On 19 May 2014 at 11:39pm Ray Cist! wrote:
Not me!
On 20 May 2014 at 6:42am Boris wrote:
I would prefer to have Farage living next to me than a group of Romanian men. Anyone who says other wise is bull crapping.
On 20 May 2014 at 7:00am fireball wrote:
I would not have Cameron or Glegg living next door to me.
i like Farrage because he calls a spade a spade . So good for him
On 20 May 2014 at 7:55am Normal voter wrote:
If I moved next to a mental health clinic, he would be a welcome neighbour.
On 20 May 2014 at 7:58am drone wrote:
I don`t mind who lives next door to me as long as they behave in a neighbourly & considerate manner. My neighbours are entitled to expect the same of me.
On 20 May 2014 at 9:03am Agreed wrote:
I agree. It is a shame that Nigel Farage is now on record stating that he defines problem neighbours, not by what they do, but by what nationality is stamped on their passport. That is un-neighbourly , inconsiderate, and just plain stupid. As was admitting it.
On 20 May 2014 at 9:33am Parsnip trousers wrote:
What kind of behaviour does one consider unneighbourly and inconsiderate?
On 20 May 2014 at 9:34am UKIP supporter wrote:
Hypocrisy is the besetting sin of the Left.
Lewes is stuffed chock-full of well-heeled, middle-class Lefties ( Polly Toynbee being a prominent example) who have moved here to escape the horrendous social problems that London exemplifies, which they want to inflict on everyone else, but refuse to live with themselves.
They remind me of Sean Connery, the famous Scottish nationalist, who will do anything for his beloved native land : except live there. (God forbid, he might then have to pay Scottish taxes)>
So they all come to Lewes, where they can continue to send their kids to schools where most speak English; not fear being mugged in the street; and can vote Green and read the Guardian in peace.
Dream on for a while, but you won't be able to escape reality for ever.
On 20 May 2014 at 9:46am Lewes resident wrote:
Whilst I understand the point you are trying to make, why would people moving to Lewes from anywhere not want their children to go to nice schools and be able to live in fear of not being mugged? What is this reality that they will not be able to escape from forever?
On 20 May 2014 at 9:49am GhostBike wrote:
THey "all" come to Lewes, eh? All those London well-heeled, middle-class lefties? Must be hard in a town of 17,000 odd people. Most of them stay in London, I would think.
Incidentally London may have become more diverse over recent years. But alongside that, crime has fallen, schools have improved, employment has risen, and the place feels more comfortable and affluent.
I did leave London for Lewes. Not because I hated living among black people, though, I'm afraid. More the fact that I simply could not afford anything more than a 2-bed flat without a garden. I came to Lewes because it has a nice quality of life, good pubs and is surrounded by hills. Not because I hate London, or for the matter, want to live solely among white people.
On 20 May 2014 at 9:56am someone else wrote:
I realise I have no hope of contending with the raging inchoate stupidity of UKIP voters but I will try.
UKIP voters are small people. Pathetic little-Englanders who live in constant fear of opening their front doors in case the scary foreigners are out there. So much for the legacy of our forebears who went out and built an Empire. These people have nothing to do with traditional British values and I pity them. If I took away the impact immigrants have had on my life, my business and my children's education we would all be very much the poorer for it.
Before you vote UKIP look up their voting record in the EU assembly. Because they are committed to voting against anything the EU proposes they have recently voted against (well, those who turned up) i) legislation which would compel drug companies to release all testing information (which is widely supported by MPs of all parties here) and ii) legislation which would compel HGVs to be designed to provide the driver with better visibility of pedestrians. The purpose of both of these proposals is to protect the lives of British people but UKIP do not care about British lives: they are just interested in grandstanding to suit their own megalomania.
At home the have said that they are committed to privatising the NHS and introducing flat rate income tax with no threshold.
By all means let's have a sensible debate about whether or not Britain should be in the EU, but resorting to hysteria and voting for racist fascists is not about the values my parents and grandparents fought two world wars to protect.
On 20 May 2014 at 10:19am Mr Sensible wrote:
And one of the purposes of the EU is to guard a against a third European/world war. Voting for a xenophobic party full of loons that want to take us out of Europe and implement divisive policies at home does not seem wise.
We forget the past too easily and to our great cost.
On 20 May 2014 at 10:34am Voter wrote:
UKIP also recently voted against an EU policy to protect endangered endangered wild species. They were alone in this.
They are nutters and the fact that a section of our society is willing to vote for them under the pretext of 'a protest vote' makes them dangerous nutters.
On 20 May 2014 at 10:36am Southover Queen wrote:
Calling them "racist fascists" suggests that there is a coherent policy, which there simply isn't. Indeed, it suggests that its members, representatives and candidates hold coherent attitudes in common with each other, which they manifestly do not. What those of us who are able to stand back from the media storm can see is that UKIP's appointed and approved representatives are a muddled bunch of little Englanders, outright racists, "Libertarians" (such as Donna Edmunds) and random nutcases the Tories don't want because they're an electoral liability.
The people voting for them seem to fall into two distinct camps: people who seek someone else to blame for their own failures (and Romanians are a convenient scapegoat) and people who have somehow grasped the notion that UKIP is going to challenge the hegemony of the EU - a perception which is largely promulgated by little Englander media and UKIP itself. There's also a significant group of people who think that voting for them will send "a message" to what they choose to characterise as the corrupt political classes with their snouts in the trough, without grasping the wonderful irony that of all the undeserved snouts, Farage and his unsavoury cronies really do take the biscuit. They don't participate in democracy and they do draw all the salaries and expenses due to our elected MEPs - sums which are considerably more generous than the MPs who are presumably meant to be receiving this message. I cannot be the only person struck by this irony: the "anti-politician" whose monetary gain is way way ahead of his Westminster equivalents who gives absolutely nothing back for that payment beyond deeply misleading and dishonest scaremongering.
On 20 May 2014 at 10:42am UKIP supporter wrote:
Ghost Bike: UKIP is a party of decent, moderate people firmly in the tradition of British democratic political parties. I have met them and I know them. You really should not assume that your fantasises correspond to reality.
Around 30% of people are going to vote for them this week. They can't all be foaming, racist, fascist hyenas can they? Or are you arrogant enough to write off one third of your fellow citizens as ignorant and stupid?
The EU is an undemocratic superstate in embryo that has called into being the devils of 'racism' and 'fascism' that you profess ro oppose.
Perhaps you can explain why the Left, in the shape of the Green party and Labour ( eg the late Tony Benn) always opposed the EU until the advent of Neil 'family on the payroll' Kinnock and Tony Blair?
Now they are the keenest supporters of demolishing democracy in Europe.
The fact that the EU caused the current crisis in Ukraine demonstrates that far from preventing war in Europe, it is in grave danger of causing one.
Finally, my family members died in the war too. They did not die to see this country handed over on a plate to a corrupt dictatorship so crooked that its accountants have not signed off its accounts for 15 years, nor to the gang of spineless opportunists in Westminster who have facilitated it.
Fortunately, however, the country is at last waking up. Not before time.
On 20 May 2014 at 11:35am Ah Bless. wrote:
there is always one.
On 20 May 2014 at 11:46am Peter wrote:
So @UKIP supporter, you're saying that people who move here from London and basically want to have a better quality of life should be voting for UKIP on principal, I'm sorry I don't understand why? Can you please explain?
On 20 May 2014 at 11:57am UKIP supporter wrote:
Ah Bless: there are going to be a whole lot more than one this Thursday : get used to a UKIP majority babe!
Peter: Not at all. I am castigating the hypocrisy of the smug and sanctimonious rich Left. I know they will never vote UKIP : they'll leave that to the oiky plebs they despise, whose ever worse living conditions ( crap jobs & schools, no homes,) they and their ilk have done much to bring about since that wonderful new dawn when their erstwhile hero Blair came to power in 1997.
These days, UKIP is drawing support not only from disaffected Tories pissed off with Dave, but from Labour voters too. (Check out today's Independent article on conditions in Southampton for example. It's not going to be a Labour stronghold much longer).
You Lefties are in for a big shock, and I'm loving it. You were the future.......once!
On 20 May 2014 at 12:05pm Peter wrote:
OK thank you, if I vote for UKIP then what will they do for this country? I am not middle class or a rich leftie, I am genuinely interested as I am fairly ignorant about the whole thing and never normally bothered about voting.
On 20 May 2014 at 12:09pm Mr Sensible wrote:
@UKUP Supporter: 'The EU is an undemocratic superstate'.
Umm.. aren't we just about to have elections in which we get to vote for our representatives in this 'undemocratic superstate"? Also of note is that the EU election system is considerably more representative (and therefore more democratic) than our national outdated 'first past the post' system.
An even better to work out who to vote for based upon what you believe in is here:
Check it out here »
On 20 May 2014 at 12:23pm Peter wrote:
That Vote Match is interesting and helpful, I should be voting Labour!
On 20 May 2014 at 12:57pm Voter wrote:
UKIP Supporter. Surely your elected representative Donna Edmonds (wherever she is) should be doing all the promotional stuff on this site. Have you shut here up because, despite UKIP being brilliant, the candidates are a complete liability? Or how about aggressive, one-finger saluting Janice Atkinson who has lumbered UKIP with one of the most embarrassing images of this election?
On 20 May 2014 at 1:04pm Ukip supporter wrote:
Mr Sensible: As any fule know, the 'European Parliament' is not a Parliament at all, in that it cannot initiate legislation, but merely rubber stamps the 'directives' (what a lovely word!) issued by the EU's real rulers, the European Commission. I repeat, the EU is not democratic. And when anyone votes against it ( as in the referenda in France & the Netherlands) they are either ignored, or ( in the case of Ireland) made to vote again until they get the 'right' answer.
The Sussex motto is 'We won't be druv' > but we are being 'druv' all the time by our unelected EU masters.
It is a mystery why the country that produced the people who fought for the franchise: the Levellers, the Chartists and the Suffragettes - have tamely allowed this to happen, and even more of a mystery why the parties of the Left support the corporate bankers' beanfeast that is the EU.
On 20 May 2014 at 1:16pm Mr Sensible wrote:
You are speaking absolute codswallop. All the decisions taken in Europe are approved by democratically elected ministers responsible and accountable to their parliaments and public opinions.
The EU's institutional system does better in terms of democratic legitimacy than democracies like France, Germany or Italy: like many Western systems the EU has a bicameral system, meaning that legislation is made by two bodies, of which at least one is directly elected by citizens. In the EU, these bodies are the European Parliament, as the directly elected part, and the EU Council, a second chamber representing national governments.
In such systems, federal legislation is based on the agreement of both chambers. In the case of the EU, the Lisbon Treaty extended the European Parliament's powers in almost all policy fields of the union. The parliament is able to deny any legislative initiative of the Commission, as the highest executive of the EU.
Compared, for example, to France or Italy, the EU's Parliament has much more power while the French and Italian system hands huge chunks of power up to the president as the highest executive. In the EU, the member states' governments or the Commission will not be able to decide anything against the will of their people's parliament.
Hence, the institutional design of the EU is in no way more undemocratic than an average European national system. In some respects, the EU is even a frontrunner in legitimacy issues: the EU publishes all official documents of Commission decisions, EU regulations, funding programmes and a lot more on its website and makes them available for everybody. In any rating of legislative transparency, the EU would, surely, come out first in the world.
Add in proportional representation and you have what is probably the most democratic and transparent institution in the world.
Farage is lying to you if he says otherwise.
On 20 May 2014 at 1:22pm Zebedee wrote:
Donna Edmunds is seen as a liability by the party leadership and has been told to shut up till after the elections. It was that or fire her.
On 20 May 2014 at 1:30pm A Winstanleyist Writes wrote:
Sorry UKIP voter, you've really got that wrong. The Levellers, the Chartists and the Suffragettes would all be horrified at UKIP's manifesto if they were around today.
Mr Farage is a City broker, as was his father before him. His agenda is to protect his City mates, something he shares with the Conservative party, and that's why we had the rather unedifying spectacle of Osborne going to Brussels to argue against caps on bankers' bonuses.
I'll take the EU, imperfect though it is, rather than hand over yet more power and influence to the Billionaires' Club.
On 20 May 2014 at 1:34pm UKIP supporter wrote:
Mr Sensible: NO, dear heart, it is you are who talking cods..let us take your opening statement: 'All the decisions taken in Europe are approved by democratically elected ministers'..
ALL>>>>>>??? When would they have the time??
This begs a host of questions, such as,
'Who takes the decisions in the first place, before they are approved?'
The European Parliemnt is not democratic, I repeat, because it lacks the primary characteristic of any Parliament: viz. the ability to initiate, discuss, pass and if necessary reject, legislation.
I thought everyone knew that the EU had lack of democracy cemented into its very foundations, but it seems that you don't.
Doesn't the phrase 'democratic deficit' often used with regard to the EU ring any bells?
The fact that the EU is a remote, Stalinoid bureaucracy is a major reason why it is increasingly unpopular for, unless you had noticed, the anti-EU revolt is not confined to the UK. A whole range of anti-EU parties from moderates like UKIP to frankly nasty outfits like Jobbik in Hungary and Golden Dawn in Greece will win seats this week in the fake Parliament , and if the EU don't like the monsters it itself has created, it will just have to lump it.
Since you are such a fervent supporter of the EU, perhaps you would like to enlighten us as to why it is so hated by the very citizens it is laughably supposed to represent as this week's elections will conclusively prove?
On 20 May 2014 at 1:56pm Old Cynic wrote:
Swivel eyes loons one and all :-(
On 20 May 2014 at 1:57pm Mr Sensible wrote:
You are just wrong, misled. The EU is substantially more democratic than the UK. One of our two chambers of representatives, The Lords is entirely un-elected and representative of no-one. In the EU the two chambers are the European Parliament, as the directly elected part, and the EU Council, a second chamber representing national governments. QED. Already a whole lot more representative and democratic!
As for your statement "All the decisions taken in Europe are approved by democratically elected ministers'..
ALL>>>>>>??? When would they have the time??"
You might just as easily say "All the decisions taken in the UK are approved by democratically elected ministers'..
ALL>>>>>>??? When would they have the time??"
Unlike yourself I cannot see into the future so cannot tell if the citizens of Europe will reject Europe this week but recent polls indicate that in the UK support for the EU is high and rising (this is not to say that many would not like to see the UK change).
See the link and give up predicting the vote. It makes you look like an idiot.
Check it out here »
On 20 May 2014 at 2:30pm UKip supporter wrote:
Mr Sensible: Those who vote in this week's elections will not be rejecting 'Europe'...they will be rejecting the EU - something quite different : a Stalinesque construction imposed on Europe by an unelected elite.
Europe long preceded the EU and it will long outlast as it has outlasted every little tinpot dictatorship before it.
I say there will (*unless there is massive Eu-style fraud) be a huge anti-Eu vote. You decline to predict the result, possibly because you know I am right.
I offer you a challenge> if UKIP win more than a quarter of the vote (25%) and beat LibLabCon come on this site a week hence and call us all 'idiots' again.
Your arrogance in the face of democracy is quite breathtaking.
Your ostrich-like attitude is also quite amusing. Keep it up!
On 20 May 2014 at 2:43pm Ah Bless. wrote:
so UKIP supporter wants us to vote for a party that censors ITS OWN candidates! (Donna Edmunds) Hilarious. What a fruitcake.
On 20 May 2014 at 2:53pm Chipaholic wrote:
I'm sure he'll be happy to continue calling you an idiot (not that that was the main thrust of his argument), no matter how many votes UKIP get. A large UKIP vote won't suddenly convince everyone else that UKIP are right, it'll just motivate us all to try to dispel the FUD that led to that vote.
UKIP (and their fellow travellers across Europe) are a symptom of ill-health within a nation, and many people who aren't far-right supporters are keen to see the causes of that illness addressed. Paradoxically, UKIP's policies if actually put in practice would just exacerbate the causes of the illness. But then that makes a kind of sense, as that would increase their support...
On 20 May 2014 at 3:25pm Mr Sensible wrote:
Sorry. I wrote Europe when i meant EU. Minor slip. All else still stands.
Europe has had many wars, recently two devastating ones that has damaged our civilisation to a degree it's difficult to comprehend (just think Israel/Palestine). The EU seems a reasonable way to avoid war by increasing an interdependence and integration between the constituent nations.
I am certainly all for it. There can be nothing worse than war.
Can you explain what you mean by the EU as a 'Stalinist construction'?
On 20 May 2014 at 3:58pm ukip supporter wrote:
Mr Sensible: Certainly. A Stalinist construction, as in USSR, an undemocratic, inorganic, artificial construction imposed from above, and doomed to failure just like the USSR , Yugoslavia, and any other number of multi-national federations have been before them.
The point is that people dislike having laws imposed on them by
others whom they have not voted for, and this tends to breed discontent. 'No taxation without representation' as the US rebels against Britain put it.
Our EU tax amounts to £55 million a day - and that's just the membership dues!
The EU has a Jacobin, statist, corporatist mindset entirely at odds with such ideas and institutions as Trial by Jury, Habeas Corpus, Magna Carta etc.
Recall that of the 28 EU members all but three (UK, Ireland and Sweden) have been within living memory Communist, Nazi, Fascist or military dictatorships - and/or occupied by the forces of those dictatorships.
No-one under the age of 60 or so has voted on being part of a single state with its own anthem, currency, foreign service and all the other trappings of a nation state that the EU has silently acquired.
What the over-60s voted on back in 1975 was joining a trading bloc. They were lied to when told this would lead to 'no essential loss of sovereignty'. They have been lied to by the three major Westminster parties ever since.
People don't like being lied to. People want to live in a free, independent democracy such as Switzerland and Norway. They don't want to be run by Messrs Barroso, Rumpy Pumpy, Schulz and the ridiculous 'Lady' Ashton who no-one voted for.
The average salary of an EU civil servant is £300,000 (tax free).
And you guys wonder why people don't like the EU...Go figure for Chrissake.
On 20 May 2014 at 4:22pm Mr Sensible wrote:
"The point is that people dislike having laws imposed on them by
others whom they have not voted for, and this tends to breed discontent."
You happen to be talking about Europe. You could just as easily be talking about the UK, East Sussex or Lewes. As I said, Europe is far more democratic and representative than any UK political body whose representatives are elected via the first-post-the-post system.
The UK government continually lies to us. Nothing new there. It seems the prerogative of governments all over. Why blame Europe? Europe is just your particular scapegoat, you might as well choose clotted cheese for all the sense your arguments make.
On 20 May 2014 at 4:35pm bastian wrote:
Ukip Voter, I have to pick you up on some points, they are bugging me so much I can't believe your history is so thin you haven't spotted them your self!
You keep going on about hoe important Sovereignty is to you, but your Royal family are all from Europe, foreigners if you like. They started out Norman French (danish vikings), married into Spain to prevent battle and then ended up being German in the 1700's- How is that British. The pound is Saxon, that's German.
Not all of Europe is Catholic so it can't be a Jacobite threat and Europe has stricter rules than Britain on Religion intolerance.
All the terms you have used, habious Corpus (Latin), Magna Carta (a written set of laws defined by the Noramns FRENCH to keep Saxon peasnats in order stating their rights under Norman supreme rule.
I could go on but I need to go to the pub.
On 20 May 2014 at 5:48pm Foreign Muck wrote:
UKIP supporter only eats lamb, oats and potatoes. No foreign muck brought here by scrounging foreigners. Dirty smelly foreign food like pasta,, carrots, tomatoes and curry, have ruined this country, and turned The United Kingdom into the mess it is today. Oh, sorry, my mistake, no potatoes either. God Bless The Queen.