This piece of mine appears in today's First Post.
Neil Clark: Brussels will be glad to see the back of Nigel Farage if he can beat Bercow in the general election
The British have sent many loud-mouthed yobs to Europe over the years - rampaging football hooligans, drunken stag party revellers - but Nigel Farage, leader of the UKIP MEPs, takes the crown after his performance yesterday.
Already known in Brussels for his brash and abrasive style, Farage launched a scathing personal attack on the new President of the EU Council, Herman van Rompuy, in the European Parliament, one which left MEPs reeling in shock at its sheer nastiness.
"Who are you? I'd never heard of you, nobody in Europe had ever heard of you," Farage proclaimed. He said van Rompuy had the "charisma of a damp rag" and compared him to a "low-grade bank clerk". For good measure he also insulted the EU President's homeland, saying Belgium was "pretty much a non-country".
Farage's attack on the modest and mild-mannered van Rompuy and his equally inoffensive country will only confirm what many in Europe think about the British: that we are a country of arrogant, bullying xenophobes.
Farage, a former commodity broker, represents the worst kind of Brit abroad, a blazered, braying, over-confident public schoolboy, convinced of his own - and his country's - superiority over others.
You can read the rest of the article here.
34 comments:
Completely agreed. I'm no fan of the European Union, but Farage's attempt to 'do a Hannan' really was crass, and is not the kind of image of our country that I would want transporting around the world. A thoroughly mediocre little man - and clearly no gentleman either.
Absolutely.
He makes me ashamed to be British.
Sadly, I have to agree. The attack seemed to be completely gratuitous, as if it was Farage's time of the month. I really don't believe Mr Farage will be going far in politics.
Lillets are very good, I've heard. But I wouldn't know...
I don't know about that. I've considered voting for UKIP because they're against the EU, but apart from that they seem quite an unpleasant shower ( as opposed to...?), and I recall that Farage has some pretty reactionary positions. But I sort-of feel that the ultimate point of his barrage against rumpy-pumpy was well worth making " Who ARE you?" Just a nice self-effacing little man trying to deprive all Europeans of healthcare and labour rights, currently trying to impose debt-peonage on Greece? Who next?
I'm into allies of convenience, but I think Jock is going far too far here. Maybe that's because I'm more in the Old Labour social democratic vein (which was largely supportive of the then EEC) rather than Old Labour hard left (which was almost entirely against it) compared to most posters here, but I think - and hope - I would feel Jock is making some pretty nasty allies of convenience (as he has done before) even if I did support EU withdrawal.
I don't know the first thing about Europolitics, but it seems odd that Farage would first say "who are you? I don't know the first thing about you" and then immediately list a number of objections to the person he says he knows nothing about.
Pompous is the word you forgot to include.
Funny how it is the British centred City of London which controls global finance and banking through a series of international banks and schemes through people like George Soros and the various cons like the derivatives market that has totally screwed up the international economic system.
Or how the British government put Iceland on the terrorist watch list and froze its assets when it refused to pay back banking loans to British banks when it went bankrupt despite the fact that London is the centre and haven of more terrorist groups than anywhere on the planet which includes the largest distributor of Jihadist propaganda Babar Ahmed and Azzam publications since the Bosnia war and tried to set up a Bosnian-Chechen training camp in the US and a suspicious number of British Muslims that happen to be senior Islamic terrorists.
Nigel Farage is trying to burst some bubbles to get a proper debate going.
Let's face it, van Rompuy was appointed as President, we didn't vote for him. And he was appointed on the basis that he didn't offend anyone. Nigel Farage was elected to his position in free and fair elections by the people he represents on the basis that he will offend when necessary.
We're moving from democracy to dictatorship in a series of small steps, The Boiling Frog Syndrome.
We'll wake up one day and wonder how we allowed it to happen, but it'll be too late by then, and it'll be a long hard struggle for our children to get back what we had.
Van Rompuy isn't exactly a high-profile politician but i'm sure a former Belgian PM is better known than Mr. Farage whose photo I had never seen until I read this piece.
I'm pro-European but not especially pro-EU (in its current guise)
I wish more people would make the distinction.
It seems that people like Mr. Farage and Jeremy Clarkson simply don't like Johnny Foreigner but plenty of other people with misgivings about the EU would not want to be associated with these clowns.
one question, why is it that when comeone confronts people about truth he gets the black sheep label?
Nigel has serious questions to be answered now because no one is ready to answer them then it would be easier to attck Nigel.
Let's not worry too much about the pillock Farage. Belgium's still there, as is Mr van Rompuy - both unsurprisingly undiminished by the ranting of this political pygmy, who demeans only himself (along with, unfortunately, my country of origin).
@Anon 12:08 PM
That's the point, Farage is asking how this non-entity (who may be a very nice bloke for all we know) became the president of over 800 million people without any of them even being consulted or a vote being cast.
The people who are slinging mud at Farage can't answer the question that so they attack the messenger, which tells you all you need to know.
At least Nigel Farage has a democratic mandate!
This Rumpy-Pumpy guy enjoys high level influence over EU law-making, and he is paid a fortune by EU-taxpayers. Yet nobody anywhere in Europe got a chance to vote for (or against) him, did they?
(It seems to me that you are missing the real scandal around here, Neil.)
@Gregor
Farage would like to engage in sensible debate here, but he is denied the chance.
Last week he was bumped from the Question Time panel at eleventh hour because a question was included about the Teesside Corus steel plant closure. None of the panel members or audience mentioned the real reason for the closure, but if you look at the links below you will see that UKIP were onto it, hence the withdrawal of Farage's invitation.
1. Paul Nuttal
2. Global Warming Time To Get Angry
In the first link the issue of parliamentary privilige arises.
Farage may have a democratic mandate. He's also a bigoted, narrow-minded oaf who just hates Johnny Foreigner.
Indeed "pro-European" and "pro-EU" are two separate things: "pro-European" is more a cultural thing and people of such views may feel that the EU is bound up with multinationals and strengthens American-led standardisation. I can sympathise with those views but that doesn't make me think we'd be better off outside the EU: Switzerland and Norway may do well, but they're not in our geopolitical position and they don't have Murdoch or UKIP.
Struck me as quite funny.European politicians take themselves incredibly seriously and are fair game when they insist on removing themselves from the hurly-burly of politics.
There was a time when Europe came up with interesting political ideas of a liberating nature.Now, a fog of boredom pervades.
Well, Farage could have made his comments in a more witty way about nonentities in the EU but this ties in with the decline of civility.
Having said that the way to deal with nasty pieces of work is polemic and wit and not shouting abuse, which is what populist PiS politicians do in Poland.
It reduces politics to a pantomime.
@Czarny Kot.
Clarkson's invasion of Poland joke and moronic stunts have been sliced to pieces in a piece I wrote in my blog as this silly man's ideas are gaining ( or were gaining popularity ) in Poland.
http://krakowconservationwatch.blogspot.com/2010/02/rise-of-jeremy-clarkson-as-propagandist.html
I see Clarkson as an asocial market populist libertarian whose views have something in common with the far right ( all dressed up in English "irony" of course ).
I wrote,
"Market populistic poses are an aspect of the way the new irresponsible "fuck you" attitude of supposedly transgressive actions are getting closer to the fetish for speed and car racing championed by supporters of Fascism such as F T Marinetti, the Italian supporter of Mussolini.
Marinetti and Clarkson believes in global corporativism no less than the Italian Futurists who supported Mussolini or the Russian Bolsheviks did in hoping for a new steel and concrete Utopia and more mindless modernity.
The difference is that Marinetti was an intellectual and was able to write well. Yet the desire to use "shock tactics" and anger people to gain attention is common to both who want to outrage the "liberal middle class" and their perceived concerns for the environment and conservationism"
Robin Carmody: "Farage may have a democratic mandate. He's also a bigoted, narrow-minded oaf who just hates Johnny Foreigner."
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Sorry but that is a stupid remark. If Farage were a "bigoted, narrow-minded oaf", it's a bit unlikely he would attract quite so many votes from the mainstream British electorate, isn't it?
You can look at it another way too: if you don't like Farage and/or UKIP, then you can vote against them at the next EU election. But if you don't like Rumpy-Pumpy you can...uh...
(Get the drift?)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McqqFb7eQ2Y&feature=related
TWIG - thanks for those links; they were a real eye-opener. I didn't know anything about that - no surprise there, since there seems to be a lot of pressure to keep it quiet.
Here's a quote from those links ( from a letter by - yes - Farage):
" Corus’ steelworks at Redcar, near Middlesbrough, “Teesside Cast Products”, is to be closed (”mothballed” is the euphemism). It is Britain’s last great steelworks and an essential national resource. Without it, we are at the world’s mercy.
Corus is owned by Tata Steel of India. Recently, Tata received “EU-carbon-credits” worth up to £1bn, ostensibly so that steel-production at Redcar would not be crippled by the EU’s “carbon-emissions-trading-scheme”. By closing the plant at Redcar – and not making any “carbon-emissions” – Tata walks off with £1bn of taxpayers’ money, which it will invest in its steel-factories in India, where there is no “carbon-emissions-trading-scheme”.
There’s more. The EU’s “emissions-trading-scheme” (ETS) is modelled on instructions from the “International Panel on Climate-Change” (IPCC) of the United Nations Organisation. The Chairman of the IPCC is one Dr Rajendra K.Pachauri, a former railway-engineer, who obtained this post by virtue of his being Chairman of the “Tata Energy-Research Institute” – set up by Tata Steel."
I recommend to the rest of you to read Booker and North's 'the Great Deception' and read Spectrezine online regularly, and realise that the number one priority is to get out of the EU. Unfortunately UKIP seem a bit too keen on the 'special relationship' with the US which is just a variation on the same thing, since the US pretty much gives the EU commission its brief anyway.
@Jock
Farage's point about the Teeside works I agree with.If he can make points like that with logic and polemical force then he would be more respected.
We do need a return to a more 'confrontational' politics as and when necessary. But the way it's expressed is essential. It's just in a media spectacle age that one needs to generate controversy or "stir" to get noticed.
Anonymous: have you ever *seen* the "mainstream British electorate" you so venerate?
Jock is more clearly than ever a crypto-rightist - Christopher Booker, oh dear me.
When Cable said Brown had gone from Stalin to Mr Bean it was considered the hieght (wll nearly) yet it was hardly more polite than calling Rumpy a bank teller.
The difference is that, for all the crap, subservience & inanities of the Commons it is still more of a real place than the EU "Parliament". Well OK the other difference is that the media are determined to spin Cable & the LDs as nice moderates & Farage & UKIP as nasty extremists.
No, these are the worst British politicians abroad: www.dailymail.co.uk/.../Europeans-horrified-Labour-MPs-champagne-drinking-contest-official-trip.html
Nigel Farage is speaking out against the arrogance and lack of Democracy in the EU Commission and you idiots focus on the messenger. We are so easily bundled into one happy group ready to defend eachother against the very Elite that set up the whole EU scheme in the first place.
Mark my words, the EU was set up WITHOUT the People and their rights in mind and as a result we open the doors for a massive shift of power (already taken place) to which noone can answer.
It is all very, very dangerous. The EU IS NOT to be trusted, not in the past and not now. What Hitler wanted by force, they have achieved by stealth. You fools.
You only hate Farage because he speaks out. You would rather have the Blairs and Brown who take care of things behind closed doors with their unelected corporate buddies.
You worms make me sick.
Funny how paranoid bigots are always "anonymous" ...
But then this blog does seem to attract a good few of those, from all sides.
I am sorry Neil but I am a friend of Nigel and I will back him up on this issue. He is the only British Politician that dares to stand up to the tyranny of the EU and the Bilderberg group which their sole aim is eugenics and New World Order. This is the last time I will read this blog as you Neil have lost my respect unless you take back what you said then so be it incase you have not noticed they tried to assassinate him on the day of the election 2010 so Nigel is a hero and is the Ron Paul of British Politics.
Bravo Nigel Farage!!! You are right. Those that haven't paid for reconstruction, troops, security since World War II are on a socialist trip [you pay we play] Enough! The PIGGS need to be bailed out, Germany is paying. The only ones working. Belgium {as soon as they do not loose NATO are happy] ALL have excess of "public employees" "pensioners" etc. GO & WORK. WORK IS NOT A 4 LETTER WORD.
Why does this post *keep* attracting right-wing loons?
Random googlers, perhaps? I wonder whether they find Neil's version of socialism so conservative that there isn't all that much difference?
Farage's admirers, like the man himself, have no rational politics: they just hate "Johnny Foreigner" and "socialism" (not that what they call socialism is actually worthy of the name).
@Robin Carmody
They don't hate Johnny Foreigner, they just don't want unelected and unaccountable people in Brussels running our government because it's undemocratic.
As for hating socialism, you're not wrong.
What do you mean by rational politics?
p.s.
Did you notice how I made my point without resorting to pejorative terms?
As distinct from unelected and unaccountable people in Washington telling us what to do?
Your ilk tend to call the norms in France or Germany "socialism" when they are just as capitalist as our own, just (usually) a different form of capitalism closer to what we had here in the post-war years (which your ilk were wrongly calling "socialist" back then as well).
By rational politics I mean, broadly, social democracy or moderate post-war conservatism of the sort that you would no doubt call "traitorous" because it took us into the then EEC.
I am afraid that certain people in this thread fully deserve the description "loon". The post suggesting an attempt to assassinate Farage on election day was so tinfoil-heavy that it's a wonder it didn't go on about the Illuminati and shape-shifting lizards.
Farage has the balls!
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