UKIP DEVIZES - PUBLIC MEETING REPORT

A report of Sundays Public meeting by Alan Wood.

UKIP held a excellent meeting in Marlborough Town Hall yesterday (Sunday) afternoon with Nigel Farage, Neil Hamilton (former Conservative MP and Junior Minister) and Alan Wood, the PPC & Chairman for Devizes Constituency, as speakers, Malcolm Wood the SW Regional Organiser chaired.The audience comprised of UKIP members from local branches in Wiltshire. There were a number of people from other parties plus schoolboys from Marlborough College, and people of no party at all who had come to listen. The BNP 'spy' could not resist giving away her presence by jumping out of her seat to challenge Frances Howard (PPC Salisbury) who said that BNP steal our policies. Supportive Ex Lib-Dems also made their presence known. Pior to the meeting UKIP volunteers delivered over 4,000 packs of Trevor Colman/Rod Trelease leaflets in Marlborough a fortnight berfore the meeting, which included a colour laser-printed A4 leaflet for the meeting.Drinks for the speakers and audience were kindly donated by Robert Francis, teas for the audience kindly prepared and washed-up by Marilyn Day, Dottie Halfon and others. The audience was 120+ people and the collection raised £363.45, which will be passed on to the campaign fund. We hope that those people who received information packs will respond in the usual way to Lexdrum House to receive more information on UKIP. A small meeting in Durrington last month also resulted in new members with other useful responses.A number of Conservative members expressed their concern about the EU in the Q&A session. Clearly, David Cameron's position on Europe is of concern to them as he is just as shaky as his predecessors on the EU, whilst that of Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg is a charade of broken promises on the Lisbon Treaty. So we now have loads of ammunition to impart to voters on the failure of other party leaders to keep promises.

Alan Wood spoke first on Council Tax and VAT. As VAT is a minimum of 15% and impacts unfairly on the poorer people in the community he expressed the view that it should be abolished. As a former Civil Servant he was aware of the cost of the bureaucracy in Britain, and that it was now unaffordable.From his experience as a local councillor he also outlined the financial impact of the EU on Council Tax and his view that this was another unfair tax which bore down on the poor rather than the rich.Finally he reminded members of the need to volunteer to be candidates in the County Council elections of 2009 which will fall on European Election day.

Neil Hamilton spoke of his past opposition to the EEC and his insider knowledge as a minister working with the Council of Ministers and the European Commission. His most telling remark was " I spent all my active political life in the Conservative Party. Conservative Party policy on Europe is no more than a calculated fraud because the last election slogan of the Conservative Party was " Yes, we want to be in Europe but not run by Europe." I can tell you that particular dish is not on the menu in that restuarant in Brussels".

Nigel Farage gave his usual barnstorming speech on Freedom, Democracy and Independence and as usual answered many of the questions put by the audience personally. It is a feature of our meetings that the audience may put questions. Malcolm Wood mentioned the EU derogation on small garages being able to have access to data on vehicle components and test data from manufacturers. It is believed that this will fall in 2010. The information will be checked and if correct used in bulletins by UKIP to the public.