Gabriel said:
denislawsbackheel said:
Tristram Hunt
Appropriate rhyming slang
Talk about fiddling while Rome burns!
However I won't vote for a party that advocates flat rate tax, privatising the NHS and allows rich benefactors to buy a cabinet position.
Ukip are a joke.
Are those UKIP policies? Just looked on its site and that doesn't seem to be the case, and does it have cabinet positions? Where did you see this?
Jesus wept!
Flat rate tax is one of their few definite policies.
As for buying positions this is a cut and paste of the Times of Oct 10th.
Can't put the link cos it's a pay site.
Ukip members have accused the party of allowing donors to buy their way into top positions after the latest businessman to donate money was awarded a parliamentary seat to fight.
Since Arron Banks pledged to give £1 million to Ukip last week, after a dramatic switch of his allegiance from the Conservatives, it has emerged that the insurance tycoon intends to contest a Westminster seat next May.
This week, another donor, Paul Sykes, the Yorkshire businessman who has donated more than £4 million to the party, was made Ukip’s chairman of campaigns. His appointment to the influential post has caused consternation among party members.
A senior Ukip party figure, who asked not to be named, said: “Why on earth has Paul Sykes been appointed to run campaigns? What does he know about campaigning? One stint in 1997 for Jimmy Goldsmith’s Referendum party isn’t good enough.”
A third donor, Alan Bown, who has donated more than £1.3 million in cash and services to the party since 2003, also wields substantial influence in the party, sitting on its national executive committee.
Mr Bown, a retired bookmaker and businessman, has conducted polling for the party and been an integral figure in developing Ukip’s campaign strategy.
Caven Vines, a Ukip councillor in Rotherham and the party’s parliamentary candidate for Wentworth and Dearne, said: “If you’ve got a big enough chequebook, anyone listens to you. It’s not right,” he said, but added “life’s not right”. When he travels to London this week, he said, “I dare say I’ll be asking a few questions” about the issue.
Another parliamentary candidate for Ukip, who asked not to be named, said: “It’s really not good that donors can just rise up in the party because they give money. And it makes you wonder. We’re campaigning along one line, but then it seems we’re becoming just like the rest of them.”
Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, told The Times yesterday that Mr Banks had “been in touch a lot” since his announcement of a £1 million donation last week.
Mr Farage said: “He wants to go ahead as a candidate but he also wants to talk about fundraising for us. He’s very interested in political polling and issues like that but things have been rather busy lately and we haven’t had time to discuss that.”
At last week’s press conference, Mr Banks said that, like other donors, he would be stipulating where his money went. “I think it will be directly to the party but it will be for specific purposes — the election campaign.”
Asked about the idea that he could get involved with directing certain aspects of the election campaign, such as market research, he said: “There’s a whole package of things we might do for Ukip and that might be one of them.”