Brian Taylor of BBC Scotland said last night he picked up at Holyrood that the other unionist parties were pleased that UKIP had won the former Lib Dem seat in Scotland and stopped the SNP getting a third. That was the most revealing moment of last night for me – it showed the vicious irresponsibility of the Better Together campaign, and exposed the lie that UKIP are outsiders.
The other moment worth watching was Alex Salmond confronting Dimbleby that the BBC had given UKIP four times as much coverage time in Scotland during the campaign as the SNP. Dimbleby tamely responded that his complaint should be directed to BBC Scotland. The BBC’s promotion of UKIP again explodes the myth of UKIP as outsiders.
The Unionist camp’s pathetic attempt to claim that UKIP’s 10% and fourth place in Scotland, squeaking one seat, shows Scotland is the same politically as England where UKIP got 29% and came first, is desperate politics. That in order to make that point they were happy for a racist party to marginally represent Scotland in Europe, is a sign of the total moral bankruptcy of the Better Together neo-con British Nationalist programme.
New Labour are completely screwed. To only beat the Tories by 1%, when there is a huge UKIP voteof which a significant slice will go back to the Tories, shows there is no chance whatsoever that New Labour will win the UK general election.
The people of Scotland have a very simple choice in September. Independence, or another Tory government which will probably pull the UK out of the EU, and might very well be in coalition with UKIP.
New Labour won almost nowhere except London. It is the party of London., with a leader who has never in his life lived outside London. But it is a fascinating fact that of all the class, educational, geographical and other statistics you can correlate with New Labour success, the factor with the strongest correlation of all with the New Labour share of the vote is the prevalence of postal voting. New Labour can win only where the system is open widest to abuse through massive scale electoral fraud.
Some of this is straight fraud – postal ballots being given to ghost voters, non-existent people on the register. That is very much more prevalent than you probably imagine. But mostly it operates through the deprivation of the privacy of the polling booth. In a polling station nobody is supposed to be allowed to look over your shoulder (although there were disgraceful scenes in places in Tower Hamlets, Wood Green and Newham). But if you receive your ballot paper in your home, you are extremely vulnerable if you live in a situation where others are able to enter your home and demand to check that you have voted the right way before you post your ballot. That is beyond doubt the situation both of many family members, particularly affecting women, and of certain highly hierarchical and patriarchal communities. Postal ballot distortion is an absolutely disgraceful blot on British political culture. It is also fundamental to New Labour’s ability to salvage something from a disastrous electoral performance.
There is indeed a very nasty undercurrent of racism in England at the moment. I live in one of UKIP’s strongest areas and this racism cannot be wished away. In fact I do not believe that Farage is personally racist, and I believe he is genuine not tactical in his abhorrence of the French National Front. But I do believe Farage has pandered to and encouraged people who are racists, and that there are a great many racists within UKIP. These people must not be allowed to become a ‘respectable’ part of politics and must be confronted wherever they appear.
I have argued for years that the UK is not a democracy in that no real choice is offered between the main political parties. Their policies are all the same. If the range of possible policies on any one issue were enumerated from 1 to 100, New Labour, Lib Dem and Tories offer you choices in the range 81 to 86. The electorate has noticed, and people are sick of it. People have noticed all over Europe too. The politics of neo-con consensus and its lackey media is happily dead. This is a change that will not stop. Once we imprison enough neo-cons who ripped off the public and the taxpayer, perhaps they might concede that it turns out history had not ended after all.
It is true that UKIP’s support does represent an upsurge of dissatisfaction with the political elite, and that also is part of an unarticulated rage at the astonishing growth of inequality of wealth in society and the vast shift of resources to the billionaire middlemen in the financial sector who do extremely little for it. It is good that rage is building, and Syriza show in Greece that it can be constructively channelled. But it is much more often and with much more success diverted in order to awake volcanoes of atavism, and rage that should be directed at plutocrats is instead turned on foreigners. The danger is letting that analysis divert you from the fact of how very, very real and very, very nasty that atavism is in the dispossessed classes. We are in a dangerous place. The neo-con establishment is fanning racist flames.
At school, we were taught about the years of revolution in Europe of 1830-32 and 1848-9. Those revolutionary years coincided with Asian Cholera pandemics, which undoubtedly played a part in driving people beyond endurance. You can of course argue that poverty and famine assisted the spread of the pandemics.
This current year of European change has also been sparked by economic distress, and seen an increase in poverty marker diseases, some of which we had hoped had effectively vanished. But plague has been a cause. Europe has suffered the most devastating plague of bankers in history.
The disillusioned should not blame immigrants. Immigrants are victims too. Turn your wrath on the bankers, the billionaires and the neo-con parties who do their bidding. Another world is possible.
Let’s start by ending the UK and setting Scotland free. It is not illegitimate to judge an idea in part by the quality and motives of those who oppose it. The full range of the neo-con establishment prefer racist isolation for a neo-con UK to a free Scotland. Just look at them. Then kick them where it really hurts.
Who mentioned skin colour ?
It was your cowardice in sidestepping it in the first place that you betrayed by your snide allusion to our “racism”.
Even a useful idiot like George Galloway has got the guts to identify the Biradiri system (disgracefully encouraged by Labour) is at the heart of the issue.
The people have shown that half measures will no longer do. What is needed at this juncture is more EU and more immigration. People are understandably disillusioned with the political classes. It is therefore critical that we proceed with full EU integration and the replacement of the xenophobic English working class. Blame the bankers. All opposition to immigration is racism. I have met Nigel Farage and let me assure you that in private he eats kittens. That is the choice. Independence or a kitty holocaust.
good post Craig, but not a case in isolation. Farage immigration issues, albeit with slightly differing tonal emphasis, is an issue Golden Dawn are viciously expressing in Greece, its what Ms. Le pen is proclaiming in France, Yobic is shouting at the Roma in Hungary and what this cheeky chappie Bernd Lucke is on about.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/a-portrait-of-bernd-lucke-and-the-new-german-right-a-969589.html
And we have not even talked of Norways fascists, still not purged after Breivigs apparent solo attack, or the Svoboda’s in eastern Europe.
A globalised world wants to trade with each other, with all the bells and whistles attached, ideally take as much for themselves as they can, for their prosperity and theirs alone, not to be shared with those whose resources we took or traded.
But the free movement of globalised labour, answering the needs of various countries, is once again skewed towards our western specialists and engioneers accessing foreign work, whilst labourers who want to change their lot, from Africa Asia and further afield are rebuffed, denied work and sent back home.
Not so the 350.000 US/Oz immigrants to this country, once again their access is preferred to that of eastern Europeans.
Schengen is good for us, its a wall to others, an extra insurmountable hurdle for a person with little means.
This fence will grow in height and the Wilders of this world, we totally forgot our Dutch fans of simple messages.
The political parties don’t want to give us a fair voting system they can’t manipulate anymore, they would hate demarchy, because it would end the traditional politcal oligarchies and send them were they belong, into room 101, so whats the recipe to defeat UKIP in a first past the post system?
vote tactically wherever you live?
We both have seen the Biradiri system work in Blackburn, we know that postal voting is fraudulent and that our vote is not secret anymore, but recorded.
Short of organising our own general election using NGO lobby groups and a proportional system, or using demarchy cause its cheaper for us all, I can’t see any way out.
hey what an idea, what if more people vote in an alternatiove fair election, then in a first past the post lot, what will the BBC say if a citizen organised GE has more mandate than the political parties?
South Africa had so-called elections on the 7th May 2014. It was,as usual, a racial head count with the ANC winning a landslide victory despite 50 million people being treated to a truly DREADFUL, incompetent and obscenely corrupt government and an even more dreadful and thoroughly nasty-piece-of-work President.
Zuma just spent nearly a billion Rand of tax payers money on doing up his PRIVATE RESIDENCE yet he is still cheered to the rafters (as is Mugabe) in South Africa.
This makes the complaints about the EU look like chicken feed actually.
Just to keep in with the ANC’s Africa-for-the-Africans meme (locally known as TRANSFORMATION) Zuma and his ANC cronies have now got a law bulldozed through parliament that will actually make it a criminal offence to publish any government official’s corruption FACTS.
Small wonder that not a single western state nor any of the BRICS showed up at Zuma’s inauguration.
forgot to finish a sentence. After simple messages it should have read..’will become more numerous and more powerfull.’
We must get the Scots out of the UK and fully locked into the EU before they twig like the English have. The English working classes are thick and racist. The Scots working classes are still lovely and tolerant and impressionable. I was in Poland once touring the castles. To the visiting government official, Europe is a wonderful place. It was during such times that I realised the petty concerns of the English plebs about jobs and houses are really so very insignificant. I will be with my wife in Spain shortly. What a wonderful system that we have created in which one’s spouse can nip abroad for her Master’s degree with the minimum degree of fuss! It is one of my profoundest political hopes that one day all Scots will be able to do this without even having to change currency. The ignorant English will, of course, fester in their racist and uneducated prejudices created by their inability to accept mass-immigration. Let them stew I say!
“So please enlighten us on the turnout excluding those parts of the Ukraine where Putin’s bully boys stopped people from voting.”
I don’t really know why I should be providing a know-all with facts he could easily research. But, hey, on our side we try to be helpful. The figures given in this report is 55.3% (excluding Eastern Ukraine regions) and the source is Kiev Post.
http://nsnbc.me/2014/05/26/poroshenko-declares-victory-ukraine-elections-low-turn/
“Pure comedy”.
Most of the shit you write is.
“The Euro Maidan started last November”
The shooting from the boys you support started in February.
Poroshenko was not supporting Yats so much as Klitschko’s prong of the three forks, but the NAZIs have been shown the back door as long as they can get them out of the secret services, which are the bane of every government and country.
You clearly haven’t got a clue RD. But I am glad they voted the seedy lot you’ve been supporting out.
Anyway, back to work for you tomorrow eh?
Treat me with respect and I will stop dismantling the shit you post.
Davebee
26 May, 2014 – 6:02 pm
“Zuma and his ANC cronies have now got a law bulldozed through parliament that will actually make it a criminal offence to publish any government official’s corruption FACTS.”
“Small wonder that not a single western state nor any of the BRICS showed up at Zuma’s inauguration.”
Not true Davebee:
Representatives from Brazil, Russia India and China were there Davebee.
As were representatives of Cuba and Nicaragua. Also in attendance was the UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon.
http://www.news24.com/Elections/News/UN-chief-heads-of-state-to-attend-inauguration-20140523
“Important rule in life. Anyone who self describes as ‘an internationally praised author’ is a fruitcake”
__________________
Very true, Craig.
A wry smile also comes to one’s lips when one sees “is a former adviser to Ministers ” written as an expression of praise (one notes that it’s not usually stated who those Ministers are).
Rodney Atkinson and his video remind me more than a little of Christopher Booker and “Doctor” Richard North (well-known fruitcakes both) and their magnum opus “The Great Deception – the secret history of the European Union” (secret no longer of course, thanks to the unflagging efforts ofBooker and North).
It’s an obsessive, selective, mendacious work and as such I warmly commend it to the Eminences of this blog.
Davebee
26 May, 2014 – 6:02 pm
I forgot to ask…
Can you back up your statement with a link or reference?:
“Zuma and his ANC cronies have now got a law bulldozed through parliament that will actually make it a criminal offence to publish any government official’s corruption FACTS.”
“Small wonder that not a single western state nor any of the BRICS showed up at Zuma’s inauguration.”
Not true Davebee:
Representatives from Brazil, Russia India and China were there Davebee.”
____________________________
Evasive and in your usual half-truth style, Doug.
When saying representatives of the BRICs, Doug, you should also have said that they were from the local diplomatic representations in Pretoria.
I believe your comment seeks to give the impression that the BRIC representatives came in from abroad and were of high rank, eg Ministers or even Heads.
By the way, there was also diplomatic representation (again, from the embassies on the spot) from Western countries.
Hope that clarifies, Doug.
Craig
“Falcone and OldMark,
The reason these communities are so susceptible to postal ballot abuse is because they are hierarchical and patriarchal. It is not skin colour that causes the abuse, though I realise that is something you would rather discuss.”
____________________
The above comment is unworthy. As I read them, Falcone and Old Mark were twitting you about your PC expression, which sounds strange from the pen of a man who seems anything but.
What exactly is racist about saying that postal ballot abuse is more prevalent in Indian, Pakistani and Bangla Deshi communities than in others (eg Polish, Jewish, Italian, etc etc) if that is indeed the case?
“What exactly is racist about saying that postal ballot abuse is more prevalent in Indian, Pakistani and Bangla Deshi communities than in others (eg Polish, Jewish, Italian, etc etc) if that is indeed the case?”
What Craig did is explain why.
And that explanation added more to our knowledge than simply naming a particular community.
It also enables you to do something about the problem, were you so minded, because you’ve identified the factors that cause the problem.
Just saying, the brown fellas did it, doesn’t get us very far.
Davebee 6:02pm
All that you report is quite tolerable. We got what we wanted in South Africa, that’s all that matters, and in any case we’ve moved on to Israel now.
Nick Clegg Defiant After Elections Disaster
The under-pressure Lib Dem leader admits being left with just one MEP was a “huge setback” but he says he will not walk away.
http://news.sky.com/story/1269329/nick-clegg-defiant-after-elections-disaster
Whereas across the Irish Sea, there are people who know how to do the decent thing.
Gilmore resigns as Labour leader in aftermath of elections
http://www.rte.ie/news/2014/0526/619609-reshuffle/
You know politicians are on the ropes when they start blaming the media. Salmond failed to achieve the kind of result last night that would put him on course to win the independence vote. Calling UKIP members racists and alleging a conspiracy with the BBC is easier than looking closer to home, I guess.
There was a much higher turnout in Eire than here. 51.6%
16 local council seats yet to be decided
26 May 2014 21.07
Only 16 of the 949 council seats available remain to be filled in the local authority elections.
Fianna Fáil have made significant gains in the election and now hold 265 seats across the country, having received 25.3% of first preference votes.
Independents and Others makes up the next largest grouping, holding 232 council seats following a first preference vote of 28.3%.
Fine Gael support is down by more than a third since the General Election, with the party currently holding 229 seats.
Sinn Féin has experienced considerable growth and now holds 157 seats and is the largest party on the Dublin City and South Dublin Councils.
Labour has experienced a collapse in support to 7%, holding just 50 seats nationwide.
Turnout nationally stood at 51.6%.
http://www.rte.ie/news/2014/0526/619617-local-elections/
“New Labour won almost nowhere except London. It is the party of London., with a leader who has never in his life lived outside London.”
Apart from Living in Leeds, New York and at Harvard.
Labour won more seats than everyone else put together. You’re talking utter rubbish.
What a silly, angry man you’ve become, Craig.
There were police in the polling booths in Tower Hamlets, Craig. And the allegations are made more against opponents of Labour than Labour.
Postal voting is most common in the Northeast. Not the anti-women patriarchy you had in mind, eh?
Gilligan standard.
Herbie
“It also enables you to do something about the problem, were you so minded, because you’ve identified the factors that cause the problem.”
_______________________-
And what would that something be, Herbie?
(Should be easy for you to answer, now that Craig’s identified “the factors that cause the problem”)
Does “Tubby’ come from Liebour party HQ?
When I looked to see where that is located, Contact Us on the Liebour website gives the location as a disused pub in Newcastle. ???
Completely agree Craig. On the 1830s and 1848 revolutions coinciding with cholera epidemics i didn’t know about that, but i’m wondering if it could be similar to the medieval Peasan’ts revolt in England, which came after the Black Death. The shortage of peasant farmers and workers this created let them negotiate higher wages (until the King and parliament capped them) and this may have encouraged them to think they were powerful enough for a revolt to get somewhere (though they then chickened out by assuming the King couldn’t be to blame and it must just be his bad advisors and were crushed as a result)
‘There were police in the polling booths in Tower Hamlets, Craig. And the allegations are made more against opponents of Labour than Labour.’
T Isaacs- can you verify that ? And which side’s ‘allegations’ actually have substance ?
From this report of serious irregularities in Tower Hamlets it is unclear who the offenders were (politically speaking)-
http://www.eastlondonadvertiser.co.uk/news/limehouse_woman_s_anger_at_cyril_jackson_primary_school_polling_station_1_3614552#cxrecs_s
Anyone who knows Tower Hamlets however can deduce the most likely explanation for two women entering the same polling booth is that the older one is illiterate in English, and the younger one (probably her daughter)is telling her where to mark her ballot paper.
BTW in the Tower Hamlets mayorial election John Biggs (Lab) received 6000 postal votes. How man postal votes did the winner (Lutfur Rahman) receive ?
The ‘democratic’ outcome is a disappointment to the camp here so accusations flying everywhere against everyone and no proof of misconduct in the running of the election.
Who’s to blame?
The system for failing to provide real choice.
The postal voting system for fraud.
The patriarchal culture in communities.
The racist voters who hate immigrants.
The immigrants who prevent family members voting differently.
Who’s not to blame?
The non-voter who voted to allow voters a louder voice.
The vote-spoiler for the same reason but more wilfully.
The common voter who wasn’t common enough to make an impact.
There were Green party candidates to vote for whose policies were a mixture of socialist, environmentalist and pro-European. There were also anti-European socialist candidates to vote for (e.g NO2EU).
There were hard right, anti EU, center-right and Liberal parties too.
I find it hard to believe that there was no choice for voters.
No word of celebration on the fact that the Greens overtook the Lib Dems Mr Murray?
Unfortunately the Greens didn’t do as well as was hoped and only got one new MEP, which is a pity. It was more that the Lib Dem vote collapsed than that the Green vote rose all that much. Green share of the vote UK wide actually fell 0.75%. Very disappointing. Maybe they need to form a coalition with the small socialist parties, who have so far destroyed themselves with splits and factionalism.
Then the UK or Scotland might have something similar to the Green-Red Syriza coalition in Greece.
Tom (26 May, 2014 – 9:40 pm)
Insipid pea-shooter character assassination, of no substance, and though your best shot, it missed by a country mile, it was so bad if you want you can have another go, to try get the hang of it, can’t say fairer than that!
It’s perfectly OK to blame the media when they are hugely to blame, they’re hugely to blame for cutting down gentle democracy wherever its seeds fall, it roots and opens its fragile leaves to the catch the light and warmth of the sun, they cut it down and spray all around with toxic herbicide for good measure. It’s pleasing to know the BBCs ‘big beasts’ as represented by Dimbleby & Co. Ltd., Hereditary TV Presenters, Fact Stranglers and Laundry Service (Wednesdays only) by Royal appointment, run from Alex Salmond and from honest debate offered where the Dimbleby cannot be guaranteed a rigged setup, cannot work without a script provided, freezes then panics when his masters holler in his earpiece, in panic themselves at the thought of giving the SNP or any Scottish Independence supporting party or individual airtime. I think they’d rather pull the plug and show a test card than that. No one has terrified them like this for a long time, that their knee-jerks as if wired to the mains, you’d have to go back to Labour Party conferences of old, with with Benn and Foot at the height of their rhetorical and intellectual powers to see the BBC resort to blacking out all transmission than have bold truths laid before Britain’s people for them to hear, raw, unspun, and make their own minds up, with all the facts to make a proper informed fearless, because right, decision.
Your pseudo scientific nonsense didn’t cut it, neither does the bitter unionist’s fallback tactic you’ve resorted to – after ludicrous scare scories: Scotland certain to be menaced by UFOs etc. – have stretched credulity well past breaking point, then try personalising a quite clear-cut debate you’re losing; that debate was Independence or more of the same Westminster criminal misrule, pandering to the shrinking pool of morally repugnant haves and the deluded lot who aspire to join them but will spend their lives miserably failing, happy enough believing there’ll always be someone lower than them to despise and to rob blind; the unionists and neo-cons lost that debate, now they’ve totally lost the plot.
The BBC have no excuse as they’re so lavishly and effortlessly funded, free from the commercial imperative, it obtains our loot by extortion and by deception, trading on a mythical, utterly groundless reputation for objectivity, when all it ever has been is the mouthpiece of the state and of a rapacious few oligarchs hiding behind the curtain. The BBCs News and Current Affairs output is and for a long time has been truly awful, you might like it, more fool you, but for almost all others, the penny long ago dropped, their Big Lie game is up. Like many more, I don’t like one bit what they’ve been doing, it’s unforgiveable and many simply won’t take it anymore, we’ve had enough too of the BBCs ‘involuntary subscription’ model and recommend telling the TV Licensing swat team goons where to stick their extortion racket, and keeping the ransom money demanded instead to keep the power and gas on, the rent paid and subsistence foodstuffs on the table; us pioneers of a post-BBC world blog back that the air is refreshing and the horizons unlimited, the living good, the only cloud is sadness and concern for those stuck behind, glued to the box not yet fully able to re-adjust their mindset, to think things through as they once innately could, before the media lies and disinformation accumulated, and became oppressive obstacles strewn wildly across their mind’s pathways, and the infinite spaces of the imagination become cages, prisons and mazes. Break out, join us. Live again.
I’ve yet to see a convincing scrap of tangible evidence for the existence of anything so preposterous as ‘BBC Scotland’ (surely a contradiction in terms), and the counter-evidence overwhelms, it is only one of many fictions which have outlived their effectiveness, we’ve grown out of them, we’ve no need for the Tooth-Fairy or Santa Claus, know it’s all make-believe, but we pretend sometimes still, just for fun.
Other mythical beasts of imaginative fiction e.g. the ‘Scottish’ Labour/Tory/Lib-Them Parties, were once thought to exist also, but we know now they’re myths too, all there is London calling, demanding they bleed us dry soonest, increasingly shrilly calling its quislings and minions ‘attack, attack, there is NO alternative, but attack’.
Tubby Isaacs
‘There were police in the polling booths at Tower Hamlets’. Err, yes – where do you think my information came from? In TH it is indeed true that independents as well as the party of war criminals were cheating. But that is as well as.
I have not claimed that postal vote fraud is ONLY found in ethnic communities. It is a New Labour thing above all. So yes, it is indeed prominent in the North East of England. And in Fife. Thanks for proving my point.
5566h
I am delighted the Greens overtook the Lib Dems. I voted Green. Pay attention.