Ken vs. Boris: It's So On

You mean the fact that everyone in Harrogate is white and the BNP don't bother campaigning there?

If you're middle class and racist, you vote UKIP not BNP.

Plus qf 70s trade unionists wearing "Enoch Was Right" badges.

You vote Tory surely? (xp)

OK then, devil's advocate: what are the main differences between the thought processes of someone who votes UKIP and BNP? Try to answer without "there are no thought processes at play" zinging.

Bonus points for incorporating the English Democrats into your answer.

Funny but Barnbrook and Griffin don't seem too working class to me.

Barnbrook is. Griffin isn't.

Obviously, there are many, many petit bourgeois small business types who harbour fascist ideas (not a coincidence that Thatcher was the grocer's daughter) and many of these work at the heart of the BNP's electoral organisation but it can't be denied that there are larger groups of "ethnic" population in poorer areas, and so the BNP are going to target those areas. Not much point campaigning about an "immigrant threat" in Esher where there is nary a black or Asian face to be seen.

UKIP bit of a one-trick pony isn't it?

xpost Dom

UKIP put more emphasis on an anti-Europe position rather than an anti-immigration/ straight out racist stance.

UKIP also struck me, tbh, as more of a checks-and-balance party on the Conservatives, ie "Go back to your 90s position on Europe and lose part of your vote to us".

I need to pay more attention to UK politics

I was wondering why Darrell Hammond was all over the news lately

One reason why it may be hard for 'us' to judge why people vote for these parties, and who votes for them, is that 'we' don't know anyone that does. I don't, anyway. So it is all hearsay and via media reports or, at best, electoral stat breakdowns.

Come to think of it, don't think I know any Tory voters either. Well, one or two at most.

My O-level art teacher back in the 80s was a BNP candidate :(

Barnbrook is a former arts teacher as well... time to cut this subject off the curriculum, says I.

One reason why it may be hard for 'us' to judge why people vote for these parties, and who votes for them, is that 'we' don't know anyone that does.

Half the people at my work to thread.

Art teachers are always cunts.

Worst belting I ever got was from an art teacher, sadistic bastard ... ha ha, corporal punishment, never did me no harm *twitch* *twitch*

My school art teacher was a beautiful Welsh girl who drove a clapped-out mini. She would never have voted BNP. Or Tory. Or done anything I could possibly disagree with.

We've got this weird kind of situation at the moment, for the next couple of years at least, where Cameron is technically Boris's superior, but Boris has much more power than Cameron.

Like me and you on ILX, Matt.

which (on ilx) is which?

Interesting about art teachers. Mine were on the left.

It's true I suppose what DC says - though I'm not certain that BJ does have more power. A big budget, true. But Cameron (hey, same initials as DC) is still in charge of the whole party, all the MPs; and is in effect the head of Conservative Britain - all the voters, all the councils, activists, sympathizers etc.

There's a lot of right wing people posting comments on the internet.

Cameron will be pulling Boris's strings. He ain't gonna let the little fucker do anything that isn't Tory HQ approved.

It's not Cameron, it's Lynette Crosbie, who I am now convinced is an actual full-scale Machiavelli/Alastair Campbell style political genius by managing to get Boris through the entire campaign without him declaring war on Guam or something.

*Lynton Crosby

I was thinking of the wife from One Foot In The Grave

FAKE BORIS.

What I'm going to miss most about Ken is that he was one of the few impressions that Rory Bremner can still do.

That's not what I'm going to miss most.

Not even sure I've seen that impression.

It's true, though, that RB's routines often seem to become people that the audience nervously doesn't really recognize. And his US accents are poor, except perhaps for Bill Clinton.

But yeah, obviously Tory central office is going to be much more hands-on with Boris than Labour were with Ken. I get the opinion Ken was pretty much left to get on with it because he was already seen as disconnected from the government, Cameron's got a brand identity to protect.

Seen as disconnected by the government or by voters?

(Impossible to answer, praps. I'm just wondering aloud.)

What I'm going to miss most about Ken is that he was one of the few impressions that Rory Bremner can still do.

No-one's managed Cameron yet, I know he's bland but he can't be that difficult to impersonate

F'real, every time I see Bremner doing Cameron I think he's doing Melvyn Bragg.

Can't believe he's still doing John Cole, 95 years after he retired.

Oh hang on, he's trying to do Boris.

John Cale? What's his Lou like?

I never knew until about a year ago that Lucas and Walliams' hilarious "Lou and Andy" skits are based on Lou Reed and Andy Warhol.

First manifesto promise broken: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-mayor/article-23482560-details/Tube+unions+say+no+to+a+no-strike+deal/article.do

This isn't going well, and it's only day three.

also Dom, think at least one of them is gay.

Still no word on whether pigs have flown yet tho (xp)

The very idea of Boris trying to deal with the RMT is hilarious. But then again my commute doesn't involve me having to get the Tube - brace yourselves for a lot of strike action :/

he wants to make a no strike deal or something according to his pledges

I was wondering about this before the election, as the standard was running scare-posters about possible strikes - could the unions make Boris's life a misery, if they so wanted?

How can you possibly justify a no-strike deal? It's nonsense.

RMT have categorically said they won't sign a no strike deal.

They're just some blokes who drive trains, they're not the friggin' armed forces or whatever

I don't think the idea is hilarious at all. I just think it's horrific, like everything else about him.

Having been uncharacteristically sombre of late under the close watch of his media minders, the newly elected mayor could not resist making a series of quips during his first address to all City Hall staff. He himself, Mr Johnson reassured them, was no more a “crazed Thatcherite neocon” than his rival Ken Livingstone was a “Socialist who would hang the last 4x4 driver off the guts of the last non-dom”.

His door was always open, he said, and staff should address him by his first name “without fear of being fined £5 by Tessa Jowell”.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article3883064.ece

Boris, in a real dick move, is also going to start charging LPG-powered cars the full congestion charge.

that was already part of ken's plan afaik james

he can't even come up with his own ideas. WHAT A DICK.

Going back to the BNP. Their only councillor in my area is for a small, almost totally white, village. Not working class by any stretch, although perhaps you might call some of them aspirational ex-working class.