Silent Majority Speaks

Rescuing Democracy in the United Kingdom from our current Elected Dictatorship

The REAL NASTY PARTY- Labour - true home of spite, bigotry and contempt for the public

Blair is a stomach-turning liar

BLAIR - King of Duplicity

Write this letter to your Labour MP to get rid of Blair

Come back Gilligan, all is forgiven. Penny Young, Diss, Norfolk, to The Guardian, February 24, 2005 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 Power cut, please Labour's pollsters have Tony Blair running scared, because they have informed him that if turnout at the next election is below 50%, the result will be a hung parliament. This would be good news for those of us who, viewing the damage inflicted by recent governments, would like nothing better than a Parliament powerless to do anything. Letter from Ron Phillips, London W14 - Daily Mail, February 17, 2005

Tony Blair's pledge cards made no mention of pensioners. Perhaps they're the jokers. Letter to the Daily Mail from Brian Green, Daventry, Northants - February 22, 2005 The Guardian's Polly Toynbee says 'a profoundly nasty streak' among voters worried about poverty, crime and immigration might cause them to vote against the Government. Isn't it time we replaced the present electorate with one more to Polly's liking? Ephraim Hardcastle, Daily Mail, February 24, 2005 Back to the future 'Forward not Back' is quite wrong: we must go back - back to clean hospitals with more medical staff and fewer managers; back to education with proven standards. Back to police on the street and solving crime; back to increased employment in industry, back to ministers who stand up for this country and back to democratic government. Then, perhaps, we can move forward. Letter from S, M. Butler, Shoreham-by-Sea, Sussex - Daily Mail, March 23, 2005 Virtues of a secret ballot Sir - Concerning postal votes (report Mar 23) what is the first principle of a democratic political vote? Answer: THE SECRET BALLOT. It is obvious that a postal ballot is only as secret as the moral strength of the voter. With the infinite propaganda powers of today's electronic media, it is frighteningly easy for devious politicians to promote politically correct or "cool" or, most wickedly, "honest and transparent" voting patterns, where someone failing to vote "with his/her group" must "have something to hide". Postal voting should, at best, be allowable only to persons who are required to be stationed away from their constituency on government business. A few temporary disfranchisements may result, but nothing is perfect. Letter from J. B. Lewis, Bognor Regis, West Sussex - The Daily Telegraph, March 25, 2005 SIR - Why on earth are people still insisting on voting for the Labour Party this May 2005. It has lied and cheated the public again and again during the Iraq war, immigration, violent crime and hospital waiting list figures. It has introduced stealth taxes and even been caught rigging the postal voting system. To the Editor, Daily Telegraph, from Philip Priestley, High Wycombe, Bucks. April 19, 2005

 

WWW silentmajorityspeaks.com

Prepare for the nuclear option

We may never learn to love it, but could it be the answer to our energy needs?

by Edward Heathcoat Amory - Daily Mail, May 11, 2005

With the election out of the way, the Government can push ahead with its real agenda, which apparently includes plans for a new generation of nuclear power stations. Alan Johnson, the new Energy Secretary, has been told by his officials that he must make up his mind whether to go nuclear by the summer.

Although voters may feel understandably angry that our leaders failed to mention this during the (general election) campaign, the real question is whether we should be rejoicing at the new nuclear era, or rushing to build a bunker at the bottom of the garden.

It would be strange if any of us regarded nuclear power with enthusiasm. The days when it was sold as a clean, inexpensive and painless method of meeting the energy needs of the future -'electricity too cheap to meter' - are long gone. The nuclear power stations that were built in Britain from 1956 turned out to be vastly more expensive that predicted and managers often careless about safety.

They also produced piles of difficult-to-deal-with nuclear waste, and when the government attempted to offload some of the plants into the private sector by privatising British energy, it went bust and taxpayers had to bail it out. And there's always a new nuclear scare, like the (contained and safe) leak at the Thorp reprocessing plant this week.

There is plenty of historical ammunition here for the antinuclear lobby, and the public are going to be much more sceptical about promises made about nuclear energy this time around.

Safer

But to reject the nuclear option because of its dodgy past would be a historic mistake. New atomic power plants will be cleaner, safer and cheaper than their predecessors, and are absolutely vital if we are to meet our global warming targets and safeguard our supply of energy. The truth is that a nuclear future is an unattractive but painful necessity for 21st century Britain.

At the moment, the current generation of ageing nuclear power stations provide about 23% of our energy needs, but they are reaching the end of their lives. Within the next 15 years, most of them will have been shut down, and if we take no action, nuclear's share of our energy supplies will have fallen to 4%.

The Government's Energy White Paper in 2003 promised to plug this gap with 'renewables' such as wind power, which ministers said would be providing 10% of our energy by 2010 and 20% by 2020. But there was never the slightest chance that this would happen; it would take more than 22,000 wind turbines, each twice the height of Nelson's column - and built in the most beautiful parts of Britain - to provide 10% of our energy needs.

Moreover, they would need to be substantially subsidised by the state, and additional gas-powered stations would have to be built to plug the gap on days when the wind wasn't blowing. Currently, wind farms provide rather less than 0.5% of our energy needs.

So, if 'renewables' aren't an option, then we would need new gas-fired power stations. But there are two problems. Gas, although a bit cleaner than coal, produces lots of carbon dioxide, which leads to global warming. Though there is still much debate about the scale of the problem, the Government has committed Britain to very tough targets for reducing CO2 emissions, and if we built more gas-fired power stations, we don't have a hope of meeting them.

No wonder that one of the world's leading environmentalists, Professor James Lovelock, who came up with the Gaia theory that planet Earth is like a giant organism, now believes that nuclear is the only option.

There is another drawback. This year, Britain will become a net importer of gas as our North sea supplies begin to decline. By 2020, most of the gas used in British power stations will have to come from places such as Iran, Azerbaijan and Algeria. Quite apart from the unstable political situations in these countries, which could lead to the gas being cut off at any time, the pipelines themselves would be a huge and vulnerable terrorist target. Either way, virtually all of our power stations could find their supplies cut off almost overnight, plunging Britain into a new dark age. Which brings us back to nuclear power. First, cost.

A recent study found that about £4 billion would be needed to build a dozen new nuclear reactors in Britain, a much lower estimate than in the past. These new plants would produce far less waste than our old reactors, and would be much safer to operate.

Demand

Even allowing for costs of decommissioning, they would produce power about 50% cheaper than wind farms onshore, and about 100% more cheaply than offshore wind farms. The Government has insisted that any new power stations must be built by the private sector, and this is a reasonable demand. Investors would be prepared to finance new nuclear power plants and to foot the bill for decommissioning them.

But in return, they would insist on the government's guaranteeing a minimum price for the energy that they produced. British Energy, privatised nuclear power station operator, went bust because ministers liberalised the market in electricity prices without thinking through the implications. The price of electricity plunged through the floor and the old nuclear power stations weren't making enough to cover their costs.

Although electricity prices have now risen, investors won't take that risk again, so the government would have to promise that if the price fell dramatically, it would make up the difference. But, in fact, this isn't too much to ask because every expert study predicts that energy prices will rise in the future. In any case, if prices did plunge, renewable energy would need far larger subsidies than nuclear.

Then, of course, there's the issue of terrorism. With Britain on the Al Qaeda hit list, do nuclear power stations pose an unacceptably tempting target?

Waste

Of course, there is a risk, but no terrorist has yet managed to get near an atomic power plant anywhere in the world, and protecting a few power stations is infinitely easier than thousands of miles of gas pipeline.

Then there is the issue of where to put the new generation of nuclear power stations. No one wants one on their doorstep. But this isn't actually a problem, as new stations would simply be built on the sites where existing nuclear plants are being wound down.

Finally, what to do about the nuclear waste? The Finns, who have just built the first new nuclear power station in Europe in the past ten years, using private money, have an idea about that.

The spent fuel is put into iron castings, then encased in copper and dropped down a borehole, which is then filled in with a special clay. The Finns believe that this can be guaranteed safe for a million years, which doesn't sound bad.

So when it comes down to it, though we may never learn to love it, Britain has no alternative to a nuclear future.

STOP PRESS

Tactical Voting As UKIP member for several years, I believe the greatest threat facing the British is the potential loss of our independence to govern ourselves. Once Brussels gains complete control, everything else we are voting for in the coming election is academic. The real decisions will be made in Brussels by people we can't vote out. Much as I support UKIP's aims, I now believe the single most important goal for British voters is to remove Blair and his rotten Government before they complete the process of removing our sovereignty. Only a vote for Michael Howard will do this - Letter to the Daily Mail from Tony Beverley, London SW10 - April 7, 2005 Perhaps Ann Widdecombe was right about Michael Howard, but it should have been KNIGHT with a K, and he could have saved us from the monsters Blair and Campbell - Letter to the Dail Mayil from Les Fletcher, Rhos-on-Sea, Colwyn Bay, Wales - February 18, 2005 After a clear vote against them, we still got eight non-elected Regional Assemblies. When we vote against the EU Constitution, we'll get them anyway. Letter from P.Cove, Aylesbury, BUCKS.- Daily Mail, January 31, 2005 THE TIMES slavish support for the Government worries some members of the paper's staff, not to mention any perspicacious readers who are left. Political editor Philip Webster was questioned about this when he addressed colleagues as part of an in-house 'masterclass' exercise. Small wonder. One of his Blair-worshipping subordinates wrote a news story yesterday poo-pooing the row over Labours anti-semitic poster mocking Michael Howard, saying it was merely £5million worth of 'free publicity' for the party. Ephraim Hardcastle - Daily Mail, Febrauary 2, 2005 Hold the front page Further to BBC bias (Mail), very often on BBC Breakfast and Breakfast With Frost, coverage of the morning papers is censored. If the front page of the Daily Mail is critical of Tony Blair and his Soviet-style Government, it is not shown, although the front pages of all the other newspapers are shown. A supposedly independent broadcasting body is acting as censor for this Government - an absolute disgrace. Letter from Peter Fish, Chippenham, Wilts. .- Daily Mail, February 17, 2005 SIR - Why on earth are people still insisting on voting for the Labour Party this May 2005. It has lied and cheated the public again and again during the Iraq war, immigration, violent crime and hospital waiting list figures. It has introduced stealth taxes and even been caught rigging the postal voting system. To the Editor, Daily Telegraph, from Philip Priestley, High Wycombe, Bucks. April 19, 2005

 

STOP PRESS

The REAL NASTY PARTY- How Labour is the true home of spite, bigotry and contempt for the public

 For the health of our democracy, we, the people of the United Kingdom, must find a way to force Mr Blair to resign

Mr Blair has lied and deceived us over Iraq. He must resign at once. Do you agree? Agree strongly Agree Disagree Disagree strongly Don't know Don't care Please click one of the links above to cast your vote Current results

Such defiance of the democratic process and the will of the majority of we people of the UK, must be exposed by voters as a matter or urgency, and not just in the two by-elections we have had this July and the European elections in June 2004. But how can this be done?

The most effective way of getting our deceitful PM to resign would be to mobilise the army of Labour MPs currently in the House of Commons and get them to demand it, the loss of their seat to be a penalty if they did not. All voters in Labour-held constituencies need to write a letter along these lines to their local Labour MPs:

Dear Despite his absolute and unequivocal assurances over the past year of the serious risk to our security of Saddam Hussein's 'weapons of mass destruction', Prime Minister Blair has admitted, that the threat was non-existent. For that critical error of judgement and for his gross incompetence in handling this very important issue, I ask you to take immediate steps to ensure that Tony Blair does the honourable thing and resign without delay.. I would therefore be much obliged if you would propose and help mobilise a Parliamentary vote of 'No Confidence' in Mr Blair which, despite Labour's huge majority, would leave the PM with no option but to resign. If I get no reply to this letter, I shall assume you will continue to support Mr Blair as our Prime Minister. In such circumstances I shall not vote for you in the forthcoming General Election. Signed:

Simple, non-violent, protest letters along these lines on a variety of issues could be the basis for re-vitalising our democracy and increasing voters' interest and participation in politics. Download a printable copy of the above letter here.

There is another way for the voice of the silent majority to be heard, a voice that made sure broken promises would not only be revealed, but punished in subsequent elections.

In the year available before the General Election expected in 2005, many topics are available as ammunition, each one asking questions.  A weapon for our purpose will be the results of Opinion Polls in individual  constituencies using ICM, NOP, Gallop, Mori  or YouGov.

Questions suggested for this purpose are listed here.

CAST YOUR VOTE ON A VARIETY OF OTHER IMPORTANT ISSUES HERE.

Current and prospective Parliamentary candidates of all Parties running for election could share a platform at public forums in every constituency. They would be presented with  the results of polls on this issue expressed by the majority of voters in that constituency.

The candidates could be asked if their own views and that of their Party manifesto corresponded with the polls, and if not, how they intended to represent the will of the majority of local voters.  Local and National Press, Radio and TV coverage would be arranged and the results published on this web site.

Here is another powerful strategy for using your vote effectively in the forthcoming General Election. Send your sitting and prospective MPs a letter defining your requirements if they want your vote. This example deals with the proposed EU Constitutional Treaty.

Your letters would end: "If you do not answer this letter, I shall take it that you intend to follow the Government line. I shall act accordingly in the forthcoming General Election.

Or why not create a questionnaire that you send to all the candidates in your constituency, getting them to give yes/no answers to questions of your choice, and ending it with the same paragraph(above).

Download a printable example of the questionnaire.

It is high time for the people of this United Kingdom to stop allowing themselves to be manipulated by politicians. We need our representatives in Parliament to genuinely reflect the view of the majority in their own constituency, even if this means going against their personal and/or their party's policy. While they may argue their case, hoping to change the minds of the majority in their constituency, they should ultimately be obliged to reflect the majority view of those who elect them. 

It will be argued by politicians of all parties that most voters don't have the knowledge necessary to express an opinion on important subjects at issue, and that our vote is a form of delegated democracy. We should argue that it is their duty to ensure that we voters do have ready access to such information as is necessary to form an intelligent opinion. That, after all, is one main purpose of Opposition Parties in our Parliamentary Democracy.

Most important of all, such proceedings would rekindle in voters their latent interest and obligation to cast their vote, knowing that the candidate of their choice would be more likely to act in accordance with their wishes. A much higher turnout in elections would be the result.

Contact your local Party Chairman. Gain his support for setting up public forums in your constituency on these, as well as any other relevant topics, well before the next General Election expected in 2005. You should then, depending on the integrity of the candidate of your choice, feel fairly certain that your view on any subject being debated in Parliament will more accurately be reflected by your representative in that assembly.

STOP PRESS