to loathe Labour, the Lib Dems and the Tories more than UKIP?

[rootypig]

They have let this country down so badly. And now we all have to reap what they've sown.

You do realise that if we have no private providers in the NHS, there would be no GPs, drugs, ambualnces, hospitals or equipment. The only non-privately provided bits of the NHS are hospital staff.

You are fortunate in Caroline Lucas but it gives you a greater dilemma than mine!

Can she win again? Is UKIP on the rise fast enough to unseat her?

The constituency I live in has been Tory since God were a lad though the recent boundary change has added a couple of non- rural districts which might shake things up a bit. Tactical voting for the LDs to unseat him hasn't worked so far and now I wouldn't vote for them under any circs. You could say my Labour vote is a wasted one but I will still make my cross for what I can actually live with.

Labour will screw up eventually in government. It always does. So does the Tory party. Yet I really do think that Labour gives us the best and only chance THIS TIME of preserving and perhaps clawing back some public services whilst fending off what I believe will be a catastrophic hard right coalition.

Think again after next May and join a party to influence its next manifesto but don't mess about with protest votes next May. This one really matters.

YABU

I still think the country is going to the far right. It feels to me like the time just before Maggie was elected.

I am afraid that people no longer feel afraid to say out right racist comments and to slag off benefit claimants as scum bags

TV programmes like benefit street and ones featuring huge families are fuelling the fire. The seemingly 'open door' policy on immigration coupleed with the frustration with the EU and the frankly crap ED Milliband and Balls and the Tory boys of Dave etc make people feel they have no voice.

Come may UKIP will be the second party and Tories will have to work with them.

Clegg and the lib dems will be finished and labour will be in the wilderness like they were after Maggie got in.

We will leave the EU.

Not what I like but what I think will happen

I agree that people no longer feel afraid or ashamed to say the most outrageously racist comments- I was only young in 79, but I remember 'paki shops' and 'boat people' etc being freely said as if it was completely normal and ok to be outright racist. Now it's the slightly more gracious catch all of 'immigrants'. I shudder to think what will happen in May and afterwards.

I thnk we are one of the most tolerant of different people countries on the planet. Lost of people who move here even from France say how much nicer people are in the UK to people who are different from them. It's one of our strengths. The UK economy has just moved ahead of most of the others in the EU and we are starting to do better. We have made the rules on letting senior business people in who are needed in companies who earn us money far too strict. We have stopped a lot of Chinese with lots of money who want a quick holiday here to spend money in our shops. A lot of those recent immigration policies have not helped UK plc and were silly. I hope we can start to make it easier.

We also need to ensure that brilliant students wanting to study at Imperial College London etc are let in and we stop intellectually challenged supposed students at supposed institutions we have never heard of who then never attend lectures and disappear entering the country, but it's not really immigration which is a problem. Just about every wave of new people this country has ever had has benefited it. It is the poor economy and lack of jobs for some who want them which has been the issue.

I have RTFT, so no your rude post didn't help at all. Threads move, change, take different turns. Agreeing with one person's post doesn't mean that I haven't in fact read the thread. I wasn't agreeing with the "YABU" but with the content of her post.

HTH

green yes agree with your points.

I think the times are changing though.

Agree numanoid I'd rather see Labour win the next election. I wonder how many knives are sharpening already to out him as leader.

greengrow very good post.

Thanks. In recessions people turn on immigrants and the poor turn on the middle class and rich. It's just human nature, sadly. It will wear off once the economy is doing better again.

There are aspects of UKIP policies I like are self reliance, low taxes, less regulation - common sense things the Tories should be doing but largely aren't. Those in the North who want Labour out may need carefully to consider if the Tories have no hope in their area so that UKIP will keep Labour out. In Tory areas in the South better not to vote UKIP as you'll just help Labour get in.

But DH voted LD last time as an anti-Tory protest. Look what a LD vote got us.

That's why I don't feel safe voting other than for whom I would like to see in office. I am surprised by my depth of feeling, but I don't think I actually could put a cross in a Labour box - and I used to leaflet and campaign for the party as a kid with my grandparents. They actually turn my stomach, they're so oddly robotic. They all are. That's why Mr Farage attracts so much support. He gives the marvellous impression of saying what he actually thinks.

But the thought of a Tory UKIP coalition is awful.

Maybe I do need to change my thinking.

But I think the Labour party in its current incarnation drives people right! People see it as left, when it's not, and its half baked ideas discredit the left, which they shouldn't. And I DO support the Green party, wholly, and it will never grow unless the people who support it vote for it.

I am so ANGRY that Miliband has let the lie persist, that high public spending is what drove the deficit, when in fact the financial crisis did. How, HOW can we be voting for parties that would sanction the transfer of MORE wealth to the private sector?

I truly despair.

This is what I was talking about when I said Labour needs a showman -or woman. They need someone who will get angry on behalf of the people in this country who are being left behind.

The 3 major parties are not to blame that narrow minded xenophobes who previously might have voted for them have found a home.

I'm in no way a UKIP supporter and this turns my hackles. Working people in this country have been ABANDONED by each of the three main parties. Maybe not the comfortably off who own their own homes, aren't saddled with debt, and have reasonable salaries and pensions. Well I don't count myself among that number, and I would bet that you do. Well let me tell you, what is going on in the water below you is terrifying.

caroldecker yes

Just about every wave of new people this country has ever had has benefited it.

Yes.

rootypig You are very clearly a supporter of the core principles of Labour and I don't deny that the party as it is now has moved a long way away from these. It is still the only party that can actually maintain any of them.
What I am saying is that you are likely to bring about what you don't want by not voting Labour this time round.
There is nothing to stop you joining the party and having your say in order to try to affect the manifesto in the 2019 election.

My family doesn't feel let down by the last Labour government, except on Iraq. We benefitted from fantastic, cutting edge, life-saving health care. DD had a fabulously successful education at the local comp - she was at school between 1997 and 2010. School buildings steadily improved so that her year group was able to inhabit new facilities. The decrease in VAT by the Brown govt. as the recession hit enabled my DH to export more to Europe than he ever did before but that dropped off sharply when Osbourne put VAT up to 20%.
Blair's intervention in Sierra Leone and Bosnia were principled. If girls got to go to school in Afghanistan then it achieved something. Iraq? No. Just no.

Are we still able to define 'working class'? I'm not sure it's easy to do that anymore.
Do you really think Farage gives a toss about the working class anyway?

By the way, the life-saving mentioned above was done by a surgeon who is an immigrant.

rootypig, so you are in favour of no gps, no hospitals and no medication?

Why have ukip been able to thrive? To that end OP you are right about the three main parties

unitarian excellent points about school rebuilding programme under labour.

My kids benefitted from the rebuilding of both middle and high schools and they are beyond fantastic.

However the PFI deals used by New Labour to finance the building of fabulous new schools and hospitals are not so great more like glorified payday loans. Just as well your dcs have done so well as they will the ones who will end up helping to pay over the odds for these grand projects through their taxes throughout their working lives

In recessions people turn on immigrants and the poor turn on the middle class and rich. It's just human nature, sadly. It will wear off once the economy is doing better again

Well yes, BUT we have had an unprecedented amount of immigration like never ever seen before, whole towns and communities have been changed in pretty much only a decade. Whole communities have come over not odd families here and there.

This simply isn't like the old days when people turned on the small minority because they stood out for being different. This isn't one colored family being picked on because they seem forrin like in the 1950's.

Britain has changed its a hugely diverse multi cultural place. It is welcoming and friendly compared to many other nations.

I don't feel its fair to compare what used to happen in the past with complaints made about immigration now, because the numbers have been unprecedented in recent years.

Farage is an ex city man, a commodities broker who attended public school. I doubt someone so embedded in the establishment is going to be making any waves. Why would he break the mould when he fits it so exactly?

He does nothing to justify his MEP salary and is a disgraceful public servant - lazy lackadaisical, slippery and disengaged. Tough luck on any of his constituents who need his help to access EU grants to fund for local projects.

I predict that if UKIP MPs are elected at the GE then they will prove to be as venal and clueless as many of their councillors, large numbers of whom have not even held a surgery since being elected in May. Bet they are assiduously claiming their expenses, though.

Mumzy yes but that's life. It all has to be paid for and the Tories wouldn't have rebuilt them would they?

Mumzy - agree - PFI wasn't discussed in adequate detail and still isn't. One of the ways in which new Labour was massively stupid - naive, if I'm going to be charitable. One of the things that makes me so angry - a legacy of credit notes.

More broadly, the unfettered access new labour gave the private sector to the public sector is unforgivable

Nippie interesting point about the longevity of UKIP. They are an anti democratic party though - their contempt means they don't abide by those rules (as you've observed). Will they be judged by them?

carol yes that's right, no GPs, no drugs . No, I would like to see total public ownership of the health service and its assets

Rooty. For someone who didn't have much to say in their Op you have certainly found your voice during this thread.

Your ideals are pretty naive. You want a Scandinavian welfare system but are you prepared to see your taxes rise massively to be able to afford it? You may, but what about the other poor sods in this country who have seen their living standards decline in recent years? the last thing they will want is for even more of their pay to be taken off them

And I honestly cannot see how someone who admits that Labour has made some massive errors could actually bring themselves to warm to Ed as you claim you are. You must be very easily pleased or perhaps your political views were not quite so. Ague as it would appear from your OP.

And to those who claim to have seen manifestos - you have not. You may have seen manifestos from 2010 but manifestos are a declaration of policy and policy is dynamic and changes, so new 2015 manifestos will be launched by all the parties before the election

If you wanted a discussion about Scandinavian high tax welfare systems or UKIP or the abolition of private health or education then have the courage to start a thread on the subject.

What an unpleasant post.

Why don't you have the courage to set out and argue for what you believe, instead of spewing contempt.

I'm not spewing anything. I'm not hiding behind anything.

Yes I do have. On tempt for juvenile name calling.

The population of this country is rising every year by the size of a city of Southampton.

That means there are more people chasing work.

When you reach near full employment then employers do not have to work very hard to attract staff. Hence wages remain low. Hence the poor remain poor. Hence the UK tax payer ends up paying vast amounts in benefits to top up the low wages of employers who benefit from this glut of labour and fail to pay living wages.
That's what should concern anyone who has a social conscience.

And even Ed, to whom you claim to be warming, has public ally acknowledged this and is one stating that he too will curb immigration. So that either makes Ed, Dave and Nigel all racist or makes you out as someone who sees offence when all that is being stated is the bleeding obvious.

And to go back to the OP. YABVU

People who start threads stating that they hate the Lib Lab Con more than UKIP don't usually claim in later posts to be warming to Ed.