As I have repeatedly stated, I don’t use Twitter. Nothing I see or hear about it, endears it to me. The idiocy of having to contain your thoughts to 140 characters is bad enough. However, the faux outrage and mob mentality exhibited by its user-base seals the matter for me. The latest lunacy we see involves Ukip and racism and once again, taking a comment and blowing it out of all proportion tot eh original context.
William Henwood, who is standing in local elections in Enfield, north London, made the comment in response to recent remarks by Mr Henry that ethnic minorities are poorly represented on British television and in the media generally.
Given Henry’s comments about ethnic minorities being under represented on television (no, they are not – or does he not understand the meaning of “minority”?), I’d say that was a fair response. If he doesn’t like it, well, he is free to go elsewhere. What we do not need is positive discrimination – for there is nothing positive about it, it is vile discrimination in all its obscenity. So if Henry thinks it is a good idea, I, too, will heap opprobrium upon him and make the same suggestion – go to somewhere more suited to your brand of racism. No one is forcing you to stay.
Of course, all this is rooted in something else. For a long time, Ukip was a fringe party that picked up a few hundred disaffected votes at elections. While they haven’t yet won an election for the UK parliament, they are likely to do well in the EU elections next month and they are gaining more and more of those disaffected votes to the point where they can damage LibLabCon and LibLabCon and their supporters really don’t like it up ’em, do they?
So they have moved on from ignoring the small party of malcontents to ridicule. Now they are in full-scale attack mode. Something must be working, then. Me? I’m getting the popcorn in.
I have read all sorts of rumours that Westminster are behind the smears and even CGHQ are involved, I cannot comment but I suspect that this dirty tricks campaign will backfire and not only make UKIP more determined but drive more people who would not think about voting, let alone disaffected voters toward UKIP.
If that is true, it is a gross abuse of power. GCHQ is not there for the purposes of party politics.
Yes, spot on. Racial discrimination is stupid, and that applies equally to ‘positive discrimination’. I don’t see the UKIP guy’s remarks as being anything other than a quite justified retort to Henry’s stupid assertion. But LibLabCon are coiled, ready to pounce on any off-the-cuff remark by UKIP in the hope of mounting a smear campaign.
It’s interesting to note that although the media have been in paroxysms of horror about it, UKIP seems not to have been damaged at all. And that is because most people echo the sentiments of Mr Henwood. ‘If you want to parachute all your mates into the best jobs, then piss of to somewhere where you can.’
UKIP is really rattling some cages, and I for one will be first in line to hand them a tin cup to run along the bars, the more to unsettle the incumbents. Indeed, pull up a seat and prepare to watch the show.
Indeed so and I am enjoying the discomfort of LibLabCon, just as I am having a laugh at the expense of the screaming outraged loonie lefties over at the Groan.