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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August
18, 2006 (1210 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 2601 US - 115 UK - >300,000? civilians - 25 media
September
4, 2006 (1227 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 2644 US - 115 UK - >300,000? civilians - 25 media
The
NHS is anything but national
by
Boris Johnson - The Spectator - Thursday 31st August 2006 - First
published in The Telegraph
As
anyone will know who has witnessed the death of a relative from
multiple myeloma, it can be a grim way to go. Your very marrow
is in revolt, as the cancer takes over the blood-making processes.
Since
it could happen to any of us, I hope you will concentrate for
a second on the case of a constituent of mine, a distinguished
and charming author. When I last met him, he was running the second-hand
book stall at the fête, and seemed very cheerful. I did
not know it, but he was already well down the track that begins
with radiography and then goes on to chemotherapy and stem-cell
transplants, and then to courses of melphalan and steroids.
Now
he has come to the last drug in humanity's current pharmacopoeia.
It is called Velcade, and it is a good drug, fully licensed in
this country. His doctors have told him that it would improve
the quality of his life, and perhaps prolong it by two to five
years.
It
is available free in the healthcare systems of virtually every
other European country; and yet he cannot get it in Oxfordshire.
It is not available to him, or anyone else, on the Oxfordshire
NHS.
He
says, rather mildly, that he feels this is "unjust".
I think that is an understatement. It happens that Oxfordshire
is one of those counties particularly penalised by Labour, in
that our per capita healthcare funding is only about 85 per cent
of the national average. It is true — though obviously grossly
unfair — that there are some primary care trusts (PCTs) in
England that do feel rich enough to be able to afford Velcade,
and today it is still being given to many multiple myeloma sufferers
in other English counties.
And
yet, in just a few days' time, the position is about to become
worse. The injustice will shortly become an outrage. On September
6, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice) is expected
finally to rule, or "advise", that Velcade should not
be dispensed on the NHS, with chaotic consequences for those English
PCTs that are still giving it out.
And
why is it being stopped? Because each course of treatment costs
between £16,000 and £17,000. We must accept, in this
country, that there are some treatments the state just cannot
afford, and Nice will shortly rule that Velcade is not cost-effective.
Did
I say "this country"? Forgive me. There will certainly
be one part of Britain, if not England, where the NHS will continue
to distribute Velcade, free, to sufferers from multiple myeloma.
The drug will be available in Scotland, as it has been for some
time; and, much as I love the Scots, it makes my blood boil that
they should be so preferred.
Do
you remember that deathless moment when a heroic Labour backbencher
ambushed Tony Blair at Prime Minister's Questions, and asked him
to describe his core political beliefs? The PM went white, and
stammered, and, after a hilarious hiatus, he gargled, "Errr
… the NHS", and flopped back in his seat. And when Gordon
Brown, his heir-presumptive, is struggling to sum up the "spirit
of Britishness", the thing that really unites the country,
he always goes for the "unique values of the NHS".
In
a way, he is right. The NHS is an essential half of the symmetry
of British politics. In property and economics, we may be more
inegalitarian than some other European societies; but we compensate
at the moments of birth, sickness and death with the total equality
of the NHS ward.
So
let me ask you this, Gordon: how can you call it a National Health
Service? I mean, run that National bit past me again. Which nation
are we talking about here? There are two nations, and England
gets £1,085 per capita health spending and no Velcade, while
Scotland gets £1,262 per capita and free Velcade for Scottish
multiple myeloma sufferers, among many other benefits.
Gentlemen
of England now abed, here is the position. The Scots have free
nursing care for the elderly — subsidised, under the Barnett
formula, by us, the English — while we cannot afford it in
England. The Scots have the luxury of refusing to charge their
students top-up fees — since they are subsidised by us, the
English — while English students have to cough up. Now we
learn that the Scots have free cancer drugs — subsidised
by us, the English — while we in England are told they are
not cost-effective.
And
all this injustice is provoked by a fundamental constitutional
imbalance. It was because of devolution that the Scottish equivalent
of Nice was able to decide that it no longer needed to obey the
rulings of this so-called "National" body. It is because
of devolution that Scots are able to make their own health arrangements,
in the comfortable knowledge that Whitehall will bung them an
extra couple of hundred quid for every Scot. It is because of
devolution that the numerous Scottish MPs, with their small constituencies,
are able to vote on questions that affect England, while English
MPs have no corresponding say over healthcare in Scotland.
It
is just not good enough for Alistair Darling or John Reid or Charlie
Falconer or Gordon Brown or any one of these smooth-talking Scots
to say, as they do, that the only answer to the West Lothian question
is to "stop asking it".
Gordon
Brown had better understand that if he wants to become prime minister,
he must find a solution to this, fast. Scottish devolution —
of which he was such an evangelist — has smashed its Mel
Gibson broadsword through the NHS.
How
can you call it a National Health Service when we officially sanction
a financial division, by which sufferers from a horrifying disease
will die between two and five years earlier in England than in
Scotland?
There's
no more NHS. There's an EHS and an SHS. This is no longer some
abstract constitutional issue. This is life and death. Unless
Labour sorts it out, the shires of England will not be asking
for devolution, but revolution, and they will be right.
As
for Nice, it's absurd to pretend that there is anything National
about it. It's time to drop the N and put Nice on ice.
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