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
June
3 , 2005 (765 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 1,670 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.
|
Sorry,
I got it wrong on the euro
As
its very future is questioned, a one-time advocate of the single
currency recants
By
Alex Brummer - City Editor, Daily Mail, June 8, 2005
There's
a confession I have to make. When the Maastrich Treaty was finally
implemented in 1992 and the euro began to trade on the markets
followed by the introduction of its coins and notes in 2001, I
was a believer. At the time, it looked like the dawn of a new
age for Europe. After years in the shadows, the continent was
on the verge of becoming a unified economic bloc able to compete
with the world's other great trading areas.
Britain's
Thatcherite triumph
City
Editor Alex Brummer - Daily Mail, June 8, 2005
Praise
be to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Here is one European-based bureaucracy that does not dance
to the tune of Brussels, As the European politicians wring
their hands in the aftermath of French and Dutch referendums,
along comes the OECD to remind them why euroland is not
working.
It
spelled out why the centralised, inflexible and over-regulated
approaches still favoured by the German-French axis is
out of step.
The
ORCD believes that the EU could boost its output by as
much as 3.5% over the medium term if it opened its labour
and product markets and removed barriers to competition.
This'll
be music to the ears of Gordon Brown as he battles over
Britain's rebate and seeks to push the European reform
agenda, still in abeyance 5 years after adoption in Lisbon.
Right
across the board, the UK leads the way in keeping its
markets open, Indeed, the OECD finds post-Thatcherite
Britain almost faultless. It has achieved what no other
country, including the US has managed.
Markets
in airlines, telecoms, electricity, gas, post, rail and
roads have been opened up and reformed. Consumers in Britain
may not be happy with service levels, with rail and post
the most frequently criticised, but at least they have
increasing choice and a greater measure of efficiency,
Even
the mighty US is chastised for failing properly to open
up its electricity market - ask Scottish Power which came
a cropper in the Western States - and still has tightly-controlled
railroad industry.
France
is given almost universal black marks for its lack of
commitment to opening any of the key utilities to genuine
reform and competition. One wonders what the real unemployment
rate would be on the Continent if there were a shake up.
Anglo Saxon Capitalism has many faults and can go badly
wrong, as Railtracl/Network Rail fiasco showed. But it
has delivered growth while the rest of Europe is still
at the starting blocks.
|
To
my mind, benefits of a euro-zone outweighed weaknesses, such as
the disadvantages of a 'one-size fits-all' policy. I was optimistic
about an end to exchange rate extortion: the ability to compare
prices across a continent: and, most importantly, the advantages
for business as extolled by the employers' organisation, the CBI.
These
included the ability to report financial results in a single currency
as well as having the fire- power to compete globally. I was convinced
the European Central Bank (ECB), despite its lack of transparency
and Teutonic rigidity, could- with pressure from Britain for reform
- be made to work.
Joyous
If
I had a worry about the euro, it was the the City of London, so
vital to the UK's prosperity, would lose out to Hamburg as Europe's
new financial centre. I also believed that public support would
propel the euro forward and that the sheer joyous simplicity of
a single European currency would make the British eventually fall
in love with it. After all, companies such as Marks & Spencer
were introducing euro-compliant tills in their stores, so confident
were they of the currency's success.
Well,
six years on I couldn't have been more wrong. More than four years
into the single currency experiment, the collective wisdom of
the people of France and the Netherlands has been heard. While
poll after poll in Germany and Italy reveals the public's distrust
of the euro, the continent's political elite still believe that
the public was voting only against aspects of the new constitution
and that these problems can be smoothed out. The reality is that
the electorate was voting just as much with its wallet.
The
fact is that the years since the euro's introduction in 1999 have
been difficult for those who've laboured under its iron rule.
It is true that inflation has been kept tightly under control.
But most ordinary Europeans know that the price of everything
they buy - including, crucially, residential property - has soared.
In a period when the British economy has been expanding on average
by 2.5% a year, Europe has stood still.
The
European Commission has conceded that, if lucky, growth across
euroland will come in at just 1.5% in 2005. This is half the level
Gordon Brown predicts for the UK this year. Economic watchdog,
the OECD, puts EU growth even lower at 1.2%. Even worse, unemployment
in Germany (Euroland's core) remains stubbornly high at 12%.
And
Italy, the nation most disillusioned with Euroland, is having
a torrid time. Output is falling at the rate of 0.5% a quarter
and jobless rate currently stands at 8% of the workforce. Manufacturing
jobs in key industries are shifting to the Far East and the country
faces disciplinary action from Brussels because its budget deficit
- at 3.6% of national wealth (GDP) - is in excess of the euro's
rules.
The
reality is that the euro-enthusiasts' dream has been shattered.
Instead of creating a zone of prosperity stretching from the Urals
to the Atlantic, they've given birth to a trade bloc struggling
to compete in the fast-changing global economy. The trouble is
that we believers ignored the lessons of history, which show that
attempts at monetary union that are not accompanied by political
union are eventually doomed.
It
took America 140 years to achieve a working monetary union. The
Federal Government adopted the dollar as the currency of the US
in 1785. The first two attempts at establishing a central bank
failed and, as late as 1905, more than 5,500 banks were printing
their own dollars of variable value and reliability. Only in 1913,
with the creation of the Federal Reserve system, did America become
a modern monetary union. Similarly, 19th-century efforts to create
a monetary area in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, ahead of political
union, also failed.
Last
week, voters in France and Holland made it clear that they don't
want more political union for the moment. But without that political
cement - moving Europe towards common taxation fiscal, trade and
foreign policy - the euro itself is in danger of becoming unstuck.
Tensions
Politicians
and bankers across Europe have been forced to question the very
survival of the euro - something unthinkable just a few weeks
ago. Instead of debating the identity of the next country to sign
up to the euro project, they are now desperately attempting to
shore up the Euroland dream.
There
is a great awareness that this is a critical juncture in the continent's
economic evolution. Huge efforts are being made to present any
disillusioned countries from trying to dump the euro. So far the
financial markets have been relatively restrained in their response
to these growing tensions. Although the single currency has fallen
to its lowest level in eight months on the foreign exchange markets,
the damage might have been greater were there also worries about
America's debt and the weakness of the dollar.
Yet
even the modest 7% slide in the euro is a cause for concern. German
Financial Minister Hans Eichel even met Bundesbank President Axel
Weber last week to discuss consequences of possible failure of
the single currency.
Such
high-level sessions will remind people in Britain of the crisis
days of the summer of 1992 when the Germans washed their hands
of UK membership of the European Monetary System (EMS). The result
was a convulsion on the currency markets that saw Britain ejected
from the system, which allowed Britain to devalue the pound, which
has led, in turn, to a sustained economic growth for the past
13 years.
Stultified
Indeed,
the key reason why Euroland is now in such trouble is the lack
of flexibility at the European Central Bank. It was created on
the Bundesbank model, with the aim of ensuring an iron control
of credit to guarantee that there would be no deviation from monetary
orthodoxy.
At
a time when the Bank of England regularly moved interest rates
up or down to cope with changes in economic conditions, the ECB
sat on its hands. Meanwhile, promises made at the Lisbon summit
five years ago to introduce labour market flexibility and open
up the market for utilities have not yet been fulfilled. The result
- Euroland has the worst of all worlds: an inflexible monetary
regime and stultified labour markets.
So
what is likely to happen now? The fact is that there is no formal
mechanism for a country to withdraw from monetary union nor is
it very likely at present, despite the threatening mutterings
coming from Italy. Everyone is aware that the technical difficulties
involved in effecting a smooth exit from European Monetary Union
would be enormous. The seceding country would have to find a way
of reinstituting its monetary independence and exchanging its
national euros for its new currency. Above all, it would face
the risk of being overwhelmed by the power of financial markets.
But
even global investment banks argue that the long-term future of
the euro is now much more uncertain. While a seceding nation might
find withdrawal initially very painful, they might also quickly
breathe the sweet air of economic and political freedom and the
sovereignty over their own currency for which there is no substitute.
If you have suggestions
for additional subjects, or material to include in the pages linked
to the subjects listed, please contact
the webmaster.
