Rescuing Democracy in the United Kingdom from our current Elected Dictatorship
|
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
|
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.
|
|
Tony
Blair should know that respect comes by example - from the
top. If a country's leader has no respect for the rule of
international law and no respect for the truth, how can
he expect anyone to have respect. Letter
from P.J.Atkinson, Ashford, Kent - Daily Mail, January 12,
2006
The
Chancellor's single greatest act of vandalism in almost
nine years in office has been his wanton destruction of
Britain's private retirement industry. By slapping a massive
tax on pension funds, now worth
£7.3billion a year, he has helped to turn
the best private retirement industry in Europe into a basket-case
in perpetual crisis. Together with the adoption of European
accounting rules - which make it much riskier to operate
a company pension scheme - hundreds of firms have shut their
final salary plans to new employees and slashed benefits
to existing staff. From
Allister Heath: "I've seen the future and its grey"
in THE SPECTATOR - April 15, 2006
Nine
years ago the British people were sold a fantasy of clean
and competent government of principle and honesty. Its shiny
wrappings stripped away, the product now reveals its true
nature: Personal greed, arrogance, incompetence, shamelessness,
rash warmongering and an inability to accept - as is clear
to almost everyone else - that it is time to go. Editorial
- The Mail on Sunday, May 28, 2006
|
November
29, 2006 (1294 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 2885 US - 126 UK - >650,000? civilians - 25 media
December
10 2006 (1292 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 2928 US - 126 UK - >650,000? civilians - 25 media
Are
we going to let a Scot concrete over this green and pleasant land?
Stephen
Glover - Daily Mail, December 8, 2006
Oxford,
where I happen to live, is one of 14 cities or towns in England
surrounded by a green belt. You might therefore think there has
been very little development around this ancient university city
over the past 20 or 30 years. You would be wrong.
There
have been new roads, including a motorway. Supermarkets and business
parks have sprung up, all of them with acres of car parks. New
housing estates have edged their way into the countryside. Anyone
who returned to Oxford after 30 years would be amazed by the amount
of development that has taken place around the city.
If
this can happen in an area designated for conservation, one might
justifiably argue that regulations need to be tightened if the
term green belt is to mean anything at all. Gordon Brown, however,
has quite different ideas. A report he commissioned, written by
an economist called Kate Barker, recommends that more shops and
homes be built in the green belts of England, which account for
about 13% of all the land in the country. Mr Brown's own homeland
of Scotland will be unaffected by these proposals.
Ms
Barker thinks that green belts should be re-drawn to include 'green
wedges' or 'green corridors' with spaces for new homes and other
developments. In effect she is suggesting that a system which
has to some extent thwarted urban sprawl should be more or less
junked. In the offices of Tesco and Barratt Homes, businessmen
are whooping with joy.
UnderMs
Barker's recommendations, homeowners, whether in the green belt
or not, will be able to build conservatories, loft conversions
and kitchen extensions without planning permission, so long as
neighbours do not object. Owners of commercial premises who want
to erect wind turbines will not have to apply for planning permission.
The
report also foresees a new independent planning commission, confirmed
on Wednesday by Mr Brown in his pre-Budget report, which will
give the go-ahead for nuclear power stations, wind farms, motorways
and other large projects. The idea is to speed up planning procedures
and short-circuit local objections. Already the Planning and Compulsory
Purchase Act gives a determined government swingeing powers. An
independent planning commission will increase them.
Here,
in a nutshell, is the mind-blowing contradiction of New Labour.
On the one hand, every developer, including wide boys and spivs,
will be allowed to bulldoze what remains of our beautiful countryside.
Capitalism rules supreme. In this guise, the government has no
more care for local sensitivities than the 'robber barons; who
cared up America.
And
yet, on the other hand, Ms Barker, prodded by Mr Brown, envisages
an all-powerful centralised planning agency that would have brought
a smile to Stalin's lips. On Wednesday, the Chancellor drew a
comparison with the independent Bank of England, which in 1997
was given the right to set interest rates. But the Bank took on
powers that had been abused by successive governments, whereas
the new planning commission will usurp the rights of local representatives
and local people.
We
do need more houses, largely because of uncontrolled immigration
and increasing prevalence of divorce, which is creating a rising
number of single-person households. More homes mean more shops
and services. A growing economy is in any case demanding more
warehouses and distribution centres. But before it presides over
the dismemberment of the green belt, the government should turn
its attention to the thousands of still unused 'brown field' sites
in often run-down parts of our inner cities.
No
doubt some houses will have to be built on green field sites,
but would it not be sensible to try to avoid putting them up in
the southeast of England, which is already the most densely populated
area of Europe? By building so many homes in the southeast the
Government is slightly holding down house prices there without
ever being able to satisfy demand. If this were stopped, and a
determined effort made to build much cheaper houses in less densely
populated parts of the north of England, jobs and businesses would
migrate there.
So
far the Tories have said very little in response to Kate Barker's
- in truth Gordon Brown's - blue-print. One obvious point is that
the prospect of more and more stores and houses and roads on green
field sites is hardly consonant with Mr Brown's rebranding of
himself as a devoted environmentalist. An even more serious objection
is that the Chancellor appears to be riding roughshod over the
feelings of Middle England.
We
may accept that houses will sometimes have to be build on green
field sites. We depend on supermarkets, and expect to be able
to drive to them on decent roads. No doubt we are all a little
inconsistent, even hypocritical, in wanting some developments
while wishing to preserve the countryside as it is.
But
most of us, whether urban or not, retain a strong romantic attachment
to the country, and are moved by Stanley Baldwin's 1920's idealism
of rural England, anachronistic even then, as 'the sight of a
plough team coming over the brow of a hill, the sight that has
been England since England was a land .... the one eternal sight
of England'.
If
the Tories have any purpose, it is surely to defend the spirit
of this England which is being threatened by a Scot whose new
planning commission will override local feelings. I certainly
deplore playing the anti-Scottish card, but anyone can see the
anomaly of a Scottish Prime Minister - allowing a planning free-for-all
in the overcrowded southeast, while his own beautiful and under-inhabited
country remains unaffected by the depredations of unscrupulous
developers. If the Tories can't make some political capital out
of that, they shouldn't be in politics.
For
them, being concerned about the environment should go further
than worrying about melting glaciers in the Arctic Circle. It
also means protecting our England against endless commercial encroachment.
David Cameron's suspicions of big business could find no worthier
target than the rapacious developers who would love to concrete
over the green belt.
The
Tory message should be that there is something called quality
of life, and that is undermined by the slow destruction of the
English countryside We do not want economic progress at any cost.
If the Government wants to build a nuclear power station in our
back yard, we do not expect our concerns to be heard by an unelected
quango sent down from London.
Last
week I mentioned that if there were an election tomorrow, I would
probably find myself voting for Gordon Brown. I confess that the
spectacle of him on Wednesday unveiling plans that will affct
every aspect of our lives for the next ten years was pretty terrifying.
I would humbly suggest, if he wants to be a popular and successful
Prime Minister, that he is not identified as the Scot who destroyed
our green and pleasant land.
If you have
suggestions for additional subjects, or material to include in the
pages linked to the subjects listed, please contact the webmaster.
