Third place for UKIP in Barnsley?

According to a poll for the Mail on Sunday, UKIP is on target to come third in the Barnsley by-election next week.

The poll by Survation has Labour way out in front with 63% of the vote, the Conservative & _Λ^European Unionist Party second with 13%, UKIP on 9%, the Limp Dims in fourth with 6%, "other" on 5% and the BNP in last with 4%.

Guido is currently leading with "Clegg Set To Be Humiliated by the Miner’s Daughter" referring, of course, to the UKIP candidate, Jane Collins.  I have a sneaking suspicion that Guido has a bit of a soft spot for UKIP as the only anti-establishment party that isn't full of racists and lunatics.

In December we were celebrating consolidating our fourth place position and inching closer to the Lib Dems, now we're snapping on their heels in a by-election.  I guess it's true what they say - give them enough rope and they'll hand themselves.

Can UKIP survive without Nigel Farage?

The one thing that unifies UKIP supporters and UKIP enemies is the belief that without Nigel Farage, UKIP will die a painful death. I believe, they are wrong on many levels. The enemies of UKIP are suffering from a mild dose of severe wishful thinking and the members of UKIP who think the same are suffering from an inability to past the end of their nose.

Whilst Nigel Farage is the single most common reason why people first heard about or joined UKIP it would be both foolish and offensive to suggest that without Nigel Farage the party would die a death.

Of course, Nigel Farage is a fascinatingly dynamic individual who could charm a Horse to drink water and is a hugely persuasive individual. There is no denying that. The only people that do, tend to be the ones who take issue that shock horror, the leader of a party asks for some discipline amongst members.

There are many talented members of UKIP. Some are young individuals who have not been around for long and others are UKIP work horses who have been around longer than some of us have had hot dinners. Whether or not Nigel Farage was to leave UKIP, of which nothing suggests he will any time soon, UKIP are covered for the immediacy of such a thing and the long term of such a thing happening.

So, to the UKIP members who worry for UKIP anno domini, stop insulting yourselves and your party with the thought that everything is down to one individual. The only time UKIP will ever die is the day the members all leave, which is never going to happen. One man, regardless of how great he is, is not the supporting beam and the trophy roof all at once.

Remember, many people wrote Labour off when Tony Blair left. They are now leading in the opinion polls. When Thatcher left the Tories many Conservatives started writing their party wills and for many years wrote their own party off.

The reason that these two parties survived despite losing two massive figures was down to one thing and one thing only. Their members.

And guess what, we have a bonus. Our members are far more talented, committed and ready than any member of any political party ever has been.

Nigel Farage is only as dynamic and influential as the party members are. That can mean only one thing, there will be life after Nigel.

Barroso wants to spread Libyan asylum seekers in Italy around the EU

The BBC reports the following comment by Emperor Barroso on the Italian government's concerns that they are about to be flooded by refugees from their former colony, Libya:

I think if this problem develops that way, we have to be ready to do it in a European way, because these people are not just trying to come to Italy. We have to prepare a response that is compatible with our values.

As is always the case with Emperor Barroso, you have to look at what he's not saying to get the true meaning.  What he means when he says "we have to be ready to do it in a European way, because these people are not just trying to come to Italy" is that Libyans seeking refuge in Italy will be spread around the EU, not dealt with in the first friendly country they land in as international law requires.

This is yet another example of the EU acting like a country.  What is happening in Libya is appalling but we mustn't allow it to be used as an excuse for EU empire building.  International law requires asylum seekers to be taken in by the first friendly country they land in.  Libyans have the whole Mediterranean coast - European and African - to choose from, they don't need to end up here.

EU putting lives at risk with new nurse training rules

New EU rules means that foreign nurses will be able to work in UK hospitals regardless of their grasp of the English language after just 2 days of basic training involving role play and multi-choice questionnaires.

The rules at the moment say that any nurse from an EU member state who is considered to be inadequately trained can be required to complete up to 6 months additional training and pass exams.  Only a quarter of nurses finish it but under the new rules most of them will.

Nurses from outside of the EU will still have to go through the tests and exams that they currently do, it's only under-qualified EU nurses that will be allowed to bypass the safety checks that have been put in place to protect lives.

Mentally ill prisoners taking British government to court for benefits

Four convicted criminals and a former inmate in secure mental hospitals like Broadmoor are taking the British government to the EU Court of Human Rights for the "right" to receive benefits while they're locked up for rape, murder and other serious crimes.

Their case revolves around the fact that other patients who are sent there by the courts for their own safety or because they pose a risk to the public are entitled to claim benefits.

This all comes back to the argument against giving prisoners the right to vote - if you commit a crime and go to prison you have failed to live by the basic rules that society sets and do so in the knowledge that if you are caught committing the crime you will go to prison and be deprived of most of your rights and privileges.

The social security system was set up to help people in need, not to pay for fags and porn for criminals.  These people are locked up in a secure hospital as a punishment as well as treatment of their mental illness.  They can't pop down to the local shopping centre to spend their money and they haven't got homes to keep and bills to pay for.

If the EU Court of Human Rights rules that it's unfair to deprive mentally ill dangerous criminals of their "right" to benefits when non-criminals in the same hospital are allowed them then the answer is simple: don't pay the benefits to any of them.  Pensioners in care homes get their benefits taken off them, as do people staying in hospital long term so why are mental patients any different?

Tory MP, David Davis, said:

Yet again this is not an issue of human rights but of lawyers trying to play the system on behalf of their clients.

It is to be hoped that when the State tries to do the best possible thing, both for society and to rehabilitate criminals, that these efforts are not crippled by the meddling of the European Court.

No Dave, it's a case of the British government letting the EU run our country and you are helping to make it happen by propping up the europhile ConDem government.

Nigel Farage, meanwhile, said:

It would be an outrage if any prisoner received a penny of social security payments. It is disgusting that people like Ian Brady could get a back dated pension, stripped from the pockets of law abiding taxpayers on the wishes of foreign judges.

Ultimately it's the rabid europhile, Ken Clarke, that will make the decision as Home Secretary and as he's going around telling MPs that they're going to have to comply with the same EU court's ruling that prisoners be allowed to vote, the result is a foregone conclusion.

Jane Collins says No Votes for Prisoners

You can find out more about Jane Collins and the election campaign at the UKIP Barnsley website.

Hat-tip: Heaver

In defence of UKIP's immigration policy

Last night's Question Time gave one statistic that absolutely justifies UKIP's immigration policy.

There are currently 2 and a half million unemployed people in the UK and only 440,000 job vacancies.  That's 5.68 unemployed people for every job.  Meanwhile, net annual immigration into the UK is approximately 210,000.  Assuming only 1 in 4 immigrants are looking for a job (women, children and eastern European mafioso don't usually work) then that adds another 52,500 people to the unemployment figures, either because they aren't working or because they take a job that an unemployed person already living here could have had.

People who advocate immigration controls are usually denounced as racists or inhumane because just think of all those poor asylum seekers and people who want to come and make a better life for themselves.

Firstly, asylum is not the same as immigration.  Asylum is where someone at serious risk of death, injury or human rights abuses in their own country is allowed to live in another country where they are safe from persecution.  Immigration is where someone decides to move to another country because they want to.

Secondly, whilst everyone should have aspirations and the opportunity to improve their lot in life, they don't have the right to degrade other peoples' quality of life to do so.  People need to work and they need somewhere to live.  There aren't enough jobs and houses to go around the people who already live here - whether they've been in the country a week or whether they can trace their ancestry back to Alfred the Great.  Allowing another 210,000 people into the country will put more demands on the job and housing market with disastrous effects for people already living here.

There is a myth that's put about by immigration fans that we need immigrants to do the jobs that people already living here won't do.  It's simply not true that you won't find 440,000 people out of those 2.5m unemployed that will do the rubbish jobs.  They will do them if they are better off employed - even in a crap job - than they are unemployed and UKIP's flat tax policy will do just that by taking low paid people out of the tax system altogether.

For some reason Nigel didn't take the opportunity to talk up UKIP's immigration and flat tax policies (although he did mention the latter) which is a shame.  But it was still a good show for UKIP and during and after Question Time, the word "Farage" was trending worldwide on Twitter.

To finish on a completely different topic to the one I started with, did anyone else notice that in the trailer for Question Time, David Dimbleby announced that he had "four major politicians" for the show?  UKIP is well and truly in the mainstream and Nigel Farage is more popular than ever.  Something you certainly couldn't say about Michael Heseltine who was frankly an embarrassment.

Red letter day

I was surprised to come home from a couple of days away to see a UKIP envelope on the doormat with a red letter inside it.  My initial thought was "bugger, who have I upset now?"

It wasn't a summons to a disciplinary committee though, it was a second membership renewal reminder from UKIP.

I don't pay by Direct Debit and I'm terribly disorganised so I tend to read letters and forget to do anything about them.  It's good in a way though because I like to see what letters we're sending out to members who are late renewing to see how much effort is being made to keep them!

Setting aside the fact that people with poor eyesight will find it difficult to read black text on dark red paper (and a sizeable proportion of our members are elderly and probably have failing eyesight) surely a red letter for a reminder is sending out the wrong message?  Our supporters and voters are in no way obliged to give us money but the red letter implies an overdue bill and some people might misinterpret it as a demand for money rather than a request with the associated distress.

To make sure I wasn't making a mountain out of a molehill I checked with the wife and she agreed!

MPs in futile rejection of prisoner voting rights

The turncoats in Westminster have finally grown a pair and voted in favour of a motion calling for the British government to defy the EU Court of Human Rights over giving prisoners the right to vote.

The motion is non-binding and the British government is still adamant that it must comply with the EU Court of Human Rights' ruling that a blanket ban on prisoners voting is a breach of their rights.

It's good that at least some of the EU's regional administrators in Westminster have defied their EU masters but only 256 of 650 British MPs voted and only 234 of them voted in favour of the motion.  The other 400 will vote in favour of capitulation to the EU when the time comes.

Portuguese bond yields up 1% in a month

The Portuguese government is denying that it needs a bailout from the EU and IMF despite the yield rates on Portuguese bonds rising from an average of 6.7% a month ago to 7.6% today.

I don't care, I've stuffed my mattress with US dollars!

The higher the yield rate, the less confidence investors have in the Portuguese economy.  They demand higher yields (interest rates) on the bonds because they're taking on a bigger risk of not getting their money back than if they were buying bonds from other countries.

A month ago investors demanded only 6.7% interest on Portuguese bonds but today it reached 7.6% before the European Central Bank (ECB) intervened and bought bonds with lower yields to reduce the average rate and give the impression that the risk is lower.

Of course it's partly Portuguese money - money they pay into the ECB's Treasury - that's being used to buy Portuguese bonds but to the casual investor the low yield will be a convincing enough con to make them think it's a safe investment and for institutional investors the more money Portugal owes to the ECB, the less likely they are to let it fail.

I said a month ago that Portugal would capitulate within a couple of weeks.  It seems I underestimated their resolve but the outcome is still going to be the same: Portugal will be forced to take a bailout from the EU and the IMF and it will be soon.

Frank Carson is supporting UKIP

The comedian, Frank Carson, is supporting UKIP in the local elections in Northern Ireland this year and pledged to fund the party "handsomely".

Carson says that he sees UKIP as an alternative to sectarian politics in Northern Ireland.  That's pretty much what I said in November last year. One commenter on the Belfast Telegraph website said "I don't like that they believe the Scottish and Welsh assemblies are essentially pointless. A United Kingdom should be a United Kingdom, not a Kingdom dictated to by London".  Pretty much what myself and many other members have been saying for some time (not to mention most English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish people).

Steve Allison appointed Vice Chair

Former UKIP Hartlepool Borough Councillor, Steve Allison, has been appointed Vice Chairman of UKIP.

Steve was elected to the NEC last year and was on Tom Congdon's campaign team for the leadership election.  His appointment to a senior post is interesting because he's not a Faragista.

Other party leaders like Cameron and Clegg and the Millibeast surround themselves with yes-men.  Senior positions in the LibLabCon are rewards for being a sycophant; in UKIP it's because you've got talent.  It's one of the things that make UKIP different from the tired old parties.

Steve's is very much in favour of openness and reform in the party and quite openly speaks his mind if he disagrees with a decision.  In other words, he's exactly what we need in a Vice Chairman.  If you fill the upper echelons of your party with people who only ever tell you what you want to hear then you quickly lose touch with your membership with disastrous consequences.  You only have to look at the rapidly shrinking membership of the Conservatives and the open revolt of the remains of their membership over their europhilia for a case in point.

Good luck Steve and good luck anyone who crosses him!

Only 1 in 15 Tory MPs support in/out EU referendum

MPs voted yesterday on an amendment to the ConDem's EU Bill - described by the Conservative MP, Douglas Carswell, as "a bogus EU bill" - that would trigger an in/out referendum on EU membership when we, the electorate, voted against an EU power grab.

Little Willy says vote
Conservative and they'll
make the hurting stop.
Scouts honour.

The chances of us getting a referendum under the EU Bill are somewhere between zero and um ... zero ... so how many of the 306 Conservative MPs do you think backed up their false claim of being a eurosceptic party by voting in favour of the amendment?  Half?  Three quarters?  No, it was 20.  Twenty Conservative MPs out of 306 who pretend to be representing a eurosceptic party at election time voted to give us a referendum on EU membership when given the chance.

The Conservative Party is not a eurosceptic party.  Their MPs and MEPs have all gone native.  Tory supporters put their faith in the likes of Douglas Carswell and the other handful of eurosceptic Conservatives in Westminster but they're frustrated at every turn by the sheer weight of europhile MPs and sycophants who have surrendered themselves entirely to the whip and will vote how they are told.  They put their faith in Roger Helmer and Dan Hannan, not realising that the token eurosceptic Conservative MEPs are there to attract votes and deflect attention away from the fact that the Tories are firmly in the pro-EU camp, along with Labour and the Lib Dems.  The Conservative and Unionist Party is, in reality, the Conservative and European Unionist Party despite the vague rhetoric from Little Willy about controlling the EU's constant power grabs.

Millions of people were led to believe they were voting for a eurosceptic party when they put their X next to the Conservative Party candidate - they were conned into voting for ever closer union, ever increasing power for the EU and ever rising bills for the privilege.