“What a place to live!” wrote a friend from the Cotswolds, who’d been watching, aghast, the documentary Meet the Ukippers, aired last Sunday. I was at pains to explain that the curious collection of locals featured was really not a representative sample of the Thanet population, but I got the feeling she – along, I suspect, with many others – was not convinced.
What a shame. Only days before, Margate was in the news as the next big property hotspot; and there is increasing interest in the area as a weekend destination through enthusiasm for the Turner Contemporary, the prospect of the restored Dreamland, and the booming Old Town. So thank you district councillor Rozanne Duncan, for tracking down some dilapidated windows and telling the nation that parts of Cliftonville are “a no-go area after dark”, and for your fanciful assertion that we poor, sensitive English people are disturbed by “the constant noise of people speaking a foreign language.”
We will forgive the narrator’s appalling grammar since at least he confirmed, what those of us who ever go anywhere else can see for ourselves, that actually “Thanet has less (sic) immigrants than the national average.”
Not that a little diversity should put anyone off visiting our fair Isle. What might was the strange collection of characters in this fly-on-the-wall (sometimes a rather shaky fly at that – who on earth was holding the camera when Trevor Shonk’s head was cut off?) look at the South Thanet UKIP group.
Leaving aside what one might feel about UKIP’s manifesto, can you imagine any of that motley crew attempting to run the country? Or even a bath?
Far be it from me to judge anyone by appearances – especially after Councillor Rozanne Duncan’s bizarre and hideous outburst about “negroes” – so I will refrain from suggesting a good scrub and a group haircut.
And simply say that what continues to leave me slack-jawed, is the bumbling ineptitude displayed and that anyone would be so dense as to say some of the things that were said when a camera is rolling. The barely intelligible campaign manager Martyn Heale, chortling about the value of a bit of “misinformation” and airily dismissing his time in the National Front, as “I was never a member of the Gestapo” (oh, that’s all right then!) and then using the F word.
Someone with no experience at all of being a councilor being chosen as a candidate on the basis of an inane grin and the immortal “I’m cheeky and I enjoy it and I want to do something.”
And the then “press officer” (she has since had the good sense to jack it in) claiming amid nervous laughter, that she didn’t feel she could stop Rozanne Duncan’s diatribe ( why on earth not?). I regret there’s no room to go on. But by the time you are reading this, many acres of newsprint and web pages will have dissected the programme and Rozanne Duncan, already thrown out of UKIP – horses and stable doors leap to mind – may well have resigned (1000 signatures asking her to, and counting). So I will jump to the big question remaining.
Nigel Farage is not stupid. Yet the programme began with his words: “I couldn’t have a team anywhere in England who I feel more comfortable with than these people.” Can he be serious? I would have thought there might have been just the tiniest – ahem – intelligence gap?
Did he watch that footage and feel proud of the way his “team” acquitted themselves? I was cringing behind several cushions and I’m nothing to do with it. I have invited Mr Farage to meet me for a drink so I can pose that question, and others.
He hasn’t replied yet but I am sure, him being a polite chap, he will. Watch this space. In the meantime, if you want to laugh in horror while simultaneously choking on disbelief, watch Meet the Ukippers…
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You can read the original article here.
Jane Wenham-Jones 
fab piece Ms Wenham-Jones X
The collective voice of the UK; BBC, ITV, Channel 4, 5 ad nauseum together with the Free Press (sic) like The Times, Telegraph, Guardian et seq are running an orchestrated campaign to undermine UKip in the run up to the General Election.
Why? Well, most people don’t care but the politicians are not most people; they have the most to lose. So, they all come together to destroy the new threat to their rather comfortable status quo.
After the election and if UKip are no longer a threat normal service will be resumed. FAILING that, UKip is bankrolled by ex-tory grandees and MP’s (one donor donating £1 million recently), so, lets assume that the Lib-Dems implode as we expect they will then the tories will do a deal with the devil himself to keep power.
Personally I don’t care. I’ve never voted for any party, I don’t see that changing and I don’t care who gets elected they’re all as bad as each other. On a lighter note, up to 70% of the electorate never vote – how different the parties may be if we had a box on the ballot paper that simply said “None Of The Above.”. There. Rant over, have a nice day folks.
Yes.
Just had an email asking me to confirm who I am. Email system not working properly and will not be remedied until late next week. Anyway, as I am here…
Quick assessment of political parties and there chances of election.
Labour Party: stopped being the party of the people sometime in 1950’s, now orchestrated by (mostly) white middle class males who have no other interest than political power. After roundly condemning the Lib-Dem leadership over the Cash-For-Uni-Places scandal they have now said they will SLASH the impoverished student mountainous debt from £9,000 p.a. to £6,000 p.a. – I am sure they will rest peacefully in there hovels at night knowing they only need run up debts of £18,000. Poor Harriet who is ‘reading’ Byzantine Latrine Architecture at Dodgy-Poly-Masquerading-As-A-UNI still thinks it’s Monopoly money and is hoping a little identity theft may help her erm? Forget the debt.
Conservative Party: Playing to their strengths by secretly stirring up the prospects of a War (worked for Thatcher). Currently testing the russians resolve but don’t rule out a ‘just’ war (for the younger readers that’s a war from the middle ages where we went into battle for no good reason at all – a bit like the Iraq war). Getting desperate so may well pull the old tax cuts for the family man rabbit out of the bag. Nobody in Scotland, Ireland, Wales or the whole of Northern England voted for them last time but they STILL got in courtesy of LONDON vote and the HOME COUNTIES. Various boundary changes to shore up this vote may mean they get in again even though virtually nobody votes for them.
Lib-Dem: Bye bye, nice not knowing you or what you actually did.
UKip: Welcome to the new Conservative party.
Greens: You need to grow, grow rapidly and show us all your first fruits.
There. Done. Second and final rant over.
Did I tell you about…
Thank you for your comments everyone 🙂