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Tuesday 11 March 2014

Ukip members are either jokers or 'literally akin to Nazis', claims senior Tory MP

Mr Halfon, who is Jewish, said: ‘To me there are two kinds of UKIP – the [former defence spokesman] Godfrey Bloom guy who’s like a cross between Sid James and Bernard Manning, and then there's a much more sinister element, like the MEP who said every Muslim has got to sign a declaration of non-violence, which to me is literally akin to the Nazis saying Jews should wear a yellow star.

‘I genuinely find it abhorrent and frightening. I'm amazed that man is still an MEP. How someone could say such a thing and then not apologise for it…’

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2574995/Ukip-members-akin-Nazis-claims-Tory-MP-Robert-Halfon.html

Gerard Batten's idea is similar to Dave Jones' idea of making Muslims sign a declaration that they would never do anything to change the laws of this country. Here is Dave Jones at
http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/news/article/2209/calderdale-council-candidate-arrested-on-susp


I actually find Batten's Islamophobia repulsive. It is so stupid too, like when you have to fill in one of those forms asking if you are a criminal or a terrorist when you are about to enter the US
http://elliott.org/blog/department-of-homeland-security-to-visitors-are-you-a-terrorist-or-a-nazi/
declaring that you do not intend to commit criminal or terrorist activity. Repulsive, lame and utterly ineffective.

Dave at least has the excuse of not having completed his secondary education.  Gerard Batten does not.

In fact, UKIP are in many ways more repulsively Islamphobic than the BNP.

It was Lord Pearson who described Geert Wiilders - the man who wanted to ban the Koran - as a "very great man"  


The BNP to their credit condemned the invasion of the Iraq and Afghanistan ab initio, while UKIP remain resolutely Neocon with their very own Friends of Israel pretending not to understand why young Muslims who care about foreign policy might get restive about NATO members bombing Muslim countries.   

15 comments:

Unknown said...

Robert Halfon is an interesting albeit slightly unhinged person. It is not uncommon for an MP to shoot his mouth off without thinking first, of course, but it would surely have been wise to have checked his planned outburst before embarrassing his party. Wiser people in the Conservative party would have pointed out to him that his rather nasty and unquestionably stupid attack on UKIP has merely underlined his lack of understanding and served to convince ordinary people that the Tories are not only badly rattled but a bit ‘off the wall’ into the bargain. The fact that this silly website doesn’t understand that either is sad, but its other comments confirm that the contributors are, in the main, quite a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Any normal person reading the absurd comments here must surely realise that UKIP has not only hit a nerve but is probably well worth supporting.

As a postscript, has anyone, including the deluded Mr Halfon, asked himself/herself why the idiot Bloom was allowed to rant away uninterruptedly for years as a Conservative member before joining UKIP – whence he was unceremoniously kicked out as soon as he started ranting again?

No, I thought not . . .

Claire Khaw said...

I actually despise and abhor Gerard Batten's proposal as both oppressive and ineffectual.

It is like asking men to sign a declaration that they will not rape women every time a woman complains about rape.

Anyway, UKIP which claims to be a libertarian party is a mass of philosophical contradictions:

1. On the one hand it says it won't ban the burqa because it is anti-libertarian, on the other hand it says it would make Muslims sign an undertaking not to to commit terrorism. (I think the reason why Batten is allowed to get away with it is because of his seniority.)

2. On the one hand it claims to be a libertarian party, on the other hand it refuses to contemplate repealing the totalitarian PC Liberal thought-crime Equality Act 2010, but Donna Edmunds was made to apologise for implying that this is what she would like, as a libertarian.

3. On the one hand it needs the party to grow, on the other hand it is too afraid to touch me with a barge-pole because of my rather radical proposals about how to sort the British out on both domestic and foreign policy. All my proposals would only involve repealing Acts of Parliament which turned it PC Liberal. The controversy of having me become their Director of Communications would win UKIP a few extra seats in GE 2015. I already have everything worked out, but they are too afraid to even ask me questions on ask.fm!

Unknown said...

Claire doth, I fear, protest too much

As a strident and forthright wannabe Director of Communications, I fear she would not be a great success. Batten’s suggestion about Muslims living in this country making a declaration of their commitment to the well-being of their chosen country may have been a bit OTT but his purpose is clear and neither self-evidently oppressive nor abhorrent. Of course Claire may find it so and is free to say so – although her own stance may strike normal intelligent people as a bit OTT too. For example, her seeing it as “ like asking men to sign a declaration that they will not rape women every time a woman complains about rape” is just silly and best ignored.

Her further statements betray a willingness to confuse party policy statements with opinions voiced by individuals. It might be entertaining although pointless to list some of the fatuous statements of senior members of the ‘main parties’. To then go on and describe them as Tory/Labour/LibDem official policies would be absurd and, rightly, dismissed as such.

Claire’s heart is probably in the right place but she demonstrates a grievous lack of judgement which, as a Director of Communications, would pose a far greater threat to any party’s wish to be taken seriously than any remark by Gerrard Batten.

Claire Khaw said...

My dear Archibald, I knew I struck the perfect analogy when I likened making every Muslim undertake not to be a terrorist to making every man undertake not to be a rapist. If you wish to refute it, you must give proper reasons, not just descend into insults.

I am saying *again* that any self-respecting libertarian would find the existence of thought-crime legislation forbidding the British to exercise their ability to discriminate between what is desirable and undesirable according to their own preferences to be oppressive indeed.

Can you not see that this infringes on our liberties?

Does Freedom of Contract, Freedom of Association and Freedom of Expression mean nothing to you?

Then you disgust me.

Only those who value expediency over principle cannot see this.

I have been saying FOR YEARS that there is no need for UKIP to be taken seriously.

GET THIS THROUGH YOUR HEAD: There is no need for UKIP to be taken seriously.

There is no need for UKIP to be taken seriously.

There is no need for UKIP to be taken seriously.

There is no need for UKIP to be taken seriously.

It is actually imperative that it claims to be "only a protest party".

To pretend that there will be a UKIP government after GE 2015 is just fatuous.

It is better to be seen as a protest party with a coherent ideology with its representatives that can articulate its principles persuasively than the mishmash it is now.

If you claim to be serious you will be attacked as a serious party, while your pool of talent is so pitifully small and poor.

If you say you are only a protest party, then you will be more indulged.

Can't you people see this?

You have got your tactics all wrong.

Also, you are disadvantaging yourselves by not availing yourselves of the advantages of being a fringe party, which is to be unashamedly right-wing.

It is enough to entertain the voter, I am certain of that. I can do this very well, and with UKIP behind me, we can really go places TOGETHER.

Again I warn you: do not take yourselves too seriously. Do not ask people to take you too seriously. It is enough that you are a stick to beat the LibLabCon with, while allowing voters to be entertained.

What Donna Edmunds said was very popular, but UKIP's treatment of her now makes it unacceptable to say this.

If she is prepared to argue for it, then you should have let her do so, instead of making her apologise.

It is this sort of cowardice that makes voters despise politicians.

Unknown said...

Dear Claire,

I was disappointed to read your strange reply to my comment. I confess that, despite your original article, I expected more. Incidentally, I apologise for what you describe as insults. I didn’t mean to damage your self-esteem and any gentle mocking was intended as non-aggressive disagreement. Indeed, compared with the torrent of abuse you have been pleased to launch in my direction, I consider my criticisms to be kind and measured.

But enough!
You are perfectly entitled to be cross when you are criticised and, as I have already stated, I am sorry for any hurt you have felt.

However, what you are not perfectly entitled to do is to distort and deliberately misrepresent what I have written in perfect English. I merely pointed out that your assuming that Mr Batten’s comments were UKIP party policy was silly and untrue. And so it is. I also find that your view that what he suggested was comparable to “ making every man undertake not to be a rapist” is simply absurd. As to requiring me to “give proper reasons” for thinking this, I confess to being at a loss. If you cannot work out for yourself why these two propositions are entirely different then there is no way I can explain it to you. You might care, incidentally, to reread what I wrote, where you will see that I did not say that I supported the Batten proposal. As a matter of fact I remain unconvinced. But you mustn’t let a small matter of fact spoil your desire for a good rant.

I see that, possibly for good measure, you also suspect me of opposing “Freedom of Contract, Freedom of Association and Freedom of Expression“. This is a bit baffling. But having, for your own reasons, assumed this to be the case you then tell me, de haut en bas, that I disgust you. Oh dear. Well, I must learn to live with your disapproval.

The fact that you have been telling the world “FOR YEARS” that “there is no need for UKIP to be taken seriously” does not, I fear, alter the facts. Nor does repeating it several times – and in upper case letters, give it any more legitimacy. You are in a very small minority (possibly of one) among commentators, opinion formers, politicians of all major parties, and members of the public who are consulted by opinion pollsters. But you must know that. Which makes your obsessive repetitions to the contrary look a bit sad.

At this point in your rant you appear to fly off, as the French wittily say, in “toutes directions” and there seems no point in trying to untangle your slightly deranged outbursts. Please do not take this as my trying to upset you. What I would suggest is that you calm down, re-examine what you have written, put your thoughts in some kind of order, and then compose a rational, calm and , if possible, intelligible distillation of your political thoughts, such as they may be.

Then – and only then, offer it to the rest of us for discussion. It will save time.

How does that sound?

Claire Khaw said...

Very well. I will keep it short and simple.

Donna Edmunds has been made to apologise for suggesting that she would like to repeal the Equality Act 2010.

Has Gerard Batten been made to apologise for saying he wants every British Muslim to sign an undertaking not to commit acts of terrorism?

If not, why not?

Claire Khaw said...

The distillation of my thoughts about how UKIP should campaign on is to propose just the two of the following and shut up about everything else:

1. Repeal the Equality Act 2010

2. Abolish no-fault divorce

How much more motherhood and apple pie can you get than this?

Will you do it or not?

If not, why not?

Unknown said...

That’s much better, Claire. I should like to congratulate you on compressing your personal manifesto to the mentioned repeals, both of which I imagine will attract fairly widespread approval. I regret that you you did not include the 1973 EEC Treaty of Accession. I expect you have your reasons but it seems to me an odd omission. Similarly, some people may feel we could, with advantage, distance the UK from the UN 1951 Refugee Convention. As for the incorporation of Human Rights legislation into UK law; this is now widely felt to have been one of Labour’s worst mistakes, making their choice of Kinnock as leader seem merely eccentric.

But I digress.
I don’t know a lot about Donna Edmunds. But I am not enthusiastic about people – any people, being made to apologise if they don’t want to.

This has always seemed pointless to me. An empty gesture is an empty gesture. And it smacks, anyhow, of Soviet and Chinese Communist show trials. Why would you want to make Batten (or anybody else, come to that) apologise for what he sincerely believes? Ritual humiliation is an ugly sport and one we would do well to discourage, don’t you think?

Your final question “Will you do it or not? If not, why not?” is unclear. Do what exactly?

Claire Khaw said...

I am just saying that Nigel Farage has not made any effort to distance itself from Gerard Batten's proposal to force Muslims to undertake not to commit acts of terrorism.

There is no consistency to the man. It is because Batten is obviously more senior to Donna Edmunds and is an MEP. Farage is not a principled man at all. This seems to be the common characteristic of Englishmen these days.

I am delighted that you support my proposals to repeal the Equality Act and abolish no fault divorce, which is a good start. You have therefore answered my question that you said you did not understand.

Let us hope that you are on the NEC and capable of influencing UKIP policy!

What I suggest is that UKIP enter GE 2015 with just those two proposals in its manifesto.

Give yourselves plenty of time to prepare and rehearse the arguments so you all know what to say.

You can manage that, can't you?

Don't overload your manifesto again like you did last time and end up looking stupid when you are revealed to not even know what your own manifesto says.

I really cannot bear to watch you people mess things up again. Please just think it through properly this time.

Keep it simple and do it right, for a change!

Unknown said...

Dear deluded Claire,

Your obsession with non sequiturs, bold assertions, and wildly misplaced assumptions is touching. And, delightful though it is from time to time, your striving to assemble a coherent set of political statements is painfully unsuccessful. I believe your forté lies elsewhere and I think you might consider exercising your special skills in a less demanding arena.

I confess to being slightly weary of our exchange of ideas and opinions. I doubt whether we could come to any mutually satisfactory conclusion regarding political theory, debate, and/or practice.

Notwithstanding the above, I wish you well and hope you continue to take an interest in politics and political events. Try to remember that the spectator often sees more of the game – just so long as he or she remembers to stay off the pitch!

Best wishes.

Claire Khaw said...

Not quite sure why you think supporting marriage and repealing totalitarian thoughtcrime legislation is a non sequitur.

I think I know who you are anyway.

Unknown said...

Be good, Claire. And don't worry so much.

Claire Khaw said...

How can I stop worrying when Euroscepticism is in the hands of bunglers and nincompoops who are fatally afflicted both by a lack of principle and a lack of courage?

I know what fragile creatures they are, who will just disintegrate under close questioning of the liberal media.

Even if you give them clear instructions, they will think they know better when they should already know by now that my judgment and courage is far sounder than theirs.

Only spite and pride prevents them from welcoming me into their party and embracing me warmly as their new Director of Communications against that useless Paul O'Flynn.

They are also afraid of the women who have taken over their party. That Star Etheridge is the perfect representation of 21st century British womanhood.

Unknown said...

No comment

Claire Khaw said...

Sounds like you don't like her much either.

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