This is just disgusting. Absolutely vile. I hope all decent people write in to the ASA to complain about this bigoted company.

I've registered a complaint with the ASA through its online complaint form. I'll post their response here once I receive it.

The newspaper should bar the company from using its pages to promote this sort of prejudice. I'll be writing to the Falmouth Packet as well. Seems Trago Mills delights in buying advertising space to publicise its bigoted views. Why on earth would a newspaper allow it to do so?

Well, thats the final straw, I'm boycotting buying anything from them. I blogged about this here, and a facebook group is going to be set up soon to encourage compliants to the ASA

http://hollowmarked.blogspot.com/2009/01/trago-mills-are-rascists.html

I THINK A FACTUAL RESPONSE WOULD HELP TO BRING SCALE & PERSPECTIVE TO THE PUBLISHED ARTICLE. 2 MISSING KEY POINTS NEED MENTION, THAT (a) THE UK MUSLIM COMMUNITY IS ONE OF - IF NOT THE - MOST HARD-WORKING & LAW-ABIDING SECTION OF SOCIETY, &, (b) IT IS ONLY A TINY, TINY FRACTION OF UK MUSLIMS WHO ARE IN POLYGAMOUS MARRIAGES, HENCE THE UK MUSLIM NORM HAS CONSISTENTLY BEEN MONOGAMOUS WEDDED BLISS! THEREFORE THOSE MUSLIM HUSBANDS ON BENEFIT CULTURE IN POLYGAMOUS MARRIAGE BECOME SO FEW THEIR EFFECT ON DSS BUDGETS IS NEGLIGIBLE. THE DISPROPORTIONATE REPORTAGE THOUGH IS NOT!

Two or three readers have objected to my recent Trago piece about State benefits for polygamous Islamic marriages, calling it racist and offensive.

Let’s get a few things straight: the article was based on reports in the Daily Mail, Sunday Telegraph, and Times newspapers. There was no hint of racism. The mention of Islam and Muslems was strictly factual. Or are these complainants disputing that a Muslem can come to this country with a harem of wives, and claim state benefits for each of them? The taxpayer, of course, picks up the tab for this. As for giving offence, I find it offensive that ill-informed correspondents can flounder around with false accusations of racism.

Of the estimated 1.25 million readers of the Column (which has been running for 40 years in twenty-five different newspapers) I am unaware of a single complaint from any Muslem reader. Far from criticising Islam, the article clearly castigated our idiotic Labour government (and by implication the ‘useful idiots’ of the progressive left) who have embraced the lunacy of multiculturalism. This is an old tactic. Ignore the genuine complaint. Invent another.

While we’re on the subject, the UK Independence Party makes no apology for condemning multiculturalism as a naïve and doomed social experiment. A gang of skinheads in an Indian restaurant, guzzling lager, tucking into curry, and bellowing: “Oi, Gunga din,” to the waiter, might be sampling exotic cuisine of the east, but are hardly a great example of multiculturalism (despite the words of the late Robin Cook MP, who was once jolly pleased that tikka masala had been named the nation’s favourite dish, thereby celebrating ‘the advance of multiculturalism’.)

This has nothing to do with race or skin colour and should not be confused with multiracialism. UKIP has many members of so-called ethnic minorities (some of them MEP candidates) who would not thank these few complainants for their patronising and arrogant attitude. Refutation by denigration is the easiest thing in the world, showing intellectual laziness and intolerance. I have a simple message for these complainants: if you don’t like the Trago Column, don’t read it.

At the moment we still have a comparatively free press. For all our sakes, let us hope that these few individuals never get their hands on it. Oh, and for the record, I have not been “Chairman of Exeter UKIP” for some years, a lesson not to confine ones research to Google alone.

What I find most worrying is the instinctive response from your contributors that attacking multi-culturalism is the same as attacking religion. To quote IBM's famous instruction to its employees: "THINK".

David Challice
UK Independence Party