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
|
May
11, 2005 (741 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 1,610 US - 88 UK - >6,164? Iraqi - >17,300 civilians
- 25 media
May
31, 2005 (761 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 1,657 US - 89 UK - >6,164? Iraqi - >17,300 civilians
- 25 media
June
3 , 2005 (765 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 1,670 US - 89 UK - >6,164? Iraqi - >17,300 civilians
- 25 media
June
17, 2005 (779 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 1,716 US - 89 UK - >6,164? Iraqi - >17,300? civilians
- 25 media
June
26, 2005 (788 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 1,737 US - 89 UK - >6,164? Iraqi - >17,300? civilians
- 25 media
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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McLUNACY
Devolution,
says Blair, is a great success. Truth is, it's created the most
grotesquely bloated public sector in the developed world. You
fools in England are paying
By
Tim Luckhurst, Former Editor of The Scotsman - Daily Mail, June
30, 2005
Picture
a land in which economic activity is dominated by government.
For many people, access to work depends not on their ability but
on who they know in the state apparatus. Power resides with one
political party. The best and brightest leave and do not return.
This
land is not Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe. It is Scotland six years
after Blair's disastrous decision to create a Scottish Parliament.
An investigation by a Scottish newspaper has uncovered the squalid
truth about one of the Prime Minister's flagship policies.
Mr
Blair says devolution of power to Scotland is among his Government's
proudest achievements. In fact, evidence published in Glasgow
this week proves that the new Scottish Parliament created the
most grotesquely bloated public sector in the developed world.
And the biggest victim is the English taxpayer.
For
decades after World War II, one sight symbolised Scotland's extraordinary
dependence on the British state. Once a week, in towns all the
way from the English border to John O'Groats, families would huddle
together outside municipal offices, frantic to read notice revealing
who had been allocated a new council house. At the time, home
ownership was restricted to a tiny, persecuted minority and socialist
councillors believed that each of these owner-occupiers should
be force to pay for one new council house per year.
The
result was vast estates of grim, standardised homes which made
Scottish cities resemble the worst of those built by Eastern European
Communism. Scotland ran on Soviet principles. The state provide
jobs as well as accommodation and expected grateful conformity
in return. The result, as Lady Thatcher discovered, was a country
wedded to the dependency culture.
Paralysed
Overdependence
on the state nurtured a spurious feeling of security and encouraged
industrial militancy. Economic growth was paralysed. Scots had
been indoctrinated to believe that prosperity came from government
- not enterprise. When the going got tough, we just demanded more
subsidies.
Eventually,
Scottish politicians were forced to admit that tax and spend was
not the answer. Led by the father of devolution, Donald Dewar,
they boldly declared that with home rule things would be different.
This was the new mood into which the Scottish Parliament was born.
From all sides, politicians queued to promise that devolution
would mean reform. Something had to be done to close the gap between
Scottish and UK economic performance and Scotland's home rule
leaders swore they knew what.
The
subsidy culture would end. There would be less bureaucracy and
a 'bonfire of the quangos'. The new Scottish government would
withdraw from activity best left to the market and concentrate
on delivering better public services.
Very
well in theory - but the result has been failure. Despite receiving
enough English tax revenue to spend hundreds of pounds per person
more on the NHS in Scotland than any other part of Britain, waiting
lists north of the border remain scandalously long. Lavish investment
has created equally poor results in schools and universities.
It
is a very long time since Scotland's fabled educational excellence
has been more than cruel myth. The evidence published this week
revealed the reason. Far from shrinking the Scottish state, the
ridiculous little home-rule parliament has created one of the
largest public sector bureaucracies in the developed world. A
staggering one in four Scottish workers is employed by the state.
The
ranks of civil servants, smoking-cessation counsellors, diversity
outreach workers and teenage pregnancy advisers grow every week.
Last year, 11,000 new jobs were added to Scotland's government
payroll at an additional cost of £1 billion to the taxpayer.
Only one in four of these new employees was a front-line nurse,
doctor or teacher. The number of pen-pushers employed in Scottish
quangos rose from 7,000 to 10,000.
Mindless
Economic
dynamism is stifled by layers of red tape and mindless interference.
Ministers in Scotland's devolved government know this. They call
bureaucracy a 'drain' on economic growth and have repeatedly promised
to slash state jobs and promote enterprise.
But
they have no incentive to honour their commitment. As long as
Scottish profligacy is funded by the British taxpayer, the Labour
and Liberal Democratic coalition that rules Scotland will just
go on inventing new government jobs with gleeful abandon.
Opponents
of devolution always warned that Scotland's notoriously corrupt
Left-wing elite would use devolution as opportunity to leap aboard
the gravy train and pull their friends up behind them. Labour
and their even more Left-wing partners the Liberal Democrats have
replaced the socialist-supporting dockers, shipbuilders and miners
of 30 years ago with a vast new 'quango class'. These people can
be relied upon always to vote for parties that will keep them
in their meaningless jobs.
The
sheer absurdity is that this Scottish exercise in social engineering
has been funded by the English taxpayer. In every year since devolution
dawned in 1999, Chancellor Gordon Brown has lavished money that
should have been spent on English public services on his Scottish
homeland.
Obscene
His
generosity has created a farcical situation in which Scotland's
own finance minister regularly apologises for his failure to use
his whole budget. Scotland's devolved government always ends the
year with a surplus.
Mr
Brown really should know better. In a Scotland where entrenched
trade unions resist any kind of reform it was inevitable that
investment would be used to expand the state, not modernise it.
Now that process has gone to obscene lengths.
Bloated
with money Scotland does not earn, the Scottish government has
indulged in an orgy of expenditure. English taxpayers who wonder
how we Scots can afford to abolish student tuition fees need look
no further than their own salary slips. You paid for it.
You
pay for Scotland's policy of free care for the elderly, too, and
for separate schools for Catholic and Protestant children. You
also paid much more than your fair share of the £430 million
it cost to build the lavish new Scottish Parliament building.
If
you think that is appalling, spare a thought for Scotland. England
has not just feather-bedded this beautiful but abysmally governed
little country. It is in the process of moly-coddling it into
sclerosis. Massive subsidies have stifled Scotland's growth and
contributed to an alarming population decline. Thousands of Scotland's
brightest and best flee their homeland every year to work in other
parts of the UK.
All
this looks to Scots increasingly like the direct result of being
ruled from Edinburgh instead of London. The best thing the Chancellor
could do to help would be to cut the Scottish budget and force
his Scottish Labour chums to economise.
Indulging
the begging-bowl mentality that devolution was supposed to eradicate
is undermining Scotland's confidence in home rule as well as its
economy.
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