Oxford University denies that UKIP candidate Natasha Bolter ever attended Oxford

[claig]

"Natasha Bolter: Oxford University deny sex scandal Ukip candidate ever attended"

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ukip/11285916/Natasha-Bolter-Oxford-University-deny-sex-scandal-Ukip-candidate-ever-attended.html

Roger Bird, who is a PPE, introduced Natasha Bolter as having defected from Labour and being a PPE too.

I saw her interviewed on BBC Newsnight last night, and I did begin to wonder about Oxford and PPEs. I'm not a big fan of PPEs at the best of times, but Gordon Bennett, I thought to myself.

What's going on?

So how many referenda do you envisage happening every week? Will some be local and some national? Is there anything that will be decided centrally or will everything be by referendum?

Sorry. Typo. He's taking about "a chinky"

"wtaf is The People's Army?"

It is the home of teh revolution, the people who are challenging the entire Oxbridge metropolitan elite. It is tearing chunks our of the Establishment's Labour Party votes and toppling the Establishment's Tory Party in landslides in the East of England. The Financial Times, the Economist and all teh newspapers analyse teh People's Army phenomenon, they have never seen anything like it. The metropolitan elite don't know what to do, their spin on the BBC is no longer getting through.

This is from the Economist

"The people’s army

Can UKIP keep on coming? The answer could decide the next election

WEST SHOEBURY does not feel like the site of a revolution. There are no smouldering cars or placards trodden underfoot. Seagulls wheel and squawk above a grid of bungalow-lined streets sloping down to the steel waters of the Thames estuary. But in places like this—a slightly faded suburb of Southend, an Essex resort that has known better times—the populist, right-wing UK Independence Party (UKIP) stormed to victory in the local and European elections held on May 22nd. Nigel Farage called his party’s success an “earthquake” and predicted that his “people’s army” would cause yet larger tremors in the general election next May."

www.economist.com/news/britain/21603050-can-ukip-keep-coming-answer-could-decide-next-election-peoples-army

'And the other points'

I haven't read all the other points. I don't dispute that the EU has done some good things such as preventing the open access to GM food that some puppet politicians would otherwise possibly allow through under lobbyist pressure. But I believe in democracy, power for the people, referenda for the people and decisions taken out of the hands of the elites.

I find Farage fascinating on that point. He is simultaneously saying that Smith is just the sort of salt of the earth, People's Army type Claig talks about , but also that he is not fit to be a parliamentary candidate.

"I haven't read all the other points"

Why not?

"So how many referenda do you envisage happening every week? Will some be local and some national? Is there anything that will be decided centrally or will everything be by referendum?"

Weekly referenda, local and national. Most things decided by referenda by the people.

I really want to know how Government by Referendum would work in practice.

So, one referendum a week. Lots of questions or just one? Who decides what question is going to be put to the people?

"I really want to know how Government by Referendum would work in practice."

It will be better than a Blairite "sofa government".

'Who decides what question is going to be put to the people?'

I don't know the details, I will just turn up to vote. It is for the clever people in UKIP to work it all out. We vote for them to sort things out.

I'm not saying whether it would be better or worse- I want to know how it would work.

'I want to know how it would work'

I don't know, I'm not an expert on voting systems, but UKIP are, they will sort it out. We need a Swiss style system where citizens have a real voice, not this tiny clique of promoted and selected Oxbridge graduates.

That article on the levers of power is hilarious. that particular complaint was first aired a few years ago. The Cabinet Secretary and Head if Civil Service posts have since been separated. They used to be career Civil Service posts that civil servants toes internally through the ranks to occupy. When the civil service was unquestionably politically impartial it should not have mattered who held these posts. Unfortunately I. Don't think the CS is quite as impartial now as it has historically been. Cameron obviously feels that the levers are constrained by those in these top CS posts as he has now changed things so that the PM gets to pick who will fill those posts.

To complain that you can't get anything done is simply pathetic. First, start by watching Yes Minister to give you an idea of the dirty tricks that can be played. Then formulate sensible policies with realistic timescales and proper funding for change and delegate the responbility to the civil servants, monitoring their progress regularly and be ready to take any additional action necessary to keep your programme of change on track.

it isn't that difficult A for all if the PM is complaining that the levers are too rusty to work effectively how does he think any junior members without his clout manage to effect any change at all?

truth is that he doesn't understand how to operate the levers, probably hasn't been shown the levers and would probably fall over them before he recognised them.

my view is that he is a shallow, disiinterested, sound-bite politician who may be in office but who is totally ineffective and therefore not in power. he makes hollow promises that he knows he cannot keep and is therefore being very dishonest with the electorate. he is a leaf being blown in the wind of the EU.

If Ed gets in the so be it. The Tories will ditch Cameron and probably go through a succession of leaders again before they find another leader under which they can coalesce. They need to undertake that painful self analysis.

meanwhile Labour will probably totally finish this country financially, especially if the oil price remains low. All played out against a background of growing discontent within The EU member states at crippling austerity and a failing Euro.

It's going to be an interesting few years

"
I don't know the details, I will just turn up to vote. It is for the clever people in UKIP to work it all out. We vote for them to sort things out."

How do you imagine it working? What do you imagine voting on in that weekly ballot? Bin emptying days, what top rate tax payers will pay, what will be in the year 10 history curriculum and fishing quotas all on the same ballot paper?

"I'm not an expert on voting systems, but UKIP are, they will sort it out. "

Why haven't they told us how it will work, then?

Claig

Have you ever met any of these Peoples Army?

Have you ever been to a meeting of the Peoples Army?

Because I fear that you have a very rosy, romantic view of the Peoples Army, based on media hype and have not yet seen the beast in the raw.

How does the Swiss system work? I presume there has to be a minimum number of signatures, just like for Zac Goldsmith's recall referenda.

'Have you ever been to a meeting of the Peoples Army?'

No, I haven't.

But I know what they are like, just ordinary people like their voters.

Referenda are not an a voted part of the political system in many parts of the world. Switzerland, individual Stares of the US, Canada and Australia have referenda as part of their political systems. Within the EU some member States have political systems that mandate that they must gain popular approval via referendum for some Treaty changes. Cameron promised that here - that any major Treaty changes would be put to a referendum.

If you'd asked me a few years ago I would have said referenda were a good democratic idea. I'm not so sure now. You need time to understand an issue and to hear different sides of the discussion and you need an ability to make a considered decision. We here on MN exist in our own little bubble, educated enough to hold a debate, fortunate enough to have access to the internet and resources that can help you make that decision etc. Without real consideration of an issue all you will get is a visceral approach that is based on bigotry, closed minds and what some mate of mate told them is absolutely gospel. never underestimate the stupidity of some people. I would hate to see serious issues decided by a knee jerk reaction.

Which probably makes you think - why does she want an EU referendum? I'm not sure I do. I think I would rather vote for a political party that promised BREXIT and could make a considered case for that proposed action instead of leaving that decision to people who think RustyRockets is serious political force

Sorry Claig. you don't know what they are like. you know what UKIP HQ thinks they would like you to believe.

Spend a morning with the Peoples Army. Try using the term BREXIT and you'll find that the majority don't have a clue what you are talking about

The intellectual debate that we have on sites etc is not permeating down to the grass roots where bigotry is rife.

I suppose that's why the UKIP hierarchy are so in favour of grammar schools- they have to find a way to keep the children of The People's Army well away from theirs....

'The home of the revolution. The people who are challenging the 'Oxbridge metropolitan' elite.'

But the 'public school city banker who used to be metropolitan but moved to the suburbs elite' is OK then?

UKIP isn't by the people for the people; it's by the disaffected politicians from other parties appealing to the more selfish instincts of ill-informed people who just need a little push to embrace all those selfish/blame feelings whcih threaten all of us when times are tough but which most of us try to suppress. Awful, and very sad.

I have confidence in the people and like millions of others have had enough of our out of touch dismissive metropolitan elite who ignore the people and make decisions that most of them disagree with (in exactly the same way as teh EU bigwigs do too). That is why millions have switched to join the People's Army. Millions of people have had enough. At the end of the day, this country is a emocracy, it is for teh people and not for home-flippers who are here today and gone tomoorow.

"this is what you get when a smug metropolitan elite treat the people with contempt"

Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2637925/His-policies-dread-But-smug-metropolitan-elite-treat-people-contempt-writes-DOMINIC-SANDBROOK.html#ixzz3MLKpbjnL
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"Nobody can say it hasn’t been coming.

Yet as the local election results filtered through yesterday morning, there was a palpable sense of shock inside Britain’s political establishment, which had spent weeks writing off Nigel Farage and his motley band of grassroots insurgents.

‘The Ukip fox,’ Mr Farage said delightedly yesterday, ‘is in the Westminster hen house.’
...
Defying all the predictions, it has gained more than 100 council seats. In Essex, it denied the Tories victory in Basildon, Castle Point and Southend.

And in Rotherham, supposedly a working-class Labour bastion, its candidates averaged a whopping 47 per cent of the vote.

By any standards this represents a political earthquake.

Since the 1930s, British politics has essentially been a two-and-a-half-party system, with the Tories and Labour monopolising the dance floor and the Lib Dems, in their various forms, lurking half-heartedly on the fringes.

What is now clear is that those days are finished. Neither David Cameron nor Ed Miliband has the slightest hope of winning as much as 40 per cent of the vote at the next General Election.

And given Ukip’s performance over the past few years, it would be a brave man who would bet against them picking up at least 10 per cent of the vote — and maybe more — in May 2015.

The really extraordinary thing is that this has been the achievement of one man.

Who would have believed that the outspoken Nigel Farage, a privately-educated former City trader who has never won a Westminster seat, would inspire such enthusiasm among ordinary voters from the housing estates of Essex to the post-industrial towns of South Yorkshire?"

www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2637925/His-policies-dread-But-smug-metropolitan-elite-treat-people-contempt-writes-DOMINIC-SANDBROOK.html

It is a revolution because people have had enough and it is the people who make up this country and pay for the home-flippers.

"Most British politicians inhabit a gilded bubble. They are often born into comfortable households, go to private schools (or elite comprehensives) and then spend three years at Oxford or Cambridge before becoming political researchers, special advisers and MPs."

WetAugust …. Re the failure of the EU without our help.

The EU will be under pressure sooner than you think, if there is a snap General Election within months and the populist ‘anti austerity’ party wins as expected.

The stock market has already pan-holed, markets forced 3 year government interest rates above 8% - as the Greek people get an early wake up call to what happens when those international investors FUNDING their budget deficit and national debt, are warned Greece will not follow their bail out/repayment plan – should the anti austerity Syriza Party win.

“Greece Lurches Back Into Crisis Mode”
www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-08/samaras-risks-snap-elections-with-december-president-vote.html

There will be no way Greece COULD stay in the EU if that happened, especially if their communist shadow finance minister carried out his pre election threat told them Greece was going to slash their debt in half.

If a country leaves or is kicked out, never mind if other countries use that event to opt out themselves e.g. Italy, what happens to the Treaty?

Claig .. I see you are giving your UKIP propaganda machine has been a bum start again - was that due to WetAugust reminding you that UKIP cannot bring the UK out of the EU and bursting your Christmas balloon?

Shame on you WetAugust. lol

Regarding the 'popularity' of your one-man-one-policy-pony-party, OOOOps, there goes another balloon.

“Nigel Farage's approval rating hits record low as popularity suffers in wake of Ukip sex scandal”
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nigel-farages-approval-rating-hits-record-low-as-popularity-suffers-in-wake-of-ukip-sex-scandal-9932931.html
”Nigel Farage’s personal approval rating has plummeted to its lowest ever level, with a new poll suggesting the Ukip leader is now as unpopular as David Cameron.”

”Figures released by the polling group Ipsos Mori revealed that voter satisfaction with Mr Farage has dropped 14 percentage points in a single month.”

”The Ukip leader was described only yesterday by a senior Ukip spokesperson as being “like Teflon” because bad news for the party never seemed to stick to him.”