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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November
16 2006 (1281 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 2863 US - 125 UK - >650,000? civilians - 25 media
November
29, 2006 (1294 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 2885 US - 126 UK - >650,000? civilians - 25 media
1000
migrants every DAY
When
eight new countries joined the EU, Labour said only 1,000 migrants
per month would come here. But, as this dossier shows, the number
arriving at a London coach station this week is at least 1000
migrants/day
Special
Investigation by Sue Reid - Daily Mail, December 1, 2006
On
a raw November day, they climb off the busses with little more
than hope in their hearts and the will to work every hour that
God sends. A young Slovakian father, small silver cross dangling
over his black T-shirt, heads for a chocolate factory in Bradford.
A 19-year-old au pair greets the smiling toddler she will look
after in West London. Two burley men, on bearing the black eye
of a recent brawl in Prague, carry a bag of builders' tools straight
into a nearby pub.
At
Victoria coach station in Central London, Poles mingle with Slovaks,
Czechs with Lithuanians, Estonians, Hungarians, Latvians and Slovenians.
All are united in the belief that Britain will soon make them
rich men or women.
This
is the dramatic diaspora the Government said would never happen.
Originally, the Home Office predicted only 13,00 would arrive
each year when eight former Communist countries joined the European
Union exactly 3- months ago today.
From
the very start, it was clear that it was a gross underestimate.
A few days ago the Whitehall number crunchers confessed how wrong
they were. The official tally of arrivals from the Iron Curtain
nations had risen to 500,000, more than 15 times higher than they
said.
The
newcomers work in cafes, on building sites, in supermarkets and
the fields or packing factories of the East Anglia fens. They
have become nannies, bus drivers and school teachers. Every indigenous
Briton, whatever his or her background, knows - and might have
employed - an Eastern European.
But
could New Labours latest figure be hopelessly low too? Are there
millions more joining the stampede than the statisticians say?
And, if they are, what impact is that having on the hospitals,
schools and job market of this country?
We
monitored the influx of Eastern Europeans at Victoria, just one
point of arrival, for 12 hours on Friday and 12 hours on Saturday.
In that time the coach stations - one run by Transport for London,
the other by the private transport company, Green line - received
51 international coaches direct from Eastern Europe. Their passengers
stepped on to British soil alongside hundreds more on 106 domestic
National Express, Green Line and Terrevision coaches carrying
East Europeans into Victoria from the 76 budget flights to Luton,
Stansted, Gatwick and Heathrow over the same period. Arriving
there, too, were scores of other Slavic migrants on a stream of
buses from Amsterdam and Paris - travel hubs with transport links
to the former Soviet countries.
Now,
of course, this was a snapshot rather than an exhaustive poll.
However, by any standards, the number arriving were enormous.
On Friday between dawn and dusk, 1,113 bus passengers travelled
here direct from Eastern European cities. In the same time on
Saturday, the number was even higher at 1,590.
If
these figures are typical - and as Christmas nears the Victoria
terminal is less busy than usual - it means that around 1,300
are being bussed in every day - 9,100 every week. Sundays, we
were told by officials, are busier still.
Since
the eight new EU countries of Eastern Europe joined in June 2004,
these international buses alone are likely to have brought in
460,000 passengers a year - nearly 1.5 million migrants. Even
the most cautious estimates based on our observations make a mockery
of the Government's own tally, which is based on the migrants
who actually register for work.
In
fact, Geoff Walker, senior inspector of the Green Line coach station,
believes our figures are accurate and, if anything, an underestimate
of the true picture.
Now,
of course, some of the bus passengers arriving at Victoria last
weekend could have been returning after a holiday in their home
country. But Mr Walker says: "I
think that, on average, 10,000 Eastern Europeans arrive at Victoria
every week. The vast majority are newcomers from Poland. It is
quieter here now than in the summer or last year. Yet by next
February the arrivals will be up again. Your numbers do not surprise
me."
Mr
Walker, 64, has worked at the station for six years. He has always
believed that the Government got its sums wrong. "When
David Blunkett was Home Secretary and in charge of immigration,
I saw him walking with his guide dog and assistant to the Houses
of Parliament past the bus station in the morning," he said.
"Victoria was already full of Eastern Europeans coming in
on the buses. They were everywhere. In the streets, in the cafes
and sleeping on the pavements. At night I went home to see the
ten o'clock news with my wife. I would shake my head with disbelief
when Mr Blunkett and his Government insisted that only 13,000
were expected in a year. I had already suspected that this number
were arriving in a little more than a week.
"Today
there are 79 Polish bus companies coming into Victoria from the
major cities and towns without airports such as Plock, Torun,
Pila and Gorzo. They service an expanding lucrative market and
also carry passengers directly to Manchester, Glasgow, Leeds,
Edinburgh and Wales. For £39, the average price of a one-way
coach ticket from Eastern Europe, thousands upon thousands can
reach provincial Britain in a day.
"No,
they don't all come to London," says Mr Walker. "Although
the numbers are vast, what we see here are just some of them.
At first the Eastern Europeans arrivals were often well-educated
and polite. Today things are changing. There are more who come
without English and hang about the bus station not knowing where
to go next or how to get a job. The other day, a family of five
Slovaks ordered some food in the coffee bar over there,"
he points.
"When
the managers asked for their money to pay the bill, they refused.
The man of the family said he wanted to eat the food and decide
if he paid afterwards. It ended up in a brawl with the manager
taking the father by his collar and shaking him.."
There's
no doubt that some of the Eastern Europeans will go home one day.
Often they say they are here for only a couple of years to raise
money to help their families back home or to buy a new house.
And with the average annual wage in Poland just £4,700 a
year, who can blame them? They can earn that sum in cash on a
building site in London in two months.
Peter
Krol, 24, arrived on the 10.35am bus on Friday having left Krakow
in Poland a day earlier. He said: "I am coming for two years,
maybe more. I don't have a job at the moment. I will do anything
from carpentry to bricklaying. I won't have a problem because
I will work hard. I have just finished technical college and I
want to practise my English. I will live with friends in Bethnal
Green. It is better being in Western Europe. I want to save up
and buy a big house in my own country."
His
story is repeated in differing forms again and again at Victoria.
Take Peter Slewinski, 24, who arrived from Amsterdam. He graduated
in maritime economics at Szczecin University in north-west Poland.
"I have come to be a night worker packing boxes at a warehouse
in London," he said, surrounded by three large suitcases.
"I got the job through the British Job Centre which advertises
all the time in Poland. I have friends in Hammersmith and I will
live with them."
Behind
him stepping off a bus from Poland, came bar worker Barbara Pakula,
19, with her boyfriend Robert Galan, 23. They arrived with a bicycle
amongst their possessions. "How are we expected to live in
our country?" asked Barbara. "People come here because
of the money. I will look for a job and Robert already has one
as a packer at night. We will stay here for a few years at least.
Who knows if we will ever go home?"
Over
at the Green Line terminal, Michael Hadbabny, 27, arrived on Saturday
on a coach from the Czech Republic. He has already worked as a
farm labourer in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, and had been visiting
his family back home. Now he plans to stay in Britain until next
summer at least. "I owe the bank £15,000 and I want
to earn enough to pay it back," he said. "Lots of people
from my country come here because they are in the same position."
And
so they told their stories, watched by Rafal Boracozvyk, 28, who
was at the coach station to pick up his television sent over from
Poland on the bus. He has been a night manager at Tesco in Canning
Town, East London, since arriving one year ago from Chelm, near
the Ukraine border. Already his English is near perfect.
"The
more Polish people who live in Britain the easier it is,"
he explains. "It creates a community and if you have friends
from your own country you settle in easier. It is like a snowball.
The more that are here, the more come. I have found my brother
a job at the Hilton as a cook, and a house. So he is happy too."
In
Warsaw the coaches start setting out each day at 8 am. Yesterday
17 Poles boarded the first one heading for Victoria. "We
have to pick up people from five other towns where there are no
airports," said the driver. "We will be full when we
get to London."
On
board was Agnieszka Szcepanik, 23, from Lublin in south-east Poland.
She had planned to catch the easyJet plane to Stansted but it
was cancelled because of fog. Three years ago she visited England
and fell in love with a Polish boy. Now she is hare to stay and
will work as a cleaner. "I like it in London," she says.
"In Poland salaries are too low and no one can make ends
meet - however hard they try."
But
the streets are not paved with gold for every Eastern European.
At 5 pm on Friday a coach from Amsterdam arrived at Victoria carrying
a Slovakian gipsy couple and their two teenage children from Kosice,
their country's second largest city. "We don't have jobs
and we don't have anywhere to stay," said the father. "Our
tickets cost £40 each and we borrowed the money. There is
nothing for us at home so we came like everyone else."
What
will become of them? An hour later, bewildered and shivering,
they stood on the pavement outside the coach station with nowhere
to go. Perhaps they slept at the station overnight. Perhaps they
are there still.
If
so, they are sure to meet Maciek Katuzny, 32, who arrived on a
bus at Victoria 2- months ago from Warsaw. He lives at the coach
terminal. Penniless, he begs from other Poles as they arrive.
"No work, no education, no life," he says, zipping up
his bag which contains one blue towel and a thin pillow. "But
I am too poor to buy the ticket to go home again."
So
when will this diaspora end - if ever? The Home Office told the
Mail that the Eastern European citizens of EU nations are free
to come to Britain whenever they want and stay as long as they
want. A spokesman refused to comment on huge number of new arrivals
discovered by the Mail.
On
January 1, 2007, Romania and Bulgaria will be admitted as full
members of the EU. And at Victoria coach station Geoff Walker
has no doubt what the effect will be.
"When
they join the EU, the number on the buses will go up even more,"
he said. "It doesn't matter what work restrictions the Government
imposes. These people are determined to get to Britain. They will
go to Czechoslovakia, or Poland, and buy a ticket to London from
there. Who will be able to stop them?"
It
is a thorny question which the Government has yet to answer.
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