Rescuing
Democracy in the United Kingdom from our current Elected
Dictatorship
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Come
back Gilligan, all is forgiven. Penny Young, Diss, Norfolk,
to The Guardian, February 24, 2005
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
Power
cut, please
Labour's
pollsters have Tony Blair running scared, because they have
informed him that if turnout at the next election is below
50%, the result will be a hung parliament. This would be
good news for those of us who, viewing the damage inflicted
by recent governments, would like nothing better than a
Parliament powerless to do anything. Letter from Ron
Phillips, London W14 - Daily Mail, February 17, 2005
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Tony
Blair's pledge cards made no mention of pensioners. Perhaps
they're the jokers. Letter to the Daily Mail from Brian
Green, Daventry, Northants - February 22, 2005
The
Guardian's Polly Toynbee says 'a profoundly nasty streak'
among voters worried about poverty, crime and immigration
might cause them to vote against the Government. Isn't
it time we replaced the present electorate with one more
to Polly's liking? Ephraim Hardcastle, Daily Mail,
February 24, 2005
Back
to the future
'Forward
not Back' is quite wrong: we must go back - back to clean
hospitals with more medical staff and fewer managers;
back to education with proven standards.
Back
to police on the street and solving crime; back to increased
employment in industry, back to ministers who stand up
for this country and back to democratic government. Then,
perhaps, we can move forward. Letter from S, M. Butler,
Shoreham-by-Sea, Sussex - Daily Mail, March 23, 2005
Virtues
of a secret ballot
Sir
- Concerning postal votes (report Mar 23) what is the
first principle of a democratic political vote? Answer:
THE SECRET BALLOT.
It
is obvious that a postal ballot is only as secret as the
moral strength of the voter. With the infinite propaganda
powers of today's electronic media, it is frighteningly
easy for devious politicians to promote politically correct
or "cool" or, most wickedly, "honest and
transparent" voting patterns, where someone failing
to vote "with his/her group" must "have
something to hide".
Postal
voting should, at best, be allowable only to persons who
are required to be stationed away from their constituency
on government business. A few temporary disfranchisements
may result, but nothing is perfect.
Letter from J. B. Lewis, Bognor Regis, West Sussex - The
Daily Telegraph, March 25, 2005
SIR
- Why on earth are people still insisting on voting for
the Labour Party this May 2005. It has lied and cheated
the public again and again during the Iraq war, immigration,
violent crime and hospital waiting list figures. It has
introduced stealth taxes and even been caught rigging
the postal voting system. To the Editor, Daily Telegraph,
from Philip Priestley, High Wycombe, Bucks. April 19,
2005
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I
M M I G R A T I O N
It's
the social issue that dare not speak its name, but the truth is
Mr Blair is presiding over an irrevocable shift in the character
of this country, writes Max Hastings
Daily
Mail, March 22, 22005
There
is only one Tory election issue seriously scaring New Labour,
and of course it is immigration. The influx of hundreds of thousands
of newcomers to Britain dismays a hug number of British people,
and the report published this week by MigrationWatch UK will fuel
their alarm.
The
study, based on data from the government's own Office of National
Statistics (ONS), shows that nationally, almost 20% of babies
are born to immigrants, while in some areas the figures are much
higher. In Inner London, for instance, 50% of children are born
to migrants. In Birmingham, Bradford, Cambridge, Leicester and
some other cities, the figure is more than 30%.
According
to the ONS, of a 6 million increase in national population predicted
for the next 25 years, 5 million will be immigrants and their
children. This represents an extraordinary change in the make-up
of the British people. The Government's own Cohesion Panel acknowledged
last July that in some areas,,,, the pace of the influx is simply
too great for local communities to cope.
Yet
nothing effective is being done to stem the flow. Most ministers
assert defiantly that Britain will need immigrants a generation
hence to provide a young workforce to compensate for falling birth-rate
among native-born British people.
But
the truth is that Tony Blair is presiding over an irrevocable
shift in the character of this country. He seems perfectly content
that this should be taking place, irrespective of the clearly-expressed
wishes of most British people to the contrary.
Pernicious
The
implications for housing policy, and thus for the destruction
of countryside, as well as upon our national culture, are enormous.
Yet in debating this - or rather, in not debating it nearly as
much as we should - we suffer the disastrous legacy of Enoch Powell.
He made it politically disreputable to attack immigration, which
has become the great national issue which scarcely dares to speak
its name.
Those
who demand curbs on immigrant numbers are often denounced - not
least from the Labour benches in the House of commons - as racists.
This is stupid, indeed pernicious. The British people inhabit
one of the most overcrowded spaces in Europe, so it is reasonable
to question whether we should welcome more people, even if each
of the five million new Britons we are promised over the next
generation were called Nicole Kidman or Russell Crowe.
As
Gordon Brown seemed to recognise in some recent remarks, the United
Kingdom faces a serious issue, if not a crisis of identity. In
the mad pursuit of the folly of multi-culturism, more and more
people of all races are confused about who and what, exactly,
the British - which means themselves - are supposed to be.
If
it is important to control the influx of migrants to preserve
the stability of our society, it is even more important to ensure
that those who come here learn to share with us a common sense
of values. It is the unwillingness of some Muslims, especially,
to do so that causes dismay to many thoughtful people.
There
can surely be no place in any future vision of Britain for forced
marriages, the subjugation of women or - in a society which has
just banned fox-hunting because it is said to be cruel, for halal
butchery.
The
argument here seems perfectly simple, even if it is unacceptable
to many Left-wing politicians: anyone who wishes to live in Britain
must consent to do things our way.
That
does not mean sacrificing their religion, food and friendships.
It does mean accepting a commitment to liberal democracy and to
the English language.
Yet
we British should recognise that our identity problem goes deeper
than anything to do with immigrants. For several generations now,
our traditional bonds and loyalties have been weakening. All the
forces that held us together for so long - Empire, the Monarchy,
the Church, the memory of shared experience in two World Wars
- have been fading as those to who they meant so much die off.
George
Orwell, a passionate Englishman, identified 70 years ago some
of the things he thought of as most English: 'Bad teeth and gentle
manners ... the clatter of clogs in the Lancashire mill towns,
the to and fro of lorries on the Great North Road. The queues
outside the Labour Exchange, the rattle of pin tables in the Soho
pubs, the old maid biking to Holy Communion through mists of early
morning ... solid breakfasts and gloomy Sundays, smoky towns and
winding roads, green fields and red pillar boxes.
Today,
many of those sights have gone. Some cannot be lamented, for we
are better without them. There is no future in nostalgia.
Challenge
We
should acknowledge that in moist respects, for a great many people,
Britain today is a much brighter place than it was in Orwell's
time. The challenge is to create a credible British vision for
the future. This is not easy when 66% of Scots, 43% of Welsh and
25% of English told researchers at Nuffield College, Oxford, a
few years ago that their sense of Britishness was 'weak' or 'nonexistent'.
Most
of us believe that, without wanting to go backwards, pride in
our own history is an indispensable foundation. The decline of
history teaching in schools and universities is a disaster - and
I mean the fall in quality as well as quantity. How can any child
be expected to feel much excitement about the past when asked
to interpret it through a study of the early 19th Century Poor
Law rather than battles, kings and queens.
Led
by the Prime Minister, we have become absurdly apologetic about
our past. In truth, for all Britain's past follies and failures,
anyone who comes to live here is joining a society which has been
one of the foremost, most creative and inventive on Earth.
Some
educationists say that it is absurd to try to make an immigrant
child interested in the Battle of Waterloo, when his own family's
past in Pakistan, Afghanistan or the West Indies seems vastly
more real. The answer surely, is that his family has chosen to
break the link with his own historic legacy, and to invest in
that of Britain. How can he or she expect to share this country's
future without familiarity with its past?
Realistic
Norman
Tebbit's proposed 'cricket test', which caused such ire in liberal
circles 15 years ago, was flawed because cricket no longer stands
at the heart of British life, for reasons which have to do with
changing lifestyles and enthusiasms. Today, it seems much more
realistic to talk about 'football test', a 'pub test', or a 'countryside
test'.
In
an age when most of us are middle-class, plenty of common strands
of Britishness remain identifiable: a love of green places, if
our Government allows us to preserve any of them, gardening, beer,
P.G.Wodehouse and Agatha Christie, Jane Austen and Trollope; old
buildings and bridges; Coronation Street and The Archers.
These
things, and maybe also, somewhere in our hearts, a deep-rooted
conviction that British is best. This latter quality is among
the most important. It represents not foolish vanity, but a wholesome
pride in what we have been - and in the fact that, for all our
problems, today by any measure this is one of the most successful
societies on Earth.
Our
job is to keep it that way, by asserting our identity not in jingoistic
ways, but with a quiet determination. We may welcome a tolerable
number of newcomers of all races who want to share our lives and
our Britishness, but are rightly suspicious when those numbers
become so great that our very national identity is in danger of
being submerged.
It
seems absolutely right, however, to reject those who merely want
to establish islands of their own culture and values in the midst
of ours. Britain can continue to be all that we know and value
only if the host of newcomers and their children accept the social
terms of entry that we are entitled to demand. This is not racism,
but common sense.
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Tactical
Voting
As
UKIP member for several years, I believe the greatest
threat facing the British is the potential loss of our
independence to govern ourselves. Once Brussels gains
complete control, everything else we are voting for in
the coming election is academic. The real decisions will
be made in Brussels by people we can't vote out.
Much
as I support UKIP's aims, I now believe the single most
important goal for British voters is to remove Blair and
his rotten Government before they complete the process
of removing our sovereignty. Only a vote for Michael Howard
will do this - Letter to the Daily Mail from Tony Beverley,
London SW10 - April 7, 2005
Perhaps
Ann Widdecombe was right about Michael Howard, but it
should have been KNIGHT with a K, and he could have saved
us from the monsters Blair and Campbell - Letter to
the Dail Mayil from Les Fletcher, Rhos-on-Sea, Colwyn
Bay, Wales - February 18, 2005
After
a clear vote against them, we still got eight non-elected
Regional Assemblies. When we vote against the EU Constitution,
we'll get them anyway. Letter from P.Cove, Aylesbury,
BUCKS.- Daily Mail, January 31, 2005
THE
TIMES slavish support for the Government worries some
members of the paper's staff, not to mention any perspicacious
readers who are left. Political editor Philip Webster
was questioned about this when he addressed colleagues
as part of an in-house 'masterclass' exercise. Small wonder.
One of his Blair-worshipping subordinates wrote a news
story yesterday poo-pooing the row over Labours anti-semitic
poster mocking Michael Howard, saying it was merely £5million
worth of 'free publicity' for the party. Ephraim Hardcastle
- Daily Mail, Febrauary 2, 2005
Hold
the front page
Further
to BBC bias (Mail), very often on BBC Breakfast and Breakfast
With Frost, coverage of the morning papers is censored.
If the front page of the Daily Mail is critical of Tony
Blair and his Soviet-style Government, it is not shown,
although the front pages of all the other newspapers are
shown. A supposedly independent broadcasting body is acting
as censor for this Government - an absolute disgrace.
Letter from Peter Fish, Chippenham, Wilts. .- Daily Mail,
February 17, 2005
SIR
- Why on earth are people still insisting on voting for
the Labour Party this May 2005. It has lied and cheated
the public again and again during the Iraq war, immigration,
violent crime and hospital waiting list figures. It has
introduced stealth taxes and even been caught rigging
the postal voting system. To the Editor, Daily Telegraph,
from Philip Priestley, High Wycombe, Bucks. April 19,
2005
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The
REAL NASTY PARTY- How
Labour is the true home of spite, bigotry and contempt for the
public
For
the health of our democracy, we, the people of the United Kingdom,
must find a way to force Mr Blair to resign
Such
defiance of the democratic process and the will of the majority
of we people of the UK, must be exposed by voters as a matter
or urgency, and not just in the two by-elections we have had this
July and the European elections in June 2004. But how can this
be done?
The
most effective way of getting our deceitful PM to resign would
be to mobilise the army of Labour MPs currently in the House of
Commons and get them to demand it, the loss of their seat to be
a penalty if they did not. All voters in Labour-held constituencies
need to write a letter along these lines to their local Labour
MPs:
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Dear
Despite
his absolute and unequivocal assurances over the past year
of the serious risk to our security of Saddam Hussein's
'weapons of mass destruction', Prime Minister Blair
has admitted, that the threat was non-existent. For that
critical error of judgement and for his gross incompetence
in handling this very important issue, I ask you to take
immediate steps to ensure that Tony Blair does the honourable
thing and resign without delay..
I
would therefore be much obliged if you would propose and
help mobilise a Parliamentary vote of 'No Confidence' in
Mr Blair which, despite Labour's huge majority, would leave
the PM with no option but to resign.
If
I get no reply to this letter, I shall assume you will continue
to support Mr Blair as our Prime Minister. In such circumstances
I shall not vote for you in the forthcoming General Election.
Signed:
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Simple,
non-violent, protest letters along these lines on a variety of
issues could be the basis for re-vitalising our democracy and
increasing voters' interest and participation in politics. Download
a printable copy of the above letter here.
There
is another way for the voice of the silent majority to be heard,
a voice that made sure broken promises would not only be revealed,
but punished in subsequent elections.
In
the year available before the General Election expected in 2005,
many topics are available as ammunition, each one asking questions.
A weapon for our purpose will be the results of Opinion Polls
in individual constituencies using ICM, NOP, Gallop, Mori
or YouGov.
Questions
suggested for this purpose are listed here.
CAST
YOUR VOTE ON A VARIETY OF OTHER IMPORTANT ISSUES HERE.
Current
and prospective Parliamentary candidates of all Parties running
for election could share a platform at public forums in every
constituency. They would be presented with the results of
polls on this issue expressed by the majority of voters in that
constituency.
The candidates could be asked if their own views and that of their
Party manifesto corresponded with the polls, and if not, how they
intended to represent the will of the majority of local voters.
Local and National Press, Radio and TV coverage would be arranged
and the results published on this web site.
Here
is another powerful strategy for using your vote effectively in
the forthcoming General Election. Send your sitting and prospective
MPs a letter defining your requirements if they want your vote.
This example deals with the proposed
EU Constitutional Treaty.
Your
letters would end: "If you do not answer
this letter, I shall take it that you intend to follow the Government
line. I shall act accordingly in the forthcoming General Election.
Or
why not create a questionnaire that you send to all the candidates
in your constituency, getting them to give yes/no answers to questions
of your choice, and ending it with the same paragraph(above).
Download
a printable example of the questionnaire.
It
is high time for the people of this United Kingdom to stop allowing
themselves to be manipulated by politicians. We need our representatives
in Parliament to genuinely reflect the view of the majority in
their own constituency, even if this means going against their
personal and/or their party's policy. While they may argue their
case, hoping to change the minds of the majority in their constituency,
they should ultimately be obliged to reflect the majority view
of those who elect them.
It
will be argued by politicians of all parties that most voters
don't have the knowledge necessary to express an opinion on important
subjects at issue, and that our vote is a form of delegated democracy.
We should argue that it is their duty to ensure that we voters
do have ready access to such information as is necessary to form
an intelligent opinion. That, after all, is one main purpose of
Opposition Parties in our Parliamentary Democracy.
Most
important of all, such proceedings would rekindle in voters their
latent interest and obligation to cast their vote, knowing that
the candidate of their choice would be more likely to act in accordance
with their wishes. A much higher turnout in elections would be
the result.
Contact
your local Party Chairman. Gain his support for setting up public
forums in your constituency on these, as well as any other relevant
topics, well before the next General Election expected in 2005.
You should then, depending on the integrity of the candidate of
your choice, feel fairly certain that your view on any subject
being debated in Parliament will more accurately be reflected
by your representative in that assembly.
