MAKING PLANS FOR NIGEL

Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP enjoying his customary pint and cigarette. This clever marketing ploy as a 'man of the people' disguises the unpleasant truth about this far right party of racists, homophobes and sexists.

Public schooled, ex-banker has conned the public through the bottom of a pint glass.

ByHARRY BLACKWOOD

WINSTON CHURCHILL famously said: "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." Never a truer word and it seems that old Winston must have been talking to the same sort of people that I converse with on Facebook and Twitter as well as the real word.

Without wanting to sound superior (obviously I am) most people's knowledge of politics and the democratic process (which is a total sham) could be written on the back of an envelope with a six-inch emulsion brush. They'll be able to tell you every X Factor winner since 1936 but ask who is foreign secretary or leader of the opposition and they'd be knackered.

Is it any wonder then that a party of racists, homophobes, sexists and general oddballs have managed to convince a huge proportion of the electorate that they are the voice of reason?

No matter which way they try to spin it, UKIP is a party for people who aren't very bright. It has to be. Anybody with an IQ into double figures would quickly realise that UKIP is nothing more than BNP Lite; a party for people who are happy to trot out the line "I'm not racist, I've got a black doctor"

But it would be stupid to say that all UKIP voters are closet racists. Of course they're not. Just most of them. But I want to focus on the others. The ones whose only excuses are that they are stupid, suffering from cognitive dissonance or they're desperate for change. It's the last one that I think explains the UKIP phenomenon.

LIBERAL DEMOCRAT PROBLEMS RUN DEEPER THAN CLEGG

Leader of the Liberal Democrats and Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg.

by ANDY FLEMING, Guest Blogger

As a fellow human being you’ve got to feel some sympathy towards Nick Clegg.  After nearly four years as the Coalition government’s Deputy Prime Minister, his fortunes have nosedived from being a political Adonis to being the Devil incarnate.  He’s been blamed for most of the political misfortunes that have befallen his party, culminating numerous Liberal Democrat meltdown s in both local and national elections over the last few years. And then of course there was the debacle over the result of his party's only original idea, Alternative Vote system.

In truth, most of his problems are self-inflicted as he adopted the “default position” for politicians of lying to the electorate.  Springing to mind straight away is the duplicitous Coalition Agreement entered into with David Cameron’s Conservatives to introduce student higher education tuition fees of up to £9,000 per annum.