By Roger Helmer MEP

• I had a disappointment this morning (April 22nd).  I was on LBC Radio, up against Labour MP Mike Gapes.  I had hoped that the Labour Party had grown up a bit, and stopped shouting “Yah Boo Racist!” at anyone who dared to mention immigration.  But they haven’t - or at least Mr. Gapes hasn’t.  There he was, criticising UKIP’s stunning new billboard campaign as “racist”.  Please look at the ad above and tell me which racial minority is being targeted or denigrated by this ad?

"To suggest, as Nick Clegg does, that in order to avoid "isolation" a major country like the UK has to out-source its governance to undemocratic and unaccountable foreign institutions, is an insult to the British people." - UKIP MEP Roger Helmer.

• The pro-Brussels camp seems to have two main arguments for EU membership.  In the recent Farage/Clegg debates, Clegg pushed them relentlessly.  Outside the EU, we shall lose jobs, and influence, he claimed.  We shall be "isolated and marginalised".

The paper once known as 'The Thunderer' has become 'The Blunderer'. The Times has become like the News of The World.
 
"It's a fixed monthly allowance given to all MEPs and no expenses are claimed" - Nigel Farage

Press Release
 
• The Times, once a respected newspaper has helped trash its own reputation with a politically motivated smear campaign on UKIP.

Over the last few months it has run multiple front page stories making many unproven allegations against UKIP and Nigel Farage.

UKIP Leader Nigel Farage speaks during the debate commemorating 100 years on from the First World War, Strasbourg,16.04.2014

All MEPs are given a fixed allowance of £3,580 per month. They do not have to provide receipts for any of that expenditure, writes UKIP Leader Nigel Farage in The Indipendent.

• The front page of The Times, the newspaper of the establishment and passionate supporter of David Cameron, has grossly misled the British public in its latest chapter of the smear campaign against me.

A month or so ago it tried, via a politically motivated opponent of mine in the European Parliament, to start a different investigation into my use of EU money. The bureaucracy has belatedly announced – on Monday night – that there was no case to answer, not even enough evidence to request an investigation by Olaf, the European Commission’s anti-fraud office.  The very next day The Times opens-up another equally vacuous front.

"Outside the EU, we can maintain our trade with the declining European market, while rebuilding ties with the rest of the world – where the growth is." - Roger Helmer.

UKIP MEP Roger Helmer explores some of the trade myths associated with Britain leaving the EU:

• 27 separate trade deals: It seems incredible that some people seem to think when we leave the EU we'll need separate trade deals with each of the EU's (other) 27 member-states.  Yet they do – as evidenced by claims on Twitter.  Really people should get their heads in gear before they Tweet.  The whole point of the EU is that it makes trade deals on behalf of its members.  It will continue to do so after we leave, so we'll need a single trade deal with the remnant-EU, not 27 deals.  I have set out elsewhere the reasons that the EU will do a deal, but briefly: (1) Direct economic interest; (2) WTO; and (3) Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty.

UKIP Poll Boost: Tory And Lib Dem Support Falls

• SKY NEWS | Nigel Farage's UKIP has been given a boost in a new poll which puts support for the party at 20%, four points higher than last month.

It comes after he was said to have come out top in the head-to-head clashes with Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg over Britain's future in Europe.

They are scared to death of the idea of allowing by-elections to happen because they know that the Ukip People’s Army is on the march, writes Ukip Leader Nigel Farage MEP.

• During my television tussles with Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg – (you may have noticed that I bested him twice, but I don’t like to talk about it!) – he came out with a line about trust in politics being hard to win but easy to lose.

As I recollect, it was in reference to his own broken promise about supporting an In/Out EU referendum.

"By making the immigration issue our own, by pointing to the harm done to working class voters by mass immigration, the pressure on schools and hospitals and housing, the lengthening dole queues, the wage compression, we've struck a particular chord with traditional Labour voters," writes UKIP MEP Roger Helmer.

• Odd, isn't it, that even with Google, you can lose a press article that you clearly remember seeing.  There was an excellent piece in the Indy recently (that's not a sentence I write very often!) about Labour's complacency over the UKIP threat, and can I hell find it?  No I can't.  But here's an earlier and not dissimilar one.

"The problem with the EAW is that any British citizen can be transported to any other EU country without a shred of evidence being produced against them, but merely on just one of thirty two vague allegations," writes UKIP justice and home affairs spokesman, Gerard Batten MEP.

• Today’s Torygraph carries a report that the European Union will reject Britain’s request for a ‘proportionality test’ to be applied to the European Arrest Warrant.

75% to 80% of our laws are made by EU institutions, says senior European Commissioner Viviane Reding, responsible for justice, fundamental rights and citizenship.

VIDEO

• Sensational video footage has emerged of EU Commissioner Viviane Reding admitting that either "75% or 80%" of laws that affect countries belonging to the EU are made in Brussels.