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Tuesday 6 May 2014

Are UKIP loonies?

No.

Not all of them.

But I have to say that the seemingly endless succession of UKIP people who have gone public saying things that sound pretty loony to me, is gradually putting me off the whole party.

I'm sure that nearly all people who support UKIP are serious and sensible people. But the constant stream of senior UKIPpers saying strange things, have led me to feel that if there were a UKIPper and an Official Monster Raving Loony Party both standing for election, I'd prefer the Loony over the UKIPper.

Farage needs to filter out the loonies. Roger Helmer is standing for the Newark byelection; that means that he's as mainstream UKIP as you can get without actually being Nigel Farage. His beliefs include:

Date rape victims can bear some responsibility for being assaulted,
He's in favour of the death penalty
He says "If two men have a right to marry, how can we deny the same right to two siblings? Are we to authorise incest?"

Well, he's entitled to his opinions.

I'd rather vote for the Official Monster Raving Loony Party.

15 comments:

  1. There is nothing intrinsically intellectually or morally outrageous about being in favour of the death penalty.

    Alan..you will not remember me save as a callow youth in Amersham Mensa times. Have stumbled on your blog as am introducing my son into the joys of cacheing. Or he is me...one of the two.

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    1. Well, here's a straightforward disagreement:

      Taking a life, after the fact, in order to try and prevent the taking of life (deterrence) makes no sense practically, intellectually or morally - otherwise Capital Punishment would the source of it's own demise. If the death penalty is to inflict punishment then it's hardly going to be effective as the recipient is definitely not going mend his or her ways afterward. If it's revenge, then why not go the whole eye for an eye route and have public executions, floggings and amputations? Such were morally acceptable three hundred years ago. Regarded as entertainment, indeed.

      I expect that as living conditions improve and the fight for individual survival becomes less bitter, the "public morality" has improved also. Increasingly encompassing more than just our immediate vicinity.

      It used to be "morally acceptable" to pump all sorts of noxious chemicals into our rivers and seas or to take your big gun and go on an expedition as a naturalist and shoot elephants - no longer so. Maybe the moral element is that we see what we do to others we are actually doing to ourselves.

      In effect the historical trend in favour of increased morality may be our social survival instinct kicking in.

      I just hope it's in time.

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  2. No European country has carried out executions since 2012. Here's the list of countries who did execute people in 2012.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment#Global_distribution

    The death penalty is history, and I don't think it's coming back.

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  3. It may well be history. But that x has fallen out of favour over time period y nothing follows except a timeline. The morality or otherwise of the death penalty is independent of its historical embodiment.

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  4. But anyway...enjoy your blog and my son is now caching...so thanks.

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  5. Morality is time-dependent. Think of all the things that were accepted once, but are considered horrible today.

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    1. So....if there was a sudden orthodoxy in favour of hanging you would approve it? Morality is not date-stamped.

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    2. I think that's the point, though. There wouldn't/won't be a such a sudden change in orthodoxy. Better education and awareness of our environment makes the UKIP-style fear tactic less effective than once it might have been.

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  6. Morality is not time-dependent. What is considered to be moral varies over time. But that is a very different thing. Some things are right or wrong regardless of the date.

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  7. But the date alters the context of the thing, which alters the morality.

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  8. No it does not. It only alters what people agree about at any given time. A scientific progression from a Newtonian view to Dirac does not imply a moral progression in the same calendar direction. Does it?

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  9. By the way..you and Susan were very kind to me when I was the teenage Mensa upstart you used to put up with. It is a kindness I still remember even though you once beat me thirteen times in a row at backgammon.

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  10. Well, morality is always a subjective thing, but it does seem to me that, by and large, it's monotonically increasing with time. I suppose it could be argued that the abolition of slavery in all civilised countries has been a step back, but not many people would make that argument, and although you're right that the majority view isn't always the most moral view, maybe I'm just an optimist

    Thirteen times in a row? I expect we were using my dice.

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  11. You are conflating what is moral with what we agree to be moral. Your conflation commits you to the view that hanging is more moral than beheading on the grounds that there is a consensus away from the former in the direction of the latter. Morality is not "subjective"; the interpretation of it might be.

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  12. And by the way...your OP is deeply ironical in that you are committed to the view that UKIP is a loony party depending on when they were formed

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