Wednesday 12 March 2014

The Times is now gunning for UKIP

I only get the Times when Waitrose gives me one for free. Today's had 3 full pages demolishing Farage and UKIP wriiten by two of their very best journalists Rachel Sylvester and Alice Thomson. The Times does not allow free internet access but the main headings gives the flavour with Farage labelled Toad of Toad Hall.

"Insiders reveal how party is run by the cult of one personality", Rupert is pinching my lines!

"He looks like a 1950s insurance salesman"

"UKIP is hinged on  Nigel's very commplicated personal life. There is very little room to professionalise anything. There are skeletons in his closet. Nigel is dragging Highgate Cemetery behind him."

A former member of the NEC, not me although I agree with this comment,

"I feel that Nigel is the absolute dictator. He keeps himself surrounded by people who are fairly weak and willl bow to his foreceful personality. In UKIP you are either with Nigel or you are out"

How true

Alan Sked is quoted , " Everyone thinks he is a nice character but he's a complete disaster - intellectuallly and morally. He say he is worried about fruitcakes but I think he's one himself. He's turned UKIP into his own fiefdom"

Nigel isn't very bright. When he was a candidate for Salisbury , I used to get letters saying, " I am glad your candidate (Farage) believes in education but until he learns to spell I am not going to vote for him"

And it goes on and on with the same I have made for years but this the Times and Murdoch. Farage has made a serious, vindicitive and powerful enemy.


5 comments:

ALAN WOOD said...

As you predicted, the manure is being applied in truckloads.

All empires rise. All empires fall. Tyrants with them.

Nigel forgot, or never appreciated, the immortal lines :
"Be nice to people on the way up because you may meet them on the way down".

Eric Edmond said...

Thx Alan. I think Alice has been reading my blog but the Times has a decent circulation and is hugely influential. I think Farage has peaked so its downhill now.

Its a shame for our cause. You and I did our best to warn the kippers of Farage's huge downside but none so blind etc

Unknown said...

I have no idea who reads your comments – and those you quote, but I am sure I’m not the only one who is dismayed by your obvious bias and particularly by your willingness to indulge in pointless abuse. There are certainly flaws in UKIP’s policies and in its general approach but these are put in the shade by the flaws in the main parties. When a certain clueless member blamed the weather on gay marriage he was ridiculed (quite rightly) but the fact that he had been making stupid remarks for years as a paid-up member of the Conservative party was never mentioned. Similarly, the fact that he was swiftly kicked out of UKIP was glossed over and the fact that he had enjoyed uninterrupted membership of the Tories for years never got a mention.

The name-calling (“Toad of Toad Hall”, “absolute dictator”) is pathetic. And comments by bitter enemies like Alan Sked and an anonymous “former member of the NEC” do not impress.

As for “skeletons in closets”, you are on dangerous ground here, I think. If Nigel is “dragging Highgate Cemetery behind him”, what on earth is Miliband dragging along? Headbutter Eric Joyce, fiddler MacShane, anti-semite Baron Ahmed, cocaine-sniffing Paul Flowers . . . These are all matters of record and may be checked on the web. There are of course many many more. And it’s not just Labour. Patrick Mercer was obliged to resign when his little problems came to light; Stewart Green’s light-hearted remarks about females (“fat ginger bitch” and “quite a few . . . women need a good slap round the face”) didn’t go down too well either, and one understands there are other problems that are currently making Tory high command nervous. The LibDems are still reeling from the matter of jailbird Huhne; the SNP try to forget about Bill Walker’s 12 months in jail for domestic violence; Ulster Unionists prefer not to talk about Lord Laird’s lapse, and if Nigel Farage had pretended to lap milk in the Big Brother house like a certain Respect (!) MP, I am confident you would have managed to include this in your list of UKIP problems.

The fact is that, compared to the so-called ‘main parties’ UKIP is squeaky clean and you do yourself no favours by pretending the opposite. One must agree with you on one point, however. There are certainly “serious, vindictive and powerful” enemies around. And among the most vindictive, I expect you will happily count yourself.

Unknown said...

I forgot to mention your artless inclusion of a second-hand gibe about Nigel's having, allegedly, made a spelling mistake. This caused great distress to his correspondent who found himself unable to vote for anyone who made spelling errors. One wonders what this rather sensitive grammarian would have made of your own ungrammatical article.

The punctuation is abominable; the ‘textspeak’ atrocious, the style abysmal, the confusion of singular and plural slipshod, and the spelling . . . Well, it’s a bit “complicated” isn’t it?

If Nigel’s spelling (like yours) is not perfect, that may be regrettable. But it certainly doesn’t mean that he “isn’t very bright”.

Anyone who asserts otherwise cannot, I submit, be regarded as having sufficient judgement to be taken seriously himself.

ALAN WOOD said...

Archibald Wildberry is of course correct that the press is partial.
It is determined that any anti-EU party shall not prick the bubble of the "elite" in Brussels and elsewhere.

The gripe of myself is that I have seen UKIP from the inside since 1996. I worked for Michael Holmes, Roger Knapman & Nigel Farage as Party Nominating Officer and attended Farage's meetings of the Regional Officers.

I have seen most of the "players" at work, including Nikki Sinclaire, Whittaker, Page, Bown, Malcolm Wood, Trevor Colman, Fuller (in thrall of Farage)and the rest.

There were some good eggs and some bad eggs.

When you spend 13 years of your life, almost daily, using up the time you should be spending with your family, and your savings, to advance the cause of leaving the EU and restoring democracy to the public, it sticks in the craw when you see that dolt Farage wasting your efforts and those of the good men and women who have given their all or been thrown overboard.

The answer is to never give the Press cause to pillory you. Not all press is helpful.