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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April
2, 2007 (1403 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 3252 US - 135 UK - >650,000? civilians - 25 media
This
site has had 
visitors
Pensions
scandal hits Brown leadership bid
Brown
cannot claim not to be told of risks to pensions
The
unkindest cut of them all
Commentary
by Alex Brummer, City Editor - Daily Mail April 2, 2007
Finally
we know the truth. Gordon Brown was warned by Treasury experts
of the effect of removing the tax relief for pension funds before
he delivered his first budget in June 1997. But the Chancellor
pressed ahead regardless despite warnings of a 'big hole' in private
pensions and serious risks to the stability of the system.
The
decision by Brown and his then top adviser Ed Balls (now a Treasury
minister) has been even more far-reaching than officials thought.
There has been a wholesale retreat from 'final salary' pension
schemes, the gold standard of retirement provision, leaving millions
worse off.
Just
as damaging is the massive gulf that has opened up between public
sector pensions and those in the wealth-crating part of the economy.
Best estimates by actuaries who monitor the retirement industry,
suggest that Brown's decision has cost company pensions more than
£100billion. It is the cost of funding this shortfall which
has led to the flight from final salary pensions.
The
Treasury's own advice to the Chancellor in 1997 showed that final
salary schemes, which offered employees a retirement income related
to earnings during their working life, covered 90% of the 11 million
workforce. Ten years on, only just over a third of firms offer
final salary schemes. Some of the biggest, including Unilever,
Marks and Spencer and ITV, have abandoned them for new workers.
Others, like W H Smith, are seeking to transfer all workers out
of a final salary scheme.
Ed
Balls, on behalf of the Chancellor, has sought to exonerate his
master by arguing the £250billion decline in stock market
values, after the dotcom bubble burst, is the real factor behind
the crisis. Clearly, it played a part, as have changes in the
mortality tables which show people living longer.
But
what Balls fails to mention is that Treasury background papers
warned that £75billion could be knocked off the value of
corporate pension funds. And the recovery in the stock market
means any shortfall due to volatility of markets has been made
up. Despite this, the independent Pensions Regulator David Norgrove
believes the deficit is still in the order of £100billion.
One
of the more disturbing aspects of the Freedom of Information Act
disclosures is that a Labour Chancellor found it acceptable that
people who would be saving most of their lives for a pension would
receive less than they had been promised. Even more horrifying
was the recognition by the Treasury that because of the post-Maxwell
scandal reforms, which include a minimum funding requirement to
show pension funds were solvent, some poorly-funded schemes might
be forced out of business.
This
became a terrifying reality. Pensioners in dozens of schemes,
representing up to 125,000 workers, have lost out because their
schemes were wound up before the government created a safety net,
the Pensions Protection Fund. They have been thrown back on the
government-backed Financial Assistance Scheme which is still underfunded
and pays inferior benefits, despite promises by Brown in his most
recent Budget.
The
virtual collapse of final salary pensions has pushed many employees
into inferior 'money purchase' schemes, were there are no guarantees
for the saver. Moreover, the government had to set up the 'Pensions
Commission', headed by former CBI chief Adair turner, which proposed
a National Pensions Savings Scheme for all those employees who
find themselves without provision.
Because
the suggested employer contribution to such schemes is less than
that paid in by some companies, it offers firms the chance to
trade down.
Perhaps
the greatest catastrophe arising from Brown's 1997 pension tax
is the divide it has created between workers in the public service
and the rest. While private schemes were battered, the benefits
of a final salary scheme, including full inflation-proofing, were
left for most state employees. The cost of this promise is put
at between £700billion and £960billion.
Not
only have the pension expectations of those in the wealth-creating
sector been destroyed, but this group is being asked to subsidise
ever more generous retirements for bloated public payrolls.
This
is the unkindest cut of all and one which will forever tarnish
Brown's reputation as a great financial reformer.
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