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, February
17, 2005
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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
Back
to the future
'Forward
not Back' is quite wrong: we must go back - back to clean
hospitals with more medical staff and fewer managers;
back to education with proven standards.
Back
to police on the street and solving crime; back to increased
employment in industry, back to ministers who stand up
for this country and back to democratic government. Then,
perhaps, we can move forward. Letter
from S, M. Butler, Shoreham-by-Sea, Sussex - Daily Mail,
March 23, 2005
Virtues
of a secret ballot
Sir
- Concerning postal votes (report Mar 23) what is the
first principle of a democratic political vote? Answer:
THE SECRET BALLOT.
It
is obvious that a postal ballot is only as secret as the
moral strength of the voter. With the infinite propaganda
powers of today's electronic media, it is frighteningly
easy for devious politicians to promote politically correct
or "cool" or, most wickedly, "honest and
transparent" voting patterns, where someone failing
to vote "with his/her group" must "have
something to hide".
Postal
voting should, at best, be allowable only to persons who
are required to be stationed away from their constituency
on government business. A few temporary disfranchisements
may result, but nothing is perfect.
Letter from J. B. Lewis, Bognor
Regis, West Sussex - The Daily Telegraph, March 25, 2005
SIR
- Why on earth are people still insisting on voting for
the Labour Party this May 2005. It has lied and cheated
the public again and again during the Iraq war, immigration,
violent crime and hospital waiting list figures. It has
introduced stealth taxes and even been caught rigging
the postal voting system. To
the Editor, Daily Telegraph, from Philip Priestley, High
Wycombe, Bucks. April 19, 2005
Lucrative savings
It's
hardly surprising that Nigel Doughty, the owner of the
world's biggest wind turbine maker, has given Labour £250,000.
A big wind turbine rakes in about £300,000 a year
in subsidies - much more than the value of the electricity
it generates. All electricity users pay this as a little
extra on their bills. The Energy White Paper estimated
it would pay out the equivalent of a £1billion a
year wind-fall to renewable (mainly wind) energy firms
by 2010. Meanwhile, CO2 emission saving will be less than
1,000th of total world emissions, as the Government's
own figures show. Doughty's gift is a cynical ploy - and
a rather mean one, too. Letter
from Dr John Etherington, Llanhowell, Pembs. - Daily Mail,
June 1, 2005
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Pardon
the cliche, but this really is a load of hot air
(Which
will despoil Britain and do nothing for global warming)
by
Professor David Bellamy - Daily Mail, April 20, 2005
William
Wordsworth, the Lake District's most celebrated poet, once 'wandered
lonely as a cloud' before famously setting eyes on that 'host
of golden daffodils'. But if old William were to be floating over
the hills and vales of his beloved Lakes in a few years' time,
it wouldn't be golden daffodils that catch his eye. It would be
27 ruddy great wind turbines.
Whistling
in the wind
L.
J. Jenkins - Daily Mail, April 27, 2005
Anyone
who doubts Professor David Bellamy's criticism of the
pointlessness of wind turbines in providing 10% of UK
electricity by 2010, should view the Met office's website:
www.metoffice.com/education/archive/uk.
where
wind speeds at all 70 UK Met Offices are displayed for
each hour of the preceding 10 days.
For
example of about 65 Met Offices on mainland Britain at
11 pm on April 20, only four recorded wind speeds above
9 knots. And at 9 knots or less, wind turbines grind to
a halt, generating nothing
In
April 2004, at Aberporth Met Office on the exposed west
coast of Wales, the wind dropped to 9 knots or below on
22 out of 30 days. In May 2004, it was 25 out of 31 days
and this pattern continued all summer. As it takes three
days to fire up fossil fuel power stations, they can never
be turned off, if they are to provide back-up for wind
power.
At
peak demand, the UK uses 57,000 MW of electricity. To
achieve Government's target of 20% from renewable energy
by 2020, wind and other sources would have to produce
11,400 MW. Records from mid-Wales show that, annually,
the existing generation of smaller 150ft wind turbines,
is just 22% of 0.5MW installed capacity.
So
the UK would need 103,636 of these turbines to reach the
target. So far, most of England has been spared windfarms,
but 1,000 wind turbines in the Cotswolds, the Malvern
Hills and South Downs, ruining the scenery, tourist economics,
TV reception and local property values, will still hardly
scratch the surface of energy generation required.
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Wordsworth,
I am absolutely certain, would be appalled at such a prospect
and so am I. The idea of building Europe's biggest wind farm on
a hillside north of Kendal is an absolute disaster. The site is
slap bang between the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District National
Park. And never mind that the land isn't official part of the
National Park itself - who would want 27 turbines anywhere, each
of them higher than St Paul's cathedral at 377 ft.
But
that is exactly what the developers of this Lake District project
are proposing, and they stand a terrifyingly good chance of getting
the official green light following the public inquiry which started
yesterday. Not only has there been a hugely controversial relaxation
in the planning rules governing wind farms by the Deputy Prime
Minister, John Prescott, but there is strong support for the wind
farmers from several eminent conservationist groups, including
Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace.
Inefficient
So
why aren't I, a life-long conservationist. Supporting them too?
Because these wind turbines are big, ugly, hugely damaging to
wildlife and, most importantly, they don't do what they are supposed
to do. Wind turbines, you see, are incredibly inefficient. Indeed,
it is one of the reasons they have to be so high, to make the
most of what wind there is.
But
when the wind stops blowing - as it regularly does - turbines
stop turning and electricity stops flowing. So we still have to
have all the nuclear and fossil-fuelled power stations anyway
- unless we're all going to stop boiling our kettles, watching
TV and using our computers whenever the wind stops. So much then
for the government,relying on wind farms to meet its target of
having 10% of the country's energy needs generated by renewable
resources by 2010.
Wind
farms could eventually contribute something like 7-8%, according
to supporters, but only at the cost of ruining some of the country's
most beautiful upland landscapes and only on days when the wind
blows constantly and at the ideal speed. Official
statistics from the Department of Trade and Industry in 2003 showed
that wind farms deliver less than one quarter of their full capacity
- by any account a grotesquely inefficient provision of energy.
And
only now are we beginning to discover the true extent to which
wind turbines blight human lives as well as landscapes. They are
simply not very nice to live with - they are noisy, send out low-frequency
vibrations that many people find unpleasant, and they cause flickering
light patterns.
Indeed,
one wind energy firm whose wind farm overlooks a prison, has just
had to agree to shut down its turbine on sunlit mornings because
the flicking light irritates prisoners and interferes with security
sensors. This is an extraordinaryvolte-face by an industry
which in the past has heaped scorn on those ordinary people who
have dared to campaign against proposed wind farms or complained
about the debilitating effect that existing ones are having on
their lives.
But
this is far from the end of the wind farm horror. These infernal
machines also interfere with TV and radar signals, and their huge
concrete foundations and miles of access roads ruin views and
can lead to both the erosion of soil and the pollution of ground
water. Not surprisingly, wind farms are beginning to have a damaging
effect on both tourism and house prices.
Threaten
And,
to top it all, there is the undeniable fact that the turbines'
huge circling blades kill huge numbers of birds and bats. In Spain,
figures showed that 6,450 birds had been killed by 400 turbines,
a slaughter that includes 405 endangered griffon vultures from
a remaining total population of only a few thousand. In California,
it has been a similar story with 40 to 50 golden eagles ripped
apart each year.
Small
wonder then that our own Royal Society for the Protection of Birds,
despite being a supporter of renewable energy, has said it will
object to any wind farms that seriously threaten important populations
of birds and their habitats.
Let
me make on thing clear: as a naturalist and conservationist, I
am hugely in favour of renewable energy. Indeed, I can get pretty
passionate about my own personal favourite for generating the
energy of tomorrow, which is wave power, coupled with on-going
improvements in energy conservation. But wave power is dependent
on technologies that are still being developed. In the meantime,
we could be making the most dreadful mistake by relying on wind
farms that will ruin both lives and countryside for years to come.
And
the crisis is not as great as our ruling establishment would have
us believe. As Mail readers will know, I have never bought the
global warming argument which has driven the Government's unseemly
rush towards renewable energy, which is always wheeled out by
wind farm supporters. My belief is that global warming is a largely
natural phenomenon and that the world is in danger of wasting
stupendous amounts of money on trying to fix something that can't
be fixed and doesn't need to be anyway.
Studies
of rocks, fossils and ice samples, show that carbon dioxide levels
increase from time to time and so does the Earth's average temperature.
It's natural. But even if I am wrong, even if carbon dioxide produced
by the burning of fossil fuels was responsible for global warming,
wind farms would not be the right way to solve the problem.
Unless
we're going to cover the country with them, they will never produce
enough electricity and nor do they sufficiently reduce carbon
dioxide emission. Because wind speeds in this country are so variable,
because wind turbines are so inefficient, and because fossil or
nuclear-fuelled back-up will always be necessary, the savings
in carbon dioxide emissions are nothing like they are cracked
up to be. Indeed, Government's own figures show that even if they
meet their 2010 target, global carbon dioxide levels would fall
by less than one thousandth, an amount so insignificant as to
be barely measurable, let alone have any impact on climate change.
Blight
Anyone
who says different is simply recycling yet another myth promulgated
by an industry determined to erect its gleaming but still satanic
mills wherever it can on what is left of our green and pleasant
land. Whatever government we wake up to on May 6, it is time these
wind farm fallacies were exposed. We need reliable, externally
audited figures about outputs and efficiencies.
We
need to be told whether the industry is economically sustainable
without the government subsidies it receives. We also need to
know whether it is true that manufacture and construction of a
wind turbine, up to the point where the blades first turn, consumes
more energy than it will produce in its normal life span.
Until
then, we must not swop one inch of our gloriously wind-swept British
landscape for some half-baked fantasy technology that blights
lives and generates more problems that it ever will electricity.
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Tactical
Voting
As
UKIP member for several years, I believe the greatest
threat facing the British is the potential loss of our
independence to govern ourselves. Once Brussels gains
complete control, everything else we are voting for in
the coming election is academic. The real decisions will
be made in Brussels by people we can't vote out.
Much
as I support UKIP's aims, I now believe the single most
important goal for British voters is to remove Blair and
his rotten Government before they complete the process
of removing our sovereignty. Only a vote for Michael Howard
will do this - Letter to the Daily Mail from Tony Beverley,
London SW10 - April 7, 2005
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
SIR
- Why on earth are people still insisting on voting for
the Labour Party this May 2005. It has lied and cheated
the public again and again during the Iraq war, immigration,
violent crime and hospital waiting list figures. It has
introduced stealth taxes and even been caught rigging
the postal voting system. To the Editor, Daily Telegraph,
from Philip Priestley, High Wycombe, Bucks. April 19,
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.
