People of Britain - Charter of Britain

Charter of Britain

Britain has a unique culture, a rich history, and contains a proud Island race, and this is good to celebrate and to encourage within the context of other important things.
Despite some errors British culture has spearheaded democracy and justice around the world and her influence has been, all things considered, positive and worthy of respect.
The British people spurn extremism, of the right as of the left, and seek a government that is somewhere in the centre, inclusive and fair. This is an aspect of the British temperament.
British society has sought to foster an open society, with freedom of speech and a reward for diligence and industry.
Britain has every reason to be proud of the economic environment it has produced and seeks to produce, where people find the opportunity to advance themselves regardless of their social position.
The influx of people from abroad has contributed to this economic success. We acknowledge and appreciate the place of those who have migrated to these Islands.
The economic migration into Britain has reached immense proportions, now estimated at over 900,000 annually.
The full impact of the economic migration of peoples of vastly different cultures and religions is yet to be felt, and creates concerns that the values of British culture may if nothing is done, decline irrevocably.
There is a dangerous and false anti-racism that is frightened to stand up for British values. Many of those in positions of influence appear to have more embarrassment than pride in the British character and temperament. We believe that these need to be acknowledged, and defended before it is too late.

Religion and Education

The foundation of the British temperament is in Christian tradition, as well as the character born of an Island race.
The radical secularization of society in the West has created a society that has no intrinsic aim or goal other than wealth creation and individual security. Governments themselves have joined in with this aimlessness vis-à-vis more longer term and spiritually life enhancing goals. The aimlessness that results is witnessed in a rise in antisocial behaviour, as well as spiritual homelessness among many who can no longer look for direction from leaders in society in the way their lives ought to be conducted.
The Christian religion in association and cooperation with the state has previously provided these broader guidelines to life, and still does where the secularization has not been complete such as in the army, in prisons and in hospitals.
‘People of Britain’ seeks a mature assessment of secularization, seeking a reappraisal of the religious contribution to society, in particular so that society can again offer moral and spiritual leadership to its citizens.
With the help of religious and political traditions of these Islands longer term aims and goals need to be openly acknowledged in conformity with the broad consent of the people based on a mature examination of what values and beliefs are integral, though not necessarily overt without that examination, to the traditions of these Islands.

Education and the Family

The educational environment whereby people grow up to become responsible self- governing individuals leading happy, independent and law-abiding lives is the precondition of citizenship. Citizenship requires a sincere reasoned preparation utilizing the best standards and lore and culture of the land.
This requires a fundamental appraisal of all institutions, from the most basic like the family to the more complex like schools and municipal bodies, to make sure that the aims and objections of society are properly and forcibly aimed for.
The whole idea of ‘direction’ has become taboo leading to a dangerous vacuum which is failing to provide for good citizenship. Those who have the most influence in society have often failed in this area due to not wishing to appear directive of people’s lives. There is an embarrassment regarding Christian values and beliefs, and a lack of willingness to condemn behaviour that is destructive of society’s norms where to do so requires a clear moral stance.
There are record levels of people in prison in Britain. There are more people doing life in British prisons than the whole of Western Europe put together. The response of building ever more prisons is like bailing out a ship while a gaping hole is present in the hull. The gaping hole is the absence of moral direction. Without teaching and directing people to develop into good citizens who appreciate the need to work in harmony the breakdown of the development of individuals will lead to more in prison and more broken lives for victims and perpetrators alike.
The family is the most basic social grouping in human society, such that society ignores it to its peril. The legal institution of the family gives the husband, wife and children a defence and a security that no other institution can give. When it functions well it provides the securest framework in which a child may grow up to become a good citizen. We need to ask ourselves if legal and other trends do not support it as it ought to be supported, allowing it to be circumvented too easily, for fear of being morally judgmental.
One in four children is raised in single parent families. When children do not have the benefit of a stable family, mother and children are often condemned to low incomes and the children to poorer future opportunities of full participation in society. Recently the chairman of the Youth Justice Board declared that the absence of a father figure, and other good male role models is having a catastrophic effect on children with regard to setting boundaries and general discipline. The result is that many school classrooms become frightening and lawless places, and tens of thousands of children become young offenders appearing before the courts.
Britain has the highest level of teenage pregnancy in Europe and the second highest in the world with local authorities often having to provide housing and assistance. More needs to be done to instil in young people the moral teaching, that distinguishes between the best, a nuclear family of husband, wife and children, and the worst, a non working single parent struggling in isolation and poverty to raise his or her child.
Leading a healthy life ought to be a major government concern for the preparation for good citizenship. Clear and forthright efforts within the parameters of a free society need to be made to prevent lifestyle choices that are destructive to self, not only in such things as ‘smoking’, but also in other areas which are equally or even more damaging. A healthy diet has a large positive effect on behaviour leading to a decline in aggressiveness as is proven in both schools and prisons. It also maximizes the growth of the brain and allows for more efficient functioning of the nervous system.
Youth deviancy, drug abuse, disrespect for teachers, police and others in authority, bodes ill for the future stability of these Islands. Behaviour not only needs to be challenged but right models of behaviour clearly indicated. When the institution of the family breaks down, when government does not support it and give properly direct the behaviour of its citizens then this sort of thing is the result.
To bury one’s head in the sand, to advocate ‘free choice’ to the exclusion of the affects of these demographic changes that affect everybody, is clearly the height of irresponsibility. A good society needs to be directed so that people can be free for the right and good functioning of their lives, not for destruction and unhappiness. No present mainstream political party has shown itself prepared to make the difficult choices to improve children’s and young people’s physical and moral health. On the contrary, the situation is getting alarmingly worse. All these issues in this section are related and need a common solution. Society needs to be directed by those in political leadership
A directive stance is all too absent from present mainstream political parties. Government has retreated into little more than trying to create the right economic environment for people to be financially successful whilst providing the security (police and prisons) to protect that financial success. While this is a commendable aim, we do not consider it to be the prime aim of a rightly governed society. The first aim of good government must be to create the conditions of good citizenship. Good citizenship itself requires a relationship of secular and religious bodies.
Meanwhile the government in these Islands and elsewhere has become extremely intrusive into the lives of people, regulating things to the minutest detail. Therefore, while it has openly ceased to be directive in a broad sense of what values people ought to have, it has become over industrious in regulating the smallest details. This is not an accidental. Where a society ceases to be directed by the state, the state must regulate in detail. True freedom depends on true values and a strong character. What it fails to create through character, it must enforce through law. The result is not more freedom, rather less freedom. A good character grants the highest freedom to an individual. Failure to assist in the development of such character is a failure of government. One could easily say that with minute over-regulation freedom has been inverted and all but banished through the bizarre circumstance of seeking to give freedom of choice and not being morally directive. The true freedom is created only after a proper character has been established that allows for an informed and a good choice, not any choice.
Over-regulation has a stifling effect on many choices that we make, in schools, in industry, in society.
The Christian ethical and social teaching is arguably the best available for teaching children and thereby facilitates the character necessary for modern society. We ought not to be ashamed of this teaching, nor frightened of it. It does not need to be taught in a morally straitjacketed form, nor with an agenda directed by religious zealots, rather by the state with due allowance for its administering for a broad spectrum of people. The danger we are in unless we act to defend British values
Many centuries of Christian teaching has formed the laws and traditions of these Islands. It may just be that Christian teaching is the essential within these laws and traditions. Who knows the consequences if such an essential factor is removed? However these laws and traditions are now at risk of being swept away through the influence of a cultural melting pot whereby other cultures and religions are increasingly placed on a par with the Island culture and religion, which then becomes just one culture among others. When the chief religion is undermined, all religion is undermined, and other religions often unjustly demonized.
In the present environment new values and objectives will be forged from this melting pot, perhaps very different from what has created a free and open society. Nobody knows what the end result will be in twenty years’ time when if immigration continues at present levels, with less than half the people in these Islands ethnically from the Island races, and when Christianity is little more than a fringe religion. British society may become a very different place.
The British people do not want a racist solution. A great British cultural value is openness to the other, acceptance of their culture and traditions. When other European countries have gone down this route, Britain has not. Racism ought to have no part in Britain. I reject the ethos of those right wing movements who do not wish to extend the welcome that most British people extend to newcomers to the land. We believe that a Britain united by the same values and depth of character can be shared by people of very different origins.
We must not allow our character and temperament to undermine our dearest values by assuming that all players in the social and political arena will abide by the same values. For instance the appeasement by the British Government before the Second World War was motivated by a sense that British values of tolerance and understanding would be shared by the others in the European political arena. Here British sensibilities proved to be wrong as some wilfully chose to act outside of the spectrum of these values. This indicates that to sit back and assume that everyone will play by the highest ‘Island’ values may in the end be the death knell of those values. These values were only safeguarded through the courage and spirit of the British people who refused to allow such an enemy to overwhelm them. We wish to remobilize this spirit before it is too late.
So far the attitude of the governments of this Island has been to down play British values in the desire to appear inclusive and win over as broad a spectrum of people as possible so as to secure the votes necessary for a majority in parliament.
Because acceptance of others is such an important British value, British people often allow themselves to be pushed out of their comfort zones and are frightened to speak for fear of appearing too extreme, yet if the British cultural values lose their dominant position, as they inevitably will if current trends continue, who knows what will replace them? As prisons fill, as malignant religious extremism increases, as insecurity mounts, as the chaos of indirection continues, one wonders what will come next, unless we act to reverse these trends.
I believe it is time to defend the cultural values that have historically defined the character of these lands and to insist that these values retain their dominance, with due allowance for growth and evolution, over other non-Island born cultures. We consider this normal to any society, but in the current climate this may appear extreme and arouse hostility. This is indicative of the reversal of true values.
We hope that Britain will always be an open and free society, warmly accepting the stranger and outcast, but accepting them to something not to nothing. We invite people to join in British culture, or if not we may have to reconsider whether it is compatible with British culture, or safe for British values, for them to continue living among us. For instance people not indigenous to these Islands speaking out and advocating racial or religious violence ought to have their citizenship reviewed. Conversely ordinary law abiding people of all ethnic and religious origins ought to be able to continuing living and contributing to British life. Britishness is not to be interpreted along racial grounds, rather cultural grounds
There is something that is inherently British, whether White British, Black British, or other British. It is British, and is recognizable not through the colour of the skin. All ideas that wed racism to Britishness ought once and for all to be condemned and rejected. We define Britishness by the values and character of British people, not by race. Britain has always been made up of many races. We are honoured to include the Scots, the Welsh, the Irish, the English, the Caribbean, the Asian, and many others. Britishness is rather recognized through the sentiments and character of the British wherever they may travel, and whoever they may meet. This is something that is learnt through correct and sensible education. It is a question of ‘character’.
This character and its values are expressed through politeness, firmness, fair play, honesty, compassion, leadership as well as many other traits.
To be proud of one’s country is not to be proud of its racial stock per se, rather to be proud of what it stands for. This is self evident, for we are easily ashamed of people who allow the British to fall into disrepute, but are proud of those who honour its character and greatest values irrespective of race or colour of skin. To educate for strong character and true values will make true nationalism possible.

British values and liberal inclusiveness

The dominant inclusive liberal standpoint of modern society has never been adequately defined, although it looms over most actions of public life.
The well-educated people that tend to appear on our television screens tend to be over liberal, over inclusive, and dismissive of the traditions of these Islands in their desire to express the dominant view they tend to espouse, and indeed have to espouse.
This dominant view tends to go under the heading of ‘political correctness’, a loose term, which clearly contains a great deal of truth and wisdom, but which is often overwrought and excessive in its emphases.
In its worse forms, as advocated uncritically, it is clearly not the view held by the majority, or if held then held with qualification. The dominance of so called ‘political correctness’ when taken to extremes often forces ordinary good citizens to shut up or be shamed. Hidden within this is one of the great oppressions of our time, the oppression of ‘correctness’ over true sentiment and values held, particularly the moral values.
For too long there has there been no critical appraisal of the views held by this educated elite. There is no clear idea of what it is that is espoused. We aim to properly define it, in order to permit a reasoned critique of it, to accept what is worth accepting, and to reject what goes too far. Until now such a reasoned critique has not been given. The whole of this charter is such a critique.
Too long have the British people been patient and presumed that good sense will prevail. Patience no longer serves our ends. Now is the time to do something or see that which we acknowledge as the traditions of these Islands pass away. We believe the British people have the courage to change course.
In brief I define ‘political correctness’ as the assumption that society needs to be secular, open to people’s free choice in morality and life style, accepting of minorities on an equal basis with others, and most importantly, a lackadaisical attitude to any philosophy of life or religious standpoint on the assumption that such do not matter. There is a sense of superiority amidst those who follow this correctness provided by a sense of liberation from belief, and liberation from an outside entity usually called ‘God’. It is important for those of the elites to be above firm convictions of life enhancing metaphysical frameworks and certainly not to encourage those who see in such metaphysical frameworks their life’s goal except in a condescending way along similar lines to simple choices of personal preference. Because of this the rift between ‘the West’ in its correctness and Islam in its insistence of a metaphysical framework with its imperatives could not be more extreme.
When Islam reacts against the West in its excessive secularism, it reacts with due reason and cause. Rampant secularism and non-prescriptivism has brought the West to a dangerous and toxic confrontation in particular with the Islamic people. I seek to address this rift in a sensible reappraisal of secularism. Islam has no need to fear this project, rather to see in its aims an ally with its own.

The Role of Christianity

Religion is a fundamental reality in the cultural life of the world. It should not be ignored, whatever that religion may be, and whether or not somebody is observant within their religion. Most people are not observant, and that needs to be acknowledged as their fundamental right.
However although people have the right to choose their religion or none, the Christian religion ought to be clearly and respectfully taught to children in school so that they know the basic prayers, and the fundamentals of the historic faith of these Islands. This may be applied in different ways and circumstances, but fundamental to the present project is a return to Christian observance in schools through the forum of assemblies or the like as it was thirty or forty years ago.
Compulsion in religion is not advocated, rather direction and the providing of a clear moral framework for children. Those who come to these Islands ought to know that it is fundamentally a Christian land, and that in education non-Christian religions take a clearly defined second place.
Secularism has become so marked a characteristic of modern Western society that it is hard to conceive of a retreat from that towards the reasserting of religious values. However this ought not to be seen as a fundamental return, rather as a reinterpretation of a secular state in relation to its historic religion.
There can be no theocratic state such as in Iran, or even a return to a one creed nation. The previous two hundred years have seen a growth of respect for people of different religions, and a degree of agnosticism in relation to any strong firm claim by one religion over against another. However it needs to be acknowledged that Christianity, and specifically Protestant Christianity has indelibly marked the character of these Islands.
I believe that Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and others will affirm the same values not least because it was in major part these values and traditions that made these Islands an attractive place to dwell in, and because these values are in themselves attractive save to a minority. We believe observant religious people of all mainstream religions will welcome a return to the directive agenda. It provides the core agenda of all mainstream religions, and none need fear the moral teaching of Christianity.

Responsibility of the individual towards society

Society needs to foster positive things, like respect for others, respect for elders, respect for office holders in professions.
This respect needs to be extended to the work place, the school playground, the market place and even to the drivers of motor vehicles in the way they use the roads. Respect is a fundamental character of society, character meaning a quality without which it cannot operate unless by invoking fear.
I think we need to reward more than to punish, to go out and find things that are done well and to publicize them, rather that to select the miscreants, and to publicize their destructiveness. It thereby hopes to train people towards a better way, and believes that this will do more in the long term to empty the prisons than the open door policy on moral choice that doesn’t address the question of character.
We need to encourage courtesy, honourable behaviour and civic responsibility, rather than merely fining people for infringements to reward those showing courtesies to others. This will require a radically new idea of policing: policing which affirms the values and courtesies of moral existence and seeks to honour them when they are found in people. This ought to become the first and paramount criterion of policing. Local award schemes ought to be set up round the country to discover and reward the best supporters of civic life. These ought to be the true heroes as opposed to sportsmen, businessmen, and film stars normally rewarded regardless of what they have morally added to society.
We need to place the horse before the cart, that is the fostering of an individual who is capable of good conduct and who will be rewarded for it, as opposed to the other tendency of punishment of the one, and silence for the conduct of the other.
We need to bring sense back to the debates about ‘health and safety’, giving people back the freedom and the discretion that has all but been stripped from them through the tendency to over-regulate human behaviour.
We need to bring back sense to the often commendable, but sometimes excessive, concerns of the disabled lobby, and thereby to restore to people their freedom and discretion within sensible financial and moral parameters, respecting those with disabilities, and seeking to include them, but not to the exclusion of the normal equilibrium of society that necessarily gives greater access to the well as opposed to the unwell.
We need to defend minorities from abuse and racism, including religious hatred, such that people of all faiths and ethnic backgrounds can feel secure and respected both at work and in society generally.
We need to defend justice and proportion when a necessary defence of minorities is abused by individuals within such minorities to prevent lawful and reasonable disciplinary activity or the promotion of others in the work place, much in the same way as a football referee will penalize a player who ‘dives’ in an attempt to get a free kick.
The freedom to do what one wants, regardless of the effect it has on others has to be challenged and a new way found that tempers the commendable concern for freedom with the greater concern for respect for the human being.
There will always need to be strong and robust defence of the environment. For example the unfettered freedom, among other things, to burn fossil fuels and use other dwindling resources needs to be reviewed.
People in ten or twenty years time will need to acknowledge that the motorcar is not the only solution to the necessity of travel and the true environmental cost needs to be reflected in fuel and congestion charges.
Governments need to look to the long-term health of the global community. The Welfare State
The modern welfare state is a commendable institution, but its proper function needs to be rediscovered after years of abuse.
It has to be acknowledged that in some cases the welfare state engenders a culture of dependency. There are many hundreds of thousands of people who have learnt to be dependent and who are thereby condemned to a considerably smaller degree of participation (if not actual exclusion) in the economic success of the country. An underclass has been fostered by the welfare state with all the consequent social and personal costs, particularly to those condemned to a low level of economic and social life. This must be reversed. There needs to be a vigorous re-inclusion.
There needs to be an understanding that the right to assistance irrespective of one’s own responsibility to society is not permissible apart from exceptional circumstances.
The expectation of support without the equal expectation of contribution ought to cease unless prevented by health or other unavoidable circumstances. Enshrined in this is the notion of limits, limits to assistance. Financial assistance ought to have restored to it the notion of protecting those who fall, not sustaining those who have no desire to rise.
Fundamental is the idea of one’s own responsibility to society, which applies to everybody called to be part of the human race in these Islands. Without that responsibility to society one is abnegating one’s calling to be part of the human race, for to be part of the human race requires a collaboration in its project, that of the advance of its spirit, not its exploitation.
In particular the right to have support for unhealthy life style choices, such as habitual unemployment, alcoholism, drug abuse etc. ought to be joined to a real expectation of change of lifestyle including if necessary re-education or a complete suspension of further assistance. There have been very positive results of similar programmes in America to wean people off welfare support, but it requires a forthrightness in government which is often lacking this side of the Atlantic amidst the current ‘correct’ environment of condoning peoples’ free moral choices regardless of the cost to themselves or to others.
Compassion is a virtue, but so too is hard work. The state needs to show a harder face, annulling the concept that help is always at hand. It must be prepared despite the emotional plea to clemency to say clearly no to the sort of abuse of a system designed to support hard working people who through no fault of their own fall on hard times.
It is fundamental that we foster health in people, in body, mind and soul, and that we do not permit this to be undermined by short-sighted clemency that does not have reference to the long term values, aims and objectives of the society.

Immigration

A person not born in Britain ought to have no automatic right to bring in a wife or husband or other family members from abroad.
Britain ought to have similar checks and balances as some other countries to ascertain that the health of incoming people is good and will not be placing a burden on the National Health Service, or a danger to the British people.
I agree with the policy of open borders within the European Union allowing people to travel freely between member states, to live and work freely within a European context.

The Press

I conceive that the use of the power that the ownership or editorship of newspapers, radio or television gives is compatible with the higher values of society. A free and open society depends on the proper responsibility exercised by the Press. Where this responsibility is lacking a free and open society is threatened at its root.
The press often stir up hatred, fan fears and insecurities, and pander to the lowest side of human nature. They turn the majority against minorities, and parody the views of these minorities. Frequently they hound people, are often over-intrusive into people’s private lives, fan base prejudice, and wilfully print falsehoods. When called to account they hide underneath the aegis of a free press. Such actions do not further the aims of an open and free society.
Freedom of expression is subservient to the respect that one human being owes another regardless of their culture, religion, or sexual persuasion. Where this respect is lacking, it is vacuous to talk of ‘freedom of the press’. It is rather freedom of the vile or the vicious. The manner in which this affects society ought to be properly examined and corrected within the parameters of a free society that insists that its values are maintained. There ought to be legislation to impose heavy fines administered by an independent Press Association with teeth in the case of blatant misuse of power by the media, and therewith the concept of ‘freedom of speak’ properly defined.

Broader Issues of Social Responsibility

The political institutions and values of the Island, such as democracy, freedom of speech, etc., are not themselves primary values, but have grown out of primary values. The primary values as I see them are awe and respect for the dignity of being human, honesty, responsibility for one’s fellow man (compassion), hard work, courage and equality before the law irrespective of position.
Other values such as ‘loyalty’, or ‘democracy’, ‘nationalism’ can be good, but without the former are open to misuse, such as when the elected government of Nazi Germany did not respect members of the Jewish race, or when loyalty to one’s own leads one to be less than truthful to defend a guilty son or daughter, etc.. These values are secondary values. They are valuable in so far as they are imbued with primary values.
Character depends on the concentration of primary values. A man or woman with character is somebody who has grown to adulthood enshrining primary values into the maxims of his or her behaviour towards others.
There has been a great loss of the sort of robustness of character elevated in previous times and cultures. There has also been a disregard of the value of character amidst the British peoples in the wake of the ‘correct’ atmosphere of the last twenty or so years, whereby character has been undervalued in the face of the mountain of choices open to one. This is because the emphasis on freedom of choice allows people to choose evidently weak and less effective characters which are then put on a par with strong and effective character. This is plainly absurd, and the ‘correct’ attitude that condones it needs to be challenged.
To reverse this is entirely pragmatic. The sanction society gives to weak character produces a nation of weak people. Only strong characters enshrine strong values. It is the state’s responsibility to make sure that men and women of strong character arise.
A primary value independent of all the primary values when emphasized to the exclusion of the other values can lead to dangerous consequences. For instances, compassion, a primary value, devoid of courage or hard work, can degenerate into a toleration of weakness and baseness. All the primary values need to work together to produces a robust and good character, and a robust and good society.
At the heart of ‘political correctness’ is a noble and elevated sense of compassion, but it has become over-emphasized and threatens to destroy other primary values. Compassion without strength is dangerous and essentially degenerates into complicity, and complicity with self-destructiveness. This is no longer something that touches only individuals, but which touches the whole of society. A healthy people is a strong and compassionate people. They give freely, not out of an inability to resist the clamour to assist, but because their hearts are large. An over-emphasis on compassion has weakened society, and has created dependency which is good for nobody, least of all those who are dependent. Even behind this compassion is its opposite as people suffer degradation and humiliation trying to get the benefits they need out of a system that is often badly run and abusive to them.
Education in industriousness, in sport, in team building exercises, in leadership, in the ability to stand on one’s own and not be swayed by the fickle majority; these need to return to the overall structure of British society, alongside the noblest exercise of compassion.

Politics

The present political scene appears worn out. Mainstream political parties have descended on the middle ground and are essentially liberal parties with a liberal free market agenda. ‘Left’ and ‘right’ in British politics do not have the meanings they had fifty or even twenty years ago, such that the terms are largely redundant in the main arena of Western politics.
Mainstream political parties do not seem prepared or able to change the agenda of British politics. If another crisis came upon the nation like the one of the late 1930s there is every reason to assume that the same refusal to demonstrate primary values will be continued.
Increasingly people do not exercise their right to vote. In general elections in recent years only about 60% of people have voted, and of the young only 40%, and considerably less in elections to regional assemblies and the European Parliament. Evidently many see little effect from their vote, or are not interested in the political arena.
Modern party politics is often reduced to the iconic figure of its leader, who says what people want to hear rather than giving decisive moral or political leadership. This contributes to the growing lack of trust in these leaders, who can so quickly change their positions to accommodate shifts in the public will, instead of offering firm clear principles.
We have allowed the core institutions to decline. For instance the constituency system whereby people from a specific area elect a representative for themselves in parliament has also broken down. What with so called ‘A’ lists candidates are now selected by the respective central offices of the mainstream political parties, and the fact that over 70% of constituencies are deemed ‘safe seats’, the selection of most MPs appears to be in the pocket of remarkably few people, a coterie at central office, perhaps no more than four or five people. This is not democracy, rather oligarchy.
To restore representative government parties it is necessary to increase the amount of representatives so that the men and women representing their constituents are more easily known and recognized, and so that they can be more easily selected from among the local population not shipped in from outside. This will mark a return to democracy that is at present absent.
This charter is the work of one man. I would like to see an honest debate to re-evaluate the way we present our wishes to parliament and government. I believe the charter I have written is a working model for a continuing debate where ideas can crystallize and develop. You may have similar views. Please join in the debate, to restore the nature of our consensual government so that the concerns of the majority may be heard sincerely, and effectively. Please talk, share, and pass on these ideas. If enough people are interested, maybe we can prevent Britain from going down an avenue that we do not approve of.

Robert Hampson
London
August 2006