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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April 4, 2006 (1060 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 2342US - 103UK - >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
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Brown
and Blair, two guilty men
COMMENTARY
- By Alex Brummer - City Editor - Daily Mail, April 5, 2006
Gordon
Brown was doing his best last night to play down talk of a rift
with the Prime Minister over pensions reform. The Chancellor claimed
that on 90 to 95% of Lord Turner's proposals for radical reform
of the addled retirement system, the two leaders of New Labour
were in agreement.
Yet
despite the claims of consensus Brown, who has been highly critical
of the potential cost to the public purse of Turner reforms, remains
adamant that 'affordability' - the great fault line between the
Brown and Blair approaches - has to be dealt with.
Mr
Blair, now more concerned with his legacy than anything else,
is gung-ho for a pensions revolution along the lines proposed
by Lord (Adair) Turner and hang the cost. In contrast, the Chancellor
believes that the Turner reforms are as unaffordable now as when
they were first unveiled last year. He believes a more targeted
approach to dealing with pension poverty, through means testing
of the less well off, is a better way of spending public money.
It
is on the 'affordability' question that the success and failure
of Labour's efforts to deal comprehensively with the crisis rests.
For without a clear message on the future of state pensions provision,
the Turner effort to build a national Pensions Savings Scheme
covering every private sector employer and worker looks extraordinarily
difficult.
Turner
believes that he and his Commission, handpicked by Blair, have
already made huge inroads into changing the nature of Britain's
pensions debate. He argues that it is now accepted that we will
all have to work longer, and that automatic enrolment in private
pensions offers the best way out of the pensions crisis. He cites
as evidence of the need for urgent change the fall in the number
of people now in private schemes from 52% in 2003 to 44% now.
It is certainly true that Turner's proposals now dominate the
debate. But it is wrong to suggest that the public has bought
into them.
Polling
by Scottish Widows suggests that far from wanting to work until
they drop as Turner projects, some 66% would rather pay higher
taxes than work past 65. The Commission's biggest opponents on
higher state pensions are at the Treasury. It believes the costs
of a more generous state pension system, which rises with average
earnings, would distort the whole way the public finances work,
with much less cash for basic services such as health and education.
The
Treasury argues money spent on providing the whole country - including
well-off people with good private retirement provision - with
a better state pension is wasted. Instead, Brown's pensions credit
targets those people who are most needy. As a result, so-called
'deadweight' costs, providing people with benefits not needed,
can be kept much lower.
The
problem is that if Brown ultimately wins the debate inside government,
then the whole idea of a National Pensions Savings Scheme, or
Britsave, starts to fall apart. The work done by Lord Turner is
based on the idea that the new private pensions system will kick
into operation where state pensions leave off.
But
if less well-off consumers see that the state will eventually
pick up their cost of retirement - through means-tested benefits
- they will not bother to join NPSS. Where Turner does appear
to be winning the debate is on the whole idea of auto-enrolment
in pension schemes. Every employer will be required to pay into
the national pension scheme for each worker - unless the employee
decides to opt out.
But
there are enormous problems here too. The smallest employers,
without electronic payroll systems, will be lumbered with red
tape and administrative costs estimated as high as £2.3billion
a year. Turner suggests the taxpayer might be able to assist -
so he spends Brown's money yet again.
There
is also concern, outlined by the employers' organisation the CBI,
that introduction of the national scheme will lead employers who
operate occupational schemes to reduce their contributions, from
up to 14% in the more generous schemes, to the 5% proposed by
Turner. In fact, it could be recipe for killing off what was not
long ago the best system of private pensions provision anywhere
in Europe and replacing it with a centralist, Stalinist approach.
Both
Brown and Blair have blood on their hands over pensions. Brown
must take responsibility for starving the private pension plans
to death through his £5billion a year tax raid (which he
did in his first few weeks as Chancellor in 1997).
Blair,
in cahoots with Trade Secretary Alan Johnson, must take the blame
for gold-plating the pensions of those in the government service
- including MPs and Cabinet Ministers - at the very time he is
asking the wealth-creating sector of the economy to make sacrifices.
The
stewardship of the Labour leadership on pensions has been lamentable,
defying all the promises of joined-up government made when they
came to office. It is a national disgrace that after all the damage
that Blair and Brown have inflicted on current and future pensioners,
they are still in disarray over how best to pay for the fundamental
mistakes for which they are responsible.
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