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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June
16 , 2006 (1133 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 2500 US - 113 UK - >60,000? civilians - 25 media
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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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Allow
too many people in, and the joy of being British is lessened for
everyone - black, brown, gentile and Jew alike
By
Tom Utley - Daily Mail, June 16, 2006
When
I was 12, it fell to me to deliver the opening lines in my prep-school
production of Ali Baba And The Forty Thieves. I was reminded of
them by this week's moving ceremony to mark the 350th anniversary
of Oliver Cromwell's decision to welcome Jews back to Britain
after nearly 400 years of banishment.
The
lines went like this: "A thousand pounds the rascal says
is due/Forsooth, he drives me hard, this skinflint Jew!/Would
I could seize him, as in times of old/And torture him till he
disgorged his gold!" I particularly remember that I was taught
to spit out that word "Jew" with emphatic contempt.
These
days, of course, it would be absolutely unthinkable for any school,
public or private, to stage a children's play containing offensive
lines about torturing skinflint Jews. Jaws would drop in every
teachers' common room in the land, and the letters page of the
Guardian would spontaneously combust with liberal-minded wrath.
Quite right, too.
But
this was rural Suffolk in the mid-Sixties, many years before the
tide of political correctness would sweep across the oceans from
California to lap against my boarding school on the banks of the
River Orwell. PC is much mocked in some quarters these days -
and deservedly so. But not all its effects have been bad.
Salutary
It
has been banged into us so often that racism is evil - by the
BBC, the Guardian and Lefty politicians - that most of my generation
now examine our consciences automatically when we find ourselves
disliking somebody who belongs to a different race. We ask: "Do
I have these feelings about so-and-so because he is mean, arrogant
or bad-tempered:? Or is it partly because he happens to have been
born Jewish, African or Asian? If the answer is the latter, we
know very well that we are thinking like bigots, and resolve to
put such stupid and unpleasant considerations out of our minds.
That
is a salutary exercise in good manners and good sense. As it happens,
I cannot remember there being any Jewish boys among all the Suffolk
farmers' sons at my prep school. But if there were, it is fair
to guess that they might have been hurt by the school play. Since
hurting anybody gratuitously is wrong, I am glad that PC arrived
to consign Ali Baba to the shredder.
PC
only becomes bad, rather than simply boring, when a Government
feels moved to enforce it by law. I like to think that I care
as much about personal hygiene as the next man. But when I see
a sign in the gents saying 'Now wash your hands', I flatly refuse
to obey.
In
the same way, there must be a great many people who never dreamt
of using rude terms to describe blacks or Jews - until some holier-than-thou
busybody in Whitehall threatened them with jail if they dared
let the words pass their lips. The proper way to fight racism
is by social pressure. Racists will soon learn to keep their offensive
thoughts to themselves, when the rest of us make it clear that
we find them cruel, unfunny and distasteful.
For
the best part of 350 years, Jews flourished magnificently in Britain,
without any help from laws against racism. True, they have encountered
some prejudice over the centuries, of the sort expressed in my
school play. In the Thirties, anti-Semitic views were fashionable
for a while among members of the British aristocracy, who linked
Jewishness with the threat of communism. That was before Hitler
performed his only and only service to mankind, by putting anti-Semitism
completely beyond the pale of civilisation.
But,
by and large, the assimilation of Jews into British life has been
a triumphant success story, bringing great benefits to the host
country. As Tony Blair said at the 350th anniversary ceremony
in a London synagogue: "Throughout these years the community
has shown how it is possible to retain a clear faith and a clear
identity and at the same time, be thoroughly British. This was
movingly symbolised when the congregation sang the national anthem,
first in Hebrew then in English, and when prayers were said for
the many Jews who have died for Britain in three-and-a half centuries
of wars.
But
Mr Blair makes a fundamental mistake when he conflates the separate,
though connected, issues of race and immigration. If Jews can
live so happily in our society, he seems to be saying, then why
not open our doors to the entire world? The answer comes down
to sheer numbers.
When
Cromwell re-admitted Jews in 1655, the new arrivals could be counted
in mere hundreds. Even at the turn of the last century and in
the run-up to World War II, only a few thousands settle in Britain,
fleeing from persecution in their homelands.
Today,
the latest influx of foreigners - legal and illegal - runs into
many hundreds of thousands, putting tremendous pressure on our
schools, housing, hospitals and social services. Like Tony Blair,
I count it one of the greatest blessings of my life that I was
born British. Like him, I realise that it is through no merit
of my own that I enjoy all the joys and privileges that come free
with my nationality, but only through an accident of birth. I
realise my soul has no more worth, in the great scheme of things,
than that of a starving Sudanese peasant.
I
can also see that it suits our economy at the moment to be able
to draw on cheap labour from abroad. Where would middle Britain
be, after al, without our Polish cleaning ladies and Jamaican
nurses? Indeed, I once belonged with Mr Blair in the school that
said: "The more, the merrier." Unlike the Prime Minister,
however, I do not believe that because he and I have been so very
lucky in the lottery of life, everybody else on Earth has a 'human
right' to enjoy our privileges.
Mr
Blair should consider why it is that Britain has for so long been
one of the happiest and most peaceful countries in the world.
The answer lies partly in our being a nation - united, rich and
poor, town and country, by the invisible ties of a common history
and culture. In the past, that has always made us easy to govern.
In
my childhood, you could mention The Archers or the Queen Mum to
any Briton, rich or poor, and he would know immediately what you
meant. Mention them to most of my fellow passengers on my late-night
train home from work, when they have stopped gabbling into their
mobile phones in a dozen strange languages, and they will not
have the foggiest idea of who or what you are on about.
Under
Labour, we are becoming less a coherent nation every day.
Mr
Blair should ask himself what will happen when our current economic
health begins to fail - as it surely will, as the British bureaucracy
continues to expand remorselessly, and the booming Chinese and
Indian economies make ever greater inroads into our markets.
Tensions
We
will be left with huge numbers of people who feel no great affinity
with our country, making demands on our economy rather than contributing
to it. Unlike Enoch Powell and the Roman, I do not see the Tiber
flowing with much blood.
But
I do see serious tensions ahead, of which we are already seeing
the beginnings. It is incredibly irresponsible of Mr Blair to
have failed, in all his nine years, to introduce a proper immigration
policy. Even to consider an amnesty for the half-million or so
illegals in our midst strikes me as barking mad.
I
want as many people as possible to share with me the joys and
privileges of being British. Allow too many in, however, and being
British will become much less of a joy for everyone - black, brown,
gentile and Jew alike.
Mr
Blair would do well to study the wisdom of one of his predecessors
as Prime Minister. Attacking an earlier generation of human rights
enthusiasts, this great man said: "To the liberalism they
profess, I prefer the liberties we enjoy. To the right of man,
the rights of Englishmen."
The
speaker, of course, was that magnificent Englishman - and most
exotic of Jews - Benjamin Disraeli.
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