PJC Journal – Original » 2007 » March

Mar

13

How to fight the proposed FOI changes

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This from Heather at Your Right to Know

A new petition on the
No.10 e-petitions website calls for signatories opposed to the Private
Member’s Bill that would exempt the Westminster Parliament from its own FoI
Act.

The petition is sponsored by Barry Winetrobe at the Centre for Law at Napier
University and he’s hoping that
with enough supporters, this bill will be rejected.

Please sign up and spread the word to colleagues etc, via your websites,
blogs, email groups etc.

You can write to your MP to oppose the Government’s proposed changes to the
fees regulations of the Freedom of Information Act at their postal address:
House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA or by using
the WriteToThem website – which will help you identify your MP and send
them a message for free.

An Early Day Motion opposing
the changes has been promoted by an all-party coalition of MPs – Tony
Wright (Lab), Alan Beith (Lib Dem), Dominic Grieve (Con), Richard Shepherd
(Con), Mark Fisher (Lab) and Simon Hughes (Lib Dem). Ask your MP to sign EDM
845 on Freedom of Information.

If your MP has already signed the EDM you can still write and tell them of
your concern. Public pressure is the only way to stop these changes becoming
law.

UK PLC a video appeal

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I don’t normally like video’s, they
normally tend to smack of conspiracy, but this one amusingly sums up Britain
today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whiOj5Oc_qw

My hats off to the originators.

UK PLC a video appeal

IanPJ Main Page Add you comment

I don’t normally like video’s, they
normally tend to smack of conspiracy, but this one amusingly sums up Britain
today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whiOj5Oc_qw

My hats off to the originators.

Brown and Blair move towards dictatorship – Updated

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I wrote a few
weeks ago about how Gordon Brown was consolidating
his hold on Government. How the whole of Government will be centred around the
Treasury and the non ministerial executive agency the HMRC, which now has the
most far reaching draconian powers ever seen in British history.

Gordon has now revealed
how he will take that further. Upon taking over in No.10, he will abolish the
Department of Trade & Industry and transfer responsibilities for companies
to a beefed-up Treasury.

The lesser trade
functions of the DTI will be moved to the Foreign Office while its energy
responsibilities will be transferred to the Dept for the Environment, Food and
Rural Affairs.

All remaining
policy issues covering financial reporting, corporate governance, company law,
competitiveness and what's left of industrial sponsorship, currently looked
after by the DTI, will move across to the Treasury.

His plans are now
being openly discussed by ministers. Whether Alistair Darling, current Trade
Secretary, gets to join his civil servants at the Treasury – he is a favourite
to be Brown's first Chancellor – is another story.

The net tightens,
the power is being consolidated, real power. And when Tony Blair abolishes the
Privy Council as reported yesterday,
breaking the link between Queen and State, then Gordon will become The Dictator.

UPDATED 13/3/07 – Well, Tony Blair did it!!. Reported by the Daily Mail

On Wednesday, practically in secret, the Prime Minister abolished the
Privy Council office. The move was scarcely reported – and not even
announced in the Commons.

Possibly 50pct of workforce now work for the state

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The Daily
Mail today reported that Britain has become so dependent on
taxpayer-funded jobs that nearly one worker in four is on the state payroll.

The high level of
public sector employment revealed in official figures Monday has been compared
with that in the former Soviet bloc.

I believe
that it is much worse than that, much worse. The Statistics office report only
gives figures for those who are directly employed by central and local government,
i.e. civil service pensions.

What
it does not cover is the plethora of people who are self employed or employed
by private companies, but who rely entirely on the public sector for their
income, either by wage or government contracts.

These
include NGO’s, government funded housing trusts, research facilities, funded
charities, traffic wardens, waste management, printers, IT consultants, contractors
of all types and professions, road builders, roadside technology companies,
railtrack, embassy staff and support staff around the globe, the military, the
military support and supply industry, cleaners, cooks, maintenance companies
etc.

When
you consider these into the equations the reliance upon state work rises
sharply, and I have seen some estimates that put the figures as high as 50pct
of the working population.

And with
figures like that, no wonder Gordon Brown needs to find more ways to raise tax,
or the economy will very shortly collapse in on itself.

The report
follows a series of studies by private think-tanks suggesting state involvement
in the economy has reached similar levels to the Soviet Union under Communist control in the 1970s.

We
all know what happened to the Soviet Union, the only way that they were able to retain
power was the totalitarian route.

Does it not seem strange to you then that this Government, even knowing that local elections are close by, seem totally indifferent to the fact that services are failing, funding is being cut, hospitals are closing, nurses and doctors are being sacked, yet is spending money like water on snoopers and IT projects that will lock everyone into the state, and in the view of many are the mechanisms of state control.