Open meeting in Kendal

Cumbrian voters of every political persuasion have been asked to lend their votes to UKIP in the Euro-elections.

The bold call was made by party chairman, Paul Nuttall, at an open meeting held in Kendal at the weekend.

"Lend us your vote," was his message talking about next June's elections for the European Parliament.

"If you like the EU you can vote Labour, Conservative or Lib Dem. If you don't like the EU, then there is only one show in town – UKIP.

"We are no longer a single issue party and have a raft of policies on all manner of subjects, such as education, law and order, health and energy.

"But, in relation to the Euro-elections, there is only one issue – the European Union. And we are the only party fighting to get Britain out of it and regain the right to run our own country.

"You are not electing a government or even a council, so please lend us your vote in the Euro-election," said Mr Nuttall, who is the party's lead candidate in the North west for the contest.

Also present at the lively meeting, held at the Stonecross Manor Hotel, was Phil Griffiths, North West chairman and Dr Fred McGlade, regional organizer, who also spoke of the party's election campaign.

Titford Secures 6th Formers' Approval for Leaving the EU

On Thursday night (13.11.08) 60 sixth formers at Brentwood School in Essex were treated to a lively debate on the motion: 'Britain should leave the European Union' between Jeffrey Titford, the Eastern Counties UKIP MEP and Linda Jack who is the number two candidate for the Liberal Democrats at next year's European Election.

Ms Jack centred her case against the motion on the familiar territory of the need for countries to work together through EU membership and that pulling out would leave Britain isolated. Mr Titford pointed out that "there was life before membership of the EU" and highlighted the huge cost of British membership both in financial and political terms, with the unelected European Commission becoming increasingly powerful at the expense of democratically elected governments in the member states. He also illustrated how our basic rights, such as the presumption of innocence are being eroded by the European Arrest Warrant and other attempts to make the British people subject to European style justicial processes.

After an equally lively question and answer session with the students, a vote was taken and the motion was carried by 35 votes to 23. Speaking after the debate Mr Titford said: "I was delighted to be asked to take part in the debate and found the question and answer session particularly stimulating and interesting. It was encouraging to see that many of the students had a good understanding of the very serious problems being created by British membership of the EU or were open-minded enough to take them on board."

Lies, damned lies, and career politicians....

Don't you find it difficult to understand sometimes how the UK, which is overwhelmingly eurosceptic, has somehow over the years managed to elect so many europhile MEPs?

Obviously a large part of the problem is that the Conservative Party pretends to be eurosceptic; but at some stage on the flight or Eurostar journey to Brussels or Strasbourg Tory MEPs undergo a dramatic change in not only attitude but policy. Within the European Parliament they are on the whole keen Europeans, happy to support and promote harmonising legislation that takes the UK on another unwanted step towards political integration.

It is with interest that I read that a Eastern Region MEP, the Liberal Democrat Andrew Duff, has recently been made President of the Union of European Federalists (UEF). The UEF is a nongovernmental and supranational organisation “dedicated to the promotion of a…federal Europe”. In fairness to Mr Duff he is openly an avid europhile; although his party is starting to realise their pro-European stance is a big vote loser with the British public (as the Euro elections of 2004 so starkly showed) Mr Duff continues to try and swim against the tide of sense and reason and take our country in a federalist direction.

And so Mr Duff used his recent election as President to outline the key objectives of the UEF. Unsurprisingly the ambition of this organisation is to ensure that the Treaty of Lisbon is ratified in 2009. Why do I write this? Just in case you needed another reason to oppose this revamped European Constitution…