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
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Flirting
with danger
Letter
to the Editor from GBENGA BADEIO, London N8 - Daily Mail
- December 21, 2004
David
Blunkett was simply courting sympathy when he hinted at
the depression and sadness he faces in the days ahead
as a result of his resignation.
He
lived by his own moral code, one which allowed him to
sleep with another man's wife and father a child by her.
If he had given any thought to the pressure on his pregnant
lover, he would have waited until she had given birth
before going to court to pursue his paternity claim.
Mr
Blunkett is an arrogant man who humiliated Stephen Quinn
by sleeping with his wife, by fathering children that
Mr Quinn believed were his, and by placing knowledge of
these matters in the public domain. He also humiliated
nearly all his Cabinet colleagues by suggesting that they
were soft, weak and indecisive.
Although
Tony Blair wrote that Mr Blunkett leaves the Government
with his integrity intact, most people would disagree.
It is a sad day for society when a Prime Minister who
prides himself on being a champion of family life describes
a man who had an affair with a married woman as having
any kind of integrity.
The
sadder point is that no reporters challenged Mr Blunkett
on this crucial, deceitful and ugly issue: intrusion and
destruction of another family.
Mr
Blunkett believes himself to be a good and decent man.
I don't think so. No good man tampers with the wife of
another, however flirtatious she may be.
****************
Letter
to the Editor from D. A. Gautrey, Sandy, BEDS. - Daily
Mail - December 29, 2004
Parliamentary
'perks'
As
the Blunkett shennanigans slowly fade into history, along
with the many other exposes of Labour MPs' activities,
I must admit I couldn't care less about who sleeps with
whom.
But
I can feel nothing but disgust for a woman of immense
fortune and a man of quite considerable means fiddling
a couple of train tickets and a few free car rides at
my expense.
****************
Peter
Hitchens writes in The Mail on Sunday - January 2, 2005
Why
is David Blunkett allowed to keep the house and car he
was given as Home Secretary? Is he also still going into
the office each day and looking over Charles Clarke's
shoulder? Is he still getting his Cabinet Minister's salary?
I
don't see why the Home Secretary, or any other Minister,
should have a Government-provided house. How many do?
What do they cost? At what point did Parliament debate
this? When were we asked if we wished to pay? What are
the tax arrangements/ Who decides who gets shat?
There's
a funny smell to this and if we were still a democracy
there would be troubte, too.
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Cronies
and hypocrites win again 
by
Simon Heffer, Daily Mail - December 18, 2004
The
affair, and I intend no pun, of David Blunkett has provided us
with an object lesson in what is wrong with this Government, and
the way in which it rules us.
Arrogance,
hypocrisy, opportunism, moral vacuity and the abuse of power are
now routine. We are told by his colleagues that Mr Blunkett was
a decent man who left office with his integrity intact.
Such
statements - which would no doubt be questioned by the husband
of Kimberly Quinn, Mr Blunkett's ex-mistress, and by the taxpayers
who stumped up for her free rail tickets - tell us all we need
to know about Labour's values.
Consider
Mr Blunkett's very New Labour phrase on the day of his resignation
that he had perhaps been 'too honest'. How said that the man who
was responsible for law and order feels he should have been less
truthful in his management of his personal and professional crises.
Not
that Mr Blunkett was always so honest. Having flown the red flag
over Sheffield when he was council leader, he had long since found
it expedient to be, or to seem to be, a Right-winger.
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Gordon Rayner writes - Daily Mail - Dec 18, 2004
Mr
Blunkett suffered a further blow to his reputation yesterday
as documents released by the Home Office suggested he had
given a misleading account of events in the fast-tracking
of a visa for Mrs Quinn's nanny.
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(And
how fitting, given the legislative programme of Soviet-style repression
the Home Office is trying to bring in, that his replacement should
be another doctrinaire ex-radical Leftist 'friend' of Mr Blair's,
Charles Clarke.)
Earlier
this week, before evidence of Mr Blunkett's string-pulling for
Mrs Quinn's nanny came to light, the Prime Minister seemed to
imply that the Home Secretary would remain in office because
he was a friend. Well,
as one of Labour's less supine backbenchers, Bob Marshall-Andrews,
pointed out on Tuesday, friendship is a criterion irrelevant
to the conduct of high office. Sadly, that is not the
case in this administration tainted and corrupted by cronyism.
It
is also curious to me that in a government of near total failure,
someone who generally failed at most tasks he tackled - as Mr
Blunkett did - is still regarded as a towering figure. Under his
reign at the Home Office, illegal immigration rocketed out of
control, public confidence in the forces of law and order collapsed,
the police stopped fighting crime and started to fight social
exclusion and so-called 'soft drugs' were effectively legalised.
It
is not just the politicisation of the civil service that is a
problem here - and New Labour is guilty of that - but the prevailing
idea that in this administration you do what you can get away
with, and that your only crime is being caught. We deserve better
than this self-serving cynicism, but we are unlikely to get it.
For far from being killed off, I believe that Blairism now flourishes
as never before. Mr Clarke is the ultimate loyalist, and loathes
Gordon Brown.
And
those promoted further down - the new Education Secretary Ruth
Kelly and zealot David Milliband, who will help plan the election
campaign - are ruthless careerists who understand how to organise
a political movement. If Labour had any sense, it would see that
it must end the culture of arrogance than brought down Mr Blunkett.
But with a pathetically weak Opposition, it is too easy to carry
on doing what it likes, and doing favours for the people it likes.
Happy Christmas.
Please
also read Melanie
Phillips and Max
Hastings on Blunkett and Blair
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So
what's new?
Letter
to the Editor, Dr. B. McDonald, Great Torrington, Devon
- Daily Mail, December 23, 2004
I
can't understand the fuss over the Blunkett/nanny visa affair.
This sort of thing is common practice.
In
1976, I lived in North Finchley, North London and Margaret
Thatcher, then Opposition leader of the Conservative party,
was my MP. I had obtained a teaching post in Zurich University,
Switzerland, but couldn't get a passport because I had been
born in India and had no birth certificate.
I
was fighting a long, drawn-out battle with the passport
office in London's Petty France and contacted Mrs Thatcher
as a last resort. Within ten days of seeing her, I was summoned
to the Home Office nationality and immigration office in
East Croydon where, despite having arrived very early, I
was well down the queue.
Just
before opening time, I was called to the front door and
told to go to counter 22. The man there handed me my passport
and said casually: "You've got a friend in a very important
place."
Webmaster's
comment: The two cases are very different. Blunkett was
doing a favour for personal reasons and for a foreign national
wanting permanent residence in the UK. Yours was the incongruous
situation of a Briton born in a British colony which subsequently
became an independent foreign country and Mrs Thatcher was
helping a member of her constituency, not a member of her
family.
Having
myself been born in the British colony of Burma before WW2
and entering England on a British Indian passport in 1944,
I was in a similar position when I had to leave England
for a business visit to Italy in 1962. In my case, my British
born grandfather's Birth Certificate helped me gain a British
Passport.
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For
the health of our democracy, we, the people of the United Kingdom,
must find a way to force Mr Blair to resign
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:
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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:
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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.
