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February 15, 2007
Consultation? Only when we agree with our Illustrious Leader it seems ...
The recent spectacle of the "Online Petition" against the proposed "Road Charging" scheme our Illustrious Leader and his merry minions have dreamed up as another scheme to penalise everyone who dares to use a private car having backfired badly, is enlightening by reason of the responses it has drawn from our Whitehall W****rs and their Westminster cronies. Firstly, the petition was evidently supposed to be seen by only a few selected signatories. That didn't work because the word spread like wildfire and everyone with any sense at all logged in and "signed" it! So many in fact that the website crashed. Instead of the "less than 750,000" Number 10 expeted, they got over a million signatures before it crashed.
Does this mean the government (and more especially the Civil Service) will now shelve this stupid idea? Of course not, the Minister responsible merely gets himself on TV and announces that the petition "clearly shows that people simply don't understand the need" to do this! Like hell we don't. What we do understand very clearly is that Whitehall spends less than 25% of the money collected at present in "Road Tax" and "Fuel Tax" from every motorist and vehicle user on roads and transport. The rest vanishes into the vast Black Hole that is Whitehall, lining the pockets of the army of "special advisers", "consultants" and other hanger's on that infest that place. The Minister bleated that we should trust him that there would be a reduction in the standard Road Tax rates to compensate for the "Road Charge". Oh yeah, like we were all born yesterday and have fairies at the bottom of the garden.
The truth of Mr Brown's "Economic Stability" is that we are sat on a huge bubble of debt. A growing debt what is more! When it, as expected, bursts, the only way to balance the books for this shower of tax and spend merchants will be to raise every tax they can - and guess who will be hardest hit - you've got it - you and I! Road Tax will never be reduced, Road Pricing or charging is merely another of Brown's stealth taxes, taxes that he squanders on ever more useless (and conversely powerful) Civil Servants and their inflated budgets and incompetent planning.
I have signed the petition, but I am of the opinion that even if every motorist in Britain signed it, this government would still go ahead and implement the scheme. Why am I so convinced of this? Consider their record on everything to date. Regionalised England? No one wants it, but they have gone ahead and created them anyway - only without elected assemblies, just more of Blair's cronies 'appointed' to the "Boards". Devolved government to Scotland? Everyone warned of the consequences, but they went ahead with it anyway and now are panicked by the threat that Labour could lose control of the Scottish Parliament - and be forced to allow Scotland to seek independence! Gibralter? They planned to hand it back to Spain - despite the clear will of the Gibraltese to remain British! The government simply declared the Gibraltese Referendum "irrelevant". Health crisis? There isn't one says the Minister in the face of the evidence and the story goes on and on.
Face the facts. This is no longer a democracy, it is an oligarchy ruled by the unelected in the Civil Service for the benefit of the few who are suppoed to be our servants. Watch this space - the referendum will be ignored when this shower of dishonest charlatans think they can safely get away with it - the Minsiter has already declared that the "trial" schemes will go ahead anyway. You may be sure that once in place they will not be removed.
Send Blair and his chums a message anyway, hit his site and sign the petition!
Posted by The Gray Monk at February 15, 2007 11:12 PM
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