THE UK Independence Party's candidate for Central Devon in the forthcoming General Election is Bob Edwards.
He is chairman of the Trust which owns and runs the Old Town Hall and also of Crediton Traffic Action Group, which has been in the news recently, campaigning hard for the Valley route as the sensible solution to Crediton's pollution and traffic problems.
Now 64, Bob has lived with Ruth at Salmonhutch since 1979. He is a keen, if a trifle overweight sportsman and arranges the Crediton end of the annual veterans' football exchange with twinned towns Dokkum and Fulda.
He remains an inveterate traveller, and has visited SE Asia and South America in the last two years.
Bob joined the Royal Marines from school and was just 19 when he first saw action in Borneo. As a landing-craft specialist, he spent five years at sea and during the Falklands War, he helped organise the San Carlos landings, after which he was beachmaster both there and at Fitzroy (Bluff Cove), when the Sir Galahad was bombed.
He also spent nearly three years in Brunei and Zimbabwe (straight after independence).
Since then he has experience of both small business and financial services.
Bob stood as long ago as 1989 in the European election (for the SDP) and he has increased UKIP's vote share at the last two General elections, first in West Devon and here in Tiverton/Honiton last time.
He joined UKIP soon after its formation in 1993, when it became clear that all three traditional Parties were fully committed to the European Union, however much it turned itself from a "common market" into a continental superstate.
Bob believes in "friendship, trade and cooperation with our neighbours," but feels strongly that we should govern ourselves, and not give unelected foreign bureaucrats the powers that they consolidated, indeed increased, with last year's Treaty of Lisbon.
He says: "Some of you may think this unimportant, but over 70 per cent of our laws are now made, or are heavily influenced, by Brussels. In essence, more than half your life is governed by people you have had no hand in electing and cannot, therefore, remove. So much for democracy!
"Just for example, your Post Offices have closed, the size of lorries on our roads continues to increase and you may well be treated in an emergency by a doctor who can hardly speak English all because we have given away our sovereignty.
"You can expect European taxation and the adoption of the continental legal system within the next decade."
He added: "UKIP is now a fully-fledged political Party, with a full manifesto; for example, anyone whose income is less than £11,500 would pay no tax, whilst we would put a stop to mass and uncontrolled immigration.
"We spent hundreds of years fighting to become a (sort of) democracy – you choose who governs you and have the chance every few years of throwing them out.
"Labour and Conservative, with willing acquiescence of the Lib Dems, have destroyed this during the last 40 years.
"If you think we British should run our own country, you really can only vote for the UK Independence Party. It is as simple as that."