United Kingdom Independence Party

UKIP councillors favour the death penalty

Labour Party

Almost half of UKIP’s pitiful gang of local councillors (202 in total) want the death penalty as a sentencing option for murder.

The death penalty finds even greater favour amongst this barbaric group when linked to certain types of murder – nearly three-quarters of UKIP councillors believe it should be a sentencing option for murder committed by terrorists while 70 per cent think the death penalty should be allowed for the murder of a police officer and 66 per cent want it for the murder of a child.

Fifty-eight per cent of these U-kippers believe the death penalty should be available for a racially motivated murder, presumably the killing of a white British person by someone from another ethnic group.

This astonishing and deeply worrying information was flagged up in a survey of UKIP councillors commissioned by the BBC Sunday Politics show on, amongst other things, their positions on crime and climate change.

UKIP views on climate change are, in fact, though qualitatively different, no better than how they feel about the death penalty.

Eighty-two per cent believe climate change is either not happening or human activity is not mainly responsible. The percentage for the former is 18 per cent while 64 per cent adhere to the latter position.

This survey only serves to confirm what we already know – UKIP inhabit a space beyond any imaginable civilised pale. Not only do they support judicial murder which is outlawed across the European Union, but they also refuse to face up to the fact that our planet is being laid waste by our unsustainable consumerist demands.

The survey highlights in graphic detail just what UKIP are about. Their appalling MEP Godfrey Bloom is already on record as wishing to abolish the public sector, which incidentally includes the NHS. Now they want to return to the days when the state could take away someone’s life.

UKIP are neither right not moral. Killing a person is killing however you look at it, and two wrongs will never make a right.

And we all know in our heart of hearts that our here today and gone tomorrow lifestyle is destroying planet earth, the only home we have.

I like to think that as a society we strive to improve and develop. UKIP are a disgusting throwback to an earlier, more primitive and less humanitarian age. I don’t want that and I would hope the readers of this blog do not want it either. 

The survey was carried out for the Sunday Politics show by ComRes, who surveyed 101 UKIP councillors in England & Wales between 28th June and 3rd July. The Sunday Politics show broadcast the results and interviews with three UKIP Buckinghamshire councillors on Sunday 7th July 2013.

Sources:

Poll Digest – Political – BBC Sunday Politics – UKIP Councillors Survey, ComRes

UKIP: survey on Tory links, climate change and death penalty, BBC Politics, 8th July 2013

From the Archive: UKIP’s proposal to cut back public spending – kill prisoners

Labour Party

The theme of these archive blogs seems to be that UKIP are far more right-wing than Nigel Farage would have us believe.  This blog was originally 19th March 2010 and details some of the more extreme views held by fellow London MEP Gerard Batten.  My only hope is that, with the increased exposure from the recent successes in local elections and their climb in the polls, we will see UKIP challenged more for their extreme elements.

UKIP’s proposal to cut back public spending – kill prisoners

I do not  like my fellow London MEP Gerard Batten very much. Let me explain why. He claims as a UKIP member to be a patriot but does not pay his taxes.  Perhaps he would feel more at home in Belize with Michael Ashcroft? In 2008 I exposed that he was covering up his financial records . (He does seem to have a bit in common with Lord Ashcroft – perhaps he is a non-dom too?) He voted against extending education in Europe with a minority of hard right oppositionists (the vote was 623 for, 56 against). He does such a poor job of representing London that his UKIP colleague Godfrey Bloom MEP from Yorkshire has to come in and help him. On immigration his view is “Enough is enough.”

Gerard is not keen on people of different races mixing writing:

“THE MYTH of multiculturalism depends on the belief that completely different cultures, and indeed contradictory world views, can peacefully co-exist within the same geographic and political space.”

I wonder what new UKIP MEP Marta Andresan who is an Argentine by birth makes of this weltanschauung?

Gerard has a high regard for Dutch extreme right politician Geert Wilders who you can see him pictured with.

Now Gerard has turned his mind to economic policy. Last week speaking in Strasbourg during a debate on the death penalty in South Korea he said:

” This (the death penalty) would also save millions of pounds every year currently wasted on keeping such criminals in prison for life that could be better spent on the old and the sick. So well done South Korea: go on executing your worst criminals.”

Forget justice the key issue is saving money. Look on the bright side, if there are any miscarriages of justice in Gerard’s world at least thousands of pounds has been saved with this eugenic economic policy. Of course the wonderful thing is that any country which is a member of the European Union must renounce the death penalty. To me it demonstrates what a civilized institution it is. How frustrating for Gerard.

Even by Gerard’s previous policies his new Vote UKIP – Kill Prisoners – Save Millions campaign must be a new odious low.

From the Archive: UKIP provide further proof of their far-right leanings

Labour Party

UKIP have proved time and time again that they are a great deal more extreme in their politics than they would have you believe as these archives blog seem to be proving.  This blog was originally posted last year when a number of MEPs joined UKIP’s European Parliament political group the Europe for Freedom and Democracy party.  The most worrying among them is Slavi Binev, formerly of the Hungarian political party Attack, an extreme right wing organisation.

UKIP provide further proof of their far-right leanings

This morning in the plenary chamber Martin Schulz announced that two MEPs have joined UKIP’s Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD) political grouping.  

The first of these is Mike Nattrass, though he is actually rejoining after quitting the group in June 2010.  Mr Nattrass left the group because, as he said, he did not want to sit with MEPs “who do not wish to leave the EU and have very odd views on many issues which are incompatible with my own”. He also said that by remaining a member of the EFD he “would be condoning this progressive destruction of our cherished institutions” and would be ‘far more effective’ as a non-attached MEP.

Perhaps more intriguingly, the newest member of the EFD is Slavcho (aka Slavi) Binev from Bulgaria.  Mr Binev was elected in 2009 as an MEP for Attack, a far-right nationalist party, that he has since left.  The Attack party has been involved in a number of scandals, most notably in 2006 when then leader Dimitar Stoyanov made racist and misogynistic remarks about another Bulgarian MEP.  What’s more Mr Binev was named in a 2005 US diplomatic cable on organised crime as heading the MIG entertainment group whose ”criminal activities include prostitution, narcotics, and trafficking stolen automobiles”.

UKIP are a strange bunch with stranger friends and this acceptance of Slavi Binev is further proof.  It’s worth remembering another person who felt the need to leave the EFD, Nikki Sinclaire who resigned from the EFD citing her displeasure at what she claims to be some of the racist, extremist parties that belong to the group.  Sinclaire was subsequently expelled from UKIP for refusing to be part of the EFD group, but went on to win an Employment Tribunal claim for sex discrimination against them.

Farage may be feeling confident after UKIP’s showing in the recent by-elections, but he should show a bit more care about his public perception.  I have already spoken about Godfrey Bloom’s sharing wine with fascist leader Marine le Pen and now Farage has decided to campaign against gay marriage in order to steal votes from the Tories.  Farage, it appears, is well on the way to exposing the extreme-right and bigoted character of UKIP.

Honeyball’s Weekly Round-Up

Labour Party

The week saw the alarming news that Hungary has been warned that it could be the first country in the EU to have its democracy placed under international scrutiny.

An influential committee of the Council of Europe, the Strasbourg-based human rights watchdog (not part of the EU), proposed that Hungary be subject to a “monitoring procedure” that would place the country’s democratic rights and liberties under international monitoring, something that has never happened in any of the EU’s 27 countries.

The final decision to push ahead with the scrutiny needs to be taken by the council’s parliamentary assembly which brings together lawmakers from the organisation’s 47 member states. Ten countries outside the EU but members of the council, including Russia and Turkey, are being monitored.

The “opinion” delivered by the council’s monitoring committee accused Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán of seeking to take control of independent institutions in Hungary, of using the constitutional rewriting to cement the power of his own political party, Fidesz, and of ignoring the country’s supreme court.

Budapest and Brussels have been at odds for months over curbs on freedom in Hungary, including restrictions on media expression, pressure on judges and control of the central bank. Orbán has consistently and robustly rejected the charges, with his government and diplomats mounting a loud and detailed campaign aimed at disproving the criticism,

A little closer to home, Nigel Farage was criticised this week for his reaction to the news that a UKIP candidate owns a strip club.

In an interview on Wednesday with BBC Radio 5 Live’s breakfast show, Farage, said it was nonsense that he had frequented and enjoyed lap-dancing clubs in the past but admitted going to one once unintentionally.

“I was taken once unwittingly and I did say that I wasn’t appalled by it,” he said. “I did quite like it. What you want me to say? I hated it?”

Asked whether his comment confirmed some assertions recently that he is anti women, he attempted to laugh it off. “That’s really rather silly,” he said. “I have to tell you, if I’d been anti-women, then the whole of my adult life would have been just that much simpler.”

These statements have been called in to question though, as Farage, in a 2009 interview with the Guardian said he had been to “lap-dancing clubs”, boasting that other leaders would not admit to it because “they’re living in this PC world and nobody must admit to being human”.

 

Labour should prepare to fight UKIP on Europe

Labour Party

The time has come to revise what is becoming Labour’s conventional wisdom on UKIP, namely that UKIP is to be encouraged because they take Tory votes.

David Cameron’s long awaited speech where he pledged that, if the Tories win an outright majority at the next election, there will be a referendum on a yet to be negotiated re-jigging of our relationship with EU, with rejection of the new deal by the British public resulting in our exit, seems to have calmed some of the problems with his party – for now.  Ed Miliband did the right thing by saying that we would not support an in/out referendum, though a Labour government would retain the law meaning that any future EU treaty changes would be put to the British public for approval.

After this was made clear, Nigel Farage published an article in the Mail on Sunday stating that Ed’s position on Europe meant that UKIP would now be coming after our votes.  He said:

“Perhaps it will please the Conservatives to hear that we are also targeting the Labour vote. For what we represent is the voice of not just disgruntled, disenchanted Conservatives but everyone in Britain affected by the loss of sovereignty and power that comes with being a member of the EU… We will, in the county council elections in May this year and through a national advertising campaign in our major urban centres, target traditional Labour voters in a way UKIP has never done before.”

The aforementioned conventional wisdom, I have to say, backed by recent polling data, says that even with a concerted effort on the part of UKIP against Labour, the Tories will still have more to fear than we do.  On a constituency by constituency basis, the Tories lose seats to us, or fail to gain seats from us and the Lib-Dems, by margins that can be almost solely attribute to an ascendant UKIP.  Current trends suggest that UKIP won’t win any seats, but will do enough in the popular vote to cost the Conservatives.

But there is still no room for complacency, polls can change rapidly and there are still two years to go.  For all its vagueness, Cameron’s speech has meant that the Tories have gained some ground on the issue of Europe. Farage is, I think, recognising that UKIP may find they have less and less to use against the Tories.

We could, therefore, see a drift towards either an official, semi-acknowledged, or completely unofficial electoral pact between the Conservatives and UKIP come the next election.  This would mean UKIP leaving Tory areas and gunning for us.

The best way to combat this is to start tackling the Tories and UKIP on Europe now.  Ed Miliband was right to shun the idea of an in/out referendum, but now our party needs to start talking about why Ed is right, and how much damage Cameron’s proposal, even if it never comes to fruition, could do.  Let’s not wait for a referendum to start talking about why the UK needs to stay in the EU, let’s do it now and show UKIP and the Tories how wrong they are.

Nigel Farage gets too much air time

Labour Party

The BBC and other British media outlets give Nigel Farage undue prominence.  Although  UKIP have a number of seats in the European Parliament, they have no presence in the House of Commons and only a few council seats.

I can only imagine that the reason we see him so often on our televisions is that he’s entertaining.  It would, however, be very worrying to think that editorial decisions about serious subjects could be taken on such trivial grounds.  

The underlying question is whether people critical enough of the media they consume.  What’s the best way of making people more aware of the potential biases and agendas that lay behind the news reporting?

These were some of the questions that were being asked at a meeting yesterday with the European Broadcasting Union where I took part in a panel discussion on media literacy.

I was joined by Ulrika Alert, Head of Youth and Language at UR, the Swedish Educational Broadcasting Company, who have made a series of incredible documentaries on the subject of media literacy.  They were designed for use in secondary schools, but have ended up being used in university classes, and broadcast on prime time television.  If you want you can watch some of these excellent programmes here.

There was also Philippe van Meerbeeck from Belgian Flemish public broadcaster,  VRT, who is heading up a project called EU Screen which is looking to archive news footage from across Europe from the last 100 years.  It’s an ambitious project and I look froward to seeing some of the results.  You can go and see what they’ve done so far here.

It was an interesting and lively event which raised a number of pertinent questions. It’s good these issues are being raised at European level, though sadly there is little in the way of such discussion back home in the UK.