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
|
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
July
6, 2005 (798 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 1,751 US - 90 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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The
failure to secure our borders defies belief
Commentary
by Melanie Phillips - Daily Mail, July 8, 2005
Yesterday's
sickening atrocities (in London) were shockingly to predictable.
Former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Lord Stevens, warned
long ago that they were 'inevitable'. As time went on after 9/11
with no attacks in Britain, police and security experts repeatedly
warned that there was no room for complacency and that the only
reason we had escaped was because a number of attempts had been
foiled.
And
yet, despite all this, the brutal truth is that in many respects
this country has simply not taken the terrorist threat seriously
enough. Flinching from the tough-minded measures crying out to
be taken, our leaders failed to act in a way commensurate with
the threat culminating in yesterday's carnage. Indeed, considering
how much was known and anticipated, our failure to act can only
be considered the height of incompetence or recklessness, or both.
Clearly,
we don't know whether those responsible were foreign nationals
or home-grown terrorists. But in the light of the clear danger
from terrorists slipping into this country from abroad, the Government's
failure to secure our borders defies belief.
Because
of the shambles of our immigration and asylum system and the chronic
inability by successive governments to police it properly, the
astonishing fact is that faced with an unprecedented threat to
our security, the government simply lost control of our borders.
As a result no one could know who was coming in or going out.
As
the head of MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller observed, this made the
job of countering the terrorist threat infinitely more difficult.
Indeed, one might go further and say it made it impossible. People
who were not supposed to be here because they were illegal immigrants
posing as asylum seekers have simply been allowed to disappear
into the country in their thousands.
Clearly
the vast majority of such people pose no security threat; but
it's equally obvious that it's not possible to make a country
safe if its borders are so permeable and administrative chaos
permits people simply to vanish below the official radar.
This
has been allowed to occur because, at a time of unprecedented
danger, this country's ruling elite has self-indulgently postured
on human rights and the 'diversity' agenda with reckless disregard
for the paramount priority of defending and preserving public
safety.
The
courts have undermined all attempts to police our borders, making
it impossible to deport illegal immigrants or lock up those who
are considered to be too dangerous to be at large. Faced with
this irresponsible judicial moral grandstanding, the Government
failed to repeal the Human Rights Act and thus remove the principal
weapon wielded by the judges to undermine public safety.
Instead,
when Law Lords produced their intellectually flawed ruling that
it was unlawful to detain without trial foreign nationals suspected
of terrorist involvement, Government promptly caved in to the
'human rights' industry and released them. Although it placed
various restrictions on their movements, the fact remains that
it released people who it had previously said posed such an unconscionable
danger to this country that normal procedures had to be suspended
to put them behind bars.
Instead
of robust action to deal with people acknowledged to be a danger
to the state, all the Home Secretary can come up with is the deeply
flawed proposal for ID cards - which will not even apply to many
people coming into the United Kingdom.
This move will destroy ancient liberties while adding precious
little of practical assistance to the fight against terrorism.
All
it will do is enable ministers to give the impression that they
are doing something - while at the same time they do little to
stop extremist Islamic ideologues from using what has come to
be known as 'Londonistan' to promulgate inflammatory diatribes
against the West and thus swell the ideological sea in which terrorism
swims.
It
was particularly nauseating to witness London's mayor, Ken Livingstone,
deliver his ringing condemnation of terrorism yesterday - the
same Ken Livingstone who invited terrorism supporter and Islamic
extremist Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi to speak in the capital last summer
and physically embraced him on the platform.
Even
more alarmingly, the country's principal police force involved
in counter-terrorism is now under the control of an officer whose
obsession with the 'diversity' agenda is thought to be under-mining
the fight against terror. The oppressive side of this philosophy
surfaced recently when Sir Ian Blair, Metropolitan Police Commissioner,
was rebuked by an employment tribunal for 'hanging his own officers
out to dry' to prove his anti-racist credentials.
This
was after his force was found to have racially discriminated against
three white officers who were disciplined after alleged racist
remarks at a training day, in which one of them referred to Muslim
headgear as 'tea cosies', mispronounced Shi'ites as 'shitties'
and said he felt sorry for Muslims who fasted during Ramadan.
Yet
following this institutional bullying over Islamophobia, Deputy
Assistant Commissioner Brian Paddick yesterday made the astonishing
comment: "As far as I am concerned, Islam and terrorists
are two words that do not go together." While few would disagree
that the Met has to be sensitive to the needs of ethnic minorities,
Sir Ian's obsession with attacking 'Islamophobia' is now raising
serious concerns among certain police officers and security sources.
It
is getting in the way of the job the police are called upon to
do. Officers who try to address the delicate issue of terrorism
and its supporters within the Muslim community now find themselves
in danger of being accused within their own force of Islamophobia.
The situation has become so grave that some members of the security
services no longer trust the Met with sensitive counter-terrorist
information. Law-abiding and patriotic Muslims who try to give
police vital information about extremists sometimes find, to their
dismay and disbelief, that it is not acted upon. And throughout,
there is a woeful dearth of Islamic experts and a disastrous paucity
of insightful and informed analysis.
Also,
Sir Ian seems remarkable preoccupied with promoting himself and
was all over the broadcast media yesterday after the attacks.
But earlier his timing was, to put it mildly, unfortunate. For
at 7.20 am, he boasted on BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the
Met was seen as the 'envy of the policing world in relation to
counter-terrorism'.
Along
with the other emergency services, the Met did a great job yesterday.
But counter-terrorism as all about preventing such catastrophes
from occurring in the first place. Compared to what the American
Department of Homeland Security has done, for example, the pusillanimity
of the British effort makes you weep.
America
now has Draconian border controls, including racial and religious
profiling, which enables officials to stop people if they correspond
to certain suspect characteristics. More people have to have visas
to enter the country and every entrant is now routinely photographed
and fingerprinted. And this most diverse and multicultural of
nations has no qualms about going into mosques to interview and
interrogate Muslims.
Britain,
by contrast, has pussy-footed around. Terrified of being accused
of Islamophobia and wrapping itself in the mantle of the 'diversity'
agenda, it has allowed the human rights culture and a lethal political
correctness to frustrate elementary and commonsense measures to
protect the people of this country.
The
national has been sleepwalking to disaster. Yesterday, it paid
the ultimate price.
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