One of those clever young chaps at The UK Spectator has poured some cold water over speculation that UKIP could do well, even win, should a by election be held at in the Portsmouth South constituency of beleaguered Lib Dem MP Mike Hancock.
Young Mr Jones points out that the Portsmouth South demographics indicate a younger population and, as we all know, only old people, hankering over a Britain that never really existed, support UKIP.

But we can expect the average Portsmouth South voter to be at least slightly younger — and therefore less likely to vote Ukip — than the average Eastleigh voter.

Moreover the Lib Dems are deeply entrenched locally, as they were in Eastleigh

And, like in Eastleigh, the Liberal Democrats dominate at a local government level — they hold 17 of the 18 City Council seats in the constituency (the Tories have one).

Therefore, he implies, let’s stop fantasising over UKIP and get down to good old fashioned traditional three way party politics…..it’s all a bit of a fairy story.

What he conveniently ignores, of course, is that the Lib Dems only won Eastleigh through the rather dubious organising of postal votes. On the day real time voters went massively UKIP because, during the actual campaign, voters were impressed by the party’s actual messaging (as distinct from the usual media inspired caricature) and the quality of the UKIP candidate.

Eastleigh has given the party a tremendous boost by proving that voting purple no longer a Raving Monster Loony Party moment. The media has begun to take the party a little more seriously, Nigel Farage’s Common Sense tour has played to packed halls and the national polls has shown UKIP pushing ahead of the Lib Dems.

This is not to say that the party would win in Portsmouth but the fact that a high tory outlet like the Spectator is engaging in a little agitprop shows that Cameron & Co are worried..

And so they should be…..membership is growing fast and a lot of these are from the younger demographic. Moreover they are not all disillusioned former Conservative voters. Some are from other parties and a number are people who were previously apolitical and who see the party as giving a voice to ordinary folk outside the metropolitan cultural elite.

Instead of pontificating from his media perch why doesn’t Jonathan Jones get down to some real journalism and get out and about to find out why so many people are joining UKIP – and what they are doing to bring it closer to the corridors of power…

But then that would take expenditure of shoeleather and chatting with the great unwashed – and that would never do…..might miss a few cocktail parties….

Chris Bryant, a gay Labour MP who is a tireless crusader against homophobia and who once made his underpants famous,  is clearly not a fan of Estonians barmaids.….

‘It would be nice sometimes when you go into a British hotel if the receptionist was British. ‘We need to give our young people to have the skills and the opportunities to get those jobs. ‘There is a hotel in my constituency quite often it’s not been able to employ locally, it has ended up employing people from Estonia and Latvia, often people from Estonia and Latvia have so much get up and go they’ve got up and gone.’

That’s not only true about hotels around Bryant’s Welsh constituency – hotels and pubs around West Sussex and Surrey are often staffed by Estonians and other East Europeans. But it’s not about low wages as some of the comments at the DM piece have opined. The key is in Bryant’s last few words

“people from Estonia and Latvia have so much get up and go”

Fact is Estonians and other East Europeans are not afraid of hard work and are also cheerful and helpful whereas some Brits…….

Sorry, Mr Bryant, I’d rather be served by an Estonian barmaid any day……

h/t for barmaid here…

I was very active in my local Tory Party during the 70s. With strikes and terrorism and inflation and constant economic crises within the UK and the US retreating in the face of an apparently unstoppable tide of communism the times indeed were black.

When Mrs T stood for the leadership most of the suits on our local committee were very sniffy about her.
“We need a chap, not a housewife” said one pompous pin striped pontificator.
“Au contraire, my old son” I said “we need a housewife to vacuum up all the old farts like you and get this country going again”

And that is exactly what she did. By sheer strength of will she inspired us to get up off our knees and take pride in ourselves and our country. Forget all that left wing rubbish about her being hated by working class people. She won three elections on the run with clear majorities and you don’t do that without working class votes. That’s why the left, especially the chattering classes of the BBC and Guardian, hated her – she dared to defy their conventional wisdom and proved them wrong time and time again with the support of ordinary folk.

As a young teacher I watched Winton Churchill’s state funeral with my students and they asked me why I had tears in my eyes. In a few days time I will be on the streets of London paying my final respects to one of the greatest leaders this or any other nation has ever had – and again there will be tears in my eyes.

God Bless You, Margaret Thatcher – the grocer’s daughter….

…..and they say ordinary people are turned off by politics….

H/T Facebook UKIP

Yet another pratfall for former PR man David Cameron as the massively hyped roadblock to immigration turns out to be a two inch high barrier of tissue paper.

A major crackdown by David Cameron on immigration was unravelling rapidly today after it emerged that it would only affect a small minority of foreigners in Britain.

Is anyone surprised? Scared stiff by the spectre of the rising popularity of UKIP his team of whizz kid advisers take a break from their school homework and x boxing and tell him to go ukip lite. The UKIP supporters are as thick as planks, they tell him, so just mention a couple of keywords (immigration and, before that, referendum) and they’ll all come flocking back.

So he puts on his serious “watching like a hawk” face and expects us to buy into his rhetoric.

Hot air

“A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,signifying nothing”

He knows and we know that any serious attempt to block EU immigration would be broken immediately by our E£CHR loving judges in partnership with hand wringing sob stories from the BBC/Guardianistas spearheaded by St Joan Bakewell. Cameron and his inner clique are from the Notting Hill end of the media/political elite. They despise ordinary people as mindless drones swayed only by Paul Dacre and the Murdoch press. Keep them quiet with a few buzzwords then get them back to their TV screens..

It won’t work this time, Mr C. You use the EU and the Lib Dems and Hacked Off as fall guys for your own core belief and that’s the same driving force that got you your achievement-free stint as a second rate PR man for Carlton TV.

Your core belief is simply the advance of David Cameron – and nothing else.

Times are changing, Mr C. We’ve woken up to your con game.

We just don’t believe anything you say any more..

1. Shifty on issue of in/out EU referendum
2. Surrendered to Hacked Off’s demand to shackle the press
3. Disparages mothers who decide to stay at home and bring up their kids
4. Sneers at those who oppose the idea of gay marriage
5. Thinks even more taxpayers money should be sent to corrupt third world regimes
6. Tempted to “intervene” in Syria while sacking service personnel in their thousands
7. Happy to spend untold billions on a high speed railway that nobody wants
8. Insults the many thousands of ordinary decent people who join/support UKIP
9. Refuses to secure our borders effectively and efficiently

Good analysis of Osborne’s 2013 Budget by Benedict Brogan and Jeremy Warner of the Telegraph. No histrionics, none of the “look at me, I’m the real star of the show” BBC Newsnight gotcha dramatics from the guy chairing the discussion.

Political TV for grown ups…..

Yes, that Sarah Wollaston…Cathy Newman jolted my memory about how she became Tory candidate for Totnes. She leapfrogged over the usual suspects of stodgy councillors and party suits by winning an open primary.

Yes, in those heady days of opposition that was going to be the way forward – by sending a bolt of electric energy into the well spread bottoms of the Tory faithful. No more plump merchant bankers, teenage political “consultants” or well heeled Eton/Oxbridge toffs with a few years work experience as a PR man for Carlton Television

At the public hustings before the vote, she was asked if her political inexperience would stop her throwing a punch in Parliament, and she retorted that this wasn’t what politics was about. She got a spontaneous round of applause.

She’s ruffling Cameron’s feathers by sticking to her principles – and I like the cut of her jib…

1. Anti EU
2. She turned down a low level government job because she didn’t want to be handcuffed
3. She wants NHS supremo Nicholson sacked for his handling of the Mid Staffs tragedy
4. She criticises Cameron for his retreat over minimum alcohol pricing
5. Cameron and his team, she says, are out of touch with ordinary people

(Now personally I never agreed with minimum pricing but I admire her for sticking to her guns)

Above all she has substantial life and work experience outside politics/media – 24 years in fact which is more than you can say for those spotty sixth formers Cameron, Milliband and Clegg combined….and she also annoys quite a few of the grumpy old saloon bar farts who roam the celars of the Telegraph (just read some of the comments at the end of Newman’s piece…lol..

I live in South Devon with my husband Adrian and we have 3 children, all at university.
I was previously a GP, but also spent time as a police forensic examiner for Devon and Cornwall Police helping victims of sexual violence. I was also involved with teaching and training junior doctors and medical students as well as examining for the Royal College of GPs. I was spurred into Politics after David Cameron’s invitation to those with backgrounds outside politics to bring their practical experience to Westminster

Read her blog and her tweets. The lady has more cojones than two hundred Tory suits sweating in a Turkish bath.

Sarah Wollaston for next Tory leader? You know – I quite like the sound of that though I doubt David Cameron would agree..

Was Liberal Democrat big cheese Lord Rennard a serial groper? Several Lib Dem ladies say he was. Rennard denies it all. He could be telling the truth – not all Lib Dem politicians are liars, drunks or expenses fiddlers. But party leader Nick Clegg is spinning like a weathercock in a gale over his role in the affair and, surprisingly, as Guido Fawkes has pointed out, motor mouth right on feminists MPs like Lynne Featherstone and Sarah Teather been conspicuous by their silence.

For me the most intriguing aspect of this grubby little whirlwind of accusation and counter accusation is that if it is true that there was a casting couch culture in the Lib Dem organisation why was there no sign of any carefully choreographed outrage from Lib Dem “wimmin” themselves – after all these are supposedly the shock troops of female emancipation…
…or don’t women slap men across the face anymore in response to an unwelcome and unpleasant touch?

So all Cameron’s brown nosing of President Obama and his Chicago Machine administration produces nothing but this stinking turd….

A FRESH transatlantic row has blown up after the US said it will not recognise next month’s Falklands referendum.

But then maybe Obama and his mates think that voting in the Falklands referendum will be organised in Chicago style with people voting early – and often – and the dead arising from their graves to cast their ghostly ballot.

Time, perhaps, to swiftboat the new US Secretary of State John Kerry. This could never have been done to St Hillary, as much the idol of the media/political elite as Obama but now she has briefly returned to Mount Olympus, Mr Kerry, a rather seedy and timeworn suit, needs to be the target of some home truths IF (and it’s a massive IF) Cameron and co have the cojones to do it……