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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April 17, 2006 (1073 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 2376US - 104UK - >60,000? civilians - 25 media
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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
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Why
can't we simply deport all who abuse our laws, our hospitality
and our citizens
What
kind of system lets a jailed foreign rapist claim asylum to avoid
deportation?
by
Sue Reid - Daily Mail, May 3, 2006
Oule
Doucoure is the sort of man Britain doesn't need or want. The
23-year-old African entered Britain illegally in May last year.
One month later, while working on the black market as a kitchen
porter, he spotted an attractive young nanny on a London bus and
followed her home to Kensington. There, he raped her and strangled
her with such viciousness that she feared she was going to die.
Doucoure
was caught, tried in court and has now served six weeks of a seven-year
jail sentence. It would cost the taxpayer £250,000 to keep
him in prison until 2013, posing the question: why was he not
deported immediately he was found guilty last month?
The
answer beggars belief. Incredibly - and in an extraordinary further
abuse of Britain's tolerant immigration system - he is now applying
for political asylum and hopes to stay here forever. If successful,
he will join thousands of foreign convicts busily exploiting our
shambolic immigration system.
The
first signs of this particular scandal emerged when Home Secretary
Charles Clarke admitted last week that out of 1,023 foreign convicts
released by mistake while being considered for deportation, almost
a third - 291 - were asylum seekers. If this shocking proportion
is reflected throughout the prison system - and there is no reason
why not - more than 3,500 of the 10,000 foreign convicts behind
bars are asking for asylum here too.
In
what has become a ruse favoured by foreign convicts to avoid deportation,
Doucoure destroyed his passport and identity papers. No one knows
if Oule is his real name and he refused to reveal which country
he comes from. Such practices are now commonplace, with one in
ten overseas prisoners deliberately obscuring their true identity
or country of birth to hamper deportation. The result? If a foreign
convict comes from nowhere, he cannot be sent back anywhere ...
and so he remains in Britain.
In
the next few weeks - even though he is in jail - Doucoure will
try his luck at one of the 15 asylum tribunals dotted around the
country. Every week, 2,500 foreigners appeal for permission to
stay. Nearly a quarter are successful. And
the rest? If they are not in prison, they just dig in their heels
and refuse to leave.
As
Edward Leigh, the MP chairman of the House of Commons Public Accounts
Committee, warned last month: "Increasing numbers of failed
asylum applicants are staying in this country, knowing that there
is very little likelihood they will be apprehended."
This
comment, which followed the committee's investigation into Britain's
£2billion-a-year asylum system, was chilling. It made clear
that the process of weeding out real, deserving refugees from
the thousands of bogus ones is on the verge of meltdown. Many
claims for asylum are made by determined opportunists and convicted
criminals who use every twist of the Human Rights Act and our
generous and haphazard asylum process to stay in Britain.
Yet
in a further example of the system's failure, the Mail has learned
that when a foreign prisoner asks for asylum, his conviction may
not even come to light, or taken into account, during asylum appeals.
"We do not keep records of whether they are in prison or
have been in the past when they appeal for refuge here. It may
come up in evidence, or it may not," said spokesman for Department
for Constitutional Affairs. And nowhere is this woolly thinking
more evident than in our asylum courts.
Nine
months ago, as part of an investigation into the asylum appeals
process, I visited the courts where such cases are heard and watched
foreigners - including those with shadowy pasts - telling fantastic
stories aided by slick-talking immigration lawyers funded by legal
aid. The judges were a well-meaning brigade too often clearly
restrained by the strictures of political correctness that pervade
the asylum system. They were contending with the Human Rights
laws which prevent the expulsion of anyone telling a half-believable
tale that they will suffer persecution or a loss of their family
life if they are sent back to their home country.
Astonishingly,
the hearings were not under oath. I even heard a judge tell a
young male immigrant hoping to stay here: "Whatever is decided
here today, you will not be punished." In light of such findings,
the government promised reforms. So I returned to see if anything
had changed. I discovered the same depressing story: while clearly
some were genuinely fleeing persecution, too many foreigners clamouring
for asylum had stories that were frankly tenuous.
At
Taylor House, one of Britain's biggest asylum courthouses in North
London, there is a bizarre air of jollity as Brazilians mingle
with Belorussians, Nigerians with Mongolians. In lavatories there
were new instructions in Arabic on where to find the footbath
so that Muslim asylum seekers can wash before using the prayer
room in the building. Interpreters, earning nearly £200
a day paid for by the taxpayer, were versed in every language
and dialects ranging from Pidgin English (spoken in remote areas
of Africa and New Guinea) to Korean, Farsi to Turkish.
In
Hearing Room Four, I watched Neda Mehdipour, a dark-eyed British
girl, charming two middle-aged judges as they decided if her young
husband should be returned to Tehran. The couple married a few
weeks ago, just after they first realised he could be deported.
But was their plight genuine - or was it simply a wedding of convenience;
a ploy for her husband to stay in Britain?
"If
you make him go back to Iran, I will kill myself," says Neda,
of North London. Then the 21-year-old, wearing white trousers
and high-heeled diamante encrusted shoes, looked over at her spouse,
Behnam before moving from the witness stand to sit by his side.
But is her distress genuine?
Behnam
Mehdipour's central argument is he will be persecuted if sent
home to Iran because his family follows the minority Bahai faith
and are seen as 'unclean' by the ruling Muslim regime. He says
he came to Britain six years ago after three Iranian revolutionary
guards questioned him at school about his religion. He claims
he escaped through a small window and ran to a relative's house.
His mother then paid thousands of pounds to a trafficking gang
to send him to Britain.
It
sounds plausible. However, Bahnam's testimony unravels fast. Under
questioning, he admits that he has never practised the Bahai faith
and knows absolutely nothing about the religion. Further-more,
his mother is a Muslim. And anyway, the court is asked by the
Home Office official, how could a boy jump out of a window in
front of three revolutionary guards?
Under
Human Rights laws, everyone has a right to a family life - and
the marriage to a Briton will certainly have helped his case.
The judges will let him know if he must leave or stay in six weeks'
time.
There
are plenty more similar cases. Take Abdi Adaw, a 52-year-old Somalian
care worker from Shepherd's Bush, West London. At Taylor House,
I watched him argue that his first wife, Fatima, and teenage son
should not be deported because the Human Rights Act means that
they deserved to enjoy a family life with him in Britain. It soon
became clear that Abdi, who came here 12 years ago, has another
family. His second and younger wife lives in London too with his
13-year-old daughter. He sees them once a month.
So
is he a polygamist? Abdi simply shrugs his shoulders and says
that having more than one wife is normal in Somalia. And since
he cannot remember precise dates of either wedding, it is impossible
to get the truth. The judges will have to make up their minds.
As
I chat to court ushers, the Home Office civil servants fighting
the appeals, and the immigration lawyers, I am told of Chinese
asylum seekers who claim to be oppressed Catholics in their Communist
birth country, yet cannot even spell the name 'Jesus'. I am told
of Pakistanis who say they have been spotted my mullahs while
engaged in homosexual acts of rooftops in Karachi - behaviour
which will earn them imprisonment or worse if they return home.
This is a story that worked for one asylum seeker, and repeated
hundreds of times by others from Islamic nations.
Depressingly,
when I asked another immigration lawyer for an estimate of how
many failed asylum seekers are deported, he looks over his shoulder
to make sure no one is watching. Then he put up his right hand
with the ends of his thumb and index finger pressed together to
make the figure nought (zero).
He
is exaggerating, of course. The Government says 1,200 leave Britain
each month. But according to Home Office figures, 283,000 'overstayers'
- people who should have been deported - are still here. Some
will have British criminal records - indeed, it is suspected that
a large proportion of the 10,000 foreign convicts in our jails
have sought, or are seeking, asylum.
Unless
the removal process is speeded up, it will take 20 years to clear
the backlog. And that's if no new asylum seekers arrive. No wonder
that criminals, such as Oule Dourcoure, are encouraged to use
the system to stay in Britain. One can only hope that when this
African rapist asks to stay at the asylum courts, the judges remember
the words of Mr Justice Henry Hodge, president of the Asylum and
Immigration Tribunal, earlier this year.
He
warned that there was every incentive for failed asylum seekers
to play the system to try to stay. What a revealing verdict from
a man better placed than anyone to know.
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