Petrina

Apart from the staggering inacuracies in Mounsey`s (Devils K.) posting -Foggo was never interested in Dr Abbott it was the other lot at the Sunday Telegraph who were foolishly taken in by the vitriol poured in his direction by our own Press Officer -it is totally unacceptable for one candidate for the NEC to start slagging off another candidate especially on a public forum .But then the boy has no idea how to behave !

devilskitchen

Petrina,

I fail to see any "staggering inaccurancies". Unless, of course, there is no case against Nattrass? And Watts (at the Sunday Telegraph) was wrong about the donations?

However, I accept your point and shall comment no further.

__________________
Unio Europaea delenda est

Richard Allen

Petrina if you really believe that DK's post amounts to "slagging off" then I suggest you get out more. While I agree that personalised attacks on other candidates should be avoided this is politics and a certain degree of rough and tumble is to be expected. It is legitimate to question whether David's donation to the BNP and the subsequent bad publicity make him unsuitable for the NEC. By the same token you would be perfectly entitled to point out that DK's swear blog could potentially embarrass the party (IMO his good points outweigh this potential negative).

Petrina

My point re Mounsey`s comments re " slagging off" Abbott are justified in my view as his comments were clearly designed to put members off from voting for Abbott.
If you are a candidate then it is quite unnacceptable to do that and probably against the rules .
I think that we should ALL draw back from focusing on any of the candidate`s supposed pros or cons in order to give them all a free run .

Richard Allen

On the contrary we should discuss the candidates pros and cons (In a civilised manor of course). If we don't we might as well just pick names out of a hat.

Independent UKIP

Here we go with another year of intensely controversial and highly contested NEC elections. Does the Labour party NEC elections have such debate? - not that I'm aware of; at least since the defeat of Militant in the 1980s. Why UKIP has to be so screwed in its internal debates I really do not know. Please don't do again this year, thanks.

ukip kipper

YES, the Labour NEC DOES have such divisive debate. Walter Wolfgang was elected, for example. 'Old' verses 'New' Labour rows are common.

Let me set the ball rolling discussing the candidates' pros and cons then, Richard.

I do feel slightly distasteful about 'joint' candidacies for the NEC elections, running on a shared platform. I think that Lechlade did this; now we have the 'Grassroots' candidates.

I would prefer to consider each of the four, indivudually and on their own merits.

Geoffrey Kingscott I hold in high regard, his work as general secretary being incredibly difficult - having to hold the party together before, and during, the leadership election campaign. I know Geoffrey personally and consider him to be an asset to the party. He deserves to be on the NEC.

Denis Brookes is one of the few people in UKIP who can claim to understand local government. I know Denis personally and am impressed because Denis has consistently pushed the case for local elections, and has done so for years. He was right when many others were wrong. He has done sterling work building up the party in the West Midlands. He deserves to be on the NEC.

David Abbott donated to an American group which was fundraising for the BNP. Did he know what he was doing? I don't know, and we'll never know. So, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that he didn't know what he was doing. That in itself raises questions - WHY didn't he know?

I tend to check organisations out before making a donation. For instance, I do not donate to the RSPCA or the NSPCC, for political reasons. I donate to other charities which do not use a proportion of their money on political campaigning. If you're donating more than a few copper coins in a collection bucket, surely it's in your own best interests to check out who you're donating to first?

Then there's the media angle - how would it look to the media if we re-elect him?

Had David Abbott held up his hands completely, 'mea culpa', I might still have been tempted to support him despite the media issues; after all, right and wrong SHOULD matter more than what the papers print.

Instead, we have the attack on ex-members of New Britain, which - let's face it - doesn't carry quite the same connotations as the BNP. We are expected to introduce a 'policy' on Islam - and here alarm bells start to ring. Is David Abbott's political judgement so poor that he doesn't recognise what the media can do when he says something like that? The BNP talk about Islam, policies on Islam, etc. If David Abbott adopts the language of the BNP, we can be quite sure that his opponents in the media will use it against him, and UKIP will lose out as a result.

I have met David on a few occasions and get on quite well with him. He's a nice enough chap, but I am not convinced that he's a man of substance who can take the party forward, particularly with his baggage. So I won't be voting for him in the NEC elections.

Steve Povey, I know very little about - other than what any member may have read in Independence News. I don't see anything to put me off voting for him, and I may well give him a vote if I don't find enough other quality candidates on the ballot paper.

jp

Is there a complete list of NEC candidates anywhere?

Bluemerle

In your copy of Independence. Plus voting form.

jp

Not arrived yet!