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| You are in the company of Roger Warren Evans, Welsh socialist lawyer and company director, on a journey to work out a new socialist order capable of generating equality and freedom for the world. Nothing less will do. |
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Renewing participatory democracy Multiple Differential Uncertainty
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Week 09 Thanks for your interest... ..... when the month February closed, even though it was the shortest month, you chalked up the highest monthly hit-count so far -
It's great to know that you enjoy sharing my thoughts, and that you often return. Thanks.  Democratic government under attack I have a problem. It is now quite clear that the Stop the War Coalition is masterminded by the Socialist Workers Party and the revolutionary Left, and that they have not abandoned their nihilistic, destructive ambitions, targeting the very democratic institutions of our society. I reject that approach. At Swansea yesterday, the logistics of Conference made it in practice impossible for me to join the protestors outside - but I have growing problems with "the movement" anyway.
Taming Last Saturday, I was invited to put my company law reform ideas to a Labour Reform seminar at the London School of Economics. With such a big, complex international theme, the difficulty is how to make the issues accessible and convincing to "lay" activists - I was speaking to the agenda set out last July, in general philosophical terms, at Tame the Corporations. What I have now done is to restate my strategy as a matter of practical politics. The serious activist reader may wish to go straight to the technicalities, as debated so fully last Saturday, by Labour Reform - see Treaty Brief Democracy Devalued  No
comment from meabout the mayhem in the Tory Party. I regret the fracas, because it is another sign of the declining legitimacy of our new political salariat. We in the Labour Party should be deeply concerned about the chaos within the Tory Party, ad well as the continuing ineffectiveness of the LibDems under Charles Kennedy. Because when representative institutions decay, every political party - and every democratic politician - gets hurt. NB BBC News - most of my best pictures are picked up from the BBC News website, generously without complaint from them - if you are not familiar with their marvellous public service coverage, try them out.. Migration Management My other obsession
Blunkett blunders... My despair deepens, at the inadequacy of David Blunkett. He is unfit for his office. He is sullying both the Home Office and the Labour Party. His childish and petulant response to the High Court judgment in the case of destitute asylum-seekers should have earned him instant dismissal.
Vicars in the Dock 
That, I suspect, was the impression created by reports of a new vicarious liability case, decided this month by the Court of Appeal. A Police Authority was held vicariously liable for injuries caused by an off-duty constable. Drugs Disaster Storm-clouds are gathering over the World Trade Organisation. The United States is planning to torpedo plans to empower Third World countries to solve their own problems of pandemics and disabling disease. The US pharmaceutical companies, who bankrolled George Bush's Republicans with $60,000,000 to win last year’s mid-term Congressional Elections, now want their pound of flesh, and the right to maximise their profits from curing the poorest of the world. And George Bush is giving it to them, by blocking concessions in the WTO negotiations at Geneva. Other recent topics
And read my own Big Theory itself, at Follow my August 2002 Russian Tour Diary, now unfolding in splendid technicolor - capacity problems have so far limited the scale of how much I can E-publish, but there is still plenty to read - St Petersburg Novgorod Moscow Tallinn (2) |
Old Friends Greetings to old friends! I spent Thursday evening in a Paddington wine-bar The Gyngleboy, with old Labour Party friends Ian Wallace, Stephen Gruneberg and Eddie McCauley. There is no greater pleasure than drinking and talking with old friends - especially the talking...
Disingenuous Cant Trenchant leaders in the English-language Moscow Times suggest that forthright Press comment is developing strongly within Russia Now go national...
Anxiety is the normal condition of mankind I have a "world view", a Weltanschauung. I argue that the distinctive intellectual abilities of mankind have laid the human species peculiarly open to anxiety as a normal condition of existence. But evolution has equipped mankind, I argue, to counter those anxieties successfully, so as to be able to get on with furthering the species. If you can spare a moment - give it a whirl... Signs of Silliness 
Miliband should watch it. Just as his name is being mentioned as a possible successor to Blair, he is starting to figure on the Government's renowned Silliness Index. The monthly SI-figure is the rate at which the Government chalks up silly ideas, without judgment or perception, out of touch with the lay citizenry. The Index currently stands at 7.8 (at least, according to me...) Blair's frog-marching drunken teenagers to a cash-machine figured high on the Silliness Index. So does Clarke's University Social Class Access Regulator, just to counter the disastrous effects of top-up fees. But Miliband now opens his SI-scoring with his plan to
criminalise parents
who take their children on holiday during term-time. Society already
coerces children too much, and education should not be compulsory at all
after the age of 15 -
Schools wrongfully coerce. And before that age, the bonding
effect of a family holiday is far more important than a few
missed
Do markets work? For enthusiasts for “markets” the massive Argos/Littlewoods £22m price-fixing fine poses an acute question. Is competition really the driving force, of markets? Or (as Adam Smith suspected) are businessmen always trying to rig the system, so that competition is suppressed, and risk minimised? It is an uncomfortable question. How can we As an inveterate political activist, that was the first question that came into my mind on the Iraq March, as the two great marching columns joined forces at Piccadilly Circus, and flowed down towards Hyde Park.
Exaggerating Our media are suddenly crowded-out by a new raft of consultants, all cashing in on the state of emergency. But the bogy of generic "terrorism" is a false enemy, conjured up by "the Authorities" to keep themselves at the forefront of the public agenda. Old Dogs, New Tricks
there is a great deal to be done. New Surveillance Charter E-surveillance, by police and military authorities, is undoubtedly a threat to our civil liberties. I suggest how that threat can be managed. Read my new Surveillance Charter.... Special Footnote I love the online newspapers, which are my access to the world - share them with me - click through to their Homepages from here - Diary 2002 Now up to date! I have re-structured my Diary to give you a day-to-day means of looking back, throughout the year just click throughWeek 09 Sunday 2 March 2003
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New
Failure to move him, or even challenge him, throws a
grim reflection upon Tony Blair. It reinforces the impression of a Prime
Minister who is no longer in moral command of his Cabinet. If he can
tolerate David Blunkett, his moral antennae must be 
While browsing in Welsh politics
this week, I came across the website
of Paul Flynn, the campaigning MP for Newport West - he won last year's
New
Statesman Website award - and it is 