"At the heart of this stinking affair is the erosion of democracy and the very great danger is that – as Hannan points out [see below]– that the "cure" will make the disease worse." Perhaps more importantly explaining that for all the money they earn and fiddle - and constantly increase the amounts they are 'due' - the UK parliament is actually doing less and less: The EU Ref post link to the Earl of Balfour's letter to The Daily Telegraph saying that "His letter demands the widest possible circulation" (as I am doing):"Never more has it been more important to focus on the essential point that the "expenses" controversy is a symptom not the cause of the problem."
Hannan pointed out that "Gordon Brown's proposals would make matters far worse": "The revelations of parliamentary abuses have left me feeling let down, disappointed and, in some cases, shocked. But I only started getting angry as I listened to the Prime Minister's asinine claim that the way to clean up Parliament was to subject it to an external quango." Nice to see that the spin in Brown's "class war" reference to the current system seeming like a Gentlemen's Club wasn't lost.Retired MPs say that the lot of a backbencher these days is very dull and powerless.
So much legislation comes from Brussels and bypasses Parliament altogether, and this has been exacerbated by the wholesale politicisation of the Civil Service since 1997.
No doubt, sadly, I must probably count myself - at least in part - among those so-called 'claquers' whom EU Referendum derides for helping to distract attention - not for a second assuming I am 'visible' enough to be either seen or counted - whose "love of personality politics" will...
"...wreck any chance of a serious debate, as they focus on the coming beauty contest. Thus does our democracy dribble down the pan, lost in the torrent of trivia and stupidity that drives what passes for political discourse."
4 comments:
One of the biggest concerns of the 'right' (and I use that term in its post Thatcher sense) is the fact that Labour have made such sweeping changes to the operation of Parliament that things will never be the same as they were back in the dim and distant days. The EU has ceased to be what anybody over 60 believed it would be back in the early 70's and we've signed up for virtually everything.
On one of the threads this week the vision of a BNP/UKIP swing was raised again - I posted a link to the UKIP website and their take on immigration, the EU and HRA - unfortuntaley everybody is so keen to air their definition of British ethnicity that the bigger issues seem to get missed.
I have to say when I look at some of the comments posted I wonder how 'our' David feels, I'm quite ashamed by the attitude of some people.
Indeed, I've often thought that, I think being here so long it must grate... along with Big Bad don, selector, misty mena and a few others.
By coinceidence I was reading Daniel Defoe's The True Born Englishman" recently, I should post it on the MB!
See HERE, starts on page 184 (that's only a scrolling down a little bit)
That's terrific - well it would be wouldn't it from DD!
The site of Defoes house at Dagenham, it's long gone, is one of the spookiest places in Essex. I can imagine that when he briefly lived there, before moving to Tilbury, it must have been something like the Kent marshes in David Lean's film version of Great Expectations when the wind got up off of the river.
I know there are many contenders this week but I'd like to nominate the Archbishop of Canterbury as this weeks useless human being. Which planet has been living on for the past thirty years, has he not noticed that in the list of people we least trust its usually Estate Agents, Journalists and Politicians at the bottom. How can you endanger democracy when one definition of democracy (i.e from the Greek meaning for popular Government) is consistently ignored?
My old boss used to say "people have no guilt until caught and then everybody admits they were wrong."
Wow...great adage from your boss, reminds me of a similar (but entirely different!1??) saying from C.S. Lewis: Everybody thinks forgiveness is a lovely idea...until they have somnething to forgive! (or wrods to that effect!)
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