Mandelson's Little Joke? So, Who's Laughing? [Archive]

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M Swanson

14-May-13, 08:49

Perhaps, after reading this article, folks will understand better why the popularity of UKIP is soaring. It's nothing new to many of us and is just confirmation of what we've known for years and have been scragged for daring to say so. If Britons decide to vote for removing us from the EU and Scotland choose Independence, then you too, will come to know the harsh realities of porous borders. I've a feeling it's hardly touched many parts of your beautiful country yet. Good old Eck, huh? He'll doubtless apply for EU membership asap.

Lord Mandelson: Labour sent search parties to entice migrants | UK | News | Daily Express (http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/399490/Lord-Mandelson-Labour-sent-search-parties-to-entice-migrants)

Flynn

14-May-13, 09:36

Here's what you get if you vote UKIP, a bunch of uneducated racists:

http://i1353.photobucket.com/albums/q672/Forumstufftoo/EchoStuff/UKIP1_zps7ab88819.jpg

Here's another:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/ukip-nazi-storm-candidate-mocks-1864749

Here's another UKIP candidate:

[/URL] (http://www.bbc.co.uk)[url]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-22349676

And another racist:

http://www.worcesternews.co.uk/news/10415621.New_UKIP_councillor_facing_the_sack_for_r acist_rants_online

orkneycadian

14-May-13, 11:26

Its a pity that some associate a discussion on population levels with racism. :~(

I suspect that a lot of the UKIP supporters are concerned about population levels, irrespective of race, colour or creed. It is, after all, the case in other countries. Take China for example. They implemented a 1 child per couple policy for their own people. Prime evidence of population concerns, without race coming into it. Similarly, if the skipper of the Pentalina tells me, "Sorry, we are up to capacity on this sailing. There is no room for you", then I have to take that as it is, and not assume that he didn't like the colour of my skin.

Even Comrade Flynn is very vocal that there are not enough houses in this country to allow the population to roam around freely. Is that a case that there are not enough houses for the population, or too much population for the number of houses?

But rather than lock the gates, what Labour was doing was in some cases necessary. It is true that there are economic sectors that need workers. I was speaking to friend in the hospitality sector a few weeks ago, and she says the only people that she can get to come and work in the hotel trade are immigrants. UK citizens don't want the work, and even if they do get co-erced into taking a job by the Job Centre, they work at less than half the rate of those that do want to work. Without immigrants who want to work, then indeed some sectors of our UK economy will struggle to find employees.

Put all that together then, and we potentially have a situation where there is a perceived shortage of smaller housing stock, as it is occupied by immigrant workers who are doing the jobs that the rest of the UK public won't do, whilst they in turn are occupying houses that are too big for them.

Now thats a broken Britain.

Shaggy

14-May-13, 12:45

I see your point OC. Have you worked in the hotel trade? Or any other trade that has a fair number of immigrant employees. I did many years ago and it was the most thankless and underpaid job i ever had the misfortune to take. I know not all hotels etc are as bad but there are many with the same attitude. One particular hotel in this area has a very poor record for keeping staff. He has immigrant employees and is always advertising for staff because the locals dont stay long....wonder why that is?

A number of years ago i worked for a while as a relief manager for a national brewery company and had many happy staff work for me in various pubs throughout the central belt of scotland but it's always been the foreigners that have caused the trouble for me. If they cant have it their way then they made trouble for the local staff. I suspect its because there may be more hours for them if there are no other workers! In several of the places i've managed, once the foreigners are taken on board the local staff left soon after and no matter how hard i've tried, they don't come back to work for the company. I've even tried to sway HR dept to take on locals only but was told that was racist and discriminatory. I replied "No, it is good business sense!" You can't tell me that its a one-off situation!

So, how many hospitality jobs, no, more to the point just how many jobs in total do you see paying a full-time wage? not many? or is the truth more like none at all!! part-time work has ruined the employment sector totally. Agencies started and run by immigrants and that employ only immigrants are sending workers to several different companies over a week to fill a "part-time" job that nobody wants and are raking in huge profits in doing so. This underhand practice by agencies has caused unemployment to rise because many people simply just cannot afford to take a part-time job, and if they sign up for an agency then they are classed as full time employed by the jobcentre. All because they want a 40 hour week paying a decent rate so they can have just the smidging of a decent life but no, this won't happen for the foreseeable future. As for being co-erced by the jobcentre, would you take a part-time job if you really needed a full-time one? would you willingly struggle to live on 8/16/24 hours pay just to keep the jobcentre happy? i suspect not. ~What about Homebase in Wick? they have plenty of part-time jobs, even recently they had 5x 8 hours shifts available, oh thats great you say, a full time job!.....erm no! its for 5x different people, not for one only!

A hospitality business recently advertised for, get this, self-employed seasonal staff?? eh? what?...self-employed waiters/barperson etc...that is totally taking the P. Why dont they just do the right thing and employ somebody on a proper contract...no, because that would cost them far more than a self-employed worker!

As for the housing problem, one council in england got a lot of flak for giving immigrants houses over locals who had been on the waiting lists for some time but their claim was that the govt had said this must be the case and that immigrant workers with a job have priority over local housing. So who's fault is it again??

So who or what has set the standards for local people not accepting the jobs? themselves? the employers? The govt have a lot to answer for by making a minimum wage, some cheapo companies now cant line their nests with gold due to cheap labour and have had to raise the pay level to NMW, other companies see it as a way to reduce labour costs by paying NMW when they paid more before but couldn't lower the rate without offending unions etc.

End of the day though, none of the above or solutions to any of the above still doesnt address the age old situation of "i don't want to work"

orkneycadian

14-May-13, 13:04

Good points Shaggy

The hospitality sector is just one that has difficulty in getting workers. Sure, minimum wage has something to do with it, but it would be wrong to say its all money related. There are many examples of top paying jobs being filled by immigrants - Doctors, Lawyers, even dare I say it, Bankers! ;-)

Other sectors here that have a high proprotion of immigrant workers include fish processing, farming and builidng trades. Whilst they all perhaps (if you take the labouring end of building) are at the lower end of the pay scale, they are also probably at the upper end of actual working. I.e., its not a cushy job that involves sitting on your bum all day, but one that involves getting up and doing things. My hotel managing friend says that the issue is not about how much they get paid, but whether they want to actually do anything for their pay. Do work, or play on Facebook on their mobile phone all day.

Having a background in the farming industry, I know what its like - Lots of hard work for not a lot of money. And thats just the industry. Not the case that farmers are employing labourers, and creaming all the profit to themselves. Just that the money in farming is not at the level that will meet the wage aspirations of people who feel they should get paid superstar wages for an "average" job. However, the immigrants have a different ethic, and one that can work in industries that by necessaity, are low money. On another thread on here, someone is advertising a room in a Travel-lodge for £10. Maybe thats what they paid for it, maybe it was a touch more. Yes, the UK consumer likes a good deal like a £10 hotel room. But they don't like being a hotel worker, whose wages get paid from rooms that are being let out at £10 (or similar) a night.

Similarly, they like buying pairs of jeans from Primark at £1 a pair, or whatever they sell them for. But would never dream of being the seamstress on the other end of a supply chain working in the conditions they do, and as we are all to aware of, risking their lives.

NMW is a luxury compared to what others in other countries have to put up with. Its little wonder then that people want to come to this country, not just to scrounge, but to put in a good days work, in exchange for far more than they would get back home.

M Swanson

14-May-13, 14:58

I really, really, can't understand how anyone can think that the answer to Britons not being prepared to work, is to import millions of foreign workers to take up the slack, whilst the dossers are allowed to freewheel through life, courtesy of the working taxpayers. Blair could have found different answers to compel people to support themselves, but it would not have made his social engineering possible, so he kept shipping folks in. It was all deliberate, imo and my goodness the Masterplan worked so well for everyone but the British. Sorted! Shame about the 2 1/2 million in the dole queue, with few prospects, but the time to complain was 10 years ago. Where were you then?

Never mind, there will be thousands more arriving next January and nothing will be done about it. The British bulldog can barely manage a whimper these days. Then so be it.

John Little

14-May-13, 15:26

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown had a good article about UKIP in yesterday's Independent. Worth a read.

Don’t be fooled by Ukip’s charm, it is xenophobic and creates fear

"Cheeky charmer Jamie Oliver adds his bit to spice up the appeal of Ukip (http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/letters/letters-ukip-profits-from-others-brokeneu-promises-8609385.html).
It pleases him that the party is “stirring it up” though admits he is clueless about its policies and anyway doesn’t really support them. We knew the chef was a keen and sometimes effective do-gooder, but not that he was a political ignoramus. How do you indirectly endorse a political movement without knowing what it stands for? Many voters and media cheerleaders are similarly tickled by Ukip’s idiosyncrasy and “pluck” and believe its dubious claims of originality and antiestablishmentarianism. A poll by YouGov found only 10 per cent or less backed Ukip because they thought it would run the country well. More than 60 per cent did so to send a message that they were unhappy with mainstream politicians.

Now that the party has done better than expected, all the other political parties are running scared towards it. David Cameron, Ken Clarke and a few others who did valiantly try to condemn or dismiss the crudely right-wing, anti-European maniacs have fallen silent or feel compelled to mouth placatory words which must taste bitter.

I was on BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions? this week, broadcast from Keele University in Staffordshire, where Ukip got 24 per cent of the vote. I was a little apprehensive of how the audience would react if I spoke up honestly against this so-called breakthrough. The question did come up and I queried some oft-quoted statistics. Only 32 per cent of those eligible to vote came out to cast their ballots. Twenty-five per cent of 32 per cent is around 8 per cent. So, 92 per cent either didn’t bother at all or did not vote for Ukip. Yet this tiny number is spooking and bullying all the other parties, which are allowing themselves to be spooked and bullied. To my astonishment, most of the audience applauded, did so again and again when I defended immigrants and the EU. One of the other panellists was Christine Hamilton. When we had dinner earlier, she was entertaining, warm and funny. Now a member of Ukip, she is an example of how likeable some of them are. And that may be one of the secrets of their undeserved, small surge.

Nigel Farage (http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/dont-we-all-dream-of-a-ukip-wonderland-8609397.htm) is a public schoolboy, an erstwhile City trader, the sort of chap millions of Britons have come to despise after the financial crash. But with chutzpah, an excellent gentlemen’s outfitter, fair media winds and a disarming smile permanently fixed on his face, he is seen as exemplary, honest, plain-speaking, a saviour even though his promises are worth less than the wrapping on his fancy cigars. Trust me, when you disagree with him and no-one is watching, that smile turns into a canine snarl and bite. He went for me once on a programme on LBC, his mouth unleashing brutish insults and I threatened to leave the studio unless he apologised. He did apologise, and behaved tolerably well after that. If journalists probed and contradicted him more we would see the real Farage. But like Boris, he is a media darling, adored, fun and untouchable.

The ugly truth is that Farage and his gang (http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/can-ukip-handle-the-trials-of-local-government-8605956.html) are encouraging the hatred of the outsider, blaming them for all ills, just as the BNP and NF did in their time. Poor Nick Griffin must be bursting with envy and wrath to see the upstarts winning hearts and minds which recoil from good, honest Fascism. Immigrants and the EU did not create the economic crash and crisis and did not impose painful cuts to benefits; migrants use our services and also work hard to provide those services in the public and private sectors; most pay taxes and are happy that some of the money goes to indigenous Britons who can’t or won’t work. It may be cunning and clever of Ukip to use these recessionary times to whip up animosity against “alien” interlopers. But it is morally repugnant and makes us all unsafe. Think of how people were incited to turn against those unlike themselves in Bosnia before the war, or Germany in the 1930s. Think and be afraid, very afraid.

Let me say, loudly and clearly, that not all the men and women now attracted to Ukip are die-hard racists or Fascists. But they must know or need to know that some of the values and people attached to this party are xenophobic and deeply reactionary. Sorry, it’s not good enough to say, “I voted for them just to show the others,” or, “I don’t agree with some of their policies but I want them to kick Westminster insiders. My vote is against politics.” These are real statements made to me after the council elections. The first person was a British Asian from Malawi, a businessman who failed to get selected for a seat by the Lib-Dems. The second was a retired pilot, a lonely widower, who spends a lot of time writing furious letters to newspapers, also local and national politicians, letters which are unanswered and unacknowledged which makes him more angry. Neither of these men expressed xenophobic views. But they had thrown their vote to a party where those views are held and unchallenged. Yes, I know, they have Jamaican immigrant Winston McKenzie, a former boxer, as a spokesman. He fancies blondes and hates the EU. A perfect mascot.
So let’s check out Ukip’s other, known, policies (http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/editorials/editorial-watch-for-ukip-in-the-queens-speech-8604926.html). McKenzie thinks gay parenting is “unhealthy” and “abuse”; the party wants the UK to be rid of minimum wages and worker protection and “elf&safety” rubbish; it is libertarian, does not believe in climate change, wants the lowest of taxes and a small state, which means cutting funds for health and education.

This time Ukip was aided and abetted by cowardice, complicity and inertia. Now politicians must find gumption and take on this malevolent force which is exploiting understandable public fears. Journalists, too, need to take Farage seriously and interrogate him as they do other politicians. The ultra-regressive Tea Party in the United States was seen off by incisive opponents. Ukip can and must be too."

My Bold.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/dont-be-fooled-by-ukips-charm-it-is-xenophobic-and-creates-fear-8612768.html

orkneycadian

14-May-13, 16:03

Rheghead

14-May-13, 16:53

So Mandelson admits what we've known for years, foreign workers are needed where lazy UK good for nothings won't work.

Alrock

14-May-13, 19:02

.....Shame about the 2 1/2 million in the dole queue, with few prospects, but the time to complain was 10 years ago....

So... You now admit that the 2 1/2 million on the dole queue have few prospects of getting a job....
Then how does that equate to it being their own fault?
How can you then justify treating them with so much derision?

squidge

14-May-13, 19:07

So now we have two devils.... Johny Foreigner, coming over here taking our jobs, making the poor local mans life hard, working for nothing, and the big bad benefit claimant lazy, idle and goid for nothing. Both useless ignorant stereotypes, both wheeled out time and time again and no more true than they were in the fifties, sixties, seventies or eighties. The remarkable thing is that otherwise intelligent people still put out the stuff that their parents or grandparents were saying about west indians, pakistanis, ukranians, vietnamese and on and on and yet they STILL think its true. Bonkers!

orkneycadian

14-May-13, 20:24

Not quite Squidge and Alrock. The word from the hospitality trade is that immigrants are doing it a great favour, by filling the positions that we don't want to fill. Thats an awful lot different from your (Squidge's) suggestion that they are excluding us from these positions. And thats coming from those employers that are lucky enough to attract workers. There are, apparently, more positions to fill, than there are people to fill them, especially in these northern parts.

Flynn

14-May-13, 20:34

orkneycadian

14-May-13, 20:54

If you know of any hard working ex tax payers, Comrade Flynn, I can put them in touch with a hotel that is on the lookout for hard workers. That should solve 2 problems simultaneously.

secrets in symmetry

14-May-13, 23:07

John Little

14-May-13, 23:59

Mine? I did not write the article.

secrets in symmetry

15-May-13, 00:01

Mine? I did not write the article.I know you didn't write it, but you emboldened the incorrect part!

M Swanson

15-May-13, 08:31

So Mandelson admits what we've known for years, foreign workers are needed where lazy UK good for nothings won't work.

So, why do you think Mandelson, Blair and Co, created a situation whereby not working and dossing off the taxpayer became an acceptable career choice, then Rheg?

John Little

15-May-13, 08:38

The result is a significant figure in a low turnout. Historically turnout in General Elections is higher. In Council elections where a motivated constituency get fired up to actually get down to the polls, the percentage of the votes cast turnout has been dropping for years. Their significance is inflated by lack of motivation. Even with the poll's margins of error. Since far more people did not vote this time round than did, I cannot extrapolate that in my head to the same significance in a general election.

M Swanson

15-May-13, 08:42

Of course, none of that matters when the votes are counted. It doesn't alter the fact that UKIP achieved a tremendous result and have succeeded in sending a message, loud and clear, to the Government and the clowns waiting in the wings to take over in 2015.

Flynn

15-May-13, 09:51

RecQuery

15-May-13, 10:16

I want UKIP to do well, if the Conservatives poll badly in Scotland and get the reaction they do then having UKIP become a viable alternative to them in England is excellent as far as I'm concerned.

That being said I could support a couple of their policies. Though curiously 23% of the vote (what UKIP got in the English local election) would translate into 0 seats in parliament because of FPTP. They'd need 24% to get 1 seat... 23% equals no seats and 34% equals government - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ukip/10040207/Ukip-needs-24-per-cent-support-to-have-just-one-MP-after-2015-general-election.html

Flynn

15-May-13, 12:26

That being said I could support a couple of their policies.

What about this policy; 'UKIP will replace Scottish MSPs with Scottish Westminster MPs'? In other words, abolish the Scottish parliament.

Alrock

15-May-13, 17:15

So, why do you think Mandelson, Blair and Co, created a situation whereby not working and dossing off the taxpayer became an acceptable career choice, then Rheg?

Was that not created by your precious Margret Hilda when she decimated British industry?

Rheghead

15-May-13, 17:48

So, why do you think Mandelson, Blair and Co, created a situation whereby not working and dossing off the taxpayer became an acceptable career choice, then Rheg?

I don't think they did.

Rheghead

15-May-13, 17:51

Was that not created by your precious Margret Hilda when she decimated British industry?

It was Margaret Hitler's government that openly condoned that thousands of former shipyard workers go straight on to invadity and long term sick rather than jobseekers allowance just because they knew there were no jobs to go to because their policies had ruined any industry that provided lots of jobs.

Flynn

15-May-13, 17:55

"High unemployment is a price worth paying [for low inflation]" - Thatcher.

orkneycadian

15-May-13, 18:33

If you know of any hard working ex tax payers, Comrade Flynn, I can put them in touch with a hotel that is on the lookout for hard workers. That should solve 2 problems simultaneously.

Flynn, please can you resend your PM with the contact details of those ex hard working taxpayers that are keen for a job. It doesn't seem to have arrived in my inbox, and my friend could really do with some good workers before the tourist season kicks off again.

Alrock

15-May-13, 19:05

Flynn, please can you resend your PM with the contact details of those ex hard working taxpayers that are keen for a job. It doesn't seem to have arrived in my inbox, and my friend could really do with some good workers before the tourist season kicks off again.

Please may I have the details please?

ducati

15-May-13, 19:07

What about this policy; 'UKIP will replace Scottish MSPs with Scottish Westminster MPs'? In other words, abolish the Scottish parliament.

I'm not a fan of UKIP but neither am I a fan of the Scottish Parliament. It started out with corruption and waste and I'm not convinced it has improved.

squidge

15-May-13, 22:21

Orkneycadian, assuming that your friend's vacancies are in Orkney - Orkney actually has the lowest unemployment rate in the Highlands and Islands. It stood at 1.5% at April 2013. Thats 187 people. Of those 187 people only 65 have been on benefits for over 6 months, Thats 0.5% - hardly a whole rake of people who are scrounging off the broo and probably many of those have additional problems of poor literacy or health problems. Mostly the other 122 will be in work before they hit that stage. That doesnt mean that the unemployment rate will drop remember - as people go into work then others go out of work. I would suggest that if your friend is desperate for employees that he goes to the Jobcentreplus office and tells them he will offer ALL those jobs ONLY to the Long Term Unemployed. As it is Orkney then he will probably know the 65 people concerned. It is possible though that because Orkney's unemployment rate is so low he will have to look elsewhere for employees especially as seasonal work may start to pick up for the summer increasing the number of vacancies.

secrets in symmetry

15-May-13, 23:13

Only 32 per cent of those eligible to vote came out to cast their ballots. Twenty-five per cent of 32 per cent is around 8 per cent. So, 92 per cent either didn’t bother at all or did not vote for Ukip. Yet this tiny number is spooking and bullying all the other parties, which are allowing themselves to be spooked and bullied.In this post, I will assume that you genuinely don't know what's wrong with the "8% argument". I doubt this is the case, but I'll present its "complement" nevertheless.

Only 32% of those eligible to vote actually voted. 75% of those who voted didn't register their opposition to the UKIP candidate. 75% of 32% is only 24% of the electorate. So only 24% of the total electorate registered their opposition to UKIP. That means a massive 76% of the total electorate didn't register their opposition to UKIP, so UKIP should be the government!

Yes, it's absurd, but it's logically correct, and it's no more absurd than the Guardian's argument - in the strict logical sense.

What we've done is to assume that those who voted for UKIP will again vote for UKIP in the next election, but that no-one else will vote for them (the Guardian article), or that everyone else will vote for them (my post). Using those assumptions, we have established lower (8%) and upper (76%) bounds on the UKIP vote at the next election.

There are of course variants of the argument in which not everyone votes, but these calculations are the simplest extreme cases.

If we assume that those who didn't vote are as likely to vote for UKIP as those that did vote, then UKIP would get 25% at the next election. This is the zero-assumption assumption, and is better than either of the others.

Of course, none of these estimates is correct, but the zero-assumption estimate is almost certain to be the best of the three.

Ducati's point is different. He essentially points out that the opinions of those who don't vote are never counted. Again, this is correct, and it makes the Guardian writer look even more naive.

One poster claimed that a UKIP 23% share of the vote would give them zero seats in Westminster because of the first past the vote system. The same argument holds in council elections - where it is manifestly incorrect. Obviously, this is because of geographical variations in the UKIP vote. The LibDem share of the vote in the last general election was 23%, and they won lots of seats. So it's empirically incorrect at Westminster level. The "mean field" class of models that Electoral Calculus use are obviously wrong for shares of the vote below (and in the region of) a threshold - for the same reasons they're wrong in most scientific applications below/around a critical threshold.

I noticed a much worse arithmetic error in another thread earlier on. I'll try to find it again.

Added later: the bad arithmetic error is described here (http://forum.caithness.org/showthread.php?204503-Sad-news-but-is-it-the-first-of-many&p=1028187#post1028187).

Flynn

15-May-13, 23:58

RecQuery

16-May-13, 10:39

What about this policy; 'UKIP will replace Scottish MSPs with Scottish Westminster MPs'? In other words, abolish the Scottish parliament.

By some of their policies I meant things like setting and linking the tax threshold to minimum wage.

John Little

16-May-13, 11:19

SiS - yes I know what you are saying and yes it is absurd - and yes I knew it anyway. However, not having a mathematical brain, always leaning towards the Arts can impose limitations on my consideration of factors influencing how people vote.

My notion that UKIP has peaked is based on two things.

1. As I have said, it is the motivated who turn out at Council elections - the ones who are fired up- and on this occasion it's the UKIP mob who seem to be largely made up of White, elderly, middle-class English people who used to vote Tory before Pinko Cameron took over. Back in the 60s they would have been Enoch Powell's natural audience.

2 As it happens this particular round of elections, since all counties do not vote at the same time, happened to be concentrated mostly on the Tory shires - their heartland. Natural UKIP hunting grounds.

But yes - overall I agree that the greatest danger to the UK is the people who do not vote. Because by not voting they do not oppose. And then things may happen that they do not wish to happen.

Scotland has provided a good object lesson in this I feel.

The next General Election is going to be most interesting. Labour must try a lot harder.

I am looking at Gordon Brown's actions with a certain fascination - a Uk wide campaign for social justice has a lot of appeal.

I am wondering if he could be the come-back kid of this century?

secrets in symmetry

16-May-13, 11:39

I agree with most of what you say John. The Porage Party need a quick election to benefit from their recent electoral surge, and I think they would do well in it. Their problem is that their bubble will (as you suggest) have deflated by the time the next general election comes around.

The Tory shires thing is indeed a crucial factor in inflating their bubble, and this aspect has been underplayed by the media in my opinion.

However, as Mr Porage and I have both stressed previously, the UKIP bubble has encouraged the Tory Party's nasty wing to venture out of their bunkers, and to demand that Dave the Pinko takes action against Johnny Foreigner. So far, they have had some success....

secrets in symmetry

16-May-13, 11:43

I am looking at Gordon Brown's actions with a certain fascination - a Uk wide campaign for social justice has a lot of appeal.

I am wondering if he could be the come-back kid of this century?Perhaps. He's a good public speaker, but he's no longer loved in Scotland. However, he's needed here because of the dearth of experienced talent on the Labour "benches" at Holyrood.

John Little

16-May-13, 11:47

I agree. UKIP are going to have exactly the same problem as the SNP in that people are going to, sooner or later (and most inconveniently) start asking for detail and not generalisations.

The one about getting rid of the Scottish Parliament in favour of some sort of gathering of Scottish Westminster MPs gives the lie to their 'UK' credentials. I cannot see how any party claiming to be a party of Union can ignore the stated will of the people of Scotland, which is plainly on record as being in favour of the parliament.

They will stay a mostly English phenomenon and if the mass of voters can be persuaded to get up off their derrieres and do something, then there will be no Trotsky needed on the steps of Holyrood to turn them away.

As to what I think - I firmly believe that all the peoples of this country yearn for a government committed to social democracy and social justice; next time round there will be no mistakes.

I am wondering if the Broon's time in the wilderness has tempered him to lead again?... He certainly sounded it the other day.

secrets in symmetry

16-May-13, 11:57

I don't think UKIP have much chance of making inroads into Scottish politics until the Eck and Nickers bubble bursts, which will happen as soon as they lose next year's Eckerendum. The 2015 Holyrood election will be interesting - it will be a defeated Eck government versus a still-depleted Labour opposition and the still-unpopular LibDems. UKIP will have an opportunity there, but I doubt they'll make significant progress. Having said that, a week can be a long time in politics....

secrets in symmetry

16-May-13, 18:59

I don't think UKIP have much chance of making inroads into Scottish politics until the Eck and Nickers bubble bursts, which will happen as soon as they lose next year's Eckerendum.

Porage didn't get off to an auspicious start in Edinburgh! (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-22559526) :cool:

Protestors shout 'scum' at UKIP leader

UKIP leader Nigel Farage had to find refuge in a pub after he was swarmed by angry protestors as he left a press conference.

When he later left the Canons' Gait pub in Edinburgh's historic old town and was escorted into a police van, protestors chanted "scum, scum, scum".

Mr Farage was in Edinburgh to launch his party's Scottish campaign.

The party, which wants to leave the European Union, hopes to build on electoral gains in England.

Mr Farage told the BBC he had never had a reaction like this before.

Earlier this week, Mr Farage said First Minister Alex Salmond was "illogical" to want to keep an independent Scotland in the EU.