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
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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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Discipline?
We can only learn it from our parents
I
was one of the original London Teddy Boys. When we first
appeared, the police and the media accused us of every sort
of mayhem and mischief, though the reality was very different.
We were, in fact, just a bunch of pasty-faced youths who
wore Edwardian-style fashions and hung about on street corners
trying to look harder than we were. We lived in the shadow
of fathers and uncles who had fought a world war. Many of
us, in turn, went on to do National Service.
After
grammar school, I became a long-serving officer in the London
Fire Brigade, the father of three, stepfather of four, and
I have an exemplary record. My poor, but devoted, parents
made sure I had a first-class education and disciplined
lifestyle.
These
days, it's the turn of the 'feral' youths in 'hoodies' and
baseball caps to take the stick. But if they lack the discipline,
respect and values of my 'yob' generation, it's because
they are the products of substandard, anything goes parenting.
That, in turn, is the fault of lazy, self-serving politicians
and a society obsessed with materialism.
The
young, with their half-formed minds, have too much to say
and too great an influence. Society
has become lazy and apathetic in its attitude towards directing
teenagers to civilised behaviour. We have betrayed our greatest
asset - our young - and we must live with it.
Respect?
My generation had it in spades. Teddy Boys or not, we knew
our parents had earned it the hard way through war, courage
and sacrifice. We can't start another world war to gain
the respect of the young, but wee can fight a system that's
destroying the credibility of parenting, marriage and the
cornerstone of civilised society - discipline.
We
should stop whining about the old days and shying away from
harsh decisions. The young weren't around in the old days
- they know no different. But we were, and it's time we
knocked a few parental and political heads together and
stopped betraying all those magnificent people who gave
their todays for our tomorrows. John Barker, Angmering,
W. Sussex - Daily Mail, May 26, 2005.
Who's
keeping the peace?
What
has become of keeping the Queen's peace? Policemen once
swore to uphold and maintain that peace when they were appointed
constables. A breach of the Queen's peace was - and, I believe,
still is - a criminal offence. Why have none of the louts
and yobs who have made life hell for so many of her people
not been prosecuted for having, at the very least, breached
the Queen's peace.
Letter
from David Bourne, Winchelsea, E. Sussex, Daily Mail, May
26, 2005.
Cowboy
Britain
Watching
a Western on TV, I realised nothing much has changed. Half-a-dozen
gun en wandered into town and caused mayhem because the
mild-mannered sheriff saw no need to get tough. After a
few killings, the sheriff, in despair, yelled: "Why?".
A gunman replied: "Because there's no law here to stop
me, so I can."
Doesn't
that just sum up our country today, Sheriff Blair?
Letter
from J. Davies, Colwyn Bay, Denbighshire - Daily Mail, May
26, 2005
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What
this family tells us about Britain today
We
are a nation divided . . . not between rich and poor or north
and south, but between those who live by civilised standards and
those who, with the connivance of the State, take responsibility
for nothing
By
Melanie Phillips - Daily Mail, May 25, 2005
Anyone
wanting to understand the full implications of the culture of
disrespect that so troubles our Prime Minister, should study the
story of the so-called 'baby factory' in Derby. For this case
perfectly illustrates the moral degradation bringing increasing
sections of our society to its knees.
Twice
divorced Julie Atkins lives with her three daughters and three
grandchildren. There is not a committed father for any of them.
Two of the babies' fathers are teenage boys, The third is a 38
year old man. Two of Mrs. Atkins's daughters, 14-year-old Jemma
and 15-year-old Jade, mothers of 15-month-old T-Jay and five-month-old
Lita respectively, are well below the age of sexual consent.
A
third daughter, Natasha, mother of six-month-old Amani at the
grand old age of 18, has previously had two miscarriages and an
abortion. The entire menage is supported by the British taxpayer
to the tune of some £31,000 per year in benefits and allowances.
The most disturbing thing about this disastrous situation is that
everyone blames everyone else and no one takes any responsibility.
One
might expect Mrs. Atkins to show some shame or contrition for
what has happened. After all, she has signally failed to protect
her daughters and allowed them to be sexually active - one of
them, at least, before she even reached her teens - so that as
a result two children gave birth to children, while the third
daughter became pregnant no fewer than four times by the age of
16.
Such
a mother is surely guilty of the most reckless neglect. Yet instead,
Mrs. Atkins passed the buck first to her daughters' school for
inadequate sex education and then to the Government. Mrs. Atkins
clearly thinks her family is someone else's responsibility. She
appears to have no concept of what the maternal role involves,
no idea of duty towards her own children, no understanding whatsoever
that the single most important reason for her daughters' plight
is the values they have imbibed from their own parents' behaviour.
She
is not alone in playing the blame-shifting game. The mother of
David, who was 14 when he made Jemma pregnant at the age of 12,
says she is 'very annoyed and angry',- but only because Jemma
changed her phone number and stopped her son from seeing the baby,
and that David and Jemma 'were being allowed to sleep together',
a fact of which she says she had no idea until told Jemma was
pregnant.
Did
it not occur to her that she should be angry and ashamed with
herself for having so little control over or even knowledge of
what her 14-year-old child was up to - which, according to the
locals was the talk of the neighbourhood? Then there is Martin
Dodd, father of two of the three teenage mums, who claims he also
had no idea any of his daughters had given birth until he read
it in the papers.
Unlike
the mother of his daughters, he doesn't blame the school or Government,
but her. "I think they've only copied what they've seen at
home," he proclaimed. "They should have been set a better
example. Having one pregnant daughter could be an accident, but
three seems irresponsible."
SEEMS?
There
can be surely not a scintilla of doubt that the whole grisly situation
is the very quintessence of irresponsibility. What does not seem
to occur to Mr Dodd is that he is very much part of that irresponsibility
himself. When he claims his daughters only copied what they saw
at home, he never spoke a truer word - but not in the way he seems
to think. For what they saw at home was a father who wasn't there.
And
what they also knew was that their mother had herself given birth
to them all out of wedlock - Natasha by another father altogether
- before entering into two marriages which both ended in divorce.
In other words, they have indeed only copied what they learned
at home - that fathers are disposable, sexual partners serial
and that someone else will pick up the tab.
And
the tragedy is that their babies will almost certainly follow
the same dismal pattern of failed relationships, early pregnancy
and an infinite range of other problems. Let us be clear about
why this case is such a disturbing emblem of our society. There
are many households that do not fit this pattern, in which lone
parents are struggling heroically to bring up their children.
Their
families may be broken through no fault of their own. They do
the best for their children, bring them up carefully and responsibly
and often produce model citizens. But there is another type of
family where all standards of restraint and civilised behaviour
have broken down: a pattern of recklessness which is increasingly
being repeated throughout Britain.
Mrs.
Atkins and her 'baby factory' might be a particularly ripe example
but father-less children are now being produced on an industrial
scale, with generations of female-only households which think
they can do without fathers - the single greatest cause of the
'yob' culture and the breakdown of civility and order.
How
can this have happened to Britain, one of the most advanced societies
in the world? There was a time when standards of behaviour were
upheld to which all would aspire and by which they would be judged.
Sobriety, sexual restraint, hard work and abiding by the law were
all held to be vital for civilising the masses. These virtues
were policed by a combination of laws and informal sanctions such
as shame or stigma. But now all that is slipping away. Constraints
on behaviour are construed as an assault on the sacred right to
immediate gratification.
Shame
and stigma are considered far worse than any crime or anti-social
action. Upholding notions of respectability is seen as elitist
and oppressive so that even the law is routinely disregarded.
In a society that once was truly concerned to prevent children
from being sexually abused, underage sex would lead to prosecutions
or to the children involved being taken into care. In practice,
prosecutions are rare now unless an adult man is involved, in
which case it mutates into paedophilia, now the modern taboo.
By contrast, teenage boys having sex with 11-year-olds is somehow
just 'kids doing what kids always do'.
For
their own safety, children should be removed from parents who
are a danger to their welfare. But given the lamentable state
of our social services, this is a sick joke. The presumption is
that children should never be removed from their parents unless
they are about to be killed (and too often, not even then). The
prevailing ethos holds that sexual promiscuity is not evidence
of danger.
This
is because even underage sexual activity - unlike pregnancy or
disease - is not seen as bad in itself. Sex has been redefined
as a recreational sport, and lone-parent families are said to
be no worse than any other for the raising of children. As a result,
no shame or stigma is attached to lone parenthood.
The
Government has hugely exacerbated this by insisting that all types
of family are equal but lone parent families are more equal than
others. So it has loaded the tax and benefits dice in favour of
lone parents. The result has been the rise and rise of cohabitation,
serial parenting and the assumption that fathers are a disposable
extra. As
daughter Jade remarked about the three babies: "We don't
need their dads. We give them all the love and support they need."
On
the contrary - it is the State that provides the material support
without which she and her sisters could not finance their dysfunctional
lifestyles. And this touches on what is perhaps the single most
powerful engine for this collapse of civilised values: the WELFARE
STATE.
It
is surely nothing short of fantastic that the taxpayer should
be subsidising behaviour which is so much to the detriment not
only of individuals, but of wider society. This has come about
because of the understandable anxiety that the vulnerable must
be helped. The problem is that 'help' rapidly turns into incentives.
Young girls think of the flat they're going to get and the benefits
to live on and think these are their passport to an independent
life. They are, instead, incentives to fecklessness.
The
key problem with the Welfare State is that it detached behaviour
from rewards. As a result, it has destroyed the concept of personal
responsibility. People are encouraged to think instead of rights
and entitlements. This has had a widespread corrosive effect on
behaviour and produced the 'something for nothing' society. The
more people look to the State to provide the more the State takes
control of everyday life; and the more control taken by the State,
the more people become infantilised and responsibility is destroyed.
Mrs
Atkins complains she needs a bigger house, and says she struggles
to cope - on an income significantly higher than many hardworking
families take home. The truth is the Welfare State has detached
her from any sense of responsibility for her own behaviour and
her own family. Someone else looks after them. Everything - even
her daughters' sexual behaviour - is someone else's fault.
This
corrosion has affected all levels of society. The higher social
classes also produce irresponsible adults and damaged children
but the harm done by this collapse of responsibility is most disastrous
at lower levels of society, because there, people have far less
with which to cushion its uncivilising effects. We
now have two Britains. The key divide is no longer between north
and south or between rich and poor. There are after all plenty
of decent, respectable, hardworking poor people and plenty of
dissolute rich.
The
divide now is between those who live in a world of basic civilised
codes which everyone acknowledges, and those who live in what
has been unpleasantly termed an 'underclass', which is disconnected
from mainstream life and its values. These are the 'feral' children
who cause so much crime and social mayhem, and whose violent,
wild or otherwise dysfunctional behaviour presents such a problem
in our schools.
The
only way to deal with it is to provide children for whom all the
codes of civilised life are absent with the security of absolutely
rigid discipline and educational structure. Unfortunately, education
has gone the other way. Schools instilling order and discipline
in and out of lessons are rare success stories. They are swimming
against a professional tide which has hollowed out education,
and replaced the necessary structure of learning with pap and
propaganda. For children from shattered backgrounds, this educational
free-for-all provides the coup de grace. If our culture of disrespect
is to be tackled, these fundamental causes have to be addressed.
Sad to say there is precious little sign of it.
The
Government can't even decide which minister should handle it,
let alone face up to the part it has itself played in loosening
our social glue. And the Tories are silent, paralysed by the risible
fear that they will be seen to be 'nasty' or out of touch. But
the enormous cost of our increasingly fractured, brutish society
is unsustainable.
It
must be tackled by restoring integrity to family and education
and fundamentally reforming the Welfare State. The alternative
is social suicide.
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