Useful to know where the Tories' next potential coalition partners stand on adoption

[non sociopath skin]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/nov/27/ukip-candidate-gay-adoption-abuse

The Skin

[T_i_B]

1. Ah, Croydon North

A By-election that might appear to be getting lost in all the furore over Rotherham. Although that might just be me being far too parochial?

Reading up on Winston McKenzie is interesting. He's previously stood for Kilroy Silk's Veritas in Croydon North, among with many other candidacies in many other parties.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_McKenzie

Winston Truman McKenzie (born 23 October 1953, in Jamaica) is a UK politician and former boxer, notable for having joined every major political party and having stood as an independent or minor party candidate on numerous occasions without success. He finished last in the 2010 UK Independence Party leadership contest, and is currently the UKIP candidate in the 2012 Croydon North by-election.

[LeftishBrit]

2. He seems to be a lunatic

He has been a member of just about every possible party (and a candidate for most of them).

I somehow doubt that UKIP will be the Tories' next coalition partners. They'd need to get a seat in parliament first, and as long as they keep fielding candidates like this, they won't.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Not just a candidate; their spokesman for culture, media and sport

This is who, in their fantasy world, they want pronouncing on the future of the BBC, and press regulation. This is the party that made 'Lord' Christopher Monckton its climate change spokesman, as soon as he joined. UKIP often seem to the the Tea Party of Britain.

[T_i_B]

5. Well, climate change denial is a big thing with UKIP

I think climate change denial is actually official policy with them, which I for one find very off-putting indeed.

As to BBC & press regulation, at the time of the last general election I fired off a 38 Degrees letter to all the candidates in my constituency asking what they would do to protect the BBC, the only reply I got back was a long rambling e-mail from UKIP central office about how much they dislike the BBC, which, amongst other things moaned that the BBC reports climate science as fact rather then their own crackpot theories.

[fedsron2us]

6. I suppose at least UKIP did bother to reply unlike the mainstream parties

who often seen to regard communicating with the electorate as a tiresome inconvenience of democracy.

UKIP typify the problem of most 'fringe' parties in the UK in that they often have one or two 'populist' policies but overall their manifestos do not stand up to critical examination. Moreover, they often attract the political 'chancers' who simply don't get selected as candidates by the main stream parties because they are often dodgy characters who end up as long term political liabilities. UKIP's on the ground electoral organisation is also very weak compared with other parties. For example, they are much less good at mobilising the anti Labour or anti Tory protest vote than were the Liberal Democrats before Clegg blew it for them. To be honest the state of British politics is desperate at the moment. The choice is either mainstream parties full of machine politicians, spin doctors and prepackaged policies that are often hard to distinguish from those offered by rival brands or else it is border line lunatics.

UKIPs one strong suit is the EU where there are still many votes to be picked up from both Labour and Tory camps. I have recently been reading a very interesting book called Britain Secret Propaganda War 1948-1977 by Paul Lashmar and James Oliver which is essentially a study of the International Research Department (IRD) of the Foreign Office which had close links with Britain's security services. I had not realised how much effort went into persuading a very reluctant British people to vote to join the EEC back in the early 1970s. This included using part of the secret vote used to fund IRD activities to pay for pro European breakfasts for business leaders at the Connaught Hotel. It seems a great deal of effort was expended to keep the public ignorant of the fact that tax payers money was surreptitiously used to finance the pro EEC campaign. By the time of the 1975 EEC referendum IRD funding had been cut off but by then it seems the CIA had stepped into support and secretly finance the Yes campaign as the US was keen to have Britain as a 'Trojan Horse' inside Europe.

[LeftishBrit]

3. Oxfordshire has also suffered from a homophobic and generally insane UKIP politician

http://www.cherwell.org/news/topstories/2012/05/04/ukip-candidate-slammed-for-homophobia-

She stood (and lost badly) against Labour MP Andrew Smith in Oxford East in 2010, but her more outrageous comments surfaced when she stood (and again lost badly) in last May's council elections. As well as thinking that gays should be more grateful to heterosexuals for bringing them into the world, she has also basically equated the Koran with Hitler's Mein Kampf.

Note that this character has a Ph.D. from Oxford and has published academic books on English literature - proof, if it was ever needed, that academic qualifications don't always mean wisdom.