This will be part of a short series looking at UKIP in the context of the upcoming election, including expressing my views on immigration since that appears to be UKIP’s main serious concern. This is a long piece, so get yourself a nice cuppa and settle into it.
So to the uninitiated (and to those foreign readers) who are UKIP?
There are many posts presently here at SIN written, or in the pipeline, on our series concerning moral panic, and nothing promotes moral panic quite as much as immigration. Immigration is a hot topic, particularly in the UK, where I live, but also within the wider context of Europe (and pretty much anywhere). There are literally boat loads of people from Africa and the eastern end of the Mediterranean who are hitting the shores of Italy and Spain in waves of thousand upon thousand. Often, the end destination is seen as the UK with its perceived soft touch welfare system.
My previous post talked about the rise of the right-wing UKIP in recent polls and elections in the UK. Part of this phenomena, which is predicated upon the blaming of immigrants and immigration for many social woes, is as a result of the recent economic downturn.
Here is the press release for Caleb Lack’s new book. Caleb blogs here at SIN at Great Plains Skeptic and his book is released on my own Onus Books imprint. It is an academic book, but the ebook is very reasonably priced. Check it out!
Dr Caleb W. Lack, purveyor of the fine opinions and science over at Great Plains Skeptic here at SIN, already has two Onus Books publications:
Mood Disorders: An Introduction
Anxiety Disorders: An Introduction
These great little introductory texts illuminate the latest understandings on these conditions. Look out for one on OCD to come. Further to such contributions to the Onus Books portfolio, he is, with a fellow psychologist, producing a text called “Psychology Gone Astray: A Selection of Racist & Sexist Literature from Early Psychological Research”. Here is a post from his blog to describe the project. In reading the MS to edit it, I am finding much of interest in this early, pseudoscientific era of the discipline:
I am no fan of the right-wing espouser of nonsense and lies that is the Daily Mail. It is a horrible UK paper. For those across the pond who don’t know, it has a rather chequered history, supporting the Nazis way back when and then continuing in the vein ever since. Not really chequered, ac
++tually. All bad. I have written myself to the Mail about a misrepresentation of statistics once in their headline article which effectively amounted to lies.