Ukip gains Clacton whilst Labour holds Heywood and Middleton but only just!

She may like to read this, from today's Inquirer:


http://opinion.inquirer.net/79208/binay-and-the-court-of-public-opinion#ixzz3Fls10H1E

Even though she has the legal right to -- and I am 99% sure that Filipinos living abroad are not disenfranchised and can vote at elections here?

Solita Collas-Monsod - the author of that piece - seems not to like the Mayor of Makati too much. His last four OpEds published in the Inquirer all attack Binay. I do hope SCM's insurance policies are fully up to date!

Don't blame the electorate for failing to read manifestos - blame those who write them! Is it any wonder that many people feel disconnected with the political process when this modern breed of 'professional' politicians have such little regard for their voters who now assume that they serve the political class rather than the other way around?

To my mind, the rot started in the mid-nineties when the Labour party was hi-jacked by Blair, Campbell, Mandelson et al none of whom had worked at a "proper" job but who held vaguely socialist ideals they'd acquired at university. They infiltrated and took over a party that had a fine tradition in representing the working man and morphed it into a movement that appealed to a younger, well-educated and upwardly-mobile generation of yuppies - just like themselves. True enough the party had suffered crushing defeats and repeatedly failed to oust the most right-wing Prime Minister Britain has ever had, Margaret Thatcher. From those days we now find that many of the MPs for all three major parties are career politicians; certainly their leaders and front benchers are.

And these career politicians have done little other than to give broken promises, lie, cheat and steal! And when it becomes serious - such as Blair's Iraq War - they do everything they can to prevent the true extent of their wickedness from being made public (viz the Chilcot Inquiry). Given that Cameron is Blair with a blue tie, do you trust him to hold the referendum he's promised? Me neither. He promised to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty: did he deliver on that promise? Did he heck, he's as pro-European as his pals Tony and Nick. And just as untrustworthy.

Along comes a fairly ordinary bloke - well not too ordinary, he was a stockbroker - who rightly diagnoses that Brussels and the EU is the Big Problem for Britain and starts campaigning for Britain to leave the European Union. This message strikes chords for those of us who are aggrieved by Blair's repeated broken promises and who haven't been given any say regarding "Europe" since the mid-70s when it was a simple trading bloc. As support for this not-so-ordinary bloke grows a party forms and a manifesto is produced - not one of its finest literary pieces by any stretch of the imagination. Nevertheless its message gets through to disaffected Labour, Conservative and Lib-Dem supporters, so much so that it wins big in the Euro and local elections earlier this year. It is to their great discredit that Cameron, Miliband and Clegg have variously dismissed Ukip in denigrating tones rather than confront the issues Farage raises -- issues the British people have long wanted to be dealt with. And the number one issue that no party, apart from Ukip, is willing to talk about is immigration - an issue that everyone and his dog knows that Cameron promised in 2010 to slash but the rate has actually increased since the Tory-Dems came to power.

Labour should be opposed to European migration because it is responsible for keeping wage levels down. But it's not - Labour actually wants higher levels of immigration so that its supporters can stay on the dole whilst jobs are filled by eastern Europeans on zero-hour contracts with companies run by its champagne socialist mates.

I really hope that Ukip does well next May as any major success, by which I mean a couple of dozen or so MPs, might - and I stress the word "might" - might cause the other three parties to kick-out the career politicians and replace them with people people over the age of 40 who've had real jobs outside politics.

On a point of information, you have the LibDems to thank for that, not the Tories.

We promised it, and we delivered it.

If you really think that UKIP will help people on low incomes, may I urge you to read some of Farage's speeches - he is in favour of abolishing the minimum wage and allowing employers to fire people at will, for no reason.

That would be "she". As usual in the Philippines, its the women who have the guts.

Erm, but you're not the party in power!! Besides I believe you've been trumped by the Tories who are to raise the tax threshold to just over £12,000 a year. Good policy though.

None of which have made it into their policy statements.

And you and Markham think that Nigel Farage is going to deliver that?

As a Filipino would say, "Talaga?"

You can stuff your "virtues of country and patriotism" where they belong - the last refuge of the scoundrel.

This board was a nice place whist Sean was running it.

I have had enough Fascism. I am out of here.

Being Italian, you failed to recognise a quotation from a great Englishman.

http://www.economist.com/news/brita...ultaneously-eventually-though-it-will-stretch

Student tuition fees?

As everybody knows, that election promise was NOT fulfilled. It was a casualty of the coalition agreement with the Tories, who would not accept it. It does not alter the fact that the income tax threshold was an election promise which WAS fulfilled.

Hopefully Mrs Ash will have British Citizenship in the new year and I dont think she will ne in a hurry to recoup her Filipino Citizenship.

Funny you should mention that, John. I have been trying to help my ex wife to regain hers; this is not academic as I gave her a house, which her mother lives in. The deeds are in her name and indeed they are in a box with her UK solicitor, as her mother once mortgaged the house without my ex wife being aware of it. But of course as a British citizen she is not allowed to own land in the Philippines, so she needs to regain her Philippines citizenship before a greedy sibling claims her house (which she plans to retire to anyway).

The Philippine Embassy in London are notoriously unhelpful in this matter - be warned. But I advise Mrs Ash to keep dual citizenship as indeed she is entitled to now under the laws of both countries.

Well if you're going to catalogue Lib-Dem's broken promises, you need to include that of a Referendum on the EU which Clegg promised right up to the General Election and which promise he promptly broke as Deputy PM.

You can't accuse the Lib-Dems of being particularly concerned with the environment and the reduction of greenhouse gasses. Under Ed Davey, the(ir) minister in charge of the Department of Energy and Climate Change, Drax power station in Yorkshire was converted to "biomass" - wood-chips to you and me.

But not ordinary, common-or-garden wood-chips, these are specially imported wood-chips from ancient deciduous trees in North Carolina and transported across the Atlantic in diesel-guzzling ships at vast expense. This extravaganza is being funded by a £23 levy on everyone's electricity bill for the next 13 years. But the Department of Energy And Climate Change’s own chief scientist, Dr David MacKay, recently confirmed publicly that when a large proportion of biomass is actually produced from mature trees — as the majority of the chip pellets are that cross the Atlantic — the burning produces more CO2 even than the burning of coal. And that's before you factor-in the CO2 and other noxious substances generated by the cutting-down, chipping and transporting that wood. Oops there go your green credentials, Mr Davey!