John Bufton UK Independence Party

John Bufton, aged 42, who has lived in Wales for 38 years has been selected by UKIP for the Monmouth Constituency as its candidate.

John who is chairman of the Gwent Branch is delighted to have been selected. He previously was a candidate for UKIP in the Ceredigion by-election in 2000, and was also a candidate for the Referendum Party in the 1997 General Election in Montgomeryshire.

John was also a county councillor serving on Powys county council 1995/1999 and a town councillor on Rhayader town council serving as mayor in 1995/1996. John lives with his partner Denise and has a six-year-old son James.

He is employed by Capita as a visiting officer having previously been a proprietor of a retail business in Rhayader.

Some of the issues that affect the people of Monmouthshire are covered in our manifesto as follows,

UKIP will repeal the Hunting Act, raise the state pension by £25 per week. They will also cut council taxes by a half for all householders not just pensioners.

John says the UK Independence Party exists because none of the old political parties are prepared to accept that the real government of Britain is now in Brussels. Our purpose is to restore the authority for governing Britain to our elected parliament in Westminster - hardly an unreasonable position. To bring this about we must withdraw Britain from the European Union.

People sometimes tell me that UKIP is a single-issue party. The point is that the single issue of freeing Britain from the EU.

For instance, we are no longer free to choose our own policy on asylum seekers because this is now subject to EU directives.

None of us in UKIP see ourselves as politicians. Our members are people from all backgrounds who feel deeply what the majority of British people feel - that it is not right to have our country run by institutions across the Channel.

We are not anti-European; we just believe the best people to run Britain are the British.

In the June 2004 Euro Election 2.6 million people voted UKIP - more than for the Lib Dems and more than half the numbers that voted Labour or Tory.

A vote for any other party on May 5 will be a wasted vote - it will merely continue our subservience to Brussels.