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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September
11, 2006 (1234 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 2669 US - 118 UK - >300,000? civilians - 25 media
September
22, 2006 (1245 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 2695 US - 118 UK - >300,000? civilians - 25 media
Requiem
for a hollow man
Almost
every word he spoke would have been perjury had he been on oath.
But in Blair's universe appearance is all - substance nothing.
Now the game is up for a man who prostituted his remarkable gifts
and will earn the lasting disdain of history
by
Max Hastings - Daily Mail, September 27, 2006
What
took place in the Macbeths Manchester suite on Monday night, we
may ask ourselves, after her ladyship drove the dagger between
Gordon Brown's ribs? Did her lord and master dare to reproach
her? Oh, to have been a fly on the wall.
But
then nothing about Tony Blair's farewell Labour Party Conference
will be remembered, except for the fact that his wife branded
his likely successor a liar. In the conference hall yesterday
afternoon, the Prime Minister strove to rise to the grisly occasion
and delivered a speech which must have left many people wondering
whether Lady Blair-Macbeth herself, or Gordon Brown, or the Prime
Minister himself, are now living in a parallel universe.
All
three show signs of having quit planet Earth, for different destinations.
The Chancellor scowled through the Blair speech looking like a
judge at a Stalinist show trial whom no plea in mitigation can
dissuade from voting for the death penalty.
Cherie's
eyes bulged into orbs one could play tennis with. Her husband
sometimes sounded as if he was making a pitch for the Nobel Peace
Prize rather than delivering an oration to the Labour Party. "Between
now and when I leave office," he announced solemnly, "I
will dedicate myself to advancing peace between Israel and Palestine."
He was obviously quite unconscious that he is as credible a Middle
East peacemaker as Osama bin Laden.
In
the 12 years since he became Labour leader, Tony Blair has been
many things, but never before ridiculous. Yesterday, however,
it wold have needed a heart of stone not to laugh at the tissue
of deceits which he wove for his audience in Manchester and for
the British people.
It
would have taken a heart of stone not to laugh
His
speech began like a television awards ceremony. He thanked everyone:
Gordon, of course, who somehow forced those rubber lips into a
smirk; lecherous old Prescott; Cherie, that bundle of mischief
and fun; theLabour Party, which has never loved him; the British
people, who have elected him three times and now have learned
to be sorry for doing so.
Rhetoric
and reality in Blair's Britain
Comment
- Daily Mail, September 27, 2006
His
delivery was simply brilliant, with perfect pitch and
faultless timing. Oozing sincerity, the Prime Minister
switched from that gap-toothed smile of charm to lachrymose
emotion. Tony Blair's speech to a rapt Labour conference
yesterday was a vintage performance from the greatest
actor-politician of our time.
What
a pity so much of it was utter, Alice-in-Wonderland make-believe,
Indeed,
the gap between the Prime Minister's rhetoric and reality
is so wide as to raise the question: Is he now totally
in the grip of self-delusion?
Mr
Blair spoke of opening new hospitals. Why, he'd laid a
foundation stone only the other day. He didn't think to
mention the closures all over the land - earmarked for
the constituencies of his political opponents. Nice New
Labour touch, that.
Not
a word, either, abut the 11,500 young doctors who can't
find jobs. Or the lethal MRSA superbug flourishing in
our filthy wards. Or the fact that you can't see your
GP in the evenings or at weekends. .. Oh, yes, and our
cancer rates are still some of the worst in the world.
Mr
Blair boasted he had given the country 'the best educated
people in our history'. So is the OECD just making it
up when it reports that Britain is plummeting in the international
league tables for graduates?
And
are the Government's own figures wrong when they say that
four in ten pupils now leave primary school without a
basic grasp of the three R's. As for crime, according
to Mr Blair, it has 'fallen not risen' under Labour. Oh,
yes? How dare he say that so blithely, when violent crime
is up for the seventh year in a row?
But
it was when Mr Blair turned to foreign affairs that he
showed how dangerously he has lost the plot. How hypocritical
he sounded when he praised the Armed Forces, who pay such
a heavy price for his posturing on the world stage: 'Not
a day goes by or an hour in the day when I don't reflect
on our troops with thanks and admiration.'
If
he cares so much about them why in God's name doesn't
he give them the resources they desperately need? And
why has he slashed their numbers?
In
Mr Blaur's fantasy world, Britain is an ever more powerful
force for global peace, listened to equally by Europe,
America and the Arab nations. The reality is that the
Prime Minister is deeply distrusted and ignored by Europeans
and Arabs alike, while George Bush treats his lapdog 'YO
BLAIR' with patronising contempt.
The
Premier's boast that he will devote his remaining months
to solving the problem of Palestine - an area where has
no leverage left - was simply risible.
This
was a speech in which all inconvenient facts were ignored
or turned on their heads. N mention of the importance
of stable families. Not a squeak about the pressures of
mass immigration or the scandal of an inept Home Office
that lets killers and rapists loose instead of deporting
them.
Seen
through the Prime Minister's eyes nothing is true or worth
saying unless it suits Tony Blair. How fitting that on
the day of his farewell, his wife and the equally unelected
Peter Mandelson should have indulged in yet more back-stabbing
of his likely successor. What an authentic seal on his
reign of cronyism, sleaze and spin.
Only
one sentence Mr Blair uttered yesterday rang with truth.
'Of course, it is hard to let go but it is also right
to let go - for the country and for you, the party.'
The
sooner he matches the action to these words, the sooner
Britain can start to rid itself of the politics of mendacity
and poison.
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How
fervently Blair's image-makers must have wished that they could
dispense with TV cameras focussing on the moth-eaten cluster of
acolytes who form the Prime Minister's tottering Government. Apart
from the scowling Brown and embarrassing Prescott, there were
Margaret Beckett, a foreign secretary out of her depth in Manchester,
never mind Baghdad; Tessa Jowell, who dumped her tax-evading husband
to save her job; John Reid, who told the British people that our
soldiers should be able to return from Afghanistan without firing
a shot; Patricia Hewitt, a Minister whose record makes that of
Sven-Goran Eriksson seem a success story; Alan Johnson, former
leader of one of the most reactionary trades union in the land
now, incredibly, touted as a possible prime minister.
Blair's
tone was curiously apologetic. There was an unaccustomed pleading
note, as he urged his audience to recognise how much he has accomplished:
public spending has soared on schools and the health service;
there is a right to roam and civil partnerships for gays; devolution
for Scotland and Wales; a forthcoming ban on smoking in public
places in England and Wales; a minimum wage and Britain's longest
period of sustained economic growth.
He
did not dare to mention George Bush by name, even when he urged
the importance of Britain remaining America's closest ally. He
warned again and again against reverting to the ways of Old Labour;
"There's only one tradition I hated - that of losing."
When
he thanked Gordon Brown, "a remarkable servant to this country",
he sounded as if he was paying tribute to a long-serving butler.
Conference
liked hardly anything Blair said, except the bits about duffing
up the Tories. Almost every sentence he spoke would have earned
him a perjury conviction, had he been on oath. He lied in asserting
that our presence in Iraq has "a full UN mandate".
He
boasted that Britain now "invests" - that idiotic New
Labour word for public spending - more heavily than any other
nation in the world in education and health He said nothing of
the fact that almost all this money has been squandered on paying
vastly more staff vastly more money, while achieving no significant
improvement in standards.
He
praised the work of our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, yet
his Government refused to pay or equip them properly. He said
nothing of Labour's craven surrender to the public service unions
- Alan Johnson's handiwork - by maintaining their index-linked
retirement packages at 60, while the rest of the nation's pensions
shrivel.
He
proclaimed that he has devolved power from Whitehall to the people,
while in truth he presides over the most centralised government
in British history, in which local authorities have been reduced
to ciphers. He said almost nothing about Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon
or the cringing subservience to George Bush, which has mostly
destroyed his credibility in the eyes of the British people.
His
henchmen created an edifice of disinformation
In
Manchester yesterday, we saw a prime minister whose real authority
has collapsed, a shadow of the dominant national leader he once
was. Tony Blair will always be remembered as the most successful
electioneer in modern British history. He possessed in bountiful
measure the greatest asset a politician can have - the ability
to make people feel good.
He
showed himself a brilliant platform orator. His gift for words
and persuasion, enabled him to win his fight against his party's
old guard for abolition of Clause 4 of its constitution, on nationalisation,
and to make New Labour electable. The British people were proud
of the manner in which their prime minister became the voice of
the nation when Diana died, and when the Twin Towers fell. He
delivered a succession of dazzling speeches to Labour Party conferences,
and on international stages.
His
directness and honest impressed as much as his cleverness. He
was Tony. He seemed to a great many people not only a real leader,
but also 'a decent blokc'.
Yet
over the years which followed his triumphant arrival at Downing
Street with Cherie and the children on that sunlit day in 1997,
doubts grew - and grew. There was the Bernie Ecclestone affair,
then the Geoffrey Robinson scandal. Under John Major, had not
these things been called sleaze?
There
was the nature of his closes acolytes. Most of us judge a lot
about people by the company they keep. Peter Mandelson was the
sort who relegates Iago to amateur status. Alastair Campbell was
a familiar type, recurring constantly in the cast of Goodfellas
and the Soparanos. They were both obviously clever, but were they
the sort of people a 'good bloke' chooses as intimates, unless
he needs to get people taken for rides in the middle
of the night?
Blair,
we grew to understand,
possessed
a brand of honesty which meant looking you
straight in the eye as he said whatever seemed most convenient
to him at that moment. Paddy Ashdown produced an immortal line,
after being stitched up by the Prime Minister at his most sincere:
"He's like Don Giovanni - he means it when he says it."
Much
more serious than this, Blair progressively revealed that his
vision of what was wrong with Britain was not matched by the smallest
idea of how to get anything effective done about it. He was surely
right to commit himself to improve public services. But he set
about achieving this, first by hurling huge and unaccountable
sums of money at them.
All
that delicious power kept them in their seats
Second,
he employed an army of Campbell clones to produce statistics,
graphs, charts, to show that New Labour's policies were achieving
results. Any civil servant who ventured to object to grossly partisan
or deceitful presentation of government information was sidelined
or axed.
Instead
of making Britain a better place, Blair and his henchmen created
a vast edifice of public disinformation, to make it SEEM a better
place. In Blair's universe, appearance was all. Substance did
not matter.
He
was still at this game in Manchester yesterday, boasting that
Britain's schoolchildren have just produced their best exam results
ever. In truth, of course, every parent in the land knows that
his feat has been achieved by making the exams risibly easier,
rather than by making teaching better.
If
the Prime Minister's colleagues had possessed the slightest guts,
they would have forced him to resign over Iraq. One or two might
at least have shown the dignity to quit when Blair drove even
deeper into the swamp, to join Bush in supporting Israel's invasion
of Lebanon.
They
did not, of course, because they are hooked on power. In Manchester
yesterday, almost every man and woman in that conference hall
has had Tony Blair up to here, and yearns to see the back of him.
Only terror, naked terror of losing their cars and boxes and special
advisers and first-class plane trips and armies of civil servants
and all that delicious POWER kept them in their seats, clapping
like delegates at an old Soviet Internationale.
They
hear that when Tony goes, Gordon will prove a loser. They may
well be right. But it is a wretched business for the rest of us,
to remain prisoners of an utterly discredited prime minister because
the Labour Party trembles at the possibility that its vast gravy
train in approaching the buffers.
If
Blair yesterday had truthfully summarised his achievement, he
would have acknowledged destroying public trust in the honesty
of politics; corrupting the civil service and selling seats in
the upper house of the legislature; squandering tens of billions
on bloating the public payroll, while achieving no significant
improvement in public services; imposing half-baked devolution
and constitutional reform; associating Britain with America's
most disastrous modern President in adventures in the Middle East
that will blight international affairs for generations to come;
and promoting a culture of government by news management which
has poisoned our public life.
There
is a scene at the end of that terrific new film The Queen, in
which the monarch receives Tony Blair at an audience at Buckingham
Palace, six months after Princess Diana's death. She refers to
her own humiliation following that event, then turns to Blair
and says: "One day, quite unexpectedly, you will find that
sort of thing will happen to you."
That
scene may well be apocryphal, but of course the cinema audience
laughs ecstatically at the Queen's words. We have seen them come
true.
Advance
peace? He couldn't advance to GO in Monopoly
Probably
Blair was always a hollow man, but for years he brilliantly masked
the fact. Now, we know the truth. He may still be in office, but
he is no longer in power. The game is up. Nobody should be prime
minister for ten years.
"Advance
peace between Israel and Palestine?" Good God, he could not
advance to GO on a Monopoly board.
On
Monday it was Cherie Blair's turn to denounce Gordon Brown as
a liar, for his speech in Manchester. Today it is the turn of
us, the British people, to condemn her husband in exactly the
same terms. The best claim he can make for himself to posterity
is that he has been an election winner. However, the manner in
which he has squandered the fruits of political success and prostituted
his remarkable gifts for the mere preservation of personal power
and status, will invite the lasting disdain of history.
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