Robert Mugabe is a vile man, without respect for the rights of his citizens, or the effect that his misrule is having on his country’s well-being. A racist and a communist by conviction, and a murderer and thief by action, his vilification is total, covering all wings of political thought in this country, and rightly so.

So it must come as a surprise to most that we still lavish honours on Mugabe. He remains a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath, despite a House of Commons select committee urging the government to strip him of that title, no less than four years ago. Despite the tough talk from Blair and Brown over Zimbabwe, they’ve refused to do the most simple thing and remove the endorsement that his knighthood represents.

In June, the University of Edinburgh stripped him of his honorary degree, having finally woken up to the well-documented genocide committed by Mugabe’s North Korean-trained militia in Matabeleland in the 1980s: which killed at least 20,000 and left hundreds of thousands starving.

This is a fine precedent for the government to take, and remove the vestige of honour that lies on his chest. So long as it remains, it stands not as an honour to Mugabe, who has long since abandoned that ideal, but as a dishonour to our country.

If you believe Mugabe should be stripped of knighthood, please sign this e-petition or join this Facebook group.

As has been made very clear, the government doesn’t want to hold a referendum on the EU treaty that will usher in the EU Constitution by the back door. But, whatever the government says, the inhabitants of East Stoke, in Dorset, aren’t going to take it lying down. They’ve used a provision in the Local Government Act 1972 to hold a local, parish-wide mini-referendum on whether the UK should have a vote on the matter.

Libertarians must have very grave concerns about the use of referenda. The fact that 51% of the population supports a law doesn’t make it a good law if it hinders the 49% that oppose. Even if 99.9% of this country voted a certain way, it wouldn’t make the other 0.1% wrong, or the actions of the majority any more moral. The smallest minority is the individual, but we’re all individuals, so we all suffer if the minority is ignored.

However, in this case, the government is insistent on not having a referendum for other reasons. They’ve heavily exploited their electoral ’success’ (is winning 35% of a 61% turnout really a success?) to pass fundamentally immoral laws. Now the boot’s on the other foot.

Whatever you think of the European Union itself, the European Constitution must be considered a vile document: enforcing uniformity and destroying the individuality of both countries and persons themselves. A referendum is the only way it can be thrown out, but a sure-fire way of guaranteeing it.

Sadly, we’re not going to get a referendum any time soon, are we? Not on Gordon Brown’s watch. The result is we’re denied a proper chance to throw out this travesty of a constitution, and left supporting mini-referenda in parishes like East Stoke. In Dorset? I certainly do.