An Ugly Mood 469


In Heywood and Middleton, a classic Labour northern English seat, UKIP and the Tories combined got 51% of the vote. In Clacton – a deprived coastal area – the Conservatives and UKIP got 83% of the vote.

It is not that Labour and the Lib Dems offer an alternative that is in any significant way less devoted to corporate interests and serving the economic needs of the super-rich. The large majority of voters, and especially those who do not bother to vote, have by now worked out that the difference in their lives is negligible if they have a different member of the political class with his or her nose in the trough at their expense.

But everybody who has seen an actual UKIP campaign knows that their grassroots appeal is simply racist – they promote the idea that it is not the billionaires and ultra-wealthy who are sucking the resources from society, but rather the poor of a different colour. The Conservatives are striving, particularly through rampant Islamophobia, to compete for the atavistic vote.

UKIP is an antibody produced by the political establishment and their paymasters, to counter public disillusion with a dreadful and worsening unequal society. UKIP’s task is to divert public anger away from their exploiters towards specific groups of the poor. It does so very effectively. UKIP’s success yesterday will lead to a race among the mainstream parties to scapegoat vulnerable social groups – immigrants, benefit claimants, unemployed – and to compete in external xenophobia. The next government of the United Kingdom will be right wing to a degree which would have seemed unthinkable for the majority of my life.


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469 thoughts on “An Ugly Mood

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  • Republicofscotland

    Mark Hoban Tory MP

    claimed, £35 pounds on a toilet roll holder.

    £100 pounds for a chrome shower rack.

    £79.00 pounds for 4 silk cushion covers on his second home allowance.
    _____________________________

    Mark Hoban Tory MP, says

    “Unemployed people have taken benefits for granted,a way of life, they must roll up their sleeves, and stop playing the system.
    ________________________

    http://munguinsrepublic.blogspot.co.uk/

  • Ray Jinghar-Don

    “But everybody who has seen an actual UKIP campaign knows that their grassroots appeal is simply racist”

    And the attitude revealed by comments like that are part of the reason that your ilk is destined for replacement. Utterly out of touch with the reality of the general public mood. No doubt also still reeling from the reality that the majority of Scots want to remain British. I seem to recall that you were in cloud cuckoo land for that one too. Still, keep running on an anti-racist ticket if you want to. At you might manage a result in Bradford.

  • mark golding

    I realise, Tony_Opmoc, the experience is not an excuse for a drink being just a metaphor or hope that dreadful things do not happen.

    Awful things happen on our journey simply because we cannot couple to all things. We are not God. Even so we can use what we have.

    Now if you make a conscious emotional effort or essentially say to your beloved wife, “have a safe journey” you have coupled to her journey and used intention to transform her passage through time in that instance. You create a protection or shield as if you are there with her watching yet not physically observing. This ‘entanglement’ occurs at any distance bound by the universe.

    Love of course helps us to couple; it is a powerful emotion.

    There exists, in the domain of emotion, a moiety called deltron that can be
    consciousness-activated to serve as a coupler substance between the components of physical things and the information wave that exists in the empty spaces between them.

  • fred

    “No Fred; also a commitment to unilateral nuclear disarmament, progressive personal taxation, the eradication of poverty, free state education including support grants for higher education students, free prescriptions, a fully funded NHS and lots more.”

    All popularist policies designed to get people to vote for them and to vote for independence. The UKIP have plenty of those, like zero tax on minimum wage and a repeal of the smoking laws, even their policies on immigration.

    “All those things you hate because of your right-wing mentality.”

    Now fuck off and die retard.

  • doug scorgie

    Richard
    10 Oct, 2014 – 1:17 pm

    “Please be careful not to conflate Islamophobia with racism.”

    “There is a linguistic problem that we don’t have distinct words for two completely different concepts, namely “discrimination against humans who originate from a Muslim culture” and “observing that the text of the Koran runs contrary to enlightenment values”.

    “Muslim” = a human being (the vast majority of whom are good people).
    ____________________________________________________

    Richard, an adherent of Islam is called a Muslim.
    ____________________________________________________

    “Islam”= a set of ideas (many of which are anti-scientific and cruel).”
    ___________________________________________________

    Christianity: a set of ideas (many of which are anti-scientific and cruel).
    Judaism: a set of ideas (many of which are anti-scientific and cruel).
    ________________________________________________

    “It is indeed racist to be anti-muslim, but there is nothing wrong with being anti-islam…”
    ________________________________________________

    Don’t you see Richard, it’s the same thing.

    Criticism of a set of ideas (ie religion) is a valid topic in free speech but criticism of the people who follow a religion (Islam) simply because of their religion, is discriminatory and illogical.

  • DoNNyDarKo

    Fred; What you think of SNP policies is your own business but that does not mean it is any more accurate than your false statements about Salmond ,Sturgeon and co being Nazi’s.You make things up and live in lallaland.Wash your mouth out wi soap and grow up FFS.The SNP pushed through “No smoking” legislation before E&W and then stopped alcohol pricing from getting too low.Hardly popular measures in a place like Scotland.
    All education in Britain used to be free and Govt grants were available to the poor based on income to help students.Britain could afford it now but don’t out of choice.Bank loans have become another financial product to bolster profits for the Banksters which is who the Tories work and lobby for.Westminster chooses to spend the money on War and Nuclear weapons we dont need and will never use.
    Now toddle off like a good sheep rearer.

  • Mary

    Ugly indeed.

    Cameron urged to break up coalition after Clacton mauling
    ‘In order to reconnect with our supporters, we need to break up the coalition,’ pleads former minister

    Rowena Mason, political correspondent
    theguardian.com, Friday 10 October 2014

    ‘Sir Edward Leigh, a former minister, said breaking up the coalition would be one way of showing fed-up Conservative voters that Cameron was serious about addressing their concerns, instead of being shackled to the Liberal Democrats.

    “For both our sakes, in order to reconnect with our supporters, we need to break up the coalition,” he wrote on the ConservativeHome website. “It would send another signal to our former voters that we mean it on protecting the armed forces, promoting marriage, and tackling waste in our country’s massive social and health bureaucracy: a big ask.

    “Every Conservative MP is desperate to stop [Ed] Miliband getting into No 10 – to once again open the immigration taps and lose control of the deficit. Let’s convince our people that voting Tory will give them a real Conservative government that intends to get down to business. Above all, let’s not insult the heartfelt Conservatives who were trying to give us a lesson in Clacton. Let’s convince them that the lesson is learned.”’

  • Mary

    Mark Hoban referred to above is yet another CFoI, going back to 2003.

    Name of donor: Conservative Friends of Israel
    Address of donor: 45b Westbourne Terrace London W2 3UR
    Amount of donation (or estimate of the probable value): flights and accommodation for me, plus accommodation for my wife between 13 and 18 November, to a value of £2,500
    Destination of visit: Israel and the West Bank
    Date of visit: 11 to 18 November 2013Purpose of visit: fact finding delegation to Israel and the West Bank
    (Registered 10 December 2013)

    ~~

    He is/was a Treasury minister. He recorded this massive donation.

    18 April 2011 – View full entry

    4. Sponsorship or financial or material support

    (b) Support in the capacity of an MP Name of donor: Oliver Wyman Limited
    Address of donor: 1 Tower Place West, Tower Place, London EC3R 5BU
    Amount of donation or nature and value if donation in kind: In my capacity as a Shadow Treasury Minister I received support from Oliver Wyman Limited in the form of services and advice provided in connection with implementation of our reforms on financial regulation. Oliver Wyman’s work has an estimated value of £150,000 for the period November 2009 to March 2010, which will be reported to the Electoral Commission by the Conservative Party.
    Date of receipt: 8 March 2010
    Date of acceptance: 8 March 2010
    Donor status: company, registration number Y2995605

    ~~

    What was in it for Wyman?

  • writeon

    UKIP’s success is disappointing, but understandable. It’s easy and temping to castigate the voters who supported them, but misplaced and probably dangerous. I think one is talking about a massive protest vote here, people imagining they are voting, not so much for something, but rather against something, and that something is all the other parties, or bastards as they are more commonly known!

    UKIP’s policies or ideology, if one can even talk about them in these terms, are a mushy mess, a bit of this and a bit of that, a an awful lot of fear and nostaligia for a UK that no longer exists, if it ever really did to the degree people imagine. Sentimental nostalgia for a non-existant, even mythical past, that was better than today, is potentially a very dangerous narrative once that particular ‘geni’ is out of the bottle.

    Perhaps people see where I’m going with this already? UKIP is, I would contend, at heart, at least ‘ideologically’, a nationalist socialist facist party, though without the overt militaristic trappings, no brownshirts marching through the night with torches held high, no, this is something new, a kinder, gentler, jovial form of facism, with a jolly leader who like a fag and a pint. How could a guy called ‘Nigel’ be a menace?

    And these kind of parties/movements exist all over Europe not just in the UK. Respectable, friendly, nationalist/socialists; but it’s an ethnically founded right-wing kind of ‘socialism’, almost tribal, and it doesn’t have much to do with the idea that power and wealth in society should be under collective, or socialist control. On the contrary the structure of he party reflects the socio/economic model it dreams of imposing on the rest of society, and it’s basically… fuedal, post democratic. Here, ‘class’, the struggle between the rich and the poor, is replaced by a racial/ethnic ‘myth tale’ about the idividual’s ‘blood’ being the most important thing in relation to the ‘people’ or ‘folk.’ Are you one of us, are you inside or outside our folk group. It’s here one can see the nationalist socialist ideology rearing it’s ugly and dangerous head most clearly.

    It would be a tremendous mistake to underestimate the pull and lure of this old, old, stories and ideas about ‘blood’ and the ‘folk’, though in a modern country like the UK, so ethnically diverse, they seem almost commical. But didn’t UKIP seem commical a few short years ago, and wasn’t their jovial leader a bit of a joke too?

    Virtually everything about UKIP has been imported from Denmark, though tailored for the UK market. In Denmark the Danish People’s Party, or literally, the Danish Folk’s Party, is a clear nationalist socialist party, which has become the most important party in Denmark and it’s anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-EU, policies the central politics of the political game. Like UKIP it was once ridiculed by the major establishment parties, but paradoxically the shunning and ridicule only made the party seem more attractive to disgrunteld and fearful voters and showed that it wasn’t like the other political swine, but different. If one substituted the label ‘Jew’ for ‘immigrant’ or ‘Muslim’, which one has done in Denmark, one can get a flavour of just how far the Danish political discourse has moved to the right and how potentially dangerous it really is. For example, as an illustration, Denmark has the dubious honour of being the only country in NATO and the West where the wars against Muslims are actually popular and have massive support. Danes are, according to a string of opinion polls, more supportive of the wars than even the Americans. It’s odd. Why is this? How come Danes have become so warlike? It’s complex, but part of it has to do with the ethnic question, the difference between our ‘blood’ and theirs, and why one should be ready to fight for it.

    The parallels between the UK, Denmark, which is an extreme case, and developments in other parts of Europe are striking… and distrubing.

  • doug scorgie

    Republicofscotland
    10 Oct, 2014 – 2:23 pm

    “Police Scotland pulled in Ruth Davidson for questioning…”
    ______________________________________

    It seems that the police interview of Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson over allegations of postal-vote tampering is not being covered by the English papers.

  • Kurtan

    Nice post Tony.You are probably right.

    Profanity loses argument Fred.
    If Ruth Davidson wasn’t pulled in for questioning,she should be.
    What she revealed on 3 separate occasions on TV was criminal.(see below)
    “Bristol Labour MP cautioned for electoral fraud”
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-11621053
    “Bristol East MP Kerry McCarthy revealed the results of a sample of postal votes on the social networking site Twitter days before the general election.”

  • CanSpeccy

    But everybody who has seen an actual UKIP campaign knows that their grassroots appeal is simply racist

    Bollocks. It’s just anti-genocide.

    Combine mass immigration with a below replacement rate of reproduction of the indigenous people and you have sure and certain extinction of the native majority: something that has already occurred in London, Luton and Leicester and is well on its way in many other major urban centers including Birmingham, where English children in primary schools are not even the largest minority.

    So when you brand UKIP voters racists, you are really saying that those who oppose their own genocide for the benefit of NHS-bedpan-cleaning contractors who demand cheap Asian, African, Rumanian or whatever immigrant labour are racists. They are of course nothing of the kind. It is you who are an Anglophobic racist and an advocate of an ongoing genocide.

    And objecting to African, Asian and Rumanian immigration to Britain in no way expresses disrespect for those people. It merely expresses the belief that it is criminally insane to wipe out the people of Shakespeare, Newton and Darwin, merely to juice the profits of Tony Blair’s and David Cameron’s capitalist cronies including the property developers who continue to accumulate billions building tacky brick boxes for Britain’s burgeoning foreign masses.

    Diversity is good. But diversity survives only through separation. Every human group may possess invaluable aggregations of genes that should be preserved at least until we know what we have and what we might be destroying by mongrelizing the population.

  • Tony_0pmoc

    And further to my previous point ( a very near miss coming back from yoga (no I don’t do it…yet) ) I have now been drinking alcohol. If you think I or my wife or any of my real friends are the slightest bit racist – then you should see the two girls I am going out with tonight (one is my wife)….now how can you tell the difference. My wife and I have been camping for most of the most wonderful English Summer..we look like Blackberries. Our friend, so far as I am aware hasn’t been camping at all this year…though I think she may have come camping with us about 8 years ago..when I invited everyone…and to my amazement everyone turned up (it was really short notice). Her Great Great Grandparents come from Africa. We don’t call her our Snow Queen..we just say …get a bit of sun you silly cow (she is totally lovely – and recognises everything – any kind of sorrow – and she cheers us all up – by the most simplest of gifts – her love – and a packet of malteasers – just like that)

    Tony

  • Juteman

    I think I’ve sussed Fred out, he is an ageing, middle class well off hippy.
    He is probably in his 60’s or older. The rightwards travel of south UK was too much for him under Thatcher, so he headed north. His Surrey house that he bought for £40,000, was now worth £400,000 under Thatchers policies, so he bought a quaint croft for £80,000 in Scotland. His investments give him a comfortable life, and he can shag the odd sheep before he sends it off to slaughter.
    Blogs keep him connected with the sensible folk doon sooth.
    He is scared of Scottish folk, because he thinks they will do what the Welsh did to incomers back in Thatchers time. The Welsh set fire to English homes.

    No need to be so frightened, Fred. We are normal folk, and your minefield isn’t needed, mate.

  • fred

    “I think I’ve sussed Fred out, he is an ageing, middle class well off hippy.”

    Fuck off and die retard.

  • CanSpeccy

    @Hope:

    I would perhaps have more sympathy with the UKIP position on immigration if they could provide concrete proof that immigrants present a net drain on the UK’s national wealth.

    Why would you expect immigrants to cause “a net drain on the UK’s national wealth”?

    If you import 7.5 million people over a couple of decades, wouldn’t you expect it to increase the UK’s net national wealth?

    More to the point, I would have thought, was the effect on individual wealth, and so far as that is concerned, the expectation, surely, would be that for the 99%, or at least the 90% and certainly the 51%, mass immigration will depress wages, while raising corporate profits (since “profits and wages, together, are always the same” as David Ricardo correctly stated).

    Thus, as happiness has little if any relation to absolute wealth, only relative wealth as long-term surveys have shown, the impact of mass immigration on the majority of the British population must have been negative.

    However, there some, apparently a large proportion of the English population, who think there are more important grounds than economic on which to decide whether progressive replacement of most of the British people with people from elsewhere (and their many descendants) is a good idea.

  • Juteman

    Chill out, Fred. Anyone that still talks about ‘flaming’ folk is obviously an old fart.
    Too close to the truth?
    Change ‘sheep’ to ‘old goat’, if it makes you feel better.

  • Tony_0pmoc

    CanSpeccy,

    I assume you are originally from the UK, and now live in Canada. I really appreciate nearly everything you write, most of all for having the courage and vision to write it. You make me think, because you write from a different perspective…a bit like being way above..and seeing what is going on down below…

    However, I have this to write in response….At the age of 85, what was left of my family, realised that our Mum needed Full Time 24×7 Nursing Care..now it is O.K…coming up with the answer – well your family should have done that…My wife and I and out two kids tried to do it for nearly 2 weeks…I simply could not go to work…because…My employer was absolutely Brilliant – understood completely and allowed me to work from home…

    The Doctor was completely useless..The Hospital (the Doctor told us to call 999) after 6 hours on a trolley…he was completely honest with me…he said Yes..she has serious problems..but if I admit her..she almost certainly won’t survive…she will get a chest infection within weeks..and it will kill her…

    The Social Services Were Even Worse Than Useless..God I hate them..worst Fascists I have ever come across with the most vulnerable….

    My Mum survived….receiving the Very Best Nursing Care..They Loved her and eliminated all her pain…by slowly taking her off all the drugs that the English Doctors had Prescribed (just keeping the ones she really needed)…and I loved them too..we went to see her every day..and brought her home at weekends…

    She died holding my hand 18 months later. She was deeply religious…but did not want a priest…I witnessed her go straight to heaven…she had her crucifix on a chain round her neck in her other hand…it was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life…

    None of her Nurses were English..they were largely from Africa, Jamaica, India, and Ireland.

    She got the Best Care in The World.

    I don’t do religion by the way…but She did. The Nurses just did Love & Care. Incredibly Talented.

    Tony

  • doug scorgie

    Fred
    10 Oct, 2014 – 3:55 pm

    “All popularist [sic] policies designed to get people to vote for them and to vote for independence…”
    _____________________________

    Obviously not popular with you Fred.

  • fred

    “Chill out, Fred. Anyone that still talks about ‘flaming’ folk is obviously an old fart.
    Too close to the truth?
    Change ‘sheep’ to ‘old goat’, if it makes you feel better.”

    Fuck off and die retard.

  • Tony_0pmoc

    I now realise it may be perceived I have slagged the NHS off something rotten..and I might have given complete the wrong impression..My Mum was something else…She was still Paragliding at the age of 79…and then she went to the Doctor’s with a dicky heart..and they thought about it..and fitted her with a Pacemaker..to give her a new lease of life…then after a holiday with us on a boat on the Norfork Broads..when she was rather delicate…in her early 80’s..she survived that…had a Brilliant Time..My Wife and Kids just loved her to bits…She goes home to her lovely bungalow..in The North of England still determined to be independent…my brother lived nearby and went to see her every day after work..and she gave him a glass of whisky..

    She went to sit down on a chair in her kitchen..and missed it…broke her hip…so they looked at her sussed her out ..and gave her an artificial one….She could walk again…and was completely Independent living alone in her bungalow until the age of 85

    All thanks to the NHS – Completely Brilliant Still In The North of England…

    Don’t believe all the lies..sure some of the worst things in the press you read are true…but they only paint it black…you only hear the worst…Good news doesn’t sell news..You never hear the good news…You only hear the worst..the Terror..

    The human Race..Really is Not Like That..If There are Any Real Aliens..watching us ( I have no evidence they exist ) they might well get the wrong impression, tell the dolphins to fuck off say the answer is 42 and construct an Interstellar Highway through our home.

    Planet Earth…

    Personally, if we can’t Jail The Fuckers….

    My Mates Ex of The British Army Know Who You Are

    So You had better be nice.

    Tony

  • Republicofscotland

    It seems that the police interview of Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson over allegations of postal-vote tampering is not being covered by the English papers.
    _________________________

    Doug

    Is that so, I see Fred is acting like a dickhead again, no surprise there then.

  • Juteman

    “Fuck off and die retard.”

    Shouldn’t there be a comma between ‘die’ and ‘retard’?

  • Republicofscotland

    Australia’s Super Hornet pilots have pulled out of their first armed airstrikes in the US-led fight against the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq, saying that the risk of killing civilians was too high, Australia’s News Limited reported Wednesday.

    “One of our packages on the first night … had an identified target which it was tracking and that target moved into an urban area where the risks of conducting a strike on that target increased to a point where it exceeded our expectations of the collateral damage,” joint operations chief Vice Adm. David Johnston was quoted as saying by the newspaper during a high-level briefing by military commanders Wednesday morning in Canberra.
    _________________________________

    It would appear one of the “Five Eyes” has developed a conscience.

    http://en.ria.ru/world/20141008/193807216/Australian-Pilots-Pull-Out-of-IS-Airstrikes-Fearing-Civilian.html

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