by Sunny Hundal

The Conservative MEP Roger Helmer is a well known global warming denier. He is also a critic of spending any taxpayer money that educates people about the issue.

He recently unveiled this poster campaign:

The billboards can be viewed by the citizens of Derby, Leicester, Northampton, Lincoln and Nottingham – in Helmer’s East Midlands constituency.

So where did the money for the £9000 billboard campaign come from?

The Guardian’s Leo Hickman did some digging:

I’m told that the “information fund” of the European Conservative and Reformist Group, of which all the Conservative MEPs are members, has covered the costs. Indeed, each poster carries the ECR logo, as the rules of the funding allocation demands. Another call to the ECR’s office in Brussels confirms that the group – as is the case with all seven of the EU parliament’s political groups – is entirely funded by the parliament.

…

So, what we appear to have is a Conservative MEP who, as a TaxPayers’ Alliance supporter, likes nothing more than complaining about how the EU loves wasting taxpayers money, using just such a source of funding to buy prime advertising space to promote his own pet beliefs and theories.

What a hypocrite.

Roger Helmer has previously been in the news for claiming that homophobia is a “propaganda device”.

He has also hosted conferences denying global warming, which headlined speakers who were paid to deny the effects of passive smoking.