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I love UKIP. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t vote for UKIP in return for the fleshly pleasures of a bevy of naked Swedish nuns. No, I love UKIP because suddenly, after all these years, there they are: the fruitcakes, the loonies, the closet racists. Most of them cowered behind the tattered banner of the Conservative Party, having been welcomed in by that arch fruitcake, loony and closet racist Thatcher, but discipline kept them quiet. Now they’re out, raving, wandering the streets and in plain view. That’s where they’re best. Where you can see them.

And no amount of self-righteous media scrutiny should harm them. A candidate has made racist comments about Bulgarians? What a surprise. Nigel Farage is a twit? No, really? His wife is German? Who cares? Does anybody think a UKIP voter is going to be put off by brave exposes revealing that some members of UKIP have said batty things? Of course not.

Of course they’re barking mad, that’s the point. They want to return to the little England of their febrile dreams, and imagine they can survive with their black-and-white movies and Matchless motorbikes and big blue passports, sheltering behind a door slammed in the face of the rest of the world. Their hearts are made of steak-and-kidney pudding and warm flat Bass ale runs in their veins.

But in giving voice to their dreams, they’ve tapped into the nation’s hidden political G-spots: there are too many people crowding into this country. We don’t like Europe. We don’t like foreigners even though we’re all mongrels. And we don’t like politicians any more. Look at them – Clegg, Miliband and Cameron. Who would like them? Who could like them?

So UKIP serves two purposes: it gets the loonies out in the open where they can be safely avoided. And, importantly, it is an outlet for outrage at the system we have.

But there are other, better, outlets. The Greens, for example. They have coherent policies about localism in terms of production and community. They have coherent policies about protecting our trade and environment, about caring and sharing. Even if you don’t buy into their climate change views or their alternative energy provision plans, you can at least see that they want to provide lots of jobs in an employment-heavy and developing industry.

But of course, it’s hard to talk about the Greens in detail because, even though they actually have an elected MP, unlike UKIP, they get nothing like – nothing like – the media exposure of UKIP. If anything could highlight the cliché-led right-wing bias of our nation’s media, it is the slavish devotion to Nigel Farage and his party over the past years. Had the Greens or the socialists had anything like the publicity granted to the right, where would they be?

But to emphasise: I agree with two of the central elements of UKIP’s thrust: there are too many people in this country, and our political establishment needs a boot up the arse.

There, however, we part: I don’t care what colour or nationality of people constitute too many. I believe we all have a part to play in dealing with our population. Educating all people on the need to have smaller families, for example. And I don’t agree that we should build 230,000 new homes a year all over our beautiful country to maintain the exploding, consume-and-destroy existing culture. I believe we should better utilise the resources we have.

I have no idea who’s standing for our part of the world in the Euro elections, but I will vote. I always vote. People fought for my right to vote, and I respect that. In a general election when you vote for your constituency MP, I will support North Cornwall’s Dan Rogerson because, as I know from personal experience, he has been an excellent constituency MP. Shame he’s a Liberal Democrat, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s been an excellent constituency MP. Euro elections are different, of course, and so because of the political establishment and its rotten heart, it’s Green for me.

Stop taking the…

I don’t think there’s any aspect of our lemming-like devotion to the free market that offends me as much as the pharmaceutical industry. Here is an industry that puts a price on life and well-being, a monetary price, a very high monetary price. This industry can literally be the arbiter of life and death – for example, in the NHS’s recent recommendation not to prescribe a drug that can prolong life for breast cancer sufferers because it is too expensive.

To save life, to take pain away, to enable people to be with their loved ones – these things are not enough for the pharmaceutical industry. They must also have money. Lots and lots of it.

Ah! say the wise ones. Without profit, we would not have advances in medical science. It’s profit that drives advances.

Hmmm. Did profit drive Florence Nightingale? Lister? Pasteur? Fleming? If I were a doctor or a nurse or a chemist confronted with somebody in pain, I would help them first and I would not put prices or conditions on that help.

Big pharma, as it’s called, stinks. And instead of listening with sage expressions to the debate over Pfizer and Astra-Zeneca, we should be ordering them to shut the fuck up and hand over their drugs for a tenth of the price they now charge.

That would be the biggest help the beleaguered tax-payers of this country could ever get, because at present we’re being robbed blind to pay the bastards behind pharmaceutical corporations like Pfizer and Astra Zeneca through our NHS.

That’s what people mean when they talk about privatising the NHS behind our backs: we’ve thrown open its gates to these pain-mongers, these dealers in suffering, these valuers of death, and they get fat on our taxes.

Think I’m wrong? Well, why do you think Pfizer are prepared to pay nearly £60 billion for Astra Zeneca? They’re not doing that for their health are they? And they’re certainly not doing it for our health.

Happy birthday, sister 

To a stately home of old England (or old Cornwall) to celebrate a landmark birthday with the good reverend sister who provides spiritual guidance to this place. What an epic occasion it was! Our sister’s hospitality and friendship were as splendid as she is. The surroundings were stunning. And the company: it was wonderful to see a tired and emotional Brother Hamster morph into Yoda before our very eyes, to see The Brother Who Must Not Be Named holding court on the terrace, to witness the return of Sister Superhero, to singalongaBrotherBertie and to agree that Brother Fiddle’s prediction of the Hangover Blues was all too horribly accurate. My only comfort was that Sister Chef was probably in even worse shape than little me.