Seven Things You Should Know About UKIP And Farage
1. UKIP claims to be anti-establishment. But Farage is a privately educated, ex-Tory City broker.
On top of his £81,500 a year salary as an MEP, he has claimed £2m of taxpayers’ money in expenses and allowances.
2. UKIP leader Nigel Farage says he’s a man of the people. But the Daily Mirror exposed how he opened a trust fund in an offshore tax haven, in a bid to save thousands of pounds in tax-money that could be spent on schools, hospitals and public housing
3. UKIP wants to introduce a flat rate income tax of 31%. That means low-paid workers would face a huge tax hike – while the Duke of Westminister, who is worth a cool £7.8bn, would get a tax cut.
4. UKIP wants to take money away from state schools and give it to private schools like Eton. It pledges to hugely increase military spending, building seven aircraft carriers. This would cost £48.3bn – almost half the annual NHS budget.
5. UKIP is riddled with racists, sexists, homophobes and bigots. Nigel Farage says his political hero is Enoch Powell, whose 1968 ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech has been a touchstone for racists and fascists ever since.
6. UKIP blames migrant workers from Eastern Europe for the economic crisis, unemployment and lack of housing. This is racist scapegoating: the bankers and their rich City friend created the crisis.
7. UKIP boasts that if it got into power it would scrap the European Convention on Human Rights. UKIP also opposes same-sex marriage, standing against equal rights for gay people.
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Top 10 Ukip Money Gaffes
1. Farage Under Fire for General Allowance Spending
Nigel Farage came under fire this week for apparently misusing an EU allowance of about £15,000 a year. The allowance is meant to cover office costs, but his office is provided to him rent-free by Ukip supporters. A flustered Farage fielded interviews all day defending his line that the money was ‘his to use as he saw fit’ amid calls for more transparency and accountability in his use of taxpayers’ money.
2. Ashley Mote MEP Convicted of Benefit Fraud
Ashley Mote was elected as a Ukip MEP in 2004, less than two months before criminal charges were brought against him for benefit fraud. In 2007 he was sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment for 21 counts of fraud, including falsely claiming more than £65,000 in housing benefits from the UK government from 1996-2002.
3. Part Time Paul Nuttall’s 12 Strong Taxpayer-Funded Team.
Ukip Deputy Leader Paul Nuttall was heavily criticised this year after it was revealed that he claims taxpayer funded allowances for 12 members of staff despite being one of the least active MEPs in Brussels, having attended less than half of votes. According to the VoteWatch website he is 736th out of 753 MEPs when it comes to Plenary sessions attended.
4. Tom Wise MEP Imprisoned for Embezzling EU Allowance
An MEP for Ukip between 2004 and 2007, Tom Wise was later sentenced to two years imprisonment for false accounting and money laundering. This included syphoning off taxpayer money from the EU to spend on a car and fine wine. Although he was first exposed in 2005, it took nearly two years for Wise to lose the Ukip whip, after then party leader Roger Knapman stopped the initial internal investigation.
5. Trevor Coleman Only Turns up to Sign On and Cash Out.
Former police superintendent Trevor Colman has been criticised for his lazy attitude towards his work as an elected representative, having citied picking up his daily allowance as his main motivation. As he told the Journal of European Integration, “If I don’t come and put my card in the slot to vote, I don’t get my money to give to [Ukip]”.
6. Nigel Farage and Jeffrey Titford Funnel EU Allowance to “Metric Martyrs” Trust Fund
In 2000 Nigel Farage and then-party leader Jeffrey Titford were caught diverting surplus funds from their EU allowances into a Trust Fund supporting the ‘metric martyrs’, and were ordered to repay £11,500.
7. UKIP Candidate Stands Down after Criminal Record is Exposed
Though selected as a Ukip candidate for the 2005 General Election, Damien O’Connor withdrew from the race due to the negative publicity generated for his 2000 conviction for benefit fraud.
8. Councillor Peter Lagoda falsely claims £25K in Benefit Fraud
Formerly of Ukip, Peter Lagoda was suspended from the party after being charged by Cambridgeshire police for falsely claiming nearly £25,000 in benefits over the course of two years. Shortly afterwards he was also found by an independent review to have made “racist, derogatory and discriminatory” remarks at a Cambridgeshire fire station.
9. Derek Clark MEP Forced to Repay over £30K of misspent Taxpayer Money
Sitting Ukip MEP Derek Clark was made to repay over £30,000 in 2012 after being found to have misused taxpayer-funded allowances to pay the salaries of Ukip staff in the UK. One of the men who received the money, former Ukip office manager Niall Warry, claimed the practice was widespread and “sanctioned by the top of the party”.
10. Farage Boasts of his £2M in EU Expenses
Nigel Farage was taped in 2009 boasting of having claimed almost two million pounds in expenses since becoming an MEP in 1999, he told former Labour minister Denis MacShane that his total expenses were “A vast sum” and “I don’t know what the total amount is but - oh lor - it must be pushing £2 million”.
And to think people want to vote for these lot.
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