UKIP News

UKIP MEP Mike Nattrass has today welcomed the findings of a new report which shows the M6 Toll has proved to be a costly mistake.

A new damning report published this week by the Campaign for Better Transport, says the 27-mile privately financed toll road has been bad news for the West Midlands, bad news for drivers and bad news for investors in the toll.
 
Looking at a recent Highways Agency report, reports by the Transport Select Committee and annual reports from Midlands Expressway Ltd, the Campaign for Better Transport says the toll failed to improve transport in the West Midlands and failed to deliver value for money to motorists.
 
The report’s findings come amid EU attempts to grab control over British roads and motorways and force through pay-as-you-go charges to use our roads.
 
The report states: “Toll roads are not, and will never be, a solution to congestion on British roads, no matter how attractive they may appear to cash-strapped politicians desperate to deliver otherwise unaffordable road schemes.
 
“Instead of promoting toll roads as a viable alternative to central Government money, the Department for Transport should use what little money remains in its coffers to maintain the roads we have and provide people with viable alternatives to car use.
 
“As we have seen from the M6 Toll, even a completely unregulated private sector cannot make money from toll roads. A regulated operator with fewer freedoms over the level of charges (as proposed by motoring organisations) would find it even harder to make a profit, unless supported by covert or overt taxpayer subsidies.”
 
Welcoming the report, Mr Nattrass said: “The report’s findings endorse everything I have said about the M6 Toll since it opened. The toll has been an expensive and embarrassing failure.
 
“The Toll, as the report states, has been overwhelming rejected by hauliers who instead pile onto the already congested M6.
 
“But despite this the EU wants to extend the toll motorways network under the European Electronic Toll Service Directive (EETS). It simply does not make sense.
 
“Our roads should remain in public ownership. We do not need anymore expensive failures like the M6 Toll,” he added.

The European Union is an economic and democratic disaster, UKIP MEP Gerard Batten has told Russia Today.

The London MEP said: "The way it was sold to people 40 years ago and has been ever since is that we must have it for trade and jobs.

"We do not need it for trade and jobs, even the European Union has backed down from that argument. 

“What we need is trade with Europe and the rest of the world, friendship and cooperation. We do not need to be members of this vast bureaucratic organization in order to achieve that.”

See the full interview with Russia Today here.

The seven newly-elected members of the UKIP National Executive Committee have been congratulated on their success by Party Chairman Paul Nuttall MEP.

Following a record number of 37 candidates for the seven vacant slots, at the conclusion of the counting of the votes by the team of 30 volunteers the following members were returned: Steve Allison, George Curtis, Hugh Williams, Jill Seymour, Mick McGough, Elizabeth Burton and Julia Reid.

George Curtis and Jill Seymour successfully retained their NEC seats.

After the count, Mr Nuttall said: "It was a complicated and time-consuming count for acting returning officer John Knotts and his team of voluteers and on behalf of the Party, I'd like to thank them for their efforts.

"I now look forward to seeing the new NEC members at their first meeting next Thursday on the eve of the Party's annual conference in Torquay."

UKIP has consistently opposed the introduction of the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) and The Extradition Act 2003.

It has done so because, unlike the Old Parties, it always understood that the criminal justice systems of many of the member states of the European Union did not measure up to the high standards set by the Common Law and other legal systems in place in the UK and that many people being haled off to face criminal proceedings in far-flung corners of the EU would so on the flimsiest of pretexts and without any Judge in the UK being able to scrutinise the evidence on which the draconian EAWs are based.

The year 2010 has seen UKIP campaigning tirelessly on the issue both at a general level and in particular cases. Thus William Dartmouth MEP engaged himself closely in the case of two men whisked off to Hungary to face investigation – not prosecution as the Extradition Act 2003 requires – and possible incarceration for years before charges were brought.

Thanks to William’s unstinting efforts the two men are now back in the UK. Then there was Gerard Batten MEP intervening in the case of Andrew Symeou who has been extradited to Greece on minimal evidence to face trial.

UKIP was also active in the case of Edmond Arapi who was tried and sentenced in absentia by an Italian Court to seventeen years imprisonment without right of appeal. Until this flawed measure is removed from the Statute Book new cases of gross injustice will fill newspapers and the airwaves every day.

Now the mainstream media are beginning belatedly  to take notice of our campaign. The Sunday Telegraph has carried a series of articles and a leader on the subject: Surge in Britons exported for trial, Arrested and held in Britain on demand of EU prosecutors, Extradition nightmare: 'When we first saw our son in jail it broke our hearts', More than 1,000 Britons were 'exported' for trial last year - and they couldn't even ask a British judge to test the case against them.

Andrew Gilligan’s Telegraph pieces reveal a shocking picture. Nearly three people a day are being spirited off to distant places to face lengthy investigations before possible trials according to standards that fall far below those which British people are used to and expect. Their use has risen dramatically in the last year: up by 51% in 2009-2010 as against 2008-2009. Gilligan cites cases which involve minor crimes where British Citizens have been extradited without consideration of the evidence to face the possibility of years on remand in foreign prisons.

Even David Blunkett, the Europhile Home Secretary who did Brussels’ bidding in introducing the Extradition Act in the first place, now has his misgivings: “I was right, as Home Secretary in the post-9/11 era, to agree to the European Arrest Warrant, but I was insufficiently sensitive to how it might be used.”

That, of course, is what comes of not listening to the sort of warnings UKIP were issuing at the time and ever since: that instead of this being used for genuinely serious crimes, it would result in British Citizens being extradited to face trial for minor matters at great expense to the British Taxpayer - resources which would be better used protecting our own Citizens against crime.

In its leader the Telegraph calls on the government to act but absolves the Coalition of any blame. This is, as you might expect, utterly misleading. The EU Directive that had Blunkett introducing the 2003 Act was steered through the European Parliament by Graham Watson MEP, a Liberal Democrat, with the unstinting support his fellow UK MEPs Lib Dems, Labour and, to their eternal disgrace, the Tories.

Only UKIP warned against it and voted consistently against it in the European Parliament. Now that its true nature is revealed we have the unedifying sight of former enthusiasts wriggling with shame and embarrassment at what they have wrought: Baroness Ludford and her crocodile tears, Graham Watson bleating on about terrorism (and just how many of last year’s 1032 were terrorists, Mr. Watson?), David Davis cravenly ducking debate with Nigel Farage on Question Time… so the list goes on.

Now that it has become evident that this Act is producing the most monstrous injustices, its former enthusiasts are suddenly discovering they were really against it all along and are leaping as hard as they can onto the UKIP bandwagon.

Since the Treaty of Lisbon came into force UKIP has had ample opportunity to observe “We told you so” as each new power-grab comes along. But this case amply demonstrates how we have been consistently ahead of the game from the word go, so often that it would fill a whole statute book to list the occasions we have got it right and the Old Parties have got it wrong. On this occasion we can thus say it again, loud and clear: “We told you so!”

Far from the Coalition backtracking on this, the inept and ignorant Theresa May is keen for the UK to opt in to the European Investigation Order which will have foreign judges sending British police on fishing expeditions for evidence in all manner of footling causes at a time when cuts mean less police for the investigation of domestic crimes. Faced with a disaster like the Extradition Act, the Europhile Tories are keen to repeat the exercise.

And when the EU passes it all in the European Parliament, May will have no choice but to ram the legislation through Westminster, revealing the impotence of the UK Parliament and government in all its tawdriness.
UKIP, as usual, will be fighting the UK’s corner in all this whilst the Watsons and Ludfords and their Europhile Tory chums are surrendering in droves to “More Europe”.

It has been announced today that Lord Pearson of Rannoch is to stand down as Leader of the UK Independence Party. 

The Party would like to thank Lord Pearson for all his hard work and endeavour during his time as Party Leader. Lord Pearson took on the leadership six months before the General Election and guided the party to a 50% increase in our share of the vote.  

Lord Pearson will remain a UK Independence Party peer and will continue to both represent the party in the House of Lords and raise funds for the cause. 

On a personal note, I am saddened to see a Party Leader stand down, whose vision to restructure and professionalise the party I share. However, I am pleased that Lord Pearson will carry on working tirelessly to help this country extricate itself from the European Union.    

The  National Executive Committee will meet as soon as possible to appoint an interim Leader before a leadership election will be held following the Annual Party Conference, which will take place in Torquay from 2-4 September 2010.         

Although under his leadership the vote in the last General Election increased by 50% Lord Pearson feels that other interests in his life are demanding more attention.

Leadership Resignation Statement from Lord Pearson of Rannoch

I took over as leader of UKIP last year to see the party through the General Election, and said I would then consider my position. We increased our vote by 50%, and have many exciting plans for the future. But I have learnt that I am not much good at party politics, which I do not enjoy. I am also 68, and need to give more time to my wider interests. These include the treatment of people with intellectual impairment, teacher training, the threat from Islamism and the relationship between good and evil - not to mention my dogs and my family.

 So it is right that I should stand down on September 2nd, early in the Parliament, to give a younger leader time to be established before the next election, which may come sooner than we think. There is no shortage of talent in UKIP, and the new leader will have my full support. I will continue to do what I can to raise funds for the party.

 UKIP has never been more important for our freedom as a self-governing democracy. We have a coalition government which supports every new power grab by Brussels: supervision of our financial services; an EU diplomatic corps; new police and surveillance powers; bailing out the folly that is the euro.

 Much of this is illegal under the Treaties, but that has never worried Brussels or the Luxembourg Court, which now make most of our national law in a secretive process over which Parliament has no control.

 History teaches us that trouble lies ahead when a regime is free to break its own laws with impunity, when it is supported by a puppet court, and when its people are powerless to get rid of it. That is what the European Union has become, and the only way out is the door.

Now the British people are to be allowed a referendum on how they elect their MPs, but they are denied the referendum they were promised on whether those MPs should govern the country; on whether we should remain ensnared in the tentacles of the corrupt EU octopus, or be set free to enjoy the fruits of democracy and free trade.

UKIP must go on telling the truth about “Europe”: how we cannot control immigration if we stay in the EU; the madness of throwing £6.7 billion a year in net cash down the Brussels drain when we face savage cuts at home; the terrible suffering in developing countries caused by the Common Agricultural and Fisheries policies; that only some 10% of our GDP goes in trade with the EU, yet its dictats strangle 100% of our economy; that leaving the EU would create jobs, not lose them.

 UKIP deserves a better politician than me to lead it and show the country how liberating and enriching life would be outside the EU. I am confident that one will emerge.

Malcolm Pearson       August 17^th 2010

When theatre luvvie Sir Jonathan Miller sniffily dismissed Gilbert and Sullivan as "UKIP set to music" he had no idea how many fans the thoroughly British masters of the operetta shared with the nation's fastest-growing political party.

In fact, the uppity retort has backfired with many people declaring how proud they are to be linked to G&S by Sir Jonathan.

UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom penned a missive to the Daily Telegraph saying:

"I read today that Jonathan Miller disparages Gilbert and Sullivan as “Ukip set to music” (report, August 10). How right he is. As the libretto of HMS Pinafore says: “I, humble, poor, and lowly born,

The meanest in the port division
The butt of epauletted scorn
The mark of quarter-deck derision
Have dared to raise my wormy eyes
Above the dust to which you’d mould me,
In manhood’s glorious pride to rise,
I am an Englishman, behold me!”

Good natured, humorous, pomposity-pricking, but with serious intent, and, above all, proud to be English. Suits me."

Meanwhile, Dr Fred McGlade, UKIP's regional organiser in the North West was also moved to reply.

He said: "What a sad spectacle the ageing Jonathan Miller has become.

"Ranting that Gilbert and Sullivan’s, The Mikado, is UKIP set to music, is indeed, deluded, highbrow twaddle.

"Despite his own public school and Cambridge education, he sent his children to state schools where they failed miserably as academics and he then criticised them publicly for that failure.

"Clearly riddled with guilt at applying his own Socialist principles to his children’s education, he rambles on about UKIP, Gilbert and Sullivan and anyone else that stings his sensitivities."

Dr McGlade said: "Miller should note that one thing UKIP and its members do not do, is stand up for principles and then allow others to suffer from the consequences."

UKIP MEP Mike Nattrass fears the Government is laying the foundations for an environmental assault where wind turbines and incinerators would spread across the country at an alarming rate.

From next week a ‘Feed in Tariff’ will apply to local authorities which would allow councils to sell electricity to the national grid.
 
But, Mr Nattrass fears the plans will result in the rapid development of unwanted and unnecessary incinerators despite the scarcity of rubbish to burn and an oversupply of incinerators across Europe.
 
The MEP added wind turbines are a woefully inefficient way of generating power due to the fluctuations of wind speed. As a result such schemes are reliant on fat Government subsidies to make them economically viable.
 
In the West Midlands, Mike Nattrass is campaigning against the development of a £120 million incinerator in Hartlebury and also against plans to erect six massive wind turbines in the Staffordshire village of Marston.
 
Now a storm is brewing over the Government’s efforts to encourage councils to invest in incinerators and put up wind turbines to generate income.
 
Mr Nattrass said: “The Government is simply opening the flood gates to the mass development of inefficient onshore wind turbines and incinerators.
 
“In the West Midlands Mercia Waste want to develop a £120m incinerator in Hartlebury despite the fact that other incinerators in the region are under-utilised.
 
“The coalition says on the one hand it wants to become the greenest government ever then on the other hand it is encouraging cash-strapped local authorities to erect wind masts which could spring up in our public parks.
 
“Councils are already panic-stricken by EU Landfill Directive targets but the development of unnecessary and unwanted incinerators in not the answer. More investment should be ploughed into our recycling infrastructure and also into clean coal.
 
"In my view, these extensive plans to subsidise energy generation at UK taxpayers' expense should be frozen pending research and implementation of efficient energy generation through sustainable 'green' technolgies.
 
"The recent move by French company GDF Suez to merge with the UK's International Power company will leave just two independent energy producers in the UK, Centrica and Scottish & Southern Energy.
 
"International Power, which owns UK assets including a coal-fired station in Rugeley, will be swallowed up by a company subsidised by the French state. How is this fair competition as British firms do not have state backing," he added