The U.K Independence Party (UKIP) made headlines again this week when it was revealed that one of its councilors is a homophobe. And in other news the world continues to orbit the sun.

UKIP Councilor David Silvester caused outrage when he claimed that the recent floods were “divine retribution for the government’s decision to legalize gay marriage.” Although the comments were clearly the blabbering of a madman, their homophobic content seems entirely in keeping with the party itself and all it stands for, and that’s was why I was so surprised to see that the incumbent leader, Nigel Farage, had taken the decision to suspend Silvester as part of a broader initiative to remove ‘extremist, nasty or barmy’ views from the party.

Now Silvester’s views would have been inflammatory even in the 70’s, the 1870’s that is, but given Ukip’s manifesto, it seems almost hypocritical that Nigel Farage has mustered up the temerity to dismissively label some of it’s members ‘extremist, nasty or barmy’. In fact the entire manifesto itself could probably be split into these three categories, they could even make little mascots and call them extremist, nasty, and barmy, way catchier than whatever the hell those Olympic mascots were called. Go on, I’ll give you ten seconds to remember what their god-awful names were. The point is, much like the members they claim to be weeding out, the manifesto swings ominously between extremist, nasty, and barmy.

Take their military initiatives for example. Farage wants to liquidate the Ministry of Defense (the British Government department responsible for implementing defense policy) and replace it with army personnel, thereby separating the military from the government so that the military will be able to make executive decisions without those meddlesome politicians getting in the way with all their wimpy diplomacy all the while. Put simpler, it would be like taking Jeff Goldblum’s character out of Independence Day, and letting the military General detonate nukes over Texas, forever, which brings me nicely to my next point.

The Manifesto goes on to explain that ‘The U.K is no longer a superpower and our ability to destroy a superpower becomes ever less credible or realistic.’ Yeah, that’s right Nigel, you ale swilling sack of human dung, we are all living in constant fear that our government’s inability to vaporize China, so what do you plan to do about it? Well, Farage has proposed to develop a new strategy. He’s devilishly vague on the actual strategy itself, but has at least decided that as well as sharks that shoot laser death rays out of their teeth, he wants ‘advanced nuclear cruise missiles to be delivered by air sea or sub surface combat units’ because investing money in nuclear defense is exactly what a government should be doing when it’s people are facing record levels of unemployment and poverty.

I had originally planned to read up on UKIP’s same sex marriage policy, but ended up plowing through the entire manifesto, which pans out like something that has been thrashed out during the course of a lock in at a village pub. There’s the part on integrating the Army into the Police, another bit on withdrawing from the European Human Rights Act, something on global warming being a myth, another section on world war III, and then there’s the bit about opposing same sex marriages as gay people clearly don’t deserve to have the same rights as those of us who had the foresight to chose to be heterosexual. You look at all this bile and you think, yeah, this is exactly where a homophobe belongs. I’ll bet old David Silvester still can’t quite fathom what is exactly it is he’s done wrong.

Incidentally the names of those derisory mascots, you know the ones that every parent didn’t rush to the shops to buy their offspring, their names were Wenlock and Mandeville.