Saga of malingering Mote takes new twist....

The Ashley Mote saga becomes more hilarious by the minute!

Poor Ashley - the walking UKIP-embarrassment will be unable to assiduously represent his constituents in the European Parliament following his (disgracefully) early release from the slammer. The notoriously pompous Mr Mote will have his dignity further offended by being forced to wear an electronic tag and observe the home detention curfew scheme. The Ministry of Justice have confirmed that he won't be given special permission to attend to Parliament business in Brussels or Strasbourg saying - "he will not get any special treatment". Sheer comedy gold - you couldn't make it up!!!

To further extract the urine out of the taxpayer, Mote is appealing against the court order that he must pay back the £70,000 he conned out of the public purse. No doubt the funny fellow will stand for re-election in eighteen months time as well.

The boy Nigel frothed with faux rage at the news saying - "the whole episode is an outrage….I have never heard anything like it". Damn right Nigel - no rational person can believe this crook was selected by UKIP as one of their premier candidates.

Mote, UKIP and a bunch of TITS

So, it looks as though disgraced former UKIP MEP and convicted benefit fraudster Ashley Mote has been released from prison and will be re-taking his seat in the European Parliament - much to the chagrin of one of the jurors on his case. However, poor ol' Ash's party the Independence, Tradition and Sovereignty group (or TITS for short) collapsed this week after one of their member (Mussolini's granddaughter Alessandra Mussolini, to whom, UKIPwatch's chum Godfrey Bloom is particularly attached) said that all Romanians were criminals. This caused predictable outrage, and led the Romanian far-right to withdraw their members from the group, causing it to fall below the minimum threshold of 20 MEPs required to be classified as a political group.

All of which means that Ashley is, again, without a political home. However, help is surely at hand - UKIP are haemorrhaging members and may well offer Ash a second chance. After all, it makes sense - TITS were a bunch of racists and homophobes and UKIP, erm, are a bunch of racists and homophobes.

In this light it is interesting that the re-doubtable England Expects blog which is run by a (clearly easily inflamed) UKIP official has taken umbrage that people get confused between UKIP and ITS. If the cap fits boys……....

Tom Wise and OLAF - the neverending saga

UKIPwatcher is a little bemused by the latest pronouncements by one of UKIPs most able MEPs Tom Wise.

Mr Wise, lest we forget, is currently being investigated by the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) for allegedly siphoning £36,000 of public money into his own bank account while claiming it was for the salary of an assistant.

Not very Wise says that he expects to be cleared by OLAF despite admitting wrong-doing, saying "I handled funds I should not have handled, that I should not have been handling". Ah, but it's all ok, voters because - "then I put my hand up to it". Hmm….when is an admission of guilt not an admission of guilt?

Similar confusion continues to exist on Wise's status as a UKIP MEP - has he been suspended or not. Never fear, clarification is here. The UKIP spokesman said - "we have restored the whip in order that if has it we can discipline him. If he was outside it and OLAF ruled against him, we can not discipline him as far as we are aware as a UKIP MEP". Now that makes sense doesn't it………

A cynic might think that this is little more than sophistry. But then an honest party like UKIP would never resort to spinning would they? Oh.

Before being elected in 2004 Tom Wise was a policeman. Scary isn't it?