ALTHOUGH the British people know that their Parliament no longer makes most of their laws and that therefore Westminster parliamentary elections are a waste of time, they may not know of our Parliament's farcical "scrutiny of EU laws".

There is a committee in our Parliament set up to scrutinise EU legislation (of course, it has no power to overturn those laws). It only meets for a couple of hours once a week - on a Friday and not at all in parliamentary holidays (like now). That tells you all you need to know about the relevance of this "scrutiny committee".

When MPs are on holiday those laws and directives are nodded through without even this minimal scrutiny. At this time of year our Government dictatorship is therefore particularly powerful since there is no one at Westminster to ask too many questions.

Gordon Brown seems to be taking advantage of this lack of accountability to deny us all a referendum on the future of our own democracy. No wonder the people have nothing but contempt for their Parliament and Government.

There is only one movement powerful enough to marshal the forces of the voters against this conspiracy of dictators - the British Declaration of Independence (www.bdicampaign.org).

Rodney Atkinson, Stocksfield, Northumberland.