Labour MP John Healey has a go at grieving UKIP councillor

Labour MP for Wentworth & Deane, John Healey, has been called on to apologise after claiming that a UKIP councillor in Rotherham "walked away from [his] job".

The offending tweet is referring to former UKIP councillor, Ian Finnie, who recently resigned from the council because he refused to take public money when he couldn't put in the hours. He lost two of his brothers last year and another has serious health problems which has itself brought on health problems of his own.

Numerous people have told Healey the circumstances around Ian Finnie's understandable and entirely honourable decision to stand down but he has yet to apologise.

UKIP election news on Twitter

For live UKIP election news through the night, follow @Bloggers4UKIP on Twitter.

UKIP candidate Gurkha "parasites" Twitter account is a FAKE

A fake Twitter account purporting to be UKIP candidate Bill Walker has posted offensive comments referring to Gurkhas as "parasites".

Bill Walker deleted his Twitter account some time ago but it has since been re-registered by another person to smear him. Once again, it is believed to be the work of convicted internet troll, Joshua Bonehill-Paine who has boasted of having a large collection of social media accounts standing by to attack UKIP during this election campaign. He has already admitted to being behind the fake Alex Wood account and the UKIP Voice website.

The UKIP Fact or Fiction website has done the research. It would be nice if the police did some research of their own and if it is Bonehill, get him in front of a magistrate before he harasses anyone else.

Fake UKIP Twitter accounts posting offensive and abusive material

A number of fake UKIP Twitter accounts have been set up, posting homophobic and racist comments. Some newspapers have gleefully published tweets made by these obviously fake accounts.

The fake profiles are believed to be the work of convicted thug, Joshua Bonehill-Paine, who is currently awaiting sentencing for another campaign of harassment and malicious communications perpetrated during and after a trial earlier in the year for harassment and malicious communications which saw him narrowly escape a prison sentence.

Competition time!

Earlier today I sent the following message to members of the Bloggers4UKIP Facebook group:

Bloggers4UKIP has been ticking over nicely for just over 2 years and getting about 5,000 page views per month. We have 122 Google Connect followers and is visited regularly by academics and the EU Parliament.

What we need is more members and supporters to contribute to the blog - most of the content is still written by me and I never intended Bloggers4UKIP to be a full time blog for me!

Here's how it works at Bloggers4UKIP in a nutshell: I am an administrator, not an editor and as long as you don't say anything that is likely to get me sued then pretty much anything goes as long as it's relevant.

I am currently trying to arrange an independently judged competition for the best article written for Bloggers4UKIP during October to mark our 2nd anniversary (Bloggers4UKIP's birthday was a couple of weeks ago) so if you want in, get in touch through Facebook, via Twitter (@bloggers4UKIP) or the contact page on Bloggers4UKIP.

Now the second part of the message: following Bloggers4UKIP.

As I said, there are 122 Goggle Connect followers of Bloggers4UKIP which is a fantastic show of support but 150 would be nice! You can follow Bloggers4UKIP by clicking the Follow button under the picture of David Cameron on the right hand side of the blog.

You can also follow Bloggers4UKIP on Twitter - @bloggers4ukip.

One final following opportunity - Networked Blogs on Facebook. Why not show your support by following Bloggers4UKIP on Facebook. We only have 7 followers on Networked Blogs as it's only been promoted for a couple of weeks.

We now have 124 followers on Google Connect, 8 followers on Networked Blogs and we've had an extra couple of followers on Twitter and an offer to write for Bloggers4UKIP.  Thanks to those readers who have decided to follow us!

Now for the competition I mentioned above:

Several people are already signed up to write for Bloggers4UKIP and there has been an offer already today to write for the blog.  During the month of October I am inviting new contributors to come forward and write for Bloggers4UKIP.  The fine details need to be worked out but one post per contributor written between the 1st and 22nd of October (by anyone but me) will be sent to Nigel Farage and the author of the post he likes the most will receive a signed copy of his book, Fighting Bull.

Scum Sucking Tories

Scum Sucking Tories

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.  My MP (until May if he manages to hang on that long) David Wright has landed himself in a spot of bother with his inappropriate use of Twitter.  It was inevitable really, he’s been at it for some time now.

There’s been a bit of a tweetmeme going on throughout the day with people explaining why they’ve never voted Tory/Labour using #ivenevervotedtory and #ivenevervotedlabour hashtags.

But David Wright, a junior minister in the Treasury for a few years now, had to take it too far with the comment “#ivenevervotedtory because you can put lipstick on a scum-sucking pig, but it’s still a scum-sucking pig. And cos they would ruin Britain”.

I noticed the tweet earlier but I was out with my kids and so I didn’t make anything of it but it’s ok because Tory Radio noticed it and took a screenshot (above) and then Iain Dale picked up on it.

David deleted the tweet an hour after it was posted and apologised but then, bizarrely, subsequently claimed that his Twitter account had been tinkered with!  But here’s the funny thing: it’s exactly his normal style and exactly the sort of juvenile insult he comes out with aimed at the Tories all the time.

I’ve started favouriting some of his more interesting tweets such as this inciteful comment on George Osbourne in Parliament:

Georgey Porgey looks like he is holding in a big fart

Whether he looked like he was holding in a big fart I don’t know but is this an appropriate comment from an MP, let alone a Minister in the British government?  Since December he’s drunk-tweeted me, insulted me and even tried to intimidate me to stop me from asking him questions about Labour laundering taxpayers money through the unions to get state funding for the party and whether he’s a union-sponsored MP (he refuses to tell say).

But rather than take it on the chin after apologising, he quickly changed his story and said his Twitter account had been hacked.  Absolute nonsense if you ask me!  Iain Dale is now calling for support for the Tory PPC for David’s Telford constituency, Tom Biggins who already has a big advantage over David Wright in that he’s not Labour and he’s not David Wright but David does have some support still in the sinkhole housing estates that make up the bulk of his constituency.  I want David Wright out of office as much as the Tories do but I won’t be voting for Tom Biggins who’s been parachuted in from Whitchurch, still in the county but a good hours drive away.  I will be voting for – and actively supporting – the UKIP candidate, Councillor Denis Allen who has lived in Telford for years, has been a councillor in Telford for years, has served as Mayor of Wellington in Telford and is currently Deputy Mayor of Telford & Wrekin Borough.

I have a great deal of respect for David Wright for being an early adopter of Twitter amongst MPs and the fact that despite a mutual loathing he still talks to me on Twitter, even if trying to get him to answer a question is like trying to nail jelly to the wall.  But he really doesn’t help himself with his failure to understand what is and isn’t an acceptable thing to say and do as an MP.  Every day he tweets he says something inappropriate and people have warned him about his tweeting activities but he plods on regardless writing gaffe after gaffe and inevitably has attracted the attentions of the rabid Tory Twitterati and bloggers, some of whom have regular slots on national news channels and columns in newspapers, who will doubtless hound him until he resigns or something more exciting comes along.

David will be desperate for a proper politician to do something daft in the next day or two to take the heat off him, let’s hope they’re all on their best behaviour at least until the end of the week!

Cross-posted: Wonko's World

Tweet for UKIP

Friends, Romans, countrymen (although, probably not many Romans I suspect), lend us your Twitter account.

For anyone unfamiliar with Twitter, it's a web service that calls itself a mini-blogging site and is basically a way for people to broadcast anything that's on their mind in 160 characters or less. It doesn't sound particularly useful or exciting but it has a strange addictiveness and the other services out there on the internet that make use of Twitter make it all the more useful.

One such service is TwitterFeed, a website that will take any RSS feed (like a table of contents for websites that other websites and applications can use) and posts new entries to your Twitter account.

Bloggers4UKIP uses Twitterfeed to post any new items from the blog to the Bloggers4UKIP Twitter account. People who "follow" Bloggers4UKIP on Twitter will see the title of the blog post and a link to it in their Twitter home page.

However, whilst Bloggers4UKIP has over 300 followers in Twitter, there is even more potential for promoting UKIP through Twitter using TwitterFeed to "re-tweet" posts from Bloggers4UKIP on your own Twitter account.

To do this, pop over to TwitterFeed.com and log in using an OpenID. If you don't have one (you may not realise you have one but you probably have) then there are instructions on how to get one. Once you are logged in, click on the Create new feed button and enter the login details for your Twitter account. In the RSS feed box, put in http://bloggers4ukip.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default. Set update frequency to Every 30 mins and post up to 5 new updates each time. Set Include ... to title & description and make sure the checkbox for Include item link is checked. Set Prefix each tweet with to "RT @bloggers4ukip " - this is important because it shows people where your post has come from and also lets us know how many people are doing it (and don't forget the space at the end!). Finally, make sure the Active box is ticked and save.

For more information and a tutorial with pictures, check the tutorial on the Tripwire website.

EU election results on Bloggers4UKIP

You can follow @Bloggers4UKIP on Twitter for up-to-the-minute news on the EU imperial elections.

Updates will appear on the blog throughout the evening.