Sunday, March 21, 2010

2010 Election special: UKIP

Part 3 of our Pre-Election guide: Tim Worstall makes his pitch for the UK Independence Party.

You'll have seen that loudmouthed rude man on TV recently: that Nigel Farage. Yes, he's one of us, one of UKIP, the UK Independence Party.

The rudeness, well, when the country's been sold downriver you're likely to get that little irate, being loudmouthed in defence of liberty is no crime.

As to why you should vote for us: a vote for anyone else is wasted. You might as well rip up the ballot paper and use it to clean dog poop off the pavement: we're the only people who think your vote should continue to matter.

The Great Unmentionable of British politics is that Westminster may have been the Mother of Parliaments but she's now less than a regional quango. All the big decisions are taken in Brussels, by people not only we can't vote for, we can't vote against them. Remember when VAT went down 15%? Why didn't it go down further? Against EU rules that would be. Why is the rubbish collected once every other week now? EU rules that is. Can't buy a normal light bulb? EU rules...

80% of our laws on these sorts of things are now made in Brussels by the European Union and all that the British Government, those MPs you're going to be electing in a month or two, can do about it is shout "Yes Sir!". It's actually illegal for them to say no. Which is how we get a law about jams and marmalades which defines carrots as fruit. No, really 'tis true.

We're not against Europe mind: nothing wrong with the Continent, the people, cultures, food or the weather. We're against only the political system of the European Union. We came second in the EuroParliament elections last year, beating Labour into third place. We got elected an Earl, a union shop steward, a farmer, a retired policeman, a history teacher and, yes, that loudmouth in the suit on the telly. We've views on just about everything but the only important one, the one that unites us, is "who rules Britain?".

Who should be making our laws? Should it be the people we elect? Should the law, what we may and may not do without being thrown in pokey, be made by us and for us? We say yes it should. So we should leave the European Union and do as we wish, not as we're told.

And this is why we're the only party worthy of your vote. We're the only people who want to make sure it's worth a damn. Everyone else is quite happy continuing to take orders from Brussels. We'll cooperate with "Europe", of course. Trade freely, work together when we need or want to. But we're the only people who want elections to decide who actually rules us.

Is it us deciding for ourselves? Or them telling us what to do?

Yes, quite, we're adults and we're British, so we'll decide for ourselves thanks very much: vote UKIP.

Tim Worstall is a writer and former UKIP press officer. He blogs at timworstall.com

[Tomorrow: Daniel Hoffmann-Gill into the mind of a BNP voter]

13 comments:

claude said...

"Why is the rubbish collected once every other week now? EU rules that is."

Not true. Otherwise, France, Spain and Italy would all be in breach of EU rules. I don't know about other countries but, for sure:

In France it's once a day in big cities and twice a week in small towns (not counting recycling).

In Spain it's twice daily plus separate collections everyday for glass, plastic and paper.

In Italy it's twice a week to everyday (depending on the area) for "general waste" with recycling on top.

The fact that in Britain rubbish colelction is only once a fortnight (which is unbelievably bad) is due purely to local councils and their ineptitude and bad management of funds.

That and NOTHING else. No EU. No immigrants. No lesbians. No Facebook to blame.

This is a prime example of how false myths are propagated.

Newmania said...

Myth in left wing circles has come to something true that I find inconvenient although in this case I am not aware of an EU directive on refuse collection .There are extensive EU rules about recycling waste management and related subjects however so if world in which Councils make their own choices on basic a service as the bin men is being suggested that is myth .
There really is legislation on standard condom size at the silly end and at the more serious ed look at the consequences of assorting in the services industry when a rogue Icelandic Bank is rubber stamped ….( yes I know Iceland are not members they are however part of this agreement”

Don`t think Tim have got to the heart f it though .By his reasoning were the EU Parliament truly a Parliament and not just chat show invented for symbolic purposes (while the Commission makes the rules ) , then it would be fine . After all whilst I do not wish to be in the United States of Europe I have no objection to the United States of America and do not suppose they have no democracy there
No, the argument for self determination is meaningless without some recognition of who is the people and of what does it consist . The left wish to brand any sense of Englishness racist and backwards but it is in fact a tie of memory and allegiance central to the predominantly communitarian English people . It is a Conservative sense of identity of the sort that Liberated Poland and India

Is that Timmish , Timine or Tim-like , I `m not sure . Tim is Libertarian and Liberal Economist , in the 70s he would certainly have been on the side of the “Common Market” whose oppositeness , Powell , Benn and the like would have horrified him . That is not necessarily a bad thing but the alliance between Libertarian and extreme Conservative remains a slightly unholy one

2112 said...

I suppose making sense is something only bloody foreigners do, eh Newmania?

Tim Worstall said...

"The fact that in Britain rubbish colelction is only once a fortnight (which is unbelievably bad) is due purely to local councils and their ineptitude and bad management of funds."

Sadly, no, it isn't.

We have traditionally got rid of a lot of our rubbish in landfills. We actually dig more holes each year for the minerals than we have rubbish to put into them. However, the EU decided that recycling must be done. Even if it is more inefficient in terms of resource use (and the artugment for this decision to be made at EU level was, seriously, that some countries don't have as many holes and thus they would be at a disadvantage in the Single Market unless everyone recycled).

When that gets here central government says that, well, to encourage recycling why don't local councils only collect one type of rubbish one week and the other the other?

It isn't, of course you're correct, a direct rule from hte EU that rubbish should only be collected once every two weeks. Rather, that collection pattern is the result of EU rules being put into procatice.

claude said...

Tim,
"It isn't, of course you're correct, a direct rule from the EU that rubbish should only be collected once every two weeks. Rather, that collection pattern is the result of EU rules being put into procatice."

Well, exactly. I suppose that's a mild admission that you twisted facts in the first place, Daily Mail-style, so that it looks like it's the EU's fault that rubbish in Britain is collected every 14 days even though that isn't the case in ANY other EU country.

I suppose, at least British vermin are having fun...

Bob Piper said...

But it can't be a European directive to make Council's empty the bins once a fortnight, unless little old Sandwell has declared UDI, because our bins are emptied every week.

Having said that I agree with much of what Tim says, if not the Daily Mail-daft way that he says it. We have transferred sovereignty to people we don't elect and can't therefore get rid of. The only democratic options are to overhaul completely the undemocratic EU capitalist bureaucracy... or get out.

Newmania said...

But Claude that is the was the EU often proceeds .There is no direct rule that forced the hated human rights act on us,.
In reality it is not optional.It is not good enough ,either ,to sneer at the Daily Mail. It may pick out eye catching facts but it does not ritually distort perspective and time scales in the Guardian manner.
The latter are far worse liars as they claim a seriousness and , to be frank , class based authority the Mail does not

When it comes to lies if you look back at what was said and done at the time of the so called 'Common Market' it is astonishing just how righ the opposition were. Are you seri9ously going to defend an organisation that accepts a 'yes' vote but not a 'no' vote ?

And you quibble about a shock horror British Newspaper ?

claude said...

Can someone explain this to me?

If the EU "rules" about rubbish collection are "not optional", like Newmania seems to argue, why on earth then is rubbish in the rest of Europe collected between several times a week to twice daily (and that's without including recycling which is far more present on the continent)???

My view is that there are some genuine points to make about the EU's unaccountability and decision-making, as well as the referendum which was reneged by BOTH Labour and the Tories.

But...in typical tabloid-induced fashion, those genuine points are lost along the way or deemed as crap the moment myths and half-truths are fabricated.

Do you remember when in 2007 the papers were going spare over Britain having to lose or vacate its seat on the United Nations Security Council?
It never happened. And you know why? Because it was bollocks!

Or when The Sun and the Telegraph started writing that the EU would ban the "acre" (as in measurement). Again, a porkie.

For a comprehensive list of tabloid-related myths and lies about the EU, take a good look here.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

I'm not sure who I hate the most, the Tories or the UKIP, which for me, is a rich man's BNP.

Tough call, give me some time Tim W.

Acidfairyy said...

I love people who are so against the EU yet know very little about them.
I'd rather stick pins in my eyes than vote for such a disgraceful party as UKIP.

Newmania said...

the referendum which was reneged by BOTH Labour and the Tories.


Well now you are getting desperate it is inconcievable that the Conservative party could have lied about Lisbon as the Lib Dems and Labour Party did. They were not in Government at the time but it is now an almost universally Euro sceptic Party.

For every exaggeration there are far more serious truths.For example you have misunderstood me .It is often said that the hated Human Rights Act has nothing to do with the EU in fact it does and it ( The Human rights act) is not optional for members. This is just as example of the lies told by those who want to abolish England

Can you imagine how many more I could find , can you conceieve of the volume Claude? Lets start with the assertion that the Common Market was simpy a trading agreement . As that was the erroneous basis on which the referendum was conducted thats a pretty key one doncha think

Helen Highwater said...

"those who want to abolish England"

Erm... and that would be??? Who??? Ze Germans?

Like Bob Piper says, Sandwell gets weekly rubbish collection. Recycling is done once a fortnight and garden waste (GARDEN WASTE!!!) on the week they're not taking recycling. On Saturday we even had a rather exciting general household waste collection where my street was blocked, with amusing consequences (impatient drivers tooting away to no effect), while a very big lorry with a grabber-thingy took away old washing machines and knackered sofas.

Clearly rubbish collection is made at a council level, not EU. Why the hell would the EU want to micromanage countries to that degree? They wouldn't have time!!! Your eyes glazed over skim-reading that last paragraph. Imagine that on a Europe-wide level. How dull!

I get the impression that a lot of UKIP members don't realise what the party stands for. There's someone I know (vaguely) who's a member and if you say "OOooh, I'm really looking forward to my trip to Paris," her response is, "Why are you going there? The toilets are horrible." So I'm assuming her membership of UKIP is based on the assumption that Europe is full of people with weird toilets that look like showers, and people with weird toilets shouldn't be telling us we can't have our rubbish collected once a week. Even though that's a load of rubbish. (see what I did there).

Talking of people being in power who we didn't vote for, I didn't vote for Bob, but there you go. I'm not going to form a party based on independence for my street from the rest of the Sandwell.

Johnny T said...

Single issue party. Waste of space. And they know it.