Tallbloke is not only a UKIP candidate but also one of the party’s most trenchant supporters and a dogged defender of Nigel Farage in this blog’s comments section.
In recent comments on this blog, he has maintained that UKIP’s previous refusal to reference the EU’s role in making flooding far worse than it need have been was ‘strategic’, giving the impression that he has taken advice on this from party leadership.
The question I want to ask Tallbloke is whether the UKIP strategy included quietly dripping out an admission of the EU’s role in exacerbating the flooding through EU law, on the party’s website rather than using a major public media platform; or if it included a party representative, Lisa Duffy, going on BBC Any Questions to say: ‘Well it’s not Brussels’ fault is it’?
It would be nice to know just what the UKIP line actually is.
Cheers.
Autonomous Mind 
Has Nigel Farage taken the eu shilling? I think we should be told.
This is clearly another brilliant strategy by Nigel Farage to confuse the enemy. The trouble with you plebs is that you misconstrue strategy for ignorance.
I’ve already requested this on the last piece but I’ll make the request here as well. Can anyone post up details of UKIP’s voting record when it came to the various directives which have led to this flooding fiasco?
Thanks in advance.
Paul, from the look of it, there was no electronic vote … in which case there will be no record …
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?reference=2006/0005(COD)&l=en
If you hunt around on the above page, you may find something more.
AM I enjoy this blog but here comes the BUT, why the continuous knocking of UKIP .there are a lot of people like me who want some democracy back in our country which we do not at present have with the existing system of being ruled by a fraudulent body that breaks all the barons won via the Magna Carta .
, I support UKIP warts and all purely as a very large boot to kick the other three zombies into having to think beyond the world stage and their own legacy not giving a jot as Richard named for us plebs .
Because until UKIP gets its act together it has the capacity to damage the wider EUsceptic movement.
The party’s approach is poor. The approach is dictated by Nigel Farage. Hopefully the members will eventually demand a significant improvement and change at the top.
The other parties are our opposition so we expect them to undermine and damage the prospects for an independent UK. UKIP is supposed to be on our side, so when it hampers us it deserves criticism.
Richard, you’ve managed to fry my brain after reading that. Weird that they make it so difficult to find the voting habits of our elected members. In fact it’d be interesting to know the voting record of all the major UK meps’ so that people can see who really is to blame for all this.
Forgive my ignorance AM who is the wider movement you speak of I am all for it if there is half a chance of getting away from the cancer I see in being ruled by unelected marxists
.I am sincerly here to learn .
@Maureen Gannon,
“It would be nice to know just what the UKIP line actually is.” sums it up.
The impression I get is the EU involvement in the Levels flooding debacle is something which took UKIP by surprise. They really have no worked out view and it wouldn’t do to say “it all came from the EU”, because it didn’t, but the EU has made sure that the policies behind it are running along railway lines. The EU was a large part of getting into this mess and makes it much harder to get out of it.
So what do we have in UKIP? An emotional appeal, and a few slogans. No thought through strategy. Apart from giving the others a kicking, I don’t see that they are geared up to change anything and are maybe turning into another of the same. Apparently wanting to avoid the EU aspect makes it look that way.
Duffy is supposed to be one of UKIP’s rising stars, showing that it isn’t all about Farage, and she falls into a trap like this. I believe she fell into it because they had no thought through line, so she was making it up as she went along. She could, for instance have mentioned a few of the directives which restrict policy and have invited Vaz to say that these had nothing to do with it and had no legal force, which is of course nonsense. That would have involved being briefed accurately and anticipating an obvious point. It was QT and the floods were a certain topic.
@Maureen If I was so minded, I could offer a whimsical response, asking why there is such continuous knocking of AM (and myself).
The reality, though, is as AM states. UKIP is not playing a zero sum game. It has as much capability to damage the anti-EU movement as it does to advance its aims. To an extent, if it is not part of the solution, it is part of the problem.
The trouble is that UKIP is a political party. Therefore, its main aim is to fight and win elections. Getting out of the EU is secondary.
What we are thus seeing is a realisation within UKIP (or the effects of that realisation) that electoral success and pursuing the anti-EU cause are at odds. Therefore, to improve chances of electoral success, UKIP is progressively dumping the EU issues, in favour of a more general approach, attractive to a wider constituency.
In the end, I suspect, UKIP will eventually seek to remove its anti-EU commitment from its objectives, in the same way that Labour removed Clause 4.
That leaves us with UKIP as a bed-blocker … purporting to support the anti-EU agenda, but in fact serving its own narrow party interests, with its very presence preventing other anti-EU players being heard.
As a result, the incoherent and essentially damaging UKIP lines are prevailing. If they are allowed to continue unchallenged, they could cost us a referendum. In order to support the anti-EU cause, therefore, we feel that we must distance it from UKIP, which is no longer acting in our interests, or advancing the cause.
@Paul This is a useful site, to keep any eye on the voting …
http://www.votewatch.eu/en/votewatch-guide.html
going through the European Parliament site is extremely complicated and time consuming … this is quick and dirty, but very helpful.
Thank you Richard as for the knocking of you and AM I do not believe I am guilty , when I said I am here to learn I meant it.
So teach me if UKIP is no good in the fight against the traitors in power and the fraudsters that rule us where is one to go to stop the destruction of our country.
I was asked why I was against the gagging law my answer , I lived through a war as an evacuee came back to London and it’s deprivation to be taught it was in the name of freedom only to watch this country since 2000 being run by popinjays strutting on the world stage allowing blatant fraud in their own body and the body that rules us .Cromwell wanted them gone so do I.
I attended the Bruges Group meeting in London, last November and had the misfortune to listen to Tim Congdon. I have never had to endure such shambolic and incoherent drivel in my life! He epitomized the UKIP’s total lack of substance that day. A perfect example demonstrated by the ‘MC’ not having a clue as to how to pronounce Synon…Thankfully Booker, North and Synon managed to restore a good deal of credibilty to the event.
@tux1952 I attended that meeting as well (along with WfW) and quite agree with your analysis regarding Congdon’s speech. It’s not so much that I essentially disagreed with the main thrust of his argument, more that he was unable put forward any facts to support his case.
“Shambolic and incoherent drivel” is a fair reflection I think.
Thank you, I’m glad I’m not the only one. As Dr North tirelessly points out again and again, that kind of rhetoric is not going to win anyone over who would like to know of an alternative approach. Get rid of this or get rid of that or walk away is all very well, but…what do you replace it with etc??? Volume and repetition is not going to do it. He would have been mincemeat in my school’s debating society…
I’m sorry I couldn’t resist any longer:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2560300/Why-did-floods-agency-spend-hundreds-equali-tea-gay-awareness-mugs-30-000-gay-pride-marches-As-Britain-counts-cost-shoddy-defences-reveal-bizarre-spending-quango-bosses.html
His latest posting alluding to the floods. Still nothing on any directives:
“The wider Eurosceptic movement”
What movement? The wider public doesn’t notice. You are all in the Judean People’s Front (or perhaps the PFJ). At best there is an inchoate sense that politicians are rubbish and something is wrong, but as long as there is carling in the supermarket, tits on page 3, 2 weeks on the Costas every year and the feral underclass are contained in their ghettoes things will rumble along.
The only thing that’ll get us out is if the sinister people in Brussels over-reach themselves apropos the City of London. Once the politicians paymasters get the jitters the Tories will miraculously become anti-EU, rather than simply pretending to be so,I merrily going along with every directive.
In the meantime I will vote UKIP in spite of all their flaws since I fondly hope enough of us will do so to give mainstream parties a fright.
Surely a “Spoiled Vote”…with ‘None of the Above’ would be more effective.They have to be acknowledged and counted as far as I know.
@Sebastian Weetabix With a 28 percent turnout, there are no “mainstream” parties. Politics is a minority sport. And, with five percent of the electorate bothering to turn out and vote for UKIP, the party has a long way to go. When do you estimate that you will have a majority in the House of Commons … 2050 … 2060 … 2070?
I have spoilt my ballot paper since a certain charlatan walked into Downing st with HIS signature tune of “Things can only get better “[ for him] I have written None worthy , UKIP warts and all gives me a chance to slap their egos ,when I have said this to friends etc their response is “can’t be bothered. fed up with them all “
Of course turnout was low. A mid-term election in a single safe seat is hardly worth the bother, except for obsessives, precisely because the outcome makes no difference. At the last general election we still had a 65% turnout. Two voters in three isn’t a minority pursuit and since I disapprove of stringing people up from lamp posts I’ll carry on voting. Spoiling a ballot paper counts too. One of my workmates has written “you’re all bloody useless” on his ballot paper at every election since 1979. But those who don’t vote have no right to whinge about the outcome.
My views may well never get a majority in Parliament – that’s democracy. In fact I’m not sure they even command a majority in my own house, judging by how the memsahib rolls her eyes every time I mention the EU.
No word from Tallbloke, then? I am surprised (not).
Did you really expect to respond when his comments are shown up yet again to bear little relation to reality and are only the product of his own wishful thinking? Wait until 2015 when the UKIP earthquake fails to materialise. He will probably try to climb into that hat of his.
I didn’t know about the post AM. I don’t hang on your every rambling. A shock to you I’m sure.