Silent Majority Speaks

Rescuing Democracy in the United Kingdom from our current Elected Dictatorship

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

WWW silentmajorityspeaks.com

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.

May 20, 2006 (1106 days since war ended)

Death Toll: 2455 US - 111 UK - >60,000? civilians - 25 media

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

STOP PRESS

Sorry, but they've made a mess of it

Comment on the Pensions White Paper - Alex Brummer - City Editor

Daily Mail, May 26, 2006

The Pensions White Paper is a huge disappointment. Far from providing a blueprint for retirement savings of future generations, it fudges many of the most difficult questions. The only thing which emerges with any certainty is that everyone will have to work longer and harder to enjoy a comfortable old age.

At the core of the proposals are two major reforms. The first is the promise to improve the basic state pension and restore the link to earnings by 2012. The second is to create a 'Britsaver' scheme for people on earnings ranging from £5,000 to £33,000 a year.

The difficulty with the earnings link is one of affordability, which explains why Gordon Brown as Chancellor and likely future Prime Minister has fought against it tooth and nail. Instinctively, Brown is a cautious politician and fears the huge costs of such a link. It would have been affordable in recent times because of low inflation and modest wage settlements but if there were to be a 1970's-style wage explosion the earnings link would become impossible to sustain. Tat is why Mrs. Thatcher scrapped it in the first place.

Even if earnings inflation did not take off, Brown would argue it is more efficient to target the needy, through the means-tested pensions credit, than hand out generous state pensions to everyone. The National Pensions Savings Scheme or 'Britsaver' has been welcomed by employers' organisations and trade unions alike as a means of bringing ordinary working people into the pensions net.

It sounds extremely sensible and indeed similar schemes set up from Sweden to Australia are showing a measure of success and stability. Yet the way in which Labour intends to run this scheme is still unclear. Small and medium-sized companies fear it will mean the imposition of another layer of red tape and additional costs of more than £2.3 billion a year.

Lord Turner (who devised the scheme) favoured the money being collected by HM Revenue and Customs. Unfortunately, that would almost immediately taint it as a tax. The alternative is to place the private sector in charge. The big insurers say they have the systems in place, having geared up some years ago for the Government's last pensions reform plan - the stakeholder scheme.

The advantage of allowing the private sector to administer the system, including the provision of regular statements, is that it has a proven record of delivering big financial projects. Unfortunately, it is deeply distrusted by the public as a result of scandals from Equitable Life to the very costly pensions mis-selling affair when millions of public-sector workers were wrongly sold private pension plans worth much less than the schemes to which they originally belonged.

Unfortunately, because the White Paper was hurried into print it offers no clear guidance as to what course the Government intends to take - a huge lacuna in the whole exercise. There is also the fear that far from encouraging the savings habit the new scheme will speed up the destruction of the final-salary and money-purchase pension schemes currently offered by big companies. Many firms might decide to trade down to the national scheme, thus saving on employment costs but making for a meaner retirement for large swathes of the population.

There is a real possibility that the nation will end up with two-tier provision, with the richest companies such as BP, Shell, Glaxo and the big banks offering wonderful pensions and the rest on minimum provision. Our current pensions structure is complex, difficult to understand and leaves people working for smaller companies behind. The inescapable fact is that people are living longer so generous pension schemes are becoming ever more expensive to operate.

But at the same time that the wealth-creating sector of the economy is struggling to meet the retirement needs of workers, the Government has overseen a huge growth in the public sector - and all the pension benefits enjoyed by its employees. The future liabilities for public sector pensions amount to £530billion, with the Government paying out an estimated £23billion this year alone. Those in the private sector - and future generations - will have to foot this bill while their own pension provision deteriorates.

When Labour came to power, more than 60% of the population were members of pensions schemes operated by employers. As a result of the £5billion annual tax of dividends paid to pension funds imposed in Gordon Brown's first Budget, that figure has fallen below 50% and is still tumbling.

Forget the fact that Messrs Brown and Blair are at war over pensions, the danger is that the spatchcock proposals put forward yesterday - and proclaimed by Labour as the greatest reform to social provision since the creation of the Welfare State - will simply accelerate that decline.

B A C K

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