|
|
|
|
Renewing participatory democracy Multiple Differential Uncertainty
|
Week 15 Not Tony Blair  Stand by for the Budget analyses of the weekend. For my part, I
shall be re-visiting the mortgage market, immigration, and baby bonds,
that's all - there are few other new ideas. Indeed, it was not the
right time for innovation
(which makes most people nervous...) On "new business
growth" the Chancellor tries hard to breath life into the spirit of
enterprise, but he sadly misses the point himself.
March of the Abdroids 
Budgets always throw light on corners of the economy that ordinary reporting does not reach. And I can now reveal that this Budget will allow battalions of abdroids to march in and take over Lloyds of London, bestowing limited legal liability upon its huddled masses. How will Gordon use his magic wand to achieve this?
Middle Classes A revolution starts this week, specifically last Monday 7 April. Twenty-two million pension policy-holders will be told, thanks to the Labour Government, precisely how little their private pensions investment is worth. The shortcomings of "capitalist" (i.e. funded) pensions schemes will be brutally exposed. This presents Labour with its greatest political opportunity since the creation of the National Health Service. We should announce the reinstatement of a decent State Old Age Pension, at not less than £150 per week, at current prices. The transition would be traumatic, and much detail would have to be resolved. But it is now only the State that can give our fellow-citizens the assurance of an honourable retirement. "The City" offers no political hiding place. Innovative socialism is needed.
Public Service
Try BBC News, the public service website for the best and quickest access to the news, as well as a huge political data resource, the BBC is unbeatableCapitalism? Just a misleading illusion… The Marxist Left is crippled by its belief that there is such a thing as "capitalism". It dominates their discourse, captures their imagination, conditions their syntax. Marxists, and the rest of the collectivist Left, have long been tilting at "capitalism", a windmill of their own making. And one consequence is that the Left exaggerates the power of "capitalism". For there is no such enemy. "Capitalism" is a will of the wisp, a syntactical illusion generated by Marx’s obsession with abstract nouns. Did Marx not dream up Das Kapital, the most misleading abstraction of all? Liberating teenagers NASUWT (the teaching union) reports, in a new survey of its members, a rising tide of violence in our schools. I say that we must reduce the use of compulsion, finish compulsory education at 15, and allow excluded 13-yr olds to leave mainstream school, without further mandatory schooling. That would change the ethos of secondary education. Incorrigible Blunkett
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) 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 I am sure you will want to keep in touch with what Steve Bell is drawing, in
Week 15 Saturday 12 April 2003 |
|
Edwina
Welsh Assembly Elections are in full swing, here in Wales - I love canvassing, whether by phone (telecanvassing is now an important dimension of the campaign) and on the doorstep (which is more time-consuming). Edwina Hart, the "Welsh Chancellor" is our candidate for the Gower Constituency, and a popular local "favourite daughter" - Labour's principal task, of course, is to resist the advance of Plaid Cymru (pronounced Cum-rie, with first-syllable stress..)Keeping up with the Joneses..
Mr Justice Lindsay leant over backwards in the High Court this week, to award damages to the Joneses. although he would not say how much... And he leant too far. The High Court too often calls in the doctrine of the "confidentiality" of property to protect public figures, when the Judge want to avoid the pitfalls of "privacy law" reasoning.
It must be clear that conventional "war" - the waging of a unilateral,
pre-emptive aggressive war, has now become impossible.
Transparency is killing off war. Media coverage,
open democracy, consumer anxiety, sensitivity to civilian casualties - these
all inhibit the sheer ferocity and nastiness that such war demands.
Just as duelling and prize-fighting have been prohibited in every
ordered and peaceful society, warring-between-nations will also be prohibited.
I don't know when - but that will happen.
The absurdity of "world hegemony"
will be exposed. But force will still be required (remember, I am
no pacifist).
Think Police!
Exaggerated Chicken Have you ever felt that hamburgers were getting smaller, these days - if you ever get to eat them? Well - your eyes may have been deliberately deceived. The ITV Advertising Commission has disciplined Kentucky Fried Chicken for "enhanced" photography which gives the impression that their chicken pieces are much bigger than they really are...
The Guardian > Let me acknowledge, yet again, the sheer quality of the Annette Carson The UK Court of Appeal verdict is now awaited by hundreds of thousands of UK pensioners living abroad, deprived of their Old Age pension entitlement. I fear they will be disappointed. I was challenged this week by the Australians to explain why my former Bar colleague Anthony Lester QC had changed his mind. I gave my own, unvarnished, opinion.
Special section
Dear Ian...
Where now, for Labour?
After Blair, Labour will have to propose a new agenda to the British people.
My own Labour Manifesto, drafted along
liberal socialist lines, has
attracted some interest among you - and I have expanded it to reflect your
comments - an exercise in interactive politics...
Shall we
go
The challenge for the "Dissenting
Members" of the Party is to find ways of making it clear,
Workers’ Rights, I am conscious that my Try BBC News, the public service website Other recent topics And read my own Big Theory itself, at |
|||||||
|
Created by GMID Design & Communication COPYRIGHT NOTICE
|
New
Far more important was his
personal re-emergence as a PM contender.
Gordon's
prime leadership card will be played in June, with the Five Tests Speech.
For now, gentle optimism was the right order of the day - pessimism would
have dented UK consumer confidence, already perilously fragile.
Pessimism would have hastened further economic decline.
Several of you have expressed
interest in the growth of the "informal" public
sector. The trading charity 
David Blunkett is a grave political liability. His crass handling of
the Abu Hamza case beggars belief. I heard his Radio 4 interview,
effectively pronouncing Abu Hamza guilty long before the appeal hearing, and
ignoring the claims of Abu Hamza's Solicitor that the cleric no longer had
Egyptian citizenship, and therefore (as a matter of law) could
not be
stripped of his UK citizenship. Because as a matter of law no
State may "render its citizen stateless...". If that
claim turns out to be correct, it
will - it should - be another
nail in Blunkett's political coffin. The sooner he goes, the
better.
That was what the Judge did in the
case of Naomi Campbell, remember? He held that she
had not been libelled, but that her actual medical records were
"confidential information", and that confidence had been abused.
In this case, Lindsay J has ruled that, by selling the wedding photo-rights
to a magazine, the Joneses had converted the wedding into an item of
commercial property.
I am keenly aware of the explosion of Police
activity which we are all experiencing. At 130,000, we now have a
larger civil Police force than at any time in our national history. For the Left, and the civil rights community, this poses a
unique political and intellectual challenge. 
As Ian McCartney MP takes over as Labour Party Chairman, his primary
search is for new sources of funds. Neither TU funding nor David
Sainsburys' pockets will be sufficient. Yet the Party's 250,000
members would pay £1-a-week, I believe, if they were given new and
distinctive powers within the Party, and a new concordat struck with their
own political imperious salariat. That could generate well over
£10m-a-year...