I LOATHE the leader’s beer and fags image. Suspect some unpleasant xenophobic stuff brews behind that inviting Home Rule for Britain facade.

So I’ll not be putting my cross against a Ukip candidate’s name, should one be available, at next year’s General Election. But strong temptation to do so occurs all the time.

A striking example of the EU laying down the law for Britain on what you might consider a domestic matter is currently underway. The EU plans to curb buy-to-let mortgages, of which 151,000 were taken out last year.

Until a decade or so ago this type of mortgage was virtually unknown. They have grown as rising house prices have increased the number of people willing to rent. Under what it terms its Mortgage Credit Directive, the EU intends to make it more difficult for so-called “reluctant”, or “accidental”, landlords, chiefly people who have inherited a property, to sell in a buy-to-let mortgage transaction.

Some might believe that the primary target for action should be speculators who have entered the buy-to-let market for profit. Be that as it may, it’s hard to think of any reason why regulating the housing market within our own shores should not be our own business.

Some experts fear the change will further weaken the struggling housing market. Others expect it to raise the cost of mortgages generally.

Most people, of course, will be unaware of the EU’s hand in an important change to housing regulation. But the EU perpetually beavers away like this on a multitude of issues. This column could probably focus on a different one each week - if only I was sharp enough to spot them.

BACK home, democracy is alive and well, the voice of the people carefully heeded. If only. A Government consultation on plans to allow fracking under people’s homes without permission drew 40,000 responses from the public. Ninety-nine per cent opposed the proposal.

The Government’s reaction? Through its Department of Energy and Climate Change, it declares: “Having carefully considered the consultation responses we believe the proposed policy remains the right approach.” And they wonder why turnouts at General Elections are nosediving.

FOR the second time in a year, Tian Tian, Edinburgh Zoo’s giant panda, has miscarried. Following artificial insemination, scans had revealed a cub, but it simply vanished. Experts believe Tian Tian’s body may have reabsorbed the foetus.

Let’s trust a promised review of procedures concludes that Tian Tian and her mate, Yang Guang, should be left alone. A more enlightened age than our own will probably consider the zoo’s desperate attempts to get Tian Tian to conceive a form of animal cruelty. Tian Tian might well have activated her own means of not giving birth in circumstances she hates.

ROD STEWART, Robbie Williams, Amy Winehouse, Paul McCartney, Annie Lennox – they all get round to it in the end: The Great American Songbook.

The latest pop idol to turn her talents to that glorious body of music is Lady Gaga, whose album of standards with the legendary Tony Bennett, Cheek to Cheek, is just released.

“I’m singing music I’ve loved my whole life,” she enthuses. “There’s no better music than the Great American Songbook.”

Shame she didn’t go for it straight off then, isn’t it?