B.T.L. Employees Trust explains mistrust of 9th Amendment

For the B.T.L. Employees Trust, the dangers in the ninth concern the issue of parliamentary supremacy. The Trust has written to Canon Leroy Flowers as president of the Council of Churches which earlier this week expressed support for the Bill. The trust applauds what it calls the churches’ significant achievement in blunting the edge of the ninth but says that what remains presents a clear injustice that leaves the door open for a parliamentary super majority to amend anything it likes in the constitution without the court being able to decide on it. The Trust tells Canon Flowers that they have no difficulty if the government decided as a matter of policy to nationalize B.T.L.  But in so doing they must also pay fair and just compensation and it should take those steps only after the courts are finished with the process of deciding where ownership lies. The trust bolsters this point by noting that the CCJ granted an injunction because it felt that until the courts have finished deciding who owns the shares, the only thing to do was a to freeze its further sale. The release says that to encourage the government to move ahead with this aspect of the Bill is to say that it is okay for the government to “give itself a legislative advantage in the middle of a case in which private citizens dispute the taking of their property and to try to remove certain other fundamental constitutional rights. The unfairness of that should be clear to any objective, impartial observer.” The trust ends by calling on the Churches to satisfy themselves as to when, how and what money the government will use to compensate before it entrenches Telemedia as state property. On behalf of the Trust, Dean Boyce and Keith Arnold also ask the Canon to prevail on the government to start over the consultation process since the bill has been revised.