Thinking of voting for UKIP tomorrow? If you care even a jot about the rights of women, think on.
Thinking of voting for UKIP tomorrow?
If you care even a jot about the rights of women, think on.
Here are 15 reasons why women (and men who believe in equality of the sexes) should sooner drink poison than vote for the Kippers tomorrow.
1. Nigel Farage on women: “Godfrey’s [Bloom, former UKIP MEP] comment that ‘no employer with a brain in the right place would employ a young, single, free woman‘ has been proved so right. With this lunacy, that if you have children you get three months paid leave off work, or six months paid leave off work – he absolutely got it spot on.”
2. UKIP want to scrap paid maternity leave (in line with Lesotho, Swaziland, the US and Papua New Guinea).
3. UKIP want to make it legal for employers to discriminate on the basis of gender (as well as race).
4. This would also entail the scrapping of employment regulations against sexual harassment and safeguards for part time and irregular workers, the majority of which are women.
5. Nigel Farage informed City high flyers that they are “worth less” to employers if they become mothers or that motherhood is a lifestyle choice.
6. Patrick O’Flynn, MEP Candidate, also say that pregnant women in the workplace are a “disaster”.
7. UKIP’s MEPs have consistently failed to represent the interests of women. They have voted against or simply not turned up to key votes in the European Parliament on ensuring equal pay, combating violence against women and ruling out FGM, to name but a few.
8. Since the 2009 European Election UKIP’s only two female MEPs, Nikki Sinclaire and Marta Andreasen, have both left the party. Andreason said Farage “doesn’t try to involve intelligent professional women in positions of responsibility in the party. He thinks women should be in the kitchen or in the bedroom”. Nikki Sinclaire won an Employment Tribunal claim for sex discrimination against the party.
9. Roger Helmer, UKIP MEP and candidate in the Newark by-election, said, “Rape is always wrong, but not always equally culpable.”
10. Godfrey Bloom, a former UKIP MEP, was not reprimanded for hugely sexist statements such as, “[feminists are] shrill, bored, middle-class women of a certain physical genre” and, “Women, in spite of years of training in art and music – and significant leisure time in the 18th and 19th Centuries – have produced few great works”
11. Stuart Wheeler, the party’s treasurer, said that women were “absolutely nowhere” when they compete with men in sports where they are not physically disadvantaged. He said, “I would just like to challenge the idea that it is necessary to have a lot of women or a particular number on a board… Business is very, very competitive and you should take the performance of women in another competitive area, which is sport where [men] have no strength advantage.”
12. In November 2013, UKIP MEP, Stuart Agnew said (in a debate on women in the boardroom) that “Women don’t have the ambition to get to the top, something gets in the way. It’s called a baby… Those females who really want to get to the top do so”.
13. David Chalice , a senior party official in Exeter, has voiced his belief that women should stay at home and that “cash-strapped Moslems” should have multiple wives.
14. Demetri Marchessini, the party’s sixth-largest individual donor in 2013, said there was no such thing as marital rape, arguing: “If you make love on Friday and make love Sunday, you can’t say Saturday is rape.” He also claimed women should be banned from wearing trousers because they “discourage love-making”.
15. Need I go on?
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James Bloodworth is the editor of Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter
512 Responses to “15 reasons women shouldn’t vote for UKIP”
LB
Crap Leon. You are the one saying I’m in favour of Genocide. You’re the only one doing this.
I’m pointing out that its a direct consequence of the policies you want. You are in favour of Ponzi Pensions. The state owes 7,200 bn. The state has no assets that it owns to pay them.
The end result is that the poor will be fucked because people like you took their cash, and spent it on yourself. You’ve not denied despite many times of asking whether or not you get your cash from their cash.
AM
Smear Tactics again at UKIP…How sad Lab/Lib/Con
Leon Wolfeson
“Smear Tactics again at UKIP…How sad Lab/Lib/Con”
Yes, you’re using smear tactics, UKIPer.
And it’s Lab/Lib/Con/UKIP, all Capitalists and holding hands. You’ve dug an old post out to highlight this, well done!
Thomas Evans
1. What Bloom said was right, it was the way he worded it that was unacceptable.
2. Utter lie!
3. Lie!
4. Upon leaving the EU we would repatriate Human Rights laws from the ECHR.
5. He said that in a brokerage firm, it was more difficult to hire female staff members because it afforded people very little time to have families. This much is a fact.
6. In the context of what he said. It is true.
7. It was UKIP policy to vote against all acts that would result in the transfer of legislation from the UK to the EU. Be it in reference to toilet paper, fisheries, law, human rights and anything else. Since the formation of the European Parliament in May 2014 they have changed this policy.
8. Marta defected to the Tories and is a very strange individual. As for Nikki Sinclaire he/she is a complete nutjob. She has been charged with Expense fraud, she has made numerous offensive comments and has recently been voted out of the European Parliament altogether.
Meanwhile UKIP have Jane Collins, Diane James, Janice Atkinson, Louise Bours, Margot Parker, Julia Reid & Jill Seymour who are all UKIP MEP’s.
We also have numerous female spokespeople who do outstanding work for the party not to mention standing as Parliamentary Candidates such as Suzanne Evans.
9. The point he was actually making was spot on.
Only what he said was taken out of context. Something he objected to on his website.
10. He was kicked out of the party so this is completely untrue.
11. He’s 79 years old and has old fashioned views.
Whilst a little outdated, hardly offensive.
12. As highlighted earlier. He is right.
Women have children and this can get in the way of their working lives.
That’s just a biological fact. Maternity leave and extended periods of leave etc…
13. He was making a very poor joke and referencing a Greek philosopher with his words.
14. Kicked out over a year ago because of what he said and at the time was denounced by UKIP.
15. “Need I go on?” – Well you said their were 15 reasons… There are only 14…
The simple fact is I could find examples of sexism at most if not all Parties. Some more so than others.
I have to say I am reassured that you could only give 14 examples most of which were utter nonsense or easily explainable.
Guest
Your name’s Leon? Okay.
As you talk about your desire to fuck the poor, as you blame me for you, as you talk about your genocidal mania and you can’t be bothered reading that I don’t work for the government, etc.
You, as ever, just spew that pensions are ponzis, how dare retirement be an option for the 99% and how you’ll murder the workers and steal everything the state owns for your own pocket.
Over and over and over.