UWE UKIP EU Speech

Stuart Agnew MEP gave a speech about the EU this Thursday in the University of the West of England. The event was organized by the UWE UKIP society and its president Marc Hale. It appeared that the society in UWE is the second biggest in the UK.

Stuart Agnew MEP

Agnew’s talk went through the history and structure of the EU.

A quick overlook of some of the interesting points that were made:

• “The green legislation makes it so hard for our business to develop.”
• The EU didn’t have to introduce particular rules on racism and xenophobia, because this is a limitation of the freedom of speech.
• When it came to the enlargement of the EU, the next to join the EU were shown on a map and they appeared to be Turkey and Russia. I was left wondering if Serbia and Macedonia aren’t actually closer to an EU-accession.
• Everything in the EU is getting “unmanageable” and one of the reasons is all the different languages. Luckily, it is normal for a Bulgarian to be fluent in three or four languages, so I thought that probably we could be the one to put order in this chaos 😀
• We were assured that any EU citizens that already live in the UK, won’t be forced to go home if the UK leaves the EU, unless they behave badly.

Apart from that we discussed the number of the population of Bulgaria and Romania, which is being cited as 29 millions from the beginning of the campaign against the two countries. In my opinion, and that of the National Statistics Institutes of both Bulgaria and Romania, it is 27,403,682 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Bulgaria#cite_ref-nsi.bg_2-0 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Romania )

Аgnew and UWE UKIP

And last but not least, I should point out that I saw a difference between the attitudes towards me from the different generations present
in the room. While the students behaved normal and didn’t match the image of the typical UKIP supporter that the media has built, the elderly in the room suddenly changed when they understood I am Bulgarian. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t something dramatic – Mr Agnew just spelled the word “cheque” for me, as if I couldn’t grasp the meaning and everybody suddenly started talking to me r-e-a-l-l-y  s-l-o-w-l-y.

I am a Bulgarian student, not a child in the kindergarten. I have a certificate that allows me to teach English and it was one of the requirements to be accepted on the course. Furthermore, I am teaching first year Journalism students, so it is expected that I can cope at least with the normal speed of speech.

Does this mean that the younger are more open to the world? Or are they just used to international students?

This lecture opened a lot of questions and I will try to answer them in the next months. I am looking forward the next event from UWE UKIP : )

Close-up: UKIP

I talked with Marc Hale from UKIP. This is the interview for OneEurope. 

 

UKIP (UK Independence Party) is one of the most controversial parties in the UK. One of the main topics it is dealing with is the EU and the “invasion” of Bulgarians and Romanians, once they get free access to the British labor market in 2014.

The cupcake I got on the Freshers’ Fair from the UKIP society

Every now and then there is a representative of the party that manages to make it into the news for his egocentric behavior. There was the guy who had a photo in Facebook where he is making the Nazi salute; there was the guy who said that each city should have special holding cells for illegal immigrants; there was also the guy who called women “sluts” and some other similar stories.

There are a couple of UKIP societies in different universities across England. Interestingly enough, one of them is at the University of the West of England which is situated in Bristol – the first refugee city in the UK. After listening to – for almost a year now – how the Romanians and my fellow Bulgarians will steal everyone’s jobs, I just had to meet the president of the society, in order to better understand UKIP’s views.

Marc Hale is studying History at UWE and started paying more attention to the politics a year ago. He then realized there was no UKIP society in the university, so he spoke with the chairman of the party for Bristol, who was fascinated by the idea. During the Fresher’s Fair they received 37 signatures.

Read the whole article.