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.

Catgirl - for someone who counts herself lucky not to have encountered many UKIP supporters, you've spent an awful long time engaging with them on here.

I'm voting UKIP. I'm not hiding it even though most of my friends will probably vote green or labour. I think UKIP support is higher than reported as many people do think they need to deny their voting intentions.

Yes and a lot more besides Rosesare, I'm sure. The reality is - as already been stated, so much of the national wealth is going to such a tiny percentage of the population, of course every aspect of a good society is going downwards. Wages have stagnated, education is poor, university is more exclusive, good jobs are increasingly scarce, people who have grown up in a certain area are priced out. The accident of birth is more and more relevant and weighs heavier all the time in dictating our destiny. But does anybody seriously believe voting for this party of detestable bigots are going to make that any better?

There are resources, homes, school places, healthcare enough for all people, as well as food, and land, but it's in the hands of the top 1% of the pop', banked away and forgotten about while the poor are forced to scrabble for crumbs. And you want to blame immigrants?

Why don't we talk more about resource theft and hoarding by the rich? Statistics (Gov' statistics) show immigrants (cheap labour, i.e the shitty jobs no one else wants to do) have massively fuelled Osborn's economic recovery, and contributed several billions to the economy. Poorly paid people stick just about every penny they earn back into the economy. It's a proven fact. Give a multi-billionaire a few more billion and it's get stashed away and no one benefits from it.

LikeIcan I think there's only three of you on the entire thread. And it's really fascinating to meet people with such strange (if horrifying) views.

You're not going to meet that many UKIP voters are you, because in comparison to Labour & the Conservatives they're a small minority party.
A blessing indeed.

I'm glad you're ashamed to be voting UKIP and feeling the need to hide it from your friends. It means most people you know are decent and your views are an anomaly. You'll feel the shame for ever after. Your dirty little secret.

merry that's true and you can add to that:
this government has practically stopped LAs from opening new schools instead hoping that free schools would take up that slack. It hasn't happened and in areas where house building has been ramped up the school rolls are full.
We need working people filling jobs to pay the pensions of today's pensioners. We need as many jobs and as many workers as we can get our hands on. The bigger the tax take, the greater the rate we can reduce a deficit.

Eeeeeeee ladies. Is this what we've become? I'm new to Mumsnet. I've scanned a good few of these posts and have found only a couple of well grounded arguments on both sides.

The rest seem very catty, worse, condescending. The idea that unless someone believes and votes like you then you are of less intelligence or mentally ill are so arrogant it's untrue.

I see democracy as more people voting for a common cause than another common cause. People barracking Nigel Farage and his family, picketing UKIP meetings etc and generally looking down on UKIPpers for their beliefs, yet at the same time, calling themselves liberal is pretty scarey and certainly not the democracy that is in my head.

Facism doesn't stop being facism just because it comes from the left.

I think Farage has made certain views 'more middleclass' and therefore more acceptable to say. He is a well spoken, clean cut gentleman who seems to speak in a reasonably intelligent way the majority of the time until he comes out with lines about immigrants and HIV. Which differs from the BNP tattoos and badly dressed thug image.

My grandmother is 90, reasonably well educated and travelled. She lived abroad for a number of years and was married to an airline pilot. She is the epitome of snobbish at times. I think the last thing you can call her is knuckle dragging. Hell she has all the right knives and spoons; ones I haven't a clue what they are used for. Her three children are massively liberal even hippy-ish.

What she is, is very closeminded and old fashioned. She struggles to comprehend much outside her experience of life. She lives in an area that is prime UKIP territory too. On the coast, and in a retirement hot spot. I think it is acceptable to consider voting UKIP because there isn't quite the same social stigma there is compared with some other places.

She hasn't quite got past the 1970s yet so what she hears echoes attitudes she grow up with and heard in her youth. I wouldn't call it knuckle dragging.

And yes she is racist. She was mugged a few years ago and her comment was "and he wasn't even a 'Darky'" which my mother prompted scolded her about.

So yeah this is why I do think its dangerous to assume that UKIP voters are knuckle dragging. They are often older and simply don't get how the world has changed around them and don't want it too. Not because they are stupid but because that's what they learnt and thought of as normal and acceptable.

The thing is, she and people like her aren't uncommon and do make a large part of the vote especially since young people are increasingly disenfranchised and unlikely to vote. They therefore have a disproportionate influence on politics. Its also why in debates about UKIP its massively important to try and get young people to vote full stop, because UKIP simply don't appeal in quite the same way (that's not to say they don't appeal, but the UKIP demographic is older).

Here's a couple of articles about the demographic profiles of voters of different parties.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2572187/The-secrets-ballot-box-Tories-earn-Labour-voters-rent-home-Lib-Dems-better-educated-Ukip-voters-white-retired.html

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/17/ukip-support-british-politics-voters-labour-party

Link fail.

I've never said Ukip voters aren't decent people most of them, who have genuine concerns. And I understand the importance of not belittling their opinions or branding them all as Xenophobes. (It only makes them worse if you do)

Sadly though they've been duped into blaming immigration for a host of problems within British society such as unemployment and a perceived loss of ‘British culture.’

The truth is that for generations the ruling elite have held capital and owned land, passing it on through inheritance and ensuring that their domination persists into present day. This class system (that people have been led to believe is dead) is well and truly alive. 70% of the land in Britain is owned by around 1% of the population. It is not difficult to see who is responsible for the status quo when income inequality is as high as it’s been since the depression of the 1930's..

Immigrants are targeted as scroungers and cheats, when the overwhelming majority of them pay their taxes and contribute. As someone clever once said - "It's not about what's true or false. It's about whether or not it's believed"..

I look down on people who vote UKIP. It doesn't make me a 'fascist'.

Democracy means I get to diagree with them (and them with me) and on 7th of May we can still vote for whom ever we wish.

I even get to hold the opinion they are either low on intelligence or choose not to apply it. And they can think I am a bleeding heart, naive liberal or an uneducated Northerner.

None of that equates to 'fascism'.

It's funny, a few years ago labour supporters were seen as uneducated dimwits, it was only the invention of 'new Labour' that their 'image' changed ( a bit ) Still, most labour supporters are uneducated people living in dull Northern Towns - so what? they're still entitled to vote.

This is so breathtakingly stupid and ignorant, I can't believe you're actually serious about posting this LikeIcan.

This page [https://www.facebook.com/BritiainFurst]] pretty much sums up how what I think goes on in the heads of must UKIP supporters.

Linky fail www.facebook.com/BritiainFurst

Laughing my head off at LikeICan's post. What a Luddite.

Lass I'm curious to read the well grounded arguments for UKIP - could you point me to them?
This is aibu. People ask a question and get replies.

I agree that politics has consistently failed to deal with the gap between the Hyper rich and the rest of us.

The effects of allowing so much of the national wealth go to so few, has had catastrophic impact on ours and many other developed worlds societies. I think of it as a sickness, and this party of ignoramuses are the rash it's come out in.

Personally I wouldn’t even engage with their arguements, they get a feeling of legitimacy from that.

Sourdrawers

Well put. I think immigrants have been blamed for a lot of wrongs in the UK and very unfairly. I don't think immigrants are responsible for all the problems or even very many. Banks, big companies and inept planning are to blame and I think UKIP are trying to address that in some way.

However, I do feel that Immigration, en mass and uncontrolled can't work. Controlled immigration is needed as without it we would indeed collapse. UKIP are not anti immigration, just ani mass and unplanned immigration. As N Farage eloquently put it, unless you know how many people you are going to get, you can plan for nothing.

I'm not too bothered about immigration. As a non voter in the past, UKIP seem like a party that has opened up dialogue on many unspeakable topics. They seem lies a party that speaks to non voters, those who have given up etc. They actually seem to talk sense and ..... Actually answer a question directly, where you agree with their principles or not. All the others seem to answer a question that they have pre rehearsed. A cliche I know but it's true and it's getting old an I could not put a fag paper between the other 3 parties.

Also I beleive that a country should govern itself, not be held to book by laws made up by a big Union. It all seems a bit 1984 to me. Who makes these rules? Guess it's big companies etc. That's my beef, not immigration.

Any let's bury the racist tosh. The only people who think UKIP are racist are middle class white folk. I would not be supporting them If they were racist and my DP would not be with me if I were supporting anything remotely racist.

How do you suggest we bury their racism? When NF says he'd be afraid, very afraid, to live next door to people from country X, I call that RACISM. You?

sister I think you're right about not engaging.

However, I do feel that Immigration, en mass and uncontrolled can't work

We. Don't. Have. Uncontrolled. Or. En. Masse. Immigration.

Are people who vote UKIP comfortable with the fact that they will scrap anti discrimination laws? Do they understand what that would do to our society?

I cannot understand how you could vote for a party which would do this, unless you're racist.