The Local Elections

I've been busy reading the various media reports about the local elections and the contortions that some columnists and political leaders are getting into in their efforts to minimise UKIP's achievements.
Labour is claiming that they're the winners, and statistically this is true in that they gained the most seats. But they didn't gain some of the seats they would need to gain if they are to win next year's general election.
The Conservatives lost 231 seats but retained some 1350 with the LibDems being the biggest losers having lost nearly half their seats, losing 307 and retaining a mere 427. So UKIP, coming from nowhere and collecting 163 seats is quite an achievement, particularly when you read the fatuous comments from the leader of the Green Party, Natalie Bennet, who claimed "We're becoming much more of a national party.". Now many seats did they win? A mere 36 in total, up from their previous 20!
Meanwhile, Nick Robinson, the BBC's political correspondent, takes the view that "UKIP have not turned into a party of power. They have though confirmed their power to disrupt." As this is what the LibDems have been doing during the past four years, it's not a position to be despised.
George Osborne, meanwhile has decided that 'he respects Nigel Farage but that the UKIP leader does not have "answers to the country's future".'.
One suspects that George is carefully positioning himself to be in a position to negotiate with Nigel Farage in the event that the Conservative Party decides that it's had enough of Cameron.
So now it's a matter of waiting until tomorrow for the results of the elections for the EU parliament.

It's not in the News

The main political parties are making an all out effort to discredit UKIP and are feeding the mainstream media with any scraps of news which might conceivably discredit UKIP, and even better from their point of view, demonstrate that UKIP is racist.

Fortunately, this joint campaign seems to be having little effect, and support for UKIP seems to be growing. The suggestion that a remark made by a UKIP member questioning why a runner, Mo Farah, who was born in Somalia and is resident in America should run on behalf of Britain is, I am sure, something that many people have asked or thought. It's hardly a racist question, at least by any reasonable definition of the word.

What the media don't tell you, but was revealed yesterday in Guido Fawkes blog is that:
Labour have suspended a candidate for a councillor post because he has been as accused of defrauding his own council.
A LibDem councillor remains a candidate in spite of being photographed with an AK45 in his native country.
The Tories have selected as their candidate for a seat on a Lincolnshire Council an individual who was formerly an active member of the BNP.

Had any of these been UKIP candidates, one imagines it would have been headline news, but as they were not, these items only get a small mention in the local press.

It is fortunate that there are people around like Guido to blog on these issues, and it is easy to see why, as far as politics are concerned, I prefer reading the various blogs to reading a newspaper or listening to the BBC.