JO Moore's proposed loathsome subterfuge indicates a malaise which extends far beyond her. Its flagrant conception and unquestioning ministerial acceptance betray the whole deceitful culture of control and spin which permeates New Labour.

Such matters as Hillary Armstong's recent attempt to gag MPs and Tony Blair's attempt to gag the media, both over Afghanistan; Stephen Byers and Railtrack; the Tube service debacle; the Henry McLeish affair; the Mandelson and Robinson affairs; the London Mayor fiasco; the attenuation of Local Democracy; the increasing appointment of 'Tony's Cronies' and other New Labour placemen; the 'People's Peers' farce; the sham proposed reform of the House of Lords; the substantial shift of taxation from rich to less rich all serve to demonstrate that Ms Moore was merely reflecting the untrustworthy, arrogant, uncaring, and undemocratic attitude of her political masters.

Sadly, their Thatcherite and Majorite Tory predecessors, whose policies they ape, were as bad.

They also introduced a series of major bogus measures dressed up as genuine economic and service improvements to fool the public into accepting what are essentially asset-stripping, revenue-cutting, and privatising policies.

In fact, these have actually proved gravely harmful to the public and national interest, and wrought havoc with the whole range of public services, including health, education, roads, rail, etc, to say nothing of the economy.

We even suffered a dose of such duplicity locally.

Government made a statutory commitment to provide £50m-£60m for a new district general hospital in Harlow to replace St Margaret's and Herts and Essex, closed as general hospitals under the Care in the Community policy.

All we actually got was a £9m extension to Princess Alexandra with the resulting hugely overstretched resources, massive increases in waiting lists and waiting times, and all the derivative detrimental effects.

There is now a real democracy crisis. Many if not most people in this country no longer trust a single word almost any national party politician says.

That is the real reason for the exceptionally low turn-out at the last general election.

ANDREW O'BRIEN

(by email

andrew@aob1.fsnet.co.uk)

November 22, 2001 8:34