I've remained aloof from twittering and facebooking and, until now, have relied entirely upon the odd email to friends to share my thoughts and opinions. The difficulty always is that email recipients can rapidly become fed up with drum beating. When that happens they tend to ditch the emails without reading them and I've devalued the process by using that route. It's time for a change.
The bee in my bonnet these days is the EU. Or, more specifically, the EU and Britain's involvement with it. I'm also ticked off with our understanding of what democracy means, or doesn't mean any longer, in this country. I'd be pleased if I can persuade you to think on these things, too.
Where to begin? How about starting with our Prime Minister, David Cameron?
According to sources, he is 44 years old. (October 9, 1966).
On 1 January 1973, when David Cameron was just seven years old, the UK joined the European Economic Community (EEC). The EEC was an economic free trade mechanism between sovereign states; it now no longer exists, having been replaced by the European Union.
When the people of this nation were given the democratic opportunity to vote on whether or not we should join the EEC I was 30 years old and, like a great many others at the time, I thought it would be a good thing for Britain to participate as a member of that community.
The UK joined the European Union on 1 November 1993 when the Treaty on European Union (otherwise known as the Treaty of Maastricht) came into force. David Cameron was then 27 years old and John Major was Prime Minister. I was given no opportunity to express my opinion about whether or not I should support our entry into this changed institution. Nor was anyone else in this country, despite promises from all major political party leaders that a referendum would be arranged.
All this is documented history. But why would an otherwise mature man of 27 who had never himself been able to vote on the legal association between UK and EEC, consider that anyone who did vote in 1973 to join a now defunct institution, voted for every British citizen, for everyone, for all time and that no further vote is necessary? But that is exactly the position he has chosen.
In his Witney constituency, with an electorate of 72,000, David Cameron persuaded 34,000 to elect him as their MP. Or, put another way, 38,000 people either didn't vote or else voted for someone else. (23,796 voted for someone else).
So, in 2010 34,000 people authorised David Cameron to tell 60,000,000 people in the UK that a referendum in 1973 settled our relationship with Europe for all time! And that is democracy as the British people are forced to understand it.
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