Plaid Cymru council threatens disciplinary action for not speaking Welsh

Gwynedd Council have threatened Leisure Centre staff in Bangor, Tywyn and Dolgellau with disciplinary action if they can't speak Welsh.

The Plaid Cymru-run council's Language Committee have threatened disciplinary action against staff who don't speak "the customer's language of choice".

The Welsh Language Measure 2011 places a duty on public bodies to provide services in Welsh to Welsh speakers but has no such provision for English speakers and no protection for people who choose not to learn to speak Welsh.

The 2011 census showed that Polish is the second most spoken language in the UK and almost as many people in Wales speak Polish as speak Welsh.

Labour councillor in London under investigation for electoral fraud

A Labour councillor for Chadwell Heath in London is being investigated by the police for alleged false statements on his nomination papers.

UKIP London referred Cllr Sam Tarry's nomination papers to the police after consulting with the nominating officer for Barking & Dagenham. He is believed to be living in Brighton with his girlfriend and renting out his flat in Barking for the last year but claimed to be living in the aforementioned flat on his nomination papers.

Making a false statement on your nomination papers is punishable by up to 6 months in prison.

David Cameron's utter humiliation

The former Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Jean-Claude Juncker, has been appointed president of  the EU Commission.

David Cameron made a big noise about opposing Juncker's appointment in an attempt to convince people of his eurosceptic credentials. He even said at one point that if Juncker was appointed president he would consider thinking about contemplating possibly maybe suggesting on a strictly non-committal and equivocal basis that he might possibly consider sort of suggesting that we might in the fullness of time and in the right circumstances consider possibly leaving the EU.

He was, of course, lying. Juncker's mission as president of the EU Commission will be to drive closer integration and remove more of our sovereignty. National vetoes and opt-outs will be abolished wherever possible and the drive for a United State of Europe will be made a priority. David Cameron was powerless to stop Juncker's appointment and he's powerless to change the direction of the EU. Any talk of leaving the EU is as empty as the promise he made to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and as empty as his promise to hold a referendum on our membership of the EU in 2017.

Enough is enough

Tory think tank predicts 12 seats that will fall to UKIP

Tory think tank, the Bow Group, has named 12 seats it believes UKIP could win in the general election next year - 6 from the Tories, 5 from Labour and 1 from the Lib Dems.

The seats they identify are:

Constituency	Incumbent	Majority
Cambourne & Redruth	George Eustice	66
Thurrock	Jackie Doyle-Price	92
Newton Abbot	Anne-Marie Morris	523
Great Grimsby	Austin Mitchell	714
Waveney	Peter Aldous	769
Telford	David Wright	981
Walsall North	David Winnick	990
Plymouth Sutton & Devonport	Oliver Colvile	1,149
Newcastle-under-Lyme	Paul Farrelly	1,552
Plymouth Moor View	Alison Seabeck	1,591
St Ives	Andrew George	1,719
Halesowen & Rowley Regis	James Morris	2,023

H/T: Breitbart

Chuka Umunna says UKIP supporters are too thick to use email or internet

Labour MP Chuka Ummuna says that UKIP supporters are disengaged because they can't do things like send and receive emails or browse the internet.

Chuka's email address is [email protected] if you want to explain what a patronising pillock you think he is. We were going to put together a guide to sending emails as UKIP supporters are all too thick to figure it out ourselves but then we realised that UKIP supporters are all too thick to browse the internet as well so you wouldn't be able to read it. A real time saver thanks to Chuka's word of wisdom.

The UKIP Supporters Group on Facebook have got some Labour supporters to help them do some number crunching on the average interactions - ie. likes, shares and comments - per post from each of the mainstream political parties (plus the Lib Dems, Greens and BNP) because obviously, as Chuka says, UKIP supporters are too thick to use the internet. Interestingly, despite UKIP supporters being too thick to use the internet, the UKIP Facebook page gets nearly five times as many interactions as the BNP page which gets more interactions than Labour, the Tories, the Lib Dems and the Greens. In fact, each post on the UKIP Facebook page gets more than double the interactions on average of Labour, the Tories, Lib Dems and Greens combined.

Disgraced Lib Dem MP Hancock admits "inappropriate and unprofessional" relationship

Disgraced independent Lib Dem MP, Mike Hancock, has admitted having an "inappropriate and unprofessional" relationship with a mentally ill teenager.

GUILTY

The CPS decided not to charge Hancock when the complaint of sexual assault was made four years ago and again when Portsmouth City Council referred the results of their investigation to them. Hancock denied the sexual assault at the time and still hasn't admitted it, resulting in the victim of this "inappropriate and unprofessional" relationship taking out a civil case against him in the High Court which he continued to deny until yesterday.

Hancock has admitted to having an "inappropriate and unprofessional" relationship with the mentally ill woman who was a teenager at the time and apologised for falsely claiming that the case she brought against him was financially motivated. He's also apologised for the distress it caused her and her son and the worsening of her psychiatric condition that occured as a result. He tried to avoid going to court because of his own mental state as a result of the case which saw him checking in to a Priory clinic where he remained during his election campaign last month but the judge forced him to face justice.

Hancock lost his seat on Portsmouth City Council last month to UKIP's Cllr Julie Swan. The Lib Dems did a deal not to put a candidate up against him but that wasn't enough to save his skin. The people of Portsmouth don't want this lying sleaze representing them and if he had any honour he would resign. Hancock should be the poster boy of the campaign to introduce voter recall for MPs that would have allowed the people of Portsmouth to rid themselves of this leech long ago.

EFD group's future secured for another term

Nigel Farage and Roger Helmer have managed to secure the future of the Europe of Freedom and Democracy group in the EU Parliament today.

The EFD group will comprise UKIP's 24 MEPs, Five Star's 14 Italian MEPs, 2 MEPs from the Sweden Democrats, an MEP from the Czech Free Citizen's Party, one from the Latvian Farmers' Union and one French MEP who was elected on a Front National ticket but resigned from the party two days after the election to sit as an independent.

It was looking increasingly unlikely that UKIP would manage to form a group after the pro-EU Tories pillaged UKIP's previous allies for its own group, selfishly risking handing the French National Front and its extremist allies the chance to become the official voice of euroscepticism in the EU Parliament just so Cameron could deprive UKIP of the opportunity to re-form its moderate eurosceptic EFD group. Luckily Farage and Helmer managed to pull it out of the bag but it was very nearly a case of vote Tory, get National Front.

Farage says that he is hopeful that more MEPs will join the EFD group now that its future is secure.

UKIP membership approaches 40k

UKIP's membership has hit another record with membership standing at 39,147 this weekend.

The party is hopeful of breaking through the 40,000 barrier before conference in Doncaster in September.

Young Independence has also seen an increase in its membership which has broken through the 2,500 mark.

The Lib Dems currently have around 44,000 members so it looks like UKIP will be beating them on number of members as well as elections.

Click here to join the People's Army!

5 Star Movement vote to join UKIP in EFD group

Earlier this week we said that it looked increasingly unlikely that the EFD group would survive after the French National Front and the Tories had pillaged the membership but that Nigel Farage always has something up his sleeve.

It looks very much like what he had up his sleeve was an ace because Beppe Grillo's 5 Star Movement's members voted overwhelmingly today to join the EFD group, taking the number of countries represented in the group to 6 and just one short of the minimum to formally recognise the group in the EU parliament.

Commenting on 5 Star Movement's decision to join the group, Farage hints at more members being unveiled next week.

This gives a great confidence boost to those other delegation members who are coming to sign up to our common Group next week.  This feeds into a process of solidifying what should be a big group.

Roger Helmer elected leader of UKIP's MEPs

Roger Helmer was voted in as group leader of UKIP's MEPs yesterday amid uncertainty over the future of the Europe of Freedom and Democracy group.

The EU has consistently raised the bar for the formation of groups in the EU Parliament to try and squeeze out the smaller parties and keep all the influence with the europhile parties. The current rules require a group to have at least 25 members representing 7 member states which UKIP managed to achieve last time but is struggling to do this time after losing members to the European Conservatives & Reformists that the Tories run and a new group being set up by the French National Front.

The unwillingness of the EU to listen to what they're being told has not only allowed extremists to win seats across the EU, it has allowed them to gain influence in the EU Parliament by poaching members from UKIP's moderate EFD group to join a group led by the French equivalent of the BNP. Once Le Pen and her allies are settled in, the Tories and the other eurofederalists will wish they had UKIP and the EFD moderating the eurosceptic contingent in the EU Parliament.

It's looking increasingly unlikely that the EFD group will survive but never say never, Farage always has something up his sleeve.

Lord Pearson demands more UKIP peers

UKIP peer, Lord Pearson, has written to the Cabinet Office demanding that UKIP be given more representation in the House of Lords to reflect the party's vote share.

The Conservative/Lib Dem coalition agreement promised to make the House of Lords reflect the vote share at the last general election which would mean give UKIP 23 peers according to University College of London. UKIP currently has 3 peers, all of which defected from the Conservatives.

The Cabinet Office says that it has no plans to increase the number of UKIP peers in the House of Lords.

Tories hold Newark but UKIP slash majority

The Conservatives have won the Newark by-election but with a much reduced majority thanks to UKIP's Roger Helmer.

Tory candidate Robert Jenrick went into the election defending Patrick Mercer's 16,152 vote majority and 44th safest seat and won by a far less impressive 7,403 votes. If this result is indicative of the general election next year, cabinet ministers are going to lose their seats.

Roger Helmer ran an excellent campaign and UKIP was once again the only real opposition to the incumbent parties. Roger came a very strong second with Labour a distant third, an independent in fourth, the Green Party in fifth and the Lib Dems successfully defending the challenge from the Monster Raving Loony Party to finish in sixth.

Party	Votes	%	+/-
Conservative	17,431	45.0	-8.9
UKIP	10,028	25.9	+22.1
Labour	6,842	17.7	4.6
Independent (Paul Baggaley)	1,891	4.9	-
Green	1,057	2.7	-
Lib Dem	1,004	2.6	-17.4
Monster Raving Loony Party	168	0.4	-
Independent (Andy Hayes)	117	0.3	-
Bus Pass Elvis Party	87	0.2	-
Common Good	64	0.2	-
Patriotic Socialist Party	18	0.1	-
Turnout 52.67% (-18.69%)
Swing Con to UKIP 15.46%

Independent poll puts UKIP in the lead in Newark

An independent survey of voting intentions of 2,100 people in Newark carried out by a group of students at Loughborough University puts UKIP's Roger Helmer slightly ahead of the Tory toff Robert Jenrick.

They haven't published their data or methodology so it can't be checked for veracity but it's still an interesting poll because it backs up what the bookies are saying in Newark which is that people are backing UKIP in big numbers.

Party	Votes	%
UKIP	651	31%
Conservative	630	30%
Labour	441	21%
Lib Dem	147	7%
Other	231	11%

Only 24 hours until Newark can vote UKIP

Despite a sustained media campaign against UKIP's Roger Helmer, attempting to portray him as a homophobic "retired colonel" Roger Helmer is the bookies' choice in Newark.

In just 24 hours the people of Newark will get to choose their next MP and it's a two horse race between the millionaire Tory toff living off his wife's half a million salary or hard working businessman Roger Helmer. It should be a no brainer really!

Tory candidate for Newark tries to cover up his privileged upbringing and wealth

The Conservative candidate for Newark has been accused of hiding his wealth and private education from voters to try and avoid getting a reputation as a Tory toff.

Robert Jenrick and his wife Michal own two £2m+ houses in London and a £1m+ mansion in the country. His wife earns half a million a year working for an American law firm and they can afford to rent a house in Newark that they don't even live in just so he has an address in the constituency. Jenrick's CV says that he is state primary school educated which is a bit of an odd thing to say ... unless you're trying to skirt round the fact you went to a £13k a year private school of course!