And then we kill them - by Richard... Sunday, November 21, 2010

And then we kill them - by Richard... Sunday, November 21, 2010

"The full extent of the police and criminal prosecution powers that the European Union has over British citizens can be revealed today," writes Mary Ellen Synon.

This is the result of a Mail on Sunday investigation, which has "uncovered an alarming array of new EU controls over justice and home affairs for which no one has voted, and most are unknown to the public."

Of course, the reason why most are "unknown to the public" is because the media rarely talk about them and, when they do, "no one seems to care". More specifically, no one in parliament seems to care for, as we wrote when that plaintive statement was made, in legislative terms, "the parliament has collectively lost the will to live".

Parliament is no longer really interested in its primary functions, we wrote, and has turned in on itself, to the extent that its internal, petty politicking has assumed an overweening importance, to the exclusion of everything else.

That was over two years ago, when Philip Johnston was railing against the creation of "a powerful new EU interior department, called the Standing Committee on Internal Security (COSI)." He had devoted some space to then home secretary Jacqui Smith's failure to mention it.

But then, as now, this was our old friend the Hague programme, about which we were sounding the alarm in 2004. But, if you had then asked the average British political blogger or MSM political correspondent about it, they would have thought you were referring to young William's last television appearance.

But since then, more than enough has been written about it for those who wanted to know about to keep themselves informed, not least the European Union - Tenth Report of 15 March 2005. And therein lies another part of the problem.

This does go back all the way to 2004, when we saw the European Council reaffirm the priority it attached to "the development of area of freedom, security and justice", claiming, as always, that it was "responding to a central concern of the peoples of the States brought together in the Union". Despite our concerns, nothing happened then and, six years later, as the Mail on Sundayraises the alarm (and not for the first time), precisely nothing will happen now.

Therefore, the real problem is that, unless the issue can gain political traction, and there is a felling that this is an issue that can get resolved, there is and will be nothing to drive it forward. People, and the media – in the short-term, at least - will take a lead from the politicians. And if the politicians do nothing, the issue dies.

But that is the short-term. As Booker reveals in his column today, more and more we see the "authorities" working to their own agendas, which have nothing to do with the principles of justice or good administration.

When it also dawns – as it eventually will – that the authorities are also working for an alien power (not "foreign" - but alien), as is increasingly the case with the police through the Hague Programme, then the last vestiges of consent will break down. The divide between "us" and "them" will become a permanent breach. And then we start killing them.

This is not a warning, nor a threat, nor a prediction, nor indeed an instruction. It is simply an observation. When the compact between the people and their rulers breaks down, the result is always the most extreme form of violence.

In Britain, however, having been tolerably well administered for several centuries, we have become slow to turn to serious violence. Thus, our rulers have got lazy and complacent and they think they can continue along the route they have taken. They can't. The worm will turn eventually. When it does, people will die. That now is the only certainty.

COMMENT THREAD

Does nobody care any more?

Posted by Richard Monday, February 11, 2008 blogosphere

This is the plaintive cry from Philip Johnston in today's Daily Telegraph concluding a piece headed, "MPs' debate on EU treaty is a scandal". "The House of Commons is about one third of the way through its debate on the Treaty of Lisbon," he writes, adding: "Have you noticed?"

In a word, yes! We had noticed and wrote about it yesterday. John Redwood also noted it last week, which we reported.

If you take the "temperature" from the political blogosphere and from the media, though, there is no interest and little concern. Johnston writes that, "You could say this is the media's fault for obsessing about MPs' expenses and the politics of another country." But he adds that the parliamentarians themselves "are hardly enamoured of their own discussion."

That there is no detailed debate on the treaty, he views as "a scandal" and "proof of the supine nature of national parliaments within the EU". Here, he has the measure of the beast – something we picked up in our other piece yesterday.

In legislative terms, the parliament has collectively lost the will to live. It is not longer really interested in its primary functions and has turned in on itself, to the extent that its internal, petty politicking has assumed an overweening importance, to the exclusion of everything else.

Thus does Johnston rail against the creation of "a powerful new EU interior department, called the Standing Committee on Internal Security (COSI)." He devotes some space to home secretary Jacqui Smith's failure to mention it in her speech. He then refers us to details obtained by Bruno Waterfield who in turn links us to the "smoking gun" of the Council conclusions from 2006.

This is, in fact, our old friend the Hague programme, about which we were sounding the alarm in 2004. But, if you asked the average British political blogger about it, they would think you were referring to young William's last television appearance.

So it is that, as Johnston warns, "we are about to hand control of our criminal justice system to the European Commission and the European Court of Justice," leading him to his despairing cry.

Nevertheless, he has hit upon the root of the problem – nobody does care or, at least, not enough people care. Some of those that could make a small difference are happier gurgling away about the US primaries, about MPs expenses, about sharia law and a whole host of issues other than the way we are governed and the destruction of our parliamentary system.

Soon enough, they will have to care and, although it is never too late, the longer we leave it, the harder it will be to restore our democracy and the greater will be the pain. In the meantime, scandal it is, but one which will not get the attention it deserves.

Print ready

Barking bloody mad - by Richard...

But he can always get an audience, even if he has to go to India to get it. Having run out of credibility in his own country, presumably he thinks he will get a better reception in the home of Rajendra Pachauri.

COMMENT THREAD