Andy McSmith's Diary: This is a country run by perverts and child abusers. Vote for me

Ukip sure does attract them. A week away from polling day, two more examples of Ukip candidates with weird and wonderful ideas have come to light. John Kearney, a Ukip candidate in Basingstoke, is an avid Catholic blogger with strong religious convictions. Though he has Protestant friends and believes that some Protestants will get to Heaven, he believes that they nonetheless live in “invincible ignorance”.

Britain is, he wrote once, “a country run by Sexual Perverts who delight in Child Abuse”. He is concerned about Western decadence being exported to the developing world. “Condoms, sexploitation, abortions, homosexuality, all in the name of progress, are part and parcel of the packages that organisations like Planned Parenthood force on to the poorer countries,” he wrote.

But perhaps, more than anything else, he fears the imagined threat from Muslims. He wrote: “Today we have the rise of Islam and a contempt for human life among a large number of people of that faith. They seek world domination and are more evangelical in their cause than Christians.

“A new word has arisen in Brainwashed Britain ‘Islamaphobia’ (sic). This is called an unnatural fear of Islam. I do not know about unnatural but I would say that anyone who does not fear Islam is a fool.”

All these and other enlightened comments can still be found online.

North London’s Helmand

And then there is Heino Vockrodt, a Ukip candidate in Brent, who addressed a furious email to the “Yes-Sayers, Appeasement Chamberlains and Look-The-Other-Way cowards” at the council offices, whom he accused of failing to stop an Afghan centre from flouting planning regulations. In the email, seen by the Brent & Kilburn Times, he wrote: “Just like in all the other cases where Muslims are grooming sex slaves under the eyes of the authorities, the council does NOTHING for political correctness.

“All the old owners of the neighbouring shops have been squeezed out by Muslims. The entire parade – once lovely owner/occupier shops – resembles Helmand province now.”

At a rally last week, Nigel Farage pleaded: “Please, do not ever call us a racist party. We are not a racist party.”

Lib Dems at odds

“Nigel Farage is clearly a gifted politician, and politicians in the mainstream parties need to think about the nature of Ukip’s appeal,” the former Liberal Democrat minister Jeremy Browne has told House magazine, the trade journal for MPs.

That is not quite what his leader said when ShortList magazine asked him about Farage. “The idea that he’s this ‘alternative’ politician is totally synthetic,” Nick Clegg replied. “He’s much more of a politician than most politicians I know. He’s been a jobbing Conservative candidate since he was knee-high to a grasshopper.

“He and I joined the European Parliament on the same day, and he’s still there now. So he will be found out at some point.”

At least they can agree that he is a politician.

The rubbish piles up

Brandon Lewis, the Local Government minister, believes in weekly rubbish collections. It is a bit awkward that the number of households on fortnightly collections has gone up on his watch, but he blames that on the Labour government, council officials, private waste collections firms – anyone really, except the current administration. “Had the Government not taken the actions it had, weekly collections would have disappeared in England by 2015,” he asserted, in a written Commons answer.

“We have stopped the rot, but there is more to do. Many town hall jobsworths, over-zealous NGOs, and vested interests in the waste industry remain blindly obsessed with restricting bin collections as a perverse policy goal in itself.

“We are open to representations on how best to… protect the environment, public health and local amenity from the nuisance of stinking rubbish.”

He means household refuse, not the stinking rubbish talked by politicians.