Be Excellent To Each Other

I didn't scan it, but it's still in the kitchen.

The Lib councillors put out a photocopied page called Liberal Focus. This was called Liberals (Out Of) Focus.

Oh hoho.

I was under the impression that he was, other than the stint in the city.

I thought he worked in the City for many years? (We can debate whether that's an actual "job", mind, but at least he had one at all lol)

Farage has been an MEP for 15 years. In all that time he has achieved nothing other than being friends with people who support the murderers like Anders Breivik.

He's been standing for election for 20 years. He was a banker; but is now a fully fledged career politician.

The think that pisses me off the most is that he's somehow got this 'man in the street' reputation despite being the exact opposite. Most people voting UKIP hate the EU and immigration, but disagree completely with other UKIP policies.

Farage is a far right, silver spoon, rich lunatic. A public schoolboy whose daddy got him a job to make him rich. Farage wants less governance and oversight of banking. He wants to repeal all human rights legislation. He's fine with firing people for being pregnant, gay, whatever. He makes Cavey look like Karl Marx.

He's a fucking vile, rich, out of touch wanker who has lucked into one policy that has attracted a lot of racists and disaffected people (Farage, not Cavey!)

Beyond the anti-EU platform he has nothing. When UKIP win these elections, nothing will happen. They don't even turn up to the jobs they are elected to. They rip off the expenses for every penny like the corrupt fuckers they are, and achieve nothing in the parliament.

I have nothing but contempt for the party and their baseless, hateful lies.

It also amuses me that Farage says that all our laws are made in Brussels (an obvious lie). Surely then if they win these elections they run the country! Cool. Go pass a law, Nigel. Go on.

I agree with Curio.

I very largely agree as well mate; this is what I allude to in my "very dangerous time" remarks.

Farage is no fool, though, and he's well and truly caught the imagination of a jaded, disaffected and until now apathetic English electorate that's suddenly decided they've truly had enough of their concerns - some of which are legitimate - being not simply ignored, but actually rejected with total contempt, by the people who are supposed to be, and are paid to represent them? He's created this zeitgeist which now has momentum.

I'm dreading the next few days.

Totally agree. He's not an idiot (though his strength is not fielding questions on the fly).

Don't hold back mate

Joking aside, it is still a Lib Dem policy. It just wasn't ever one of the higher priority ones, so it got lost in the coalition agreement.

The most depressing thing in all of this is that UKIP will totally split the Tory vote, and as a result we will have a fucking Labour government - and Millipede. Seriously, I don't think I'll be able to bear it, I really don't.

I don't understand why people vote for UKIP for MEPs. All they do is go and refuse to vote on issues, even issues that they agree with. But they still draw pay and take up space. So rather than fighting the EU to try and make it better for the UK they simply abstain. It's stupid. Can MEPs even make the UK leave the EU? It's that entirely up the MPs?

All the parties are mostly up their own arse and out of touch with everyone aside from the rich donors they need to run elections.

For the last few years the rich have gained more and paid less, the welfare state grows larger with often perceived injustices around EU immigration.

All the time the middle band who work hard to own their own homes and better themselves get screwed for tax and are refinancing a still corrupt and out of control banking system who borrow at 0.5% and lend to every else at 4-25%

It’s these people that are attracted to UKIP not because then see them as a credible government but because they want a protest vote and the other more credible parties to take notice.

But the stupid thing is that UKIP are massively, massively pro-establishment and pro-corruption and pro-rich people getting highly paid.

So people are voting for a party for the wrong reasons.

If you want to protest then vote Green.

Nobody votes for UKIP because logic and reason are their strong suits. They're basically taking the "thick as pigshit" vote from all the other parties.

Compromise is, sadly, a dirty word in politics.

Let's be honest, most of the electorate are thick as pigshit though? Sorry, I know that sounds obnoxious, but how the hell else could you explain someone slavishly voting Labour despite their utterly lamentable record - much of which they've had to come out and actually publicly apologise for? It's like turkeys voting for Christmas.

Never mind voting, you should become an MEP!

80K a year basic, huge allowances for assitansts, staying in Brussels and even 40K a year for having an office at home

Most of which just needs to be claimed with no recipts

Money for old rope for 5 years!

MEPs don't have that power, no.

UKIP sits inside the smallest group in the European parliament, which is a far-right group called Europe for Freedom and Democracy (EFD). So UKIP are very marginalised in the European parliament, and have many extremist and racist parties in their EP group. The EFD's deputy leader even praised mass-murderer Anders Breivik! The UK media completely ignore the extreme nature of UKIP and its allies, however.

And you wonder why your average Brit is pissed off with EU, and mainstream politicians? Farage has struck political gold and he knows it. He's making hay big time.

Yes but at the same time he will be filling his boots as well!

Yes, that's indeed ironic (albeit he would, I am sure, speak plenty about "having to break the system from within" type BS, whilst snuffling up fine truffles with the rest of the Eurocrat machine)

Talk about having your cake and eating it. Gah.

He's Oswald Mosley 2.0. None of Farage's type of right-wing xenophobic demagoguery is unfamiliar to anyone who knows and understands the history of the 20th century - the targets and presentation may have changed, but the underlying concept hasn't.

Because as disappointed as they may be by Labour they hate Tories even more and don't want to see another fucking Tory government.

I absolutely do not get why Nick Clegg takes so much stick for this? Yes, he made this pledge, but it was obviously only ever deliverable if he could form a majority LD government, which he obviously could not (in fact, could only form a small part of a Tory led Coalition)

I don't agree with Nick Clegg on many things particularly, but I think him and his party have served their country with dignity, great courage and some distinction. His party have been successful in softening the Tory hammer blow for many people, without utterly wrecking the economy.

...And that crass tribalistic BS is, effectively, thick-as-pigshit, gurning stupidity.

Get real. I'm sure loads of people vote for the Tory party because they see it as the least worst option too.

Indeed. They're stupid as well.

(Which is why I said "most of the electorate", not just Labour voters - albeit they are frankly the most demonstrable example of this)

Nope, can't be arsed with this fucking ding dong when you're in tit mode.

That smiley is just awesome.

@Mark - no ding dongs with me mate, just saying that UKIP or Tory voters don't have a monopoly on stupid.

And I totally used it on the wrong forum.

Er - oops.

I agree.

People who waste their vote annoy me.
I'm talking about the people who vote for someone that they don't believe in, be it a protest vote or to stop someone else getting into power etc...

The calls from people on Twitter etc... to vote for anyone other than UKIP to stop them getting in, are just as dangerous as the UKIP voters in my opinion.

I've long thought it would be good to have (anonymous until they're all over) presentations on what the people you might vote for do actually stand for before being allowed to vote.

Sadly not really a feasable suggestion, but some way of guaranteeing that a voting person has actually bothered to find out what they're voting for would be good. (and perhaps get a bit more sympathy when they turn round.later and claim that what they got wasn't what they voted for)

Of course what I'd actually like is a diverse group of people working together to find decent solutions rather than the seesaw tribal bullshit and jeering that we currently have.

So very much this. It appears to me that you rarely see someone in politics talking about what we should do to solve a problem when, instead, they could just spend loads of time slagging off their opponents idea instead; as if being negative about other shit was somehow a positive contribution. Or you get the media making a shitstorm out of stuff like whether David Cameron eats fucking sausage rolls or not. Put it all together and trying to give a shit is an uphill struggle.

Yeah, but diverse committees don't tend to work so well, unfortunately. All you end up with, for much of the time, is a hamstrung, directionless, impotent talking shop, when actually, shit needs to get done. How many companies are (successfully) run like this?

Nice idea, but I prefer the much riskier option of actual leadership, conviction and coherent political vision/objectives - but you've just got to hope you're being led by a skilled, educated politician with a plan, like Thatcher, as opposed to some media crowd-pleaser guy like Blair. (Or Brown, who wasn't even a crowd-pleaser).

(As for would-be voters having to give a presentation before casting their vote...? Meh! I don't think so; I bet half of the electorate wouldn't even be able to deliver a presentation on anything, let alone contemporary politics!)

If they left the name of the party off the slips so you actually had to know who you were voting for it'd be a start.

I think you missed the entire point, there.

Not so much 'missed the point' as 'misread the point'.

No, I think I understood it perfectly well.

If you're going to introduce such impediments to people voting, you might as well scrap voting altogether and have done with it. The average person is clueless, lazy, badly educated and full of apathy, yet this isn't entirely their fault. They've probably gone through a lousy education system that's ill equipped them for anything much, if they're younger than 30.

Well you've mistyped something somewhere then. Dave was talking about voters sitting through a presentation made by the candidates before they were allowed to cast a vote. You then said:



Those two things aren't the same.

Ah right, yes, sorry I did misread it. My apologies.

Trouble with that is you'd have candidates squabbling over who goes first, last, could they be arsed, could voters be arsed sitting through up to six presentations etc etc = not practical.

It's definitely not practical for a few reasons as Dave himself admitted but I quite like the idea as a concept. Anything to try and make voters more informed before they make an actual decision, and I include myself fully in that judgement.

Just get some scientists to make a decent online poll about your opinion on certain issues, including their importance, and let it choose who you should vote for.

I did this survey thing today. It seems pretty neutral.

I'm 33% green apparently...

Yeah, it reckoned I should vote for the liberal democrats.

And that I shared two opinions with UKIP (One of which is because I misread the question as the opposite thing, so yeah...)
And I thought it was giving me a surprising amount of agreement with the conservatives, until I reliased I was looking at the results for the green party.

Here's that flyer. I reckon it's Labour