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
L
U N A C Y
For
21 years the Countess of Mar, Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords,
was at the heart of our immigration system. In this devastating
critique of incompetence and chaos, she explains why she can take
no more
Daily
Mail, July 25, 2006
The
principle of justice must lie at the heart of any effective immigration
system. Incomers to Britain need to know their claims for settlement
will be treated fairly, while the host population has to have
confidence that new arrivals have genuine right to stay, and are
not merely exploiting administrative failure or abusing the law.
But
justice is largely absent from the present immigration shambles
presided over by the Labour Government. In place of fairness,
we have only chaos. Efficient border controls have all but collapsed,
while the legal process for hearing cases has descended into farce,
bogged down by an excessive workload, bureaucratic incompetence
and technical delays.
With
the immigration system utterly paralysed, legal decisions about
rights of abode are divorced from reality,
since so few illegal migrants or failed asylum-seekers are actually
deported, even when they lose their cases.
As
a result, immigration proceedings are often little more than a
pantomime designed to waste taxpayers' money and the time of participants.
It was precisely my exasperation with this mess that led to my
resignation last week as a member of the Immigration Appeals Tribunal,
the body dealing with claims from migrants who have been refused
leave to remain in Britain by the Home Office.
Abuse
For
21 years I had served on the Tribunal, but I could no longer justify
my involvement in a legal process which not only achieved so little,
but had also become an outrageous abuse of public funds. I was
paid £242 a day for sitting on the Tribunal, yet for reasons
I shall explain, my deliberations were usually an irrelevance
to the future of each appellant.
Officers
face 870 corruption claims
by
James Slack, Home Affairs Editor - Daily Mail
More
than 870 corruption allegations have been made against
Home Office staff dealing with immigration cases, it emerged
yesterday. Most of the cases are still under investigation
- but 110 staff have already been disciplined or face
prosecution.
The
apparent scale of the corruption is another huge blow
to the home Office, which repeatedly defended the integrity
of its staff. Earlier this year, an internal investigation
cleared staff at the Lunar House head-quarters of Immigration
and Nationality Directorate of a sex-for-visas scandal.
But
the latest figures suggest that rather than there being
no wrongdoing, the scale of corruption and misconduct
is much worse than even its harshest critics feared. It
raises the alarming prospect of staff handing out visas
- the right to live in Britain - in return for bribes
or other favours.
Shadow
Home Secretary David Davis said: "This implies a
fundamental problem at the heart of the immigration service."
The number of corruption charges is revealed in a report
by MPs on the Home Affairs Committee.
Since
2000, 703 cases have been referred to the IND's Security
and Anti-corruption Unit, of which 409 warranted an investigation.
A further 169 complaints were made to the Immigration
Service Operational Integrity Unit. Complaints were made
by staff who believe their colleagues to be corrupt, as
well as members of the public.
The
committee was told by officials that the majority of cases
are still being investigated, but 31 people have been
referred to the police for prosecution. Some 79 staff
are facing disciplinary action.
The
IND has a total of 15,000 staff - which means the equivalent
of one in every 20 has come under suspicion for corruption.
In January, a whistleblower accused officials at Lunar
House, in Croydon of offering visas in return for sex
favours. An Internal Home Office inquiry rejected this
claim, though it did find evidence of 'unprofessional
behaviour towards applicants'.
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I
took my duties seriously, giving each case anxious and careful
scrutiny, particularly because in some cases involving people
seeking asylum from persecution or civil war in their own country,
deportation could potentially be a matter of life or death.
Yet
I was increasingly aware that whatever the Tribunal decided, no
matter how flimsy the case, the claimants would probably remain
in Britain because the Government has lost the will to maintain
proper deportation procedures. The scale of this shambles was
reflected in an admission from the Home Office last week that
an estimated 450,000 rejected asylum-seekers could still be living
in Britain.
This
travesty of justice existed at every level. In an indication of
the endemic mismanagement, lawyers would often turn up at tribunal
hearings without any sets of paper, and then there would be a
delay while they were handed a bundle of copies to ready. Files
were forever being lost.
These
problems were exacerbated because the legal process was so absurdly
elongated. If a claimant's application was refused, they could
go through three further stages before being issued with a final
rejection. First
of all, they could appeal to an immigration judge. After that,
they could go to my tribunal and then, ultimately, to the High
Court. This ability to drag out appeals is costing a fortune,
since most of them are paid for by Legal Aid. Moreover, it is
leading to ridiculous delays.
Appeals
hearings for claimants that were first rejected five years earlier
are common, and I remember dealing with one case from the Balkans
which had lasted 14 years. Because rejected claimants have nothing
to lose by appealing, they naturally do so, creating a huge workload
for immigration judges.
Occasionally
I would call on their offices, and it would be difficult physically
to see them, since their desks would be piled so high with orange
immigration files awaiting their decisions. The judges regularly
complained to me that they simply did not have the time to read
through all the voluminous casework.
Equally
dispiriting was the way we had to deal with cases which did not
have the slightest merit. Through years of experience, I developed
a sense for those who were trying to spin a yarn, like the thousands
of Sri Lankans who would falsely claim to be caught up in the
horrors of the island's civil war or to be fleeing the Tamil Tigers.
The
repetition of the same story so many times persuaded me that this
could not be the whole truth, and that they were simply being
tutored to lie by middlemen as part of a bogus asylum racket.
Bogus
I
also grew thoroughly fed up with the number of migrants who contracted
bogus marriages to stay here, and then - when they had their claims
rejected - cited the Human Rights Act in their defence, eagerly
supported by their publicly funded lawyer, who would talk piously
about the Act's clause on 'the right to family life'.
The
system is crazy. It is nothing to do with merit or upholding a
fair immigration policy. It is just an expensive, legalistic game
that undermines the integrity of our borders and our judiciary,
making a mockery of any concept of public service.
Yet
the Immigration Tribunals were very different when I joined in
1985, because the workload was less excessive and there was still
a willingness by the Government to act on legal decisions. We
dealt mainly with cases of bogus marriages, deportations on grounds
of criminal or other undesirable behaviour and children brought
here under false pretences, usually by migrants masquerading as
the child's 'family'.
It
was tough work, but manageable, and I think we played our part
in ensuring that the immigration system worked properly. I think
the rot began in 1992, when the Tory government severely restricted
the use of temporary work permits for immigrants. So those who
wanted to work or settle here sought out alternative avenues.
Hence
the development of the vast immigration industry, complete with
false documentation, bogus claims of asylum and an army of lawyers
and advisers depending for their living on processing applications.
Controls
The
Home Office has been struggling to cope every since. And the Labour
Government has made the problems even worse, partly through the
removal in 1998 of embarkation controls - so they do not have
a clue how many people are leaving the country or how many are
legally here - partly through cuts in the Immigration Service,
and partly through the Human Rights Act.
And,
of course, it's all down to their noisy encouragement of mass
immigration, spreading the belief across Africa, Asia and Eastern
Europe that everyone who comes here will be welcomed, which can
never be the case.
Because
the Home Office is so badly mismanaged and politically misdirected,
staff morale is at an all-time low, which only feeds the cycle
of chaos. It is no wonder illegal immigrants to missing, procedures
are ignored and files are lost in an organisation where staff
turnover is so high and leadership so weak. Even the computer
technology, so often hailed as the saviour of the system, does
not seem to work properly.
The
British people - and those who genuinely need asylum on our shores
- deserve better. But there is precious little sign that they
will get it from a Government still addicted to gimmickry and
empty slogans.
John
Reid's much vaunted new uniformed border control force is a classic
example. Without a major increase in personnel, this will just
be window-dressing. If there was genuine political will to resolve
the crisis, the Government could strengthen the system. But given
what I have seen of the new Home Secretary, I fear it will remain
a farce, and I no longer want any part of it.
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