Simon Heffer on 10 years under Blair & New Labour.

Check this out:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/04/25/do2501.xml

I have posted the bottom half of his piece below:

We would be wrong.

The past decade has seen a sustained assault on public probity, economic responsibility, constitutional efficiency, the rule of law, administrative competence, liberty of the subject, and our international reputation of a sort unknown in living memory. I defer to no one in my disdain for the Major government: but, with the notable exceptions of its economic buffoonery and its toadying to pro-Europeanism, it could not hold a candle to the present crew for sheer destructiveness of our values, our way of life and our money.

If you seek its monument, look around you. Our public services, which we were told were safe only in Labour's hands, are nearly non-serviceable. As a group of doctors protested on Monday, the NHS is now so hopeless that people, having already paid high taxes for the privilege of a free-at-point-of-use service, are making huge sacrifices to pay to go privately.

Children pass record numbers of GCSEs and A-levels, and record numbers go on to university, yet employers report a shortage of able graduates and, as Jeff Randall wrote here a fortnight ago, would rather have entrants straight from school.

Council taxes, like many other imposts, have risen far faster than inflation, yet local services (bins again) are being cut. Do not be deceived by a near-doubling of the prison population in the past decade into thinking Labour is "tough on crime". The police are now a weapon of social engineering, with promotion at the highest levels contingent usually on how well an officer buys the ruling ideology, and not how good he is at catching criminals.

**The local police in Newport are not to good at dealing with trespass by gypsies/travellers and take a soft on crime approach whilst the council seems to think that social engineering is the way forward:http://newportcity.blogspot.com/2007/04/found-this-gem-in-our-local-paper-south.html

Crime has risen because of Labour's refusal to address the causes of criminality, notably family breakdown, poor schools and the proliferation of drugs. The knife culture, and the present epidemic of youths going around stabbing each other to death, is redolent of what a happy country Labour has made.

Never since the Six Acts of almost 190 years ago has individual liberty been so abused by the state in peacetime. As the statistics show, this is not about controlling crime: it is about controlling people. Yet (and this is a mark of the incompetence with which we are governed) our borders remain porous and the Government barely knows where to start in enforcing them, with the minister responsible admitting that the public have become angry.

But since one of the flagship policies of Blairism - devolution - has effectively ended the United Kingdom, perhaps disregard for our borders comes as standard.

We face a troubled old age because of the assault on pensions by he who looks sure to be the next prime minister. High taxes are driving more businesses abroad: contrast this with the success of our much-patronised neighbour, Ireland.

High personal taxes have been used by the next prime minister to build a client state that employs almost a quarter of our workforce and, in some Labour heartlands, between a third and a half. In the countryside, by contrast, farmers are adding all the time to the suicide statistics, and their land is seen as little more than a theme park.
(my own local MP Paul Flynn-Labour- has made bad taste remarks about farmer suicides) link:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/635929.stm

Our soldiers die ever more numerously in Iraq. Our Armed Forces are ruthlessly run down. To curry favour with an anti-American Europe, Mr Blair offers to sign up to its new "constitution" without any consultation of the British public.

But worst of all, perhaps, is the vice Mr Blair came to power principally to eradicate: sleaze. I know he is not a crook, but there are allegations that crookery has happened on his watch. Whatever he wants his legacy to be, it probably isn't the sight of some of his associates being taken off in handcuffs.

We are not in shock - we are all to used to this - so let us avoid cliché. Let us not talk of 10 wasted years, for that is too simple and, indeed, is not enough. Let us talk,
instead, of 10 utterly ruinous ones.

**Well said Mr Heffer, one thing I find amusing about this government is that former Home Sec. David Blunett has after leaving that job(some may argue he was pushed) landed himself a job writting for the tabloid newspaper The Sun. Every so often Blunett will bang on about morality, declining standards in public life whilst forgetting that he took part in a high profile legal case to find out if he was the father of his girlfriends baby. Oh said girlfriend also happened to be a married woman and yet he sees no problem pointing at other people via his weekly bit in The Sun.

Mind even that pales when compared to the behaviour of John Prescott. A man who is on record for lambasting Tory sleaze and has been caught out shagging the office bike behind his wifes back, yet somehow still hangs on as Deputy PM? My bit on Prescott, his cheap skank and bringing disgrace to public office: http://newportcity.blogspot.com/2006/05/prescott-stays-but-his-skank-ho-is.html

Tags: Simon Heffer
New Liebour
Politics
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