So at last some theology. About time this blog posted some theology, I know.
Covenant, Hope and Human Future – Theological Economics
Ah well, it took me away from shouting at the television, for a while at least. To read it in Scribd, click Mode (top left of screen), View Mode then Book Mode. You can download and leave comments. The Related Documents are not mine. For more by me, see here
Nevertheless, both [the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and the British National Party (BNP)] stand to gain because they articulate key issues of overriding importance to the public — such as mass immigration and membership of the EU — but which the mainstream parties obdurately fail to address. These issues are fundamental to the very identity of the country and its ability to govern itself at all. Indeed, their neglect can even be said to have contributed in no small measure to the expenses scandal. This is because parliamentary democracy itself has become steadily emptied of meaning and purpose, leaving a vacuum which has been filled by corruption. For more than three decades, Parliament has become increasingly powerless. In recent years, this was the result of the Labour Government deliberately outsourcing its powers — to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembliy; to quangos, management consultancies or unelected advisers; or to the courts through human rights law. But above all, the British Parliament has progressively surrendered its powers of national self-government to Europe, which has reduced the cradle of democracy to the status of little more than Westminster Regional Council.This whole process was summed up in 1998 by Peter Mandelson, who observed with menacing perspicacity that ‘the era of pure representative government is coming slowly to an end’… Paradoxically, the diminution of Britain’s place in the world has gone hand in hand with an increase in the power of the State over its own citizens. Determined to ram through its agenda for a new world order of which the EU is an important part, the Labour Government increasingly concentrated power in itself while it steadily took it away from Parliament. So there was more and more secondary legislation upon which MPs don’t have to vote, less and less time to debate important measures, and ever-tighter control by the party whips over MPs whose only career was in politics and who were, therefore, totally dependent for their livelihood upon political patronage. The outcome was an empty Commons chamber as MPs found they had less and less to do — and employed their creativity instead in filling in their expenses forms.
Melanie Phillips No wonder British MPs turned to crime
