Q: why does it take flooding in the Thames Valley before the Westminster village wakes up to a problem?
A: because we don’t have a functional democratic system in this country. What we need is more devolved power and control and money. If that had been in place we would’ve had more effective local planning and regional planning for exactly these kinds of events, and the ability for us all to make the appropriate decisions for ourselves in our local communities and regions, instead of being dependent on and waiting for the attention of Westminster.
Q: are the political elite banding together to scare the Scots over their independence vote using the Pound?
Yes.
If we had a properly devolved political structure in this country, the Scots, like any other region, would have the ability to control local taxes and local spending, and this wouldn’t be an issue at all.
A national currency that covers all of the regions is in everybody’s interest, and that will place certain restrictions on every region, including Scotland’s, to control their finances in a way that assists in the protection of the value of that currency.
The Scots are being forced to vote in a referendum on every option except the one that they actually want, Devo max. After we take control of Westminster in 2015, we will grant every region of the United Kingdom the powers of Devo max.
Q: is the ban on smoking in cars with children practically enforceable?
No it isn’t, and even the authors of the bill readily admit this.
Whatever your thoughts are about the dangers of a particular activity, we need to be much more careful about passing laws that then require our police force and our courts to get involved in making sure that these laws are prosecuted, because we certainly don’t need a rule book full of laws that are not enforced – that simply degrades the value of the law in everybody’s eyes.
There is a basic contract in place that is not sufficiently recognised. And that contract is that in return for respecting our laws in the public space, we grant to individuals their privacy and their rights of freedom in their own private space. When we start to invade private spaces with public laws, we endanger the respect for our public spaces. And that is a very dangerous place for any free society to go.
Q: should the UK take its lead from the Swiss when renegotiating its relationship with Europe?
A: of course the Swiss are not part of Europe, and therefore it would be very hard to take a lead from what they have done in their referendum restricting immigration.
But it is a sign that people all over Europe are dissatisfied with the relationship between them and this administration in Brussels, and it is one of the greatest tasks of this and the next generation to renegotiate that entire relationship on the half of all of the citizens of Europe so that it functions as a much better level.
Immigration: The fear that the lady speaks of is again another outcome of a lack of local control in our communities and/or regions. Immigration policies are decided that national or supranational levels, but communities are left to deal with the consequences, to provide the facilities and infrastructure without the ability to participate in those decisions. Migration and the free movement of labour are undoubtedly good things, and it should be up to every community to decide for themselves what level of immigration they are prepared to accept and invest in, so that when ever a new citizen moves to the community that community also receives the funds to pay for the infrastructure to support them, and that is what LIFE’s policies do.
UK LIFE 