John Bufton MEP was elected to the European Parliament in 2009 as UKIP’s first ever MEP in Wales. He had previously sought election to the National Assembly and Parliament. He was born in 1962 in Llanidloes, Powys and joined the family Haulage Business before embarking on a career within the Health and Social Care Sector, managing a Residential Care Home for the Elderly with the Local Authority. He previously served as a member of Rhayader Town Council and Powys County Council. His interests and hobbies are rugby, walking, swimming, music and politics.

The break up?

Is there any hope left for the Eurozone?

A very Un-British pursuit

The riots this week has led to a lot of questions about what kind of society we now live in. What happens next could be the crucial step

Food for thought

The politics of food is a more complex and unfair issue than you may think

Lost in translation

How do the half a billion citizens, living within a Diaspora of cultures, histories and languages, connect with the overarching governance of a whole continent? The EU is failing to communicate with those who fund it

The EU: a fictional future

Are we heading towards becoming the United States of Europe? What are the possible futures of the European Union? Welsh MEP John Bufton plays with fact and fiction

A year for the EU

For the EU it has been a tumultuous year of many challenges, some unforeseen, some predicted, with legislative milestones and bittersweet anniversaries accompanied by storylines that will change the way Brussels operates forever

The moral maze

There is barely an area of social policy that does not have a European Treaty casting a shadow over it

Fiscal and political castration

So you think the Comprehensive Spending Review is our biggest worry? The European Union is now setting our finance policy

When there’s not plenty more fish in the sea

Our insatiable demand for fish is depleting the oceans to the point where we won’t be able to eat them anymore. The fault lies with a European Common Fisheries Policy that is making fishing unsustainable and destroying a way of life in the developing world

European External Action Service: A new dawn in EU Foreign Policy?

Recent EU executive action makes the federal superstate a greater reality. But is anyone considering the long term implications of further European integration?

‘Once food production is relinquished, indubitably so is independence’

Fifty years of the Common Agricultural Policy spells fifty billion pounds of waste per year

The prophesised Orwellian bureaucracy that is now reality

Some 35 years ago today, the UK voted in the first and, so far, last referendum to enter the European Union. And it was a major mistake made on the back of a campaign of half truths and the dismissal of genuine concerns of an undemocratic future that has come to pass