The middle aged don't stay middle aged forever! Those things requiring change will be long-gestated ideas by the time they get drafted! And the things that should be changing should be things that affect the most people, not an issue that affects only a few. So if it's a problem for many then it would bring change regardless of who ends up in that job.
Amended for you in light of the following article. New nicknames: Berk & Hair? Prince Charles uses 'intestate' cash in Cornwall to fund his own charities | UK news | The Guardian
In real life Pitt the Younger agreed to accept the posts of Prime Minister & Chancellor of the Exchequer (at the fourth time of asking) at the age of 24, and remained in office for most of the next 23 years until his death. Present day ministers are all old fogeys in comparison.
tomrowley20287 makes a lot of sense. It has always baffled me how we get a minister for Agriculure who has lived all their life in the City. Like wise Cabinet re shuffles, where people are transferred to a new ministerial position they know even less about...mad. TBH I think the country needs to be run more like a business, by people who understand profit and loss, investment, the value of having the right person in the right job etc. They need to understand that you cant spend more than you make in the long term. If businesses operated that way they would go bust. Now maybe its just me, but if I need new radiators, I get a Plumber, not a Joiner or Butcher (not even if they are really nice people!). Common sense really. The vote for UKIP is surely a (minority) protest vote? As to Farage, I wouldn't trust him to look after my kids pocket money, racist, true Brit or whatever he actually is. As has been said of the main political parties, they all seem to be fighting for the middle ground. IMO if a party adopted a 'right man for the job' policy then that would be worth voting for, as long as the policies are not too radical.
What about women? but, I tend to agree on your first point about those who choose to be professional politicians should not be permitted any sort of position of power!
Voting for UKIP is not a vote for the nation, it's a vote for racism, and there's no place for that in the modern world. If they could display any policies specifically designed to make the country nicer to live in and more friendly and prosperous, I'd vote for 'em too. But they can't, any more than any other party can. They're all fkin' useless, but at least the others aren't nazis.
Please include women in my above post. It's the experience and wisdom I was focusing on rather than the gender. Oops! And as much as I hate to say this as it's just as sexist; if the government was formed entirely of women I think things would probably run a little smoother. There's definitely be less willy waving!
A couple of points. I don't think being pro British is the same as being anti the rest of the world. Neither do I accept that UKIP is racist because it wants to put the British first and have a radical rethink of immigration policy; linking UKIP with the BNP is scaremongering. Farage has often said that if the Conservatives returned to being a conservative party then the need for UKIP would disappear. As a number of posters have said I think the electorate is tired of the main parties squabbling over the middle ground whilst taking their core voters for granted. Maybe the recent trend of parties going out to not loose the election will have to be replaced with some genuinely radical policies to appeal to voters. Labour has nothing new to offer. Increasing spending now to stimulate growth from which to reduce spending later has been seen through as the problem not the solution. The idea that we can somehow safeguard the standard of living here by borrowing in the face of globalisation is doomed. We do live in interesting times.
The increased interest in UKIP is not surprising. Throughout Europe, there has been a rise of nationalist parties and it is interesting to see why this is. In an increasingly globalised world, people are worried about losing their roots, and I think justifiably so. The French want France to remain French and secular - they don't want the Islamic population watering down their culture, hence the popularity of the Front National. In Switzerland, it's the UDC which introduced the absurd anti-minaret law. But that law, scaremongering or not (it was) got voted in by the people, so it wasn't just a small faction of people who felt that way. The UDC want Switzerland to stay Swiss. People don't want to be hassled in city centres by a lot of so-called asylum-seeker Africans selling cocaine. If that sounds alarmist or racist, come to Lausanne city centre and see for yourself. It wasn't like that 20 years ago. The difficulty, of course, is maintaining your culture and traditions without falling into racism, or refusing to accept immigration. But it seems that of late the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of inclusion. It is for any guest to adapt to the lives of their hosts, and if you don't like how your hosts behave and their values, then you should be living elsewhere. The problem with all the nationalist parties is that they focus almost exclusively on the problems of immigration, as if solving that problem solves everything. Naturally, it's only a small part of what any government should be doing, something that is almost peripheral. And focusing inwardly isn't a solution either. This is why I dislike nationalist parties; they are the great simplifiers. But mainstream parties still have to address the electorate's valid concerns which nationalist parties capitalise on.
A friend of mine showed me his new UKIP member card the other day and to be honest his main reason for joining was that there's too many immigrants in this country. His attitude was 'send them home'. Of course this is nonsense, what's done is done, thanks to the open house policies of the Labour Party who were hoping that all of these immigrants would be eternally grateful, vote Labour and keep them in power permanently. My point to my friend was 'be careful what you wish for', it can come true and bite you in the backside. If UKIP is an 'off shoot' (my generalisation) of the Conservative Party then they will take votes away from the Conservative Party and less from Labour and we end up with a union led socialist government borrowing money from anywhere to fund their policies. In this respect I don't trust the opposition party where my money is concerned now that the EU has set a precedent in Cyprus to raid private bank accounts and steal their money to fund their political ends. It's too tempting for them not to and you couldn't stop them! Where we have gone wrong in this country is to move away from an industrial production base due to cheap imported products which we have to borrow to pay for since we have so little in product to exchange the imports for. I don't know how to turn the clock back but if this country was better at paying its way with production it wouldn't matter so much who the heck was in power. We are all part of the problem really, taking just my family as an example (not to mention all those on this forum), we have numerous German/Japanese/Italian bikes and cars which is contributing to the problem of paying for imports, but I just had to buy a new BMW GS and change my car for a new BMW 1 Series since I just didn't fancy any built in this country. Can't really grumble then, can I? Well while working I led a large group of engineers designing and manufacturing complex machinery in England which was sold throughout the world, including Germany and Japan, so felt entitled to buy BMW/Honda, except that company has now moved to Italy! Mind how you go.
@ Pete - My comment about Ed Millichild looking and sounding like Pitt the younger was a comment on the character from Blackadder III ( "Leader of the opposition? What, young snotty here?" ) NOT the actual person. I'm sure Pitt was nothing like the character in Blackadder, where as Ed definitely is...
In reality UKIP are not going to take over... They are not ever going to be running the country, and it's highly unlikely they will ever run a local council. Look at the numbers - they have less than 15% of the number of councilors that the Consrvatives do. The BIG problem with UKIP is that they don't have to have any MP's or councilors to influence policy. If the other parties think that they will loose votes to UKIP they will be forced into adopting policies that will appease the voters who may vote for UKIP and not for them. In this way the Conservative party will be forced to move towards isolationist, anti-Europe, anti-immigration policies just to try to keep voters who may otherwise vote UKIP. Worrying times...
Well, you could see it like that. But I prefer to see it positively. The Tories should be taking notice of what the electorate really feels, and the immigration issue is a valid one. It's how you address it intelligently that counts. There is more chance (just) of the Tories addressing it intelligently than UKIP. Removal from Europe would not be addressing it intelligently. The piece of information I would like to have, as a language graduate, is the language skills of the party leaders and their chief lieutenants. I wonder if Farage speaks any foreign languages fluently. You can't expect to engage properly with other people and build empathy if you're not prepared to speak to them in their native tongue. No wonder Britain prefers the US - no need to make an effort there. This failure to address the UK's chronically poor language skills is one of the underlying reasons behind seeing all foreigners as threatening and "other" rather than trying to understand all the things they have in common with Brits.
Glidd makes a solid point. Not understanding other people's languages means there is automatically a gulf between you and them. There's no chance of you identifying with other folks, which is the thing that has to happen before there can be proper trust or cooperation. Trouble is, if you don't want to get closer to other cultures, you aren't prepared to put in the effort to learn their language, which then means a common understanding is impossible. Language is the basic way that we communicate with each other, identify with each other and establish common ground and trust. Not learning other languages means the process can never start. The "shared" language with the USA leads to the other side of the coin. We think we are speaking the same language so we are shocked and dismayed that the other country's values and assumptions are often quite different to ours. I've seen this in action, having grown up in the USA and then been an adult in the UK. "Separated by a common language" is the phrase that is used for this.
Perhaps you are right. The Conservatives might abandon the centre ground and go back to being the 'nasty party' with the same isolationist, anti-Europe, anti-immigration policies which comprehensively lost them the elections of 1997, 2001 and 2005. But only if they come to be dominated by people who are completely lacking in political nous - unlike David Cameron.
At one stage the BNP seriously proposed amalgamating with UKIP thus combining their support, their resources, and their votes. That was genuinely scary, because the fascists might have thereby become a real force in British politics. Fortunately the various different bits of the far-right are too fragmented, not to say too stupid, to unify so it was never agreed. Scare over - although individual members still migrate freely between the different strands.
