Go With The Flow - Pissing In The Wind

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the 'go with the flow' campaign has picked up so much momentum. For those who've missed it, this is the campaign to encourage people to piss in the shower as a way of preserving valuable water resources. Picked up by the BBC (naturally), and subsequently it's gone pretty viral. How many people who take a sneaky leak in the shower knew they were making a political statement?

Personally, I find the whole thing pretty depressing. Is this what it's come to? The campaign hails from two students at the University of East Anglia (Climateh=gate central to you and me). It somehow says a lot for the limited horizons of today's student eco-activists. The poverty to ambition is there. The pant-wetting excitement and endorsement from our establishment. The focus on limiting our ecological foot-print, trying to make us as invisible as possible. The incredible smugness of it...

How is this radical? Access to clean water is a real issue in lots of parts of the developing world. But not in Norwich as far as I know. Last time I was there it looked like there was plenty of water to go round. Will the water saved from not flushing the toilet after peeing in the shower get shipped to parts of the world where it could be useful? Nope. This is more about the illusion of radicalism than anything else. If they really want to make a difference then why aren't they campaigning for access to cheap electricity and infrastructure devlopment that will make a lasting difference to poor people without access to clean water? Why aren't they campaigning for more development not less?

And why stop at peeing? If they really want to show solidarity with poor people without access to resources, then why not take a dump and use the dried turds as a cooking fuel? Why not disconnect from the electricity grid and go to burning dung inside - then they can really experience what it's like to have no resources.

The Fake 'People's March'

As a former leftist I still like to look at what the comrades are up and what they have to say. Occasionally one is even surprised to find evidence of intelligent life in the stagnant pond. One port of call for me is the UK Indymedia site, still a good place to catch up with what activists are up to, particularly those not aligned to Respect or the SWP. Which is why it's interesting that there's nothing posted on the site about the People's March for Climate - you know the one, the one advertised on the tube and in a slick PR campaign of co-ordinated marches internationally.

Now the normal thing would be for demonstrations like this - which the anarchoids will see as reformist and led from above - would attract the attention of the more militant types. They will join the march so that they can leaflet and paper-sell in order to propagandise for more 'direct action' tactics. This happens on a range of issues - anti-war, anti-austerity, anti-fracking etc etc.

But in this case there's nothing. Not a sign of interest at all. Is this because the 'People's March' is so devoid of contact with activists that they've decided to ignore it completely? Or is a realisation that the whole anti-climate change tack is busted and of no value at all.

Like I said, I still look for signs of intelligent life in the pond, but these days it's hard to find any signs of life there at all...

Still, the BBC are covering this stroll by a tiny number of people. And the corporate organisers will be happy with that - as though a few lines on the BBC website is a good result for the hundreds of thousands they've spent putting this together.

Thank you, Australia

Thank you for ridding yourselves of the Labour Party, it's Green allies and the environmentalist dogma that still has the political classes in the rest of the Western world in thrall. Thank you repealing your carbon tax and showing us poor and oppressed masses in Europe and the US what is still possible. Thank you for showing that another world is possible.

Now, if you could just drop Al Gore into one of your croc-infested rivers we'd be even happier. And make sure you get Obama and Cameron to wade in to the same waters to rescure Al...

Greens hate 'chemicals' shock horror

The BBC leads its science pages today with a shock horror on neonicotinoids killing off bees. We should be very worried. After all, as Matt McGrath breathlessly reports:

The scientists say the threat to nature is the same as that once posed by the notorious chemical DDT

This must be the same DDT that saved millions of lives and which Rachel Carson demonised in 'Silent Spring'. The same DDT which became a cause celebre for greens all over the world until it was banned. This is the ban that is estimated to have caused 20 million deaths in children. What a great victory for green misanthropy that was.

That neonicotinoids are being compared to DDT says more about the greens than it does about any science. And in case you're wondering, the source of the BBC story is not some new piece of evidence, it's come from the green transnational corporation the  International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Criminalise Payment of the BBC Tax

I don't know what all the fuss has been about decriminalising non-payment of the BBC tax (aka the licence fee). As far as I'm concerned I'd go a big step further and criminalise payment of the tax. The BBC has long reached the stage where it should be privatised completely - I think it needs to be stripped of every penny of funding from taxation - whether that be a licence or through direct state funding.

Guess What?

I was stunned, stunned I was, to read the headline on the BBC website: "Fracking 'could harm wildlife'".

Now I've been trying to avoid the BBC news site since I saw the Matt McGrath's article that pretty much said that climate change 'deniers' had come round to the truth because they now accepted that CO2 was a greenhouse gas and that the world had warmed. Either McGrath is a moron, or he's a slimy motherfucker deliberately playing the warmist game of 'we were right all along ...'. It really is one of the most outrageous bits of warmist propaganda I have ever seen, anywhere.

Anyway, mustn't think about it now, because my blood pressure rises and I end up ranting that we should privatise the BBC, or better yet just close it down completely. Our state broadcast is as despicably Orwellian as you can get when it comes to climate, environment, immigration, the EU, the cuts...ad infinitum.

So, back to the shock horror that fracking could - note the weasel word right there in the headline - harm wildlife. The source of this is a report from a completely disinterested group of environmental and green group, including the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (you know, the green charity that has tireless campaigned against wind turbines - or not, because chopping up birds is fine if they are collateral damage in the fight against global warming). The summary report, which is what the headlines are based on is available here: http://www.rspb.org.uk/Images/shale_gas_summary_tcm9-365778.pdf

One would assume that such a document would largely be about the damage to wildlife that fracking has been shown to cause in countries where the technology has been used extensively - in other words based on the experience of the US. So I looked in the report for the evidence of extensive damage to wildlife habitats and the harm that this had done to wildlife. But no, there are some vague mentions of damage, but nothing substantive and most of the report is about climate change, methane, and vague 'could do...' prognostications. It's a science-light propaganda piece that is there just to agitate for tough restrictions on fracking because fracking is bad in and of itself. At the end of the day, these people would rather have birds sliced by wind turbines and the environment scarred by wind farms than go for a lower carbon fossil fuel like shale gas.

And of course, no such exercise would be complete without the BBC there to cheer-lead the way.

Christiana Figueres and the Silver Lining

There's a predictable, and understandable, sense of outrage over the statements made by Christiana Figueres, head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, about the recent flooding in the UK. She is quoted as saying that the recent flooding has a silver lining in that it reminds us about climate change:

‘It’s unfortunate that we have to have these weather events, but there is a silver lining if you wish, that they remind us [that] solving climate change, addressing climate change in a timely way, is not a partisan issue.’

Of course she is only saying out loud what so many warmists believe anyway. Again and again they are on record as wishing for 'global warming' to really get going so that they can be proved right and we sceptics proved flat out wrong. Unfortunately for them nature doesn't want to play ball. We've not had the increased warming due to CO2, instead we've just had weather and a flat-lining of global temperatures (accepting for a moment that the very idea of a global temperature is a algorithmic construct that actually tells us very little). So, the words have morphed and now any unusual weather event is used as evidence of climate change, even in the face of no evidence and no way of attribution.

However, she's right of course, and with the BBC and most of the rest of the media and politicians playing the same game, the warmist message has definitely been boosted by the floods.

Roger Harrabin Is An Irrelevant Old Hag

In discussing January's record wet weather in the UK on the BBC, so-called 'Environment Analyst' Roger Harrabin actually says this:

But consider this: we have drained bogs which used to catch rain; allowed soil to run off fields and clog rivers; built homes on our flood plains and supermarkets in our countryside; we've almost certainly heated the climate and swelled the sea level.

I kid you not. It's beyond satire. All he needed to add was that we've angered the sky gods. Is there even a coherent thought in all of that? It's just a long list of sins we humans have inflicted on Gaia and now she's pissed on a raining on us (especially on Somerset, what have you lot been doing in the West Country?)... Oh, of course, what you've been doing in the West Country is allowing the Environment Agency to get away with not draining your rivers. How come that's not on Harrabin's list of sins?

Fracking - The Next Step In The UK

Tucked away on the BBC News site is a little piece of local news that is sure to have national ramifications later. The story is about the proposal from Sinn Fein that there be a referendum in the county of Fermanagh on fracking. On the face of it this should be a good thing - for those of us of a libertarian bent local referenda are a good thing to have. The problem is of course that where the opponents of fracking are well-organised, have access to the media and can call on support from a wide range of green and leftist groups. They also have the advantage that they do not have to stick to the evidence, all they have to do is sow the usual greenist fear, uncertainty and doubt.

Who'll counter the welter of lies from the anti-fracking lobby? A few national politicians, none of whom sound like they mean it or know what they're talking about. Representatives from the smaller energy companies? They'll be accused of bias and confused with the big energy companies scalping the public. Sceptic bloggers and a few columnists like Booker and Delingpole.

It will not be a fair fight. Which is why I suspect that the greens are going to latch on to this pronto...

Cameron, Fracking and Climate Change

There are some who will rejoice in David Cameron's recent pronouncements on the joy of fracks. For those of us jealously looking at what has happened in the US, fracking has seemed like an absolute gift and have been desperately hoping that we in the UK would take advantage of shale gas and oil in the same way. For a long time we've watched the liberal establishment, including large chunks of the government, spreading lies and disinformation or else pandering to the green lobby. We've watched the manoeuvring in the EU as moves have been made to block the advance to market of shale gas. And, let's be honest, we're still a way off commercial exploitation of shale. But, that said, the fact remains that the recent announcement of additional incentives to local authorities to allow exploratory drilling is step in the right direction. The question is, however, is it the right thing to do? And, further, does this mean that David Cameron is no longer a green true-believer?

The reason for doubting the wisdom of the new incentives - allowing local authorities to keep 100% of business rates collected from shale gas schemes - is that it plays into the hands of those who portray fracking as dangerous, unhealthy, polluting, toxic and so on. If, as those of us who support fracking contend, it is safe, non-toxic and non-polluting, then why allow the extra incentives? If it's so positive, why the bribes? This is exactly what opponents will say and are saying. People will be told that they are being bribed, that they are selling out to the energy industry, that their acquiescence is being bought cheaply. Furthermore, opponents will claim that this is a subsidy and that it is yet another example of the fossil fuel industry being heavily subsidised. Yes, it's nonsense, but opponents of fossil fuels play fast and loose with things like definitions of subsidies. So, to those people and the green propagandists in the BBC and mainstream media, giving local authorities more revenues is a subsidy, but the feed-in tariffs and the panoply of schemes that hand over our money to wind and solar farms are not subsidies.

The bottom-line is that the incentives may actually back-fire in that they fuel suspicion and play into existing green narratives that seems all forms of fossil fuels - including the lower CO2 emitting shale gas - as inherently evil and to be attacked and stopped at all costs.

Now, to the question as to whether this change of heart on fracking signals that David Cameron is no longer a true believer. There are those on the left who have always assumed that Dave is really a cynical opportunist who has played the green card for political reasons alone. But the evidence doesn't stand much scrutiny. Dave may not have many principles, but he subscribes pretty much to the liberal line on most issues and particularly when it comes to environmentalism. Which is why he continues to make alarmist comments about climate change and will continue to do so no matter what the scientific evidence shows. He can justify his support for fracking because it reduces carbon emissions compared to burning coal, and because the US has shown that it can reduce overall emissions while delivering reliable power. In other words, for a pragmatic green politician fracking makes a lot of sense, and it's only the out and out fanatic like Caroline Lucas of the Green Party who cannot see that fracking makes sense even within the logic of anthropogenic global warming.

Polar Ice All Gone - Just Like Gore Predicted It Would

Five years ago the Goracle himself predicted that the Arctic would be gone in five years. Yep. Five years. So on the day that even the BBC publishes a story on the spectacular rebound in Arctic ice extent and volume, here's a view of Gore in action...

 

Is anyone in the real world even listening to Gore these days?

Mandela: The Anti-Mugabe

It's hard to believe that there's anyone who isn't sick to death of the wall to wall adulation accorded to Mandela, particularly by the BBC. Now I admit that I've got a soft spot for Mandela. But I'll be honest, it's as much for what he's not done as for what he did do. I like Mandela because he didn't declare himself President for Life. Because he didn't raid South Africa's treasury and treat it like his personal bank account. Because Mandela didn't lock up his tribal and political opponents. Mandela didn't decide to blame every problem the country faced on "white settlers" or "colonial meddlers". He didn't hand power over to his children. He didn't say that Africans are too child-like to be trusted with democracy, or that Africans and elections don't mix. I like Mandela because he gave up power at the right time.

It's these non-achievements which mark him out as different and superior to most politicians. Mandela is great because he's not Robert Mugabe.

I doubt you'll see the media discuss his life and work in those terms, but it's what he didn't do that really marks him out for greatness.

Personally, I think the best thing for South Africa, and the thing to make permanent his legacy would be for the ANC to lose power at the next election. Already the corruption is endemic and there are plenty of 'liberation heroes' doing very nicely thank you, and who show no compunction in shifting the blame to other people for the problems the country is facing. A period out of power is exactly what's needed to halt the creeping Mugabism...

Now, if only we could shut the BBC up because the sycophancy and adulation have turned into aversion therapy.

Media - Stealing Material

Richard North has a piece on EU Referendum entitled 'Media: The Story Stealers', which is about the way that Christopher Booker's story about an Italian woman who was forced to have her baby by caesarean so that it could be taken from her and be put up for adoption. It's a horrific story, and it's easy to see why it has been picked up right across the media. The only thing is that Booker, who's been writing about the reign of terror that social workers and the family courts have imposed on many families, hardly gets credited with brining the story to public attention in the first place.

I've had a little taste of it here too, with the Balakrishnan and the Lambeth Slaves story. It started when I guessed the likely identity of the group involved before it had been revealed in the press. Once it was confirmed that it was Balakrishnan and his group I wrote a few pieces about my contacts with them years ago in Brixton. Not only did that lead to a massive spike in traffic, it also lead to numerous contacts from the mass media.

To date I have spoken or had email contact with the Independent, the Sunday Times, the BBC, the Huffington Post, the Sunday Telegraph, Sky News and more. I gave them information about the group, what it was like in Brixton at the time, the ins and outs of the different far Left groups active at the time and more.

And the result? Only one person has given any credit to this blog and that's Cahal Milmo of the Independent. Many of the rest have quoted verbatim from text I've given, used extracts from conversations I've had with them or else picked up facts that I supplied and have given no credit or attribution. I shouldn't be surprised, but when I've had long and detailed conversations with journalists and they've promised to give the blog a mention it's galling for them to use my material and not credit me with it.

Not only that, I see the same idiocies and errors of fact repeated again and again. Even when given correct information some newspapers seem unable to get it right. For example, the Communist Party of Great Britain, the Communist Party of England (Marxist Leninist) and the Communist Party of Britain (Marxist Leninist) are not the same, and Balakrishnan was only ever involved with one of them. And the stories about Balakrishnan proclaiming himself Jesus are as idiotic as the garbage about Carlos the Jackal staying with Balakrishnan in Brixton.

They Have No Shame

So listening to the warmists on the BBC this morning proved once again that they have no shame. Predictably the discussion with head honcho at the World Bank included an attribution of Typhoon Haiyan to man-made global warming. Sure, it was prefixed with 'scientists tell us that it's impossible to attribute a single event to climate change' but this segues into 'but we know that extreme events will become more frequent and more extreme, and this was an extreme event so...'

And so we have warmists using a natual disaster and the suffering of the people of the Philipines to continue to campaign for policies that will make such calamities worse in the future. As Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank, points out in the interview with Evan Davies, poverty makes the impact of such disasters much worse. So what does he suggest? More sustainable energy, a reduction in the use of fossil fuels and the rest of the green agenda. Access to cheap energy is essential for economic development to take place, and yet he advocates, and the BBC clearly promotes, the very policies that make energy more expensive and which hold back the development that means people can build homes that don't collapse every Typhoon season.

Of course, completely missing from the entire discussion, is any mention that warming stopped more 16 years ago. Where is the warming that is supposed to have made Haiyan more likely? The pause in warming is the most embarassing fact in climate science and yet it is routinely ignored by the warmist establishment.

Instead we get them using natural disasters as a cue to propagandise and promote failed environmental policies that actively work to keep the poor people of the world poor.

Really, they have no shame whatsoever and it's sickening.

The BBC, Wine and Climate Change

Alarming headlines in the last couple of days have highlighted a projected a global wine shortage that is likely to raise prices as demands outstrips supply. Much of this is driven of course by changing patterns of demand, particularly relating to increased demand from China. The other side of the equation is also subject to changing patterns. Buried in the story on the BBC is this little snippet:

They say this could be partly explained by "plummeting production" in Europe due to "ongoing vine pull and poor weather".

Poor weather? But surely the BBC has been warning us for years that wine production was a risk because of rising temperatures, not because of cooling or wetter summers. For example on 20 October 2010 the BBC were warning that 'Best loved wines at risk from climate change'  - and here they meant increased warming.

Or perhaps we can go back a couple of years further and find that warming was the key concern on the story from 6 September 2008: 'Spanish wine makers fight climate change'

Go back to July 2007 and we have 'Winemakers keep weather eye on climate' . Again the story was that global warming was going to negatively impact wine production.

And so here we are in 2013 looking at what's really happening rather than on model projections and the story is very different. The climate is changing, but not how the models told it should. Rather than hotter, drier weather causing shrivelled vines, it's colder, wetter weather reducing the crop. For those of us who view a glass of wine (or two) as one of our five a day, this is worrying news, and as sceptics have been saying for a long time, it's global cooling that is the real danger to humanity, not the little bit of warming that we experienced nearly 20 years ago... But don't expect to read that on the BBC any time soon.

Another Lunatic Lib Dem

No, not Nick Clegg (or Nick Clunge as he's been nicknamed at the Banger), or brain-dead Ed Davey. Not convicted Lib Dem and child pornster Derek Osbourne, or uber slime bag and ex-convict Chris Huhne.

No, the latest Limp Dump to prove yet again that this is not the nice party that they like to pretend to be is John Larsen, an ex-mayor with a pathological interest in explosives. Larsen, now doing a nice long 18-year stretch, was found guilty of setting off explosive devices in Denbigh, Wales. Not content with setting off home-made bombs, including some packed with shrapnel, Larsen liked to report his 'concerns' to the police and media. A bit like those parents who poison their kids so they can get sympathy and be close to doctors and nurses, Larsen liked to cause the problem and then get close to the investigation and media interest.

One can only imagine what the media would have made of the story had Larsen been a member of UKIP, Respect or some other minor party. But being a member of the Limp Dumps doesn't even warrant a mention on the BBC.

Christiana Figueres Is An Irrelevant Old Hag

Oh for f*cks sake, do we really have to be treated to the sight of Christina Figueres shedding crocodile tears on stage? Of course this is faithfully reported by the BBC, where reporter Matt McGrath seems to be fitting comfortably into the shoes left by arch-warmist Richard Black (also known around here as the 'odious Richard Black'). The ostensible reason for Christiana Figueres (head on the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) blubbing is that she is crying for 'the children' of the future, who are doomed by global warming.

Yeah, right. The only time I want to see Figueres and her like in tears is when she's sacked and the whole stinking edifice of UN climate structures is dismantled for good. Unfortunately this is as likely as Edward Davey finding a brain cell or the BBC admitting that the global warming game is up for good.

In the meantime, we have to put up with our licence fee being wasted on the daily vomit of warmist propaganda.

Militard - The Statist

While the Daily Mail may have shot itself in the foot with the story about Ralph Militard - I mean anything that provokes sympathy for Ed Militard is an own-goal - perhaps there will be some good that comes out of it after all. Now emboldened by the positive response to his calls for regulating our energy bills - bills which are highly directly because of policies he put into place - and by the sympathy the Mail has garnered for him, Militard is showing his true statist colours.

According to a piece in the Guardian, Militard is quoted as saying:

Yes, we will be doing more to show the difference a Labour government would make … we will tackle the cost of living crisis and one of the ways we'll do it is by making markets work in the public interest

Because, of course, only under the guidance of the enlightened few can markets be made to work. Because, as history has shown us repeatedly, politicians have worked their magic and have been successful every time they have done this. Apparently our nice Ed Militard is as ignorant of history as he is of economics or even the world of work in the real economy. And yes, like many of our leaders he may have studied economics at some point in his life, but it clearly has made no real impression on him, except perhaps in some simplified Keynesian way.

Still, Militard the statist and his penchant for price controls and other interventions is clearly on show now. The danger is of course that his simplistic calls for state intervention strike a nerve with the electorate. And of course the BBC will continue to do his bidding as his interest coincides with theirs.

We have been warned...

BBC and 'Well funded sceptics'

The BBC has a piece online today that looks at climate sceptics. As you'd expect from the BBC it's heavily weighted towards the IPCC side of things, but still managers to give a superficial impression of being fair. For example, there's a side bar that states:

Although there are only a small number of mainstream scientists who reject the established view on global warming, they are supported by a larger group of well resourced bloggers and citizen scientists who pore through climate literature and data looking for evidence of flaws in the hypothesis.

Aside from repeating the lie that there are only small number of 'mainstream scientists' who are in the sceptic camp, it also repeats the bigger lie about 'well resourced bloggers'. Come on, who's well resourced? Is it the sceptic camp or is it the alarmist camp funded by governments, trans-national bodies (like the UN, EU etc), big green and a host of environmentalist activist organisations. The disparity in resourcing is staggering - back in 2009 Australian blogger JoAnne Nova pegged the money spent on climate science as $79 billion (http://joannenova.com.au/2009/07/massive-climate-funding-exposed/) - yet the implication in the BBC story is that well-funded sceptics are attacking plucky little climate scientists.

But let's also focus on the last bit of that quote:

well resourced bloggers and citizen scientists who pore through climate literature and data looking for evidence of flaws in the hypothesis.

Excuse me, but isn't that what scientists do? Doesn't the scientific method depend on this process?

UKIP - Not Serious

While the immediate storm over Godfrey Bloom's 'bongo bongo land' may have disappeared from the front pages, the affair continues to reverberate. From my perspective - not aligned to UKIP but becoming sympathetic over the last few years - the effect has been pretty depressing. Like an awful lot of people in this country I've got little time for the three main parties - there's little to differentiate them and most political discourse runs on predictably tribal lines. I hate our political classes with a vengeance but at the same time I care passionately about politics and where the country is headed. So, in many respects I'm exactly the constituency that UKIP should be appealing to. And at times I've felt that perhaps UKIP was the way to go. Not just on the European Union, but also with respect to climate change, wind farms and a critique of the liberal mindset that predominates in our political and media masters. Even on the economy UKIP seems to be on the side of economic liberalism and free markets - though it has to be said it's often hard to figure out where UKIP stands because it rarely seems to talk about the economy in any substantive way. The bottom line is that on a wide range of issues UKIP seems to offer something that 's different to the main parties and appealing to a libertarian (note the small L).

The one sticking point has been race. Although I vehemently disagree with the ideology of multicuturalism (which elevates difference and segregation to the highest degree), I am an anti-racist and have got no time for racists, whether they are BNP, Islamist or BBC. In the past I've been Paki-bashed by Nazi skinheads, racially abused and suffered from racism and discrimination. That was a long time ago and thankfully my kids haven't had to suffer this kind of treatment. Although the left will never say so, we do live in a very different world to the days when the National Front was out on the streets and casual racism was everywhere. Nowadays things have gone the other way and it's the white working classes who suffer unfair treatment - they are the only people not allowed pride in their culture. Multiculturalism is triumphant and to real anti-racists this is a betrayal of the struggle againt racism.

You would think that this too would make me align to UKIP - and at times it has. But this latest affair from Godfrey Bloom makes me pull back for a number of reasons.

Firstly, I have to say that Bloom comes across as an ignorant bigot. He can spin it how he likes, makes half apologies or attempt to front it out, but he comes over as the sort of half-drunk bar-room racist that I would run a mile to avoid. While I don't want politicians to be all smarm and professional blandness, I do expect them to display some signs of intelligence. Ignorance is not attractive to the voter, any more than dishonesty or disdain for Joe Public. Now the fact is that there was a real point in what he was saying - the discussion on the aid budget is an important one which many people, me included, would agree with him. Listening to interviews with many of Bloom's constituents one is struck by the fact that so many people, of all races, were agreeing with him. But it was also striking how so many criticised him for his language and behaviour. So, the end result is that a point on which he has people agreeing with him has been drowned by the furore over his racist language.

Much worse than this however is the attitude of so many UKIP supporters and indeed the missing leadership from UKIP itself. There are plenty of comments of blogs and forums from UKIP supporters who seem to glory in Bloom's display of ignorance. Maybe it's that frisson of outright racism that they find appealing. Is this what UKIP really wants? To go after the BNP vote?

Let's be clear, if UKIP is a serious political party and not the vehicle of a handful of leaders safely esconced in Brussels, it needs to appeal to a wider range of the electorate. It needs to appeal across racial and class barriers, it needs to appeal to those who look for signs of intelligent policy as well as wanting to have a go at our ruling elites. And it won't do that with people like Godfrey Bloom slurring racist comments to the party faithful.

In the blogosphere I see people like Autonomous Mind and Richard North of EUReferendum having intelligent conversations and discussing policy options to a depth that I don't see from UKIP itself. If there's an issue related to some EU policy in the news, where do I go to gain an understanding of it? It's not to UKIP. So, while some are happy to snigger at the 'bongo bongo land' jibe, I suspect there are plenty more who've decided that perhaps the mass media are right after all and that UKIP is a xenophobic little hub of racists and embittered cranks.