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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How
dare they take away my right NOT to vote
By
Andrew Roberts - Daily Mail, July 5, 2005
This
is the classic way by which the Government tries to 'soften up'
public opinion before a major new policy announcement. Geoff Hoon,
the Leader of the House of Commons, has recommended that we should
all be made to vote at general elections to reverse the staggering
decline in turn-out.
In
a speech yesterday to new Labour's pet think tank, the Institute
for Public Policy Research, he denounced what he called 'deliberate
non-voting', saying that 'serial non-voters' threatened 'the long-term
legitimacy of our political system'.
What
patronising, arrogant and dangerous rubbish.
In
fact, as so often in modern Britain, it is the politicians and
not the general public who are at fault for the widespread sense
of alienation that the electorate feels towards Westminster. It
is they - rather than we- who need to get their act in order.
We all know the reasons for low turn-outs is because the public
is appalled by politicians, regarding them as cynical, deceitful
untrustworthy and incapable of managing our country.
With
a turnout of a meagre 61% in May's General Election - compared
with the norm of 75% for most of the post-war period - there is
clearly a malaise at the heart of our political system. But Hoon's
'solution' of making voting compulsory is a grotesquely illiberal
way to deal with the problem.
It
is also, incidentally, a solution that would work in Labour's
favour for, as he himself admits, most 'serial non-voters' are
to be found among young people in deprived areas - people very
unlikely to vote conservative. In order to work the system he
proposes, Mr Hoon admits that fines will have to be levied on
those of the electorate who choose not to vote - currently 39%
of us.
So
this, then, is a Government that has the audacity to say the mass
fining of millions is a means of increasing 'the long-term legitimacy
of our political system'. In fact, it will do precisely the opposite
and simply reinforce for everyone what we know already to be the
case - the bossy, arbitrary nature of our present political masters.
Even
putting aside the probably insuperable nature of the administrative
problem of fining people who often don't receive their polling
cards, the whole concept of compulsory voting is an insidious
trap. It goes to the heart of whether the state is our servant,
established in power merely to do our bidding, or whether - as
the New labour view maintains - it is our master and has the right
to coerce us if it believes such coercion to be in our own interests.
The
debates over ID cards, the abolition of jury trials in certain
cases, smoking in public places, and many other great issues of
today ultimately boil down to whether individuals should be given
the maximum amount of liberty consistent with public order and
safety - or whether the state knows best how we should live our
lives.
Compulsory
voting would be a sinister extension of the state's encroachment
on the rights and liberties of free-born Britons.
There
is no doubt that participation in voting has collapsed in recent
years. In 15 general elections between 1945 and 1997, turnout
percentages have been in the 70s on no fewer than 13 occasions,
and in 1950 and 1951 they were in the 80s.
To
have allowed turnout to fall to 61% is, indeed, a national disgrace.
But the responsibility falls squarely on the politicians. Instead
of making politics an uplifting, instructive, morally significant,
even educational activity, the cynicism of modern politicians
is such that it leaves voters with a tangible feeling of disgust
at the whole process.
For
New Labour to accuse the electorate of threatening the future
of politics in this country takes them and their spin doctors
to a new and quite breathtaking level of gall. The fact is that
politicians today are not a patch on their forebears - and that
is why so many of us are losing interest.
You
only have to look at the death of political speechmaking for evidence.
As late as the Fifties and sixties, thousands of people used to
flock to hear the great political orators of the day speak in
person, declaiming from rostrums up and down the country in a
political vernacular that inspired, educated and never patronised
the listeners.
Winston
Churchill, Nye Bevan, Iain Macleod, Enoch Powell, Michael Foot
- you didn't have to agree with their message to value the fact
they represented the best traditions of a political rhetoric that
stretched back to the days of William Pitt, Edmund Burke, Charles
James Fox and beyond.
Contrast
those great speeches of the past with this effort of the last
Liberal Party conference, though the oratory at the Labour and
Conservative conferences was no better.
For
in the peroration of his speech, Charles Kennedy - heir to Gladstone,
Asquith and Lloyd George - attempted to enthuse his listeners
with the following set of verbless sentences, platitudes and sound-bites:
'225 days. Then a stark choice. A serious choice. And we, increasingly,
are the winning choice. Because all we say and all we do is based
on those fundamentals. Freedom. Fairness. Trust. That is Liberal
Democracy.'
In
the last nine sentences of his speech, Kennedy averaged fewer
than four words per sentence. That's not oratory, but rather a
series of bland advertising slogans of a sort that would have
had Winston Churchill jeered out of the hall.
Yet
under Mr Hoon's proposals, it will be us
who are fined for failing to
respond, rather than modern politicians for being pathetic shadows
of their predecessors.
There
is doubtless a Treasury agenda behind much of this, as there nearly
always tends to in new initiatives emanating from this Government.
The fines that will be levied on us for not voting will be payable
to local councils, thus saving central government money it would
otherwise have to pay to the councils.
But
my strongest objection is that it is fundamentally undemocratic.
The point of democracy is allowing people not to conform if they
do not wish to. The compulsory vote will be a form of nationalisation
of politics, more reminiscent of Eastern Europe.
New
Labour piously tells us that is part of our civic duty to vote,
and that universal franchise was hard-won and thus ought to be
exercised. The early 20th century struggles of the suffragettes
are regularly trotted out by modern politicians to encourage women
to vote.
Yet
at the same time the Government is - especially in its policies
on crime, education, immigration and welfare - breaking up precisely
that sense of civic pride and duty that in the Fifties produced
such high electoral turnouts.
The
suffragettes might have won votes for women in 1918, but if elderly
ladies in council blocks are scared of leaving their flats to
walk to the polling stations, they will be fined.
It
is the politicians and not ordinary Britons who have betrayed
the legacy of the Pankhursts and the best traditions of British
democracy.
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