UKIP now stand before two paths - and we must choose wisely

The drawbridge for a progressive Ukip is being lifted - so run for a leap

It has become clear to me that there is a silent battle taking ground in Ukip, between those who look to the past and those who look to the future. It’s now that the Party must decide its destiny – and I must say; only one option will provide Ukip a longstanding future. Party membership may have risen steadily over the years, but as days pass we lose excellent contributions because they believe that the party is not going the right way – and it rightly isn’t, with a group of boring old-Tories possessing greater influence in Ukip.

The fact is, no one joined Ukip to comply with the establishment; actually the complete opposite. Many of us are proud anti-establishment folk, seeing our leaders as relatively unaccountable, ineffective and inward looking spineless men who believe they can tamper with the country’s traditions and culture however they wish. The main reason I, like many, are in Ukip is because of the “I will not support the LibLabCon - I will not obey” mentality, which is a fair enough mentality. Like when an establishment politician explains that we should not support Ukip because they are a ‘smaller party’ and consequently has no future in British politics, it’s like a slave, who wants nothing more but freedom, to be told that he or she will never get hold of that freedom. Thankfully, we are getting strong determinism to see change; and many of the determined are currently being accommodated by Ukip, but the Party leadership must ensure that they are stuffing the pillows sufficiently.

Many activists are not finding comfort on the pillow, like I’ve heard from many in Young Independence. This is ultimately because the Party is currently taking the ‘love it or hate it’ approach, and as much as this may secure ground among boring Tories and some Old Labour, it’s not enough to secure the electoral success we hope for in the 2015 General Election. The 'bunker reality' is that only a Ukip talking about development, expansion, curry and the Commonwealth can really pierce into unknown territory. Moreover, it would prove significant to steal the far-left’s mantra  that the EU robs workers of their rights and centralises businesses with the multi-national cooperations, with their full-hearted dedication to this project going way back – because it does. And the fact is many joined the Ukip of the small man, the small business, the pub and so on. There are some overly nationalistic forces in the party which project mixed messages to the wider population, and could even come out as some dodgy Isolationism.

But we should be the party of the Global Britain – that’s where the money is. Goodbye to the shackles of EU laws and regulation and hello to a Britain freely trading with the world and establishing special ties with the Commonwealth, perhaps even establishing closer economic and military relationships in the long run. What the people of Britain really want to hear is that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the party of the world and everyone is invited*. The three main parties have ruined the party and British want a fresh alternative to be the DJ – a DJ that will probably play Rule Britannia and the James Bond theme tune quite often.

If Ukip manifest itself as the true progressive party of British politics, like the SDP-Liberal Alliance did in the 80s, anything is possible. But the difference is This is a party which has grown from the people and have a natural instinct to provide what the people want – and that’s a Britain men and women of all backgrounds can call home. So fix up Ukip. In 10 years we don’t want Ukip to be added to the list of grassroots political movements that eventually slipped over their own oil. In one sense, we are a party of proud opportunists, because we were blessed with an opportunity we should never neglect: to make a change for the future, not the past.

*very strict terms and conditions apply

Hope not Hate launch anti-UKIP leaflet for trade unionists

Fake charity Hope not Hate are selling an anti-UKIP leaflet marketed at trade unionists as part of their trade union funded political campaign against UKIP.

The leaflet comes a year after Hope not Hate asked readers of their UKIP attack blog if the supposed anti-fascist organisation should target UKIP even though the party isn't fascist and concluded that there was no mandate to do so. According to their accounts lodged with the Electoral Commission, tax dodging Hope not Hate is funded almost entirely by trade unions with most of their big donations coming at election times for political campaigning.

Earlier this month Hope not Hate sent out an email begging for money to pay for their anti-UKIP campaign. Presumably there wasn't enough money left from the donations after paying Nick Lowles' salary because they're charging prospective pedlars of hate £20 +P&P for 1,000 copies of their propaganda leaflet.

New King Coal

The prospects for our natural resources providing Britain with an almost unlimited amounts of energy seem to just get better and better. News of potentially huge discoveries of coal beneath the North Sea that could potentially power Britain for centuries (H/T our very own dear Roger Helmer's twitter feed).

Shale gas....Coal.....Oil...even Thorium...we have potentially a wonderful new age of secure, cheap energy at our fingertips. Properly managed and with bold local devolution of resource rights, we could use this to power an industrial renaissance and rebalance our economy away from London and the South East.

How depressing it is that we are stuck with our effete, blinkered and timid Political Class, still infected with all the sanctimonious hypocrisy of "green crap", busy masturbating their MetroLib egos and polishing their CV's as the opportunities continue to slip through our fingers.

How depressing that they lack the guts to devolve mineral rights to individuals or at least local councils who could use them to rebuild local economies far more effectively than a greedy Treasury who will see them all as a short term cash-cow and squander then as assuredly as they squandered North Sea oil.

How depressing that we are stuck in the EU, with it's vested interests in outdated Uranium nuclear technology, leaving Norway and China to go for the much safer and much more plentiful Thorium option.

We will never be free to fulfil our potential as a nation until this wretched Political Class is utterly destroyed. Let us redouble our efforts to do precisely that.

Ukraine: A Sinister Method To The EU's Madness?

Ever since Nigel Farage's incendiary - and absolutely accurate - allegation during his LBC debate with Nick Clegg that the EU had blood on it's hands over Ukraine, we have had a predictable playground level of response suggesting that it shows that Farage - and by extension probably UKIP - supports Vladimir Putin's regime.

Granted, a few brave souls, most notably James Delingpole, has rallied to Farage's defence and pointed out the idiocy of the EU's actions in trying to bring Ukraine into it's orbit: after all, anyone who knew anything about Russian history and it's paranoia of encirclement would know how it would respond even in the most benign of circumstances, let alone when the country still feels wounded and humiliated after it's defeat in the Cold War.

However, a far more interesting question is: why the hell did the EU do it?

Those fews commentators who have bothered to look at the situation have concluded, perhaps correctly, that it is simply a mixture of vanity and arrogance. The EU's quasi-religious fervour towards the European ideal simply blinded it to the manifest dangers involved.

Another probably equally valid interpretation is the desperate need to keep forward momentum: with progress towards economic and monetary union currently stalled thanks to the grotesque consequences of the Euro, EU grandees may have reckoned that the need for progress in at least one area, enlargement, was paramount unless the whole project would start to slip into reverse. So blindly fanatical is the EU in support of it's goals that it would risk confrontation with Russia just to keep the ideal alive.

All perfectly plausible, but isn't there also a case that some kind of limited confrontation with Russia would suit the EU's purposes extremely well?

The fundamental flaw concerning the European project is, of course, the lack of a common European identity. In the immortal words of Enoch Powell: "Europe can never be a democracy because there is no European demos". 

Sooner or later the EU will have to address this fundamental flaw if the EU is to survive: somehow, we must all begin to think of ourselves as Europeans. A gradual introduction of European propaganda into schools and media may work, but only over the very long term. Instead, wouldn't it be easier to unite the people against a common enemy? It's a very old and successful trick, to be sure: Britain was cemented as a concept, for example, by it's constituent Protestant nations'  common fear of the continent's Roman Catholicism.

Here Russia fits the bill perfectly: it is geographically close, it's regime unquestionably sinister and it is just powerful enough to be seen as threatening but not powerful enough to make antagonising it not worth the candle. Moreover, there is still a widespread fear and hatred of Russia, particularly in the EU's eastern european member states, that stems from the memories of Soviet communism. 

Other potential enemies arguably don't work nearly so well. The far more real threat of militant Islam is simply too dangerous too confront, given the potential for sectarian conflagration that could result in scores of European cities. America is extremely powerful but a liberal democracy which no one seriously imagines has military designs on Europe. China is too geographically distant and is militarily still puny despite it's growing economic clout.

So a Russian bogeyman works best, but could it still really be the case that the EU would be so reckless, and so cynical, to deliberately poke the Russian bear with a stick? 

In life, it is generally best not to believe conspiracy theories, and to suggest that the EU's primary motive for it's idiotic Ukrainian policy was to resurrect the Russian bogeyman may well be going too far. Then again, the construction of the European Union has been a giant conspiracy against the people from the start. One cannot entirely rule out the idea that the EU did factor in the benefits, as well the risks, of provoking Russia into taking action against Ukraine, and moved accordingly.

DUP Cllr John Montgomery defects to UKIP

DUP Councillor John Montgomery has defected to UKIP, criticising the DUP for being "dictatorial".

Cllr John Montgomery

He was welcomed into the party by Cllr Henry Reilly and David McNarry MLA.

Cllr Montgomery sits on North Down Borough Council and will seek re-election this year as a UKIP candidate.

UKIP now has two councillors in Northern Ireland and one member of the Stormont Assembly and hopefully UKIP's increasing presence in the province will help to drive the normalisation of Northern Irish politics and bring about an end to sectarian politics.

Farage put Clegg in his place last night

Last night's LBC leaders' debate between Nigel Farage and Nick Clegg went brilliantly for Nigel with every opinion poll showing that he won the debate hands down.

The media were desperately spinning for Clegg last night but even the Guardian and Huffington Post - both avowedly anti-UKIP publications - had to agree that Farage put Clegg in his place and emerged as the most credible of the two.

If you didn't get a chance to listen to the debate last night then the good news is you can watch the whole thing on YouTube and we heartily recommend that you do because it'll show you why Cowardly Cameron and and Meek Miliband were too scared to debate Nigel Farage.

The Lib Dem press office have been trying to spin the results of the YouGov snap poll by cherry picking comments by YouGov's boss Peter Kellner about the audience for their poll having a disproportionate number of UKIP supporters to suggest that the odds were stacked against Nick Clegg. Guido points out that what they forgot to pick out of Kellner's comments was the bit where he said that if they hadn't adjusted the figures to take into account the UKIP bias then instead of 57% of respondents saying that Nigel Farage won the debate against Nick Clegg's 36%, it would have instead been 65% to 25% in Farage's favour.

Clegg -v- Farage tonight on LBC

You can watch the debate live on the LBC website, listen to it on LBC radio and follow it on Twitter with the #LBCDebate hashtag.

The poll on the LBC website asking who's going to win the debate currently says 77.3% Nigel Farage, 22.7% Nick Clegg.

Racist MP Diane Abbott accuses UKIP of fostering racism

Racist Labour MP, Diane Abbott, has told a trade union anti-racism rally that "growing support for UKIP could see a rise in racism".

Whilst Abbott is clearly an expert on racism from her many years of being a racist, she is very wide of the mark on UKIP.

UKIP's immigration policy is about space, not race. There aren't enough jobs and houses to go around the people who already live here so inviting unlimited numbers of immigrants to live and work here is crazy.

UKIP's policy of promoting monoculturalism is about community cohesion, not race. People who move here and don't speak English, don't mix with people who aren't from their native culture and who don't make any effort to integrate with society struggle to find meaningful work and contribute positively to their community. Multiculturalism encourages self-imposed segregation and isolationism and increases the risk of extremism spreading through groups of impressionable young people.

Here's a selection of racist comments made by Diane Abbott, none of which have resulted in her losing her job or even earning a reprimand:

1988: 'the British invented racism'
1996: 'blonde, blue-eyed Finnish girls' [are unsuitable as nurses because they have] 'never met a black person before'
2007: 'You’d be better off working for a white Conservative. You’re a black conservative, you don’t do the black thing.'
2012: 'White people love playing "divide and rule" We should not play their game'
2012: 'Dubious of black people claiming they've never experienced racism. Ever tried hailing a taxi I always wonder?'

Stephen Kinnock, MP for Copenhagen

Neil Kinnock's son, Stephen Kinnock, has been selected as a Labour candidate for the safe seat of Aberavon.

Stephen Kinnock, soon to be MP for Aberavon, Denmark

Kinnock is married to the Danish Prime Minister and is based in London which makes the rich and powerful son of millionaire peers the obvious choice to stand as an MP for a working class constituency in South Wales. Any claims of nepotism will no doubt be strenuously denied by the Labour Party who will undoubtedly have a plausible explanation as to why a part-time MP who's never had a proper job in his life and spends half his week in London and the other half in Denmark will be able to effectively represent a constituency nearly 200 miles away.

Aberavon has had a Labour MP since 1922 so it looks like we'll be seeing the MP for Copenhagen taking his seat in Westminster next year.

Crimea's referendum is neither illegal nor illegitimate

The EU and US have imposed sanctions on Russia for its continued presence in Crimea after somewhere between 93% and 97% of Crimeans voted to leave Ukraine and join Russia (news reports are inconsistent).

True to form, the EU is unhappy with the result of the referendum and says they have to hold another one that gives people an option of staying in Ukraine and changing nothing. With a turnout of over 80% and more than 90% in favour of joining Russia it's hard to see what difference it would have made other than splitting the few percent that voted to stay in Ukraine with greater autonomy.

The EU and US have declared the result of the referendum illegal and unconstitutional and William Hague has repeated the EU's position as if it were his own. It's true that under Ukrainian law Crimean independence is unconstitutional but once they've declared independence - which they have - Ukrainian law and the Ukrainian constitution no longer applies. If all that was required to stop a country declaring independence was a piece of domestic legislation then no country would become independent again.

The International Court of Justice has already ruled that international law has no "prohibition on declarations of independence" when it was considering the legality of Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence. There is simply no international law against unilateral declarations of independence and it's this concept of something not being illegal because there's no law against it that confuses the EU who operate under the Roman/Napoleonic legal system where everything is wrong unless the law says it's right rather than the Common Law which says everything is right unless the law says it's wrong.

All the countries (plus the EU) that are describing Crimea's declaration of independence as illegal are motivated by self interest. The EU doesn't want to set a precedent that a country could leave a United States of Europe just because it wanted to, the UK doesn't want to set a precedent that Scotland or England could unilaterally declare independence, Spain with the Basque country, the US with Texas or Hawaii, Italy with Venice or Sicily, France with Corsica, China with Hong Kong or Macau ... need I go on?

The claims that the referendum is invalid because it was conducted under Russian occupation are equally vacuous. Whether the "defence forces" are Crimean or Russian is debatable but a moot point given the fact that they have been welcomed on the streets, there have been no reports of violence in the run-up to the referendum and the huge turnout on Sunday. Clearly those that were put off voting by the presence of these "defence forces" were insignificant in number.

The fact is, the Crimean authorities had de facto control of Crimea, it has a defined territory and population, the Crimean people have a shared history and culture and the Crimean authorities have the machinery of state to be able to conduct international relations. It ticks all the boxes.

If the EU had kept is nose out of Ukrainian affairs none of this would have happened. It was EU empire building that precipitated this whole crisis and in time we will undoubtedly find evidence that the EU sponsored the pro-EU protesters that deposed the elected president. Now that events have played out their inevitable course the EU has nothing to offer Ukraine but some temporary trade deals worth a fraction of what it had with Russia.

The Crimean people have expressed their wishes quite clearly and unequivocally and as uncomfortable as that makes world leaders trying to cling on to their own little empires, we should respect their decision and move on.

________ Lib Dems and their ________ leafets

The Lib Dems have been posting this fill in the blanks leaflet through letterboxes in Leicester.

How about filling in these blanks about what a ________ bunch of ________ ________ the Lib Dems are?

There is little point in employing as a press officer a person who could have an argument in an empty house

Former Director of Communications for UKIP, Mark Croucher, has contributed a few extra facts to the discussions around Saint Nikki of Meriden and her cowardly attack on Nigel Farage and Annabelle Fuller in the EU Parliament.

It turns out that Nikki Sinclaire applied for a number of paid jobs in the party, including Director and Deputy Director of Communications and was turned down for all of them. One of the jobs she applied for was given to Annabelle Fuller instead and this is believed to be the source of her dislike for Fuller.

Croucher explains why Nikki Sinclaire wasn't given a job in the party:

Regarding Ms Sinclaire, she was an unsuccessful applicant for the position at the time, just as she was an unsuccessful applicant for my then position, for Clive Page's position, and for a number of other paid roles within UKIP. Her subsequent actions, her on-going bitterness and abrasive personality, her arrest for expenses fraud and her association with members of the far-right including those on paid positions on her current staff have proved that our decision with regards to Ms Sinclaire were correct.

Sinclaire was not interviewed for the position as we only bothered to interview candidates with some ability. There is little point in employing as a press officer a person who could have an argument in an empty house.

Neomedievalism Revisited

As regular readers of this blog will know, one of it's obsessions is that the post-modern age we live in, despite all it's technological wizardry, has culturally far more in common with the Medieval period than with the age of the nation-state that preceded it. Culturally and economically, we are governed in greatly attenuated "democracy" under increasingly oligarchical control. Social mobility has stagnated, and there is much less distance between the elites governing countries, including our own, than between the elites and the people.

One of the major aspects of the medieval period is, of course, that politics and power were very largely dynastic concerns, with fiefdoms being handed down the generations. Astonishingly, this is precisely what is happening on an ever more greatly brazen scale in our own society. Sue Cameron writes in the Daily Telegraph about the rise of dynastic politics in both the Conservative and Labour parties, with "Old Etonians and Red Princes" being groomed and selected for plum positions and constituencies. She also notes the domination of the top educational establishments by the sons and daughters of the elite who can pay for a level of education so expensive most could not even begin to entertain. Of course, to regular readers of bloggers4UKIP this is very much old news, as they will have read it here first.

The emergence of the "power couple" point to another link with the medieval period. Then, marriages within the elite were a highly political affair that hugely influenced the political fortunes of those concerned. Now high powered members of the political, legal, media and business elite tend to marry each other, thereby concentrating that power still further. (As an aside, the EU' imposition of board room quotas for women will greatly  magnify this trend, as the women directors and executives placed on company boards will overwhelmingly be married to high powered men. Perhaps the legislation was designed with this very process in mind.)

The results of these trends is that power in politics, business and not doubt media and law will increasingly be a family affair, played out and strongly influenced by dynastic politics within a few ultra powerful families. In a world of stagnant social mobility, the rest of us will be forced to watch on in ever-growing frustration at an enchanted world neither us or our children will ever reach.

How perfectly incredible that with all our advances in technology and knowledge, we have arrived back at such a sorry state.

Comres put UKIP in first place for EU elections

A ComRes poll for the Independent on Sunday and Sunday Mirror has UKIP in first place for May's EU elections on 30%, followed by Labour on 28%, Conservatives on 21%, the Lib Dems on 8% and the Greens on 7%. The Lib Dems have dropped 10 points since May last year.

The UKIP vote is somewhat muted for next year's general election but a strong third place as you'd expect with the Lib Dems still polling half of UKIP's vote. The gap between Labour at the top and the Conservatives in second place is closing and most people don't think Ed Miliband will be Prime Minister after the next election.

EU Elections
Party	%	+/-
UKIP	30%	+3
Lab	28%	+5
Con	21%	-
LD	8%	-10
Green	6%	+2
Other	7%	-

General Election
Party	%	+/-
Lab	35%	-2
Con	32%	-
UKIP	16%	+1
LD	9%	-
Other	8%	+1

Smeargate steps up a gear

The anti-UKIP smear campaign being run by the press shows no sign of letting up with both Nikki Sinclaire and Mike Nattrass being drafted in to help with the personal attacks on Nigel Farage.

Yesterday's Mirror quotes Nattrass - who left the party after failing to be reselected for the EU elections and losing a legal challenge to the decision - claiming that Nigel Farage was given a bottle of 7-Up as a prize for having sex with a 25 year old Latvian woman 7 times in one night. That would be a pretty impressive achievement for anyone, let alone a middle-aged chain smoking heavy drinker. It's a ridiculous story and a decent journalist would have seen it as such straight away.

They also repeat the claim by Nikki Sinclaire - another former UKIP MEP with a grudge - that Farage has been sleeping with Annabelle Fuller, his former assistant. This story has been put about for years and repeatedly denied but Sinclaire brought it up again publicly in the EU parliament where she can claim parliamentary privilege from the safety of the belly of the beast.

What Sinclaire, Nattrass and the journalists writing this crap are all forgetting is that whilst it might benefit their careers to sling mud at Farage, he has a wife and children. Their politically motivated smears aren't just attacking him, they're causing distress to him and his children as well and of course poor Anabelle is being hounded by the press yet again asking the same questions she's been getting for the best part of a decade.

Nikki Sinclaire and Mike Nattrass are only interested in trying to keep their seats in the EU parliament and don't care who they hurt in the process but the papers have already been rapped on the knuckles over this sort of thing by the Leveson Inquiry and should know better. Politically motivated attacks are to be expected but when innocent partners and children are brought into it, that's a step too far.

UKIP member takes Brighton & Hove to unfair dismissal tribunal

A refuse collector in Brighton is taking Green-run Brighton & Hove City Council to a tribunal for unfair dismissal after he was accused of writing homophobic messages on three posters in a staff canteen.

UKIP member Des Jones says that he has been hounded of his job by members of the GMB union because of their hatred of UKIP. He goes on to say that he was accused of writing homophobic slogans targeting a members of staff that he doesn't know on three posters but the handwriting on all three posters is different and one of them is in joined up handwriting that he says he never learnt to do.

If his claims are true then we wish him the best of luck and hope that this results in a full and open investigation into the powerful influence of trade unions in the public sector.

RIP Tony Benn

Labour MP Tony Benn has died this morning aged 88.

Benn was a well-respected MP and despite some unpopular views on abolishing the monarchy and supporting Sinn Féin he was one of the most popular on both sides of the political divide. He was a supporter of an EU referendum and opposed the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. He also criticised the IMF, World Bank and EU Commission who he said were unelected and unaccountable.

MigrationWatch claims immigration costs £22m a day

MigrationWatch UK has published a report claiming that immigration has cost the UK £22m a day between 1995 and 2001.

The MigrationWatch report uses the same data an methodology as a recent report by UCL that claimed immigration made a positive contribution to the economy but they say they have used more realistic assumptions about immigrants claiming benefits and haven't covered up some inconvenient findings that they say UCL did.

There's no doubt in my mind that immigration costs the economy money. It is inconceivable that when unemployment is so high, the contribution an immigrant worker makes to the economy is greater than the cost of providing their own services and the services and benefits paid to someone who already lives here that could have been doing that job and the cost of providing for their family as well. Whether that cost amounts to £95bn over 6 years I don't know but the more I think about it, the more plausible it sounds.

UKIP policy is to freeze economic immigration for 5 years and then introduce a points-based system to ensure that the immigrants we do allow into the country have skills we need, money to pay their bills and a house and job to go to when they arrive. This will allow people who already live here to fill the vacancies that arise during those 5 years rather than sitting at home on benefits whilst 9 out of 10 new jobs go to newly-arrived immigrants. This policy is about space, not race and would apply equally to everyone rather than discriminating against people who don't live in EU countries as current rules do. Refugees and asylum seekers would of course be unaffected by this policy as immigration and asylum are two completely different things.

It's good to finally see some open debate about the cost of immigration to our economy and to a lesser extend the impact on society. The media will of course side with UCL because criticising immigration gets you denounced as a racist by the Guardian-reading elite but it's important that people continue to put their heads above the parapet and keep the debate going.

Tories select former BNP activist for by-election

Grantham & Stamford Conservatives have selected a former BNP activist as their candidate for a South Kesteven District Council by-election.

Dr Peter Moseley appeared on the leaked BNP membership lists complete with the same address and mobile phone number. The Conservatives said "he is dedicated, local and hardworking" and that "supporting Peter is the only way local residents will get the District Councillor they need".

Last year Labour helped get a former Nazi elected in Milton Keynes whilst a local party - For Darwen - got a former BNP councillor elected to Blackburn with Darwen Council in 2010. The Conservatives in Darwen offered a former BNP activist the opportunity to stand for them for Darwen Town Council in 2009. UKIP is the only party that bans past and present members of the BNP, National Front, EDL and other undesirable political parties and groups from becoming members.

Miliband rules out EU referendum

Labour have effectively ruled out an EU referendum, saying there is an "overwhelming economic case" for being in the EU.

Ed Miliband said today that there would only be an in/out referendum on our EU membership if there was a significant transfer of power to the EU. As the Lisbon Treaty was an enabling act, it is unlikely that a new treaty will ever be needed for future power grabs so in Miliband's own words: a referendum under a Labour government is "unlikely".

Smearfest part 2

The Times isn't being allowed to build itself a monopoly on making up stories to smear UKIP, the Mirror is determined to get in on the act as well.

Yesterday's Mirror ran a non-story about how Alan Bown wrote to UKIP MEPs in 2011 telling them that they should donate £10k a year out of their salaries to the party. He apparently told them that if they wanted reselection they needed to prove they were "good value for money" and pointed out that it costs the party upwards of £125k to get an MEP elected.

The Mirror is spinning this as a possible breach of rules around using expenses to finance party political operations but as the very first paragraph of the article says, they were asked to donate from their salaries not from their expenses.

UKIP MEPs have been told to pay £10,000 a year from their Brussels salaries towards to the party’s coffers - or risk being booted out.

Their "expenses" are for things like offices, stationary and staff and are all administered by EU-approved accountants so MEPs wouldn't be able to give any of it to the party. The Mirror will of course know this because they've run plenty of stories about MEP expenses in the past. What makes it even more of a non-story is that it was on the premise that MEPs would donate money to the party from their salaries that the membership voted to contest EU elections a decade ago.

Then there's this little gem from the Times (yes, another one) in which we're told that sex-obsessed UKIP staff walk around the party's London offices half naked, take pets to work and make lists of women they'd like to have sex with before knocking off early to go to the pub. This has come as news to UKIP staffers on Facebook who are presumably disappointed that this sort of hedonistic behaviour apparently only happens when they're at the coffee machine or on their lunch break.

The idea that UKIP staff would somehow gets their pets from home to the offices in central London on public transport is frankly ridiculous, the idea that they walk around the office half naked even more so. The "insider" is anonymous of course but presumably either a disgruntled ex-employee or just a troublemaker taking advantage of the desperation of the newspapers to protect their investments in the run unto the election.

Another anti-UKIP smear from the Daily Mail

It seems that the papers have nothing better to do with their time at the moment than make up stories about UKIP.

Today it's the turn of the Daily Mail with the sloppiest piece of anti-UKIP propaganda we've seen for a while. They are running a story "UKIP candidate forwarded racist e-mail ranting against the family of murdered Stephen Lawrence" which starts with the following sentence:

A Tory MP called in the police after his UKIP opponent sent him a grotesque diatribe comparing the family of murdered Stephen Lawrence to apes. 

It then goes on to give details of the email John White sent to Peter Luff MP and how he refused to apologise. It's only when you get two thirds of the way down the article that you get to see how the story has nothing to do with UKIP:

He added that he had let his UKIP membership ‘lapse’ a couple of years ago.

Last night, a UKIP spokesman said that Mr White was no longer a member of the party.

He added: ‘UKIP abhors racism and takes all allegations of racism extremely seriously.
'John White left UKIP in 2012 after becoming unhappy about the direction of the party.’

So he isn't a member of UKIP and hasn't been a member of UKIP for two years but the Daily Mail still try to imply this has something to do with UKIP.

Mr White, who won more than 3,000 votes at the last Election, was a member of the Labour Party for 33 years, switching to UKIP when Gordon Brown became Labour leader.

So he was in Labour for 33 years followed by 3 years in UKIP but he's described as an ex-UKIP candidate, not a former lifelong Labour Party member.

The Daily Mail then go on to quote Luff slagging off UKIP because of an email sent by someone who isn't a UKIP member:

This exposes UKIP for the narrow-minded bigots they really are.

The Daily Mail is so far in the gutter Thames Water should bill them for sewerage every time they print a newspaper.

The Times plans anti-UKIP smear campaign

A very well put together statement on the anti-UKIP smear campaign the Times plans to run from Monday. The only important bit of information that's missing is that the Times have been briefed by the Lib Dems for this campaign. Makes you wonder how much of an "investment" they've got in the current political class if they're going to actively campaign against UKIP during this election campaign.

UKIP has been aware in recent weeks of relentless activity by Times journalists aiming to derail its rapid rise in popularity. This has included questioning about the private lives of party staff that would disgrace the now defunct News of The World.

The Times is planning to run on Monday a series of claims that UKIP has breached the rules on using European parliamentary funds while campaigning to get Britain out of the EU.

In fact UKIP has always worked hard to ensure that demarcations between EFD employees and party employees are properly observed. UKIP MEPs who donate to party funds do so out of their own post-tax salaries. UKIP MEPs work for withdrawal from the EU just as they promised the voters that they would when elected in 2009.

It is clear that their success in advancing this agenda and increasing the popularity of the party has upset the political establishment and its media supporters.

For the avoidance of doubt, UKIP MEPs are careful to observe European parliamentary rules when spending resources on advancing the goal of British withdrawal.

UKIP has from the outset been the biggest constituent part of the EFD group and Nigel Farage is the group leader. It is wholly legitimate and within the rules for some EFD staff to work out of London and indeed staff from other groups that include other British political parties do the same.

After the rapid growth of the party, UKIP has now put in place a bi-annual review as an extra check to ensure that staff responsibilities remain appropriately demarcated and that the actual work patterns of staff remain consistent.

We anticipate being on the receiving end of a continued smear campaign from pro-EU journalists but will not allow it to deflect us from our mission to secure for the British people a vote on withdrawing from the EU and taking back powers of self-government and control of their borders.

Two wins for UKIP while Elvis beats the Lib Dems

More popular than the Lib Dems

UKIP won two council seats from the Conservatives in Haverhill yesterday:

St Edmundsbury Borough Council (Haverhill East)
Name	Party	Votes	%
Tony Brown	UKIP	529	54%
Pat Hanlon	Lab	240	24%
David Roach	Con	157	16%
Ken Rolph	LD	54	5%
UKIP gain from Con

Haverhill Town Council (Haverhill East)
Name	Party	Votes	%
Paul Firman	UKIP	630	64%
Ken Rolph	LD	107	11%
Liz Smith	Lab	229	23%
UKIP gain from Con

The best result of the day. though, was in the Clifton North by-election in Nottingham where the Lib Dems were relegated to last place by the Bus Pass Elvis Party.

Nottingham City Council (Clifton North)
Name	Party	Votes	%
Patricia Ferguson	Lab	1,179	41%
Andrew Rule	Con	1,025	36%
Kevin Clarke	UKIP	536	19%
David "Lord Biro" Bishop	Bus Pass Elvis	67	2%
Tony Marshall	LD	56	2%

UKIP councillors have best attendance records

Research by the Times (£) has found that UKIP councillors have the best attendance of any political party.

UKIP councillors attend on average 92.4% of compulsory meetings, Conservatives attend 88.6%, Labour attend 88.3%, the Lib Dems attend 87.7% and the whiny Greens attend just 79.6% of meetings.

Propaganda from the LibLabCon parties dismissing UKIP councillors as ineffective show that the opposite is the case: if you vote for a UKIP councillor they will spend more time representing you than councillors from any of the other parties.

Green Party complains about UKIP being designated major party

Green MP being arrested for
public order offences

The whiny Greens are complaining that OFCOM have given UKIP major party status for the EU elections, meaning that UKIP will have to receive equal media coverage to the LibLabCon parties.

The Green Party has 2 MEPs and received less than half of UKIP's share of the vote in the last EU elections in 2009 so why would the Green Party expect to receive equal media coverage to the mainstream parties? Not because they're popular or because they expect to do as well as the mainstream parties but because they think they have better policies than the mainstream parties.

It is a decision influenced by what can be easily measured, polling figures, rather than considering the fact that the Green Party is the only party representing significant majorities of public opinion on issues ranging from re-nationalising the railways, to making the minimum wage a living wage to having a publicly owned and publicly run NHS.

The last thing a media regulator should be doing is forming opinions on political party policies. Election performance and opinion polls - facts, not opinions - are absolutely the right things to base a decision on. Just because the Green Party base their manifesto on unevidenced opinion doesn't mean OFCOM should.

Clegg -v- Farage: It's on!

Malicious lies from anti-UKIP campaign Hope not Hate

Trade union front organisation, Hope not Hate, has given up any pretence of non-partisanship and is openly attacking UKIP.

Nick Lowles: Bought and sold
with union gold

Hope not Hate claims to be an anti-fascist campaign group with no political axe to grind but it is funded almost entirely by trade unions and has admitted that UKIP isn't a fascist organisation and therefore shouldn't be targeting UKIP. Hope not Hate is running a political campaign against UKIP on behalf of the trade unions. They even have an attack blog called Purple Rain which is devoted to campaigning against UKIP.

Hope not Hate claimed yesterday that a former Labour Party branch chairman in Dudley who has defected to UKIP is a former BNP member. They have seen the same name Steve Daniels on the BNP membership list which was leaked a few years ago and made an understandable assumption that it was him as the address is the same. However, if they'd asked for clarification before posting a libellous article on their attack blog they'd have been told that Steve Daniels has a son also called Steve Daniels who used to be a BNP member living at the same address. Hope not Hate have been told about their mistake but from experience there is little hope of a correction.

On Tuesday another post on their Purple Rain attack blog claims that an ex-National Front member has been made chair of Boston & Skegness branch with a picture of Cllr Victoria Ayling and some quotes from the widely condemned and refuted Daily Mail smear against her. Hope not Hate's selective quoting makes it appear there is no doubt about the claims when Cllr Ayling has denied being an active member of the NF and said that she had some involvement with them in the 70s as research for a degree course.

In an email newsletter sent out yesterday begging for money to fund their anti-UKIP campaign, the man who profits from their trade union funding, Nick Lowles, said:

At this weekend's party conference, they tried to remove journalists from a fringe meeting on Sharia Law. They didn't want the public to see their true colours -- and sure enough one of the first questions asked was, "How can you be both a Muslim and an English man?"

What Lowles fails to mention of course is that this wasn't a question asked by the fringe organisers, it was a question from the audience and the rest of audience booed and jeered the man who asked the question. UKIP is quite happy to shows it true colours - the reaction of the audience shows that the implication that you can't be English and Muslim is something that UKIPpers don't agree with even if the British government says you can't be - but Lowles and his trade union paymasters instead prefer to mislead the public to help their election campaign on behalf of the Labour Party.

UKIP won't reveal their true agenda to voters. That's up to us. Make a £25 donation now to help us expose the extremist views they're trying to hide.

The more supporters like you chip in, the more leaflets we can deliver, the more ads we can run, the more campuses we can visit -- the more hope we can spread.

And here we see why Lowles and his trade union paymasters are lying and defaming UKIP members - they're trying to raise funds for a leaflet and advertising campaign attacking UKIP and judging by the fact that tax dodging Hope not Hate is asking for £25 a time in donations they must be planning to spend big.

Hope not Hate's new-found obsession with UKIP isn't ideological in any way, it's purely financial. Like any self-respecting communist, Nick Lowles makes a lot of money out of his political career and that money is only going to keep coming while there is an "enemy" to fight. For the trade union money, the enemy is anyone who challenges Labour. For government money (they get a lot of our taxes as well) the enemy is anyone Lowles calls a fascist or racist.

Cold War 2

The EU-sponsored coup in Ukraine has taken its inevitable course with a Russian invasion of Crimea.

Russia has had imperialist ambitions since the break-up of the USSR. The CIS was created almost immediately after the USSR broke up and a union of Russia and Belarus was created with the intention of expanding to other former Soviet states. To provide a supply of compliant republics to feed the NewSSR (see what I did there?) Russia changed its policy on breakaway republics - apart from those trying to break away from Russia of course - from ignoring them and letting them sort themselves out to supporting them, including militarily if it suits their agenda.

It is this policy of supporting pro-Russian breakaway states that led it to invade South Ossetia and Abkhazia a few years ago (both of which want to join the NewSSR) and why it has now invaded Crimea. It also helps that the ceding of Crimea to Ukraine during the days of the USSR and the subsequent failure of Russia to reintegrate Crimea immediately after the break-up of the USSR is something that still grates with the Russian people so Putin can expect public support for what he's doing.

The first cold war came about when America's sphere of influence came up against USSR's sphere of influence. The second cold war is just starting and it's the EU expanding into Russia's sphere of influence. It is inevitable and pre-mediated and demonstrates the lengths the EU will go to to expand its empire. And just like in Georgia, the EU will stand impotently on the sidelines telling Russia that they're being naughty whilst doing nothing to help.

There is no doubt that the EU sponsored the coup in Ukraine - we all know it, the Russians know it. Thousands of pro-EU protesters spent weeks in Kiev and someone supplied them with food and made sure their bills were paid while they were waving the ring of stars in the capital.

Crimea will come out of this conflict in the same state as South Ossetia and Abkhazia - recognised by Russia and a handful of the usual suspects as an independent state but officially unofficial. The EU's dream of controlling the gas and oil production in Crimea as well as its strategically important Black Sea port has come to nothing whilst Russia's relations with the west have declined once again. The world is a more dangerous and unpredictable place than it was a few weeks ago and all in the name of Russian and EU imperialism.

Don't get mad, get even