In the first part, I looked philosophically at the debate. I will now continue by considering my own country, the UK, in terms of the EU and economics, amongst other things. This takes off from the last post which looked at how borders are arbitrary and the luck of birth place is not enough to warrant privilege.
Britain and the EU and Economics
With the rise and rise of UKIP, even despite their consistent foot-in-mouth propensity (and perhaps because of it), I have written a piece looking at UKIP in a skeptical light and am now due to write about the subject which concerns them the most. Immigration. This is quite a useful thing to do because in some respects I am not fundamentally sure where I stand on the minutiae of this core election Pandora’s Box.
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?
UKIP, The British, but more popular version of the Tea Party, is stooping to new lows, as if that was possible. One of their authorised group, a Christian group whose tag line is “Fighting through Christ for deliverance form EU tyranny”, has made declarations about homosexuality and Manchester’s gay Pride event which seem right out of a previous century. This is from The Pink News (H/T Matthew Coussell through via Hope Not Hate):
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.
UKIP have done spectacularly well in the recent local and European elections in the UK> They were a fringe group of right-wing Euro/climate/immigrant-skeptics. They are now not so fringe, having, post-recession, harnessed the fear vote. Whilst I don’t deny the need for immigration reforms, supporting UKIP in any way to do this is clearly the wrong option.
“I’m not a racist, I’ve got coloured neighbors and they’re fantastic neighbors” – An interviewed UKIP voter on the BBC.
Local elections have just taken place in the UK for a proportion of local councils where the electorate can decide which councillors will represent their interests in local wards by winning seats on their local council. UKIP (the UK Independence Party), essentially a break-away faction of the Conservative Party, the right wing mainstream party of the UK, originally set up to take the UK out of membership of the EU, made massive gains.
OK, so this sort of thing is what you would usually expect from rabid Republican senators. Anyway, looks like that sort of behaviour has traversed the Atlantic. Let me just get this out of the way first – AAAAARRRGGGGHHHH! Fuckwit!
Anyway, the BBC:
So there were local elections yesterday, these for councillors for the County Councils (broadly speaking, States in the US). Councils are run by a number of councillors, and overall majorities mean that certain parties control whole counties (again, broadly and simply speaking).