Rescuing
Democracy in the United Kingdom from our current Elected
Dictatorship
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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 17/2/05
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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
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Surrender
to the Gipsies, Prescott orders Town Halls
Gipsy
camp cave-in. Anger
as council decides it's futile to fight
Voters
are being robbed of the power to stop Gipsies moving in
Perfume
shopping? Try the air down here, Mr Prescott Open
sewers, rats, drunken mayhem and kids of ten driving vans - and
- oh yes - by the way - who owns the £112,000 Bentley?
Paul
Harris reports - Daily Mail, March 10, 2005
On
the Hovefields travellers' site, it's been a busy week. Last Saturday
a fight broke out between rival groups when a man with a Samurai
sword chased a bare-chested teenager down a lane. Two nights later
someone was stabbed three times near one of the many new houses
which have been built illegally on the site at Wickford, in Essex.
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Political
stink
Letter
from
Margaret Jackson, Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire.
Daily Mail, March 19, 2005
We
are victims whose lives have been ruined by an illegal travellers'
encampment. These people have been told to rip up their
Tarmac, replace the protected trees they've chopped down
and remove their hideous sodium lights - but, of course,
they take no notice and the authorities couldn't care less.
We
can put up with everything but the smell of raw sewage.
We're elderly and live in the last house at the bottom of
a close so we are the only victims. This has gone on for
at least 7 years. In hot weather, we have to sit indoors
with all windows closed but the smell still permeates the
house.
A
local councillor told me a pipe is fractured and raw sewage
escaping, but because it is on private land and the travellers
wont let them in the council can do nothing to stop it.
Environmental
health officers deny this. They say they can't think what
can be causing the smell and have done nothing. One woman
even told me that I was retching only because I didn't like
it. In other words, if only we could get to like the smell
of raw sewage everyone would be happy.
Now
my 80-year-old husband has terminal stomach cancer. If he
lives to see the summer, he would love to be able to sit
out in his garden.
Is
that too much to ask.
Letter
from
Margaret Jackson, Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire.
Daily Mail, March 19, 2005
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Next
day a horse was killed after straying on to a busy dual carriageway
into the path of a car. Each morning, gallons of raw sewage overflowed
on to roads around the estate and the stray dogs got lucky with
some of the rats that infest the stinking piles of rubbish.
Meanwhile
the new residents of Hovefields - so-called travellers with nowhere
else to live - cruise around in top-of-the-range sports cars,
four-wheel drive vehicles, and - in one case - a £112,000
Bentley. This is the reality of John Prescott's dream to help
Gipsy families live in harmony in the community - a nightmare
for law-abiding residents who have to live next to them.
Now
- as human rights legislation and new laws continue to discriminate
against ordinary tax-payers in favour of chancers and villains
- householders around the country are making it clear they have
had enough. In Hovefields, one of dozens of travellers' estates
which have sprung up over the past few years - they are challenging
the Deputy Prime Minister to come and see for himself the misery
that is being caused while the perpetrators simply laugh at the
law.
As
one homeowner put it yesterday: "This used to be our little
piece of paradise in the country-side. Now it's like living in
hell."
The
travellers moved on to the former Green Belt site three years
ago after buying land from a departing local. They pitched their
caravans then set about building an entire estate of brick, chalet-style
bungalows in defiance of planning laws. Last year they won a remarkable
landmark victory when a judge allowed them to stay because of
what were described as their 'very special circumstances'.
This
week their position was further strengthened when Mr Prescott
urged councils to review policies and practices in dealing with
Gipsies after concluding that planning law discriminated against
them. His department's report said Gipsies were regarded as an
ethnic group under race law and that planners should respond to
their needs and take 'positive action' to help them.
The
idea, in theory, was to try to help travellers find homes in the
community in the same way as they might be provided for regular
homeless families. But at Hovefields, he would only have needed
to get halfway down a muddy tract - lined with excrement and flanked
by piles of rotting debris - to realise it isn't quite working
like that here.
More
than 200 people are estimated to live on the site now and new
homes are springing up constantly - without planning permission,
of course. To get water the newcomers tapped into a main and fed
it to their homes. The illegal action was discovered only when
an ordinary resident got a massive bill for metered water he wasn't
using. Instead of prosecuting the perpetrators, the water hoard
simply divided the bill and charged the householders and the Gipsies
separately.
Neighbours
complain that Hovefields is like a ghetto, in which they are frightened
to leave their homes at night. "It's like living in The Bronx,
" one told me. "They are completely lawless - they just
do what they please. Everyone calls them do-as-you-likey-pikeys
- they seem untouchable. They are picking off the countryside
field by field and building houses on it as fast as they can.
The most frustrating thing is that no one seems willing to do
anything about it - just the opposite in fact. As soon as you
mention the world Gipsy everyone backs off."
Another
householder - like her neighbour, too frightened to be identified
- told me: "When we came here it was our little piece of
paradise. There were just open fields and a few houses dotted
around. These days you might open your door and se someone going
to the toilet in the road in front of you. When you walk down
the lane you might come across a ten-year-old driving a van. At
night the whole place comes alive with drunkenness and noise.
It's Bedlam."
Some
stories seem so incredible that your first instinct is to suspect
that they are exaggerated. On the contrary, the authorities largely
confirm much of what has been going on. One resident told me how
rubbish was not collected for several days after the travellers
started an altercation with the dustmen, who would not then come
on to the site without a police presence.
Exaggeration?
Basildon District Council confirmed that refuse collection services
had recently been suspended while arrangements were made to put
police on standby. The local school, said residents, was now populated
entirely by traveller children. Myth? the last truly local child
was removed from the school in October.
The
original houses - some of which might normally be worth more than
£600,000 - were now virtually worthless and unsaleable.
True? "I could give you a valuation," said one estate
agent, "but it would be pointless. You'd never sell it."
Then
there are the pony-and-trap races on the dual carriageway. One
householder complained to police after the main A127 into London
was blocked by competing horsemen.
Likewise,
tales of expensive cars some travellers were said to drive seemed
to be corroborated by the vehicles parked yesterday on freshly-laid
driveways outside bungalows that bore suburban names such as Middle
Meadows and Pear Tree Paddock.
Behind
electric, wrought-iron gates we saw a Mercedes, a £50,000
4x4 BMW and a four-wheel-drive Porsche Cayenne, selling for up
to £69,000. Top marque was a blue Bentley Continental, listed
at £112,000.
"These
people say they need help because they are destitute fruit pickers,"
said a local. "I don't know many fruit pickers who drive
Bentleys."
No
wonder the travellers' neighbours are issuing an open challenge
to Mr Prescott to see the kind of lifestyle that 'positive action'
can create. "He should come here and see exactly what it's
like," they say. "These people mock the law and the
law just backs them up. The most frustrating thing is that there
is absolutely nothing we can do about it. And the more they get
away with it here, the easier it will be for them to get away
with all over the country."
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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
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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
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.
