I think UKIP are the middle and upper class division of the BNP.... suggesting compulsory abortion for unborn babies with Down Syndrome

[JakeBullet]

Or rather yet another of their candidates has made a stupid comment. They really are not all that good are they?

Here

Yet another reason not to vote for them.

I haven't seen our UKIP leaflet, The DDs (12&15) tell me it went straight in the bin for being anti gay marriage.

DD2 says it doesn't matter who you marry so your not voting for them!

And yes I would have aborted for DS. The world is a very tough place and I'm not certain it is right to bring a child into the world who is already at a massive disadvantage. Who may have major health problems and many never be able to live independently.

Don't y'know, these are the Colourful and eccentric refreshingly non-PC members that Farage was banging on about.

Absolutely vile.

I'm surprised by that statistic too Wilson. I thought the % was much lower.

Everyone's offered the screening for down syndrome now though, its just a blood test and scan to see if the baby is high risk.

I suppose that those with high risk results then have the choice of going ahead with a CVS or amnio then. I wouldn't imagine the drs would advise a termination unless the result was definitive.

In any case, it's the decision of the parents not a vile little man.

UKIP are worrying. Farage is being very deceptive, putting on a glossy outward face about wanting the best for Britain, but he's being backed up by some seriously nasty types with their own far-right agenda. Facism/Nazism came to prominence on the back of 1930s economic collapse. Don't want history to repeat itself.

Vile as they are, I can't get too worried about them. They are polling at an all time high of 10%.

The UKIP vote is spread too evenly across the country, they won't win a single seat at the next election.

They couldn't win Eastleigh at a mid-term by-election where the former MP had utterly disgraced the sitting party who are in an unpopular coalition in the middle of a recession.

Post 2015 UKIP will have the same number of MPs they have now - none!

What gets me is that there's no mention of quality of life, it's all about the "burden on the state".

I strongly support parents' rights to decide whether or not to continue with a pregnancy where the child's quality of life may be very low but that is because it's about consideration for the child themself, not about the financial costs of treating them!

This kind of rhetoric makes my blood run cold.

Absolutely vile and indefensible, agreed.

I have to say though that the title of the thread is thoroughly dishonest in stating that this is the UKIP position, then making a comparison with the BNP, only then in the body of the post to say that ... err ... actually it was only one of their councillors. And it turns out he was in any case suspended from the party and then lost his seat.

It would be a bit like saying that it is the policy of the Labour Party to defraud people of their pensions so that the senior party members could gamble it away on the gaming tables only then to add that - well, actually it was only one of their former MPs, Robert Maxwell, and he's dead anyway.

With the number of UKIP candidates expanding so much, and bearing in mind that it's not a closed organisation - anyone can join - it would be unsurprising that someone didn't turn up expressing an offensive opinion. Some people just want any old bandwaggon to jump onto.

It's especially unsurprising as Tory HQ has people systematically sifting through all UKIP candidates' social media sites looking for extremist remarks.

I think the real test is how the party then deals with it and they do seem to be making an effort here.

QuintessentialOHara Yes it was indeed a Nazi policy. It was also a very mainstream opinion among "respectable" Fabian and Bloomsbury types. Virginia Woolf thought that mentally disabled children should be put down. Marie Stopes disowned her own son for marrying a woman with short sight, as it would (according to her) contaminate the gene pool. George Bernard Shaw thought that economically unproductive people should be gassed.

In the interwar years eugenics was just as fashionable and respectable a topic at the dinner tables of Highgate and Hampstead as environmentalism is now.

Funnily enough it became much less fashionable after WW2 and there was mass amnesia about what popular opinion had been only a few years previously.

I always get Claire Khaw and daftpunk muddled up in my head. Their approach to life seems so similar.

UKIP are the BNP for the Telegraph broadsheet classes. However, with more education often comes more inventive ways of being unpleasant

UKIP is weeding out some of the ones that are stupid enough to spout racist and other offensive views in public, but the fact that they are attracting so many of them tells us a lot about the party. And it makes me suspect that many of the remaining members and candidates share similar views but are just slightly more media-savvy about revealing them in public. Here's another lovely UKIP local chairman they had to kick out.

ScrambledSmegs

UKIP are the BNP for the Telegraph broadsheet classes. However, with more education often comes more inventive ways of being unpleasant.

Like Communism? Oh wait, you didn't mean that.

Given the hitching up of petticoats on Mumsnet and the Guardian website over UKIP, they seem to be doing very well. Of course, we'll see what comes out of the local elections. My gut feeling is that there is quite a lot of hype from the press at the moment, building UKIP up so that when the results come out they can say 'look, it wasn't that bad' and everyone can go back to waiting for the next episode of Game of Thrones.

But it does give all you Guardianistas someone else to feel superior to, so I suppose we should thank UKIP for that.

Thing is , flatpack I know I'm superior to Farage and his ilk.

In all honesty, I don't understand why you can't see that the stuff they come out with about people with disabilities is wrong.

Ahh, Nigel Farage, the Alan Partridge of UK politics.

And this one

www.guardian.co.uk/uk/the-northerner/2012/may/02/ukip-steve-moxon-whistleblower-home-office-beverley-hughes

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/11/21/steve-moxon-women-business_n_2170854.html

He praises Anders Brevik and is against all sorts of womens rights like maternity leave, protection from abuse etc. Scary man.

I think UKIP are very scary dangerous people.

However blame Labour alongside the Tories for their rise. I am a natural Labour voter but have been very badly affected negatively by mass immigration and you just know that they're going to promote it again when they get back in.

They are a potent mix, they can attract Tory voters against they EU and traditional working class Labour voters who are being harmed by mass immigration. Unless Labour takes the blinkers off with regards to how some of these issues are affecting ordinary people and takes a rational approach towards it I truly believe these extremists stand a strong chance of becoming a real political power in this country.

How has mass immigration affected you Bridget? Genuine question, I am not being snarky.

The thing is it's very easy to find oddball councillors in any party. There is a list of 25 (IIRC) Labour councillors who have been convicted of paedophile crimes. Similarly lists of Tories. I won't include links but they're easy to find. I don't know if there's a list of lib dems but the name Cyril Smith springs to mind.

There's certainly a councillor in Burnley who was elected as a BNP councillor but then switched to Labour while in office. She would be banned from even joining UKIP.

There is a general choice here for all political parties. First, you can thoroughly vet and probe into everyone who wants to stand as a councillor in your party. If you are too zealous in this then you end up with clones spouting the party line (as has happened to a large extent in the Commons). Or, you are much more lax and don't do this. The advantage of this is that you may get a richer political climate through a greater variety, but of course as the other side of this coin you will get a few lunatics as well.

Nigel Farage is trying to distance himself from the BNP apparently they do not allow former BNP members to join UKIP but other far right parties is ok

they have a somewhat charasmatic smooth talking leader (and it pains me to say that) that believes in and leads a party full of nasty bigots a dangerous combination

and now Boris Johnson has joined in with the lets not be to harsh on the geezer worrying

Bless you, flatpack . No, I didn't mean that. I'm not a Guardian reader either.

Maybe it's more the Labour Party that should be distancing themselves from the BNP, who like to describe themselves as "the Labour Party your fathers voted for". This is unfair but they tend to pick up support preferentially in Labour voting areas. Last time I looked (long ago admittedly) their manifesto included lots of stuff about more funding for the NHS, improved old age pensions, protectionist trade policies, and encouraging workers' cooperatives. All very old Labour.

UKIP are a small-state libertarian outfit and tend more to attract natural Tories who have become exasperated with Cameron.

Bridgetbidet makes some interesting points.

Extremists of all persuasions flourish when main stream parties plough over or ignore people's concerns. Remember Gordon browns ridiculous apologies about racist accusations to that voter on the election trail?

These are dangerous people and dangerous times. They arnt funny or silly. People will vote for them.

Do you agree with this bloke then flatpack ?

Sorry if that disappoints you...but I am not and never have been "a Guardian reader".

JakeBullet

Do you agree with this bloke then flatpack ?

All the bad, evil things that everyone says, I definitely agree with them. Especially the bit about murdering children and eating them.

Of course I fucking don't. Curious my arse.