Hairgoo

(Some examples picked randomly from their 2010 manifesto)

"Flat 31% tax" - So lower income earners will shoulder a disporpotionate burden (as a % of individual income) than higher earners, and overall tax take falls as the top end tax payers who currently shoulder the highest burden in actual terms get lower tax bills.

"Phasing out NICs" - So if NICs are not payable, how does a self-employed person earning below the tax threshold earn credits towards maternity allowance, pension benefits etc? I can see the appeal of simplifying things, but they haven't thought through the consequences.

"Replace the EU?s Value Added Tax (VAT) with
a ?Local Sales Tax? (LST)" - So going from one simple to administer national scheme to a myriad of different local tax rates with no centralised control? Administrative nightmare. It's bad enough that my council can increase Council Tax with no real oversight, let alone a sales tax.

"Scrap up to 120,000 EU directives and
regulations that impact on the UK economy." What if the impact is positive? eg things like Working Time Directive are presumably on their hit list? Like the EU or not, there are a vast number of regulations that have had a positive impact on our quality of life and individual rights. I don't want us to go back to having lorry drivers bombing around on minimal sleep.

"Denationalise universities and further
education (FE) colleges ... Universities and FE
colleges will function as independent charities,
responsible only for their curricula and performance,
and accountable only to their students" So no national accountability for standards? No limits on what Universities can charge? Fine if you're rich, it'll bugger up the prospects for most though. If you think the current fees position is bad...

"End the active promotion of the doctrine of
multiculturalism by local and national government
and all publicly funded bodies" So we are to tolerate segregation of communities...? I don't think it takes a genious to read between the lines on what they believe here.

"Withdraw from the European Arrest Warrant
scheme which allows innocent British citizens to
be summarily extradited" Err, that's sometimes a good thing: 'Since the EAW, 49 out of 65 of the most wanted criminals in Spain have been returned to the UK to face justice. These include those accused of murder, robbery and rape'. Just because something is 'European', doesn't mean it is bad and should be repealed.

"Abolish the politically correct and under-performing
Crown Prosecution Service, returning
to local police prosecutions" Being a lawyer I could go to town on the problems with the CPS, but if UKIP think the answer to its problems is even less oversight and control, and fragmenting how it operates so that it's impossible to ensure consistency, they are having a laugh.

I love the lack of joined up thinking with these two:
"Make no cuts in NHS frontline health services
but substantially reduce NHS waste and
bureaucracy
? Make the NHS directly and democratically accountable.
We will introduce new elected County
Health Boards. " So remove beaurocracy by adding a new layer of beaurocracy?

"Be the Party of the Commonwealth. UKIP will
seek to establish a Commonwealth Free Trade
Area (CFTA) with the 53 other Commonwealth
countries." Why on earth would the Commonwealth want to do this, to the detriment of their existing trade arrangements with their existing trade relationships? Newsflash: We are no longer the centre of an Empire...

I don't have the time to go into everything (as much as I'd love to) so I'll now resort to sweeping generalisations haveing just flicked through the manifesto.

As a whole, the sums simply don't add up. They want lots of tax breaks for the rich, lots of public spending on huge infrastructure projects and vanity defence spending (3 new aircraft carriers, when we can barely afford the 2 that are being commissioned?), and all without working out where the cash will come from (because public debt also has to come down, and taxes will be reduced).

It's logically inconsistent - on one hand crying for a smaller public sector and beaurocratic cost, whilst calling for further layers of local government and elections and referenda on everything under the sun.

The ecomomic policies are a pipedream - particularly the idea that somehow without the EU, Britain will magically have so much internation economic and political clout that every important country and trade organisation will be clamouring to give us preferential treatment. And that's without considering all the protectionist guff about keeping public spending to UK businesses etc (whilst wanting free trade with everyone bar Europe, it seems).

The immigration policies have more than a whiff of Little Englander about them, and ignore the reality of Britain having an ageing workforce, the impracticalities of carrying out their purge of foreigners. They are using benefit-crounging/criminal illegal immigrants to whip up opposition to immigration in general. I don't like that. It smacks of a very unpleasant mindset.

God knows what utopia they are seeking with their crime & punishment policies, but it's not a Britain I would want to live in (and I'm generally a 'tough on crime' guy).

And absolutely worst of all, the c**ts, they want to bring back smoking in pubs. I love not stinking of smoke after a quick pint in my local.

It's a great manifesto for a University Debating Society event, with lots of individual policies that sound appealing on certain levels and which are great for soundbite politics. But when you look at it in the round, none of it adds up.

Who really wants to live in a country that panders to people like Farage?

Whilst UKIP on an individual basis are just vaporware, the fact that they are so successful with their soundbite politics is worrying because it risks the national parties pandering to them at the expense of exercising sound policital judgment.

Classic example being the statement on the referendum, which simply introduces political and economic uncertainty for potential investors in UK Plc over the next few years, for no gain other than Cameron shoring up a few votes.

I'm a died-in-the-wool Conservative with no love for the EU Commission, from a Forces family, living in a sleepy part of Little England, and well and trully one of the 'squeezed middle' getting rinsed by HMRC. So in essence a lot of what UKIP prattles on about has some appeal. Jingoistically, I'd LOVE it if the Commonwealth had greater prominence, and if our Armed Forces were larger and Britannia Could Rule the Waves. But I'm not so far removed from reality that I think any of that stuff is remotely realistic or worthwhile.

/rant off, return to work

Posted By: CWC on March 1st 2013 at 11:59:41

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