eurealist.co.uk

Address removed

7.7.2005.

To Andrew Dismore

Dear Sir,

Re Your “Crown Employment (Nationality) Bill.” 27th June 2005.

I write this letter on a day when despicable atrocities have occurred in our Capitol City of London. What was to have been a great day is now a day that will forever live in our memory, for our thoughts are with the wounded and bereaved.

It is also a day I came across yet another attempt by you sir, backed by certain other like-minded people that would undermine and try to destroy our British Constitution. How could you even begin to believe that it is safe to appoint foreign nationals in “places of trust” in either ‘civil or military’? Mistakes can and have been made with not vetting adequately British nationals for places of security and trust. I pray that that is not so in this case?

The Act of Settlement holds as true today as it did all those long years ago, perhaps even more so with these very recent tragic events. This, so I am told, is a sovereign Country, it has a Constitution that holds certain requirements and one of those requirements is to only allow in places of trust, people we hope can be faithful and true British citizens, as written in the Act of Settlement. This is a document that has stood the test of time since 1700 until 1997, and after today’s atrocities it has been brought home to people that an attack on London is an attack on the whole of the United Kingdom. It makes us conscious of the fact that we must fight harder to preserve that which we have taken for granted, yet are in danger of losing. I ask you to think hard about what your true intention is in putting your Bill forward, and having done that, I ask you now to withdraw it and fight to keep our Constitution as many before you have so sworn to do.

People from other Countries do not swear an Oath of Allegiance to our Queen and Country, in fact, as we have seen today there are people that would kill innocent civilians going about their every day duties, they would disrupt the transport system and stock market through their despicable cowardly actions, to ‘further their own cause’, what ever that may be.

You certainly would not have been able to alter one dot or comma of the EU Constitution had the British people have voted to ratify it, so why on earth should you make an attempt to alter your own Constitution?

Yours faithfully,

Anne Palmer.

Copy to all those named on the Bill, and also to The Lord Chancellor, The Leader of the Opposition in the House of Lords, The Prime Minister, and Leader of the Opposition. As this is about our Constitution, this is an open letter.

From Hero von Esens
The EU’s New Communications Approach: Tell the Same Old Story, But Better
Attached is a speech made by Danuta Hübner, EU Commissioner for Regional Policy, to the Committe of the Regions on behalf of ailing Communications Commissioner Margot Wallström.

It it is interesting not so much for its specific proposals, which are characteristically woolly, as for the way it reveals underlying strategies and assumptions within the EU’s apparat. One of these strategies is the “divide and rule” approach of setting regional representatives against national governments. The speech refers to “the blame game” - whereby national governments take the credit for successful EU policies, whilst blaming the EU for any failures. The Commissioner appeals to the regional representatives to resist their governments in this matter.

Aside from this, the speech implicitly assumes that the failure of the Dutch and French constutional votes was due to the failings not of the constitutional document itself, but to the way it was communicated to voters. A better, “more professional” communications platform, it is implied, will overcome citizens’ concerns (and, it is imlied, citizens’ annoying inability to understand such complex matters). That assumption is worrying for more than its casual arrogance alone. For it shows that the EU - for all the noises it’s making about “wanting to listen” - has no serious intention of doing so with a view to coming up with a different approach, but only with a view to selling the existing approach in a more effective way!

Commissioner Wallström’s much-trumpeted “Plan D” (for democracy and dialogue), in other words, will exclude the give and take of actual democracy and dialogue, then. That is a great pity, as Commissioner Wallstöm had a golden opportunity to transform not merely the communication of overall policy, but the formulation of a new policy truly responsive to voters’ manifest concerns.

The speech is in pdf format: Here