Rescuing
Democracy in the United Kingdom from our current Elected
Dictatorship
|
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 answeer 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
|
May
11, 2005 (741 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 1,610 US - 88 UK - >6,164? Iraqi - >17,300 civilians
- 25 media
May
31, 2005 (761 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 1,657 US - 89 UK - >6,164? Iraqi - >17,300 civilians
- 25 media
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.
|
Tame
yobs by giving them a sporting chance
Are
the middle class to blame for Yob Britain?
Ashamed
of the values that once made Britain such a civilised nation,
it's the social cowardice of the middle classes that's to blame
for many of our problems ......
From
the book "The Great Abdication" - by Alexander Deane
Alexander
Deane - Daily Mail, June 4, 2005
Has
a society ever changed to much, so quickly? In 1955, American
anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer wrote: "The English are certainly
among the most peaceful, gentle, courteous, orderly populations
that the civilised world has ever seen. Control of aggression
has gone to such remarkable lengths that you hardly ever see a
fight in a bar and football crowds are as orderly as church meetings."
Those
words could hardly sound more hollow in the England of 50 years
later, where anti-social behaviour prevails, where chief constables
admit they have lost control of their cities, where feral children
wander without restraint, where drug-taking and gun crime is rife,
where family structure has broken down and authority has collapsed.
Tony
Blair is quite right to speak of his anxiety about social decline,
although his attitude smacks of hypocrisy, given that his government
has wilfully dissolved so many of the bonds that used to hold
our society together. From its vast expansion of the Welfare State
to enthusiasm for uncontrolled immigration, New Labour has been
an engine of social destruction. It is
a grim reflection of eight years of Labour rule that we now have
among the highest rates of lone parenthood, pensioner poverty,
drug abuse and teenage pregnancy in Europe, while standards of
education and healthcare are falling.
But
apart from the Government, there has been another guilty party
in this sorry saga: the British middle class. In my view, the
very people who should have been challenging the lack of respect
and morality in modern Britain have been colluding with it.
Morality,
dignity and thrift are mocked as outdated
The
middle class used to form the conscience of the nation. Their
values of respectability and decency were the guiding principles
for society. At the turn of the century, for instance, many coalminers
consciously modelled themselves on the best of the middle class,
seeking to better themselves by establishing their own libraries,
evening classes and debating societies.
The
essentially middle-class virtues of self-reliance, honesty, thrift
and fidelity were widely promulgated, turning Britain into one
of the most orderly societies the world has ever known, with crime
rates and family breakdown just a fraction of the levels that
exist today. Aristotle once said that the best state was one dominated
by middle classes. That was certainly the attitude prevailing
in Britain until the late 1960s. But since then, that spirit has
all but disappeared.
Middle
class values - once seen as something to aspire to - are now widely
regarded as outdated, snobbish, irrelevant or shallow. For many,
the desire to keep up appearances, and to show restraint and dignity,
are faintly disreputable or downright laughable.
As
I explain in my book, The Great Abdication, the tragedy is that
the middle classes themselves, supposedly the bedrock of our civilisation,
have so willingly gone along with this change. Instead of standing
up for their moral code, they've presided over its demise. Unwilling
to impose judgments on anyone, they have retreated into a private
world of self-gratification and self-advancement. Or - even worse
- they have sought to pretend that they are not middle-class at
all.
Disguising
their affluent backgrounds, they glory in downward mobility, adopting
the manners, outlook and the voice of the working class: the well-heeled
university student from public school with the fake Estuary accent
has become one of the more regrettable symbols of modern Britain.
One
recent survey demonstrated that two-thirds of the population now
consider themselves to be working class. Given the fact that Britain
is now wealthier than ever, with home ownership, car use and holidays
abroad all at record levels, this is a patently absurd figure.
But it shows how terrified people are of being labelled as middle
class.
Rather
than upholding their own role models, they revel in the unedifying
exploits of downmarket celebrities like Wayne Rooney and his fiancee
Coleen McLoughlin, the royal couple of Chav Britain. Where once
the middle class strove to understand the higher aspects of culture
- an outlook that led to the huge success of TV series such as
Kenneth Clark's Civilisation in 1969 - today they delight in following
the inanities of Channel 4's Big Brother.
The
ultimate middle-class film of the pre-1960s era was Brief Encounter,
about a doctor conducting a doomed, unconsummated affair with
a married woman. The central theme was the conflict between their
respectable values and their illicit love for each other. In the
end, their middle-class morality triumphed.
But
it would be unthinkable to make such a movie today, when any restraint
on passion is seen as ludicrous. In films, as in life, anything
smacking of restraint or dignity is seen as unduly repressive
and out of touch. To me, this social cowardice amounts to nothing
more than an abdication of responsibility. There is nothing shameful
about being middle class; respectability is something to be proud
of, not a cause for embarrassment. So who are the middle classes
today, and why have they so casually abandoned what was once their
central role in guiding and civilising society?
The
first question is harder to answer than the second. Writer Patrick
Hutber said that 'motivation' was they key distinguishing quality
of the middle classes. He used the word to describe a set of 'virtues,
aspirations and attitudes'.
This
presents difficulties in defining the middle class of today, as
it is my contention that these qualities have been largely (sometimes
deliberately) abandoned. We are left with broad qualities (education,
income, occupation) which they have in common. But, in short,
you need only look around at Britain's comfortable majority to
see that there is a middle class that is thriving as never before.
The problem is that it doesn't act like one.
One
reason is self-indulgence. Moral rigidity is demanding, especially
in terms of financial and sexual matters In a society which places
so much emphasis on personal freedom it requires real toughness
not to give in to the siren voices of licence and luxury. This
is particularly true in our climate of aggressive secularity,
where the ethics of Christianity have been replaced by the code
of individual rights.
The
values of suburbia are now a source of shame
The
great 18th Century philosopher Edmund Burke wrote that men are
qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition
to put moral chains on their own appetites. In modern Britain
few people would even know what 'moral chains' are, never mind
be inclined to wear them. As a result, those who should know better
feel reluctant to say anything condemnatory about the ease of
divorce or having children out of wedlock, of smoking dope or
fiddling benefits. After all, such activities all to often happen
in their own families.
Other
factors have encouraged the middle classes in this direction.
One is the enervating embrace of the bloated Welfare State, which
has all but destroyed the middle-class belief in independence.
Social security used to exist for those in genuine poverty; now
it covers almost every family in the country. There can be no
greater indictment of the absurdity of the current regime than
the fact that even a couple earning £64,000 a year is eligible
for means-tested child tax credits.
Another
problem is decline in educational standards. This has happened
partly through ideological destruction of the grammar schools,
which used to inculcate middle-class values into pupils, and partly
through the loss of authority of the teacher as a result of child-centred
progressive teaching methods and the abolition of discipline in
the classroom.
But,
once again, the middle class has colluded with this disastrous
revolution. In fact, many well-off parents have welcomed the dumbing-down
brought about by grade inflation and the expansion of universities
because t feeds the illusion that their offspring are performing
well. On a deeper level, all the dominant cultural and intellectual
forces of our age are now battling against traditional respectability,
so it is understandable if the middle classes are inclined to
give up the fight.
Throughout
the public services, the BBC, the universities, schools, the London
literary scene, Westminster, local government and the arts, notions
of morality and domestic responsibility are seen as either ludicrously
bourgeois or dangerously extreme. Such ideas do not fit in with
the all-pervasive agenda of social inclusion and non-judgmentalism.
The values of suburbia have been turned into a source of shame.
In
the name of the war on elitism, university admissions, for example,
are now explicitly based against middle-class applicants, while
in publishing, authors are far more likely to see their books
in print if they can weave a tale of racism, poverty, child abuse
or gritty back-street drama.
In
our civic life, every fashionable ideology has been dragooned
into the attempt to undermine the middle classes. So multiculturism
continually stresses the importance of diversity, warning against
any imposition of a universal moral code. For the pseudo-Marxists
who fill the higher ranks of the state sector and academia, every
sign of middle-class elitism must be eliminated in what amounts
to a new kind of cultural revolution.
The
burgeoning therapeutic and counselling industry encourages the
belief that every feeling, no matter how reprehensible or enfeebling,
is valid, that self-expression is all. In the same way, an army
of lawyers encourage the shrill emphasis on personal rights rather
than wider social responsibilities.
It's
time to stop wallowing in guilt and regain our pride
All
this is the utter antithesis of traditional middle-class values
of self-reliance, respectability and self-improvement. And it
is no wonder that Britain is in such crisis when the middle classes
are taught to be ashamed of the very qualities that once built
a cohesive society. I believe it is time
to stop wallowing in guilt and self-indulgence.
No
one is going to challenge the current disastrous drift of public
policy except the middle classes themselves. If they could only
find the courage to speak out against vulgarity, barbarity, communal
neglect and neighbourhood indifference, then we could start to
build a better Britain on solid foundations that the middle classes
once provided.
The
fact that something's wrong with Britain doesn't mean that it's
government's job to fix it. Indeed, it is this over-reliance on
government that has led to some of this trouble in the first place,
as government itself is often at fault. As individuals have abdicated
responsibility, they have asked not what they can do for society,
but when government is going to get round to doing it for them.
Passing
laws is not the remedy. Increasingly, ours is a society governed
by letter of the law rather than by a sense of what is right.
Instead, we should insist that people know, or should know, right
from wrong and understand basic human virtues.
Government
can only follow a moral
agenda once it is given both the spur and the legitimacy to do
so by popular opinion. We must generate that opinion ourselves.
No one else will do it for us. It's up to you.
If you have suggestions
for additional subjects, or material to include in the pages linked
to the subjects listed, please contact
the webmaster.
