All Hail President Rompoy and Foreign Minister Ashton

Rompoy and Ashton have no legitimacy. When they spend our money and speak on our behalf throughout the world there will be no way for us to hold them to account for what they do.

Queen Elizabeth is an unelected, unaccountable head of state, not just of the United Kingdom, but of dependencies and former colonies scattered across the globe; the remnants of a long gone empire.

The monarchy has a place in history, but no legitimacy in a modern democracy. All that could be said for the monarchy is that its powers have been effectively removed.

This is not the case for the unelected and unaccountable members of the House of Lords, including the bishops of the established church, who happily lie about where they live to collect massive ‘expenses’
 while passing laws to interfere ever more in our lives. This affront to democracy is an even greater anachronism than the monarchy.

Monarchy, aristocracy, state religion and a secretive, establishment judiciary all have the excuse of history and tradition to justify themselves. That is a weak excuse which freedom lovers should reject.

When it comes to the United Nations, which is a clique of the victorious powers of 1945, having no democratic legitimacy; the EU, which has been cobbled together in an authoritarian way, to prevent the re-emergence of German nationalism and then to consolidate the victory in the cold war we have anti democratic affronts growing up in our own times and we should be far more ashamed of that.

To cap it all, our daily lives are run by 800 quangos spending £35 billion pounds every year. Appointed by cronies, accountable to nobody, these people are the embodiment of the snooper, nanny state that steals our money and controls our lives.

Rompoy is a parasitic nonentity put in place by a cabal of Euro oligarchs. Give him the respect he deserves. At the same time help us get rid of the unrepresentative parasites on our doorstep who really control our lives.

Being Quango’ed into a Soviet State

 

The reason why western democracies have the highest standards of living in the world and why the Soviet Union and its satellites collapsed in economic ruin is that wealth creation is driven by private enterprise.

 

When the state owns and controls most of the economy the generation of new ideas and products withers. This causes public discontent because they are deprived of the things they need and which they can see being enjoyed in freer societies. The government which cannot face letting go of the control that it has grabbed from its own citizens can only respond by ever more interference in personal choice.

 

When the Labour Government came to power in 1997 about 33% to 35% of the British economy was owned and controlled by the government. That was an unacceptably high proportion and very damaging to the efficient development of wealth creating companies. The laws we have to control monopolies and to try to stop large corporations from completely dominating a market define an unacceptable monopoly as control of one third or more of a market. On this basis the British Government had a monopoly grip on our economy even in 1997. Since then the government stake in gross domestic product (GDP) has risen to nearly 45% and it is growing at an increasing rate.

 

According to Dominic Lawson in the Sunday Times there were almost 1,200 quango’s in 2001 costing £20 billion a year to run. By last year the cost of quango’s had risen to £34.5 billion a year. In just seven years the quango bill has risen by 75% at a time when inflation has only been around 2.5% and at the moment it is close to zero.

 

This government has taken the country into near bankruptcy. We have a national debt so huge that our grandchildren we be left with trying to pay it off and it is still increasing at a rate of £200 billion a year.

 

Desperate all the time to find more money to finance their lust for control, the government continually increases taxes. The recent increase in top rate income tax from 40% to 50% will actually produce almost nothing if not even reduce the tax take because high earners will move away, but an even more damaging consequence is that the decline of the wealth producing sector will accelerate. This is the road to collapse that killed off European communism twenty years ago.

 

We need to call a halt before we are all ground into destitution and subservience. A good start is to kill off the quangos.

Gordon Brown and Afghanistan

 

It is in matters where lives are daily being lost and placed at risk that we need the greatest political clarity about what we are doing and why.

 

The first thing I want to say is that the removal of the Taliban Government in 2001 was an entirely justified action. The Taliban were hosting Al Quaeda and facilitating their campaign of international terror which had culminated at that time in the murder of 3,000 people in the 9/11 attacks.

 

The criminal Taliban government with all of its disgusting oppression of women, ghastly executions and maimings had come about because of repeated international interference by world powers. There was particular responsibility by the USA and Pakistan and the previous involvement of Russia, but many nations also had a hand in it. None of this excuses or justifies the illegitimate Taliban government and its crimes.

 

Al Quaeda is a criminal organisation responsible for mass murder and terrorism. The claims of Bin Laden and his associates for religious justification are of no worth and provide no justification for their crimes. Mafia claims for the moral authority of their ‘family’ values or Somali pirates attempted justifications of ‘policing’ fishing waters in response to loss of livelihood to international fishing are in a similar league to the propaganda of Islamists. Al Quaeda is organised crime like the Mafia or piracy. It is entirely justified to bring these organised criminals to justice and to take measures to destroy their organisations. By the very nature of the threat, these actions have to be international.

 

Dealing with very dangerous crime originating in another country requires military action, but it is very different from a war. As soon as the language of a ‘war on terrorism’ was invoked by George W Bush the necessary action against Al Quaeda and its supporters was misdirected. In his speech today Gordon Brown has shown that he has not yet managed to disentangle the issues in his mind and his government will continue to fail to set clear objectives in Afghanistan which will result in the unnecessary loss of British and Afghan lives for no purpose.

 

The Karzai Government is deeply corrupt and its pretensions to democracy have been exposed as completely fraudulent. These are matters which should be of great concern to the Afghan people, but they are none of our business. It is not possible to impose functioning political systems or moral values with armies and weapons.

 

It is not our business to stop Afghan farmers growing poppies. I will not go into the stupidity of British drug laws, but heroin use in this country cannot be controlled by trying to reduce production in Afghanistan. The demand for drugs in Britain is a British issue which can only be addressed in Britain.

 

Afghanistan is a multi ethnic place divided by different language, tribal and religious affiliations. For well over a century it has not been effectively ruled by a single government from the centre and there is no likelihood that it will be in the foreseeable future. Whether this problem is resolved by allowing the country to separate into its regional groupings or to form some sort of federal or con-federal relationship is a matter for the Afghan people to work out without outside interference.

 

The immediate problem is obvious. Invading powers have destroyed the military, policing and infrastructure of the country. With immediate withdrawal of the western powers, Karzai’s corrupt state apparatus would probably fall quickly to insurgents. So what is the solution?

 

The coalition forces should immediately stop all non-military activity such as school and road building or the administration of elections. The Karzai government must be told to establish its legitimacy by creating an administration that has public support. That can only be done by negotiating with the people who hold power and influence throughout the country. Some of the people they will have to talk to will be armed and may have been fighting to remove foreign influence from the country. This is not the same as wishing to attack the USA or Britain or having delusions about setting up a worldwide Islamist caliphate.

 

The coalition military should be taken of the streets and withdrawn to defensible bases pending withdrawal. Training of Afghan police and army should be rapidly phased out. If the Afghan government want training for their state forces (and they most certainly need it) such training should be provided by commercial contractors. There are plenty of private companies in the United States, Britain, Russia and elsewhere which are mainly made up of ex military personnel and they would compete for this business.

 

The pursuit of criminals like Bin Laden, Mullah Omar and their associates must continue as must the destruction of terrorist training camps and elimination of the criminal infrastructure. This does not require mass troops on the ground. It can and should be done by increased intelligence work, special forces operations and precision attacks by missiles and pilotless drones on firmly identified terrorist targets.

 

Brown has dithered on most things as Prime Minister and Britain has been too eager to follow bad leads from America. Now is the time for clarity and decisiveness. Recognise that it is a mistake to try to export democracy or western attitudes to Afghanistan and pull out the ground troops rapidly. Re-state our determination to prevent terrorist murder on British streets by eliminating criminal organisations whether they are based in this country or elsewhere.

Sixteen year olds should be able to vote in elections

We have made long, slow progress towards universal franchise. At each stage there has been resistance. It was said that those who did not own land did not have the responsibility to be able to vote sensibly in elections. Then it was women who could not be trusted to take part in the democratic process. The last stage was that sufficient maturity to cast a vote was conisdered to be eighteen rather than twenty one.

Well, sixteen year olds are considered mature enough to no longer be forced to attend school. They can legally have sex, buy cigarettes and go off to work to pay taxes. As far as I am concerned, that is enough responsibility and assumption of maturity for it to be accompanied by an entitlement to vote for the people who are making these rules. I don’t think this should be a rigid limit for all time. As we have seen, the franchise has been continually extended as democracy has itself matured. We have different layers of government and it seems reasonable that young people should be introduced to the democratic process by having entitlement to vote for town or parish councils at fourteen years of age, for example, and for district and county council elections at fifteen.

 A few countries have extended the franchise to sixteen year olds. It is time for the UK to follow.

Electoral Reform – Proportional Representation

Government should be elected by proportional representation

The nature of government is that it has coercive power. Ultimately the only thing that distinguishes a government from a private security organisation, or even a gang of armed robbers, is that it has legitimacy. Governments claim legitimacy from a whole range of different sources. Historically they tended to say that they had been appointed by God or that they had the approval of God. This is the divine right of kings and all its similar forms throughout the world. Alternatively the government may accept that it achieved power by force of arms, but that battle is a legitimate way to government. Not surprisingly, I do not accept such justifications. Most people would accept that a government must have some degree of approval from the citizens that it governs.. This approval is expressed in a host of different ways including democratic elections by secret ballot which I believe to be the appropriate form of representative government at this stage in the twenty first century.

Changing the system of democratic election will result in different outcomes in terms of the nature of the political parties and composition of government. With the first past the post (FTP) system in the UK, we have a small number of parties with a prospect of gaining members of parliament and usually a government of one party that represents fewer than half of the people who cast their votes in a general election. The main parties are very broad coalitions rather than being expressions of a specific ideology.

Where very proportional systems of election exist, there are usually many more political parties representing the different nuances of political opinion and there is a much greater likelihood that the government will be composed of a coalition of two or more of the parties. For a government to be able to genuinely claim legitimacy, it is my view that each representative in a parliament should be there by virtue of a majority of those voting and the government should be representative of more than fifty percent of the votes cast overall. Neither of these conditions appliies in our system so I do not accept that we have an adeguate democracy to give our government legitimacy. That means that I want to see constitutional change, but we should only be pursuing it by democratic and peaceful means.

Monarchy

With Prince Andrew expressing political views about British and American decisions to invade Iraq, and Prince Charles continuing to interfere with his views on everything from Islam and fake ‘complementary’ medicine  to organic farming and climate change it is time again to raise the issue of making Britain a proper democracy.

 It is time for the abolition of monarchy throughout the world. Hereditary political power is unacceptable. The British Queen can continue to call herself that if she wishes, but not be head of state or possessing any political rights or responsibilities other than those of any other citizen. The personal possessions of the royal family need to be separated from the national assets that are associated with the royal family.

Rowan Williams and sharia – Stupid, Wrong and Dangerous

 

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has today gone from just being a rather silly man to being a dangerous one.

 

In an interview with the BBC he says that it now seems inevitable that Britain should allow parts of Islamic Sharia law to be incorporated into British law if social cohesion is to be maintained.

 

He says that he is thinking in terms of certain aspects of financial and marriage law being given the support of legal enforcement rather than the hideous punishments of sharia being introduced to the UK.

 

Williams points out that orthodox Jews have their own courts that have some forms of recognition and he goes on to waffle about Catholic attitudes to abortion needing, and getting, some form of recognition by doctors being able to exempt themselves from involvement in abortion.

 

What he is doing is deliberately confusing the right of some professionals to decline to take part in certain practices on the basis of conscience with the introduction of a different system of law for part of the population. That is dangerous, divisive and, to me at least, abhorrent.

 

Muslims can already conduct their financial affairs according to their preferences. Basically that means avoiding deposits and loans involving interest. Provided they have entered a contract, they will have the protection of civil law to enforce those contracts. They do not need, and should not have, any special or different treatment in law.

 

When it comes to marriage, divorce, custody and other relationship matters, it is utterly unacceptable that sharia should have any recognition at all. All sharia courts are male dominated and the culture in Islamic societies generally is discriminatory. If there were a choice of using British law or sharia courts in Britain, muslim women would come under irresistible pressure to use the sharia system. As a result they would lose custody of their children when they should not, they would suffer disadvantage in divorce and in financial settlements.

 

Above all, the objection to incorporation of sharia into British law is that we live in a democracy. That requires that our chosen government is the only law making body in the country and the same law must apply to everybody without exception.

 

One of the failings of our system is that it includes bishops like Williams to have a place in the House of Lords where they are able to speak and vote on legislation despite being accountable to nobody. In this recent statement Williams has shown himself unfit to be a part of the legislature.

 

All religious involvement in our legislature should be abolished. We now need an end to the established church and we must have the abolition of blasphemy laws, tax exemption for religious schools and all other preferential treatment for religion by the state. People are entitled to hold religious beliefs, but the church has no entitlement to influence law, undermine democracy or to be subsidised by taxpayers.

Kenya Election Theft and Church Massacre

In one of the only African elections in which there appeared to be a genuine doubt about the outcome and a real possibility of development of political debate, Kibaki seems to have stolen a second term in the Presidency at the last minute.

After decades of graft, corruption and dictatorship Kibaki promised to serve for only one term as President and to eradicate corruption when he was first elected. After a very short time in office he emasculated the anti corruption work and then, surprise surprise, he went back on his promise to stand down after one term.

It would appear that the parliamentary elections have not been fixed and supporters of the opposition leader, Odinga, now have a majority.

Violence has already occurred. The worst example being the hideous church massacre which raised fears of a repeat of the ethnic massacres that claimed a million lives in Rwanda seventeen years ago.

To stop this and save democracy in Kenya, Kibaki and Odinga need to meet very quickly to work out a settlement of the government for the next five years that will defuse the violence and prevent the country descending into tribal conflict and economic collapse. Africa cannot afford another Zimbabwe or any return to past horrors of dictatorship and economic misery.

Now is the time for the African Union to act decisively in a way that it has repeatedly failed to do in the past. Kenya needs assistance to broker guaranteed solutions between the President and the opposition. Kibaki has reneged on past agreements. He must not be allowed to steal an election and get away with it now. Odinga does not have the support of the whole country and he must come to a secure arrangement with his opponents.

The church arsom murderers must be brought to justice.

The international community must apply pressure immediately to show that they will not stand idly by while Kenya is destabilised. Actions necessary are:

Stop all international aid

Do not allow Kibaki or his government to travel until a settlement is agreed.

Suspend Commonwealth membership

Advise people not to travel to Kenya unless they really have to, and to avoid conflict areas at all costs.

Discourage all tourism to, and trade with, Kenya until an agreed election outcome is established, a stable government is in place and the rule of law prevails.