to wish I could vote ukip loud and proud

[Mumof4worried]

I've nc for this, as I generally have to in life.

I'm voting ukip, I live in Peterborough where we have had massive immigration. The affects have been huge. Enlargement of EU distroyed dh building business overnight. The schools are close to bursting and have to do a school run to two different schools, had a 5 hour wait in a and e. Teenage son struggles to get part time farm work like I did when I was a teenager. House prices are out of control, god knows how any of mine will ever leave home.

I'm not saying all of these are 100% to do with uncontrolled immigration, but it has Made the problems so much worse.

I'm not racist, most of my friends are 2nd gen Asians or homophobic, my brother and his husband visit a lot.

I just want an oz type points immigration system. I don't care that lots are highly skilled, that is often very bad as it leads to a brain drain in other countries and my children will have to compete with the worlds most ambitious and motivated people.

I just want to be able to express these thoughts but I'm shamed into hiding them by the media.

Don't apologise! We'd have missed out on the 'Get tae fuck...'

No MrsD, you're not.

Absolutely not.

Oh those great years of Tory rule, I mean, it's not as though problems like homelessness, crime, drug addiction, unemployment ect spiralled under a Tory government, it's not like people were demonised for being unemployed, or equally demonised for fighting to keep their jobs, it's not like the average worker lost job security, lost decent pay rises etc, it's not like housing costs exploded. No those Torys, what a fab legacy they left, must have them back some time.

I remember the Tories last time as well. And just like this time, the lives of ordinary people were exponentially worse, while the already well-off just had their positions further entrenched. I used to wonder, as we were doing collections for the miners in school, as we saw even in the small town that I lived in the first visible homeless people that we had ever seen, as my friends' fathers lost their jobs, why anyone would vote for them - it was like turkeys voting for Xmas. Then as I got more politically active and did a bit of research, I found this quote from Nye Bevan which summed the whole thing up during his time, and that time in the 80s, and still holds true today:

How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the twentieth century.

They do it by appealing to people who think they'll get a slice of the pie. They do it because people don't see how impossible that is. What they don't want is working people actually getting richer, because that would leave less for them. So they try to convince the electorate that they, the Tories, are equal to us. Eg 'We're all in this together'. No we are fucking not. No ordinary working person in the UK is in the same position as the Tories in Westminster.

Presumably the immigrants made you semi-illiterate too? They seem to be to blame for most things, so why not that?

All this 'Britain is full' rhetoric ignores the fact that we have an aging population - more than 20% is over 60. The NHS needs immigrants and the country needs productive people to pay taxes.

Painfulbits EU immigrants cannot vote in General Elections, however in council elections, and in the case of European elections they have to choose if to vote in their home country or their country of residence. In the last European election that process was changed but not well communicated, so thousands of voters were left www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/go-and-vote-in-your-own-country-evidence-of-nonbritish-eu-citizens-turned-away-at-the-polls-despite-being-on-electoral-roll-9427571.html disenfranchised despite having been on the electoral roll. I remember having had to chase up my own poll card because they'd stuffed it up. If I hadn't queried it I would have been turned away too.

The right to vote in GEs was a main driver for me to apply for citizenship. You have to have lived here for a number of years, pass the Life in the UK test, a language test and pay quite a bit of money, plus go to a ceremony.

Australian immigrants however are eligible to vote in UK general elections because of the commonwealth

No ordinary working person in the UK is in the same position as the Tories in Westminster

But they are all aligned with the Labour/Libdems I do not have much in common with Milliband and his 1.7 million pound house nor his two kitchens.

You're most welcome to, everyone should be allowed to acknowledge their party of choice without being attacked.

I don't have anything in common with Farage and his private school education and ££££ job in the city either, Gobbolino. He isn't a man of the people at all, for all of his pint-supping fag-smoking ways. (Well, maybe if he switched to rollies ...) Agree with you about Labour/LibDem at Westminster, btw (not that I would ever vote LibDem on pain of death, duplicitous splitters that they are), but at least if you vote for Labour you are voting for the others aligned to them, the socialist shop stewards and union reps etc that are actually getting off their backsides and improving things for their members and other working people as well. The Tories? Well, I guess they'll campaign for you if you're a landowner ...

MrsDeVere, I agree that this lot are even worse than Thatcher. Don't get me wrong, I fucking hated her at the time and I think what she did to this country was diabolical. However, she was more thick than evil, just about, on balance. She thought that wealth would trickle down; I really do think she believed it. She thought that if the rich got richer then the poor would get richer as well. She was wrong, of course, and her policies caused misery to millions of people, but she did think she was doing the right thing.

This lot, not so much. The cuts they are putting in place are ideological in a similar way to Thatcher's in that they want to shrink the role of the state, but they don't think that in shrinking it people will become better off (which is what she thought) - they know that people will not become better off, they know that if they have a top-down re-jig of the health service then it will wither and die, they know that the policies they are enacting will lead to insecure non-jobs, to increased homelessness, to those at the top living it large at the expense of everyone else. They know all this, and not only do they not give a fucking shit, but they think it is the right and proper way of things. They are tearing up all of the hard fought-for social contracts drawn up by the post-war govt for shits and giggles, with a breathtaking level of impunity, and they know exactly what they are doing. I actually can't think of words low enough to describe them.

cruikshank I tend to agree with you- I think Thatcher really was a zealot for the Friedman school of economics. Now everyone knows the chaos and carnage that unfettered market causes and that it leads to unprecedented levels of inequality. So to accept it or believe in it now is especially reprehensible

Some countries with a points systems work it so that if they are short of a particular skill, then people are more likely to get in if they have that particular skill.

As far as I know, no reasonable country has anything like jobs for home grown people, nhs queue jumping for home grown people or anything like that.

In the US and Canada, people permanent living there all have the same rights to services and employment. This crap for british born first is disgusting.

Thatcher was responding to a time when the unions could bring the country to its knees, Winter of Discontent, anyone? Those days have long gone. The union discourse has changed. The workers, these days are part of the establishment, never mind beer and sandwiches, it runs London's transport system and our heating and infrastructure. There is a problem, in that Nye Bevan's welfare state was built for those with to pay for those without. A land fit for heroes and all that. But, this battle is about those with some, those with a lot and those with everything, who want to keep all of it. Put, briefly, Bevan's welfare state is out of date. Cameron and the Tories have got that bit right. But, simply saying let's delete it is criminal stupidity. What we need to do is bring it up to date and rationalise it. If work currently doesn't pay, then either pay more (and risk inflation) or admit that the country is better off, if a proportion of people don't work.

It's not rocket science.

OP- I would echo PP's who have said that if you are ashamed of doing something, it would be advisable to have some time for careful consideration of why that might be. I have never been ashamed of doing something I genuinely felt to be the right thing to do.

As to UKIP themselves, I personally could not vote for them. I don't agree with their views on so many things, although I think they seem to change their policies (with the exception of their immigrations stance and their views on the EU) every two minutes depending on the prevailing wind. So many of their members seem to express bigoted/racist/sexist views.

Is immigration an issue- in some places it is, but to blame all sorts of things (the issues within the NHS etc) on the immigrants is so overly simplistic and muddle-headed it makes me despair. Ditto the issues with the EU- are there issues? Absolutely- is the answer to leave? Not to me. We'd still have to comply with various rules in which we have no say if we wanted to trade with the EU. I can accept others have different views though.

From trawling Urban Dictionary, it appears we can define our threatened Britishness as thus -

• Loved by Americans, to whom we've done nothing wrong since Napoleon.
• Use the words 'minger', 'chav', 'scally', 'bird', 'claret' and 'cheerio'.
• We don't sit around having tea parties with frilly tablecloths.
• NOT JUST ENGLAND
• Harry Potter reasons
• Hating the French
• We produced Shakespeare and 'Chauser' (sic)

Actually, I believe this post nicely sums up a probable-UKIP voter's view of Britishness

Moomin, respec that deskripshon of British. We deserv a lot more respekt in the werld. Obama gets to much kredit. And hes not even British.

Think about that.

I have just managed to skim read the thread but re Britain becoming unrecognisable,
I bloody well hope that the Britain of my childhood is unrecognisable to my children. I grew up in the 70s&80s in a pit village. People were poor and I mean really poor. Kids were often hungry and we simply didn't have anything.

But hey, wasn't all that bad eh? Because at least we were mostly white and could shout Fucking Paki or Fucking Poofter without people getting all arsey. And far better then when there was no jobs at all, not to mention no NMW rather than now when some bastard who just happens to be better qualified and more keen can waltz across our borders and snatch it from under my lazy arse.

You can bet your life I want the Britain that my children grow up in to be unrecognisable from the one I grew up in. My kids thrive in this big tolerant melting pot and that's what it means to be British IMO.

So many people saying so many sensible things.

All I can add is:Vote GREEN

I'm voting Green. I live in a Tory stronghold so it's pretty much a protest vote, but they are the only party I can vote for really. Though I don't agree with them on everything.

Since you are presumably not a terrified teenager thinking of secretly voting against her bff in the school council election, listen to your own voice of reason.

That voice is clearly there or else you wouldn't have namechanged for this. You'd be out there wearing a UKIP badge and have a purple £ sign poster in your window.

I have a concept of "British values", based largely on the values that I was taught when I was growing up and refined by the experience of living overseas and mixing with people from a range of cultures.

I do not know what is meant by the term "a British way of life". Not all British people live similar lives.

My problem with people voting UKIP because they want to defend traditional British values is twofold.

Firstly, despite living in a very diverse area, I have never felt that British values (or indeed, the British way of life, whatever it may be!) needed defending, because I have never felt that they were under threat.

Secondly, everything UKIP stands for is fundamentally incompatible with the things that I love about this country. The tolerance, compassion and openness that I sometimes missed when I was overseas.

The biggest potential threat that I see to the values that I hold dear comes from the growing influence of the far right. :(