Tory MP resigns

Curiously it is a pro-EU MP from the left of the party. All the criticisms could have come from either wing of the Tory Party.

The real damage in this is it seems to me is that all the remaining sitting Conservative MPs can now have little chance of getting out from the Cameron disaster with any self-respect or authority remaining.

If only John Redwood or David Davis had penned something like the following:

"Quentin Davies' letter to Cameron:

I have been a member of the Conservative Party for over 30 years, and have served for 20 years in the Parliamentary Party, in a variety of backbench and front bench roles.

This has usually been a great pleasure, and always a great privilege. It is therefore with much sadness that I write you this letter. But you are entitled to know the truth.

Under your leadership the Conservative Party appears to me to have ceased collectively to believe in anything, or to stand for anything.

It has no bedrock. It exists on shifting sands. A sense of mission has been replaced by a PR agenda.

For the first 19 years of my time in the House, in common I imagine with the great majority of my colleagues, it never occurred to me to leave the party, whatever its current vicissitudes.

Ties of familiarity, of friendship, and above all of commitment to constituency supporters are for all of us very strong and incredibly difficult to break.

But they cannot be the basis for living a lie - for continuing in an organisation when one no longer has respect for its leadership or understanding of its aims.

I have come to that appreciation slowly and painfully and as a result of many things, some of which are set out below.

The first horrible realisation that I might not be able to continue came last year. My initial reaction was to suppress it.

You had come to office as leader of the party committed to break a solemn agreement we had with the European People's Party to sit with them in the EPP-ED Group during the currency of this European Parliament.

For seven months you vacillated, and during that time we had several conversations.

It was quite clear to me that you had no qualms in principle about tearing up this agreement, and that it was only the balance of prevailing political pressures which led you ultimately to stop short of doing so (though since then you have hardly acted in good faith in continuing with the agreement, for example you never attend the EPP-ED Summits claiming that you are "too busy" - even though half a dozen or more Prime Ministers are always present.)

Of course I knew that you had put yourself in a position such that if you did not leave the EPP-ED Group you would be breaking other promises you had given to colleagues, and on which many of them had counted in voting for you at the leadership election.

But that I fear only made the position worse. The trouble with trying to face both ways is that you are likely to lose everybody's confidence.

Aside from the rather significant issues of principle involved, you have of course paid a practical price for your easy promises.

You are the first leader of the Conservative Party who (for different reasons) will not be received either by the President of the United States, or by the Chancellor of Germany (up to, and very much including, Iain Duncan Smith every one of your predecessors was most welcome both in the White House and in all the chancelleries of Europe).

It is fair to say that you have so far made a shambles of your foreign policy, and that would be a great handicap to you - and, more seriously, to the country - if you ever came to power.

I have never done business with people who deliberately break contracts, and I knew last year that if you left the EPP-ED Group I could no longer remain in a party under your leadership.

In fact you held back and I tried to put this ugly incident out of my mind and carry on.

But the last year has been a series of shocks and disappointments. You have displayed to the full both the vacuity and the cynicism of your favourite slogan 'change to win'.

One day in January, I think a Wednesday or Thursday, you and George Osborne discovered that Gordon Brown was to make a speech on the environment the following Monday.

You wished to pre-empt him. So without any consultation with anyone - experts, think tanks, the industry, even the Shadow Cabinet - you announced an airline or flight tax which as you have subsequently heard from me in a long paper (which has never been refuted) and I am sure from many others, is certainly defective and contradictory - and in my view complete nonsense.

The PR pressures had overridden any considerations of economic rationality or national interest, or even what would have been to others normal businesslike prudence.

Equally it seems that your hasty rejection of nuclear energy as a 'last resort' was also driven by your PR imperatives rather than by other considerations. Many colleagues hope that that will be the subject of your next u-turn.

You regularly (I think on a pre-arranged PR grid or timetable) make apparent policy statements which are then revealed to have no intended content at all. They appear to be made merely to strike a pose, to contribute to an image.

You thus sometimes treat important subjects with the utmost frivolity. Examples are 'inequality' (the 'Polly Toynbee' moment - again you had a paper from me!), marriage and the tax system (even your own Party Chairman was unable to explain on the BBC what you really meant) and, most recently, mass consultation of the public on policy decisions. (In view of your complete failure to consult with anyone, within the Party or outside it, on many of the matters I have touched on, or on many others, the latter was perhaps intended as a joke).

Of course I could go on - up to three weeks ago when you were prepared to stoop to putting forward a resolution on Iraq (demanding an inquiry while our military involvement continues) which it was admitted at a Party meeting the following Monday (by George Osborne in your presence) was motivated by party political considerations. That was a particularly bad moment."

Believe it or not I have no personal animus against you. You have always been perfectly courteous in our dealings. You are intelligent and charming.

As you know, however, I never supported you for the leadership of the Party - even when, after my preferred candidate Ken Clarke had been defeated in the first round, it was blindingly obvious that you were going to win.

Nor, for the same reasons, have I ever sought office in your shadow administration.
Although you have many positive qualities you have three, superficiality, unreliability and an apparent lack of any clear convictions, which in my view ought to exclude you from the position of national leadership to which you aspire and which it is the presumed purpose of the Conservative Party to achieve.

Believing that as I do, I clearly cannot honestly remain in the Party. I do not intend to leave public life. On the contrary I am looking forward to joining another party with which I have found increasingly I am naturally in agreement and which has just acquired a leader I have always greatly admired, who I believe is entirely straightforward, and who has a towering record, and a clear vision for the future of our country which I fully share.

Because my constituents, to whose interests of course I remain devoted, are entitled to know the full background, I am releasing this letter to the press."

Has Britain's veto on Police and the Judiciary already been abandoned?

The following two reports from the Conservative Party web site on the EU, certainly might indicate that is the case, as do the EU's own web pages as has been explored more fully on another of my blogs "Ironies Too" linked here, which is also covering the grave constitutional crisis with a lame duck PM about to sign away his country.

NEWS Thursday June 7, 2007

EU Constitution moves in by the back door

Plans to resurrect the obsolete EU Constitution have moved one step closer to becoming a reality as the European Parliament voted today to support the controversial Prüm Treaty. The Prüm Treaty contains many of the measures that were originally part of the EU Constitution which was voted down two years ago by France and the Netherlands. These measures include proposals to give foreign police the right to freely enter the UK and arrest British citizens suspected of crimes abroad with no regard to the current extradition procedures. Other plans include a central European database of EU citizens, containing highly confidential data such as credit cards records. Police would have the right to search any EU citizen's details even if the person in question is not suspected of any crime. Despite vocal opposition by MEP Philip Bradbourn, Conservative Spokesman on Justice and Home Affairs, the Parliament has today voted in favour of the Treaty. Mr Bradbourn addressed the Parliament last night in a tough speech outlining his opposition to the Treaty. Mr Bradbourn said: "This Treaty fundamentally goes against the rules of data protection and civil liberties that we have come to expect in Europe. This 'one size fits all approach is clearly inapplicable for countries with very different legal traditions and even senior police in the UK have called for this Treaty to be scrapped, proposing that voluntary bilateral agreements between Member States should be the way forward in security co-operation. Now that the Parliament has unfortunately voted through the Treaty it is up to the British Government to veto it when it reaches Council of Ministers, which is something Conservatives insist they do".

Top Story TODAY 15th June 2007

British police must share fingerprints, driving licenses and DNA records with all EU police forces from today

Blair fails to veto new EU powers on personal data-sharing throughout Europe and, despite of Labour's rhetoric, some elements of the rejected constitution came into force today. The first shot of a constitution climb-down sounded today as Franco Frattini, Commissioner for Justice and Home Affairs, confirmed that the Prüm Treaty would now have EU force.

Vapid begs Daily Mirror to be kinder

The report is from the The Observer linked here.

It seems the Tory leader thinks the following is unfair political comment, though presumably not denying the facts:

Class struggle: the Mirror on Cameron

'Cameron's all too aware his toff-class membership is a potentially fatal problem, instructing Con spin doctors never to invite your columnist to Tory events, because I've spent 18 months highlighting his toffness. I turn up anyway at Tory shindigs, just to annoy him'.

'Spotty Cameron was packed off to £25,000-a-year Eton, puffing on wacky baccy rather than learning Latin. Then it was off to Oxford's dreaming spires, where he bought a silly £1,200 tail coat, pratting around as an Edwardian gentleman in the restricted gene pool that is the Bullingdon Club.'

'Only toffs with plenty of dosh bray there is more to life than money. It's easy for well-heeled David Cameron to come over all Ken Doddish and preach happiness. Daddy was a stockbroker and the Tory leader fought his way to the top from the, er, top. Born with a silver dinner service in his mouth, he suffered the indignity of a bog-standard education at Eton and Oxford.'

'You don't have to be a toff to get on in Old Etonian David Cameron's Tory Party - but it certainly helps'

'Tory toff David Cameron accuses parents who fail to discipline their children of being 'selfish and irresponsible'. But what the hell does Diddy Dave know about that world? His parents didn't raise him like that. They sent him to boarding school as soon as he could say "Goodbye, Mama".'

'Labour MPs were having a fag behind the bike sheds when Tory toff David Cameron was fagging at Eton. The posh chap's latest wheeze to reward youthful goody two-shoes reeks of his privileged upbringing.'

An E-mail somebody has sent to Vapid


Dear Mr Cameron
                            As the UK nears the point when the Prime Minister is involved in
discussions on the content of a proposed new European Union constitution which could be binding
upon the United Kingdom, HM Opposition's stance is conspicuous, once again,  more by its silence
on this momentous issue than any principled and public response to what should be its highest
priority, namely the future governance of the UK.

   The content of the  following speech made by Mr Ashley Mote MEP is the one that should have
been delivered by you in one form or another, and indeed by the leaders of all other political
parties in the UK at this critical time.   As it is, the statesmanlike  appraisal  of the
current prospects for the UK's future relationship with the EU is left to a relatively unknown 
and independently minded MEP.   Shame on you Mr Cameron!

   The Conservative Party website trumpets:  "Parliament should be the watchdog of the (British)
Constitution."    Shame on you Mr Cameron for not acting on your own stated principle through
your guilty silence.

  Your web site also suggests proposals  that the Conservatives will ensure "No deals being made 
in Europe without full explanation first".

  Once more the British people will see through  this empty promise  because just such  a "deal"
is being negotiated in secret by Mr Blair  with our EU partners on the proposed EU 'constitution',
and in particular with  Angela Merkel of Germany, at this very moment.

  The deal is being passed off by Mr Blair as of no particular constitutional significance, and
therefore not requiring a referendum by the British people.  Whilst your Party does call for such
a referendum, that call is muted and mis-trusted because of your Party's abysmal track record in
its approval of further EU/UK integration in almost every possible policy area since the signing
of the Treaty of Rome.

  Shame on you Mr Cameron,  for failing to make a single major policy speech in opposition to
the EU's  increased hegemony over the will of a freely elected UK Parliament by an unelected
foreign organisation, and for failing to expose the nature of the second hand EU 'constitution
now being proposed. 

Now read on -  for the speech you should have made:


Sovereign Nations Don't Have Constitutions Imposed on Them - 7 June
2007



EU Constitutional Debate, European Parliament, 7 June 2007

Text of speech by Ashley Mote MEP, independent, SE England


"You are our Neighbours - Not our Masters", Ashley Mote MEP
tells European Parliament
"The British government's White Paper on the original constitution
said that it involved “no fundamental change”
"But why have a constitution if you don’t want fundamental change – what
else could be its purpose?   Angela Merkel has said that the new version should have a new name and
“use different terminology without changing the legal substance”.

How reassuring to be so vividly reminded of German commitment to
democracy and the rule of law.

The old - and doubtless the new - constitution totally reverses the
relationship between the EU and the Member States and between the
governing and the governed.
Whenever before did a sovereign nation permit outsiders to write and
impose a new constitution on them, except after defeat in war?


In my country the state draws power from the people, and answers to them.

In the EU, the State now seeks to exist in its own right, and have the
people answer to it.
Our rights and freedoms are our birthright. They are not in the gift, or
at the discretion, of a passing parade of political nonentities - here
today and gone tomorrow.
The original draft constitution did us a great service: it crystallised
the future.
It attempted to turn a Europe of nations into a nation called Europe.

It forced us to decide if we would allow Europeans to become our masters.
We do not.
You are our neighbours. You should be our friends. But nothing more.

Whatever its new name - like the last one, this one will not be a
constitution at all.
The first version was vague, grandiose, imprecise, deliberately complex,
confusing and extremely long.
It was proscriptive rather than enabling.  It made law, instead of creating a framework for law-making. It offered no effective checks and balances to control future law-makers,
and no mechanism to stop the train.  It consolidated power for a system of government by a self-perpetuating
bureaucracy.  It turned the member states from theoretical masters of the house of
Brussels into its servants.  So what's different this time?
This oppressive constitution is not the answer. It is a 1950s solution to 1920s problems.
Today we live in another world. People living in today’s fast-moving, flexible, unpredictable, hi-tech
world need responsive, imaginative, minimalist government.


The EU has been left far behind by the Americans, and soon the Indian
sub-continent and China will overtake as well.

The EU and its grandiose ideas are part of the problem. They are not part
of the solution.
Hostility exists across all 27 countries. It abounds in Poland, the Czech
Republic, Austria, Latvia, parts of Scandinavia and, of course, the UK.

The Dutch are rightly angered by suggestions that they didn’t understand
what they were voting about last time. Given the chance, they may well
vote ‘no’ again.
And what happens in Ireland and Denmark, where referenda are mandatory
even if the word ‘constitution’ disappears?  Resistance will inevitably harden.


These are important constitutional issues which the Council of Mínisters
has largely chosen to ignore just as they have ignored the failure of the
first version of the constitution.
Some 36 new EU projects and institutions - wholly dependant on that
document for their legitimacy - have all gone ahead already. So much for
due process and the rule of law.
For the bureaucrats, rebirth of the constitution - even under an assumed
name – really is just a tidying-up exercise. For the rest of us it changes everything.
No British parliament has the power to bind its successors. The EU
constitution - whatever it's called - threatens to deny that power of an
elected British government.
That alone makes it unlawful.

Suggesting – as clause 18 of the original did - that we might have to
come, cap in hand, to ask to leave is preposterous. And wait two years while the rest of you decided? Who are you kidding?


The Victorian lawyer, Professor Dicey told the British people that they
are free to withdraw their consent from parliament at any time and have
the right to use any means to regain control of their sovereignty.

The Bill of Rights, 1689, is still the statute law of the UK. Its
authority was re-affirmed in a House of Lords judgment

in November 2001. Desuetude (repeal by lack of use) is unknown to English
law.
The Bill of Rights is based on a concept of permanence and declares that
any actions taken against its principles are null and void. It
specifically forbids handing power to foreigners. "
END

Shock and astonishment!

The headline reflects my reaction to an interview on Boulton on Sunday on Sky News this morning when Conservative MP Graham Brady was interviewed and brilliantly defended his stance on Grammar Schools and lambasted the state of present party politics.

It appears the Tory Party still retains some upright, decent and thoughtful individuals among its parliamentary representatives.

One is only left to wonder why former party leader Michael Howard, first promoted George Osborne and then backed David Cameron as his replacement when there were people of integrity and character available. As Conservative Home points out here, the new four hundred thousand pound a year press chief the ex-NoW editor once used his pages to describe these two as follows:

"Osborne ... has now owned up to his encounters with a cocaine-snorting call-girl ... like Cameron, the frontbench MP won't be drawn on whether he has taken drugs himself. But remember, politicians make the laws. That's why we have the right to ask about their backgrounds - especially when they aspire to run our country."

Clearly politics is all a matter of money for Mr Coulson, perhaps that attitude is what rubbed off on the present Shadow Foreign Secretary, William Hague MP, who wrote in his column for Coulson's rag during the run up to the 2005 general election that he was earning too much money to sacrifice time to take an active role in the campaign.

Watch Willets Wriggle

A U-turn on Grammar Schools! You had better believe it although 'two dead brains' can't accept the facts.

Channel 4 News lead story tonight may be viewed from here. Click on ' watch the report'.

Tories go deeper into the gutter

Now its the gutter press where the Conservative Party has fished for its next public relations supremo.

The former editor of the totally disreputable and unprincipled News of the World will be the party's new PR chief, even though that dreadful paper saw fit to give him the boot after the bugging of the royal family. The Times report is here. AND look before debasing the almost non-existing standards of the old 'News of the Screws' he was wait for it ..... a showbiz reporter with The Sun. One wonders why Vapid didn't go the whole hog in imitating Blair and just hire Alistair Campbell?

Even this blogger is left breathless at the extent of the Cameroon's descent to absurdity. I thought I had heard and seen it all after the fresh faced Osborne struggled to claim the Blair crown in debate on Channel 4 News last evening with the loathsome Environment Minister .....then today comes this!

Shadow Europe Minister reigns!

The bad news is that it is over the Tory Grammar School policy.

An indication of the importance placed by the Party on EU matters, with our remaining sovereignty about to be sold out in Berlin in three weeks time, is the seniority and renown of his named successor as detailed below.

Why not use the contact details below to elicit his views on the Berlin summit?

Mark Francois MP

Member of Parliament for Rayleigh Shadow Minister for the Treasury

ABOUT MARK

Mark was elected as a Member of Parliament in 2001. Previously, he served for four years on Basildon Council in the early 1990s, and faced Ken Livingstone in Brent East during the 1997 general election. In July 2002, Mark was appointed an Opposition Whip. Since September 2004, he has been a Shadow Minister for the Treasury.

CONTACT MARK Email: chairman@rayleighconservatives.org.uk Telephone: 01268 742044 Fax: 01268 741833 Website: www.rayleighconservatives.org.uk Postal Address: House of Commons, London, SW1A 0AA.

Conservatism, Class and Grammar Schools

Cameron could have been heard on Radio 4 at 0810 (Listen Again here), or his views may be read in this item from today's The Times, linked here.

There seems no doubt that the Cameroon Team advisers, described by Janet Daley in yesterday's Daily Telegraph as "juvenile idiots" linked here, have deliberately picked this as another attempt at a Clause IV moment for the Tories, but it seems to be deservedly about to seriously backfire.

Cameron's education (or lack thereof) should be the last area of their past that he and his fellow Shadow Cabinet Old Etonians and ex-Public School pupils should seek to expose to popular scrutiny.

I have ceased regular postings on this blog as the deep character flaws of the present leader of the main opposition party must by now be clear to all but the most stupid and unthinking Tory follower. Because of my own experience of both Grammar and Public Schools I have decided to record a few views on the present dispute.

At age eleven after leaving primary school where at one stage I had been in a class of 46 in an age group of two years with seating for only forty, I went to the A stream of our local Grammar School where with ten others we were fast-tracked in a range of subjects with first-rate individual teachers in subjects as diverse as Latin and Physics. We were exhorted to work as a team where failure of one would be considered as a failure by all.

After two years my family had to move from the West Country to the South East and my sister who was also at the Grammar School was forced to then attend the dreadful local Comprehensive. I was almost equally unfortunate being sent off to board at a West Country public school typical of its type. The contrast in quality of instruction was enormous. In fact it would be true to say that in almost every subject taught I had already reached the 'O' Level standard at thirteen when leaving the Grammar School which at the private expensive institution we struggled to attain at the time of the exam at age sixteen.

The main contrast was the attitude of the teaching staff. At the Grammar School the teachers were imbued with enthusiasm bringing vast and exciting knowledge to pupils they knew had the capability to absorb and subsequently utilize what they were taught. The teachers at the public school however were of far inferior abilities, appeared merely to be at the school for the higher salaries than those attainable in the state sector, and approached their pupils as the spoiled undeserving but privileged brats many of us were who would have no need or benefit of the education they were there to reluctantly receive.

Cameron with his clearly blighted character, possibly a direct result of his time at Eton, was indeed foolish to pick this topic, essentially one of unearned privilege, but still his Shadow Cabinet remains intact and none resign. That speaks volumes on the ex-Grammar School pupils that useless group reportedly contains.

Michael Portillo finally admits Cameron's flaws

The attack and backtrack, for that is what this truly seems, is in Portillo's column in today's Sunday Times, linked here.

Former Daily Telegraph editor, Charles Moor, clearly also has growing doubts according to his Spectator Notes column this week, linked here, which leaves only the present editor of that magazine among Tory journalistic heavyweights who heavily backed Vapid during his Sunday Telegraph days to desert the lightweight fop.

How accomplished David Davis appeared on Sunday's Sky News this morning. But can the party ever now be salvaged given the wider membership elected such a disaster. Even Portillo is beginning to wonder as may be seen in this quote from the conclusion of his column:

Cameron’s handling of the Dyke incident was clumsy. But it was more than just an ill-thought-out wheeze. The Tory leadership has been reflecting deeply on the shifting tectonic plates of United Kingdom politics.

While the party talks about winning an outright victory, other gloomier scenarios are at least as likely. In one, the Conservatives urgently have to find new ways to do business with other parties in local government as a prelude to doing a deal at national level. In another scenario the electoral system changes and the Tories have to woo new partners because otherwise they will be in opposition for ever.

Part time politics, partitioned party

I hinted at Cameron's disconnected attitude to politics in the posting below. My thoughts were prompted by his recording of an interview for the supposed flagship BBC political programme Sunday AM. As Master Marr stated on the now available transcript, linked here:

But next month's elections are a big test for him too, and of how far the Cameron effect has spread.

Well I met David Cameron during a break in canvassing at a hospital in his Oxfordshire constituency.

Big test maybe, but hanged if Vapid will give up his Sunday for a live interview regardless of what news might break!

Recalling that Cameron when previously interviewed by the slimy Scot Marr in Henley , Vapid claimed Scottish blood running thick through his veins and absolutely refused to contemplate an adjustment to the Barnett formula whereby scrounging Scots live off English largesse, and have so for decades. Now we get this exchange:

ANDREW MARR: Let's talk about Scotland where the Conservatives are not in a particularly strong position, to put it gently. It has been suggested that you might hive off the party in Scotland, and Scottish Conservatives might effectively organise themselves to give them a new chance.

DAVID CAMERON: Well I don't have a plan to do that. I think it's important though that we do emphasise that the Scottish Conservatives are a Scottish party - they elect their own leader, they write their own policies, they're responsible for their own manifesto.

It's devolution at work, so they are able to come up with the right policies for Scotland, not always the same policies that we might have in England, that's right. And we need to emphasise that. And I think that's important, but I don't have plans to...

ANDREW MARR: Would you be against them choosing a new name, for instance?

DAVID CAMERON: Well it would be up to them to make that suggestion if they wanted to. I think actually they are very much running under the banner of being Scottish Conservatives and I think it's important that they emphasise that they are a party for Scotland.

ANDREW MARR: If, as a result of these elections, Scottish National Party are forming an administration in Edinburgh and calling for there to be a referendum, what will your response be? Don't they have a right to have a referendum if people in Scotland want a referendum and they say they do, they've got a right to that haven't they?

DAVID CAMERON: If there is a referendum I will campaign as actively as I can for a no vote because I want to keep England and Scotland together. But we've always said if that there was a referendum, and if the result went from my point of view the wrong way we would have to honour that. I think that's that the only way to be open and frank with people in Scotland about this, but I desperately, you know, hope that it doesn't happen.

So what happened to the Union. How can the British opposition party in Parliament have different policies to its own party in Scotland. If so, who is the leader where? Is it me or has the world gone mad?

I am beginning to believe Jack Straw or Ming Campbell might be the last hopes for Britain. At least they have seen life, albeit just from the Westminster/(Edinburgh) bubble.

A "modern and caring" father of young children cannot run a Nation

Think about my headline. Then watch the first posting on WebCameron linked from my sidebar.

A Prime Minister in this uncertain age must devote 24/24 hours and 7/7 days to his responsibilities. The RN Iranian fiasco proves that point!

Just look at this latest entry on the WebCameron site:

an eventful few days

17 April 2007

A long gap since the last blog. Apologies – this is another casualty of moving house. The best brains of BT and our IT department cannot get me a broadband connection, so I’ve been completely disc ..

Thus speaks a cipher!

Cameron failed again last weekend - recording an interview on Saturday afternoon with the sycophantic fellow-Scot Marr for Sunday AM and thereby missing immediacy to gain a "Family Day"....... during the last stages of the local election campaign..... in the middle of a crisis for Britain's armed forces????? When the country is crying out for mature governance!

David Cameron is a family man with a disabled eldest son who requires constant care. David Cameron should be given the time to provide such care and indulge his other children as he so obviously feels is necessary to ensure that they mature to be the kind of self-centred adults that would be equally unsuited to running a country as himself.

One or other of the Cameron generations could perhaps later run an independent Scotland.

A Tory vote on 3rd May will only continue the present farce.

David Cameron

An interesting introduction to the Channel 4 'Dispatches' programme to be screened tomorrow evening is in today's Mail on Sunday, linked here.

Britain is now a one party state

The important Evening Standard article may be read from here.

Cameron's air taxes

If you thought the policies unveiled today were loop the loopy but missed the Channel 4 debunking of global warming, you can see the programme from this link.

Then see how you feel as a supposed Conservative Party proposes to monitor ALL your foreign air travel and tax you accordingly!!!!!!

Air flight rationing to keep plebs down

The latest nonsense from Cameron is apparently to restrict cheap air travel by force. Read the report in the Sunday Telegraph from here.

I agree with the posting on these proposals on Samizdata, linked here, which was as follows:

Sky Cameron and the Tory world of tomorrow

Thaddeus Tremayne (London) Transport • UK affairs

(4)

The Conservative Party has long been regarded as having a certain nostalgic, and some would say romantic, yearning for the past. I had no idea that this included a desire to drag us all back to the 19th Century:

Harsh new taxes on air travel, including a strict personal flight "allowance", will be unveiled by the Conservatives tomorrow as part of a plan that would penalise business travellers, holidaymakers and the tourist industry.

The proposals, to be disclosed by George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, include levying VAT or fuel duty on domestic flights for the first time as part of a radical plan to tackle global warming.

The Conservatives will also suggest - most controversially of all - rationing individuals to as little as a single short-haul flight each year; any further journeys would attract progressively higher taxes, a leaked document entitled Greener Skies suggests.

Even if this is just policy-mongering, the fact that such proposals could even be considered is per se a megaphone-warning about the true nature of the Tories and their future likely conduct.

The mobility that has been afforded to people on relatively low incomes by cheap international air travel is one of the most productive and liberating benefits of this age. By declaring war on this, Cameron and his lickspittles show themselves to be not just opportunist but also disreputable and loathsome (as is anyone who either supports them or votes for them).

As for me, I will be unaffacted. I do not intend to hang around long enough to witness the huddled masses setting sail from Southampton to seek a better life in the free world. If (God forbid) Cameron does win power in the next election, I shall utilise my air travel 'ration' to purchase a one-way ticket out.

The Mail and the Independent on Sunday, here, both continue to probe at the Cameron and drugs mystery. The Sunday Mirror has this comment, linked here.

18 February 2007

CAMERON, THE ULTRA-YOB

Richard Stott

IT'S no big deal that David Cameron smoked cannabis when he was at Eton. But he is wrong and self-serving to claim what he did before he became a politician should remain private.

To know the true face before he slapped on the public make-up is essential if we are to know the nature of the man. We are in a better position to judge the worth of Cameron's views on our "broken society", the breakdown of family life and the lawlessness of teenage gangs now we know he belonged to an Oxford gang that got blind drunk, trashed restaurants and smashed shop windows.

Cameron, we are told, continued to smoke pot at university. Not a hanging offence although it might be if he went on to heavier stuff.

More revealing is that he became a member of the ultra rich, ultra snob Bullingdon, an invitationonly drinking club where the aim was to get blind drunk, wreck restaurants and then pay for the damage with bundles of cash. Rich yob indulgence by privileged young men in £1,000 tail coats with big wallets and even bigger mouths.

Cameron's love affair with himself was illustrated again when he was a special adviser to Chancellor Norman Lamont at the time of Black Wednesday. After Lamont was fired he made a conference fringe speech hostile to British membership of the EU. Not something John Major wanted to hear. At a party that night Cameron cut Lamont dead. Such loyalty.

After the last election Cameron - who wrote the Tory manifesto and campaigned "passionately" for it - ditched virtually every major policy within weeks of becoming leader. This is not a man of principle, it's a selfish opportunist who believes only in what he can make you buy. The stuff dreamed up by marketing men, pollsters and image makers. If you trash belief and principle and bung enough cash at presentation you can get away with anything. Just like those drunken nights with the boys from the Bullingdon.

Cameron's real addiction problem

A quote from Jonathan Pearce on Samizdata, linked here:

But although the Tory leader may inadvertently encourage different views, he has a continued problem. Cameron, after all, is in love with a drug far worse than cocaine, LSD, Qaaludes (what the heck are they?) or dope. He is in love with power over other people. He suffers from hallucinations about how the Tories will win power by conceding Blairist ideas of the role of the State. He suffers from the extraordinary idea that Oliver Letwin is a great thinker.

Compared to Bolivian marching powder, that is heavy shit he is smoking.

"Straight Talk" this evening

Despairing conservatives can watch the leader of the UK Independence Party, Nigel Farage MEP at 10:30 this evening on BBC News 24 give a convincing explanation of some real conservative policies

Cameron's days are numbered

BNP and English Democrat Shocker in Bede by-election

BNP ran Labour 658 votes a close second with 546 votes with the English Democrats on 75 and Save the NHS with 43 making the combined small party total sufficient to have changed the result.

Cameron's sham conservatives on 301 and UKIP with just 8 votes came away with the biggest bloody noses.

UKIP did somewhat better in Croydon, but given the government's problems is it not the Labour successes that are truly astonishing:

London Borough of Croydon - Bensham Manor: Lab 1,683, Con 617, Green 240, Lib Dem 126, Ukip 40, Monster Raving Loony party 15, People's Choice 9. (May 2006: Three seats Lab 1,846, 1,805, 1,670, Con 1,117, 861, 774, Green 581, Ukip 305). Lab hold. Swing 7.5% Con to Lab.