{"id":20056,"date":"2013-04-30T10:24:05","date_gmt":"2013-04-30T15:24:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=20056"},"modified":"2013-04-30T10:24:05","modified_gmt":"2013-04-30T15:24:05","slug":"tory-and-media-fear-of-ukip-can-be-gauged-by-the-level-of-abuse-directed-at-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/04\/30\/tory-and-media-fear-of-ukip-can-be-gauged-by-the-level-of-abuse-directed-at-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Tory (and media) fear of UKIP can be gauged by the level of abuse directed at them"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.spiked-online.com\/index.php\/site\/article\/13585\" target=\"_blank\">Patrick Hayes<\/a> on the vitriol being sent UKIP&#8217;s way by the Conservatives and by the mainstream media:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Nutters. Nutcases. Loonies. Morons. Crackpots. Cuckoos. Oddballs. Fruitflies. Fruitloops. Fruitcakes. When it comes to slang used to suggest that members of the right-wing libertarian UK Independence Party (UKIP) are mentally ill, mainstream politicians and the media have lobbed the entire urban dictionary at them.<\/p>\n<p>UKIP\u2019s latest diagnosis came at the weekend from polo-necked Conservative minister Ken Clarke. In light of the upcoming local elections, Clarke dismissed UKIP as a \u2018collection of clowns\u2019, full of \u2018waifs and strays\u2019 not sufficiently \u2018sensible\u2019 to become local councillors. His comments echoed UK prime minister David Cameron\u2019s oft-quoted remarks from 2006 when he dismissed UKIP as a bunch of \u2018fruit cakes and loonies and closet racists\u2019. Cameron has refused to retract these comments, adding earlier this year that he still thought UKIP was full of \u2018pretty odd people\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>Almost since its launch in 1993, politicians have chosen to paint UKIP as the successor to the Monster Raving Loony Party, full of &mdash; as Michael Howard, Cameron\u2019s predecessor as Tory leader, put it &mdash; \u2018cranks, gadflies and extremists\u2019. The message is clear: on no account should UKIP be taken seriously as a political force. It deserves only ridicule. After all, how could any party that calls for the abolition of the smoking ban, or for the UK to leave the EU, be considered to be of sound mind? If you support UKIP, you need your head examined.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Patrick Hayes on the vitriol being sent UKIP&#8217;s way by the Conservatives and by the mainstream media: Nutters. Nutcases. Loonies. Morons. Crackpots. Cuckoos. Oddballs. Fruitflies. Fruitloops. Fruitcakes. When it comes to slang used to suggest that members of the right-wing libertarian UK Independence Party (UKIP) are mentally ill, mainstream politicians and the media have lobbed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,28,53],"tags":[431,389,188,213,101,533],"class_list":["post-20056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-media","category-politics","tag-conservatism","tag-davidcameron","tag-electionwatch","tag-newspapers","tag-tv","tag-ukip"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5du","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20056"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20057,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20056\/revisions\/20057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}