When did the Left ditch democracy?

Douglas Carswell nails it in this article - http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/douglascarswellmp/100261001/when-did-the-left-ditch-democracy/

Here's an extract:

'On issue after issue, where they know they cannot win openly, the Left has passed responsibility over to quangocrats and Commissioners, Human Rights lawyers and judicial activists.The Left obtains by top down decree what they cannot win at the ballot box. And the Right loses, even when we win elections.

Far too many on the right still seek either re-heated Thatcherism or a kind of mid-70s, patrician Toryism. Neither will do.

A truly modern Tory party needs to recognise that we must do battle against the Left not merely for votes on polling day. If the Left has created structures that are beyond meaningful democratic accountability, we must embrace direct democracy.  We must be prepared to re-engineer the machinery of the state – the quangos, the senior civil service, the judiciary – and yes, even Parliament – to make them properly answerable to the rest of us.

Either we do that, or we face more defeat and retreat.'

What the BBC deliberately doesn't tell you about welfare immigration

'...the UK is one of only five EU states (the others being Finland, Germany, Estonia and Ireland) that offer non contributory benefits to the unemployed. In other words, only if you live in one of those countries are you able to claim unemployment benefits without having paid into the system.

If you or I – or the BBC home affairs editor Mark Easton – pitched up in France, Italy or Greece, we could not claim unemployment benefit without having contributed into the system. (There might, as someone in the comment thread will point out, be a million or so Brits living in Spain, but they have no right to claim any Spanish benefits that their taxes have not contributed towards.)

The European Commission is, however, demanding that if Brits can claim non-contributory unemployment benefit in Britain, then so too must every EU citizen. It is the whole reason why they commissioned this report in the first place.  That there are no corresponding non-contributory entitlements for Brits to claim in most of Europe is something they ignore. We must open our system up to all comers, they insist.'

There's more about this matter from Douglas Carswell in The Telegraph but never in or on the pro-EU, pro-unfettered immigration, pro-Labour BBC.

MP fails popular culture reference test...

Douglas Carswell MP (@DouglasCarswell) tweeted at 7:11 AM on Tue, Jun 04, 2013:

On way to interview with R4's Today programme, I met this tardis in the corridor. http://t.co/MKzh47mN2q
(https://twitter.com/DouglasCarswell/status/341799451813367808)

If Douglas Carswell doesn't know the difference between a Dalek and the Doctor's TARDIS, with broken Chameleon Circuit, then he's out of the running to be the next Doctor...

The EU in another power grab?

The EU's mania for power and control knows no bounds and if what Devils Kitchen writes is true, the EU is set for a huge power grab. I thought someting was afoot when there were rumblings at PMQs about the EU, Kate Hoey is a reliable barometer of matters EU. So Devils Kitchen's piece with more than a nod to Douglas Carswell is a must read, if not a pleasant one.

Douglas Carswell writes:

'If you read the European Commission document 11807/10 [PDF], however, it doesn’t seem quite so clear cut. Studying it, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the new rules on fiscal oversight are going to apply to all EU Member States, not just members of the Euro.

The paper – subtitled “Tools for stronger EU economic governance” – focuses on how Member States, not just Euro countries, “will act in compliance with the EU framework.” The “new structured mechanism” for vetting each countries budget will be applied to “all Member States”.

In or out of the Euro, the paper suggests Britain may indeed have her budget subject to EU Commission vetting – albeit that the time table for this “semester” process might allow officials to claim that the Commons gets to see it first.

And what if Brussels did not approve of the tax and spend policies of our democratically elected government?

If such rules only apply to Eurozone countries, why does page 5 of the document, under the heading “Corrective Action”, say that “This mechanism would apply to all Member States”. Use of that word “all”, again. If there’s a caveat saying “all” excludes Britain, I couldn’t find it.


...


EU competence is to be extended into member state’s fiscal policy, with the power to make law for "all EU Member States". And it appears to have been kept hidden until today.

Not even the European Scrutiny Committee, I’m told, had sight of a paper by the “Task Force to the European Council” called “Strengthening Economic Governance in the EU” until today.

This hidden paper appears to confirm two things:

a) Despite what we were told in June, UK budgets will now become EU business. They might not be able to impose sanctions on us if they disapprove – yet. But they are involved.

b) According to the document, “The Task Force recommends a deeper macro-economic surveillance with the introduction of a new mechanism underpinned by a new legal framework .... applying to all EU Member States”.

Yep. That’s right. The EU is to legislate in a new area. In a way that could apply to all EU Member States.

And you thought there would be no further transfers of power to Brussels, eh?'

The question of the day is "Have we been had?" and the answer is... YES and I am not a happy blogger.

The Himalayan glaciers are melting, really?

Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim in this report was that the world's glaciers were melting so fast that even those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.

Now the scientists who were behind this warning have admitted that it was based only on a news story in the New Scientist published eight years before the IPCC's report.

It has also emerged that the New Scientist report itself was based simply on a telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, an Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. Syed Hasnain has since admitted that his claim was "speculation" and was not supported by any formal research.

It seems that the claim about the melting glaciers is soon to be retracted by the IPCC. I wonder how much publicity the warmist BBC will give this retraction and what else that the IPCC have reported is also based on faulty or insubstantial evidence?

In June the BBC reported that (my emphasis):

"Glacier melting in the Himalayas is http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/8142048.stm to disrupt water supplies within the next 20 to 30 years. Floods and rock avalanches are http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/8142048.stm to increase. Heavily-populated coastal regions, including the deltas of rivers such as the Ganges and Mekong, are likely to be at risk of increased flooding."

I await their corrections...

For an interesting outlook on Himalayan glaciers, I recommend this article which includes the claim that (my emphasis):

"According to Prof Graham Cogley (Trent University, Ontario), a short article on the future of glaciers by a Russian scientist (Kotlyakov, V.M., 1996, The future of glaciers under the expected climate warming, 61-66, in Kotlyakov, V.M., ed., 1996, Variations of Snow and Ice in the Past and at Present on a Global and Regional Scale, Technical Documents in Hydrology, 1. UNESCO, Paris (IHP-IV Project H-4.1). 78p estimates 2350 as the year for disappearance of glaciers, but the IPCC authors misread 2350 as 2035 in the Official IPCC documents, WGII 2007 p. 493!

So we have a raging debate about impending glacier melt-down because of sloppiness of some IPCC authors! Further, according to Kotlyakov, the present glacier area of some 500,000 km2 could shrink to 100,000 km2 and this could happen NOT in 2035 but in 2350, if the current rate of warming continues. "

Douglas Carswell has blogged about this too.

No criticism allowed

The Mail reports that:

"A Tory MP has been banned from criticising Speaker Michael Martin in an all-party Parliamentary journal.

Douglas Carswell, who has led calls for Mr Martin to quit, used an interview with the Commons’ House magazine, which is edited by MPs themselves, to explain why he believes the Speaker must go.

But when the article about Harwich MP Mr Carswell was published, his comments about Mr Martin had been deleted.

‘When I was asked what I thought of him, I said that he’s not up to the job and needs to be replaced by someone who is,’ said Mr Carswell.

‘Yet, when the article was published, it was censored.’"

Read the whole story and worry at where this once free Country is heading; I'll give you a clue, it's called totalitarianism.

Here's an honest MP

Douglas Carswell MP for Harwich and Clacton has made a promise

"This week the Westminster establishment will try to pass a law that would exempt MPs from the Freedom of Information Act and allow MP expenses to remain secret.

I've had enough of this farce. I decided over the weekend that at the end of this financial year (April 2009), I'll be publishing a detailed breakdown of all the things I've claimed for as an MP over the year. Want to see what I spend on travel or rent? I'm going to put it on-line for all to see.

My colleague, Ben Wallace MP, had the courage to show the way, and I now intend to follow his lead.

This nonsense once again underlines that there is something profoundly wrong with the way Westminster is run. Speaker Michael Martin is not up to the job, and his good old boy gatherings Speaker Committee system simply isn't delivering credible or effective leadership. They might hate me for saying so, but they don't live in Clacton.

Mr Martin ought to unilaterally declare that Commons officials will place a breakdown of each MPs expenses on-line at the end of every financial year - and tell MPs who complained that if you spend public money, you must be accountable to the public for how you spend that money.

Incidentally, if some MPs don't have the moral nous to see that, how can they possibly have the moral nous to make judgements over vastly more complex subjects, like Gaza, or education, or today's Policing Bill? "

So that's Douglas Carswell and Ben Wallace who will publish their expenses in full (and I believe Michael Gove as well); any more transparent MPS? It's our money so be accountable to us and publish in full.