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 17, 2006 (1073 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 2376US - 104UK - >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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The
price of going green
Ross
Clark says that eco-friendly energy is expensive and impractical
The
Spectator - April 20, 2006
The
world's ugliest boiler is attached to the side of my house. It
is a slab of grey metal from which protrudes a short exhaust pipe,
just at the right height to blast the hat off anyone who happens
to be walking to the front door at the wrong time. Worse, it covers
the garden with a petrochemical fug, and will oil prices rising
rapidly it is costing me more than £1,000 a year to keep
my tank full. If anyone had an incentive to turn to 'green' energy
it is me. If I could replace my heating system with one of Dave
Cameron's windmills and a few solar panels, believe me I would.
But
I am not getting very far at the moment in my search for a green
form of energy for my home. There has been no shortage of architectural
awards doled out to 'eco-friendly' homes; there is no end to the
websites that promise to help me cut my carbon emissions and exploit
'free energy' from the sun or wind. It is just that when it comes
to keeping yourself warm, none of them seems quite able to do
the job. Inasmuch as they save you energy at all, it is usually
at such a high installation cost that you will be lucky still
to be alive when your home improvements recoup their costs.
Take
double glazing: the government is so convinced of the merits of
have two panes of glass instead of one that it is now illegal
to replace a window with single glazing. Yet, according to BRE,
the formerly government-owned Building Research Establishment,
it could take up to 100 years for a double-glazed window to replay
its cost in fuel savings. And, if it is the environment you are
interested in saving, forget it: the
double-glazing industry is a huge consumer of uPVC, an oil-based
plastic which is horribly toxic to produce and to dispose of.
For
about £1,500 plus VAT, you can, like Dave Cameron, have
a windmill installed on your roof, allowing you to make use of
entirely free energy. But don't get too excited: unless you live
a fairly monkish existence it is unlikely to meet your energy
needs. According to Windsave, a Scottish-based company which manufactures
the devices, you can count on your windmill producing at least
500 kilowatt-hours of electricity every year. But
that is only enough to keep a one-bar electric fire going for
20 days - equivalent to a whopping £30 worth of electricity.
At
this rate it would take the windmill about 50 years to recover
its costs. My own household already consumes about 4,000 kilowatt-hours
of electricity a year - and that is just on lights, cookers, computers
and so on, not on heating the house. Nor
is it possible to save energy by moving to a windier area: irritatingly,
Windsave's windmill have to go into auto-shutdown in strong winds
in order to prevent them pulling the side off your house.
Never
mind, that still leaves solar panels. The government is so keen
to encourage us to collect free energy from the sun that it is
offering homeowners grants of £400 to install solar panels.
However, that is not going to cover the cost of installing such
a device. I have found a company called the Green shop willing
to install a solar hot-water system in my home for £2,830
+ VAT. But I am warned that I will still need a boiler as the
solar panels will not produce enough energy to fill my hot-water
cylinder in the winter. And what would I save in any case?
In
summer I supply my house with hot water using an immersion heater
timed to make use of off-peal electricity. Last summer it cost
me just £20. At this rate it would
take more than 100 years for my investment in solar panels to
pay off - by which time I wonder whether the panels would still
be working at all.
The
other option is to do what the Queen and Elton John have both
done; install a geothermal pump in my house. This is, in effect,
a refrigerator in reverse, exploiting latent heat within the soil.
Water would be pumped through pipes laid beneath my house, where
the soil is at a fairly constant 10 degrees C. The water would
then be pumped into my house and compressed, in the process of
which it would heat up and discharge warmth into my living room.
Although
fairly standard in North America, there aren't many homes with
geothermal pumps in Britain. But I did find Nicolas Ray, an architect
who has incorporated geothermal pumps in two new houses he is
building in the yard of his offices in Cambridge. The first sight
was not promising: his office windows and several surrounding
buildings were covered with a tarpaulin spattered with muddy clay;
sinking a 40-metre borehole is a pretty messy business.
Installing
a geothermal pump was easier for the Queen, apparently; she was
able to install a system exploiting the heat contained within
the water of the lake in the grounds of Buckinghgam Palace.
Elton
John, too, had an easier time: if you have an acre or more of
garden you can install the pipework for your geothermal pump at
a relatively shallow depth, it being the length of pipe which
matters. It is only those of us with small gardens who have to
drill deep.
The
mess is not the only objection to installing a geothermal pump.
Although heat extracted from the ground comes free, the pump requires
a considerable quantity of electricity to pump water around the
circuit. In fact, admits Ray, the system won't help the occupants
of his new house save any money compared with what they would
pay to heat them with a conventional heating system fired by a
condensing boiler. In other words, I would never recoup the £2,000
it would cost to drill a borehole,; unless, that is, oil prices
rise faster than electricity prices.
I
am not wholly put off. If I can transfer a little bit of pollution
from my own garden to a distant power station, there is some benefit
to me. I have asked an American company to conduct a feasibility
study into installing a geothermal pump. But I am unconvinced
that green energy is yet at the stage at which is provides a practical
option for people other than the well-off.
It
is certainly not about saving money. It is really about assuaging
middle-class guilt and having a few toys to show off to your friends.
As for helping the environment, there is a rather more straightforward
way and one which is guaranteed to save money; switch your central
heating off and invest in a £30 sweater fro Marks and Spencer.
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