NEC - More Characters

For completeness I give my views on Martin Haslam (non-elected, but invited),Marta Andreasen (ex-officio, non elected) & Michael Zuckerman, elected.

Martin Haslam is one of the most honest and decent men I have ever met. He was nominally deputy treasurer of UKIP but in fact did all the Treasury work. I am not quite sure what Ms Andreasen did. He has donated over £10000 to UKIP and also paid La Andreasen's salary of £36000 for the first three months. I have never met anyone with a bad word to say about Martin except NF. Nigel arranged for a journalist from the Independent newspaper to phone Martin when he was playing tennis with the sole purpose of entrapping Martin into speaking to a journalist without informing NF. NF brazenly stated he was testing Martin's loyalty. It beggars belief that anyone could doubt the integrity, honesty and loyalty of Martin Haslam. He is a man without fault.

Ms Andreasen's character shows through in her interview with the BBC. Click on the URL below, click on "Watch full interview " button, turn up the sound and settle down for 30 minutes informative viewing.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/hardtalk/2293519.stm

After watching ask yourself if you would wish to work with this woman, have her working for you or have her represent your party and your views.

After Martin's entrapment he was removed from the NEC by NF. Ms Andreasen is now signing the cheques and keeps the UKIP books presumably in Barcelona where she lives.
As La Andreasen is now an MEP candidate she might well be signing cheques payable to herself. This is called a conflict of interest and is not recommended as good practice.

Mr Zuckerman also has ambitions to be an MEP. He is on the London list but Mr Batten and Mr Atkinson are ahead of him. Mr Batten and Mr Atkinson had some bitter arguments during the MEP election. Mr Bannerman has helpfully suggested if these arguments continue then Mr Batten and Mr Atkinson should be demoted in the list leaving Mr Zuckerman as numero uno.

Mr Zuckerman as party secretary and legal advisor was also helpful in confirming that Mr Bannerman being paid by EU money, an organisation UKIP avowedly wishes to leave, was not a bar to Mr Bannerman being a member of UKIP NEC and formulating the charges against me. The ways of the law are indeed strange.

I expect to have more to tell you about Mr Zuckerman in the New Year.

On Tuesday, 9th Dec, I attended a meeting of my local branch committee to which our excellent chairman, Ken Perry, had invited our RO and long time friend of Mr Farage, Malcolm Wood to explain by what authority the NEC could remove an elected member whose only crime was to disagree with some of the great leader's views. Ken and the other committee members were clear that they were minded to dissolve the branch if necessary.

I was humbled and proud of the way Ken and all the committee members refused to be distracted by Mr Wood's dissembling and obfuscation. They repeated their argument that UKIP's ruling cabal had no democratic authority to expel me. That by so doing they were behaving just like the EU and were turning UKIP into a Fascist organisation. Why do we have elections at all if the NEC ignores the result? How can the NEC be prosecutor, judge and jury in its own case?

They have written to Nuttall demanding I be reinstated.The decision to disband will be deferred until they get his answer but they demand his answer by Xmas. They also noted they had not yet received a reply from Nuttall to their previous letter.

Our committee represents all that is best in UKIP and indeed why I joined UKIP in the first place. Mr Wood's waffling and persistent avoiding of questions went down very badly indeed. As Mr Lincoln said, "You cant fool all of the people all of the time"