Not content with adopting over simplistic theories, advocating a very selfish head-in-the-sand approach to climate change and persistently seeking to spread anti-European scare stories, it seems that the local UKIP supporters (most recently in the form of yet another missive from Dave Grylls of Kingsteignton, WMN December 5) are now trying to convince the rest of us that their beloved one issue pressure group that is UKIP is somehow on the threshold of an electoral breakthrough.
Not forgetting the fact that we have all heard this hype more times than UKIP has lost its deposits at election time (a whacking 458 x £500 out of 572 in 2010 alone), like so much of UKIP's hot air and self-back slapping, this simply isn't borne out by the facts. There is no evidence whatsoever electorally that UKIP is going to make any significant breakthrough at the only election which really counts, the next General Election, no matter what has happened in a by-election, what some opinion poll or other, man down the pub or right wing national tabloid might suggest from time to time. Although it may surprise UKIP going by the letters its fans send to the press in their droves, we do actually live in parliamentary democracy where we are governed by those we chose and not by largely meaningless by election results or obscure opinion polls, the latter often conducted at the whim of a foreign newspaper owner. Let's not forget also that The Green Party has far more council seats at local levels than UKIP – fact.
If, and it's a big if at that, Europe were actually such an issue in the minds of the ordinary voter, UKIP would romp home at a General Election. As it is, voters persistently elect MPs of various political persuasions in the full knowledge that they are not going to renege on our international treaty obligations or turn Britain's back on her European trading partners. It is only in the tiny minds of an electorally insignificant UKIP (just 3% of votes cast last time around) that Europe is an undying obsession. So while the rest of us get on with our lives and raise real concerns on jobs, pensions, education, health services and greedy utility companies, UKIP continues to live in its own fantasy world of Little-Englander Union Jack waving and a rose-tinted view of an Empire that meant the world map was coloured pink – in others words, 1912 rather than 2012.