Friday News Fun: Define The Term Of Abuse 'farage'

[Zeuhl]

As pointed out by aog on an earlier thread, the term 'farage' is increasingly being used as a term of abuse or even an expletive.

Can any ABers suggest definitions for this term?

Here are a couple of suggestions

farage n. a smarmy opportunist

to farage v. to achieve prominence well beyond one's merit

[ichkeria]

Anyone watching Newsnight last night would have seen the quite extraordinary (to those of us who read the original article) spectacle of Diane James, the unsuccessful Eastleigh UKIP candidate trying to justify the daft "4 million Bulgarians want to come to Britain" Daily Express story. For those who don't know, this was a survey of a few hundred people by the Bulgarian government asking would people like to work in the UK (I think it was the UK rather than any other EU country). A - perhaps surprisingly small - 56% of those questioned replied yes, which was then jumped on by UKIP and the Daily Express and extrapolated to over half the entire population of the country - of all ages - and THEN presented as though these people were more or less already packing their bags. I saw the girl in the audience who'd questioned her on it shaking her head in disbelief.
You do wonder what confidence some of these people have in their own arguments if they feel the need to resort to such deceit.

[jake-the-peg]

Well he came and stood against the speaker John Bercow in my constituancy.

I guess he figured with none of the opposing parties standing he had to have a chance

He came third

Behind Bercow

and a man dressed as a Dolphin!


So yes a smarmy opportunist who can't even win against a novelty candidate!

[ichkeria]

"and a man dressed as a Dolphin! "

Even Zeuhl beat him!!
lol

[emmie]

never mind when they land on our shores perhaps you would like to give one of them a job, or a home come to think of it.
UKIP are a party that has expressed what some feel, that the country is under threat from mass immigration, that it isn't always a wonderful thing to have millions arrive, many of whom have not added one thing to Britain, to the economy but made things infinitely worse.

[jake-the-peg]

I see

Were you cheering for Mo Farah 6 months ago in the Olympics?

or were you saying "look at those immigrants! how they're making Britain infinitely worse' ?

[New Judge]

No I was doing neither, Jake. I was not cheering for anybody in the Olympics last summer. I didn't watch a single minute of the nonsense as I had other things to do. It's quite obvious that some people can run faster than others and quite why it was felt necessary to spend £10bn to prove it was beyond me.

But I do understand what you mean. Though I tend to believe that it makes about as much sense to suggest that unfettered immigration is good for the UK as we might occasionally import somebody who can run fast as it does to suggest that 4m people will come to the UK because a very small number of them have said they might like to do so.

[Zeuhl]

"and a man dressed as a Dolphin! "

LOL ichkeria

are you trying to be offensive on porpoise?

[emmie]

Mo Farah came here aged eight, not exactly working age is it. He is a wonderful athlete, and yes i cheered him and all the other wonderful Olympic and Paralympic athletes on, who wouldn't..
He is a credit to Britain which gave him a chance and he took it, however many don't.

[Kromovaracun]

New Judge

"Anyone watching Question Time last night would have seen the vilification and downright insolence displayed towards UKIP and their representative on the panel. Words such as “disgusting”, “scaremongers”, and “racists” were regularly thrown about when some members of the audience attempted to get their points across."

This attack was made by a member of the audience who did subsequently make a perfectly valid challenge to the UKIP panelist regarding the Party's claims about the numbers of immigrants it predicted would come into the country. She was certainly impassioned and did use words like "disgusting", but she made a perfectly good point.