Hardly a day goes by without some politician being hauled up by the press for saying something they shouldn’t have said. This item about the UKIP Lewes Councillor Donna Edmunds came to my attention as it is trending on facebook, albeit with a slightly distorted version. So I figured I better investigate to get the full story.
In the light of UKIPs recent honeymoon status, it is all the more disturbing that someone who is a candidate for the forthcoming European Elections should be advocating policies that are harping back to a time of negative discrimination.
This was the Timeline photo that was trending on facebook that caught my attention. As I am a black woman and a small business owner, that view just jarred with my business ethics. For catching attention, one cannot but give it high marks, but for being factual, the picture will rate 80%.
My investigations revealed that there was no specific mention of discrimination against blacks, but that said, recent comments from some UKIP councillors have been downright racist.
Donna Edmunds was first quoted in the Argus as saying she believes business owners should be allowed to refuse to serve women and gay people.
It is a rather sad indictment of some of the thinking within UKIP, that a serving Councillor and a MEP hopeful should come up with such views. She claims she is a libertarian and so does not think the state should have a role on who business owners serve, but that businesses should be free to make that choice themselves.
The statements was made on an internet forum and she apparently went on further to say that business people should be allowed to refuse service to anyone they want for whatever reason they want, including because a customer is gay or a woman. You can read the full article in the Argus for more details.
This is just another in the long line of what some would call nasty views, being expressed by UKIP councillors and candidates. The scaremongering figures and quotes coming out of UKIP about Europe just beggars belief.
Isolating United Kingdom (UK) from Europe is not going to do this country any good, and that is a view I express as a business person and an employer, and someone who trades in Europe. UKIP harp on how much Europe is costing the UK, but fail to say how much benefit the UK is getting from Europe.
People should look beyond the gloss at the real intent of UKIP.
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