The Anonymous Widower

Does UKIP Allow People To Express Their Prejudices?

We all have prejudices.  This philosophy was first expressed to me by a postman in Ipswich, who happened to be black. He told quite a few tales how racial prejudice and the fact that he was a postman, got some strange reactions, which on balance were positive. This was all thirty years ago and he said if you scored all your prejudices and added them up and the sum was negative, you are a sad bastard.

I have three major prejudices; Imperial weights and measures, smoking and any supposed science, that is accepted or rejected without scientifically-correct review.

With Imperial weights and measures, I grew up with feet, inches and pounds, but as I was trained as an engineer, it wasn’t long before I realised what a stupid system they are.  When I worked for ICI, I was told by someone, who knew the truth, that one of the partial causes of the Flixborough disaster was that it was a plant that was copied from a European one, by converting it to Imperial units.  And someone got a calculation wrong.  It is interesting to note, that ICI went totallyto SI units in the mid-1950s. The worldwide use of SI units is described like this in Wikipedia.

The system has been nearly globally adopted. Only Burma, Liberia and the United States have not adopted SI units as their official system of weights and measures. In the United States metric units are not commonly used outside of science, medicine and the government; however, United States customary units are officially defined in terms of SI units. The United Kingdom has officially adopted a partial metrication policy, with no intention of replacing imperial units entirely. Canada has adopted it for most purposes, but imperial units are still legally permitted and remain in common use throughout a few sectors of Canadian society, particularly in the buildings, trades and railways sectors.

It’s about time we changed fully.  My son, who is in his forties, doesn’t understand Imperial units.

Incidentally, I won’t allow a rule with Imperial units into my house.

My Everyday Rule

The picture shows my everyday measure. It is metric only and I bought it in France.

My prejudice against smoking is obvious and is shared by many.  My father was a heavy smoker and was it one of the causes of my childhood ill-health, that haunts me to this day.

As a scientist and engineer, I’m always wary of something that doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny, like homeopathy, faith healing,non vaccination of children for MMR, capital punishment, creationism and religion.

But a lot of prejudices we have are not rational and some are quite frankly sexist, racist, anti-immigrant or homophobic and rightly against the law.

So do people with these  type of prejudices and other ideas, that have been proscribed by Parliament, vote for UKIP, as they think the party might do things, like lift the smoking ban in pubs, bring back capital punishment, allow people to keep hand guns?

After all the party seems to have changed its policity on HS2 to get votes in Buckinghamshire, depending on what web site you read.

I would love to have definitive UKIP answers to the following questions.

1. Would they cancel HS2?
2. Would they allow smoking in pubs, clubs and restaurants?
3. Would they allow full use of Imperial measures?
4. Would they bring back capital punishment?
5. Would they bring in heavier prison sentences?

May 5, 2013 - Posted by AnonW | News | Politics, UKIP