To be upset that there are 3 Ukip posters up in houses down my road :(

[LEMmingaround]

It is a pretty working class street, some council, some privately owned houses. Not sure if that is relevant but WHY the fuck would you advertise the fact that you are a fuckwit? All of the people with the notices up are older people - older than me, which is 43 (im not older!!!! - ok, maybe a bit).

Its pretty worrying really that what i would normally see as very respectable folk have been sucked in by this bullshit?

This is a conservative ward, and although dissilussioned with the previous gov i have always voted labour - i am going to have to vote bloody tory in a half beat effort to keep Ukip out of the area :(

My DD lives in a town with a ukip counsellor - its fucking dire and getting worse :(

In the words of Stewart Lee

"A lot of people have been saying that they're voting UKIP as a protest vote, which I sort of understand, but when we were young, as protest vote you'd vote for someone nice who might not get in like the Greens, or some funny, silly amusing party like the Monster Raving Loony Party or the Liberal Democrats.

But, people have been voting for UKIP as a protest vote, and they're nasty, and they might get in.

I mean, what kind of a protest is that. It's like shitting your hotle bed as a protest against bad service, then realising you've now got to sleep in a shitty bed"

Fair enough, protest if you like, but vote for someone who can't actually cause any damage to the whole moral fibre of our society, whose viewpoints on race, sexuality and disabilities aren't totally abhorrent like UKIPs are, if they win. So, they get us out of Europe? What then? What of health, education, fiscal policy, agriculture? Do people seriously think that a party that has deliberately chosen not to produce any policy documents (other than on the EU and immigration) so that they can't be held to account if they don't deliver is a contender to run our councils and represent us in Parliament? Really?

Daisy

stewart lee (if we are going to use his shitty bed analogue) assumes that the bed isn't full of shit in the first place.

Stuart Lee is an idiot. It's people like him that people are voting UKIP to annoy.

"stuart lee is an idiot"
please define idiot

not agreeing with a viewpoint does not make the other person an idiot
ignoring evidence and reason makes one an idiot

It's people like him that people are voting UKIP to annoy.

That is a seriously, pointlessly stupid reason to vote UKIP.

It's people like him that people are voting UKIP to annoy.
Anyone voting for that reason isn't really mature enough to vote, let alone debate the serious lack of policies.

What evidence and reason has Stuart Lee come up with? Other than "immigration is fab and the UKIP are racist"?

Why don't Labour want us to have a EU referendum? They'd walk the next election, easily, if they would make it a cast iron promise to have one within a few months of the election. So why not? Who are they serving?

I think that's pretty much summed up the UKIP position. It's all about pissing off Stewart Lee.

If only they'd just said 500 posts ago; we've been worrying quite needlessly that they're a bunch of racist, disablist, misogynistic homophobes.

Utter rubbish, Raven. We just want out of the EU. That's it. That's all. So why won't one of the major parties even countenance this?

Because it would be a monumentally foolish thing to do, that's why.

...I mean, I knew we weren't dealing with a sophisticated level of political acumen here, but can you not just go round his house, ring the doorbell & run away?

Icimoi Sun 11-May-14 14:53:00

"Sundaypolitics, it's more a matter of looking at your question the other way round. What evidence is there that Spain would have been immune from the effects of the recession if it had not been in the EU?"

A valid question, but it doesn't rescind the importance of the questions I asked. They are all equally worth debating. Your original statement concerned the unemployed youth in Spain today and whether EU membership has been beneficial for that particular category of people. No doubt Spain would have suffered after the financial crash in 2008 but whether youth unemployment (56%) would be as high as it is today I'm not so sure.

There are two issues here. Firstly part of the problem and arguably the decisive factor is it is tied to the Euro and so has no control or ability to devalue (according to Peston & many other economists). Wages, employment hours and the cost of goods have been artificially inflated over recent years - Spain cannot compete with German output to simplify for arguments sake. Currency is therefore a major contributing factor.

The second factor is whether Spain's membership in the EU has inhibited the restructuring and growth of its economy? The Spanish housing market experienced the fastest growth in the Eurozone pre-2008 and have suffered harshly since the collapse. Homeowners are in negative equity but have been spared widespread repossessions because of 0.5% rates. This is storing problems for a later date and big business knows this better than anyone. The construction industry which was booming has collapsed. Ultimately the pace of economic reform has not helped young people that much is evident. The EU and its free movement of travel helps tourism but it is not helping young people find employment.

The Spanish economy could restore growth faster if it cast aside the Euro, reverted to the Peseta once again and devalued. It would then experience an uplift in Tourism and business opportunities. If it cast aside EU membership they would be throwing away their expensive, debt driven lifestyles for a less glamorous tourism driven economy. Where there is room for growth in the economy is green energy, specifically solar-powered however this requires heavy investment something the Spanish government cannot afford right now. If they left the EU and became more competitive, then arguably investment might come from business. I think the UK's membership of the EU is far worse given our Financial Services sector makes up circa 80% GDP, we have a trade deficit with EU, fishing industry and farming community severely hampered by CAP and CFP since 1970s, restrictions on trade with non-EU member states, housing shortage as net EU immigration since 1997 now totals well over 4 million.etc

Btw is there a better way of quoting or replying to an individual message on here?

Euro membership and EU membership are two different things, though.

It is by no means likely that leaving the Euro would have helped Spain recover faster - devaluation might have some positive impacts on Tourism, but that counts for only 11% of Spanish GDP, which is clustered into a few distinct geographical areas. Leaving the Euro would have had huge negative impacts on transaction costs and inward investment for other sectors with high levels of exports (farming, automotive, energy, technology), creating further job losses.

EU membership - as opposed to single currency - enables Spain (and the UK) to more easily trade. Leaving the EU would have been suicidal (which, sensibly, is why doing so was never on the agenda in Spain).

EU immigration has a fairly marginal effect on housing - the number of EU citizens migrating here is only slightly higher than the numb of Britons living in other EU countries. The problem there is simply that not enough houses are being built.

Ironically, UKIP's stated policy on this would make mattress worse, as they're calling for an end to all building on sites other than brownfield ones, which would effectively put an end to house building.

And to clarify, there haven't been 4 million EU citizens coming here since 1997. The number is 2.8 million, which is almost the same as the number of Britons living in Europe (including a million Spain alone).

www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5cd640f6-9025-11e3-a776-00144feab7de.html#axzz31Qeis1SM

Can you not see the disparity between 2.8 million Britons spread all over Europe and 2.8 million EU citizens all coming to one small country? Then there's the fact that a large number of the British emigrants are either retired or in highly skilled jobs, not competing with natives for unskilled or semi-skilled work or demanding social housing.

"Utter rubbish, Raven. We just want out of the EU. That's it."

Why?

I drove past a ukip billboard poster earlier that had been the subject of graffiti. Spray painted across the bottom in large letters it read

RACIST NAZIS

I do like freedom of speech :)

Logic isn't your forte, is it? 2.8 million in, 2.8 million out = the same number of people here.

'disparity between 2.8 million Britons spread all over Europe and 2.8 million EU citizens all coming to one small country'

Must've missed that bit in Maths...

I seem MNHQ has had a bit of an irony bypass........

As if somehow Britons were the only immigrants in those other EU countries, and not joined by those from all the other member states, too.

EU immigration is multi-directional; people from Germany and Poland, etc come here. People from Britain go to Germany or Spain. People from Germany also go to Spain or France or Italy.

If Britain pulled out of Europe, it would make no difference to housing as fewer British born people would leave to go and live in Europe. The actual number of people here would be the same.

The problem with housing is not immigration, or EU migrants demanding social housing, it's that there are not enough houses. That's fundamentally a domestic issue - UKIP try and present leaving Europe as a single, simple answer to our problems. It isn't.

Leaving Europe will only exacerbate our problems, as will reducing immigration from the rest of the world.

Plus housing is too expensive even if you are in the skilled workforce