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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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
June
17, 2005 (779 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 1,716 US - 89 UK - >6,164? Iraqi - >17,300? civilians
- 25 media
June
26, 2005 (788 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 1,737 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.
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Plastic
Poll Tax
Editorial
- The Spectator - July 2, 2005
It
seems increasingly plausible that among the many Britons to have
had their identities stolen is one T. Blair of London SW1. Perhaps
it was an application for a platinum card, carelessly discarded
in the Downing Street dustbin, which allowed criminals to strike;
perhaps it was a greasy teenage boffin who hacked his way into
Tony's PC. Whatever it was, if is difficult otherwise to reconcile
the fresh-faced, liberal-minded Tony Blair of the 1980s and 1990s,
who championed human rights and made a stand against overbearing
government, with the waxy, angular authoritarian who passes himself
off as Tony Blair today.
Perhaps
a biometric examination of his eyealls, under the government's
proposed ID card scheme, will settle the matter for good. Or perhaps
not. Given the multiple failures of other government IT systems
chronicled elsewhere in these pages, it is improbable that the
Home Office will get a remotely reliable national ID database
in return for an outlay, estimated in a thorough study by the
LSE, of £19 billion. In any case, there is little to suggest
that eyeballs provide a foolproof method of human identification.
The whole scheme presupposes that criminals will not find some
way of altering their biometric data; the day ID cards are introduced
opticians can expect long queues of shifty-looking gentlemen seeking
corrective laser treatment.
The
libertarian arguments against ID cards have been rehearsed often,
and are no less valid for that. However benign the government's
intentions, the fact remains that the information collected for
ID cards could also be used by authoritarian regimes. We have
seen, through the new lop-sided extradition treaty with the US,
the abandon with which our own government is prepared to co-operate
with other nations which have designs on our citizens.
What
is there to prevent the likes of Robert Mugabe gaining access
to our national ID database through Interpol? Do we want rogue
elements in our own security services to have the power to monityor
every movement of every citizen? And what of the persecution of
innocent citizens which will result from the fallibility of the
data? It may be faintly amusing when a fine for non-payment of
the London congestion charge drops on to the doormat of a milkman
in Aberdeen, the registration plate of his float having been confused
with another vehicle'.
It
will be rather less amusing when armed anti-terrorist police turn
up at the homes of innocent people whose eyeballs closely match
those of terrorist suspects. ID cards will not, ultimately, prevent
identity theft; they will merely make life easier for criminals
who manage to master the forgery of them. Great
though the libertarian case against ID cards is, Tony Blair has
calculated, probably accurately, that the British public is apathetic
on issues of liberty.
This
is perhaps inevitable: few Britons have lived under dictatorship.
But there is another aspect to ID cards which will surely not
escape the wrath of the people: their cost. According to the LSE
study each ID card will cost a minimum of £170 to produce,
payable upon renewal every five years. Even if, as the government
has now indicated, the cost to each individual will be capped
below £100 (the balance, of course, will be borne by taxpayers
in other ways) it still amounts to a tax on existence on the scale
of the hated poll tax. That tax, at least, went to public services.
But all a citizen will get in return for his £100 ID card
fee is a piece of plastic.
Gawd
help the citizen who loses his ID card, as many thousands inevitably
will. Their lives will presumably be suspended until they've gone
through the business of proving they've not dropped from outer
sapce of been smuggled into the country. The main effect of ID
cards will not be to fight crime but to create offences: offences
by those who refuse to have a card, refuse to produce it on demand,
or who deface the wretched thing with a pair of bunny ears in
a drunken jape.
It
is a sign of being too long in power that a government treats
the public less as people than as pawns in its own megalomaniac
schemes. It becomes so confident of its ability to muster thin
majorities of pliant backbenchers that it omits to listen to the
larger disquiet in the country. On Tuesday evening, the Blair
government demonstrated that it had reached that stage. Those
who imagined Labour backbenchers would choose ID cards as an excuse
to depose Tony Blair were sadly disappointed. The real storm,
however, will come when members of the public, leading happy lives
of blameless obscurity, are ordered to present themselves at their
local council offices to have their bodies scanned, and are charged
£100 for the privelege.
According
to the Home Secretary, who has changed his argument for ID cards
so often that he's long since passed the point of credibilty,
the exercise is now all about 'securing our identities'. We are
confident that this is not how the public will see it. Rather,
they will feel, like the viciims of identity thieves themselves,
that they have had their identities - and their money - stolen
by the state.
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