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 answeer 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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May
11, 2005 (741 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 1,610 US - 88 UK - >6,164? Iraqi - >17,300 civilians
- 25 media
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
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.
|
The
leak that changed minds on the Iraq war
By
Michael Smith - The Sunday Times, June 12, 2005
Six
weeks ago The Sunday Times published the leaked minutes of a July
2002 Downing Street meeting in which Tony Blair committed Britain
to war in Iraq months before Parliament was consulted.
They
detailed a secret pledge to President George W Bush to help oust
Saddam, showed that Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, had
warned such action could be illegal and that Jack Straw, the foreign
secretary, had thought the case for war was “thin”.
By
any standards these were fascinating revelations. Nothing, however,
could have prepared us for what a worldwide impact the story would
have. More than a month later it still features in the daily top
10 most popular stories on our website, with 330,000 people estimated
to have logged on to read it.
Though
it remains unclear to what extent the leaked documents had on
the general election (held four days after the story broke), anger
about the war is widely seen as the key reason for the government’s
severely reduced majority.
What
is clearer is that they are having a strong effect on public perception
in America, where there has been a wave of interest in the leak.
At least two websites, afterdowningstreet.org
and downingstreetmemo.com,
have been set up to draw public attention to the leaked minutes.
The former received more than 1.6m hits on a single day last week
(it averages above 1m a day) while the latter has been selling
out of T-shirts bearing the legend: “Did you get the Downing
Street Memo?” Last week the leaked documents stormed the
mainstream US media when they were raised at a White House news
conference, forcing Tony Blair and George Bush to address the
issue.
The
minutes showed that Sir Richard Dearlove, then head of MI6, warned
Blair’s war cabinet that “the intelligence and facts
were being fixed around the policy”. The prime minister,
who chaired that July meeting, told the White House briefing room
that “the facts were not being fixed in any shape at all”.
The
American public is not so sure. Last week a Washington Post-ABC
News poll found for the first time that a majority of Americans
— 52% — felt the war in Iraq had not made the United
States safer. Today
we publish further revelations in the news section in the form
of a July 2002 Cabinet Office briefing paper.
It
makes clear that both Blair and Bush have a lot to apologise for:
“When the prime minister discussed Iraq with President Bush
at Crawford in April he said that the UK would support military
action to bring about regime change,” it states, adding that
“regime change per se is illegal”.
As
a prime minister had agreed to do something that was illegal under
British interpretation of international law, it was “necessary
to create the conditions in which we could legally support regime
change”, the briefing paper says.
For
Blair, “creating the conditions” meant going to the
United Nations to get a unanimous resolution warning Iraq to co-
operate with the inspectors or else. Bush needed the backing of
Congress and he didn’t get that until October 11, 2002.
But
as Geoff Hoon, then British defence secretary, said in that Downing
Street meeting in July 2002, the “US had already begun ‘spikes
of activity’ to put pressure on the regime”.
No
bombs were dropped on southern Iraq in March 2002 but by July,
with the “spikes of activity” in full flow, about 10
tons of bombs were being dropped a month. The problem was that
the Iraqis didn’t retaliate. They didn’t provide the
excuse Bush and Blair needed.
So
at the end of August the allies started the air war anyway. The
number of bombs dropped on southern Iraq shot up to 54.6 tons
in September alone.
The
authenticity of these figures is not in doubt. They were obtained
from the government by parliamentary questions put by the Liberal
Democrats so they are up on the Hansard website for all the internet
bloggers to see.
They
show that Bush and Blair began their war, not in March 2003 as
most believed, but at the end of August 2002, six weeks before
Bush received his congressional backing, and more than two months
before the UN vote.
That
is why the wave of public awareness sweeping America is so dangerous
to Bush and why he has refused to answer a letter from 89 Democratic
congressmen asking if the intelligence was “fixed” and
precisely when he and Blair actually agreed to go to war.
John
Conyers, Democratic congressman who drafted the letter, promised
when downingstreetmemo.com
was set up last week that once 250,000 people had signed the website’s
petition demanding the same answers he would deliver it to Bush.
By Friday more than 500,000 people had signed and it seems likely
that by next Thursday when Conyers carries the petition up to
the White House gates the names on it will number well over a
million.
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