mrabody

In my personal experience the are plenty of people who can and do afford to dip into their own pockets regularly. Both myself and another key member of my local branch association have used our own money to buy printers, photocopier, a freepost license etc. Likewise, the UKIP Surrey News relies only in part on the contributions of member branches - it is guaranteed and substantially bankrolled by individuals. In the constituency where I am PPC the chairman has employs someone to do typing and correspondence on behalf of the local branch. In my experience if they think they are going to get a concrete benefit people will open their wallets. In the case of the billboard campaign I don't blame wealthy people for not wanting to chip in too much money, because it would be extremely difficult to measure the impact of the campaign and to determine whether it was worth the money spent on it. Wealthy people don't get or stay that way by throwing money around willy-nilly.

I still think that if the case was put to the party membership, Nigel's salary could easily be met. I for one would happily give £20/month by standing order. I know people who would give more. Taking my contribution as the average, if you could find five hundred people willing to support Nigel, then that would come to £10,000 per month.

Barboo

An accusation has been made, and NF has denied it, but I don't see that he has to demonstrate anything. It's up to those who made the accusation to do the demonstrating, but first they need to be informed directly that they got it wrong. Therefore, the first step must be for Farage to contact the editor and ask for a retraction to be published next week. If it isn't, or the paper doesn't produce evidence to substantiate Foggo's claims, then certainly a complaint should go to the Press Complaints Commission.

I don't think you can assume anything until these stages have been gone through in sequence. I agree it will reflect very badly on Nigel Farage if he does nothing more than put a statement on the party website.

kernow

You obviously live in a different financial world than most of UKIPs old age pensioner grass root members, if you think they'd be happy to cough up £20 a month!

charlie endell

How funny!

When I joined the party some years ago, the then party treasurer told me "No-one gives the party cash, they know Farage will spend it on court cases...."

Nothing changes.

eublues

Bromley Times

MEP expenses row

27 February 2008
AN MEP has furiously refuted claims that he is siphoning off taxpayers' money to pay his son as an assistant.

Leader of the anti-Europe United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) was accused of using EU expenses to pay his son Sam as an assistant even though he is in full-time education.

An article in a Sunday newspaper claimed Mr Farage, from Bromley, and the party are being investigated by Olaf, the EU's anti-fraud watchdog, which the South East England MEP completely denied.

Mr Farage said: "I am very angry and upset about it. Anything that drags one's family in to it is not nice. My son has never worked for me in any capacity whatsoever. There is not a grain of truth in it. He is very upset. He is studying for a politics degree with the intention of making a career out of it and this has seriously prejudiced his chances of getting a job."

Mr Farage, whose wife Kirsten works for him as a secretary for £24,000 per annum, said he was due to meet his lawyers on Monday.

Last Friday, Mr Farage spoke to the Times about fraud and deception within the European parliament, claiming there needed to be greater clarity about expenses.

He said at the time: "I have been saying this for years that we have a system that is open to fraud and we have an expenses system which MEPs can abuse completely. You end up with lazy MEPs who claim massive expenses, spend all their time in Brussels and never come home to see their constituents.

"The government is going to find it very difficult to keep this one quiet, but the EU is rotten to the core at every level I don't think this episode will make one bit of difference."

A spokesman for Olaf was unavailable for comment at the time of going to press.

katherine.nelson@archant.co.uk

Anthony Butcher

I see that the papers still refer to UKIP as "anti-Europe". Not helpful. I think that the press office should get on to that.

This is total nitpicking again and may mean nothing at all, but once more we see the line "My son has never worked for me in any capacity whatsoever".

__________________
If you care about what's in your food and where it comes from, then get it labelled!
Label My Food - http://www.labelmyfood.org.uk

stathan

I'm surprised that a clown who actually thought that Kilroy -Silk is fit to lead anything doesn't realise that he is a laughing stock and it's unlikely that anyone with half a brain cell would care less what his opinion is on any subject!

B.A.Ware

Am i missing something who's the clown?

__________________
We’re not just about Europe.

Resigned Member

Farage's silence except for a UKIP statement and his failure to go to the Press Complaints Commission or to even write to the Sunday Times is exactly the same method he used at the time he was accused of being spanked by a Baltic lady in the News of the World.
As a result of his action it is assumed by the media and others that the NOW story is true. More important as he failed to deny it in a proper way it has allowed anyone to continually state the accusatipon of the spanking sesssion as a matter of fact and make it impossible for Farage to take any legal action as he failed to do so in a reasonable time.

Independent UKIP

How do you know what letters he has or has not written? It is Wednesday evening. The actual story was published Saturday evening to be read on Sunday. I don't think it entirely unreasonable to at the very least wait until the next issue of the paper before making any assumptions as to his actions.

I think the PCC statement speaks for itself:

Press Complaints Commission >> Making a Complaint >> How to make a complaint