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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June
16 , 2006 (1133 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 2500 US - 113 UK - >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
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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Now
everyone's got a get out of jail free card ...except
the law-abiding
Richard
Littlejohn - Daily Mail, June 16, 2006
Whatever
happened to manhunts? I'm old enough to recall when any murderer
who went over the wall of Wormwood Scrubs immediately became Public
Enemy Number One. The jailbreak would be lead item on News At
Ten and the papers would all carry front page Photofits of the
absconder, under the headline: Have You Seen This Man?
Incident
rooms and hotlines would be set up, with five-figure rewards offered
for any sighting of the fugitive or information leading to his
recapture. Mobile canteens would dispense hundreds of gallons
of tea and thousands of bacon sandwiches to the phalanx of coppers
walking in wide formation through Epping forest, methodically
poking the undergrowth in search of clues. There'd be roadblocks,
sniffer dogs, house-to-house inquiries and posters of Britain's
Most Wanted on every bus shelter and lamppost.
Questions
would be asked in the House, prison officers would take every
breakout personally and the police vowed to get their man, however
long it took. If there was any suggestion that the escapee had
slipped through the All Ports alert to a foreign jurisdiction,
detectives in worsted suits and trilbys would pack their toothbrushes
and head for the Costa del Crime with a posse of Fleet Street's
finest in hot pursuit. Even if they returned empty-handed, they
at least exhausted their options.
In
the days when Britain took the administration of justice seriously,
escaped prisoners such as Buster Edwards and Ronnie Biggs became
household names, such was their notoriety. The grand-daddy of
TV cop shows wasn't called No Hiding Place for nothing. A prison
break was a big event. David Bowie even wrote a song called Over
The Wall We Go! to poke fun at the police after a couple of high-profile
escapes.
Fast
forward to 'tough on crime' Tony Blair's Britain. Since Labour
came to power, more than 1,000 murderers, rapists and robbers
have escaped from open prisons. They didn't have to go over the
wall, they simply walked out of the front door. Nearly 400 have
had it away on their toes from a single nick, Leyhill in Gloucestershire,
since 1997. Twenty-five are still out there somewhere, including
one murderer who has been on the run for eight years.
Well,
I say 'on the run'. I shouldn't think
anyone is even bothering to look for him. And that's
just one prison. The Home office either won't, or can't, give
accurate figures for other jails. When was the last time you turned
on the news or opened a paper to learn of a full-scale manhunt
for an escaped prisoner? How many of Britain's Most Wanted can
you name? Me neither.
A
few years ago, one absconder was headline news. Now hundreds vanish
into thin air and the authorities shrug. The police stick a description
on a website and hope they'll turn up. It's not just home-grown
villains, either.
We've
learned about hundreds of foreign criminals at large on our streets
after fleeing jail. No one seems to know where they are. Have
they vanished back into the 'community' or have they left the
country? Your guess is as good as mine. Not only has the Government
no idea of who enters Britain any more, they don't bother checking
up on who leaves, either.
Most
of those escaped criminals are caught only when they re-offend,
as so many of them do, often with tragic, fatal consequences.
We might ask why murderers and sex offenders are being housed
in open prisons in the first place. But then again, we might also
wonder why they take the trouble to abscond, given that under
Labour's lenient sentencing and parole guidelines they'll all
be out in five minutes anyway.
The
safety of the public and the security of our borders are two overriding
responsibilities of any government. On both counts, Labour has
been found wanting miserably. Not so much failure, perhaps, as
deliberate dereliction of duty. Occasionally, when rumbled, they
throw a human sacrifice such as Charles Clarke to the pack and
hope that the rumpus will go away - which it generally does when
the next crisis or three lumbers over the horizon.
They
reserve their real wrath not for the outrageous incompetence and
indifference of the system but for those who have the audacity
to draw attention to it. As I keep telling you, this hasn't happened
by accident, it has happened by design.
This
is the Britain they always wanted - a country where the 'rights'
of criminals override the right of the rest of us to sleep soundly
in our beds; where Public Enemy Number One is not the escaped
murderer or sex offender but the law-abiding taxpaying citizen
who wants merely to defend his own family and property.
Britain
is now a considerably more dangerous place than it was nine years
ago. That is Blair's true legacy.
Anyone
got a number for the escape committee?
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