Silent Majority Speaks
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Blair wants to leave his mark on
history - looks more like a stain to me.
Peter Thorndyke, Diss, Norfolk
- Daily Mail, May 23, 2005
I know I'm me - why do I need an
ID card?
"Sorry, officers, I don't have
an ID card. I never applied for one. It seemed a bit steep
at 300 quid. I do have my free passport, my driving licence
and my London freedom travel pass, each with my photograph.
I have my NHS medical card, with its lengthy number, given
me at birth, my RAF service book with my Armed Forces number,
and a chit authorising me to wear a few gongs -including
a General Service Medal with Malaya bar, for fighting communist
terrorists on behalf of my country, or so they told me.
"I've also got various credit cards and
store cards, all with my signature on the back, generally
good for buying the everyday requrements for life as well
as the odd luxury. If you decide to arrest me, I suppose
I'll have to be photographed and given another number, besides
my PINs.
"I'm afraid I haven't got a pension book;
it was taken away."
"By thieves, sir?"
"No ... well, not exactly. By the Government.
By the way, may I see your warrant cards please, gentlemen?"
Oh dear, they've disappeared. E. Harry Gumer,
Romford, ESSEX - Daily Mail, June 1, 2005
NO means NO
When does NO mean MAYBE?
When it's not the answer the EU wants. With the courageous French
NON resounding in their ears, shabby, undemocratic self-interested
leaders of Europe propose ignoring the part of their precious
constitution that requires ratification by all members and
continuing without one of the biggest founder members to
prevent derailing the gravy train.
As in Ireland, they refuse
to accept any NO votes, ignoring the will of the people,
and re-stage votes until they can engineer the 'correct'
answer. Sadly, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw dances to their
tune like a puppet on a string. With tactics such as these,
how can anyone really believe the EU has our interests at
heart. Letter from Steve Penny, Kingsnorth, Kent - Daily Mail, June1,
2005
Surely the French
result makes the £1million the EU recently spent on
a treaty signing ceremony seem a trifle premature and extravagant.
Letter from Keith Wiseman, Bury, Lancs. - Daily Mail, June1,
2005
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Britain has traditionally
been one of the biggest net contributors to the EU because
we do not get as much money back from Brussels in farm
and regional subsidies as our rivals.
According to Treasury
figures, between 1995-2002, Britain's average contribution
taking the rebate into account, was £2.6billion,
or £43.55 per head of population.
The French - the biggest
recipient of farm subsidies - contributed £1billion
a year or £16.08 per head of their population.
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Tony
Blair should know that respect comes by example - from the
top. If a country's leader has no respect for the rule of
international law and no respect for the truth, how can
he expect anyone to have respect. Letter
from P.J.Atkinson, Ashford, Kent - Daily Mail, January 12,
2006
The
Chancellor's single greatest act of vandalism in almost
nine years in office has been his wanton destruction of
Britain's private retirement industry. By slapping a massive
tax on pension funds, now worth
£7.3billion a year, he has helped to turn
the best private retirement industry in Europe into a basket-case
in perpetual crisis. Together with the adoption of European
accounting rules - which make it much riskier to operate
a company pension scheme - hundreds of firms have shut their
final salary plans to new employees and slashed benefits
to existing staff. From
Allister Heath: "I've seen the future and its grey"
in THE SPECTATOR - April 15, 2006
Nine
years ago the British people were sold a fantasy of clean
and competent government of principle and honesty. Its shiny
wrappings stripped away, the product now reveals its true
nature: Personal greed, arrogance, incompetence, shamelessness,
rash warmongering and an inability to accept - as is clear
to almost everyone else - that it is time to go. Editorial
- The Mail on Sunday, May 28, 2006
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This
site has had 
visitors
Our
PM has been Mr Bean and a Runner Bean.May he soon be a
Has-Bean .. please!
'Straight
to the point' - from Harry Dodd, Bath - Daily Mail, December
18m, 2007
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A
shambles
Another
100,000 asylum seekers have been granted an amnesty to stay on
By
James Slack - Home Affairs Editor - Daily Mail, December 22, 2007
Almost
100,000 asylum seekers have already been given an 'amnesty' to
live in Britain by Labour, it emerged last night. These are in
addition to the 165,000 expected to benefit from a controversial
Home Office exercise revealed earlier this week which will let
them stay because their files had been forgotten.
It
means that - by the time the latest 'stealth amnesty' is complete
- more than a quarter of a million asylum seekers whose cases
were not proved under normal rules will have been given permission
to stay here. They will be free to bring their relatives to Britain,
and claim the full range of benefits, including housing.
Details
of the way Labour has dealt with the historic backlog of asylum
cases were revealed in research by the independent House of Commons
library. It found that, in 1999 and 2000, the Home Office gave
permission to stay to 18,480 people who had outstanding cases
dating back four years or more. Nine out of every ten of those
who applied for the special treatment were approved.
In
a second amnesty, which began in 2003 and has only just been completed,
24,615 families with unproved asylum claims were given indefinite
leave to stay. The total number involved in this exercise - when
partners and children are included - is 80,000.
Conservative
MP James Clappison, who uncovered the figures, said granting an
amnesty to so many with unproven claims would damage public confidence.
Mr Clappison, a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee, said:
"It undermines the credibility and integrity of the system,
which the public have been led to believe is to protect people
who are fleeing from persecution."
Sir
Andrew Green, chairman of MigrationWatch UK said. "The shambles
in the Home Office's administration of asylum over the past ten
years has led to this resort of citizenship by stealth for nearly
a quarter of a million people, most of whom have absolutely no
right to be in Britain. The Government must get tough on these
issues or the queues at Calais will get longer and longer."
The
figures have emerged in the wake of controversy over the latest
so-called 'legacy' exercise. On Monday it emerged officials trawling
through a backlog of 450,000 cases are expected to grant 165,000
people leave to remain over the next four years.
Their claims were found in boxes by blundering Home Office officials
last summer.
They
have now decided the applicants - many of them people who initial
claim was turned down but were never deported - have been here
so long that kicking them out would breach their human rights.
The
previous two exercises took place for similar reasons. Those approved
in 1999-2000 were claims dating back earlier than 1996, which
needed to be cleared.
The
second amnesty - known as the Family Indefinite Leave to Remain
exercise - dates to 2003, when then Home Secretary David Blunkett
announced a desperate plan to clear his own backlog. He asked
his officials to trawl for who might be eligible and made a prediction
that 15,000 families, or 50,000 people, would be covered.
But,
according to the Commons Library, the final total was 24,615.
It is the equivalent of 80,000 people being told they can stay.
The major reason so many claims have been approved is the Human
Rights Act. People who have been in the country for many years
can claim it is their home, and they no longer have links to their
homeland. The legislation,
passed by Labour, also prevents the removal of asylum seekers
to countries where they could face torture or persecution.
Immigration
Minister Liam Byrne, said: "We are continuing to resolve
the historic backlog of asylum cases dating from before the 2004
Asylum and Immigration ~Act - to date we have concluded around
52,000 cases, two thirds of which have either been removed, or
discovered to be duplicate files or errors."
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