Silent Majority Speaks
Rescuing Democracy in the United Kingdom from our current Elected Dictatorship
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Spin,
not face-to-face confrontations with the voters, is the Government's
chosen method of communication. Ordinary people are dangerous. Ordinary
people might ask a question which throws a politician 'off message';
the Cabinet member might reveal himself or herself to be a human being
like us, and not a programmed android. Worse still, he or she might
tell the truth.
Ann Leslie - Daily Mail, September 16, 2004
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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June
29, 2006 (1146 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 2529 US - 113 UK - >60,000? civilians - 25 media
July
15, 2006 (1162 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 2545 US - 114 UK - >60,000? civilians - 25 media
Reid's
pledge fiasco over 450,000 failed asylum seekers in UK
By
Matthew Hickley - Home Affairs Correspondent - Daily Mail, July
20, 2006
Ministers
said yesterday that checking visitors in and out of Britain is
crucial in bringing the shambolic immigration system under control.
They plan to do this by reinstating embarkation
controls, which were scrapped by the then Labour Home Secretary
Jack Straw in 1998.
Officials
at ports and airports will electronically register every visitor
to the UK. This will identify anybody who fails to go home at
the end of their holiday, or when their visa expires. The result
should be that the Government finally knows exactly who is, and
is not, legally in the UK. But the £400million system, known
as Project Semaphore, will not be fully operational until 2014.
Turning
a blind eye to a social disaster
Comment
- Daily Mail, July 20, 2006
There
are many high-minded and, indeed, pragmatic reasons for
turning a blind eye to illegal immigration. Top of the
list is the feeling, shared by all decent people born
British, that it was through no merit of our own that
we drew the winning ticket in life's lottery. So what
right have we, the thinking goes, to turn away fellow
human beings who have fled from poverty, oppression or
war?
No
wonder so much bein-pensant opinion - in the Guardian,
the BBC and the Home Office - holds that immigration officers
have no right to tell any foreigner arriving here: "Sorry,
mate. You're not welcome. Go home."
Then
there are the pragmatists who point out that many immigrants
are prepared to work incredibly hard for very low wages.
And in boom times like these, cheap labour is gold dust.
Who is going to sweep our streets or clean our office
lavatories? One thing's for sure: it won't be the true-born
Brit who, too often, is tempted to idleness by a welfare
system encouraging him to avoid work. Not while there
is a hard-up Somali or Pakistani to do it instead.
That
said, there is a limit to the number of foreigners any
country can absorb before terrible social pressures build
up. The Home Office confession that there may be as many
as 450,000 failed asylum seekers here - nearly twice as
many as previously thought, enough to populate a city
the size of Edinburgh - confirms this limit was reached
long ago.
The
figure is truly terrifying - both for its demographic
implications and for insights it gives into the stupefying
incompetence of the Home Office. Have these people never
heard of computers? Their ineptitude is almost criminal.
But, of course, it isn't they who suffer.
The
social tensions are felt in the poorest areas - far away
from the comfortable enclaves of those who vilify anyone
who dares say: 'Enough is enough'. They are felt in our
schools, where teachers have to cope with children who
cannot even speak their language - and end up unable to
teach any child anything at all. They are felt in the
queues for housing and hospital beds.
Worst
of all, they are felt on our streets - where gangs of
young people who have no innate respect for our laws prey
upon any passer-by. Home Secretary John Reid's solution
to all this - shuffling off responsibility for immigration
to a semi-independent quango - will achieve nothing.
All
it will do is conveniently to enable him or his successor
to escape Ministerial accountability.
What
we need is a proper immigration policy, properly administered.
And we need it now, while Britain still remains - more
or less - a democratic, governable national entity.
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John
Reid found himself on the back foot yesterday hours after it emerged
that up to 450,000 failed asylum seekers could still be living
in Britain. The Home Secretary came under fire after pledging
in the House of Commons that he would clear the backlog of deportations
'in 5 years and hopefully sooner'.
It
became clear on Tuesday that the number of failed asylum seekers
still in Britain could be nearly twice as high as Government previously
thought. The previous Home Office estimate of 233,000 was exposed
as a massive underestimate after officials discovered a huge number
of cases lying around in files. The trawl uncovered an extra 200,000
cases - and possibly even more - that had been ignored n previous
counts.
Mr
Reid made his five-year pledge on clearing deportations as he
announced a string of reforms to his crisis-hit department. But
the hugely ambitious pledge was dismissed as 'implausible' by
critics, and within minutes he was backpedalling furiously.
Mr
Reid then claimed he was referring only to failed asylum seekers
'who can be found' by immigration officials. Given that huge
numbers have disappeared into Britain's black economy after their
asylum claims were judged to be bogus, his promise appeared
virtually meaningless.
The
asylum backlog dominated Government's immigration policy in recent
years, after Tony Blair set a target of deporting more rejected
applicants than the number of new false claimants arriving - the
'tipping point'. The goal was finally met earlier this year, but
the huge effort demanded from the Immigration and Nationality
Directorate meant other policy areas were neglected, including
the deportation of foreign criminals - which erupted into a devastating
scandal two months ago.
Ministers
have refused to guess how many failed asylum seekers are still
in Britain, although when the National Audit Office published
a figure of 283,000 last year, the Home Office claimed it was
probably 50,000 too many. Now it has emerged that a more thorough
trawl in the wake of the foreign prisoners debacle has revealed
up to 450,000 case files, mostly lying forgotten at the IND's
headquarters in Croydon, South London.
Insiders
have told how many were in heaps on window wills covered in Post-it
notes, or crammed into cupboards which staff were afraid to open
in case the piles collapsed. Mr Reid claimed yesterday that not
all the files represented people who need deporting as some may
be duplicates, some will have died or left the country, and some
may be eastern Europeans who have since become EU citizens and
can live and work in Britain.
But
because of the IND's dismal record-keeping, the Home Office has
no idea of the true number. The Home Secretary told MPs: "People
will say it will take 25 years and all the rest of it. I think
this can be done, while continuing to deport the current cases,
within five years and hopefully sooner."
Minutes
later at a press conference, he said the five-year pledge applied
only to failed asylum seekers 'who we can find'. He added: "Can
we guarantee to find everybody, and having found them to deport
them? That's not the experience of any government."
Liberal
Democrat spokesman Nick Clegg dismissed the pledge as 'bold and
somewhat implausible."
Shadow
Home Secretary David Davis said: "The government and this
Home Secretary have form for making headline grabbing announcements
only to fail to follow them up. John Reid must now come forward
and explain exactly how he intends to achieve this and not just
quietly shy away from his responsibilities."
The
Home Office has struggled to boost the rate of deportations and
latest figures show only 1,440 failed asylum seekers families
sent home per month - equivalent to 17,000 a year.
Dr
Reid also confirmed plans to separate the troubled IND from the
rest of the Home Office and turn it into an 'arm's length' agency,
giving bosses greater freedom to set their own policy. He denied
trying to distance himself from the scandal-ridden organisation.
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