Silent Majority Speaks
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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June
29, 2006 (1146 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 2529 US - 113 UK - >60,000? civilians - 25 media
July
8, 2006 (1155 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 2543 US - 113 UK - >60,000? civilians - 25 media
Whitehall
warns £15bn ID cards project may be heading for the scrapheap
By
Jane Merrick - Political Correspondent - Daily Mail, July 10,
2006
Plans
to make every adult in Britain carry an identity card were in
disarray last night. A senior Whitehall official admitted the
£15billion scheme for compulsory ID cards could take years
to introduce. And documents show that Home Office officials are
preparing for the entire project to be 'canned completely'.
The
damning assessment from those closest to the plan undermines Tony
Blair's attempts to win support for ID cards. He has nailed them
as necessary to combat terrorism, illegal immigration and crime.
But officials say one of the Prime Minister's ideas is actually
making the situation worse.
Wild
cards
Keith
Waterhouse - Daily Mail, June 10, 2006
Where
did we go right? In common with a few other commentators
resistant to brainwashing, I have pointed out from the
start that Tony Blair's multi-billion-pound ID cards bonanza
is doomed to spectacular failure.
Its
dependency on biometric date, digitally encoded fingerprints
and iris scans which nobody in government understands
makes it a non-starter. As for its 101 flaunted uses,
the security system that sweeps at it beats as it cleans
is, as Tony and his successor will eventually be forced
to concede, 'not fit for purpose'.
The
project will not be abandoned in so many words. That's
not the Whitehall way. Most likely it will be allowed
to suffer a long, festering death, known in the trade
as 'saving face'. We will have lost extra millions but
no one, not even its more rabid supporters, ever said
that ID cards would come cheap.
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Mr
Blair suggested that opposition could be softened by a compromise
where individual records are stored on a temporary register. Civil
servants, however, say there is no evidence that the compromise
is 'remotely feasible' and accused ministers of 'ignoring reality'.
The
appraisals come in leaded e-mail correspondence last month between
Peter Smith, acting commercial director at the Home Office's Identity
and Passport Service, and David Foord, ID card project director
at the Office of Government Commerce, which rules whether public
projects are value for money. From 2008, if Labour is reelected,
there will be a voluntary ID card system. But after 2010, everyone
applying for a passport will have to buy and carry a £93
card. Mr Foord warned that, given the government's poor record
on IT projects, it was likely to be a 'botched operation' many
years late.
Contracts
for the scheme were under threat because of 'the amount of rethinking
going on'. He said of the suggested scaled-down system:
"What
benchmark do we have that suggests that this is even remotely
feasible? We are setting ourselves up to fail. This has all the
inauspicious signs of a project driven by an arbitrary end date
rather than reality."
Mr
Smith said his agency was planning for the entire project to fall
by the wayside. He wrote: "We are
designing the strategy so that other contracts such as a contact
centre for passport queries are all sensible and viable contracts
in their own right EVEN IF the ID card gets canned completely."
Another
official said: "Nobody expects this
to work. It is basically on hold while ministers rethink their
options. It's impossible to imagine the full scheme before 2026."
The
disarray means yet another crisis for Home Secretary John Reid.
Tories have pledged to scrap ID cards.
Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said last night: "These
civil servants can see plainly what the Government refuses to
accept. It's time they admitted failure."
The
Home Office said: "We have not abandoned the introduction
of ID cards. We have always said it would be in stages."
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