Murphy's letter from Edinburgh

 

Labour are becoming a liability

Just recently the Government of this country has become a liability.  For those who don't know who the government of this country is, it's the Labour party.

The Health Secretary Patricia Hewit has stated that the National Health Service has had its best year ever, while at the same time they are paying nurses off, shutting hospital wards and closing down hospitals because they've got it wrong.  Meanwhile they are telling us that it is nothing too worry about.  At the same time students nurses who have been trained have been told there will be no jobs for them when they finish their training, and doctors who came from abroad to fill in the gaps in the health service are being told that they are no longer required, while at the same time there is a shortage.

Yes, everything's rosy if you wear rose tinted glasses, but try telling that to the British people who are starting to see where things are going in this country as events become clearer.  Even the Royal College of Nursing gave Patricia Hewit a rough ride as she tried to justify what is going on with our health service where the cuts for the Cinderella services are failing all over the country.  That's the mental health services and services for the disabled and the elderly.

Yesterday, Home Secretary Charles Clarke admitted that serious criminals who had come from abroad and committed serious offences in this country have been let back into the community after the courts ordered their deportation after their sentences were finished.  They have disappeared in this country without deportation.  The thing is, no one knows where over a thousand of them are.  They were let out of prison and they have disappeared, and they are likely to commit other serious offences given the type of offences some of them have committed, or they could move too any country in Europe.  If they were able to get into Britain on false passports or without a passport, I'm quite sure that they can move around Europe with impunity.

This is the same man who attacked the media for reporting the news of what is going on in this country.  They are too blame for reporting the news according too Charles Clarke in an attempt to divert the attention of the governments failings by blaming them for reporting the news.

The last government tried that one before and they got their just desserts for being so arrogant when they got things wrong.  The British people are often docile and don't talk on the issues as events change.  But there comes a point when they will take no more of the spin, and when that happens, the government can expect a rough ride for the rest of their term in office.

The government also wants new powers that would allow government ministers to change laws without consulting parliament in their Regulatory Reform Bill.  They have been told to water it down.  That too me is the road to a dictatorship, or an autocratic state.  This bill should never be allowed to see the light of day if we value our freedoms.

Parliament is there to make laws, and the Labour government has gone a bit overboard with the powers that it already has.  In its first eight years they brought in over 1,000 new laws that will effect people all over the country.

I can tell you that ignorance is no defence in the laws of this country.  But how are the ordinary people who know nothing about law supposed absorb what is now against the law and what isn't?  I doubt if half your lawyers know what these new laws are.

The media are reporting these issues because they are news stories and the day the government can tell the media what story they can and can't report, we go down a very slippery slope.

But believe me, the media in this country won't be silenced because some government minister doesn't like the bad press that they are getting for their blundering time after time.  This is where the media should turn up the heat so that we can scrutinise the governments mismanagement which seems to be almost normal now.

The government might have started off well after 19 years in the wilderness, but they have now become a liability and it will be very hard even for their supporters to trust them in the future.

I doubt that the Labour party will get their fourth term by the time the next General Election comes around.

That's because even their supporters are now starting too see bad government for what it really is.

Written by Andrew Murphy 26 April 2006

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