Dear Mr Farage,

(Continuing - Open Letter to UKIP's Nigel Farage on Insulting Bulgarians. March 14, 2013)

It has been many weeks since I first wrote the above letter to you, published online and also sent to you twice - in person via your UKIP press office. I am still awaiting your reply.

I further note that you have again secretly returned to Bulgaria, but this time with a channel Four (UK) film crew. A documentary report now filmed in the very same impoverished area of Sofia – the very same district that you visited before.

The conclusion I draw is that you are quite incapable of learning from your mistakes and that you still insist on portraying Bulgaria and its people in the most negative of light.

You wish to further your own political objectives by portraying this wonderful nation as nothing more than a ‘desperate shanty-land.’ Do you not think that given your continual misrepresentation of the Bulgarian people that you could at least now be honest with them?

Anyone watching this latest broadcast will soon realize that it is the Roma community that you find so objectionable and not the generic population as a whole.

I congratulate the Bulgarian parliamentary leadership for refusing to meet with you.
I also admire the genuine hospitality shown toward you, this evident in the latest broadcast from the members of the Roma community. Though I suspect many have failed to understand the true purpose of your latest trip, this was nothing less than an ‘anti-Gypsy’ propaganda exercise.

Disengaged communities across the European Union all need our help as a unified Europe, decent housing, education and jobs. The destructive cycle of Roma poverty must be broken but you seem committed to only one end. You will ‘play the race-card’ at any opportunity to ensure you gain political votes. I personally welcome the Roma into the wider E.U to find work, if all member states committed themselves to bettering Roma living conditions instead of pandering to the delusions of the new right wing populist  movements - we will all soon find that politicians like you will find their real place in the system– this lost in the past.

When you were welcomed so warmly by this community, with all your smiles and handshakes present for the camera, you seem to have forgotten to tell them something. This, that your new political candidate for Ramsgate (Kent), Mr Martyn Heale is a former National Front activist. In fact a former ‘branch-organiser’ of the ultra right-wing British fascist party. He stood as an NF candidate in Hamersmith (London.) Surely you must be aware of My Heale’s past, Mr Farage? This very same man was your own personal election agent during 2005. The same man that after having left the National Front’s service then became Chairman of the West London (de-registered in 2008) ‘Anti-Immigration New Britain Party.’ His second choice of extreme far-right positioning.

Whilst you may publically portray UKIP as a legitimate petitioner acting on ‘British interests,’ the racist and xenophobic truth of what you and UKIP stand for is quite obvious to all. When you accepted the hospitality of the Roma community in Sofia did you not think to tell them that your friend and new candidate for Kent was a member of a political party that comprised of Holocaust deniers? The same Holocaust in which millions of Roma perished.

There was only one ‘highlight’ in your new broadcast that pleased me. The young Bulgarian woman (I believe to be a university student) whom most assertively stated to you, “If I wanted to come to Britain not you or anyone else would stop me.”

Mr Farage, I’d be delighted to pay her air-fare. And I recommend that she moves to your constituency!

There seems to be some concern from you that I did not write the original letter – I confirm that I did. These are the genuine concerns of a British expatriate’s in Bulgaria. I find it very funny indeed that the letter has been dismissed as a ‘Bulgarian plot’ on several websites. I chose not to state my profession on the original letter only as a means of preventing you from claiming it to be ‘a cheap self-promotion exercise.’ So I stuck to the point, to vent the anger of a British man that lives in Bulgaria who is outraged by British hypocrisy. A man that finds you to be more irritating than an arm-pit infested with the fleas of one thousand camels. But just to be sure that you do now truly believe that the original letter was written by ‘yours truly,’ and not a part of a ‘wider foreign conspiracy,’ I’ve also written you a new song.

I’ve written many works to celebrate the wonders of Bulgaria, Baba Marta, Vseki den, Sofia City of Love and others, but this one is just for you. I sincerely hope that you enjoy it. I’d be delighted if you would put a copy of it on the UKIP office answering machine, or indeed keep it as a personal ring tone for your mobile-phone. This might help in reminding you to reply.

You’ll find the song here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdAMP7HS3e0

Please don’t come here again, it’s very embarrassing.

Yours,
Jonathan Taylor