MY INTERVIEW ON RUSSIA TODAY ABOUT THE OFFICIAL MULTI-CULTURALIST POLICY IN ENGLISH SCHOOLS TEACHING "BRITISH VALUES"

INTERVIEW FOR NEWS FEATURE ON RUSSIA TODAY ABOUT THE OFFICIAL MULTI-CULTURALIST POLICY IN ENGLISH SCHOOLS TO TEACH BRITISHNESS

Early on Thursday, 20th November, I was quietly fuming to myself about the article which had appeared in the papers about a primary school in Lincolnshire being marked down by Ofsted for being too English. The phone then rang and I was invited to come to Russia Today’s studios at Millbank Tower to be on this News to talk about it. Naturally I was happy to do so and the YouTube of my interview is below. Before you look at that interview though do read the article:-

Rural school is denied top grade by Ofsted inspectors because it's 'too English' and not diverse enough

 A high-performing primary school has missed out on Ofsted’s top grade after being judged too English.

Pupils at the rural primary lacked ‘first-hand experience of the diverse make-up of modern British society’, declared the watchdog.

However, around 97 per cent of the population in the town to which the school belongs are white.

Ofsted refused it an ‘outstanding’ rating and graded it ‘good’ instead.

It said the school was failing to do enough to ensure pupils understand the ‘cultural diversity of modern British society’ and experience ‘first-hand interaction with counterparts from different backgrounds’.

But parents complained Middle Rasen Primary in Market Rasen was being punished for factors outside its control and had effectively been told it was ‘too English’.

The row is the latest controversy over new rules on teaching ‘British values’ introduced in the wake of the Trojan Horse scandal, in which Muslim extremists tried to infiltrate schools in Birmingham.

Schools are required to ‘actively promote’ British values such as democracy, tolerance, mutual respect, individual liberty and the rule of law.

However the rules – and Ofsted’s enforcement of them – have brought criticism from some schools and faith groups. A Christian school in Reading says it was warned it could face closure for failing to invite imams and other religious leaders to take assemblies.

In another case, a Roman Catholic school in East Anglia was marked down for failing to do enough to ‘teach students about the dangers of extremism and radicalisation’, although the report was later withdrawn.


The 104-pupil Middle Rasen Primary, in the town of Market Rasen on the edge of the Lincolnshire wolds, was inspected last month.

Ofsted praised it for high standards of teaching and leadership and the courteous and enthusiastic behaviour of pupils. But the inspector said: ‘The large majority of pupils are White British. Very few are from other ethnic groups, and currently no pupils speak English as an additional language.’

It said the school should ‘extend pupils’ understanding of the cultural diversity of modern British society by creating opportunities for them to have first-hand interaction with their counterparts from different backgrounds’.

Yesterday parents attacked the Ofsted decision. Mother-of-two Kirsty Egen, 29, said: ‘I think it’s ridiculous. It’s a brilliant school.

‘Why would the school spend time on trying to teach the children how to integrate with people who aren’t even there? It seems very vindictive to just mark them down for something they cannot change.’

Jodie Miller, 35, whose daughter Dylann, six, attends the school added: ‘We are a small rural community, there just aren’t many children here from different backgrounds.’


Julia Weeks, 47, who has a son of ten at the school, said: ‘To mark a school down for something they cannot control is crackers. If there were more people from ethnic minorities around then maybe you could have a complaint, but there just aren’t.’ Father-of-one Benjamin Bannan, 33, added: ‘It’s outrageous that a British school can he punished for being too British.’

Head teacher Melonie Brunton said the school was now looking to partner with an inner-city school in an effort to comply with Ofsted’s recommendation.

‘Ofsted are very keen on British values,’ she said. ‘We were very pleased to have got the very positive comments. We are a rural Lincolnshire school and that is always going to be an issue.’

Ofsted said: ‘We judged this school to be good across all areas, including teaching quality and pupils’ behaviour. All schools must teach pupils about fundamental British values.’

Father-of-one Benjamin Bannan, 33, added: 'Its outrageous that a British school can be punished for being too British. It just doesn't make sense at all.

'We would welcome people from different cultures with open arms I'm sure - but there just aren't any ethnic minorities around here.'

Ms Brunton said the school would look to look to partner with an inner-city school to develop their understanding of multicultural issues.

She said: 'We would have liked to be 'outstanding' but we were very pleased to have got the very positive comments.

'We all worked really hard - everybody, the staff and the pupils have worked hard.

'I think the problem is that we are a rural Lincolnshire school and that is always going to be an issue. I agree that we could do more and we are trying to get a partnership with an inner city school.'

The head said school trips usually involve visits to the countryside, such as farms and zoos.

But they recently had a trip to Derby, which included a mosque visit as well as touring the Rolls-Royce factory.

She added: 'We try to do things but not enough. I felt the Ofsted comments were a backlash against the Birmingham Trojan Horse issue and Ofsted are very keen on British values.'

Reverend Charles Patrick, who was head of the governors at the time of the report, added: 'There is always more that you can do and maybe now we look at twinning the school with ones from other minority areas or something like that.

'But this is a rural area, like 80 per cent of the country, we don't have many non white residents. Perhaps it would be a different matter if we were in the middle of London or Manchester or something.'

Tory MP for Gainsborough Sir Edward Leigh said: 'This is political correctness gone mad.

'Middle Rasen Primary School is an outstanding school by any standards, and Melonie Brunton is a brilliant headteacher - I back the school and its head one-hundred percent.

'Just last week I wrote to Nicky Morgan, the Education Secretary, objecting strenuously to the new so-called 'equality' regulations she is implementing in schools.

'Conservatives have always stood for freeing our schools from the deadening hand of state-enforced orthodoxy.

'Why there has been such a massive U-turn under Nicky Morgan is inexplicable to me.

'Multiculturalism is an irrelevance in Lincolnshire with its low number of ethnic minorities, who are already welcomed and well-integrated into our local communities, as they should be.'

A spokesman for Ofsted reiterated that it was not the only factor in depriving the school of its 'outstanding' rating.

He said: 'We judged this school to be good across all areas including leadership and management, teaching quality, and pupils' behaviour and safety.

'All schools must teach pupils about fundamental British values including mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs.

'That way they will be prepared for the future wherever they go.'

Click here for the original of the article >>> Middle Rasen Primary School denied top grade by Ofsted as it's 'too English' | Daily Mail Online

Now here is the link to my interview with Russia Today – click here >>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6MSh487lKQ

What do you think?

ARE THE FLAGS TELLING US ANYTHING?

ARE THE FLAGS TELLING US ANYTHING?

We have long-standing family friends who live in Ashbourne which is a nice old-fashioned market town in Derbyshire near the border with Staffordshire.

Around the corner from where they live there is a row of houses which are overlooked by the path which I use to walk my dog. I know your heart is sinking already at the thought of a long drawn out story, but in fact the nub of the matter is simple and very encouraging to any English nationalist.

When our friends first moved to their house about 15 years ago, I went out for a walk and looked down on this row of houses there was then one flagpole which flew the Union Jack.

About 10 years ago there were two flagpoles, one flying the Union Jack and the new one flying the Cross of St George.

About 5 years ago there were two flagpoles with the Cross of St George and the one flying the Union Jack.

Last Saturday there were seven flagpoles all flying the Cross of St George and that also included the flagpole that had previously flown the Union Jack.

I suspect that this is very bad news for the Emily Thornberrys of this world and all those who hate and fear the rising sense of English national identity!

But in case you are wondering, these seven flags appeared to have been flying for some time and not to have just been raised in the last few days in order to tell the Islington set to “go forth and multiply”!

THE LESSONS OF THE SOUTH YORKSHIRE BY-ELECTION FOR POLICE COMMISSIONER

THE LESSONS OF THE SOUTH YORKSHIRE BY-ELECTION FOR POLICE COMMISSIONER

 

The fact that is strangest to those of us that have an idealist hope that representative democracy can be a force for good is that over 85.12% of those registered on the electoral roll in South Yorkshire could not be bothered to get off their backsides to vote.  This is whilst they were living in the midst of probably the worst scandal in the whole of the Western world.  They could hardly fail to have been fully aware of it and of much of its ramifications and their idleness puts them as being somewhat complicit in the scandal.  Can it be imagined that if significant numbers had taken to the streets to object over the last 15 years, that even the conspirators at the heart of South Yorkshire Labour wouldn’t have re-thought their approach?



The extent of the scandal is this, for many years now isolated voices have been pointing out that there is a widespread problem of Pakistani/Muslim men sexually predating upon very young English girls.  Although it is now clear that many people within the upper reaches of Labour and, no doubt, of the local media were well aware of this happening.  Not only did they not do anything to prevent it, but they actively demonised anyone who raised it.



This case must be the most appalling example of institutionalised racism and bigotry that anyone could imagine taking place in England.  Given the current furore over Jimmy Saville (and for that matter Ched Evans, the Sheffield footballer, who appears to have taken advantage of a drunken, but at least adult girl), who can doubt the seriousness of what is now officially admitted to be, in Rotherham alone, at least 1,400 children raped, trafficked, abused and, no doubt, at least similar numbers in many other towns across England.



For example, Manchester is beginning to look like a place where Labour behaved in the same way, where Labour government officials, social workers and the police and local media all behaved in the same way.  In Manchester the numbers of girls may exceed 10,000.



It would appear that across England that the scandal may well encompass over 100,000 girls, most of whom were supposedly in local government “Care”, very often having been taken away from feckless parents to be put in a situation which turned out to be far worse.



The extent of the scandal is not just those local officials, police and local politicians who were aware of it and did nothing, or actively colluded in covering it up, but the scandal went as far into the heart of the Labour Government as the then Home Secretary, David Blunkett, and was certainly known about by the Labour MPs of the various towns involved, as is clear from the Yorkshire Post article below.



Yet in the midst of this utterly appalling scandal, that any decent human being should be up in arms about, this is the very context in which 849,654 adult citizens living in South Yorkshire couldn’t be bothered to vote.  This figure does not even take account of up to 25% of those eligible to vote who care so little about the future of our country that they are not even on the electoral roll.  It is not as if there was no choice given to those people to vote against the corrupt Labour establishment.  No our candidate, David Allen, had come second last time.  We delivered a hard-hitting leaflet, which I show below, and there was a reasonable amount of media coverage and reporting of what was going on.



Why then was it that only 8,583 people voted for the only candidate genuinely committed to a root and branch tackling of this appalling problem?



Well one answer of course is the paedophile vote.  Labour scraped back in again with mostly postal voters (somewhere in the order of 80% of their vote was postal votes), and they got 74,060 votes.  Those voters would have been the paedophiles themselves, their friends and family and all those that had been involved in the cover-up and institutionalised neglect of their duty to these girls.  There were also, no doubt, some un-thinking Labour Party supporters.  The Liberal Democrats did not stand and that of course helped Labour, as their standing would have split the votes of unthinking Leftists.



Then there is also the fundamental lack of State support for these elections.  When Police Commissioner elections were being introduced by the then Police Commissioner, the aptly named Nick Herbert, I, and many others, lobbied him to have mayoral style booklets delivered to every elector, which would not only explain the role of the Police Commissioner, but also the voting system and every candidate would have an opportunity to put their electoral address into the leaflet.



The Conservative Minister’s calculation was they did not need the booklet as much as the other parties because they have got the most money and therefore could afford to pay for leafleting, but also there is the usual Conservative Party ‘bean counter’ mentality of keeping the costs down, even where that seriously undermines the purpose for which the money has been spent.



Elections are always quite expensive, not least because the returning officers send a notice of the election card to every elector.



All too typically for the British State the card that is sent has very little of importance or use on it and sending it is nothing more than a ‘tick box’ bureaucratic exercise.  Whereas if that note was replaced with a Mayoral style booklet we would have a realistic chance of getting some better involvement from the electors.  But no, Nick Herbert absolutely refused to support these elections in a way that would have made it likely that this ostensibly commendable reform would succeed.



Given the size of the electorate at 1,000,015 and the distances to be covered over the whole of South Yorkshire, comprising some 14 Westminster parliamentary constituencies, and that there is no support in making contact with the electorate for any of the candidates, it is obvious that the amount of money spent on the campaign is likely to make all the difference.



Unfortunately, but inevitably, the English Democrats had the smallest war chest for fighting these elections.  We had a well-designed, hard-hitting leaflet.  We did our best to raise the issue on social media, but in the end the amount of money spent was inevitably going to tell.

 
Labour had not only invested time and effort in the past in getting their supporters on the postal voting system, but also had relatively deep pockets and an urgent need to try to maintain their position in order to close off the prospect of senior members of the Labour Party being arrested for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and various other conspiracy charges arising out of their disgraceful behaviour.



The Tories were there in their role of trying to keep the Punch & Judy shows going between Labour and the Conservatives and splitting any non-establishment opposition vote and got 18,536 votes.



UKIP stood, despite being a party that is opposed to the concept of Police Commissioners, a bizarre position for a party claiming to be in favour of democracy.  They put up a former South Yorkshire Police Inspector, who, even if he wasn’t personally involved in the scandal, must have known about it.  He was supposedly in “Community Policing” and engaging in buttering up the Imams in the various mosques of South Yorkshire.  He would have a vested interest in protecting his friends and former colleagues who are guilty.



However when it came down to money it has been stated that by senior people within UKIP that they spent over £150,000 on the election.  I have also heard others say that they spent up to £250,000 on the election.  In either case they spent at least 15 times as much money on this election as we did and still got nowhere near winning it.  Their vote was 46,883.  So UKIP may have spent over £5 per vote.



It was also interesting that the English Democrats counting agents at the various counts reported that about 40% of all the Second Preference votes were English Democrats, so it sounds as if, even if Labour had not succeeded in getting over the 50% mark, that UKIP would not have succeeded in winning the seat.



The lessons therefore of this election are that it is not enough to have the best policies, or the best candidate, or the best leaflet, or even the best social media campaign, what is required to win this was large numbers of potential supporters signed up to vote on the postal vote and also much more money.



In the absence of either of these two key resources, the English Democrats nevertheless did quite well to get 8,500 votes and to retain our deposit.  We also got significant additional publicity and were treated with respect by the media as a serious political party with serious political aims and a serious and sensible candidate.



Well done David Allen and the South Yorkshire English Democrats who made it all possible!



Here is the Yorkshire Post article I mentioned:-

 

Exclusive: MP and Home Office failed to act on Rotherham grooming 11 years ago


by Adrian Pearson, the Yorkshire Post’s Political Editor


ROTHERHAM’s horrific abuse concerns were raised with the Home Office and the town’s MP but never acted on, The Yorkshire Post can reveal.



Abuse campaigners have revealed how in 2003 they met with a senior Home Office representative to say the Rotherham Council and South Yorkshire Police could not be trusted and called for urgent Government action.

And in 2009 they wrote to Denis MacShane with a five page letter detailing abuse concerns made by a Rotherham family but received no response.

Mr MacShane has said he was never approached by constituents raising abuse concerns, and that was why he did not speak on the issue of Rotherham-specific abuse in the House of Commons.

The former MP said he has no knowledge of the letter, and that as it was not directly addressed to him but to a larger group he might not necessarily have had to act on it.

The letter was sent by charity Parents Against Child Sexual Exploitation, then known as CROP, who said its own researcher had to stop work because of fears a serving police officer was passing information on to abusers.

Evidence of the 2009 letter, released by the influential Home Affairs Select Committee, comes as it emerges former Rotherham Council staff face criminal charges for misconduct in public office.

South Yorkshire Police chief constable David Crompton revealed he asked the National Crime Agency to look at council failings and those of his own force as part of its investigation into how abuse claims were handled.

The abuse charity PACE said it still could not understand why when the Home Office was informed of widespread abuse, incompetence or worse in public office and the possibility of police corruption, civil servants did nothing.

Minutes from the charity show that in early 2002 the Home Office knew its own researcher was under pressure to stop asking difficult questions, with records stating “The Home Office in London…know that she is being asked to falsify data and has other problems.”

The Home Office though told Rotherham charities and youth workers that the researcher’s work was to be axed and, it can today be revealed, banned them from publishing the provisional abuse inquiries.

From 2003 onwards briefing notes had been prepared for the then Home Secretary David Blunket and the charity was told “The Home Secretary is ready to read what CROP sends.”

In 2004 charity chair of trustees Hilary Willmer met with Sue Jago from the Home Office “in which she promised the Home office would give a high profile to the issues we raised”.

Ms Willmer last night said: “When we found out what was happening to these girls we assumed everyone would be horrified and there would be immediate action. We had to painfully learn that that was not the case, including when we told the Home Office.”

Ms Willmer’s charity revealed a family support worker was appointed but was forced to quit because of “she believes at least one police officer was undermining her work and potentially putting her personally at risk as he/she was being paid by pimps/groomers for information.”

It emerged yesterday that South Yorkshire Police has now referred 14 people to the IPCC watchdog and may make further referrals should the criteria be met. The force said Both South Yorkshire Police and the independent investigation will remain in constant dialogue with the IPCC.

Mr MacShane said he has no memory of the charity rasing concerns with him. He said he was among the first to speak out in 2012 when the claims became public, and said many serving officers will have questions to answer.

“No one ever approached me on this, not a single person came to me as a constituent on child abuse by Asian males. This notion that the whole world knew and there was a cover up is balderdash.”

He added: “The real people who have questions to answer are Rotherham police officers. It happened at a district level and all those who served at a district command from roughly 1999 to 2010 need to exam their records to see what they knew.”

The Home Office did not provide a comment.



Click here for the original article>>> http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/main-topics/general-news/exclusive-mp-and-home-office-failed-to-act-on-rotherham-grooming-11-years-ago-1-6913834

Explosive Report on Guy Fawkes' day - Immigration of NO net economic benefit to UK!

Migration Watch UK have issued a Comment on CReAM’s revised report 'The Fiscal Effects of Immigration to the UK'.


CReAM is the acronym of
the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration. It is based at UCL and is part of the classic Leftist trick of creating a network of mostly bogus groups that pop up in an orchestrated or choreographed way to respond issues that are of interest to the Left. Here are some links:-

NORFACE - New Opportunities for Research Funding Agency Co-operation in Europe	NORFACE is a partnership between fourteen research councils to increase co-operation in research and research policy in Europe. Over the five project years, the partners will engage in a range of initiatives designed to deliver new levels of co-operative research policy and practice.
CReAM - Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration	CReAM is an independent and interdisciplinary research centre located in the Department of Economics at University College London. CReAM's research focuses on the causes, patterns and consequences of international population mobility and movements affecting UK, Europe and associated global processes.
European Migration Information Network	Based in the Migration Research Unit (MRU) at UCL, it also provides a web-based system to quickly locate useful data related to migration issues.
The Economics and Politics of Employment, Migration and Social Justice	Anglo German Foundation Project coordinated by Prof. Christian Dustman, University College London
Migration Research Unit	The Migration Research Unit is based in the Department of Geography at University College London. It carries out high quality research on international population migration issues.

In this case most of the funding (maybe all) came from the EU funded "European Research Council". So you, dear taxpayer, paid for it!

In assessing the credibility of Cream's "Experts" you might like to bear this report in mind:- " 'Expert' behind migrant report was man who said just 13,000 would come from Eastern Europe  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2822825/Expert-migrant-report-man-said-just-13-000-come-Eastern-Europe.html#ixzz3IfPrzX8m
 
Here is Migration Watch's comment:-
“This report confirms that immigration as a whole has cost up to £150 billion in the last 17 years. As for recent European migrants, even on their own figures - which we dispute - their contribution to the exchequer amounts to less than £1 a week per head of our population.”

Migration Watch UK Press Comment on CReAM’s revised report 'The Fiscal Effects of Immigration to the UK'

1. CReAM have now published a revised version of their paper first put out in November 2013 on the Fiscal effects of immigration to the UK. The original CReAM paper was given extensive media coverage and flourished as conclusive proof that immigration was a fiscal benefit to the UK, and that migrants contributed more in taxes than they took in public spending. It was claimed that their estimations were robust and certain and made on the most extreme of conservative assumptions.

Migration Watch published an assessment of this original paper highlighting that

The presentation of the paper had failed to highlight its own finding of an overall fiscal cost of some £95bn to the UK from 1995-2011.
Despite its claims of using ‘worst-case’ scenarios, in many cases the paper in fact detailed very much best case scenarios that were likely to have overstated the contribution made by migrants.
In areas where it was claimed that no evidence was available, there was such evidence and that a paper purporting to provide robust and certain results should take these into account.Our assessment suggested that the likely fiscal cost of migration over the period might well be over £140bn.

The authors have now carried out what they call ‘robustness checks’ using different scenarios that do take on some of the points raised by Migration Watch and others. None of these reduce the overall fiscal cost. In fact the overall finding - still absent from their headlines - now appears to be a fiscal cost of £114 billion [para 4.2.1] as a best case, and worse-case scenarios extending this to a cost of up to £159 billion [Table A7 Panel (a) (c)] . Quite different from their previous suggestion that the worst case was a cost of £95bn, and with the MW assessment well within this range.

In their press release the authors continue to avoid highlighting their overall finding of this high fiscal cost of migration of billions of pounds each and every year between 1995 and 2011.

Instead, as before, they cherry-pick particular periods or groups to distract attention from their overall result, which they now concede is an even higher cost than they previously thought.

2. Their original and much publicised headline that - despite the overall cost - EEA migrants since 2000 have contributed 34% more than they have received has been endlessly repeated as a justification for continued high levels of migration particularly from Eastern Europe. They have now revealed that even on their extreme and optimistic assumptions, migrants from Eastern Europe has barely paid its way and on what is now their best-case estimation contributed only just over 10% more than they received.

The authors continue to call this in their press release a 'substantial contribution' from the accession countries. Not only is this a much smaller amount than people have been led to believe, but to suggest that this is somehow more than their UK-born peers is simply wrong.

They put this contribution "mainly down to their higher average labour market participation compared with natives and their lower receipt of welfare benefits". Actually, all this means is that they are more likely to be working-age and not receiving old-age pensions, and much is often made of the fact that these are young workers in the prime of life. But official statistics show that in the UK as a whole, working households without children actually contribute twice as much in tax as they receive in benefits. The assertion we hear so often that migrants in general and Eastern European workers in particular contribute far more than their UK-born counterparts is simply not comparing like with like and certainly not demonstrated in any way by this paper.

3. On specific points raised by Migration Watch:

We said that income should be taken into account in estimating means-tested benefits (including tax credits). This is an obvious and highly significant point that appears still not to have been addressed at all.

We said that attribution of company taxes by simple population share will distort the contribution of recent migrants. The authors have taken account of this in a variant scenario that - in our view correctly - no longer assumes that even the most recent migrants have just the same financial stake in UK plc as lifelong residents.

We said that employee wage data alone from the Labour Force Survey was unlikely to be a sufficient basis for any reliable estimation of personal taxes. The authors have now taken some account of this in varying their estimation of taxes paid by the self-employed.

We said that Business rates should not be attributed to self-employed individuals. The authors have taken account of this in a variant scenario that - in our view more correctly - attributes these in the same way as company taxation and better represents the financial stake that recent migrants have in UK plc.

We said that there are significant characteristics of migrants generally or specific groups that are likely to make a difference to fiscal impact. The authors have taken some account of this in relation to housing benefit, consumption taxes, and family size. On the other hand they do not appear to have taken account of some other issues we raised like inheritance tax or council tax.

The effect of even these partial changes has been to significantly up the authors’ estimate of the fiscal cost of migration and show that Migration Watch was on the right track and correct to draw attention to these issues.

4. These adjustments have a disproportionately large effect on the most recent migrant groups, particularly from Eastern Europe. In fact, the cumulative effect in the authors’ own alternative scenarios is to reduce the contribution made by this group to a mere £66 million over the ten years from 2001-2011 (Table A7 Panel (b) (d)). This is clearly likely to be less than the margin of error in the calculation, and shows that the fiscal contribution of Eastern European migrants - notwithstanding their high rates of employment and their youthful age-profile - may well be nothing at all.

Commenting on the report, Sir Andrew Green, Chairman of Migration Watch UK said:

“This report confirms that immigration as a whole has cost up to £150 billion in the last 17 years. As for recent European migrants, even on their own figures - which we dispute - their contribution to the exchequer amounts to less than £1 a week per head of our population.”

A very good way of explaining the unfairness at the heart of the UK?

Payment for running siblings' new cars

Back in 1999, the parents of three children bought two of their offspring, a new BMW, each. The third received nothing.

For the next 15 years, they did not acknowledge their third child's existence although they forced him to pay the running costs of his siblings' new cars.

However, after those 15 years, circumstances forced them to recant slightly and they bought their third child a second-hand moped. He still had to pay his siblings' running-costs.

By coincidence in 1999, the British government granted two of the three countries of Great Britain (Scotland and Wales) their own parliaments and with them, selfdetermination. The third, (England) received nothing. For the next 15 years, the British government refused to acknowledge England's existence, although they forced her citizens to pay the running-costs of these Scottish and Welsh parliaments, enabling the Scots and Welsh to enjoy freebies which they were denied.

However, after those 15 years, a Scottish independence referendum forced them to recant slightly, and the people of England have been told we're going to get EVEL (English votes on English laws). We will continue to be made to pay the Scots' and Welsh running costs.

We weren't asked. The Scots and the Welsh got a referendum - we didn't. The Scots and the Welsh each got a brand new BMW. Now, after 15 years, we're being told we can have a second-hand moped - "take it or leave it".

Clive Lavelle Weston-super-Mare English Democrats