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
15, 2006 (1162 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 2545 US - 114 UK - >60,000? civilians - 25 media
All
spin and no action
Commentary
by Steve Moxon - sacked immigration whistleblower
Daily
Mail, July 24, 2006
John
Reid was meant to sort out the shambles of the Home Office following
the departure of Charles Clarke over the foreign prisoners fiasco.
Portraying himself as a tough-minded, non-nonsense Scot, he explosively
declared that his new department was in such a mess that it was
'not fit for purpose'. But, with his combination of political
ruthlessness and managerial expertise, he would soon begin to
turn around its operation.
Border
control force that never was
Report by James Slack - Home Affairs Editor
An
apparent promise of a new uniformed border control force
to stem the tide of illegal immigration descended into
farce last night. Home Secretary John Reid's plan led
television news bulletins yesterday morning, drawing the
sting from a scathing report on immigration my MPs.
Chief
Constables thought they had won a long-running campaign
for a crack unified team team of police, customs and immigration
officials to guard Britain's porous borders. The Association
of Chief Police Officers issued a statement welcoming
the creation of the force, saying it would help the fight
against illegal immigration.
But
it later had to be contacted by Home Office officials
to 'clarify' that this was not the case. There will be
NO announcement of a new single border control agency.
Instead, immigration staff are to be made to wear uniforms
for the first time to make them appear 'more visible'.
The
Government is also trying to find cash to provide a few
hundred more border guards to address huge manpower shortages
in the 5,000-strong team. Mr Reid told Sunday's GMTV programme:
"We need to do more and I intend to do more because
next week what I want to do is to strengthen the resources
for our border enforcement. We need a better, more forceful,
more effective, more visible border enforcement."
But
critics said simply giving staff new uniforms would make
little or no difference to the fight against illegal immigration.
There were also warnings that could actually make immigration
staff, who check passports of new arrivals to the UK,
harder to spot.
Airports
and ports are already awash with uniforms, including pilots,
airline and check-in staff. If the new uniform is not
carefully designed, immigration staff could lose rather
than gain authority. This is
the latest in a series of headline-grabbing Home Office
announcements to unravel within hours.
The
uniform plan is not due to be officially announced until
tomorrow, when the Government will unveil its action plan
for putting the shambolic immigration department back
on track. But details leaked out early in a spin operation
to coincide with the publication of the Parliamentary
Home Affairs Committee's report into immigration controls.
As well as warning of corruption, the report denounced
the Government's enforcement of immigration law as 'clearly
inadequate'.
Tomorrow's
announcement will include a promise to double the budget
for catching illegal immigrants to £280million by
2010. The bulk of the cash is likely to be spent on IT
systems to try to trace the suspected 570,000 illegals
living in the UK.
Some
extra staff are also likely to be funded, increasing the
current total of 1,500. John Tincey, of Immigration Service
Union, said: "This is welcome, but the need is for
extra staff right now, not in four or five years."
Home
Office insiders insisted they had not used the phrase
'border control force'. It had been misunderstanding by
broadcasters. The BBC was chief among those to fall for
the Home Office spin operation, leading to early bulletins
with Mr Reid's planned announcement.
The
corporation's website also declared: "A uniformed
border control force is to be introduced at ports and
air-ports for the first time in the UK, Home Secretary
John Reid has said."
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Like
so many Blairite politicians, he seems to believe that dramatic
announcements and high profile policy launches are a substitute
for real action. In this enfeebled government,
empty propaganda has become an end in itself.
As
a former official at the Immigration and Nationality Directorate
who blew the whistle on the Government's failure to apply its
own rules to immigration cases and sacked for 'embarrassing the
Home Office Minister Beverley Hughes, I
find Reid's approach wholly unconvincing. It is all spin and no
substance.
Only
last Wednesday, he made the ludicrous claim that he would clear
the backlog of failed asylum seekers within five years. What made
this promise absurd was the disclosure less than 24 hours earlier
by the BBC that the Home Office had found that the number of failed
asylum seekers was not the 200,000 previously estimated, but 450,000.
Clearly,
Reid was indulging in empty rhetoric. The same applies to his
much-heralded plans for a shake-up of the immigration system tomorrow.
Main elements of his supposedly radical scheme are the transformation
of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate into a quasi-independent
agency, a uniformed border control force, an increase in the Home
Office budget for immigration and disqualification for company
directors who employ illegal immigrants.
From
my experience, I think they add up to little more than tinkering
and gimmickry. By
hiving off day-to-day management of immigration, Reid has created
a recipe for more buck passing and lack of communication between
various officials.
Moreover,
the agency will still be managed and staffed by the same personnel
who have failed so badly in their present role.
Anyone who has worked in the Home Office knows that calibre of
employees at Lunar Rouse, the Croydon headquarters of the current
directorate, is worryingly low, partly because of poor pay and
lack of training.
Instead
of indulging in this kind of window-dressing, the Government should
have created an entirely separate immigration department, freed
of the sclerotic, politically-correct grip of the Home Office.
A genuinely independent body, under a different minister, could
have started afresh and taken control of the system. As it is,
we are stuck in the same old quagmire. Reid's other initiatives
are just as ineffectual.
His
boast that the immigration budget will double by £280million
by the end of the decade is just laughable. Taking account of
inflation, that is
hardly significant. The sum still barely matches the expenditure
of a small local authority.
The
reality of the continuing mess at the Home Office is exposed by
the report of the Home Affairs Select Committee, due out tomorrow,
which will savage government failure to control immigration. Evidence
keeps mounting.
A
leaked paper from the Home Office yesterday which revealed that,
if Romania and Bulgaria join the EU next year, then 45,000 'undesirables'
could come to these shores. And this figure could prove a severe
underestimate.
Indeed,
my sacking from the Home Office was connected to warnings from
a British official in Bucharest about the award of visas to Romanian
criminals, after ministers had ignored his evidence. It was typical
of the Government to shoot the messenger rather than deal with
the problem.
The
truth is that all the twisted statements and noisy initiatives
cannot disguise the fact that the immigration system is in ever
deeper crisis. The system is on the verge of breakdown. And these
is precious little sign that John Reid's bombast is going to fix
anything.
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