Fish and Ivory: UKIP's appalling EU voting record

Of all of the parties in all of the countries in the whole of the EU, UKIP representatives have the worst attendance record, worst voting record and worst work performance of the entire lot.

UKIP MEPs don't do anything to represent British interests in the EU, they just make grandstanding speeches and claim expenses. On the rare occasions they turn up, they belligerently vote against every piece of legislation, no matter how worthy, and with no consideration of how the legislation would affect British interests. All the while they claim expenses, and even, in some cases put their non-British family members on the taxpayer funded payroll.

In this article I'm going to provide two clear examples of how UKIP are an appalling party, that behave in a shamefully unpatriotic way, whilst simultaneously harping on about what a wonderful band of loyal British patriots they are.

Ivory

In January 2014 six UKIP MEPs, including party leader Nigel Farage, voted against an EU motion to clamp down on the illegal ivory trade. Aside from Farage, the other five UKIP MEPs to vote against this motion were Paul Nuttall (the deputy leader), Gerrard Batten, Stuart Agnew, William Dartmouth and Derek Roland.

Thankfully the motion passed by 671 votes to 14, but for me, it is a source of national shame that half of the votes against this motion were cast by British MEPs (6 of them the aforementioned UKIP members and the other one Nicole Sinclare, who was elected as a UKIP member in 2009 but defected to set up her own We Demand a Referendum party).

Not only are UKIP MEPs the laziest in the whole of Europe when they do bother to turn up to vote, they vote in a way that the vast majority of British people would find abhorrent.

The UKIP excuse for voting against the Combating Wildlife Crime motion is that they have an ideological obligation to vote against any piece of legislation that would give the EU more powers. I could write my own explanation of why it is bad to rigidly adhere to an ideological stance, even when doing so would cause you to do something appalling, but I'll leave it to the notoriously Eurosceptic historian and Daily Telegraph columnist Tim Stanley to state the case:

"[I] expect Ukip to explain that they always vote against anything that expands EU power. As a passionate anti-EU conservative, I appreciate that stance. But when it comes to taking action against something as squalid as the ivory trade, even this rabid patriot would compromise my anti-EU principles. What next? Refusing to uphold a ban on child labour?"

If you head off to the polls to vote for UKIP, be sure to remember that they are the laziest of all European political parties, and in all likelihood they're going to continue voting in appalling ways, that bring shame on our country.

Fish

The 2014 UKIP European election video contains a section attacking the EU for the damage that has been done to the UK fishing industry, and the practice of forcing fishermen to sling perfectly good fish back into the sea to be eaten by seagulls because of arbitrary quota requirements.

I actually agree with their argument that the EU fisheries policy has been a complete shambles for decades, that the discard policy wasted countless millions of tonnes of perfectly good fish, and that the British fishing industry has suffered appallingly as a consequence of this mismanagement.

There is one glaring problem with UKIP harping on about how terrible the EU fisheries policy is. That problem is that a certain Mr Nigel Farage was a member of the European Fisheries committee for three years, yet he only ever bothered to turn up to one single meeting out of 42*.

So UKIP are happy to use the suffering of the British fishing industry as part of their vote UKIP propaganda campaign, yet when Farage actually had an opportunity to stand up and fight for the British fishing industry in a place where he could have made an actual difference, he couldn't even be arsed to turn up to 97.6% of the meetings.

To put this absolute lack of effort into perspective, we can look at a celebrity chef called Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. This guy is not a politician, and he doesn't have access to the EU fisheries committee, however what he does have is a determination to fight against the appalling waste caused by the discards policy, and a commitment to stand up for the interests of small scale British fishing operations.

Hugh was so incensed by the insanity of the EU discards policy that he set up Hugh's Fish Fight, got more than 870,000 people all over Europe to sign his petition against the discards policy, and eventually got the EU discards law changed.

It really is a shameful performance from UKIP. They harp on about protecting the British fishing industry in their party political broadcasts, but when it comes to the crunch, some liberal, environmentalist celebrity chef has done infinitely more to make a positive difference than the supposedly patriotic leader of their party who was actually sat on the EU fisheries committee (which has the power to table amendments to existing legislation and table new legislation) but couldn't even be arsed to turn up to the meetings.

What is even worse is that the UKIP party political broadcast harps on about discards as a stick to beat the EU with, as if they are completely ignorant of the fact that some borderline hippy celebrity chef went and did what UKIP MEPs couldn't be arsed to do, and has already got the stupid discards law changed.

Working against Britain's interests

There are two very significant ways in which the behavoiur of UKIP MEPs work against Britain's interests.

Sometimes legislation is proposed that would actually work in Britain's interests, yet their ideological voting habits mean that they end up voting against it, on the grounds that they don't want to EU to have more powers. An example could be legislation to allow EU member states to impose import taxes on products that are produced in conditions that would be illegal in the UK. Putting a tax on pork products from caged pigs, or eggs from battery hens in tiny cages (both illegal in the UK but widely practised elsewhere in Europe) would help the British farming industry by preventing foreign farmers from undercutting their prices with barbaric animal welfare conditions. UKIP would probably belligerently vote against such a motion, even though the outcome would be positive for UK farmers and the UK economy.

The other way that UKIP work against the British national interest is their appalling attendance record, which means that they often don't bother to turn up to vote at all. This means that legislation that is bad for British interests can scrape through simply because UKIP couldn't be bothered to actually vote against it.

The former UKIP deputy leader David Campbell Bannerman (who quit through the revolving door between UKIP and the Tory party) criticised UKIP for their ideological stance and their lack of participation saying "I believe in leaving the European Union, but it is important to engage as much as possible . . . Not engaging is not helpful".

Alternatives

If you are Eurosceptic there are other parties you can vote for to get the outcome you want.

The Green party has a manifesto commitment to a referendum on membership of the EU, but you can guarantee that their MEPs will also work tirelessly to make the system better for Britain and more democratic too, rather than bagging millions in expenses despite being the laziest party in the whole of Europe.

If you don't like the idea of voting Green, there are several other Eurosceptic parties such as No2EU and New Deal that have strong anti-EU philosophies, but don't come with all of the toxic Thatcherite ideology, failed Tories and complete raving nutcases (the gay equality causes floods chap, the single finger salute woman, the my political opponents should be hung guy, the we should shoot a "poofter" guy, the gays have sex with animals woman, the "is Tuna a real fish like one that swims in the sea?" woman and the guy that calls the police on bloggers who fact check spoof UKIP posters).

Conclusion

You might think that voting UKIP is  good way of expressing your discontent with the EU, but it isn't. There are plenty of other anti-EU parties that offer us a referendum on the EU without being the laziest political party in Europe, voting against British interests for purely ideological reasons and shaming the UK by voting in appalling ways that virtually nobody in the UK would actually support.

Voting for UKIP is wasting your vote in an incredibly belligerent manner.

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OR

Why don't UKIP oppose TTIP?

Ukippers love to imagine that their party are the brave and rebellious political outsiders standing up to the Westminster establishment, but the slightest effort to actually look at the detail reveals that they adhere to exactly the same right-wing Thatcherite economic ideology of neoliberalism as the Lib-Lab-Con establishment. What is more, they share the same economic ideology as the unelected technocrats in Europe they're always banging on about.

One of the most glaring indicators that UKIP is just another establishment party hawking defunct neoliberal economic dogma is their refusal to condemn the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the United States and the countries that make up the European Union. The TTIP "trade agreement" is a grave threat to the sovereignty of all the nations involved because it will create a new tier of highly secretive tribunals (National Sovereignty and Investor State Dispute Settlements) designed to allow multinational corporations to sue the nation states that have signed up to it.

TTIP is being negotiated right now, and if the multinational corporations that are behind it get their way, the EU technocrats will rubber stamp it before the end of 2014. If this so-called "trade deal" goes ahead then the UK government will be opened up to all kinds of secretive court cases brought by multinational corporations, with the massive fines to be paid by the UK taxpayer.

To give a hypothetical example, lets say that the UK government decides to introduce new environmental legislation, which prevents a multinational mining conglomerate from strip mining one of our national parks (or reduces the profitability of their mining operation). If the government intervenes like this, the corporation will be able to bypass the entire British judicial system and sue the UK government in a secretive tribunal for every penny that they claim the new legislation has cost them in profit.*

If TTIP is passed it will likely result in the complete destruction of what remains of the NHS because foreign multinational corporations could simply sue the UK in secretive tribunals if the government refuses to sell them all the profitable NHS services they want to cherry-pick.

It might seem incredible that UKIP have somehow forgotten to mention something as important as TTIP in their 2014 European Election "manifesto". But then in mitigation they did have to cut a fair bit out in order to make space in it for a two page "I'm voting UKIP" window poster - the biggest section in the whole (absolute joke of a) manifesto!

Neither the Lib-Lab-Con establishment**, nor UKIP have criticised TTIP, meaning that the only parties that are actually standing up against this corporate over-writing of our sovereignty are left-wing parties like the Green Party, the National Health Action Party and No2EU Yes to Democracy. So much for right-wing people wrapping themselves in the Union flag and declaring the left "unpatriotic" eh?

If you oppose the TTIP corporate power grab, then it might be more sensible to vote for political parties that are prepared to take a firm stance against it (and take practical steps to undermine it) rather than voting for a party that can't even bring itself to criticise it, and has the worst attendance record in European debates in the whole of the EU making them unlikely to do anything at all to oppose it.

Given that it represents such a grave threat to the national sovereignty of the UK, anyone with an enquiring mind must be wondering why UKIP have carefully avoided making any kind of criticism of this corporate power grab, why not a single UKIP MEP voted against it the last time it was debated in the European parliament, and why their economics spokesperson Roger Helmer even voted in favour of it.

The reason would seem to be that a "trade deal" designed to give multinational corporate interests primacy over democratically elected governments and the British justice system fits so nicely with the neoliberal ideology that UKIP adheres to. Just like the Lib-Lab-Con establishment that they posture as an alternative to, UKIP are all in favour of a "trade deal" designed to over-write our democracy, supersede our justice system, destroy the public sector and disempower the public in order to better serve the interests of multinational corporations.

TTIP is a corporate power grab of astonishing proportions, and the lack of transparency over the negotiations is deeply concerning, but UKIP hasn't uttered a word of criticism, in fact one UKIP parliamentary candidate described TTIP as something that "benefits the whole of the EU – even if all the talks are held in secret" and described the announcement of a public consultation on TTIP as "an alarming turn for the worse", as if even the pretense of letting the public know what is being negotiated behind closed doors is some kind of nightmare scenario.

The hypocrisy of this stance is absolutely breathtaking - UKIP have built up a huge supporter base by posturing as a party that cares about British sovereignty, but when a huge threat to our national sovereignty is on the table, being negotiated by the very same unelected technocrats they are always banging on about, the UKIP leadership remain absolutely silent on the issue, and some of their political candidates even speak out in favour of it.

That UKIP cannot bring themselves to utter a word of opposition to TTIP, suggests that they are just a bunch of opportunists, using the language of sovereign independence to win votes, whilst doing nothing at all to oppose an undeniably huge threat to our national sovereignty.

 Another Angry Voice  is a not-for-profit page which generates absolutely no revenue from advertising and accepts no money from corporate or political interests. The only source of revenue for  Another Angry Voice  is the  PayPal  donations box (which can be found in the right hand column, fairly near the top of the page). If you could afford to make a donation to help keep this site going, it would be massively appreciated.    

 * - Someone has written to me to complain that this hypothetical example is too melodramatic, but it is actually based on a real case in Peru, where the US corporation Doe Run has used the US-Peru "free trade" agreement to sue the Peruvian state for imposing environmental restrictions on the heavily polluted La Oroya smelting plant. You can read more about that case here.

** - Labour have sort of opposed bit of the TTIP, arguing for an excemption for the NHS. Some Labour MEPs have argued against the State Investor Dispute Tribunals too, but they haven't expressly criticised the whole deal, nor the unaccountable way that it is being negotiated.

UPDATE: Here's an excruciating video of the UKIP MEP William Legge telling the American ambassador that they must do more to sell TTIP to the public.

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 ANOTHER ANGRY VOICE 

       
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 The mainstream media oligopoly
        
Why 73% of UKIP supporters should actually vote Green
           

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Reasons to vote alternative 
   
Margaret Thatcher's toxic legacies
                    
The ongoing destruction of the NHS
         
The "unpatriotic left" fallacy

             

The JP Morgan plan for Europe
    
Ukippers say the funniest things
           

Reasons to vote alternative

I've thought long and hard about whether I should actively endorse one particular political party for the European elections on May 22nd, rather than just campaigning against the establishment political parties that adhere to the bankrupt ideology of neoliberalism.

In the end, I've decided to provide some information and some general voting advice instead of endorsing one specific political party.

In this article I'm going to explain why you should bother to vote, then provide some information on which parties you should and shouldn't consider voting for.

Why you should vote

Voting in the European election is especially important for two reasons. Firstly, it is contested on a proportional basis, meaning that those who vote for alternative parties are not just "wasting their vote" as is the case in the unrepresentative and apathy inducing Westminster system. Secondly, The turnout for Euro elections is embarrassingly low (33% in 2009), which means that if you do vote, your voting power is effectively doubled (the turnout at the 2010 General Election was 65%).

Who not to vote for

The Lib-Lab-Con establishment

The European elections are conducted on a proportional basis, which means there are no such things as "safe seats" and "wasted votes", which are symptoms of the outdated and grotesquely unrepresentative electoral system in Westminster.

The archaic electoral system used in general elections has allowed the three Westminster establishment parties (the Lib-Lab-Cons) to run a closed-shop. Time after time they have lied to, and openly defied the wishes of the electorate, safe in the knowledge that alternative parties have virtually no chance of overturning their oligopoly on political power.

The European election is an excellent opportunity for people to protest against the out-of-touch Westminster establishment, because under the Proportional Representation voting system, every vote counts.

Anyone who votes for the Lib-Lab-Con Westminster establishment parties in the European elections is, in essence, voting for the continuation of the establishment orthodoxy.

UKIP

It looks as if UKIP could conceivably win the most seats in the European Parliament backed by a tide of political illiterates who consider them some kind of "alternative" to the establishment orthodoxy. What these people fail to realise is that UKIP is even more fanatical about the right-wing Thatcherite economic orthodoxy of neoliberalism (the bankrupt economic ideology that ruined British industry and created the global financial sector meltdown) than the Lib-Lab-Con establishment, and that they are bankrolled by a pack of former Tory party donors.

One of the saddest indicators of the political illiteracy of UKIP supporters is that the vast majority of them actually favour the explicitly socialist policies of renationalising the rail network and energy companies, but they are going to march off to the polls in order to vote for a blatantly Thatcherite party with a burning ideological hatred of the public sector; a right-wing party led by and bankrolled by people who consider the most right-wing Tory party in living memory not nearly right-wing enough.

Some of the clearest indicators of how right wing UKIP really is, are the anti-NHS statements from UKIP deputy leader Paul Nuttall, who has openly praised the Tory led coalition for their policy of carving up the NHS and privatising the pieces, despite the fact that 82% of the general public (and the majority of UKIP voters) strongly oppose NHS privatisation.

Another glaring indicator that UKIP is an establishment party is their outright refusal to oppose the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The TTIP is a grave threat to the sovereignty of all the nations involved because it will create a new tier of highly secretive tribunals (National Sovereignty and Investor State Dispute Settlements) designed to allow multinational corporations to sue nation states. Thus, if the UK decides to prevent a multinational corporation from doing whatever the hell they like (lets say strip mining one of our national parks) our country can be taken to one of these secret courts and forced to pay the multinational corporation everything they claim they would have made in profit (from their Lake District Strip Mining operation) in compensation.

That UKIP cannot bring themselves to utter a word of opposition to this, suggests that they are just a bunch of opportunists, using the language of sovereign independence to win votes, whilst doing absolutely nothing to oppose an undeniably huge threat to our national sovereignty.
 UKIP is the party to represent the kind of person who loved Margaret Thatcher, but thought her biggest fault was that she was too left-wing. If you are not as right-wing as Margaret Thatcher was, yet you actually vote for this unmistakably Thatcherite party, you are clearly an idiot, and should be ashamed of yourself.

The fascist fringe

It is incontestable that UKIP occupies the extreme-right authoritarian territory you would expect from a "Thatcherism on steroids" party, however they do tend to regularly expel people from the party when they express totally outrageous and openly fascist sentiments (mandatory abortions for disabled fetuses, suggesting black actors go to live in black countries, blaming gay marriage for the Somerset floods, referring to female party members as sluts...). That they attract so many of these lunatics in the first place should be deeply concerning.
 
People who are genuine fascists (rather than just politically illiterate/hopelessly confused little-Englanders) have a couple of parties to choose from:

There's the laughing stock that is the BNP, which is led by Nick Griffin (a man who is now as financially bankrupt as he is morally bankrupt) and there are the English Democrats, who are pretty much the political wing of the English Defence League.

Genuine Alternatives

The Green Party
(Green Party of England and Wales / Scottish Green Party)

One of the most amusing sounds in modern British politics is the sound of UKIP drones trying to dismiss the Greens as a "single issue party". The Green party have a detailed manifesto covering a huge range of issues, unlike UKIP, whose party manifesto had to be dropped after party leader Nigel Farage dismissed it as "drivel", meaning that they go into the 2014 European elections with the most absurdly childish party "manifesto" I've ever seen (a 12 page document, five pages of which are taken up by pictures, and the rest containing nothing more than a few unsubstantiated bullet points and pro-UKIP quotations).


Anyone who actually bothers to check out the Green Party manifesto, and then takes a look at the ludicrous UKIP "manifesto" will be left in absolutely no doubt about which is a serious political party with actual policies, and which is a bunch of absolute charlatans pretending to be a political party.

Everyone should be more-or-less familiar with the Green party position the environment, so here are some of the Green parties most interesting policies on non-environmental issues.

• Universal Basic Income: The Green party has been advocating Basic Income long before it became fashionable. The beauty of Universal Basic Income is that by making a basic subsistence income unconditional for all, it would prevent political parties from using welfare as a political football/stick to beat the poor with.

• A referendum on membership of the EU: "I support a referendum on our membership of the EU because I am pro-democracy" - Green Party MP Caroline Lucas. "The Green Party is opposed to the objectives, structure and policies of the EU as currently constituted"- Green party policy document on the EU.

• Renationalisation: The Green party has called for the renationalisation of the UK rail network and the energy companies. The vast majority of British people want these bits of national infrastructure run as not-for-profit public services, yet the Lib-Lab-Cons and UKIP all oppose renationalisation.

• Opposition to TTIP: One of the strongest indicators that the Green party is a genuine alternative party, and that UKIP are a pack of charlatans, is the way that the Green party actively oppose the attack on our national sovereignty known as TTIP, whilst UKIP bang on and on about protecting our sovereignty, yet remain absolutely silent on TTIP (presumably in the hope that nobody notices that they refuse to oppose it).
  

• Free education: The only people who support the introduction of extortionate tuition fees and brutal cuts to the higher education budget are the kind of  people who "measure the cost of everything and the value of nothing". The Green party are clever enough to realise that education is an investment, not a cost. Do we want a country with a highly educated workforce and a high-skill economy, or do we want a country where students from poor and ordinary backgrounds have to lumber themselves with an outrageous 9% "aspiration tax" for their entire working lives in order to pay for three years of university education?

• Clamping down on tax-dodging: The Green party are strongly opposed to tax-dodging, and have repeatedly made the case that the majority of ideological austerity measures would be unnecessary if the government would just clamp down on the tens of billions of pounds per year siphoned out of the country by tax-dodging corporations and the super-rich.

In social and economic terms, the Green party occupies the traditional territory of the old Labour party, but they are quite a lot more libertarian than old Labour ever was.

If you're one of these people who believes the Labour party can be taken back from the orthodox neoliberals who usurped it in 1994, voting Green in the Euro elections might be your best option. A vote for the Green party would help to drag the Labour party back towards the left, just as a vote for UKIP helps to drag the Tory party ever closer to the extreme-right fringe.

If just one in every hundred people who didn't bother to vote in the last European elections decided to vote Green, they would easily force the Liberal Democrats into the embarrassment of a fifth place finish.

No2EU

If you are more left-wing than Margaret Thatcher was, and the single biggest issue for you in the Euro elections is that you oppose the EU, you should consider voting for the No2EU party. instead of UKIP.

The mainstream media oligopoly has been extraordinarily successful in convincing people that the EU is a leftist project, however the reality is that the EU is extremely right-wing and anti-democratic. Just think about it for a moment:

• Would a leftist project make laws to prevent member states from renationalising state infrastructure?

• Would a leftist project allow an unelected banking cartel (the ECB) to rule over Europe?

• Would a leftist project have introduced anti trade union laws?

• Would a leftist project have spent trillions of Euros bailing out the corrupt and insolvent banking sector, rather than financially supporting people and industries directly?

The famous left-wing politician Tony Benn was speaking out against the EU when Nigel Farage was still in nappies, yet somehow, a huge swathe of the British electorate has allowed themselves to be convinced by the right-wing press that the EU is run by left-wing bogeymen, and the only conceivable method of expressing their opposition to the EU is to vote for UKIP (Thatcherism on steroids). Neither of these things are true; the EU is run by the same kind of right-wing neoliberals that have taken control of the Lib-Lab-Con establishment political parties, and it is perfectly possible to express your discontent with the EU by voting for No2EU, rather than endorsing an extreme-right Thatcherite party.

National Health Action party

If you are deeply concerned about the way that the Tories have carved up the NHS and set about selling off the pieces to the private sector (including several major donors to the Tory party), despite their pre-election promises that they wouldn't reogranise or privatise the NHS, then you should consider voting for the National Health Action Party.

The major problem for the NHA Party is that they are only standing candidates in the London region, meaning that those of us who live outside London must choose one of the other left-wing parties to have expressed strong opposition to the Tories ideological destruction of the NHS (the Green party, No2EU, SNP, Plaid Cymru)

Scottish Nationalist Party & Plaid Cymru

I don't live in Scotland or Wales, so I can't vote for the SNP or Plaid Cymru. I certainly wouldn't want to patronise Scottish and Welsh people by writing an in-depth description of the pro-independence parties that they almost certainly know more about than me. I think it is fair to say that both of these parties occupy political territory far to the left of the Lib-Lab-Con Westminster establishment. Both parties have decent records of voting against the most grotesquely illiberal legislation put forward by the coalition government (Secret Courts, the Gagging Law, Iain Duncan Smith's retroactive money grab ...).

If you believe that your country should have independence (or much more political autonomy from London) you should consider voting for SNP or Plaid.

Pirate Party

The Pirate Party is standing candidates in the North West region, so if you live there, they are worth considering if you are bothered about issues like confronting mass state surveillance, promoting political transparency, safeguarding personal privacy, digital freedom and net neutrality.

Some people tend to dismiss the Pirate Party as a fringe group of no real importance, however they have managed to pick up elected representatives in 11 different countries so far (Germany, Sweden, Iceland, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Hungary, France, Austria, Croatia, Netherlands, Kosovo), so they are more than just the "joke party" that some people would like to pretend that they are.

Last time around the Pirate Party managed to pick up 4.5% of the vote in the North West region, so if just one in every 200 people who didn't bother voting last time around decided to vote Pirate Party this time around, they'd get more than enough votes to return the UK's first Pirate Party MEP.

"We want to see an end to mass surveillance. We want to see an end to treaties negotiated behind closed doors. We want to see digital rights and net neutrality protected. The best way to do this is to have a strong Pirate Party voice in the European Parliament." - Jack Allnut - Pirate party European Spokesman

Yorkshire First

Yorkshire has a larger population than Scotland, and an economy almost twice the size of Wales, however the region has no political autonomy. The Yorkshire First party proposes a regional assembly for the Yorkshire region in order to give Yorkshire folk some power over their own regional affairs, rather than allowing the Westminster clique to continue (mis)managing the region from down in London.

The Yorkshire First party claims to be "neither left nor right, just Yorkshire". If you live in Yorkshire and believe that the region should have more autonomy from London, you might want to consider voting for Yorkshire First.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I'll offer a bit of voting advice to anyone who is in the left-libertarian quadrant or the centre-ground on the political compass.

The two main parties to consider voting for are the Green party and the No2EU party. In my view the Green party is the better bet because they have a much stronger manifesto, they are much more likely to gain enough votes to return some MEPs, and they have a good chance of beating the appalling Liberal Democrats into 5th place.

If you are left-wing and anti-authoritarian, you should seriously consider voting Green.

If you are strongly opposed to the EU, but don't want to endorse an extreme-right Thatcherite party, you should consider voting No2EU.

There are also other parties to consider voting for if you live in specific regions: The Scottish National Party (Scotland), Plaid Cymru (Wales), National Health Action Party (London), Pirate Party (North West), Yorkshire First (Yorkshire).

Perhaps the most important piece of advice I can give you (no matter what your political orientation) is to learn something about the actual candidates before you cast your vote.

• Which of the candidates looks like they will best represent your interests?

• Which of the candidates have genuine life-experience and come from honest backgrounds (rather than career politicians, or lobbyists/investment bankers turned politicians)?

• Which of the candidates have articulated coherent alternative views on a wide range of issues?

 Another Angry Voice  is a not-for-profit page which generates absolutely no revenue from advertising and accepts no money from corporate or political interests. The only source of revenue for  Another Angry Voice  is the  PayPal  donations box (which can be found in the right hand column, fairly near the top of the page). If you could afford to make a donation to help keep this site going, it would be massively appreciated.
         

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