UKIP if you want to

There’s something or other that bit different about the United Kingdom Independence Party.  I say ‘something or other’ because one senses that to use the conversational French expression for that phrase would be inappropriate, and might provoke something of an Anglo Saxon response from any UKIP member.

And what is the right title for a UKIP party member?  ‘UKIPper’ sounds a bit too upbeat for a collection of people that, whenever they appear on the telly, appear furious about something, usually about having a camera pointed at them come to think of it.  ‘Kipper’ then?  ‘Kipper’ sounds about right as, if they are anything like their fuming Beloved Leader, they are no strangers to smoking.

So what is it that’s just that bit different about Kippers?  Well, they are probably not alone in starting sentences at dinner parties with ‘I’m not a racist but…’ but they are probably alone in having conversations like that before the first course is uncorked, and talking about that sort of thing to the exclusion of everything else.

These are the sort of people who make it very clear that they get on very well with foreigners, and make a point of telling you that they know the name of the lady who cleans their office, and she’s foreign.  One presumes.  Never spoken to her but she wears a headscarf.

The Kipper worldview is that things were a lot better in the 1950s.  This is, of course, utter tosh and if anyone wants to argue, I advise them to first pop back to the mid-50s in the time machine of their choice and try to stream Netflix.

By the way, the time machine of choice is always the Time Machine from the classic film of the same title.  Blue police boxes are fine, as are gullwing sports cars, but any time traveller who decides to fling themselves into an uncertain future at a rate greater than the standard one second per second, and does so in a machine built around a comfy armchair, deserves huge respect.  Indeed, a comfy armchair is a reliable way to travel into the future in the conventional way, meaning you arrive at your destination, say lunchtime or when the pub opens, refreshed and ready for action.

To the media, the Kippers are an amusing distraction posing no real threat.  Unlike conventional far right political movements that shave their heads and beat up ethnic minorities, Kippers are usually sedate right up to the point when they say something so unbelievably racist your arse clenches so hard it squeaks.  Then they keep on talking as if nothing had happened.

There is a school of thought that Kippers are not racist at all, and that they just consider that the EU is a failed project that the UK would be better off out of.  Judging by what’s reported however, that’s far too sophisticated a school of thought.  The school of thought occupied by UKIP is not one, one feels, that would be highly rated by Ofstead.  More likely, Kippers consider that the EU is a failed experiment of the type usually devised by mad foreign scientists in old Universal movies and the UK, or more precisely the paler parts of the UK, would be much better off out of it.  It would mean we could pass our own laws, eat whatever cheese we wanted, and birch homos without some jumped up foreign judge who has never touched cheddar in his life.

The media bloody love Kippers but I’m not sure what’s more dangerous, taking them seriously or not taking them seriously?  A sixty minute programme about the economic impacts of EU policies on, say, fish, would hardly make for riveting viewing, but a slightly overweight woman with views even more worrying than her hairstyle, who is not afraid to express those views?  Now we’re talking, usually about forigners.

The interesting thing is that all the mainstream political parties dislike UKIP, either because it poses a threat to their share of the vote or because their policies are repugnant.  Part of the English national character is to side with the underdog, and maybe that’s part of the appeal of being a Kipper, and proud.

A dusting of weather

Saaaannnnnnnndddddstooooooooooorrrrrrmmmmmmm!  Sandstorm.  Sandstorm!  Sandstorm.  The Red Death is upon us!
Well, it is if you believe the newspapers.  Apparently the good people of England have awoken to find strange deposits on their cars.  Hardly a novelty if you habitually park underneath a tree, but in this case it’s a thin film of dust.  And not just any dust.  African dust.
Luckily, since the inexorable rise of the UKIP, Daily Mail readers have been trained how to react, instinctively and without thinking, to any threat originating from overseas.  And this is the worst kind of overseas threat, a threat from Africa that has travelled through Europe and crossed the channel to arrive in England, possibly simply to settle on the cars of hard working families, but possibly to claim benefits, or even possibly both.
Apparently the wind (already, along with his villainous cohort the rain, an element as unwelcome in England as a fox turd in the fondue) has picked up some of the Sahara, blown it across Europe and evenly distributed it across the Home Counties. 
Now the English, by and large, know how to react to sand being blown about the place.  Christ knows, any English holidaymaker who has spent time on an English beach is used to eating sandwiches that are at least 7% mineral deposit thanks to the summer ‘breeze’ whipping along the beach.  The correct reaction to a sandstorm is to erect a brightly coloured windbreak, hunker down and drink flask tea until it’s time to go to the pub.
Reality, of course, fell a little short of the full-on award-winning CGI FX that people were secretly hoping for (after this winter’s storms, England has become a nation of not so much storm chasers, but people who are chased by storms and have a smartphone and a desire to get their footage on Sky, the BBC or at least YouHooTube with the tag ‘weather fail’).  As it transpired, this was hardly the sort of weather event that caused the arse of even the most nervous camel to snap shut.
As a weather event, it did give one a sense of perspective, billions of grains of sand blown across two continents, before ending its journey on the windscreen of a VW in Essex.
And it did indeed result in a thin film of dust on many a car, so resulting in many an Englishman taking his car to the local Romanian hand car wash – a foreign import the English are happy not to moan about.

Nature Notes Special - Floody Hell!

Water used to be our friend, our playmate.  We shower in the stuff, we add bubbles to it and bath in it, sometimes with candles.  We add bubbles to it and we drink the stuff, sometimes with a slice of lemon.  We water our plants with it, we water ourselves with it, we fill big pools and swim in it, we fill slightly smaller pools and communally bath in it after rugby games.  We even swim with dolphins in it, we like water so much that we can stop thinking 'fish poo' for long enough to splash about with Flipper in it.
Recently though, water has become the implacable foe, the slow creeping menace that inches towards the nation's doorsteps, or the rushing torrent, the same brown as the underwear of anyone unlucky enough to be caught in it.  The floods have come, and come, and come.
It is now, officially, beyond a joke.  What started before Christmas as the 'storm surge' turned to filthy weather at Christmas, leaving people with no power, a big raw turkey and realising that KFC for your Christmas dinner isn't really all that bad, as it means no sprouts and extra chips all round.  Ironically there was an advert doing the rounds over the festive season that posed the question 'can you barbecue a turkey?'.  Yes, you can is the answer, but you'd only know that if you had a telly, meaning you had power, in which case, you wouldn't be wrestling a reluctant barbecue from the back of the shed where it's become entangled with hose pipe, bicycles, cobwebs and the other Summer paraphernalia, but instead sitting snug getting hammered on red and waiting for the oven timer to ping before forgetting to put the scouts on, like any civilised person.
For future reference, yes, you can barbecue a turkey.  A mate of mine did it one year, even though he didn't have to.  A Webber kettle barbecue is best, lots of coals that are well banked for a constant heat, then drink red wine until its ready and you are pissed enough not to notice you've barbecue a turkey.  As with most cooking, it's all in the preparation, in this case, uncorking breakfast.
As the days turned to weeks, the rain continued to fall.  The television showed spectacular pictures of huge waves crashing over sea defences and nightly heart-rending images of flooded front rooms.  There was nothing to be done, it would appear.

Then Prince Charles visited a flooded village.
Several things then happened, very quickly indeed.
The first was that question 'what use is the monarchy in the twenty first century?' was answered, as the Prince got blanket TV coverage and sympathised with the plight of the flooded villagers.  He then, one imagined, 'phoned the prime minister and gave him a Royal bollocking.  Because the next day the prime minister was chairing the government's emergency committee after which the army was deployed.
Following Prince Charles's example, politicians unwisely began popping up in wellies in villages.  Unlike the Prince, they were bollocked by very angry villagers who wondered what the fucking fuck they had been doing for the last few weeks.  Hint: if the answer was not 'filling sandbags' they you looked like a prize tool.
The other question that was answered was 'Is there more to UKIP than racism?'.  Yes, yes there is.  There's stupidity too.  UKIP's leader, Nigel Farage, was seen dressed in what one imagines a repressed country squire might look like, in suspiciously new wax jacket and wellies, droning on about how we should cut the foreign aid budget and use it for flood defences.  The BBC bloke then asked what he was doing to get relief money from Europe, which is available.  The answer - f**k all, Mr Farage apparently believing that the entire structure of the European Union closes down on a Sunday.  Next item on the news, EU officials making a statement about some ruling or other, on a Sunday.
As with many disasters, this adversity has brought out the best in people.  Communities coming together to help one another, the British Army doing their usual spectacular job in crap conditions, and monarchy leading.

e Day - tally ho!

Nigel Farage, standing as a parliamentary candidate for UKIP and so a Europhobe of the first water, has been hurt when the small aeroplane he was travelling in crashed. The pilot was also pretty badly hurt.

Exciting rumours that it had been shot down by a Fokker proved to be unfounded. Apparently the ‘vote UKIP’ banner it was trailing wrapped round it on landing.

Hoisted by his own petard?