eurealist.co.uk

For links to original story The Edge of England’s Sword: Letting the side down?: “Letting the side down?

John at The England Project reports on a pro-hunt rally in Wales where the BBC claims protesters engaged in homophobic and racist taunts. If true, its the sort of thing that needs to be stamped out since even if it is only a tiny minority involved the media will find it a very useful hook to discredit the movement.

However, I wouldn’t jump to conclusions just yet. According to John, the Grauniad and other outlets report the story without any mention of the abuse. Frankly I don’t think you can believe a report from the BBC that is not corroborated by a respectable news organisation.” I like the sentement!

Mary Ann Sieghart in the Times “Can someone please help the Tory Party to rediscover its identity”

Makes the point that every Tory MP she speaks to, finds the thought of ID Cards obnoxious, as that is the case then why on earth do they not say so, apparently the problem is Michael Howard who tried to introduce these cards when he was home sectary and now he is leader the Tory policy is not to oppose the introduction, but to try to make things difficult for the government by asking awkward questions.
“You would have thought that a party whose fundamental tenet is that “the people should be big and the State should be small” would not have the slightest difficulty. The Tories must oppose ID cards on principle.

For this is a scheme which will give the State unprecedented access to information about its citizens. One glance into a policeman’s iris recognition machine could tell him how much you earned last year, whether you suffer from depression, what benefits you claim and what your recent movements have been.
You won’t even need to produce your card for the police to find out all your secrets. They will be able to keep tabs on us without even encountering us on the street. If we move house or live with a friend for a few months, we shall be obliged to notify them, on pain of a huge fine. Can this really be Britain we are talking about?

The Conservatives were swept back to power in 1951 on the promise that they would scrap the hugely unpopular wartime ID cards. We are not at war now, and the reintroduction of these cards is a manifestation of the least attractive nanny-state tendencies of this overweening Government.”

This does seem to be the Tory position on many fronts, instead of making their policies based on solid Conservative values and building a consensus in the country for that view and those policies, they want to appear to be opposing the government without opposing the policies the government is introducing.
This policy of not having policies is making it very difficult for the ordinary man or woman in the street to understand exactly what the Tory stance is on any issue, and making natural Tory supporters turn away in frustration at the lack of any real solid policy that everybody can support and then going out and selling those ideas to the people.

The Tory policy on the EU is to stand against the Constitution and to return one or two of the powers they have already given up to EU control, the fact that opposition to the Constitution itself will not stop the integration tendencies only at best delay them, or that to have any powers returned will need the agreement of all 25 member states governments, undermines that policy, so it is meaningless as a policy of our government, it only looks at some of the symptoms and does nothing to address the real problems of the EU. It is also not a natural Conservative territory which is not to give away powers of government or to remove the power of the people to elect their own government but to stand for the freedoms this present government is removing as fast as it can to protect the British people and the British Constitution. The fact that Ted Heath was a traitor to theses basic conservative beliefs can be no reason for true conservatives to go along with the continual unaccountable rule from the EU, that he set in train when he lied to the British public in the 1970s.

It is really up to the true conservatives to make the party electable again, and they will not do that by standing on the sidelines sneering at what is happening, they need a big idea on the grounds of true conservative values of freedom and self-determination and they need to promote that idea and face down the opposition whether it comes from the BBC the Guardian or the Labour party. They need to take back their natural ground from this administration and they need to make it clear that a vote for the Conservative party is a vote for freedom and a vote for Britain and the British peoples soverignty.

But none of this can have a chance of happening until those people who are followers of the Heath path to the destruction of this country are eradicated from the party and that will not happen until Conservative are convinced that the people of this country will not give them the chance of power until they see some real defendable conservative policies

EUobserver.com

EU launches bid to slash red tape
26.11.2004 - 09:52 CET | By Richard Carter

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Economics Ministers on Thursday (25 November) launched a new bid to cut EU red tape in a drive to make the regulatory environment in Europe easier for business.

The simplification drive reflects determination both by the Dutch Presidency and the Barroso Commission to improve Europe’s business environment and boost Europe’s competitiveness.

How very nice that the machine which has increased red tape continually for the past thirty odd years should now suddenly decide to put everything into reverse and start scraping it all. I wonder, is it only just now becoming clear to these unelected unaccountable Eurocrats that they have been forcing their ideas on us all without our agreement and they are going to eventually do something about it.

Or perhaps the cynical view might be that they are only creating headlines so the Europhiles can point to the slashing of all the red tape in an attempt to undermine what they perceive as one of the main planks in the Eusceptic argument against the EU in the run up to the referendums on the Constitution; or would that be just too cynical.

On way of applying a test would be to look at all the red tape they are going to slash, for this we can look to Dr North EU Referendum who, reporting “Taking the p***!” on a piece in the Times said:

“The EU, according to The Times has produced 101,811 regulations since Britain joined in 1973. And guess how many regulations they are putting in this “bonfire”? Perhaps a thousand; two thousand, maybe. Possibly even three of four thousand? Er… no exactly. P. Hewitt and her pals are have picked a mere 15 directives for the treatment - from an original list of 300.

And are these going to be abolished? Er… no, not exactly. Five directives relating to medical devices will be consolidated into two. The contents won’t be reduced, mind you, but they will be printed in three less directives. That’s progress for you”.

Sir - Following the Queen’s Speech, it seems to me that the only thing that George Orwell got wrong was the date.

Michael Murphy, Sheffield

Lord Steyn attacks fellow law lord over Guantanamo Bay detainees:

“Courts must never abdicate their duty to protect citizens from the abuse of power by governments, a senior judge said last night.”

In a highly unusual move, he launched a public attack on Lord Hoffmann, a fellow law lord, for suggesting that the courts should not interfere with certain Government decisions.

On the contrary, Lord Steyn told a group of lawyers and judges in Belfast, it was the “democratic and constitutional duty of judges to stand up where necessary for individuals against the Government”.

“If the judges of today teach a new generation of lawyers, and judges, that complaisance by the judiciary to the views of the legislature and the executive in policy areas is the best way forward, one of the pillars of our democracy will have been weakened,” he added in a lecture to the Judicial Studies Board.
“In troubled times there is an ever present danger of the seductive but misconceived judicial mindset that ‘after all, we are on the same side as the Government’.”
This, he said, was a “slippery slope which tends to sap the will of judges to face up to a government guilty of abuse of power”. Even democratic governments sometimes abused their powers and needed to face open and effective justice, he said.

Perhaps if this view had been prevalent at any time during the last 30 years Britain would not now be in the mess of the EU. It is all well and good Lord Steyn making this stand, and well past time some Judge did so, but oddly he has chosen to make it over the case of the detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

Judges all seem quite happy to ignore their “democratic and constitutional duty” as they stand by and watch the British Constitution being totally destroyed. What about the right of the rest of us, under the EU arrest warrant any one of us can be arrested in our own home and carted of to any other country to face charged for crimes which are not an offence in Britain. It would be nice to think that a law Lord might wish to point out in passing, that this is against the British Constitution, we owe allegiance from birth to the British Crown, and it in return owes us the right to be tried by a jury of our peers under our laws and protection in our own homes from a foreign power, thousands have died standing up for this this principal. None of us asked to become Citizens of the EU and therefore our Government have no right to force this citizenship on us against our will, and neither does the EU have the right to then take over powers of government and act as if we the people of Britain owe it our allegiance and must obey its law it is about time our Judges really did start to fulfil their “democratic and constitutional duty”.