to laugh at the sight of this UKIP battle bus today?

[yolofish]

petrol stations are fairly limited in my rural area - at least 15 miles from one to the next.

so... driving along today I had to snigger at the sight of the local UKIP battle bus making a fuel and no doubt coffee/coke/choc/crisps etc stop at one of these few and far petrol stations - which is an independent, and owned and run by an Asian family.

that must be a tricky thing really to balance if you are a Kipper: "shit we need fuel/food! omg, there's a brown chap/chapess behind the counter!"

Dress it up how you like - UKiP are dirty fascists. They need to scapegoat a minority and be sensationalistic to get votes. That's how Hitler bacame popular.

I did read a funny (and upsetting) article about the BNP accidentally booking a black DJ for their Christmas party, and it being veeeery awkward when he arrived and found out what the job was. UKIP often make a point in public that they definitely, definitely not racist, no siree, so I think they may have tried to turn this petrol station stop into a photo op.

Not a ukip supporter but you do know that there are and have been well documented cases of racists, paedophiles, criminals and expense fiddlers in all the main parties. To think these kind of nut jobs belong to the political right is very naive. Gordon brown came out with the statement, "British jobs for British workers" which is something you'd expect farage to say.

What I mean is a lot of questionable people go into politics of whatever flavour.

btw, Hitler was a really nice chap, and a vegetarian. Incidentally, the best way to prevent the country getting overcrowded is to invade somewhere else.

Our local Ukip representative hasn't got time to hate immigrants. He's far to busy hating women. Particularly female business women or councillors acting "above them selves"

The problem is that more of them choose UKIP; a good statistic from another MNer here:

943,598 voted BNP in the 2009 Euro Elections
179,694 voted BNP in the 2014 Euro Elections

Where do you the other 763,904 voters placed their X? The policies were very similar after all.

I can well believe that there are people out there who arent racist intending to vote UKIP - but if you are racist/xenophobic then UKIP is a gift from the Gods. At that point why don't the non racists think "Oh, hang about, do I really want to be considered a racist?" Wouldn't that be a terrible thing for people to believe about you? Of course if you are racist, you won't care what people think about you and you'd be UKIP loud and proud.

Incidentally, the best way to prevent the country getting overcrowded is to invade somewhere else.

Something you would never catch the 'English' doing, eh?

Hitler wasn't popular. He won one election and then did away with the Weimar Constitution. Mind you, he'd obviously read his Julius Caesar.

I so wish i could share an FB thread on here but it's from a closed group that I left in disgust recently and reported the group to FB.
I'm from close to Rochdale. Our MP is Simon Danczuk. He's a good local MP on the whole but doesn't have a huge majority and is going to have a fight on his hands to keep his seat I think.
We're in a leafy fairly mc part of Rochdale, predominantly white (this is relevant).
The group has been taken over by UKIP supporters who search out an share the most disgusting allegations drawing on recent events - the child abuse and the Labour counsellors family going to Syria. Insinuations that SD is being supported by terrorists, that most of his votes are generated from certain parts of the Borough and derogatory comments made about these places, that the Labour Party in general supports terrorism, fake concern about feeling safe in Rochdale centre (it's fine, bit of a dump but fine), support for the EDL marches. Need I go on?
Those of us who tried tried to reason with them were shouted down as 'lefty do gooders' without any type of debate. No supporter if any other party ever used the language they used. (Although of course there are arseholes in all parties)
But we're the bigots??

That's just guessing though, how many people voted Tory? Labour? Libdem in the euro elections? How does that compare to previous euro election? What was the turnout?

Ukip is the most talked about party on the internet, I read in the telegraph that their youth wing is growing massively. Partly because they are seen as the under dog, anti-establishment, anti-authority. They interviewed one lad whose mum was a Green Party member. Focussing on them so much in the way on here and in the media, is actually helping ukip I think.

Idontseeany, you have my sympathies. Rochdale, Oxford, Rotherham, all will contain constituencies which inevitably are right on the coalface because of recent events. You're going to go through Enoch Powell days, there's no doubt about it. I can't see what else we can do to support you, except call out the ukip/fascist monsters for what they are and vote responsibly.

I'm so sorry. Hope it gets better soon.

captain, lack of discussion is not an answer. There are real problems out there. Fascism is not the solution, though.

Dora thank you.
Election night is going to be a bloody dog fight here I think.

A racist is not going to stop being racist because we laugh at them, or if the media keep asking but you are all racists really? Because not all of them are racist and if you think that those people who support ukip for their policies, leaving EU, right wing liberalism are stupid morons for holding a different opinion, then you are going to alienate them by calling them so at every given opportunity. you risk pushing them away even further. The main parties have to take some responsibility for allowing this to happen imo. Poor policies, false promises and being more interested in feathering their nests than putting the country first. They've allowed ukip to happen. It's a massive wake up call as shouting racist all the time is not working is it?

Aside from their high profile anti-immigration stuff, many of their other ideas are also completely bonkers. Our local ukip candidate wants to ban all bus lanes. Their battle bus wouldn't get very far if that happened.

I think it is very worrying, in a new item recently the presenter asked school children who they might vote for when they're old enough, one boy said 'ukip to keep all the foreigners out' He must have got those views from his parents.

Also have ukip provided figures as to how much money immigration actually costs the country? From my understanding I thought immigrants actually bring in money by paying more tax into the system, and there are actually just as many British people retiring to European countries costing them money.

I watched Evans interview with farage, perfect opportunity to pick apart his manifesto yet he spent most of the interview calling him racist basically. Fine touch on it, but all those people who support ukip will be agreeing with Nigel when he said liberal elite bbc is also against him. Nigel is right their are plenty of nutters in all parties. Perhaps if more focus was on the manifesto then they stop looking like the underdog against the establishment. And people would laugh at their policies instead.

While I agree that shouting Racist at them does no good and yes the party appeals to people who feel they are ignored, most supporters seem to only have a hazy idea of any other policies from what I can gather.
UKIP purposely appeals to the basic Us and Them instinct of many voters who seem to be able to finally put the blame for their own lot in life onto a specific group of people and say "look it's not my fault I can't get a job/house or afford to have children, it's theirs, they took it away from me".

Oh no, they're not racist, are they heck.

Vevvie, that's not official UKIP though is it? Granted the person is obviously a racist nutjob, but all that is going to happen is that if that person is genuine member of UKIP, they will be investigated and kicked out of the party. That is what UKIP do to questionable members, even senior ones like that dreadful person Godfrey Bloom.

If you attacked Nigel with that, he's just going to say it's not official policy, kick the dickhead out of the party and you are going to be doing his work for him by allowing him the opportunity to say these people exist in all parties (true) and you don't judge those parties in this way and we are the persecuted ones.

We have to try a different tactic?

How patronizing and ever so slightly racist to even suggest that the owners of the petrol station couldn't possibly be UKIP voters, because they are Asian

People that have lived in this country for a long, long time, second and third generation are also concerned at the way things are going and I know one or two Asians as you call them , who will be voting UKIP.
There are probably more than you think.

That leaflet is horrendous, but I thought it had been exposed as a troll blog.

Even if it could be shown that ukip were not racist (pigs might fly), their published policies would push them off my list. And that's not even considering their nutjob candidates and supporters.

yes sallyingforth that is what I mean, how many people support them because they are seen as anti-establishment but have not read the policies. What if we actually stopped this mass hysteria over how awful UKIP is because they are soooo obviously racist and only racist, white men vote them, and actually said, I don't agree with them because of x,y, or z in their manifesto. And then let's see how these UKIP supporters respond. Because they can't go on the defensive over racism because you're not even mentioning it.

Hmm, okay. How about the ridiculous notion of not having sex education in primary schools?
There is nothing about further taxation for high earners.
Coal? Fracking?
GM foods?
Save our fishermen? This is actually a manifesto headline, would be fabulous if they'd bothered to turn up to the votes that would have helped our fishermen, but no, despite being in the building, Farage didn't bother.