UPDATE: Interview with UKIP candidate...

Robin Julian, general election 2010 UKIP candidate for Torridge and West Devon interviewed by Adam Wilshaw.

IN THIS EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: “We are a very proud nation. Labour and Conservatives have been demoralising the British people”/ “you are programming people to be zombies”/ “Multiculturalism is where everybody is coming here and speak their own language and don’t recognise the British system and the way of life”/ “If you insist you want to wear a Burka then I suggest if you’re not happy here, go home”

Question: Can I ask you how you became involved in politics?
I've always been involved but more just to talk about it. I've always been very upset about the way the political world has been going and a guy came up to me and said "did you ever hear about UKIP" and I didn't, be truthful. I got involved.

The policies are just what everybody talks about on the streets, so I took it up seriously and I'm very passionate about it.

Question: Why would anyone vote for a candidate who is not likely to win?
I would not say that. The word on the street is very positive. We have fantastic policies and we can finance them. What is on everybody's lips is the economy, where they're getting their billions from, and immigration and what are they going to do about it.

I find that is absolutely scary as well. And we've got a fantastic policy on that where it's about space not race.

Housing. An average for the South West is about 80,000 homes for the homeless and for people to be re-housed. There's been earmarked 750,000 houses. You take 80 from 750 which leaves 670 and it's been told, they've made no secret about it, they are for immigrants.

We are going to struggle with employment here and end up like everybody else where the British people have been made redundant and the foreign workers have been working here.

Question: Your political opponents throw at UKIP that you're a "one issue party"...
Far from it. The manifesto covers all aspects of the economy. It covers aspects of fishing, agriculture, law, society, transport.

Question: One of those policies is the flat tax of 31%. Would that not have the effect of making wealthy people wealthier and poor people poorer?
No, because £11,500 is what you get tax free. Then it starts at 31% and that encourages them if they want a better job to work harder, they get more money. It is deliberately designed to move money around in the economy because if you've got more money you'll spend more money. It will encourage people to save for pensions and we say no tax on pensions.

Question: UKIP is talking about cutting waste. Isn't that one of those things we always hear at election times but never actually seems to happen?
This is possible. We are a straight-talking party. There's the £80billion we are giving to the EU. Straight away, before frontline services are even touched. If anything we will be strengthening the frontline services.

Question: You want to cut public sector levels back to 1997 levels. Would that not increase unemployment?
No way. I'll give you an example. At the moment we've lost our industry, we've sold it to foreigners, Cadbury's is a fine example. We've lost Rover, Jaguar, Land Rover, Rolls Royce. We're going to get our industry going.

We are a very proud nation. Labour and Conservatives have been demoralising the British people.

We are a very clever people and now we have got to the situation where the French are the farming industry, the Germans are the industrial industry, and we are £7billion in debt to Europe. It just cannot carry on.

Question: UKIP's manifesto talks about "culling political correctness". What is political correctness and why is it so bad?
I have got an HGV licence and have travelled in Europe. Last year I was employed to move rigid lorries. Between the cab and trailer there is a space and they all had to have a bar across there in case an old lady fell in between the two bits.

This is political correctness in case she injured herself. Since then there has been more injuries of lorry drivers slipping between these bars and it's dangerous.

It's cost the country thousands of pounds to have all this done.The other one which is totally ridiculous is when they're doing repairs on the road and they have one chap on one lot of lights, another chap on another lot of lights, and a quad bike all dressed up in health and safety gear, driving up and down in case you run over a worker.

I've never heard of anybody being run over yet.In other words you are programming people to be zombies.Political correctness goes right into all industry, into farming, it's getting ridiculous. It's costing this country £120billion a year to employ people to implement these EU regulations.

Question: Your manifesto talks about stimulating the manufacturing base by manufacture of weapons, building nuclear power stations, railways, flood defences. They sounded like the American New Deal of the 1930s, like Government make-work schemes?
Since Beeching closed the railways towns have grown in great enormity. We have got to get the trains back where practical.We also want the canals opened up.We're talking about flooding. The short-sightedness of all these political parties.

You need flood plains so rivers can burst banks into meadows. But no. We've got to build a house right up to the river's edge and flood the people out.

They've paid a fortune for these beautiful houses to look over the river and find they're knee-deep in slurry and sludge.We've also abandoned council ditch-diggers to keep the ditches clean so when you have tons of rain so they flow.When they build new houses, put proper pipes in.

If you've got a waste pipe for 2,000 homes and you stick another 2,000 homes on it that pipe can't cope with 4,000 homes.

I'm an ex-Army man myself and they need to be fully equipped. We're fighting a war that goes back to the Second World War and we're in 2010 so we should have the up-to-date equipment. We ran out of ammunition when we were fighting in Iraq and we had to ask the Belgians for ammunition.

I mean what sort of system have we got here? It's just absolutely outrageous and we're going to sort it out.

Get our Forces back to proper strength, 1979 strength. Look at like this. If you're next door and you're causing me a lot of trouble and I've got a cannon and you want to attack me I can say "I've got a cannon here, watch it" and you'd back down. Deterrent is to say "don't try to attack us, we are here with bigger stuff than you".Labour have caused unrest in this world by attacking people unnecessarily. It is not on.

Question: UKIP wants to withdraw from the Human Rights Act. Why is that?
It is meant to be for people of torture, human rights. I'm an ex-policeman and only recently stood down. When I used to go arrest anybody they said "I know my rights, I've got human rights".

We are policing with our handcuffs behind our backs. It is ridiculous.The human rights in prisons. It's better than a five star hotel. Television. Swimming pool. Football. Education. Yes you need to educate them, but not have it five star.The other one is you can be arrested anywhere in Europe and prosecuted.

You are guilty unless you can prove your innocence. The law we've had for hundreds of years is you're innocent until proven guilty. We don't want that law.

Question: UKIP wants elected police, education and NHS boards. Would that not lead to chief constables, for example, spending all their time politicking rather than focusing on the job of running the police force.
No, they're already involved in politics now. What we are saying it should have a civilian board where the chief constable is accountable for the people.

The police force in this country is unique. You're there because the people want you there, you're not there by the Government, like all the other countries. You're policing on a vocation.He'd be more accountable to the people.

Question: UKIP says “life must mean life”. Does that mean people will die in prison for certain crimes?
Life is life. Yes, die in prison if necessary. You’ve got to understand these people that have been found murdering other people, you lose somebody and you’ve lost them, they’ve got life already got life.

Therefore this person should not be allowed out. It is for murderers, rapists, violent criminals of that sector. They should be left in there.

Question: UKIP says it is “opposed to multiculturalism”. What does UKIP mean by multiculturalism and why is it opposed to it?
Multiculturalism is where everybody is coming here and speak their own language and don’t recognise the British system and the way of life.

We can’t have people preaching against the British; they should be expelled straight away. If you come here, you should blend in with the British people.

You should learn our language and be part of the British culture. Like if we wanted to move over there we would have to do like in Rome do as the Romans do.

If you want to move to a Muslim world you would have to dress correctly and believe in all what they believe in.What’s happening is we have got an education system where they can’t even speak English; it’s a second language in this country.

It’s unacceptable.I find on the streets nobody has complained about that; they quite agree.It’s important if you want to be here then you follow the Christian way of life and the way we live. If you don’t like it, nobody’s saying you must stay. You can always go.

Question: UKIP wants to ban the Burka in public buildings and some private buildings.
That is absolutely correct. This Government has imported terrorism. This Government is the only one which has created the terrorism in this country by the sheer influx of people coming in here.I’ve never known another country in the world where you can come in and go out and nobody even knows who you are.

You’ve seen where suicidal people are all covered up and you don’t know if it’s a male or a female. You could be robbed. You could be mugged.

You can’t identify anybody.You’re in a British country. We don’t have things like that. If you insist you want to wear a Burka then I suggest if you’re not happy here, go home.

Question: Another UKIP policy is for “boot camps”. What would that be like and what evidence is there it would be a good way of dealing with young offenders?
There isn’t any discipline any more. They just don’t care about the police any more; they’ve lost the value of respect.It starts at home. It ends up in education.When I was at school and anybody came in the class we had to stand up.

We had to be taught about opening the door and having respect for ladies.Thank you, please, they don’t cost a shilling.If we built this into the schools again, and sitting properly, and having a discipline to yourself, you’d probably knock a lot of this unruliness and this boisterous behaviour on the head.

The English used to be called the gentlemen people and we’ve lost it. You have doors slammed in your face and people don’t even say thank you any more.Manners is the root of everything, really.

Question: You’re an ex-Army man yourself. So you know what it’s like being drilled. You can imagine these young offenders going into these boot camps and it turning them around?
Exactly. I also believe the people on drugs have got to go to a hospital and be sorted out and dried out properly.

It’s ridiculous to throw these poor people in hospital.I know of a couple of prisons where they’ve gone in there convicted for drug abuse and the prison officers are still supplying drugs in there. It is outrageous behaviour and we should nail these prison officers and throw them in prison themselves.

Question: Your political opponents say there is quite a lot of common ground between UKIP and the BNP in terms of bringing the debate about immigration and Britishness to the fore. How do you view the BNP?
The BNP, I can see where they’re coming from. What’s happened is the BNP have got a narrow policy.

It’s the Labour that caused all this because it’s the Labour that are going to lose their seats to the BNP.Gordon Brown stood there and said “jobs for the British workers” and that’s where they’ve got in.Their regime is about kicking everybody out.

We’re not talking about that. We’re talking about closing the borders for five years to find out who is in this country.

The illegals are going out and the people that are legit, it’s fine.We’ve got foreign criminal gangs here that are on drugs, it’s a different culture, and are exploiting the youngsters as sex slaves. It might be fine in their country but it is not British culture. It’s got to be stamped on with a giant foot.

Question: UKIP is climate change sceptical?
Climates have been changing before we were even about. This country has been in a forest age, we’ve been in an ice age, we’ve had the dinosaurs, and the sun and the moon are constantly moving the world around. We’ve had meteorites.

We’ve had scientists say that Greenland was once snow-free and they used to grow potatoes on there, according to their giant scientistic (sic) drills.

Yes, we are sceptical.But we are to blame for cutting down forests in Brazil and ruining the forestation there and the animals and the tribal people. The carbon monoxide that is drawn in by the trees that’s where we should be nailing everything.

As for green policies, well are greener than the Greens.We have a bio-fuel policy.Nuclear fusion.

We’ve also got 200 years of coal and a fantastic system where the chimneys have so many filters the last filter is water vapour; you can’t get greener than that.Commercial bioplants can absorb all the rubbish and you won’t need landfill sites.

Every district council is being charged £3million by Euro taxes which could reduce our community charge.

Question: Can you outline your philosophy of what’s wrong with our relationship with Europe?
It started off as the EEC trading nations and people voted for the EEC believing everything was going to be fair.

This country is built on trade and that’s how we want to carry on.Since then we’ve had new laws, new directives, like the farming industry.

We can’t sell everything over there; they flood the market over here. We’re importing a billion gallons of milk.You go to Hartland and look at the farms around there and they’re standing idle, they’re empty; we can’t produce milk.

We can produce milk but if we go over our quota we get fined.This is all EU rules and regulations. We’re going to have a fair trade.

Why are we giving all our billions to Europe when we can subsidise our own people?We have now got fishing people here and they are in their boats watching these massive great trawlers fishing all our fish.The British people are not fishing anything out; it’s the foreigners that are fishing everything out.

We want our 200 nautical miles back.We want our industries back and we want to start building our own cars and exporting again.We’ve lost everything; we’ve given it away and the Europeans want more and more of our money for nothing.

We’re abolishing the wind turbines because when we get all these wind turbines here, hopefully we never do, the European government has said we’re going to have wind tax.We won’t lose trade over there; it’s a myth, a total myth.

Question: How would electing you improve the lives of people in Torridge and West Devon?
I want the community back. I want our post offices back. I will get the police back. I will get the shops back, the pubs back. And village life back.

I will be the key man to help everybody to get it back and make everybody’s lives that much better.