English Yokel

Yokel is relieved to see others holding similar views.

Yokel had been puzzled as to how the EU would abolish the Westminster Parliament once it had become surplus to requirements when the Lisbon Constitutional Treaty was brought into effect later this year. For such abolition would have to be done in a very careful and gentle manner to avoid provoking the English to rebellion against the Brussels government.

Then it slowly dawned on him that the Telegraph had been chosen to drip feed the poison that would cause the English to demand the abolition of their own Westminster Parliament. Now we know that it was an ex-SAS officer who passed the information on to the Telegraph, a paper that has shown a steadfast trend of late to be a NuLabour Government stooge. Just how the ex-SAS officer came by the disks has yet to emerge, but the Metropolitan Police won't be looking for the culprit as it is not in the "public interest"!

Then we have the focus of the story on "MP's expenses", and trying to draw a parallel with the expenses that employees claim for out of pocket expenditure on their employer's business. But the focus is actually on the Additional Costs Allowance, a nasty little trick to provide a tax-free increase to MPs' pay during times of formal pay restraint, and one that was introduced in the early 1970s, ie over 30 (yes, thirty) years ago, and which was widely known about by the MPs themselves, and by the lobby hacks who fawn all over them.

Which begs two points. Firstly if it is a legitimate allowance, then it is not the MPs who should be harassed by the press but the governments that introduced and operated it. After all, it is said that the Commons Fees Office was known to ring up MPs and tell them that they had not been claiming enough! Secondly, why explode the system now? The dust has not yet settled enough to know the answer to that, but there must be something nasty going on, that the "powers that be" do not want the British public to know about until it is all irreversible.

In an attempt to comment on this affair, Nadine Dorries (Con) has made some rather strong assertions on her blog. It matters not one jot whether you agree with her assertions or not. Be worried that the Telegraph's owners have used the British law of defamation to gag her, and have her British hosted blog taken down. Of course it is currently still available in the Google cache, which has been copied by a number of concerned bloggers. One of the first things that happens in an old style Coup D'Etat is that the newspapaers and TV stations get a visit from the would be government, and are closed down unless they toe the new Party line. These days, we already have a very compliant press and TV, so that just leaves the bloggers to be shut down.

We live in worrying times.