Friday, June 15, 2012
Sock Puppetry 2
I have sent this letter out tom newspapers across the country. I tried to be emolient to journalists by not mentioning that they have been publishing these lies for years & to merely suggest that in future they should be clear when they are reporting an independent person and when they are reporting a state sock puppet. Tell me if you see it published - so far fakecharities have been among those things the British media simply do not mention, but it is always possible that will change.
##################
Sir,
Daily we see the press covering some "report from a charity" telling us we need more government in some fielf. The little understood way in which "charities" have been used by government bureaucracy, seeking to advertise (or "raise awareness" to put it in more politically correct way) how much they need more money.
Thus Christopher Snowden's report on how government has manufactured "sock puppet" charities is a welcome addition to the debate. It turns out that 27,000 charities across Britain get at least 75% of their money direct from government grants. In some cases such as ASH only 2% comes from independent sources. In cases where the charity only engages in charitable work this may well be acceptable but for "charities" whose main activity is political campaigning for bigger government, more regulation and more regulators, it clearly isn't. For example 9 of the top "environmental charities" get 70% of their income from EU grants, which they then use to promote more EY regulation. We don't know where the other 30% comes from - there are other governments than the EU and other ways of making payments than by direct open grants - but we do know that only 5% of all charity money given in Britain by people is given to "green" charities. We also know that the majority of money received across registered charities comes from the state.
At the very least, when reporting the opinions of organisations passing as charities, journalists should distinguish between those who are truly independent charities and those who are simply "sock puppets" for government bureaucracies. A Mr Snowden says "There is undoubtedly greater PR value in a charity calling for restrictions on liberty than would be the case if the message came directly from a bureaucrat or politician. The charity worker is assumed to be driven by altruism." Journalists should not be complicit in this deceit of the public with our own money.
It should be noted that government "sock puppetry" is not limited to nominal charities. I have elsewhere written on how Scottish Renewables, which appears to be a lobbying group for the windmill industry, has more government organisations on its membership list than windmill companies. Equally the BBC, officially an independent organisation bound by its Charter to "balance" is in fact a government funded organisation which has a clear agenda, indistinguishable from the state one on subjects such as alleged catastrophic warming, the EU and the need to liberate foreigners with bombers which unambiguously censors reporting of some parties and promotes others. For example the aforementioned subsidised greens get 10 times more coverage, all supportive, than UKIP with 4 times as many votes, does.
To quote Snowden again "This is not civil society; it is the muzzling of civil society."
Neil Craig
Ref - Snowden's report http://www.iea.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/files/Sock%20Puppets.pdf
Some quotes from it http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/government-fakecharities-sock-puppets.html
##################
Sir,
Daily we see the press covering some "report from a charity" telling us we need more government in some fielf. The little understood way in which "charities" have been used by government bureaucracy, seeking to advertise (or "raise awareness" to put it in more politically correct way) how much they need more money.
Thus Christopher Snowden's report on how government has manufactured "sock puppet" charities is a welcome addition to the debate. It turns out that 27,000 charities across Britain get at least 75% of their money direct from government grants. In some cases such as ASH only 2% comes from independent sources. In cases where the charity only engages in charitable work this may well be acceptable but for "charities" whose main activity is political campaigning for bigger government, more regulation and more regulators, it clearly isn't. For example 9 of the top "environmental charities" get 70% of their income from EU grants, which they then use to promote more EY regulation. We don't know where the other 30% comes from - there are other governments than the EU and other ways of making payments than by direct open grants - but we do know that only 5% of all charity money given in Britain by people is given to "green" charities. We also know that the majority of money received across registered charities comes from the state.
At the very least, when reporting the opinions of organisations passing as charities, journalists should distinguish between those who are truly independent charities and those who are simply "sock puppets" for government bureaucracies. A Mr Snowden says "There is undoubtedly greater PR value in a charity calling for restrictions on liberty than would be the case if the message came directly from a bureaucrat or politician. The charity worker is assumed to be driven by altruism." Journalists should not be complicit in this deceit of the public with our own money.
It should be noted that government "sock puppetry" is not limited to nominal charities. I have elsewhere written on how Scottish Renewables, which appears to be a lobbying group for the windmill industry, has more government organisations on its membership list than windmill companies. Equally the BBC, officially an independent organisation bound by its Charter to "balance" is in fact a government funded organisation which has a clear agenda, indistinguishable from the state one on subjects such as alleged catastrophic warming, the EU and the need to liberate foreigners with bombers which unambiguously censors reporting of some parties and promotes others. For example the aforementioned subsidised greens get 10 times more coverage, all supportive, than UKIP with 4 times as many votes, does.
To quote Snowden again "This is not civil society; it is the muzzling of civil society."
Neil Craig
Ref - Snowden's report http://www.iea.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/files/Sock%20Puppets.pdf
Some quotes from it http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/government-fakecharities-sock-puppets.html
Labels: BBC, Government E-Petition, Rise of modern fascism
Friday, December 16, 2011
More of My E-Petitions
22/9 - 4/10 £22.5 MILLION FOR A BARRACKS THE MoD INTEND TO SPEND £400 MILLION ON
The government propose spending £400 million on a new barracks in Scotland.
Keetwonen is the name of the biggest container city in the world. Living in a converted shipping container was a new concept in the Netherlands when launched, but the city of Amsterdam took the courageous step to contract to go and realise it. It turned out to be a big success among students in Amsterdam and it is now the second most popular student dormitory offered by the student housing corporation
These converted containers are publicly advertised at £2500 each housing 4 or 2 with a separate room.
With 3,000 units lets, very pessimistically, double it for shipping costs and getting it on site.
Lets add 50% for the related facilities.
£22.5 million as against £400 million
Ask ordinary soldiers if the Keetwonen facilities are as good as, or better than normal barracks. Let Parliament debate whether spending £400 million or £22.5 million is better.
===================
22/9, 28/10, 18/11 ORION NUCLEAR PULSE SPACE ROCKET - 10,000 tons to orbit, "Mars by 1965, Saturn by 1970"
The Orion nuclear pulse rocket was first proposed in the early 1960s. It would have been able to put 10,000 tons of material in orbit at a tiny fraction of the cost of the Shuttle. Their motto was "Mars by 1965, Saturn by 1970". British born Freeman Dyson, who worked on it as a young man and is now arguably the greatest living physicist has confirmed it would still work.
It was costed then at $100 million annually for 12 years. With inflation now £450 million annually. We now spend this on the NERC quango annually (one of several whose main function is "raising awareness" of "catastrophic global warming"). The ideal launch site is South Georgia or one of the South Sandwich Islands, British territory. This is because they are not only thousands of miles from inhabited land but the wind pattern, eastward round and round Antarctica, would mean radiation release anywhere inhabited would be less than 1,000th of natural background radiation.
===============================
22/9 m 26/9, 28/10, 18/11,21/11 ABOLISH THE HEALTH AND SAFETY BUREAUCRACY
Economist's Rule of Thumb is that government inspectors cost the industries inspected 20 times as much as they cost the government to employ them. Thus the 200,000 assorted "safety" inspectors destroy the productive work of 4 million workers or about 1/7th of the workforce. We all know of deaths that happened because the HandS people wouldn't allow rescues. Beyond that the strongest correlation with safety is national income. Each 1% increase in national wealth saves 21 lives per 100,000 people. So even in its own terms the HandS organisation kill about 1,000 times more people than they save.
Rejected because "E-petitions cannot be used to request action on issues that are outside the responsibility of the government. This includes:
party political material
commercial endorsements including the promotion of any product, service or publication
issues that are dealt with by devolved bodies, eg The Scottish Parliament
correspondence on personal issues "
I can only assume this is saying that the "Health and Safety" regulations are entirely "outside the responsibility of government" ie entirely the responsibility of the sovereihn power - the EU.
Rejected again - interestingly for the entirely different reason that petitions are rejected if they "contain offensive, joke or nonsense content
use language which may cause offence, is provocative or extreme in its views
use wording that is impossible to understand
include statements that amount to advertisements"
Rejecterd again for the same alleged reason.
"I must ask you to state which particular part of the epetition is a joke, incomprehensible, an advertisement or alternately why any reduction in government regulation is considered too erxtreme for the public to be allowed to consider it?"
=======================
29/9 28/10, 18/11 PARLIAMENT SHOULD DEBATE WHY BRITISH PUBLIC PROJECTS ROUTINELY COST MANY TIMES WHAT THEY COULD
The Norwegians have cut hundreds of kilometres of tunnels at 4m per km yet London's Crossrail, which not much more than 26 miles of tunnel is costed at 16 bn. Richard Rogers is on record as saying that of the #670 million the Millenium Dome cost only 46 million was spent building it. Our railways are far more expensive than continental ones because the infrastructure building and repair costs many times more. There are 2 possible explanations - incompetence and corruption. If there are more perhaps someone could say. Either way Parliament should be able to debate it and provide an answer. This is, historically, what they exist for.
=========================
28/10/11, 18/11 EU COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS
We call on Parliament to debate getting an internationally respected firm of independent accountants to calculate a cost benefit analysis of our membership of the EU. This has meny times been proposed but for unknown reasons been rejected by governments of all parties. By producing actual facts it would make the EU debate more reasoned and less argumentative, which all sides should wish.
Rejected becuase this petition covers it. Please sign it.
=================================
18/11, 29/11 CENSORSHIP OF E-PETITION SITE
Parliament should debate the rountine refusal of the e-petition site to process various petitions, without notification, or to reject them as being "party political material or commercial endorsements" when they neither endorse anything commercial nor are taken from any party material let alone referring to any party and arguably, as in the petition about the censorship of the acknowledged murder of 210 unarmed civilians at Dragodan by our police, do not even refer to anything any UK political party is even willing to discuss, let alone have a policy on.
==================================
21/11 INTRODUCE FAILURE STANDARDS FOR GOVERNMENT PROJECTS
This was proposed in the series Yes Minister in the 1970s. Parliament should at least get the opportunity to say why not ---------"He proposes that every council official responsible for a new project would have to list the criteria for failure before he's given the go ahead.
I didn't grasp the implications of this at first. But I've discussed it with Annie & she tells me it's what's called the "scientific method. I've never really come across that before since my early training was in sociology & economics. But "the scientific method" apparently means that you first establish a method of measuring the success or failure of an experiment. A proposal would have to say: "The scheme will be a failure if it takes longer than this" or "costs more than that" or "employs more staff than these" or "fails to meet those pre-set performance standards!.
Fantastic. We'll get going on this right away. he only thing is, I can't understand why this hasn't been done before."
Rejected because it "contain offensive, joke or nonsense content
use language which may cause offence, is provocative or extreme in its views
use wording that is impossible to understand
include statements that amount to advertisements "
===========================
22/11, 29/11 EQUIP OUR ARMED FORCES WITH THE TACTICAL HIGH ENERGY LASER
The Israelis and Americans developed this mobile laser system. In November 4, 2002, THEL shot down an incoming artillery shell. A mobile version has completed successful testing. During a test conducted on August 24, 2004 the system successfully shot down multiple mortar rounds. Anything that can do that can do the same against aircraft which are larger, far more expensive and slower moving. Armed forces with lots of aircraft have been understandably unwilling to make extensive use of a weapon that makes them obsolete, but obsolete they are. At "$3000 per kill" they are clearly far better value than the Eurofighter at $20 billion for 232 planes and available immediately off the shelf. Unfortunately British military procurers have a long record of paying billions for the development of weapon systems when cheaper alternatives are already available off the shelf. It is proposed Parliament should debate making the purchase of such weapons a top priority.
===========================
23/11 BBC's LICENCE FEE DEPENDS ON MAINTAINING THE CHARTER DUTY OF "BALANCE"
The BBC's Charter requires that their reporting show "balance". Parliament should debate whether the BBC' has breached their Charter. For example giving more coverage to deaths in the Gaza war than the 1,800 civilians killed by being dissected to have their body parts sold, by our policemen in Kosovo. Equally we have the BBC deciding that anybody doubting that we are experiencing catastrophic global warming should almost never be reported because they allege their is a consensus the other way, though the BBC have repeatedly refused to name a single scientist anywhere in the world, from the majority not employed by the state, who supports their alleged consensus. Closer to home we have the BBC giving 40 times more coverage to 1 political party, almost entirely supportive, per vote received than to another, almost entirely opposed. Parliament should therefore debate when the BBC broke their Charter and how they could best repay the licence fee vitiated by that breach.
==========================
WE COULD BE OUT OF RECESSION IN DAYS - LET PARLIAMENT DEBATE WHY THEY DON'T WANT TO
A 24 point proposal has been made to get out of recession within days and into fast growth - see here http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/2011/11/we-could-get-out-of-recession-in-days.html Not MP has been willing to say that even one of these proposals would not work
let alone all 24. Politicians of all parties seem resigned to at least 6 more years of recession and claim not to know of any way to achieve growth (while the rest of the world continues with 5% annual growth & China & India with 10%). They should, at least, be willing to debate such an option and say why they reject it. Since the programme involves cutting parasitic government spending, regualyion and controls of our lives and dropping the Luddism all parties are adicted to it is understandable they do not want to. However the public has a right to know if they have any non-self serving reasons to reject a growing economy.
=======================
Here are another batch of E-Petitions I have put on the government's site. This links to the full run of them. Please sign any you agree with. We don't get that many chances to have even a tiny influence on government.
The government propose spending £400 million on a new barracks in Scotland.
Keetwonen is the name of the biggest container city in the world. Living in a converted shipping container was a new concept in the Netherlands when launched, but the city of Amsterdam took the courageous step to contract to go and realise it. It turned out to be a big success among students in Amsterdam and it is now the second most popular student dormitory offered by the student housing corporation
These converted containers are publicly advertised at £2500 each housing 4 or 2 with a separate room.
With 3,000 units lets, very pessimistically, double it for shipping costs and getting it on site.
Lets add 50% for the related facilities.
£22.5 million as against £400 million
Ask ordinary soldiers if the Keetwonen facilities are as good as, or better than normal barracks. Let Parliament debate whether spending £400 million or £22.5 million is better.
===================
22/9, 28/10, 18/11 ORION NUCLEAR PULSE SPACE ROCKET - 10,000 tons to orbit, "Mars by 1965, Saturn by 1970"
The Orion nuclear pulse rocket was first proposed in the early 1960s. It would have been able to put 10,000 tons of material in orbit at a tiny fraction of the cost of the Shuttle. Their motto was "Mars by 1965, Saturn by 1970". British born Freeman Dyson, who worked on it as a young man and is now arguably the greatest living physicist has confirmed it would still work.
It was costed then at $100 million annually for 12 years. With inflation now £450 million annually. We now spend this on the NERC quango annually (one of several whose main function is "raising awareness" of "catastrophic global warming"). The ideal launch site is South Georgia or one of the South Sandwich Islands, British territory. This is because they are not only thousands of miles from inhabited land but the wind pattern, eastward round and round Antarctica, would mean radiation release anywhere inhabited would be less than 1,000th of natural background radiation.
===============================
22/9 m 26/9, 28/10, 18/11,21/11 ABOLISH THE HEALTH AND SAFETY BUREAUCRACY
Economist's Rule of Thumb is that government inspectors cost the industries inspected 20 times as much as they cost the government to employ them. Thus the 200,000 assorted "safety" inspectors destroy the productive work of 4 million workers or about 1/7th of the workforce. We all know of deaths that happened because the HandS people wouldn't allow rescues. Beyond that the strongest correlation with safety is national income. Each 1% increase in national wealth saves 21 lives per 100,000 people. So even in its own terms the HandS organisation kill about 1,000 times more people than they save.
Rejected because "E-petitions cannot be used to request action on issues that are outside the responsibility of the government. This includes:
party political material
commercial endorsements including the promotion of any product, service or publication
issues that are dealt with by devolved bodies, eg The Scottish Parliament
correspondence on personal issues "
I can only assume this is saying that the "Health and Safety" regulations are entirely "outside the responsibility of government" ie entirely the responsibility of the sovereihn power - the EU.
Rejected again - interestingly for the entirely different reason that petitions are rejected if they "contain offensive, joke or nonsense content
use language which may cause offence, is provocative or extreme in its views
use wording that is impossible to understand
include statements that amount to advertisements"
Rejecterd again for the same alleged reason.
"I must ask you to state which particular part of the epetition is a joke, incomprehensible, an advertisement or alternately why any reduction in government regulation is considered too erxtreme for the public to be allowed to consider it?"
=======================
29/9 28/10, 18/11 PARLIAMENT SHOULD DEBATE WHY BRITISH PUBLIC PROJECTS ROUTINELY COST MANY TIMES WHAT THEY COULD
The Norwegians have cut hundreds of kilometres of tunnels at 4m per km yet London's Crossrail, which not much more than 26 miles of tunnel is costed at 16 bn. Richard Rogers is on record as saying that of the #670 million the Millenium Dome cost only 46 million was spent building it. Our railways are far more expensive than continental ones because the infrastructure building and repair costs many times more. There are 2 possible explanations - incompetence and corruption. If there are more perhaps someone could say. Either way Parliament should be able to debate it and provide an answer. This is, historically, what they exist for.
=========================
28/10/11, 18/11 EU COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS
We call on Parliament to debate getting an internationally respected firm of independent accountants to calculate a cost benefit analysis of our membership of the EU. This has meny times been proposed but for unknown reasons been rejected by governments of all parties. By producing actual facts it would make the EU debate more reasoned and less argumentative, which all sides should wish.
Rejected becuase this petition covers it. Please sign it.
=================================
18/11, 29/11 CENSORSHIP OF E-PETITION SITE
Parliament should debate the rountine refusal of the e-petition site to process various petitions, without notification, or to reject them as being "party political material or commercial endorsements" when they neither endorse anything commercial nor are taken from any party material let alone referring to any party and arguably, as in the petition about the censorship of the acknowledged murder of 210 unarmed civilians at Dragodan by our police, do not even refer to anything any UK political party is even willing to discuss, let alone have a policy on.
==================================
21/11 INTRODUCE FAILURE STANDARDS FOR GOVERNMENT PROJECTS
This was proposed in the series Yes Minister in the 1970s. Parliament should at least get the opportunity to say why not ---------"He proposes that every council official responsible for a new project would have to list the criteria for failure before he's given the go ahead.
I didn't grasp the implications of this at first. But I've discussed it with Annie & she tells me it's what's called the "scientific method. I've never really come across that before since my early training was in sociology & economics. But "the scientific method" apparently means that you first establish a method of measuring the success or failure of an experiment. A proposal would have to say: "The scheme will be a failure if it takes longer than this" or "costs more than that" or "employs more staff than these" or "fails to meet those pre-set performance standards!.
Fantastic. We'll get going on this right away. he only thing is, I can't understand why this hasn't been done before."
Rejected because it "contain offensive, joke or nonsense content
use language which may cause offence, is provocative or extreme in its views
use wording that is impossible to understand
include statements that amount to advertisements "
===========================
22/11, 29/11 EQUIP OUR ARMED FORCES WITH THE TACTICAL HIGH ENERGY LASER
The Israelis and Americans developed this mobile laser system. In November 4, 2002, THEL shot down an incoming artillery shell. A mobile version has completed successful testing. During a test conducted on August 24, 2004 the system successfully shot down multiple mortar rounds. Anything that can do that can do the same against aircraft which are larger, far more expensive and slower moving. Armed forces with lots of aircraft have been understandably unwilling to make extensive use of a weapon that makes them obsolete, but obsolete they are. At "$3000 per kill" they are clearly far better value than the Eurofighter at $20 billion for 232 planes and available immediately off the shelf. Unfortunately British military procurers have a long record of paying billions for the development of weapon systems when cheaper alternatives are already available off the shelf. It is proposed Parliament should debate making the purchase of such weapons a top priority.
===========================
23/11 BBC's LICENCE FEE DEPENDS ON MAINTAINING THE CHARTER DUTY OF "BALANCE"
The BBC's Charter requires that their reporting show "balance". Parliament should debate whether the BBC' has breached their Charter. For example giving more coverage to deaths in the Gaza war than the 1,800 civilians killed by being dissected to have their body parts sold, by our policemen in Kosovo. Equally we have the BBC deciding that anybody doubting that we are experiencing catastrophic global warming should almost never be reported because they allege their is a consensus the other way, though the BBC have repeatedly refused to name a single scientist anywhere in the world, from the majority not employed by the state, who supports their alleged consensus. Closer to home we have the BBC giving 40 times more coverage to 1 political party, almost entirely supportive, per vote received than to another, almost entirely opposed. Parliament should therefore debate when the BBC broke their Charter and how they could best repay the licence fee vitiated by that breach.
==========================
WE COULD BE OUT OF RECESSION IN DAYS - LET PARLIAMENT DEBATE WHY THEY DON'T WANT TO
A 24 point proposal has been made to get out of recession within days and into fast growth - see here http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/2011/11/we-could-get-out-of-recession-in-days.html Not MP has been willing to say that even one of these proposals would not work
let alone all 24. Politicians of all parties seem resigned to at least 6 more years of recession and claim not to know of any way to achieve growth (while the rest of the world continues with 5% annual growth & China & India with 10%). They should, at least, be willing to debate such an option and say why they reject it. Since the programme involves cutting parasitic government spending, regualyion and controls of our lives and dropping the Luddism all parties are adicted to it is understandable they do not want to. However the public has a right to know if they have any non-self serving reasons to reject a growing economy.
=======================
Here are another batch of E-Petitions I have put on the government's site. This links to the full run of them. Please sign any you agree with. We don't get that many chances to have even a tiny influence on government.
Labels: British politics, Government E-Petition, space
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
EU Referendum - 111 MPs Who Show Some Honesty
For 111
Against 483
Total MPs 650
Abstained/didn't vote/2 tellers each side 56
Apparently 81 of the 111 who voted for allowing us a referendum were Conservatives. Add in most of those not voting and we get to 110-120. There are 307 Conservative MPs.\Of these 80-100 will be on the government payroll - ministers, PPS's and a few others who could not defy the whip and remain in government (2 PPS's did resign over it). So probably more than half of their backbenchers defied the government whip to some extent.
For anybody who looks at the overall vote and thinks Cameron won a comparison with the Norway debate in 1940, which directly caused the fall of Prime Minister Chamberlain and his replacement by Churchill is instructive.
The government won it too, though by a much smaller majority because the Opposition parties opposed. However "39 Government supporters voted with the Opposition, and some others abstained" - a far smaller total than last night.
They have saved any claim the Conservative party may have to some integrity. Cameron gave us a "cast iron pledge" of a referendum and can have no personal integrity. no promise from him as leader can ever again be trusted (though to be fair he has already proven that).
The Labour party and SNP were silent on the subject during the last election but made absolute Manifesto Promises (a pledge in the manifesto being the single most solemn promise any party can make) of an EU referendum in the 2007 election and immediately cynically broke it. Clearly no equal or lesser promise by any of them can ever be assumed truthful.
The SNP made the same promise and could have put it through the Scottish Parliament had they wished, being the government, but decided to break their word instead. To be fair any such referendum would have been limited to Scotland. Last night they decided to reverse their previous promise and vote against an independence referendum. What twisty turny things they are.
The Pseudoliberals made the referendum promise in their 2007 Manifesto and immediately cynically broke it along with Labour. They attempted to regain a shred of integrity at the time by promising a referendum on membership later.This promise was repeated in their Manifesto in 2010 and indeed remained on their website until a few days ago. Having made that absolute promise, so many times, yesterday they marched into the No lobby in Parliament. I do not think it can honestly be denied that this must represent the very highest standard of honesty to which any loyal "Lib Dem" ever aspires and that there are therefore no circumstances whatsoever under which any member of the party can ever be treated as in any way honest.
I don't know of any case where Vladimir Putin lied to his electorate so thoroughly or indeed so often as all 3 parties in Britain have to their's. In which case it is impossible to honestly say Russia is not clearly more democratic than Britain. A electoral system in which in which you are disenfranchised if you note for any but the 2 or 3 officially approved parties and there are no circumstances under which the electorate can expect any of them to do as they have promised or to be in any way honest barely counts as even a sham democracy. it is that blatant.
Democracy needs leaders every bit as much as dictatorship. The difference is that in a democracy, though the leader has the right, indeed duty, to say what he believes is the best policy, he must always remember that in the end the people's will is sovereign. Remember that and he will keep public trust even when the public disagree with him. The best argument against rule by referendum is that we get to choose our leaders and should trust them. When we know they will repeatedly break the promises they make to get elected we cannot choose knowledgeably or give them trust.
Naturally our media did their duty, as duty is defined when fascists control the media.. The BBC's coverage has been all about rebroadcasting Cameron's speech (and saying he "feels no bitterness" and none of the others; calling what is clearly the Conservative majority "splitters"; calling it a massive victory purely on the votes; declining to mention the promises we were made; and refusing to actually mention the issues. C4 interviewed one of the Yes voters with the "have you stopped beating your wife" type question "Do you just want to leave Europe". The proper answer to that is "I know of nobody who wants to run a saw under Britain and ship it off into the middle of the Atlantic. Europe is a continent and culture of which we are inextricably part. The EU is not Europe as your question is so dishonestly intended to pretend. Now if you will ask an honest question I will tell you exactly why it is in our interests and those of European culture, that we not be consumed in bureuacractic, Luddite, incompetently run EU superstate" but I can see why he didn't and that such an answer wouldn't get broadcast.
--------------------------------
An idea for UKIP and indeed the SNP if they genuinely favour independence. Since we joined every Westminster government has continuously refused to do an accountancy assessment of the costs and benefits of membership. I believe it to be about £100 bn annually (combination of regulatory cost and the money we hand over), but would be interested in evidence that |I am wrong. It is well within the competence of Holyrood to decide to do such an assessment for Scotland, 8% of Britain by population.
Against 483
Total MPs 650
Abstained/didn't vote/2 tellers each side 56
Apparently 81 of the 111 who voted for allowing us a referendum were Conservatives. Add in most of those not voting and we get to 110-120. There are 307 Conservative MPs.\Of these 80-100 will be on the government payroll - ministers, PPS's and a few others who could not defy the whip and remain in government (2 PPS's did resign over it). So probably more than half of their backbenchers defied the government whip to some extent.
For anybody who looks at the overall vote and thinks Cameron won a comparison with the Norway debate in 1940, which directly caused the fall of Prime Minister Chamberlain and his replacement by Churchill is instructive.
The government won it too, though by a much smaller majority because the Opposition parties opposed. However "39 Government supporters voted with the Opposition, and some others abstained" - a far smaller total than last night.
They have saved any claim the Conservative party may have to some integrity. Cameron gave us a "cast iron pledge" of a referendum and can have no personal integrity. no promise from him as leader can ever again be trusted (though to be fair he has already proven that).
The Labour party and SNP were silent on the subject during the last election but made absolute Manifesto Promises (a pledge in the manifesto being the single most solemn promise any party can make) of an EU referendum in the 2007 election and immediately cynically broke it. Clearly no equal or lesser promise by any of them can ever be assumed truthful.
The SNP made the same promise and could have put it through the Scottish Parliament had they wished, being the government, but decided to break their word instead. To be fair any such referendum would have been limited to Scotland. Last night they decided to reverse their previous promise and vote against an independence referendum. What twisty turny things they are.
The Pseudoliberals made the referendum promise in their 2007 Manifesto and immediately cynically broke it along with Labour. They attempted to regain a shred of integrity at the time by promising a referendum on membership later.This promise was repeated in their Manifesto in 2010 and indeed remained on their website until a few days ago. Having made that absolute promise, so many times, yesterday they marched into the No lobby in Parliament. I do not think it can honestly be denied that this must represent the very highest standard of honesty to which any loyal "Lib Dem" ever aspires and that there are therefore no circumstances whatsoever under which any member of the party can ever be treated as in any way honest.
I don't know of any case where Vladimir Putin lied to his electorate so thoroughly or indeed so often as all 3 parties in Britain have to their's. In which case it is impossible to honestly say Russia is not clearly more democratic than Britain. A electoral system in which in which you are disenfranchised if you note for any but the 2 or 3 officially approved parties and there are no circumstances under which the electorate can expect any of them to do as they have promised or to be in any way honest barely counts as even a sham democracy. it is that blatant.
Democracy needs leaders every bit as much as dictatorship. The difference is that in a democracy, though the leader has the right, indeed duty, to say what he believes is the best policy, he must always remember that in the end the people's will is sovereign. Remember that and he will keep public trust even when the public disagree with him. The best argument against rule by referendum is that we get to choose our leaders and should trust them. When we know they will repeatedly break the promises they make to get elected we cannot choose knowledgeably or give them trust.
Naturally our media did their duty, as duty is defined when fascists control the media.. The BBC's coverage has been all about rebroadcasting Cameron's speech (and saying he "feels no bitterness" and none of the others; calling what is clearly the Conservative majority "splitters"; calling it a massive victory purely on the votes; declining to mention the promises we were made; and refusing to actually mention the issues. C4 interviewed one of the Yes voters with the "have you stopped beating your wife" type question "Do you just want to leave Europe". The proper answer to that is "I know of nobody who wants to run a saw under Britain and ship it off into the middle of the Atlantic. Europe is a continent and culture of which we are inextricably part. The EU is not Europe as your question is so dishonestly intended to pretend. Now if you will ask an honest question I will tell you exactly why it is in our interests and those of European culture, that we not be consumed in bureuacractic, Luddite, incompetently run EU superstate" but I can see why he didn't and that such an answer wouldn't get broadcast.
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An idea for UKIP and indeed the SNP if they genuinely favour independence. Since we joined every Westminster government has continuously refused to do an accountancy assessment of the costs and benefits of membership. I believe it to be about £100 bn annually (combination of regulatory cost and the money we hand over), but would be interested in evidence that |I am wrong. It is well within the competence of Holyrood to decide to do such an assessment for Scotland, 8% of Britain by population.
Labels: British politics, EU, Government E-Petition
Friday, August 26, 2011
More E-Petition Fun
Here are the petitions relating to space development on the government's e-petition site.. There are currently 3 of them, all of which I have signed, thereby substantially increasing their popularity. I have some doubts about a UK Space Port, but better than nothing - the mainland UK is too far from the equator for an optimum launch site, which is why I previously proposed one on Ascension Island.
I would assume that any future petitions on space travel will mention space so it is a good word to use when searching.
Please link and sign.
UK Space port
I am also adding some petitions of my own. The site says that it may take a week for them to appear which is a happy coincidence since I am, from Sunday, going to be away for a week. When I come back I will provide links to all petitions on by then.
If everybody from Britain here and in the various Glasgow space supporting, scientific, science fiction groups & engineering students signed these it would come to several hundreds. If those all around the country did it would come to many thousands, possibly 10s of thousands.
The bottom place on the first page of petitions (ie 20th place) has 4,932 signatures today.I have no doubt that, with the petitions up for a year anything inn that position will, through sheer momentum and number of views, get the 100,000 necessary to trigger a Parliamentary debate. It is time for those who understand how important space development is to spend less than 5 minutes saying so.
Labels: British politics, Government E-Petition, space
