The Great Sausage Roll Scandal – Media Gnashers Chomp UKIP!


If you were taught about the growth of democracy in Britain at school, you’ll remember that elections were once held without benefit of a secret ballot.

Voters had to show their hand in public, and were thus easily manipulated by free beer and victuals.

-Dickens, in The Pickwick Papers, captured the essential aspect of this.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooo

0000000000000000

-‘Oh, yes,’ said the little man, ‘very much so indeed. We have opened all the public–houses in the place, and left our adversary nothing but the beer–shops–masterly stroke of policy that, my dear Sir, eh?’ The little man smiled complacently, and took a large pinch of snuff.

The Eatanswill ( in reality Sudbury -the UK town, not its Ontario namesake!) image captured the public imagination, and if you turn to non-fiction sources, you’ll learn that the mobs of inebriate voters often ran amok, outrageous violence resulting from gratis grog, a predictable consequence of course.

3333333333333333333333333333333333

  • avoid
  • 3333333333333333333333
  • So the secret ballot was introduced, but the old reformist legislation enacted remains in force, viz. restraining parliamentary candidates from largesse  – “ if either before, during or after an election they directly or indirectly give or provide any food, drink, entertainment or provision to corruptly influence any voter to vote or refrain from voting”

The key words here are surely ‘to corruptly influence…‘

But – WOW – has the anti-UKIP media/hyena pack leapt ravening on poor Kim Rose, the party’s candidate in Southampton Itchen.

Farage backs Ukip candidate in sausage roll bribery row

 

As part of the election fun, he had a famous snooker star named Jimmy White come to town.

Nice idea, brightens up the campaign scene.

=======================

  • —————————————————————————————————
  • BUT Kim Rose laid on refreshments at an event at a local community hall on 21 February, after inviting White to play snooker with children. 

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/10/nigel-farage-backs-ukip-candidate-sausage-roll-bribery-row-southampton-jimmy-white

=========

wine-women-and-song

=========

Free beer for all? Tots of rum for the tots?

Sirloin steaks? Champagne and caviar?

Anything that might, in the wildest pinko imagination, lure underprivileged voters to see a promise of a better life under Kim’s party?

No.

—

SausageRolls1-300x231

Sausage Rolls!

Yes! That humblest of snacks, verily beloved by children (who BTW can’t vote) but not exactly the stuff of corruption.

Yet somehow the cops got wind of this, the savoury scent of the sausages drifting by the local nick, perhaps, and Kim has been reported under electoral law.

Silly season stuff – but not this time round, when the Grub Street harpies are flitting back and forth, the Guardian’s Rowena Mason ( ‘political correspondent!’)by no means the only one to swoop on this nonsense.

=============

  • EU - referendum voteliberal-media-bias
  • ===============================
  • You’d think possibly far worse evil, surely, lies in ‘cast-iron’ promises made and blithely broken, like the last time Cameron vowed solemnly to give the British people a vote on the EUSSR.
  • –
  • b6128-alcoholicsilhouette ‘He promised…!’

–

But then while the media may not LIKE Cameron, they HATE the People’s Party.