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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December
28, 2005 (959 days since Iraq war ended)
Death Toll: 2,172 US - 98UK - >>30,000?
Iraqi - 25 media
January
16, 2006 (978 days since Iraq war ended)
Death Toll: 2,219 US - 98UK - >>30,000?
Iraqi - 25 media
March 18, 2006 (1043 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 2317US - 103UK - >>6,164? Iraqi - >>17,300?
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 |
CHERNOBYL:
did it really kill 1,000 British babies?
by
Michael Hanlon - Science Editor - Daily Mail, March 24, 2006
Twenty
years ago next month, one of those rare events in life that define
the way we think about everything burst on our television screens.
We watched with growing horror and grim fascination as news reports
came flooding in. For anyone now aged over about 30, it was a
"Kennedy Moment": we can all remember where we were
when Chernobyl blew on April 26, 1986.
We
can all remember the confused, embarrassed obfuscation from the
Soviet government as it lied, panicked and covered up. We can
all remember the brave airmen who died after flying helicopters
over the burning core of Reactor No.4. They had been sent to dump
sand and concrete in a frantic bid to stop the radioactive fire
that made the air around them flash with ionising radiation.
Chernobyl
has become legend, a sort of technological equivalent of the Flood
or a Biblical plague. The accident caused the mass evacuation
of tens of thousands of people, from Chernobyl itself and nearby
cities like Pripyat - which, even today, remain ghost towns. And,
after the disaster, we waited for the awful, inevitable deaths.
Cancers, gruesome birth defects, terrible radiation burns. In
the months and years following the disaster, the death toll, we
were told, was terrifying. Tens, maybe hundreds of thousands had
been killed - that, we assumed, was the scale of the tragedy.
Hundreds
of children, we also assumed, were born with damaged immune systems
and terrible cancers. Waves of poisoned air, laced with iodine-131
and caesium-137 had spread over Europe, poisoning rivers and fields
as far away as Finland, Cumbria and Wales.
Indeed,
the legacy is said to remain, 20 years later. This week, in a
written answer to an MP, the Department of Health said that more
than 200,000 sheep are grazing on land contaminated by fallout,
and that emergency orders still apply to 355 Welsh farms, 11 in
Scotland and nine in England as a result of the catastrophe. What's
more, a former Cambridge scientist told an anti-nuclear conference
that Met Office and NHS records show that poisoned, radioactive
rain from Chernobyl killed 1000 British babies.
He
studied 50,000 infant deaths between 1983 and 1992 in 11 areas
(including Cumbria, Wales, the Midlands and the Scottish Highlands)
and said the 'black rain' that fell boosted the risk of deadly
respiratory problems and certain cancers.
The
truth is that Chernobyl accident has defined the way we think
about nuclear power ever since. The accident made us distrustful
suspicious, hateful even of the technological world in general
and those men in white coats who had always reassured us they
knew best.
Which
is all very extraordinary, because the amazing thing is that almost
everything in the Chernobyl story turns out to be NOT true - an
urban myth on a huge scale.
The
anti-nuke brigade don't like it when you point out what actually
happened. Of course it was terrible, but nowhere near as bad as
popular legend insists.
The
first myth is that Chernobyl killed tens of thousands of people.
Up until the mid-Nineties, the generally accepted death toll (including
that quoted by the Ukrainian health ministry) was in the region
of 125,000. As time wore on, these figures plummeted. But as late
as 2000, the BBC was still reporting, uncritically, that Chernobyl
had left 15,000 dead and 50,0000 crippled by radiation.
In
fact, 31 people were killed when the reactor blew- 28 from radiation
exposure and three scalded to death by escaping steam. Also, 134
people received high radiation doses and 14 of these subsequently
died, although several of unrelated causes.
One
authoritative United Nations report on the tragedy concluded that
the radiation from Chernobyl caused no increase in birth defects
and no increase in leukemia. In fact, the only long-term effect
of the release of radiation has been a modest increase in thyroid
cancer in children born before the accident.
Many
people DID suffer after Chernobyl, but not because of the radiation.
Hundreds of thousands of families were relocated. The resulting
panic, stress, and economic strife caused an epidemic of mental
illness, suicide and alcoholism.
Last
September, 2005, the United Nations produced another report which
estimated that in coming decades, a total of 4,000 people will
die, or see their lives somewhat shortened, as a direct result
of Chernobyl.
It
is, however, highly unlikely, to say the least, that a QUARTER
of all Chernobyl's victims were British babies born between 1986
and 1989, as John Urquart told the Nuclear Free Local Authorities
Conference. The UN prediction, of course, is still pretty bad.
Dozens dead, may many hundreds; thousands even, who will become
ill as a result of all that radiation. Many people will come to
the conclusion that mankind's continued dependence on nuclear
power is simply dangerous madness.
However,
the fact that Chernobyl was by far the world's worst nuclear accident
actually tells us just how SAFE nuclear power is. Indeed,
the world's second-worst nuclear accident, a near-meltdown in
the reactor core at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, in 1979,
killed no one at all.
To
discover the real dangers of nuclear energy, you must compare
atom-power with other means of generating electricity such as
gas, coal, wind-power and so on. Such a study by scientists at
the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland, a physics research
organisation, make grim reading for the anti-nuke greens.
Coal
power is 40 times more dangerous than nuclear power per unit of
electricity generated, and that is before mining accidents are
taken into account. Gas, oil, and even hydroelectric power are
all far more dangerous than nuclear to power station workers and
people living nearby. Chernobyl, in fact, comes way down the rankings
of power-generation accidents.
For
example, more than 2,500 people were killed when a hydroelectric
dam burst in Italy in 1963. And 1,572 were killed by a coal dust
explosion in China in 1942. Yet it is only accidents in atomic
plants that make the headlines.
When,
in August 2004, four people were killed in a Japanese nuclear
plant, Greenpeace rushed to condemn the latest 'nuclear scandal'.
In fact, the workers were simply scalded after a pipe burst. There
was no nuclear accident. The victims might as well have fallen
down the stairs or got run over in the company car park, but because
this was a nuclear station, these were 'nuclear deaths'.
Thanks
to Chernobyl, there is enormous disquiet abut nuclear power. Even
if Tony Blair decides to restart our nuclear programme, he and
his successors will be met with vociferous protests.
Chernobyl
was a terrible accident, a blight on a new technology. The station
was badly run and contained inherent design faults. But it did
not kill hundreds of thousands, and has not irradiated a large
patch of Central Europe, as environmentalists insist.
In
fact, wildlife thrives in the so-called 'dead zone' around the
station, where radiation levels may be lower than in Aberdeen,
a city built of naturally radioactive granite.
Nuclear
power can be the cleanest, safest means of mass power generation
ever devised.
Even
the fact that atomic power produces little or no greenhouse carbon
dioxide has not been enough to sway the green lobby, who maintain
an almost religious objection to this technology. Like all religions,
the anti-nuclear movement has its myths - but we shouldn't allow
the lights to go out simply because we are afraid of the nuclear
bogeyman.
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