The 42 day smokescreen

People who represent a clear and present danger to the security of our country should be locked up for 42 days without trial. That is the message that Jacqui Smith has been peddling so assiduously for the last month or so.

Why 42 days ? Who has actually analysed previous security breaches in such detail that they have been able to calculate the precise number of days the authorities would need to be certain of gaining a conviction in the future? 42 is such an exact number. Why not 50; or 60 days? After all they are equally nice, equally rounded numbers.

The answer, of course, is that the number of days is neither here nor there. It could just as easily be 102 or 12.

The only true purpose of the 42 day detention debate has been to create a smoke screen. Think about it. What is currently wending its way through the entrails of the British parliamentary system that will have a far more dramatic and long-term effect on democracy in this country than any 42 day detention policy?

Identity Cards, perhaps?

No, this is even more serious than Nu Labour's plan to turn each of us into a human bar code.

Then it must be the Police database containing the DNA of over a million innocent people, right?Close, but no cigar.
It's the Lisbon Treaty, stupid.

While Jacqui and Gordon - who would surely have been a white crimplene suited Seventies cabaret act in another life - have been insisting on the need to imprison anyone they want for 42 days without trial, the bill to enable the Lisbon Teaty is about to be debated in the House of Lords having been rammed through the Commons by the battering ram of vested interests known as the Europhile tendency.

It is a strange creature, Europe. Poll after poll demonstrates that the British people are heartily sick of being sucked any further into its web. More people than ever are calling not just for the ties to be loosened but severed completely. Yet, our political elite conspires to bind us ever closer, mocking our protests while denying that we have anything to protest about in the first place.

That elite includes not just the current crop of party leaders but all of their predecessors from the Seventies onwards; including Maggie Thatcher. She, like the rest, knew precisely the nature of our relationship with Europe. She and they have accepted for many years that the eventual aim was a United States of Europe in which Great Britain would become a province with slightly fewer powers than, say, Georgia currently does in relation to the federal government of the USA.
Peter Lilley made this plain in the Commons last week. As he said, over 80% of all the laws and regulations to which we now have to adhere start their life inside the EU Commission. Our Government Ministers like to claim these bits of legislation as their own. But only to maintain the fiction that anything they or anyone else at Westminster does, has any real effect on life in modern Britain.

The truth is, of course, that our feeble, mediocre Parliament is an anachronism. Its members are as relevant as a sail in a submarine; as powerless as the Queen has been for the last fifty years. But, still they go on posturing, posing and conniving in dark corners as if it matters a jot which of them ends up as Party leader or deputy leader. Occasionally, in a moment of lucidity or honesty, one of their number spills the beans. This time it is Peter Lilley. In the past, William Hague has come close to admitting the same thing; that the House of Commons is to Brussels what your local Town Hall used to be to Westminster.

Nobody takes very much notice for the simple reason that every effort is made to divert our attention. Every time a major European story is about to grab the headlines, the media are chucked another, more juicy bone to get their collective teeths into. It's been Nu labour's way of manipulating the news since its very first days in office. The lickspittles otherwise known as political journalists play along happily with the charade; willingly recycling rumours and briefings to keep the pot boiling and everyone's attention from the debate that really matters; what is happening to our democracy as the tentacles of Europa wrap themselves ever tighter around us.
This time is no different. We have been told in no uncertain terms that there will be no referendum. The elite has closed ranks. Doubters have, as usual, been branded Eurosceptics and Little Englanders. Meanwhile, Gordon and Jacqui, abetted by their media chums, continue to do their bit; puffing out billows of chaff about 42 days detention to keep the European question firmly off the radar.

Once the Lisbon Treaty passes the Lords, the fog will clear and we will all be sailing full-steam for the sunlit uplands of Europe. (Unless the Irish chuck a large Celtic spanner in the works of course and chuck the whole idea of the Lisbon Treaty out on its ear. ) Either way, with Lisbon resolved, just watch how quickly Gordon caves in to back-bench demands for a fresh debate on the whole question of detention without trial.

Long term chaos

Not so flash Gordon has been making the rounds of the TV and Radio studios recently to try out his latest mantra: "busy making the right long-term decisions". You needn't ask what long-term decisions he's referring to. You see, busy making etc is one of those catchall phrases carefully tailored by Gordon's script writers to cover virtually any eventuality. Worried about the state of the economy? Well, stop worrying. Big Gordy is busy making the right long term decisions about the economy that will see this country through the global downturn that is currently affecting not just us but everyone else in the world, too.
Just as worried about violent crime, especially knive crimes involving teenagers? Well, guess what, our Gordon is busy making the right long term decisions to reduce violent crime in our country, as well. Ditto the problems facing the education system, the NHS, the Forces, untramelled immigration and just about anything else people worry themselves sick about.
Now, NSF Gordon is nothing if not steadfast and determined. In fact, according to every Brown profile , those have been two of his defining characteristics since he was a schoolboy in Fife. During the 10 years he spent as Blair's Number 2, his constant refrain was that he was the real power behind the throne. His was the clunking fist on the tiller guiding the great ship of state through choppy economic waters; his vast intellectual power that was brought to bear on such thorny subjects as whether or notto join the Euro. It was his vision of a fairer, more prosperous Britain that Tony Blair played the front man for between 1997 and 2007, before Gordon finally elbowed him out of the way and became the official resident of Number 10 .
Leopards, as they say, do not change their spots. The Gordon of 1997 was the same anal-retentive obsessive that we have to suffer today. So now, 10 years further down the line, the country we live in is almost certainly the product of Gordon's long-term thinking. The pension system for everybody but a select few is knackered; destroyed by class-warrior Brown in one of his first acts of fiscal incontinence. Pensioners are so poor they are having to choose between eating and staying warm in winter. Almost 500,000 of them are eligible for additional credits but find the system of claiming them either so confusing or demeaning - or a mixture of both - that they choose to go without. Meanwhile, with British pensioners on the bread line, we are exporting over £30 million in child benefits to Poland and other east European countries - even though the officials administering the scheme admit they have no way of checking that the kids being claimed for actually live abroad, belong to the parents making the claim - or even exist.
The Jesuits have a saying: "Give me the boy at seven and I will give you the man." Whether you live in a city, small town or village look at the teenagers you see around you. They are ill-educated, over-indulged, undisciplined and, frequently, pissed out of their brains; girls just as frequently as boys.
Eighteen years old now, they were seven when Noo Labour first came into power. Their values, their outlook, their violence, their ignorance and lack of education are a direct result of the social engineering pursued by Labour from their first day in office. They are, in every sense, Brown's children.
Doesn't exactly fill one with confidence, for the long term,does it?

A new oxymoron - British Democracy

This is how the Oxford English Dictionary defines DEMOCRACY:

"Government by the people; That form of Government in which the sovereign power resides in the people and is exercised either directly by them or by officers elected by them."

If you entertain the amusing notion that modern Geat Britain is a democracy a few seconds contemplation of that definition should rapidly disabuse you. A couple of weeks ago many people in England and Wales went to the polls to elect local councillors. I was one of them. The fact that I did so was almost a conditioned reflex; as I suspect it was for many of the people who dutifully placed their crosses against their chosen candidates. The truth is, very few of us really believe that the act of voting has anything other than symbolic importance any more. We may, individually and collectively, genuflect in the direction of the democratic ideal but we all know that, for reasons most of us can no longer define, democracy is slipping away from us like a half-remembered dream.
We know how it is meant to work. As the OED says so clearly, it's Government in which power resides in the people and is exercised by them or on their behalf by elected representatives. Or, as the Americans more succinctly put it : Government of the people, by the people and for the people.

We also know that our leaders are confirmed disciples of the process because they never fail to tell us so as they send young British soldiers to die and be maimed in the name of democracy in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Few world leaders can emote so sincerely as Blair, Brown or David Millimetre in the name of democracy. Unfortunately, there is a disjunction between their fine words and less than fine actions. The governance of Great Britain in the 21st Century owes more to Vladimir Putin than Thomas Paine. If you don't believe me, consider just a few recent examples.

• The creation of Rowland Hill, the General Post Office was once one of those peculiarly British institutions - along with our education system and NHS - of which we could justifiably be proud. The concept of a delivering an item of mail to anywhere in the land for a set fee was so revolutionary that, in its own way, it was as important to the establishment of democratic government as Universal Suffrage. For the first time, thanks to the penny post, people all over the country were able to exchange news and information as and when they felt like it and not when officialdom in all its guises decided to share it with them. That concept of Universal Delivery survived two World Wars, untold changes of administration, floods and the Great Depression. The one thing it couldn't survive was the dead hand of the European Union. Amid all the debate about Post Office closures, the loss of the second post and the prospect of privatising the Royal Mail, the one fact that the politicians of all stripes have been desperatel to play down is that they can do nothing to turn the situation around. And the reason that they are so powerless is that all of the Post Office's ills are attributable to an EU edict that forced it to open up its services to commercial competition. To cut a long story very short, those competitors fell on the profitable bits of the business like wolves savaging a lone calf, leaving the Royal Mail to struggle along with the not-so-profitable parts. Hence, for the first time in a couple of decades, the business is now haemorraging money. What has this to do with democracy? Simple. When were any of us in this country given the opportunity to discuss, disagree with or refuse the legislation that has crippled our postal service? Answer: NEVER. The EU legislated and our administrators did what they always do when it comes to the EU, rolled over to have their tummies tickled. What makes it worse of course, is that none of the legislators in question was or ever will be elected to their highly remunerated positions. They were appointed by a Commission that is, itself, an unelected body. Government for the people by it's elected representatives? I think not.
• A few weeks ago - a life time in Politics - Not SO Flash Gordon promised that he would drop the pay as you throw taxes for rubbish collection by local councils. He made the promise in the aftermath of his party's mauling at the local elections. Quite what good he thought the statement would be AFTER the event is anybody's guess. Perhaps, his script writer slipped the "No more pay as you throw taxes" speech into the pile after the one about " getting on with the government of this country" but before " making the longe-term decisions that need to be made". Whatever the reason, there is little doubt that Gordon promised to rein in the more over-excitable councils who were handing out fines to rubbish bin sinners like sweets at a children's party. With the elections behind him and no immediate reason to score extra Brownie points, Gordon has now lost interest in the topic. The truth has managed to break through the froth of lies and broken promises that passes for what New Labour calls News Management. And that truth is that, even if Brown wanted to stop the "Pay as you throw taxes" he couldn't. It's the EU again, see. Apparently, on the advice of a group of Professors in Dresden ( ex-East Germany, significantly) the EU has ordered member states to introduce the taxes across the board. And not merely to introduce them but to establish Rubbish Police equipped with SatNav chipped bins and trackers, to enforce the taxes. Exemplifying the EU's unique take on democracy, these professors caution officials faced with disgruntled local residents : ..."lack of consensus should not be allowed to intimidate us into avoiding innovation" In other words, if the locals don't like it fine them until they grow to love the idea. Government by the people etc? As far as the EU and our current rulers are concerned, that's just a load of old garbage