MADAM - Roshi Saul (letters SNJ December 31, 2014) asks “What are Ukip in favour of?” and further asks Caroline Stephens, Ukip’s Stroud PPC, to defend Ukip’s signing up to be allied with a right wing Polish party who have spoken positively about Hitler’s tax policies.

I know not what Hitler’s tax policies were but I suspect that they could not be any more disreputable than those engineered by the current president of the European commission, Jean-Claude Juncker (which intriguingly rhymes with “bunker”) when he was, until recently, prime minister of Luxembourg.

Those tax avoidance policies, agreed in secret, were massively pro-big business and cynically anti-citizen.

This behaviour is unsurprising and is totally in keeping with the anti-democratic stance of the EU.

What’s more, Europeans would not have known of this conspiracy had it not been for the brave, public spirited actions of a whistleblower who, for his trouble, has been arrested and faces a prison sentence.

These actions I suggest would not have been out of place in Germany in the mid-1930s.

What is even more alarming is the fact that the Lib Dem, Labour, Tory and Green parties, by way of their acceptance of all things EU, agree with this shameless behaviour.

To make matters worse they sat on their collective hands when the centuries-old British judicial provisions of Habeas Corpus were recently abandoned by Parliament to be replaced by yet another unholy measure, the European arrest warrant.

The shambles of what currently represents EU and UK criminal law could not be more clearly demonstrated than by the case of Ched Evans, the professional football player convicted in the UK of rape and recently released from a subsequent prison sentence here.

Due to public pressure Evans found it difficult, if not impossible to find employment in Britain (unlike expense fiddling MPs), so he looked elsewhere.

It was recently reported that he was offered terms by a Maltese team but then, inexplicably, the British Ministry of Justice stated that he would not be allowed to move to Malta because of his conviction.

This policy, apparently instituted for the protection of the public (only overseas apparently), is madness of the highest order and seems to utterly contradict the ‘free movement of people’ treaty provisions so beloved of Brussels and the UK coalition.

Setting aside for the moment the merits or otherwise of Evan’s case, it is a fact that any criminal from Europe – be they rapists, Mafia members or murderers – are allowed unchallenged entry to the UK.

Our current politicians (save for a small, well known cohort who dare to put their heads above the parapet) are simply unconcerned about the safety of the British public.

The latest example of this dangerous nonsense is the suspect for the killing of a young girl in West London last year, Arnis Zalkalns, a Latvian who murdered his wife and then served a seven year prison sentence before emigrating to the UK.

Frankly, I would be ashamed to vote for any British political party who sees a shred of merit in this state of affairs.

Once upon a time, Britain was widely regarded as having a judicial system that was the envy of the world; our entry to the EU would seem to have destroyed that, along with much else that made our country a magnet for people fleeing oppression.

Thank goodness the majority of our forebears didn’t decamp to greener pastures in 1940 when the game looked up – we owe them a debt that is incalculable.

Roger Gough

Minchinhampton