Alfred the Ordinary’s blog

It can only get worse.

nobody@vox.com(Alfred the Ordinary) — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 21:51:22 +0100

While Labour have handed over sovereignty to the EU, they have also destroyed some of the basic fabric of the UK society. Some might feel sympathy for Labour when Councillor George Ryan failed to turn up for the Glasgow East candidate selection process. However, I feel none. The damage done by them is not yet understood by many people but will be evident, all too soon. Can things get much worse for Labour? I feel that Raedwald put it so well: (Cartoon from Saxon Times)

Doomed27

As a one-nation conservative I have never had difficulty in subscribing to Beveridge's crusade against the great Evils of want, disease, idleness, ignorance and squalor. Beveridge offered a ladder to climb out; Labour have pulled up the ladder and imagine throwing the nation's cash into the hole is policy enough. Beveridge's crusade has long been abandoned by Labour. Fraser Nelson writing in the Speccy writes of an East Glasgow he knows well; one of Labour's welfare ghettoes where half the working age population are welfare slaves, and which has an average life expectancy of 54 years, below that of Gambia, Ghana, Pyongyang, Gaza, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Sudan.

Labour's destructive welfarism has not only caused a poverty from which our fathers and grandfathers fought to liberate our people, it has robbed them of the drive and hunger for self-improvement, stalled social mobility and locked generations into painful welfare slavery. A curse on Brown and on Labour and all its dullard minions.

Not only in East Glasgow either; in the East End of London where multi-drug resistant TB, bedbugs, outrageous levels of infant mortality and a squalor born of overcrowding and ignorance thrive, our people are also dying early and living lives of desperate hopelessness.

Labour's Chardonnay socialists have not only abandoned the most disadvantaged in the realm, they have used all the mendacities of the State to hide them from shameful view. Whilst Brown stands at the dispatch box and mechanically recites yet another ream of tractor production statistics or launches yet another five year economic plan people are living in squalor and dying in poverty in dark corners.

I have no doubt that if Beveridge rose from his grave today he would dismiss Brown and his Labour fools with scorn and anger.

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Your MEPs at work ?

nobody@vox.com(Alfred the Ordinary) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 08:58:08 +0100

The stories of corruption and cover up from the European Parliament are so many and regular that they would be a joke if the situation wasn't so serious. However, I have some sympathy with these MEPs. They have no real power in the EU as all the important decisions and legislation are made elsewhere with almost no chance for the MEPs to have any impact so the temptation to take your money and scarper, is high.

Essential viewing from the European parliament

MEPs collecting allowance at 7AM then going on weekend

(Thanks to EURef for this one)

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The Chasm is Huge and growing

nobody@vox.com(Alfred the Ordinary) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 11:13:39 +0100

Party-finance

Feeling poor, feeling the pinch? Well so are the political parties. What are you doing to help your finances? Tightening your belts? Not so for the political parties. The answer for them is to dip deeper into you pockets; for you to give them an additional £20-£25m a year, through your taxes, to help them overcome their problems. Nice being government isn't it! Others pay.

The gulf between the Westminster Elite and the people grows bigger by the day as they become more and more detached from the real world. As a result contributions to the 3 main political parties have fallen and they have considerable debts. Although the Westminster Government recognises the gulf between it and the people, it seems unable to understand the reasons for it, as it:

Gives away yet more power to the unelected, undemocratic and unaccountable Brussels Government.
Votes itself more money in the way of salaries and unaccountable allowances.
Votes itself pensions that most of the population can only dream of.
Fails to listen.
Initiates legislation, that is generally unpopular and always with the unexpected consequences associated with poorly thought through and poorly debated legislation.

It does acknowledge one thing though, as it states in its June 2008 White Paper Party ﬁnance and expenditure in the United Kingdom - The Government’s proposals

Many factors contribute to sustaining the legitimacy which, like any other, British parliamentary democracy must enjoy in the hearts and minds of the British people if it is to work properly. The most important, however, is the opportunity which citizens have to choose their government through free elections. (p7) ... Elections should be contests of ideas and visions but recently they have become overshadowed by a chase to raise vast sums of money.

The Westminster government is proposing a cap on donations of £50,000 or less.

The £50,000 figure is higher than the level of a cap imposed by other countries and a significant sum in the eyes of most people. To this extent, it arguably falls short of the type of radical step needed to help reconnect people with the political process – which is the ultimate aim of the proposals contained in this White Paper.

(Page 10) Fundamental constitutional change is best achieved where there is a broad consensus across the political spectrum and widespread support from the public.

This White Paper is the result of the British Prime Minister asking Sir Hayden Phillips to conduct a review of political party funding. Its terms of reference included:

“To conduct a review of the funding of political parties. In particular to: examine the case for state funding of political parties including whether it should be enhanced in return for a cap on the size of donations. (p14)

It is interesting to note that the parties are already in considerable debt, so we can probably read between the lines and rewrite those terms as:

to find a way to finance the political parties from the tax payer direct, now that the tax payer is disillusioned with the main political parties shown by the falling number of members of those parties.

So the answer is, of course, (Page 57)

4.23 Sir Hayden Phillips recommended that public funding of political parties should be increased to make up for the effect of a donation gap. The public funding schemes he proposed, based on a donations cap of £50,000, would have an overall cost of around £20-£25m per year.

Staggered? Incredulous? You should be.

There is much more in this White Paper that bothers me. It can be downloaded at Party ﬁnance and expenditure in the United Kingdom - The Government’s proposals

Raedwald has commented upon some other aspects of concern, at The lies at the heart of Straw's white paper

Oh, and while I remember, there is a EU dimension to this, in that there are EU proposals to fund political parties through taxes, so this falls neatly into line with our masters' wishes in Brussels. (Thanks to ATW for the 'Heads Up')

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42 days? How about 240 days

nobody@vox.com(Alfred the Ordinary) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 22:50:29 +0100

Foxyknoxy-200

In February, The Sunday Times Magazine highlighted the case of Amanda Fox, who has been held without charge in an Italian prison. I blogged about the case then and about others held for lengthy periods, in the EU, without charge. Whether she is innocent or guilty, I have no idea, that is for proper courts to decide, but that is not the point.

It was good to see that The Times updated the story, today, at TimesOnline

Prosecutors in Perugia have closed their eight month investigation into the murder, and a judge must decide by mid-July whether to press charges.

..and we are worried by 42 days detention without charge? While we ponder over 42 days, I see the Westminster Government slowly move us away from Common Law to the Civil Law of the E.U. When that has happened we'll look back on 42 days detention as a time of relative freedom.

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In Politics, convenience rules, OK?

nobody@vox.com(Alfred the Ordinary) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:37:31 +0100

Constitution

Sweden decides that no Referendum is required on The Lisbon Treaty because it is

“essentially equivalent to the Constitution”.

They didn't have a referendum on the Constitution so therefore don't need one on the Treaty. Interesting. But that point of view is just soooo inconvenient in Britain, and in most of the rest of Europe. That's politics for you.

Read Open Europe's post on the issue

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The Irish will have to change their minds or be sat on

nobody@vox.com(Alfred the Ordinary) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 17:33:46 +0100

It seems to take an American to clarify the situation with the Irish 'No' vote. Under the title "Irish Lessons on Democracy", Sat. Jun 21, 2008, Clive Crook of 'National Journal Magazine', writes about the Lisbon Treaty. The following is an extract from that piece, which is well worth a read.

What part of No...?

Now, you may be wondering what this controversial treaty actually says. Many Irish voters were curious about that too. Pollsters found that "Do not understand the treaty" was the most-cited reason for voting no. Earlier, when governments were pressing the previous version of the treaty on their citizens--and calling it a constitution--every Irish citizen was given a copy to read. This time, that would have been impossible. The point of the new version was to disguise under layers of complication the fact that it was much the same as the old version--the one that voters in France and the Netherlands had already vetoed. So the new treaty took the form of hundreds of pages of amendments to thousands of pages of earlier treaties. It was designed to be unintelligible. In European constitutional affairs, transparency has its limits.
In simple terms, despite the deliberate opacity, Europe's governments mainly want to make the Union more workable. Now that the E.U. has 27 members, decision-making rules designed for a much smaller club need to be streamlined. But what does "streamlined" mean in practice? It has to mean one of two things--either narrowing the Union's areas of competence, so that Brussels intrudes less on national governments, or else moving even further away from the E.U.'s first core principle, that any single country can block a decision. (The treaty ratification process is itself a case in point: It demonstrates the paralysis that the national veto induces in an ever-enlarging Union.)
The problem is, the further the E.U. moves away from its earlier pri--nciple of unanimous approval, the less its member states are self-governing nations. And the citizens of those nations seem weirdly attached to the idea that they live in self-governing democracies, with governments accountable directly to them.
This is the nub of the issue. In Europe (and not just in Europe) there is indeed a balance to be struck between diminished national sovereignty and enhanced collective policy-making. The purpose of the Union is to shift this balance a long way, a feat of constitutional re-engineering whether it is acknowledged as such or not. The proposed rebalancing is not necessarily wrong--but it needs to be done in a way that commands the confidence and consent of Europe's citizens, with the result enshrined in a readable constitution. The part about confidence and consent is what gives Europe's political elite such trouble.
Five years ago, for a brief moment, a constitution with proper consensual foundations was the aim. There was a "constitutional convention." References to Philadelphia underlined the sense that this was a historic moment. People talked about democracy and about the E.U.'s "democratic deficit." The fact that most of Europe's citizens seemed to want the balance of national sovereignty and collective effectiveness pushed back--toward a less ambitious E.U., with some restoration of eroded national sovereignty--never came up.
In fact, the convention produced a constitutional treaty that pushed firmly the other way, by increasing the number of laws that could be passed by majority vote of E.U. members. Leaders remained committed to a vision that broadened the Union to new members, and deepened it with new areas of policy jurisdiction and new surrenders of national sovereignty.
As often in the history of the European Union, governments were thus defying public opinion rather than expressing it or even attempting to guide it. When France and the Netherlands rejected the treaty, the constitutional architects should have started over. Instead, they paused and came back with the same proposal, lightly disguised. That new treaty is what Ireland, of all countries, has now rejected. Will this result force governments to think agai n? Sadly, no. It will cause delay and confusion, as before--as ever--but no new intellectual exertion. A German minister spoke for the rest when he said, "A few million Irish cannot decide on behalf of 495 million Europeans."
There you have it: the constitutional sensibility of the European Union. Never mind that the treaty ratification rules require unanimous approval by member states. The Irish will have to change their minds or be sat on. If that response was good enough for the French and the Dutch, it is good enough for them. And in the future--please!--no more votes.

Thanks to EURef for the 'Heads Up' and The Saxon Times for the Cartoon

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Chipping away at Liberties, one by one

nobody@vox.com(Alfred the Ordinary) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 07:46:02 +0100

The sun sets on Individual Rights

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom: it is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves"

William Pitt 1783 - quoted in The Week.

First the 42 day Detention and now, Anonymous Evidence. From The Times June 21st, 2008

The government is examining ways to allow anonymous evidence in court cases, in the wake of this week's Law Lords ruling that defendants have a right to know who is in the witness box.
Justice Secretary Jack Straw said he wanted to tackle the issue "urgently" to appease the high level of fear felt by witnesses.

On the face of it, it sounds sensible to protect witnesses from nasty thugs, but like every law that this government proposes, the wider implications have not been considered. How long will it be before such a law is abused by the police and abused by the Government?

How long before you find yourself in the dock accused of something you know you didn't do, by witnesses about whom you know nothing? If history is a good guide, not long.

Our liberties are being chipped away slowly almost imperceptibly, one by one, and few are noticing or caring. How long before we have dumped our historic Common Law, with all its safeguards for the individual and have adopted European Civil Law, where you are guilty until proven innocent, where you can be thrown in jail for 2 years awaiting trial, and then just released with no apology and no right of redress? This is the road that we are being taken down by our current government. My hope is that the House of Lords will have more sense and will reject this small incremental step.

From The Freedom Association:

From May 1997 to the end of 2003, Tony Blair’s Government created no fewer than 366 new criminal offences. Ranging from the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 to the Crime (International Co-operation) Act 2003 the Government has gone on a drunken binge of excessive and unnecessary legislation which has turned Britain into something approaching a police state.
Christopher Gill argues in the foreword [to: The Freedom Audit, (32 pages, £3.00 inc p&p) published by The Freedom Association] that “the aggregation of all of the ever increasing powers that the state is taking over us adds up to something rather more sinister than is apparent from simply looking at each part of the jigsaw separately”.

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Africa appoints its "Democracy Advisor to the EU"

nobody@vox.com(Alfred the Ordinary) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 09:57:34 +0100

Newsflash from The Amazing Toad – reproduced in full. (Cartoon from The Saxon Times)

Mugabe

In his first statement after his appointment, the African Congress's "Democracy Envoy", Mr. Robert Mugabe, rails against the flimsy facade of democracy within the EU;

"Well, whut can ah seh abouht de recent develope-ments in de Eee Yoo? Ah am verry concerned abouht de stetments ah am heerin' concerning de ignorin' uf the will uf th' I-reesh peepul an' dat uf de rest uf der Eee Yoo. Dey, toogever wid de Frenge an' de Duts are de onlee pepul out uf narely 480 million who wuz allowed to vote for dis fuhndamental chenge in de way dey are guvund. Dis is quite deesgraceful. First de Frenge an' de Duts are treeted wid contempt, an' now it is de I-reesh who are cast aside.

Ahm afred t' report that dis ees nod de furst tahm thut thees hus happened. De Eee Yoo hes a terreeble record in dis respec'. Ah reamemba wen de Danish peepul sed dey did not weesh to agree to the Massed-tricked treety. Dey wuz called donkeys an' med to vot again, until de Eee Yoo got eets de-sired result. Den de voting stopped.

De I-reesh also were med t' feel like donkeys efter de Neece Treety and med to vot again, until de Eee Yoo got eets de-sired result. Den de voting stopped.

But what most Africans cannot understend, is how most uf de peepul uf de Eee Yoo get no vot at ahl in dis verry import-tant matter.

On top of ahl uf dis, the functionin' uf de whole place in Brussels is a compleet farce, in de democratic terms. De electid membas of parly-ament is just a load uf emptee suits which jus' nod dare heads like de Churchill Insurans doggy, while un-elected be-urocrats mek ahl de reel desissions abouht laws an' udder things which dictate de lives uf ahl the poor peepul uf de Eee Yoo.

I tink ah hev much work t' do here. Ah will not rest unteel ah hev raised de standards uv democracy in de Eee Yoo to present African levels.

An' ken yoo imajine ma surprise dis year, wen de cheeky divils seh "we wants to send election moni-tors" to mah contree, Zimbabwe?? Eet almost beggars de believe!"

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The clash of Common law and Civil law

nobody@vox.com(Alfred the Ordinary) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 14:43:27 +0100

8a-one-way.jpg

There is a fundamental difference between the UK and mainland Europe, a difference which we ignore at our peril. It is a difference in the system of law that radically effects the cultural outlook. The UK uses Common Law and most of Europe, Civil Law. In essence,

Civil Law holds that every man – and every nation – is guilty until he has proven himself to be innocent.
Common Law holds that every man – and every nation – is innocent until he has been proven guilty.

This is a large and a fundamental difference.

Civil Law in Europe

Napoleon Bonaparte was both a clever general and administrator. He knew that, to govern an Empire, a uniform system of law had to be in place so he took the existing, mainly ancient Roman Law, and put it into writing so that it could be understood by all. Common Law is a system of law based on court precedent. Laws and statutes are interpreted, and the ruling of one judge can influence the ruling of another judge. Napoleon's Law takes the civil law approach. This is based on scholarly research and the drafting of legal code is passed into law by the legislative branch. The judge's job is to interpret that intent rather than to follow judicial precedent.

In the European Union, the European Court of justice is an 'Instrument' of the European Union, so is required to interpret the law in accordance with the ways of the Union, whereas in Common Law countries, the judiciary is separated and independent from the Executive.

Common Law

The roots of common law, originally from ancient Greek and Trojan institutions, were brought to us by the earliest settlers, in 1100BC. Under these laws of Brutus every subject was as free as the King. According to “Law and Constitution”, The laws in force were cyfreithiau or "Common Rights". The usages of Britain could not be altered by any act of the Crown or National Convention. They were now considered as inalienable rights to which every Briton was born, and of which no human legislation could deprive him. One of these usages was:

"There are three things belonging to a man, from which no law can separate him - his wife, his children and the instruments of his calling, for no law can unman a man or uncall a calling".

In about 450BC they were recodified, some say by Molmutius, who is recorded as saying:

"Three things are indispensable to a true union of nations: sameness of laws, rights and language".

King Alfred, 9^th Century, codified the laws again. From KING ALFRED THE GREAT AND OUR COMMON LAW, Prof. Dr. F.N. Lee¹:

Alfred is perhaps best of all remembered for his famous Law Code. According to the celebrated former British Statesman and Historian Sir Winston Churchill,2 the roots of King Alfred's Book of Laws or Dooms (alias his "Deemings") came forth from the (as then already long-established) laws of Kent, Mercia and Wessex. All these attempted to blend the Mosaic Code with the Christian principles of Celto-Brythonic Law and old Germanic customs.

Churchill adds that the laws of Alfred, continually amplified by his successors, grew into that body of Customary Law which was administered [as the 'Common Law'] by the Shire and the Hundred Courts. Cf. Exodus 18:21f. That, under the name of the 'Laws of St. Edward' [the 'Confessor'] — as the A.D. 1042f last Anglo-Saxon Christian King of England — the Norman kings undertook to respect, after their 1066f invasion and conquest of England and hegemony over Britain. Out of that, with much dexterity by feudal lawyers, the Common Law emerged (which was re-confirmed by Magna Carta in 1215).

The power of Magna Carta was not held so much in its words as in its perception in the popular mind, throughout the centuries. It was this perception that was used to good effect against the many excesses of Parliament and Kings throught the subsequent centuries and lead to the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679 which greatly reduced the powers of the Crown. The 1688 parliament, concerned that a Catholic Monarch could return, strengthened the power of Magna Carta in the Bill of Rights

Magna Carta Article XXIX². NO Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the Land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right.

Thus the basic freedoms of the individual, and his right to quick justice by his peers, has become enshrined in Common Law.

The Insurmountable Problem

These two systems of justice haven't just molded cultures, they have fought for supremacy throughout history. One promoted liberty, freedom and rights and the other, oppression, slavery and submission to dictatorship. Only when these differences have been thoroughly understood, can we begin to understand why the two cultures of the UK and the EU with their fundamental differences just cannot join together unless one is subsumed by the other. Some are allowing that to happen without even realising what is going on and some are forcing this to happen.

To misquote a well known saying, “If you think that knowledge is expensive, try ignorance.” and ignorance is the route that the UK seems to be taking as it sleepwalks into a very alien system of law, an alien culture and an alien and foreign government, called the European Union.

1http://www.dr-fnlee.org/docs6/alfred/alfred.pdf

2From the UK Statute Law Database, http://www.statutelaw.gov.uk/content.aspx?activeTextDocId=1517519

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The Inglorious 12th June

nobody@vox.com(Alfred the Ordinary) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 19:43:15 +0100

"The best way to take control over a people and control them utterly is to take a little of their freedom at a time, to erode rights by a thousand tiny and almost imperceptible reductions. In this way the people will not see those rights and freedoms being removed until past the point at which these changes cannot be reversed” - Adolf Hitler

Saxon Times remembers "The Hitchhikers Guide"

John Major writes in The Times, 6^th June, under the title “42-day detention: the threat to our liberty (The Government's plan is simply part of an assault on our ancient rights)” questioning the government’s bill for 42 days of detention. When pre-charge detention in Canada is 24 hours; South Africa, Germany, New Zealand and America 48 hours; Russia 5 days; and Turkey 7½ days, he feels that there is no evidence and no justification for the extension towards 42 days.

There is no proof that an extended period of 42 days would have prevented past atrocities. There is no evidence it will prevent future atrocities. No example has yet been given of why the police need more than 28 days to frame a charge. This is a slippery slope. Assertions that it “might be useful” simply will not do. If we are to curtail the liberty of the individual, we must have more certainty than that. ...

The Government has been saying, in a catchy, misleading piece of spin: “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.” This is a demagogue's trick. We do have something to fear - the total loss of privacy to an intrusive state with authoritarian tendencies. This is not a United Kingdom that I recognise and Parliament should not accept it.

John Major makes a number of other points about the DNA database, ID cards, bugging, phone tapping etc that are all part of the slow erosion of our liberty. From his interview on the BBC’s Today Programme, 7^th June 2008.

Individually you can probably defend all of these things. It is the collective impact of them all that I think Parliament needs to review. We have strayed into a position where there is too much of this erosion of personal liberty of one form or another and Parliament as the guardian of our liberties needs to step back and look at this again.

But aren’t there safeguards in this bill? Yes, but laws can and will be used when the police see fit especially when the debate has been long forgotten. I’ve seen this happen many times. Supposed safeguards do not seem to last very long. As Ron of Cambridge comments

Sir John criticises the proposed Bill. As we have seen with the RIPA (Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act) there is a tendency for the extent of the powers to be widened. Terrorist law was used to prosecute a woman for reading names of the Iraq war dead; will innocent people now be held 42 days. Ron, Cambridge,

Don’t forget though, that in all this, as ever, there is a European Union dimension.

First. This is a slow drift towards the European Corpus Juris system, whereby you can be imprisoned for up to six months without charge and this can be extended.

Second, is it any coincidence that the 42 day bill is being debated at the same time as the referendum is being held on the Lisbon Treaty in Eire?

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