vote for a single issue protest party than they did over the last few years.
Mainstream politics has already paid lip service to the UKIP agenda. Time for you to move on.
See those other priorities I mentioned above? Those will always be far more important to 90%+ of the electorate than membership of the EU.

[FredClogs]

What's more the UK system of creating and passing legislation contains many tiers of unelected people throughout the process.

The idea that in UK parliamentary MPs are or should be the only people who instigate and pass legislation is as daft as the idea that faceless EU bureaucrats are running and ruining our lives.

[anonymous-user]

My work revolves to a large extent around legislation and regulations. Most of it has nothing to do with the EU, and most of it has nothing to do with Parliament. It's mostly prepared by departmental (UK) civil servants, and often badly (but that's another debate).

We are very badly misgoverned (party in power regardless), but the misgovernment happens mainly in Whitehall and Downing Street, not in Brussels, Luxembourg, or Strasbourg.

[AJS-]

10PS
If he's just after the money, why would he care about directing policy? Heck, join the Lib Dems if you have to. They all get the same expenses, right?

[otolith]

Breadvan72 said:

My work revolves to a large extent around legislation and regulations. Most of it has nothing to do with the EU, and most of it has nothing to do with Parliament. It's mostly prepared by departmental (UK) civil servants, and often badly (but that's another debate).

We are very badly misgoverned (party in power regardless), but the misgovernment happens mainly in Whitehall and Downing Street, not in Brussels, Luxembourg, or Strasbourg.

In which case, why are you sufficiently concerned about the EU's democratic deficit that you are undecided on how to vote in an in/out referendum?

[10 Pence Short]

AJS- said:

10PS
If he's just after the money, why would he care about directing policy? Heck, join the Lib Dems if you have to. They all get the same expenses, right?

I'm not sure being a parliamentary backbench MP for any of the mainstream parties is as lucrative as running your own party in the EU. Read up on the expenses available if you get chance, they're mind boggling.

Ultimately though, it's the attention and the networking that will make the money (see Mandelson and co.) which, again, aren't available in the same way to unimportant mere constituency MPs.

Farage has an ego and an eye for spotting opportunities. And that is about that, as far as I can see.

[Mr Snap]

10 Pence Short said:

AJS- said:

10PS
If he's just after the money, why would he care about directing policy? Heck, join the Lib Dems if you have to. They all get the same expenses, right?

I'm not sure being a parliamentary backbench MP for any of the mainstream parties is as lucrative as running your own party in the EU. Read up on the expenses available if you get chance, they're mind boggling.

Ultimately though, it's the attention and the networking that will make the money (see Mandelson and co.) which, again, aren't available in the same way to unimportant mere constituency MPs.

Farage has an ego and an eye for spotting opportunities. And that is about that, as far as I can see.

Plus, there's more competition within the three major parties.

Farage simply spotted a gap in the political market and is now exploiting it ruthlessly. The last thing he wants is real power because that would require him to square the circle of all his contradictory policy statements (we can't even call them policies, because he's already rubbished UKIP's previous policies).

[Countdown]

zygalski said:

This is simply a failure in understanding in terms of you projecting your own priorities onto the electorate as a whole.
Ask the person on the street if they think the EU should have more or less power & of course, most will say the EU should have less. That I would not dispute for one moment.
However, ask the same people to prioritise these:

NHS
Education
Jobs
Membership of EU
Housing market
Taxation

and most would put membership of the EU at the bottom.
Until this light bulb goes on in your head, I'm afraid there is little I can do to help you understand why UKIP will get no seats next year.

I think if you added immigration to that list it would score highly with a lot of people, and that's why UKIP is so popular in some circles. My gut feeling is most people aren't really bothered about EU membership, how we have (supposedly) ceded our legal powers to "unelected democrats" etc etc etc, improved controls on immigration are the issue.

[10 Pence Short]

Countdown said:

I think if you added immigration to that list it would score highly with a lot of people, and that's why UKIP is so popular in some circles. My gut feeling is most people aren't really bothered about EU membership, how we have (supposedly) ceded our legal powers to "unelected democrats" etc etc etc, improved controls on immigration are the issue.

So who are these unelected democrats?

[Countdown]

10 Pence Short said:

So who are these unelected democrats?

I read about them on the Internet ergo FACT

Admittedly i was confused about how they could be "unelected democrats" - isn't that like saying meat eating vegetarians?

[WinstonWolf]

zygalski said:

WinstonWolf said:

Now ask them if unelected bureaucrats in Brussels should set this policy.

Why bother with the smear tactics if you're not running scared?

If it's a foregone conclusion you're wasting your own time, why would you bother?

I'm not scared at all. I'm just trying to help you understand why the UKIP bubble has or is just about to burst.
The simple fact is that UKIP won't get any seats next year. 11-12% share of the vote would be an exceptional result for them. Their support at least in the medium term is also set to decline steadily as the UK economy has stabilised & will now begin to grow again & most people will feel more content & less likely to vote for a single issue protest party than they did over the last few years.
Mainstream politics has already paid lip service to the UKIP agenda. Time for you to move on.
See those other priorities I mentioned above? Those will always be far more important to 90%+ of the electorate than membership of the EU.

So why are you so scared of them?

[otolith]

zygalski said:

This is simply a failure in understanding in terms of you projecting your own priorities onto the electorate as a whole.
Ask the person on the street if they think the EU should have more or less power & of course, most will say the EU should have less. That I would not dispute for one moment.
However, ask the same people to prioritise these:

NHS
Education
Jobs
Membership of EU
Housing market
Taxation

and most would put membership of the EU at the bottom.
Until this light bulb goes on in your head, I'm afraid there is little I can do to help you understand why UKIP will get no seats next year.

It is quite likely correct, however for the Scottish contingent;

NHS
Education
Jobs
Membership of United Kingdom
Housing market
Taxation

Why the difference?

I suspect that it's because the Scottish Nationalists have hitched their wagon to populist Left wing causes. UKIP have hitched theirs to a substantial extent to immigration, however the underlying constitutional issues are in both cases largely independent of the effects being used to illustrate them.

[anonymous-user]

otolith said:

Breadvan72 said:

My work revolves to a large extent around legislation and regulations. Most of it has nothing to do with the EU, and most of it has nothing to do with Parliament. It's mostly prepared by departmental (UK) civil servants, and often badly (but that's another debate).

We are very badly misgoverned (party in power regardless), but the misgovernment happens mainly in Whitehall and Downing Street, not in Brussels, Luxembourg, or Strasbourg.

In which case, why are you sufficiently concerned about the EU's democratic deficit that you are undecided on how to vote in an in/out referendum?

I deliberately said most not all. The EU has a non marginal impact on aspects of UK governance (not nearly the impact that UKIP dishonestly alleges, but an impact nonetheless), and for that reason the democratic deficit and financial inefficiency are worth being concerned about, as are the effects on the developing world of the trade barrier. I'm not worried about migrancy. Can the EU be saved by reform, or is it too late for that? I don't know. Are the economic benefits worth taking the democratic hit for? Again, I don't know.

That's why at present I am a Eurofederalist who is a floating voter on whether the UK should stay in the version of the EU currently on offer.

A word on migrancy: A few years ago some Brits were up in arms about asylum seekers and assorted (mostly brown) people coming from various of the World's nasty places. Now those same Brits are up in arms about how unfair it is that (mostly brown) people can't come anymore and only dodgy East Europeans can. They said that there had been uncontrolled non EU migration (this was never true), but now they say that the non EU controls are too tough (sometimes they are) and complain of free movement within the EU, despite the fact that this was openly part of the deal when the UK joined.

A lot of the Eurosceptics complain of the EU doing things that they didn't think that it would do when they voted back in the 1970s, but they must have failed to read the documents at the time - all of the free movement stuff was on the cards from the word go. There has been some new stuff, not all of it good, since then, and some of that is worth complaining about, but free movement should not come as a surprise even to those who say they thought it was all just a trading club.

The Common Market, by the way, has never gone away - most of what the EU does is still about the Common Market.

[WinstonWolf]

Breadvan72 said:

otolith said:

Breadvan72 said:

My work revolves to a large extent around legislation and regulations. Most of it has nothing to do with the EU, and most of it has nothing to do with Parliament. It's mostly prepared by departmental (UK) civil servants, and often badly (but that's another debate).

We are very badly misgoverned (party in power regardless), but the misgovernment happens mainly in Whitehall and Downing Street, not in Brussels, Luxembourg, or Strasbourg.

In which case, why are you sufficiently concerned about the EU's democratic deficit that you are undecided on how to vote in an in/out referendum?

I deliberately said most not all. The EU has a non marginal impact on aspects of UK governance (not nearly the impact that UKIP dishonestly alleges, but an impact nonetheless), and for that reason the democratic defici and financial inefficiency are worth being concerned about, as are the effects on the developing world of the trade barrier. I'm not worried about migrancy. Can the EU be saved by reform, or is it too late for that? I don't know. Are the economic benefits worth taking the democratic hit for? Again, I don't know. That's why at present I am a Eurofedralist who is a floating voter on whether the UK should stay in the version of the EU currently on offer.

A word on migrancy: A few years ago some Brits were up in arms about asylum seekers and assorted (mostly brown) people coming from various of the World's nasty places. Now those same Brits are up in arms about how unfair it is that (mostly brown) people can't come anymore and only dodgy East Europeans can. They said that there had been uncontrolled non EU migration (this was never true), but now they say that the non EU controls are too tough (sometimes they are) and complain of free movement within the EU, despite the fact that this was openly part of the deal when the UK joined.

A lot of the Eurosceptics complain of the EU doing things that they didn't think that it would do when they voted back in the 1970s, but they must have failed to read the documents at the time - all of the free movement stuff was on the cards from the word go. There has been some new stuff, not all of it good, since then, and some of that is worth complaining about, but free movement should not come as a surprise even to those who say they thought it was all just a trading club.

The Common Market, by the way, has never gone away - most of what the EU does is still about the Common Market.

So it's the fault of the electorate for not reading the small print?

Have you actually read the Maastricht Treaty in full?

[10 Pence Short]

Countdown said:

10 Pence Short said:

So who are these unelected democrats?

I read about them on the Internet ergo FACT

Admittedly i was confused about how they could be "unelected democrats" - isn't that like saying meat eating vegetarians?

I think you perhaps meant 'bureaucrats'.

[Countdown]

10 Pence Short said:

I think you perhaps meant 'bureaucrats'.

Like the man with the prosthetic foot - I stand corrected

So what do MEPs do?

[anonymous-user]

WinstonWolf said:

So why are you so scared of them?

He isn't, it's just part of a fairly typical UKIP fantasy that he is. Being a 'kipper must at least involve the pleasure of a rich fantasy life, but also the constant embarrassment of having to say "all those hatey homophobes and Bongo Bongo nutters aren't really us". Upsides and downsides, I suppose.

[10 Pence Short]

Countdown said:

Like the man with the prosthetic foot - I stand corrected

So what do MEPs do?

Get voted in by their constituents in democratic elections.