SponPlague

Are there minutes, by any chance, or a recording, to assist absentees?

Peterc

Mrabody,as I stated in my original thread, they all acted, in my opinion, with the exception of 3, one of those being absent, like politicians and did not answer the question put by Martin Harvey, what deal they did at the interviews I certainly did not hear as I was not there! Had one of them made it public at the hustings meeting I probably would not have made the statement that I did!!

Peterc

I saw nobody taking minutes, all interested people should have been there!!

michael mcgough

The event was filmed.
For my part I mentioned the commitment and was looking toward Jeffrey Titford at the time who nodded in agreement.

All candidates at the interview stage agreed to a strict code intended to stop repetition of past problems where mistakes were made by both party and individuals.
Each candidate agreed to
1)take up seats in the Parliament
2)_set up an office in their region funded from Parliamentary genearl allowance
3)give full support at all times to branches in their regions
4)be available for media appearances 7 days a week,often at short notice,antisocial hours and inconvenient placesc
5)submit to oversight and act on advice from the party gegarding use of parliamenbt allowances and expenses .in order to pay scrupulous attention to the rules and to ensure that allowances are used in the appropriate manner
6)agree to pooling of group funds allocated to the UKIP group of MEPs from the Parliament information budget(budget line 4000) in order to make the best use of these funds
7)remain a member of UKIP for the full 5 year term of Parliament or otherwise retire.
8)provide SUBSTANTIAL financial support for the cental party out of INCOME
ie out of post tax income
9)work as a team with other UKIP MEPs
10)each MEP will decide the extent to which he/she will attend Parliamentary committees ,an important criterion for this judgement being the media coverage which this activity may or may not bring.
11)MEPs will attend most of the plenary sessions of the Parliament
12)they will also be expected to spend a substantial proportion of time in the UK


Clearly the more MEPs we have ,the better resourced we all are.We all know that only Westminster can make the decision to withdraw but with FPTP NOT CURRENTLY ACHIEVABLE.At least MP BOO signatories including our own BOB SPINK are on the inside .
If we were the top party in June 2009 the fall out would be immense as would the media coverage.Think what the knock on impact would be for a 2010 general election.

mrabody

We are unlikely to be top party next June - 2004's result was a combination of factors - it was run in conjunction with the mayoral election in London where we had a popular candidate, with a large campaign chest fueled by some large donors, and with the national profile of RKS as one of our candidates. Since then we have lost three MEPs (including RKS) had a dismal showing in this years London elections, and there has been much infighting. On the plus side, we are much better organized in places, particulary here in the Southeast and will be running a lot of candidates in next years County elections. Nigel has also done a very good job of keeping us in the media and has become the face of UKIP - many people comment about his appearances on Question Time. I think that if we manage to hold most of the seats we currently hold we will have done well. I will not be too disappointed if we manage to keep eight MEPs. I will be ecstatic if we get more than 12 elected.

In any event, even if we were to emerge on top next year, there would be little or no knock-on effect for the expected 2010 General election.

FPTP is no bar to us getting MPs elected to Westminster! Our small size, and lack of organization and resources at the constituency level are.
The fact is, that if UKIP gets itself properly organized, builds its membership to 50,000+ and starts getting a sizeable number of local and county councillors elected Westminster success will follow as night follows day. With FPTP the more parties that contest an election effectively, the lower the threshold for success is. If it is just three parties in serious competition for a seat then the winner needs to achieve at least 34% of the vote and probably more if one party is notably weak in that district. With four parties strongly contesting a seat then the winner will need at least 26% (in real life 30% or so). Throw in minor assorted parties such as the Greens and the BNP and the amount of votes required to win shrinks further.

There is no "magic bullet" such as excellent Euro Election results that will take us to the next level. We need to build the foundations of our party (membership, local organization and campaigning capability), focus our resources on those areas that show the most promise and slowly build a coalition of voters who will put us in Westminster. It doesn't mean that we can't use things like good Euro results to get a boost, but without the necessary groundwork nothing will be achieved.

michael mcgough

I do not share your pessimism but agree,as I hope we all do that we must maintain nurture and enhance our branches etc without which NOTHING is achievable.All sorts of things are likely to happen before next June which may benefit our cause.Buy the raffle ticket of optimism it is infectious.

Michael Heaver

I couldn't disagree more. If UKIP had the most MEP's of any British political Party, the EU issue would become far, FAR more urgent in the UK and would certainly be major news going into the General Election next year. Our media coverage would also become far larger (a much increased presence on Question Time etc.). Personally if we came top in the European Elections, I could see us getting up to about 5 or 6 MP's in the aftermath in 2010.

mrabody

I'm not pessimistic, just realistic. Pessimists would say that we will only retain a couple of MEPs next year. Actually on this forum, most of the people who are saying that are actually exhibiting optimism as this is the outcome they are hoping for!

mrabody

No it wouldn't translate into votes. It might indicate that our pool of support was growing but we need to be able to harness that support. At present we are unable to do so. And in any event from what I have heard anecdotally (I believe Ray Finch can back this up too) there are plenty of people who will vote for us in the Euros but will continue to back other parties in the General election.

And there is no reason to believe that we will get greatly increased media exposure just because we do well in the Euros. Out national press seem to be of the opinion that all that matters is what happens in Westminster. They view Brussels as unimportant/peripheral. Electing another 15 or 20 UKIP MEPs will not change their minds. Indeed, if we do very well next year and elect more MEPs it will most likely be at the expense of Labour - the news stories will not be about the strength of UKIP but about the collapse of the Labour vote. In other words it will be viewed through the prism of what it means for Westminster.

HULKMAN

So a man who does this is still considered a good candidate? It shows you how corrupt UKIP is. How many favours did Smith pull to get on that list? A man who costs the party £18,000 and suggests lying to the Electoral Commission will be a good MEP according to the selection panel!