Steerpike

All aboard Ukip's Common Sense battle bus! Today Nigel Farage's party took the fight to Portsmouth - or more precisely, Portsmouth and Southsea Station. It's not entirely clear what the station did to offend Ukip, but the party's battle bus accidentally collided with it while trying to execute a U-turn. Hopefully it's not an omen for what will happen when the party drives back over previous commitments made in its 2010 manifesto.

Ukip have suspended a member and Merton council candidate who appeared in their party political broadest, Andre Lampitt, for a series of 'repellent' tweets. Here are those offensive tweets, which have now been deleted, in full: Nigel Farage has said he is 'deeply shocked' by the tweets and has pledged to root out 'real extremism and nastiness' from his party.

If the French are flocking to Britain, it's not just down to a 75 per cent tax hike on the super-rich. Multi-millionaire designer, Jean Paul Gaultier comes to the UK for a different reason. “The British have a lot of connection with the sexual, which is something that I appreciate. None of this ‘No sex- we are British.’ It is more like ‘A lot of sex- we are British!’” The designer, who opened a retrospective exhibition in the Barbican this month, told Mr S that the French are “snobbish” and he comes to London to “to have fun”. “Britain represents iconoclastic creativity, individuality - things that we don’t know so much in France.” Tax that President Hollande.

Ukip is the Common Sense party that listens to ordinary people. So says Lizzy Vaid, who appears on the party's European elections manifesto as someone thrilled that Nigel Farage's party is 'listening to what people want'. She should know: although Vaid looks like she's an ordinary voter on the street, she is in fact Nigel Farage's assistant and Ukip's events manager. Well, it is Common Sense to vote for the party that employs you, after all.

Nigel Farage is feeling the heat after saying that the electricity bill for his 620 square foot office is over £3,000. According to Consumer Futures, the average household dual-fuel energy bill is £1,200 and that is for an average 1,042 square feet home, so one can see why he's under pressure. Farage went on to say that he runs lots of 'machines' in his tiny office. Henry de Zoete, the bright spark former special adviser to Michael Gove turned co-founder of energy campaigning group The Big Deal, points out an open goal to Mr S: 'Like millions of Britons, Nigel Farage is being ripped off by the Big Six energy companies. But it’s ok for him because the EU and British taxpayer are picking up the bill.

Keith Vaz was in full oil slick mode on Friday night when he found himself as the only Labour MP at the Asian Business Awards in Waterloo. Surrounded by dozens of Tories, including Priti Patel, Alok Sharma and Shailesh Vara, Vaz laid it on thick, telling the audience 'that was the best speech I've ever heard from a politician to Asian audience.' Who was worthy of such high praise? Why, none other than Labour's favourite bogeyman Michael Gove. Vaz continued: 'I was almost tempted to defect; but I'll wait until next year'. Well, creeping around the enemy never did John Bercow's campaign to become the Speaker any harm.

For months now the Tories and Labour have each been trying to out-do the other by revealing embarrassing examples of spending. Labour has generated the odd story about pot plants, biscuits and tellies by using written parliamentary questions to get departments to spill the beans. Eric Pickles’s Department for Local Government has never played ball and replies by flagging up how much Labour spent in government; thereby reminding the public of those Halcyon days. Yesterday's response to one of Hilary Benn’s questions was a classic of the genre: ‘Hilary Benn: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what his Department's (a) catering and(b) hospitality budget was in (i) 2012 and (ii) 2013.