But you'd hardly notice if you read the BBC coverage.
I suppose articles in yesterday's newspapers pointing out that 100,000 Eastern European migrants now free to claim full benefits in Britain worth tens of millions of pounds after EU ruling will have helped us quite a bit.
On that happy note, I would like to point out that blogging will be light to non-existent until Saturday evening as I'm off to the UKIP Spring Conference.
Friday, 4 March 2011
UKIP came second in Barnsley by-election!
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16 comments:
With a whole 9%?
HEJ! I came close to winning the lottery last week. The guy next door got six numbers right!
Question for your conference. How are you going to get the meeja to think and talk about UKIP in other than single issue terms?
"Question for your conference. How are you going to get the meeja to think and talk about UKIP in other than single issue terms?"
For starters we need to ban Farage from saying EU or European Union and have him simply talk about policy, the party has already been shown in a negative light in claiming that we had no power over prisoner votes which were then voted on in parliament and decided to be ignored. Whilst it may yet transpire that we end up paying out compensation once individuals take their cases to the ECJ, it still put the party into the single issue spotlight.
What Norman Tebbit said on the matter was far more sensible. The ruling was based on a lie that parliament had not debated it. It actually had debated and voted on it just over 100 years ago, what the ECJ meant was it had not been debated SINCE our signing up to the ECHR. Now it has and parliament has yet again voted no, if we are still a sovereign nation, that vote must be respected.
One more thing:
The LIB DEMs lost their deposit na na na na na!!
SW: UKIP = Traditional Liberal/Whig?
BBC R4 was a bit more up front about UKIP coming second this morning.
As I've said before, AFAICS the name UKIP screams "single issue". The "Whig Party" is a good alternative, also the "Tory Party", if the Conservatives don't have rights to the name. Perhaps someone in UKIP should do some research to see which would be most appropriate.
L, I don't think anything with "Liberal" in the name is a good idea ATM.
B: It wasn't a suggestion for their name. More a comment on their philosophy.
How about 'The Party of Liberty' - after Hayek? He professed himself to be a Whig.
Have a good conference.
May I make an impertinent suggestion? Much as I love UKIP's willingness to consider unorthodox candidates, it is very important to follow court rules when soliciting votes.
Neat haircut, either casual shirt and clean trousers, or shirt, tie and suit, beard nicely trimed but not at all if possible (voters just don't like beards, they just don't). Women to follow business/casual - don't use fluffy jumpers, it suggests fluffy minds.
Obviously, you personally always do this but I've met several wonderful UKIP activists who forget how easy it is to give an adverse impression of themselves by looking eccentric when this is not in fact the case; they've just come from some other activity and haven't changed.
I know, I know, it's shallow and it shouldn't matter - but it does, and it is best they get used to it.
FT, 9% is v. good by our standards.
L, see what SW says.
L, B, as to the name, don't worry about it. All party names are ultimately meaningless, it's just a 'brand'. Parts of their local govt. manifesto for this year worry me greatly, they are far from small-government-free-market-liberal.
WOAR, that sounds very sensible. Have Ukippers turned up scruffy when canvassing round your way?
Scruffy would imply they didn't care; it's not like that - it's just that they work very hard and forget that if you wear a wax jacket and a bush hat, it may look odd to people who don't realize you've been at work.
Anti immigrant fear springs from a false belief that wages are paid out of capital/money. Total available money divided by total population. So more immies, less money each.
Both socialist and neo classical wage theory. This is how most economists think and police.
But wages are really paid out of the product of work. So the more people, the more work, the 'more' wages.
If something is stopping people working be brave and blame that not the workers.
Yes some immies are scroungers. And so are some locals. The point is?
Today Barnsley - tomorrow the world.
"As I've said before, AFAICS the name UKIP screams "single issue". The "Whig Party" is a good alternative, also the "Tory Party", if the Conservatives don't have rights to the name. Perhaps someone in UKIP should do some research to see which would be most appropriate."
Farage has. Something with the words 'English and 'Party' would do wonders for UKIP's electoral prospects. There is a huge upsurge of English nationalism out there just waiting to be tapped into. UKIP as a name just is, I feel, holding them back. And for the usual suspects note I said nationalism - not racism or xenophobia.
Anon: be very careful with the 'Tory' party. It carries a lot of baggage. Plus it isn't going to be accurate if UKIP goes Whiggish as well as adopting policies that rebalance taxation away from capital and labour and onto land. That's definitely anti-Tory.
"I've met several wonderful UKIP activists who forget how easy it is to give an adverse impression of themselves by looking eccentric" -
"Neat haircut, either casual shirt and clean trousers, or shirt, tie and suit, beard nicely trimed but not at all if possible."
OK so that is advice to "canvassers" and well it is nice to see that UKIP is mercifully free of the sort of people that bedevil the other parties, you know the people who not only have set ideas on how other people should or should not dress, whether they should be permitted facial hair, brown eys instead of blue, what attitudes are permissible/impermissible, and who then attach labels varying from the mild "eccentric" up to and beyond "freak" to anyone who simply fails to fall into line with their preferences ! For a moment there I nearly thought there might be a risk, that if UKIP got power in any form, they might suddenly drop their "single issue" focus and reveal themselves to be a party of obsessed "lets engage in some much needed social engineering designed to bring everyone into line with our preferred template for living" people, just like all the other parties seem to want to do ... after all, why should anyone's views and opinions and ideas count if they "aren't dressed properly and didn't shave this morning" ...
ps - congrats on the 2nd place by the way - nice to see both the blue and orange/yellow wings of the Grand Alliance get a good and well deserved kicking ... roll on a few more -
@Anon 21:18,
You are trying to go against human nature.
By all means go round canvassing dressed like a bog-brush: you are fully entitled to do so. But you won't get many votes. It's as simple as that.
I'm as scruffy a git as anyone when I am not trying to persuade other people to do what I want them to do. When I actually want to influence people I find it workds a lot better not to look like something the car dragged in. The whys and wherefores of this don't matter: it is reality that matters.
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