UK Independence Party
Enfield & Haringey Branch
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FROM THE SECRETARY:
The first Monday in April is Easter Monday so our next branch meeting will be on the SECOND Monday, i.e. the 12th at the Angel Community Centre as usual.
I am still appealing for money towards our election expenses. If you have not donated anything so far, please give this your earnest consideration. Cheques to be made payable to “UKIP Enfield & Haringey Branch” please.
Evelyn Rolph - Branch Secretary
Elections
Madge Jones is standing for Enfield North in the General Election, Roy Freshwater in Edmonton and Winston MacKenzie in Tottenham. We do not have candidates for Enfield Southgate or Hornsey & Wood Green.
So far as the Council elections are concerned, we are putting up the following in Enfield:-
Bush Hill Park ward - Gwyneth Rolph
Chase - Roy Freshwater
Enfield Highway - Madge Jones
Enfield Lock - Gary Robbens
Southbury - Fred Rolph
Turkey Street - David Jeal
And in Haringey:-
Hornsey - Jeremy Ross.
These candidates (or I as election agent) will be knocking on your doors in the next few days asking for signatures to their nomination papers. This is a time-consuming task and I appeal to everyone to be as helpful as possible. If you have a spouse/partner or adult children also living with you, perhaps you will ask them to sign too. They don’t have to be UKIP members. If we can get more than one signature in each house, it cuts down the number of doors we have to knock on. Your signature on the nomination paper simply means you have no objection to that particular person standing as a candidate. It does not commit you to vote for him/her.
Spring conference
UKIP is holding a one-day conference at Milton Keynes on 19th March when our Manifesto will be launched. Details in the latest Independence magazine.
Bush Hill Park library
John Jackson, a popular and hard-working Tory Councillor in Bush Hill Park, died in October 2008. Our BHP library has recently been enlarged and refurbished and Enfield Council thought it would be fitting to rename it The John Jackson Library. The official opening and dedication took place on 23rd February which Fred and I attended accompanied by our son Peter and my sister, Margaret who is a personal friend of Sylvia Jackson, John’s widow.
Greece
Poor Greece! They cooked the books to enable them to join the euro in the first place, then borrowed too much when interest rates were low. Now the economic crisis has just about bankrupted the country. Mind you, Britain has also over-borrowed but we have the advantage of being able to set our own interest rates and devalue the pound which Greece cannot do inside the euro straitjacket.
The Greek parliament is now virtually stripped of power. It is not allowed to decide on any new expenditure without EU approval and its finance minister is required to report every 4 weeks on progress made in budget restructuring. Greece has become little more than an EU protectorate. The Greeks are accusing Germany of their financial woes by saying it was the Nazis who confiscated Greek gold reserves during the Second World War.
EU President, Herman Van Rompuy is calling for an “economic government” with a single economic policy for the EU covering spending, investment and tax policies.
Port of Dover
To help pay off the national debt, the Labour Government has recommended that the Port of Dover be sold off and the leading bidder is France. Dover is Europe’s busiest ferry port and could net up to £350 million. In 2008 it made a profit of £15.1 million.
RAF rescue service
Britain’s land and sea rescue service is being handed to the French. The £6 billion contract, currently run by the RAF and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, is to be handed to the French-owned Soteria Consortium which is planning to slash the number of rescue helicopters from 40 to 24. They will axe the yellow Sea King helicopters in favour of their own.
Also up for sale is Hoseasons holiday brand which is likely to be sold to the USA for £38.8 million and British Airways will go to Spanish Iberian.
Cadbury’s chocolate
A large percentage of shareholders agreed to the sale of the chocolate makers to Kraft which promptly closed the factory in Somerset (which made Crunchie, Curly Wurly and Milk Tray) even though they had promised during the negotiations that they would keep it open. When Kraft bought Terry’s chocolate in 1993, they transferred the production of Chocolate Oranges to Poznan in Poland.
Falkland Islands
Argentina has seized control of the waters around the Falkland Islands. Drilling for oil just off the coast is due to start before the end of this month but the Argentinians are blocking the arrival of the ship carrying the offshore oil rig saying all ships travelling through the waters must hold a permit. Argentina says it has the backing of 32 South American countries, as far north as Mexico, to their claim to the islands.
House of Lords
Labour is proposing to rush through proposals to axe the 90 remaining hereditary peers before the General Election.
Day-to-day news from February
1st - Under the Lisbon Treaty the EU has the power to create a European Public Prosecutor (EPP) who would have investigative powers and be responsible for bringing cases before national courts. He/she would be able to request detention without trial for up to 6 months, renewable for 3 months at a time, with no maximum limit, and underpinned by the EU arrest warrant. The creation of the EPP is one of the dwindling number of areas where the UK has a veto.
2nd - At the moment a new mum can take 6 weeks off work on 90% of her salary followed by a further 33 weeks on a set weekly pay of £124 and 3 months unpaid, a total of one year. The EU is proposing that maternity leave should be 20 weeks on full pay. It is estimated that this will cost British businesses some £2 billion a year - in the middle of a recession!
4th - The Supreme Court is to allow UKIP to appeal against the Electoral Commission decision to fine the Party £363,000 for accepting donations from Alan Bown when his name was inadvertently left off the Electoral Register.
8th - Britain’s bin collections could be taken over by the EU under controversial new moves to set up an EU Waste Implementation Agency. The Audit Commission has ordered councils to end weekly bin collections to save money.
9th - Some 40 prescription drugs for the treatment of high blood pressure, cancer, diabetes, epilepsy and immunosuppressants to prevent organ rejection in transplant patients are in short supply. Drug manufacturers are selling them to other EU countries because the drop in value of the pound (£) means they can make a greater profit from them. This is quite legal under EU rules but British patients are being left in the lurch as lifesaving medicines are sold abroad.
10th - It is UKIP policy to restore Grammar Schools so it was encouraging to read that 85% of those aged 18 to 24 would like to see more created, an ICM survey found.
15th - Boots the Chemists are denying mothers loyalty card points when they buy formula milk for babies under 6 months of age. This is because it is against EU law to promote bottle feeding and Boots and other stores with loyalty schemes can be penalised for offering incentives to buy formula milk. Whilst breastfeeding is good for mother and baby, not all mothers are able to.
15th - The EU’s Eco-design Directive bans shower heads which waste too much water. Taps, doors, windows and insulation material are also affected by the Directive.
17th - The EU has spent about 200 million euros a year buying fishing rights predominantly along Africa’s shores, causing fish stocks to halve in 30 years. Local fishermen can no longer make a living and this has resulted in the increasing flow of African economic migrants to Europe and to the increase in piracy.
18th - The EU is planning to revise existing minimum rates of consumer taxes on fossil energy products such as gasoline, fuel oil, gas and electricity. On top of that, a harmonised EU-wide CO2 tax would be introduced from 2013 onwards. Currently in Britain we pay 5% VAT on our gas and electricity bills.
18th - Last-ditch attempts to save the Corus steel works plant in Teeside are being hamstrung by EU state aid rules over what the Government can offer as an incentive to potential bidders.
24th - We have another story of a Somali woman married to a Danish national who came to this country and stayed with her children even after her husband returned to Denmark. The EU Court of Justice has ruled that even though the woman has no right to live in Britain, we must house her and others like her and pay them benefits.