I WOULD urge everyone in the forthcoming election to not tick the box for UKIP unless they are fully aware of what they are letting themselves in for.

Some voters may feel they want to use their vote as a protest against Labour, the LibDems and Conservatives, and/or perhaps because they feel the EU is a dead weight around this country's neck. Both are understandable reactions.

But do voters realise UKIP doesn't actually want independence for the UK but rather to - I quote from the party's website - "strengthen our commitment to NATO"?

The main focus of UKIP's local election manifesto is to claim that immigrants are "crippling local services". This is a lie. Government-driven cuts of £114 million in Gloucestershire, combined with the council's ruling Conservative leadership's anti-poor policies, have caused the misery.

As sure as night follows day, when a society is in the midst of an economic crisis, those that helped cause it try to get off the hook by finding an easy scapegoat.

The super-rich, using the media they control, create a tide of exaggerated half-truths which demonise a minority, promoting divisions among the population. The rich get richer – the richest 150 people's incomes are rising at the fastest rate ever – as they wage war on the poor with heartless austerity measures, brutal cuts in vital public services and rising food costs. Instead of targeting their oppressors, embattled people are persuaded to turn on each other.

Across Europe, blatant fascism is on the march. The universal scapegoat this time is people from Eastern Europe, as well as Muslims. In Greece, hate-filled right-wingers the Golden Dawn are openly fascist. UKIP is fighting the 2013 local elections mostly on a wholly unfounded claim that Britain is about to be invaded by millions of Romanians and Bulgarians. There is no evidence and UKIP is scaremongering.

The immigration issue is only one element of UKIP's far-right, opportunist agenda. Many people perhaps aren't aware of the danger UKIP poses to education, public services, the NHS, our civil freedoms and human rights – as none of it appears in the 2013 election campaign.

It is UKIP official policy to: Oppose clean, renewable energy such as wind and solar and invest in shale gas fracking, coal-fired power stations and a massive nuclear power-station building programme; double the amount of prison places; increase defence spending by 40 per cent; bring back fox hunting; encourage the destruction of the NHS by introducing vouchers for private health insurance; cut two million public sector jobs; scrap British and European human rights law; privatise state schools and colleges; scrap workers' rights such as maximum working hours, holiday entitlement, redundancy, sick pay and parental leave.

UKIP is not just anti-immigration, it is anti-worker, anti-planet, anti-compassionate and pro-hate. Voter, if you are all these things too, by all means put an X in the box for UKIP, but I would hope the majority of Foresters have more sense.

– Owen Adams, Ruardean.