UKIP – Roger The Whopper Machine

One of Nigel “Thirsty” Farage’s stalwarts has hit on a good way of promoting his chosen party: churn out scores of Tweets, almost all with no citation, no matter how shaky, and keep churning them out, so that anyone of opposing view is forever playing catch-up, and the UKIP faithful have an ample stream of, er, by-product to Retweet. Step forward Roger Da Costa.

Da Costa claims to be a “passionate supporter of the NHS”, despite also supporting a party whose commitment to a flat tax would mean shrinking the state to the kind of size last seen in 1939, when there was no NHS. But then, he also supports doubling prison places, and there wouldn’t be any money for that in UKIP fairyland either. So he’s good on the distant-from-reality thing. How good? Here we go.

“If the UK left the EU, British expats would still have ‘executed right’ to remain a resident of Spain under Article 70 b Vienna Convention” he declares. Highly questionable (you can see the text of that Convention HERE). Plus he manages not to mention Ireland, Portugal, or France. This is because none of them are party to the Vienna Convention. But that’s as solid as his argument gets.

It gets worse? Ho yus, it’s downhill from there, as witness “HS2 is being constructed under orders from Brussels as a consequence of the TEN-T directive”. Paranoid, much? This is a flat-out, pants on fire, unequivocal lie. TEN-T is about interoperability, and the “corridors” identified in the directive do not have to be built at all (Lisbon to Madrid for example).

How about another rail related whopper? “Rail privatisation occurred as part of an EU Directive (EU Directive 91/440). The UK cannot renationalise the railways as members of the EU”. Another total lie. There is no requirement in that directive for any selling-off. Moreover, in pulling the plug on Railtrack and now putting Network Rail on the Government’s books, we have renationalised.

So while Da Costa searches for the nearest fire extinguisher, let’s move on to another example of dishonesty and paranoia. “Ukraine now has a [sic] unelected new leader put there by the unelected EU Commission just like they did with Greece and Italy”. The EU had nothing to do with the Ukraine’s interim leader, and has never imposed anyone on any member state. Pants still on fire.

But onwards and downwards: “Labour destroyed our border controls then with the help of the BBC denounced anybody who voiced concerns about mass immigration as racists”. Yes, BBC paranoia is obligatory within UKIP, as is the border controls whopper. This is the same BBC that the Farage fringe shamelessly manipulates in order to garner free publicity.

Still, he believes it, and some UKIP members do too, so that’s all right, then.