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Voted Green for everything pretty much. Happy enough to have done it now.

 Paradigm wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
So the value of an immigrant has to be judged two generations after they come and it will be based on whether people like to go to their restaurants.

Only culturally, as culture will take that time to integrate, and of course the restaurants is just a simplification. When immigrating, though, the concerns should be on what they can offer the country, be it a skill, a culture, a profession or a service.

We've had a significant number of Poles living in the UK since WW2, when they contributed various services to the defence of the nation as pilots in the Battle of Britain, and as infantry and paratroops in the invasion of France.

10 or so years ago a younger generation of Poles started to contribute services as attractive, polite and attentive waitresses in restaurants, and as skilled, reliable tradesmen in the building business.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
We've had a significant number of Poles living in the UK since WW2, when they contributed various services to the defence of the nation as pilots in the Battle of Britain, and as infantry and paratroops in the invasion of France.

Yes, this. The Poles made up a significant proportion of the "few" and therefore did more to save the UK from the Nazis than say... the Americans.

 Flashman wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
We've had a significant number of Poles living in the UK since WW2, when they contributed various services to the defence of the nation as pilots in the Battle of Britain, and as infantry and paratroops in the invasion of France.

Yes, this. The Poles made up a significant proportion of the "few" and therefore did more to save the UK from the Nazis than say... the Americans.

And I don't think anyone in their right mind would take issue with that. Confusing wartime refugees with modern economic migrants is rather irrelevant, and an entirely different conversation.

 Paradigm wrote:

 Flashman wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
We've had a significant number of Poles living in the UK since WW2, when they contributed various services to the defence of the nation as pilots in the Battle of Britain, and as infantry and paratroops in the invasion of France.

Yes, this. The Poles made up a significant proportion of the "few" and therefore did more to save the UK from the Nazis than say... the Americans.

And I don't think anyone in their right mind would take issue with that. Confusing wartime refugees with modern economic migrants is rather irrelevant, and an entirely different conversation.

Yes, but when a group of people put their lives on the line to save your country, it seems a bit harsh to say to their grandchildren, "Bugger off, you're not coming in."

Regardless, fear of immigrants is a red herring. As has probably been said on this thread already, migrants actually support the economy because they come here, work and spend money. This in turn creates more business, more jobs etc. Trust me, if all the European migrants went home tomorrow, we'd soon know about it.

Jaysus. Our locals elections are enough to make me despair.
Fianna Fáil, the party whose pro cyclical bubble friendly non existent regulation policies resulted in our financial crash, and whose blanket bailout of our toxic banks is the reason the country is in the gakker, is the biggest single group of council seats again after only 1 electoral cycle.

Goldfish memory doesn't begin to describe the memories of the Irish electorate. Disgusting.

Don't think it's just the Irish that are guilty of that, my good man.

I'm looking forward to the results being talked about. David Dimbleby has a program starting at 9 GMT on BBC News 24 that will be discussing the results. I think taking a particular slant to see how well UKIP have done. I'm hopeful that Scottish voters have chosen to stay away from UKIP.

Here we go.

UKIP seem to have come no.1 in the UK.

How fething sad.

Not quite as bad as the french victory for the National Front, but still pretty bad for the UK in my opinion.

At least we didn't have any serious Eurosceptics running.

I don't know, it did at least show Labour/Conservative that they need to get their heads out of their collective arses. Lib Dems have all but disappeared, which is what I expected.

Who is going to show UKIP that they need to get their head out of their arse?

 Da Boss wrote:
Who is going to show UKIP that they need to get their head out of their arse?

Probably the BNP in ten or so years.

 Da Boss wrote:
Who is going to show UKIP that they need to get their head out of their arse?

They don't need to. UKIP are essentially a protest vote, which will either split the conservative (note the lower-case "c") vote, and let Labour come into power, or they will have to join forces with the Conservative party to get any power in the next general elections.

That's assuming the current state of support for all of the parties. Hopefully, Lab/Con. will get their gak together and beat UKIP outright.

The Euro elections are actually pretty important though, and voting them in is a fairly drastic form of protest.

They're (EDIT: referring to Eurosceptic parties here) still a minority overall, I believe? In Britain, UKIP, Labour and Conservatives all got around 25% of the vote, which is a clear enough message without giving anyone an outright majority (not that it matters, given that UK MEPS are a minority in the overall parliament).

UKIP won the majority in the European elections. Given the size of the countries, that means UKIP are sending 23 good for nothing, won't show up, claim expenses but don't bother working MEPs to Europe for Ireland's generically mediocre 11.
They're sending 5 more MEPs than Labour or the Conservatives.

Edit: Just saw that you're reference the overall parliament.

They are indeed, and likely they won't co-operate well, and even more likely, they won't bother to show up and vote. But that means essentially that major decisions get made with less input from the nations who voted Eurosceptic, and the cries of "We're not represented by Europe!" can continue, even though that is what was voted for.

 welshhoppo wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
Who is going to show UKIP that they need to get their head out of their arse?

Probably the BNP in ten or so years.

Nah, the BNP have had their time and their form of racism is patently not electable. I assume that former BNP voters have turned out for UKIP along with those apathetic to Labour, Tories or the Lib Dems.

With these results I'm expecting there be another poll over Scottish independence soon. I'd imagine that even some of the naysayers won't be taking all that purple too well. Though can any of this be taken as an indication as to how people will vote in the general elections? =/

 MrDwhitey wrote:
How fething sad.

Yes but ultimately it wont really change anything aside form the Tories moving even further to the right. The European Parliament is still overwhelmingly pro Europe and the euroskeptic block still doesn't have any real power. At the end of the day the EU elections are not a 'real' election, peoples voting habits will be completely different in the general election and only about a third of people even bothered to vote, I certainly didn't.

In a few years UKIP will go back to being a fringe party, as they already are in national politics. In fact UKIP is quite a 'good' thing as it will draw the extreme right winger Tories away from the Conservatives so their share of the vote will decline so a Lib/Lab or Labour majority government is a lot more likely. Not that this will be a good thing per say, just the lesser of two evils. A UKIP/Conservative government would be a terrible, terrible thing and I would seriously consider emigrating should such a thing occur.

I can't say that I am surprised that the Lib Dems did so badly, I can see them getting a caning at the General Election as well.

 Wyrmalla wrote:
With these results I'm expecting there be another poll over Scottish independence soon. I'd imagine that even some of the naysayers won't be taking all that purple too well. Though can any of this be taken as an indication as to how people will vote in the general elections? =/

News media is saying its good for the pro independence movement as they will want to be part of the EU.

I'm considering if the anti-independence media in England will continue with the "if Scotland becomes independent, then they won't be in the EU", given that being out of the EU's, to an extent, the goal of the Tories and UKIP. So, based on the arguments of those parties, even if Scotland doesn't gain independence, we'd still be out of the EU, making that a moot point. Though I suppose one shouldn't question the arguments of media so often, as that's the way of madness.

Whatever, should Britain somehow allow UKIP to gain seats in the general election then my opinion of the union's going to pot (though its a wonder it can sink any lower after the Tories took power in the last one). =P

 Palindrome wrote:

 MrDwhitey wrote:
How fething sad.

Yes but ultimately it wont really change anything aside form the Tories moving even further to the right. The European Parliament is still overwhelmingly pro Europe and the euroskeptic block still doesn't have any real power. At the end of the day the EU elections are not a 'real' election, peoples voting habits will be completely different in the general election and only about a third of people even bothered to vote, I certainly didn't.

In a few years UKIP will go back to being a fringe party, as they already are in national politics. In fact UKIP is quite a 'good' thing as it will draw the extreme right winger Tories away from the Conservatives so their share of the vote will decline so a Lib/Lab or Labour majority government is a lot more likely. Not that this will be a good thing per say, just the lesser of two evils. A UKIP/Conservative government would be a terrible, terrible thing and I would seriously consider emigrating should such a thing occur.

I can't say that I am surprised that the Lib Dems did so badly, I can see them getting a caning at the General Election as well.

UKIP pulled a lot of support from labour - protest against Milliband and Balls- The lib dems are paying the price of being the third option for so long. Once in power it was obvious a lot of their policies were never going to acted upon.

This is something labour need to wise up to a little bit. They need an overall majority to be effective - and that's not taking into consideration that Milliband may be hampering their efforts or that their policy direction or lack of is going to hurt come next year.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Wyrmalla wrote:
I'm considering if the anti-independence media in England will continue with the "if Scotland becomes independent, then they won't be in the EU", given that being out of the EU's, to an extent, the goal of the Tories and UKIP. So, based on the arguments of those parties, even if Scotland doesn't gain independence, we'd still be out of the EU, making that a moot point. Though I suppose one shouldn't question the arguments of media so often, as that's the way of madness.

Whatever, should Britain somehow allow UKIP to gain seats in the general election then my opinion of the union's going to pot (though its a wonder it can sink any lower after the Tories took power in the last one). =P

Whilst I'm no particular lover of the tories they are at least not spending their way to cling to power like Labour did under Blair/Brown.

The days of Labour being for the people (and a force for change/good) are long gone.

I'm very disappointed that the Green Party lost a seat over all in these elections.

The UK is heading down a slippery slope with its attitude to the Environment. Just have a look at UKIP's policies and Dave's support for fracking. Not to mention HS2 and the damage that's going to do to England's beautiful countryside, all for what? To increase commute speeds? Ridiculous. Technology has outstripped/is outstripping the need for people to commute long distances for face to face meeting frequently. Moving further away from Europe will only make this worse.

Hopefully the general election goes very differently than this Euro one. It's certainly looking like Scotland will be making its exit from the UK.

 Medium of Death wrote:
I'm very disappointed that the Green Party lost a seat over all in these elections.

The UK is heading down a slippery slope with its attitude to the Environment. Just have a look at UKIP's policies and Dave's support for fracking. Not to mention HS2 and the damage that's going to do to England's beautiful countryside, all for what? To increase commute speeds? Ridiculous. Technology has outstripped/is outstripping the need for people to commute long distances for face to face meeting frequently. Moving further away from Europe will only make this worse.

Hopefully the general election goes very differently than this Euro one. It's certainly looking like Scotland will be making its exit from the UK.

the Green parties 'values'

A real change: from austerity and welfare cuts to investment in decent jobs.

A real change: from privatisation for the benefit of the 1% to public management of essential services not driven by corporate greed.

A real change: from subsidies to fracking and dependence on fossil fuels to a sustainable world we can pass on to our children.

meaningless twaddle - what, when, how and why? I could get the same kind of vague values or directions from the main parties.

The reality is that they can espouse their ideals as loudly and as widely as possible being so far down the food chain, they do not have to act on any of them.

At the moment people here are considering independence just to move away from the southern politics, rather much of a sense of nationalism, at least based on my own little clique. Talking about the Tories and their opinion of the environment, I'll pull out the "these are the people that tried to sell of Sherwood Forest for logging" card as ever. Whatever party managed to take power in the last election the country would've still been in a bad way, its just the face of that party that people seem to care about. Oh yes, Labour really aren't the people's party any more, but the Tories hardly give a damn at all for the little guy. Politics in the UK needs a shake-up definitely, but voting in a party which policies come down to "we hate the EU" and "we had foreign migrants", whilst having little other actual ideas, is hardly the way to go. Its kind of shameful that at the moment in Europe so many countries are moving towards electing parties who seem to just want to complain about the situation their in and blame it on foreigners, rather than trying to build foreign relations and sort out the issue (fixing an economy doesn't come down to selling off all the country's assets and making cuts btw).

 Mr. Burning wrote:

 Medium of Death wrote:
I'm very disappointed that the Green Party lost a seat over all in these elections.

The UK is heading down a slippery slope with its attitude to the Environment. Just have a look at UKIP's policies and Dave's support for fracking. Not to mention HS2 and the damage that's going to do to England's beautiful countryside, all for what? To increase commute speeds? Ridiculous. Technology has outstripped/is outstripping the need for people to commute long distances for face to face meeting frequently. Moving further away from Europe will only make this worse.

Hopefully the general election goes very differently than this Euro one. It's certainly looking like Scotland will be making its exit from the UK.

the Green parties 'values'

A real change: from austerity and welfare cuts to investment in decent jobs.

A real change: from privatisation for the benefit of the 1% to public management of essential services not driven by corporate greed.

A real change: from subsidies to fracking and dependence on fossil fuels to a sustainable world we can pass on to our children.

meaningless twaddle - what, when, how and why? I could get the same kind of vague values or directions from the main parties.

The reality is that they can espouse their ideals as loudly and as widely as possible being so far down the food chain, they do not have to act on any of them.

Quoted for truth. As others have pointed out in this very thread, they also have an irrational hatred/fear of nuclear (fission) power stations, which isn't exactly going to help wean the country off fossil fuels.

Wow. Our labour party took such a drubbing in the locals and europeans that the leader of it, who is our Tánaiste (deputy PM) had to step down!

Wowser. If the new leader is not in favour of coalition, this could bring down the government and precipitate a General. Considering the gains made by Sinn Féin (to the point where they're now the third biggest party at a local level) we could be looking at Gerry Adams as Tánaiste soonish. *shudder*

I wonder if UKIP voters actually know all of UKIP's policies, I doubt it.

 strybjorn Grimskull wrote:
I wonder if UKIP voters actually know all of UKIP's policies, I doubt it.

I wonder if anyone knows all of a party's policies before they vote for them. I doubt it.

Seriously, I very much doubt that the majority of voters know more than half of the points on a particular party's manifesto.