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Renewing participatory democracy Multiple Differential Uncertainty
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Week 18 
Edwina Edwina did it! And Labour struck back at the Welsh Nationalists! Edwina held her Gower seat comfortably, with 45% of the vote, on a 39.8% turnout - I got back from the count at 4.00 am - and a more normal life can now re-commence. Labour has won 30 seats - exactly 50% of the total Chamber - thus giving the Party a working majority, without the LibDems. So it is a good result. Plaid Cymru was thrown out of its three South Wales seats, and they were retaken by Labour - Islwyn, Rhondda, and Llanelli. Do you know who The English Courts must be given the opportunity to rule upon the lawfulness of the Iraqi War. But legal procedures will stand in the way of proceedings unless there can be found a specific cause of action within the jurisdiction of the UK. At the end of March, three British soldiers were sent home, ostensibly for refusing to obey orders which (they contended) involved the killing of innocent civilians.
Do you know who they are? They were all three from 16 Air Assault Brigade, stationed in southern Iraq to defend the oilfields [ see The Guardian ] Hit Count for April 2003 Your response held up well during April, considering the diversions of the War, and the deadening effect of the Easter break - it even increased slightly - this was the hit-counter figure to close-of-play on Wednesday 30 April - thanks for your continuing support... monthly hit-totals
2002 (sample) June 65 PS Real Web aficionados may wish to know that, of all the operating-systems used to access this site since January 2002, only 5% have been MAC - as follows -
Windows 98
32% Total 100% Liberalism, more
Far more significant, in my judgment, is the growing intolerance - the sheer illiberalism - of our society. To me, liberalism means the long-term cultivation of liberal institutions - the rule of law, respect for an equality agenda and human rights, independent judiciaries, personal property ownership, effective forms of political organisation and participation. And these are more important to me than any mechanistic doctrines of representative democracy. Labour will survive as a political force only if we learn the same lesson. Kid Glove Secretary
> Vienna > Lisbon An absurd UN War-on-Drugs Conference took place last week in Vienna. The UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs met at the midway point of its ten-year campaign to eradicate narcotics. Seventy-five nations attended, in deference to prevailing US obsessions. And the floundering UN Narcotics Director Antonio Costa declared that total global eradication was on target for success by 2008. As Polly Toynbee observed Who’s he kidding?  Others have convened an
Alternative Drugs Summit for
Lisbon
in October, to start work on drafting a new UN Treaty on drugs policy. The
former Portugese Drugs Minister Vitalino Canas, said - "We are utterly
frustrated with this defective UN system, so we have taken matters into our
own hands". A man after my own heart!
I will find out the details and keep you posted. I shall certainly try to
get
to
Lisbon myself, if the opportunity offers.
thinking big Fabians are good at thinking ahead of the game. And as the authority of global organisations comes under threat, they have properly focused on forms of globalisation, both of the Left and of the Right What matters, it is argued, is the precise form of "globalisation", not simply some general phenomenon. I hanker for a simple statement of those individual rights which we should advocate world-wide, rights that carry conviction make sense in every language, every political system. " Anti-racism" is not enoughWe are right to be concerned with the rise of the British National Party, with the popular resentment of refugees, and with the tendency of politicians to play the race card. But these nasty trends will not be countered by the barren language of "anti-racism".
Devolve to Survive "Management" is now high on the political agenda, much higher than it ever used to be.. It is difficult to engage any elector with the old causes celebres- social inequality, discrimination, injustice, tyranny and oppression. What matters is reliability in refuse collection, diligence in pothole-filling and hedge-trimming, assiduity in the removal of canine excreta, success in cutting hospital waiting-lists, managerial prowess in traffic management – these are the stuff of current "politics".
Abdroids Rule OK  Natural persons are retreating from
the corporate frontline.
1,852 individual directors of UK companies have already taken advantage of new
statutory provisions to prevent anyone find out where they live. This is the "Huntingdon
Life Sciences Defence"...
But this twist in the
corporate saga is a threatening one.
It is only contact with natural persons that enables the system of abstract
personality to be properly policed, at any level. This is further
dismal evidence of the global explosion of the secretive device of artificial personality, which
constitutes a threat to the freedoms of us all.
Property Rules OK Few people understand the profound significance of property law for all business transactions. In our settled UK society, we take it for granted that property rights are routinely respected and upheld. Our citizens have come to terms with the primacy of property and its ownership.
These are dark and No sense of direction has emerged, since the "victory" of Baghdad. The truth is, that nobody can really believe the scale of the destruction wreaked, by the Coalition attack, upon the United Nations and the world's hopes for a consensual world order. We face a grim future, ordered unilaterally by a rogue state, the United States. Edward Said delivers an excoriating critique of American conduct, in The Observer.
Charitable Loos...
Psst! Can I interest you
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 - back to top 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 What are your thoughts? Drop me a line
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 unbeatable
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Friday 2 May 2003 Dear Friends The Fakuna family were flown out of Gatwick back to the Czech Republic this morning. Their Solicitor did all she could. We just hope to see them again. Tom [ Ed: Tom wrote Wednesday 30 April...] Josef Fakuna and his family, Rosita and their children, were 'removed' at 6.30 am this morning - in an unannounced dawn raid by Immigration officials. Josef and Rosita helped to organise the February event at St Phillip's Community Centre (by the Swansea Bay Asylum Seekers Support Group/SBASSG), and they provided much of the food - the delicious Czech dishes. They were our best link with the Czech-Roma community, and they got to know many of our SBASSG members and friends over the past six months. They are now
in Gatwick
Detention Centre – their Solicitor is doing all she can, but their appeal
will probably have to be made from the Czech Republic. UK law now says
that no asylum claim can be made by a Czech citizen, despite the
well-documented systematic abuse of Roma human rights. Most Czechs have now
been sent back or been induced to go 'freely'. Tom Dr Tom Cheesman
SBASSG Treasurer I say... The "unannounced dawn raid", directed against those who have committed no crime and are suspected of none, is an inhumane and unacceptable "police" method. The Fakunas were not in hiding - they were living openly, with their children, within the community of Swansea. I am deeply ashamed of a Labour Home Secretary, and a Labour Government, willing to curry rightwing popularity by the deployment of these methods. ...Roger WE Staged "Confessions"
But these confessions are not what they seem.
At the moment, active negotiations are progressing among
human rights lawyers, to indict Tony Blair for his decision to take
his country into war - by his personal exercise of the Royal Prerogative. That
is, as a matter of law, his personal decision -
and would constitute the ideal, unambiguous focus for legal proceedings. The
Government no doubt knows about all this, because we are no good at secrecy
and this Website is certainly monitored.
And they must be keen to spike the legal guns arrayed against them.
History is being re-written, before our very eyes. Baghdad
In the chaos of post-war Baghdad, the sinews of the modern economy are laid dramatically and painfully bare. It is quite clear, for those who wish to see, that all the basic institutions of our society are governmental. The primacy of public order is brutally self-evident.
That is a key
socialist perception, and the lessons of Baghdad must not be
missed. The much vaunted "market-place" of Adam Smith can only
operate, if all the necessary public institutions are already firmly in
place. Indeed, all transactions (including governmental transactions)
are clearly integral to the health of any economy. Rightwing economic theory
("...it is business that creates the wealth, which the public sector
spends...") is shown up as a sham. Pensions dire straits All EU countries face one gigantic, common problem. Not foreign policy, not George Bush, not "drugs", not immigration. It is the failure of their various systems for the provision of old age pensions. New UK data, published this week, shows that the private pensions "industry" is collapsing before our eyes, facing the impossible task of regaining saver confidence. Compulsory state systems are either too limited (UK) or too expensive (France, German, Italy) to meet the bill.
And do you know? The Financial Times agrees. This is no doctrinal socialist fantasy. It is sound, practical politics. It is good economics, good for business. Labour should take the idea very seriously indeed. 
I return - ever in the pursuit of your interests - to the strange ways of capitalism. This large tube of toothpaste is on sale today at Sainsburys - at 47p. And these are the underlying comparative retail-prices of other toothpastes - per 100 ml.
Can you Adam and Eve it? Does it simply demonstrate the value of brands - or does it betray an underlying element of dishonesty, in all business transactions? Lord Irvine Posterity beckons  This is the last I remember of my wig, some
thirty years ago. I had moved from the Bar to the house-building
industry, and my wig had become a plaything for my daughter Katharine.
It was a fine horsehair wig, which had belonged to my father when he
practised briefly at the Cardiff Bar, in 1915. I then sold it to a
young barrister John Greaves for £15, and it moved on through the
profession, like the yellow Rolls-Royce. Non, je ne regrette rien...
continuity, stability, optimism 
Why should George Dubya be so pleased with the re-appointment of Alan Greenspan as top US banker, at the age of 77? Did Greenspan not serve dutifully throughout the Clinton era? There is one, single, simple answer. Consumer confidence. Bush's reckless dismantling of international institutions, are now the very cause of declining consumer confidence. True, there is an immediate "war dividend" - successful sheriffs are always applauded, when bad guys fall.
Talking of heaven
- Sir
It's all uncannily close to the theme of my own magnum opus thesis - Multiple Differential Uncertainty (which nobody ever reads...) My New Party Line.. I have been struggling for some time to find the right "tack" for Labour Party reform. I now say that the interface between salaried political professionals and Party volunteers should be differently configured. Each element should be given its own set of functions, its own "power sector", with the work of Government and Opposition left to the salariat, and allowing the Party's volunteers to assume exclusive responsibility for the life of the Labour Party "in the country".
Try BBC News, the public service website
Other recent topics
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) What are your thoughts? Drop me a line Budget Footnotes Budgets invariably throw up basic statistics which are difficult to come by, at other times of year - I am holding this item, just in case you have not yet tried it...
Week 18 |
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New
True,
Patricia Hewitt has managed to ruffle a few City feathers by allowing shareholders
to debate fat-cat salaries and pay-offs at their AGMs see
I am sure
you will want to
keep in touch with what Steve Bell is drawing, in
N
We
are hearing strange confessions of personal crises, from Jack Straw and
senior Ministers. They dramatically declare that they would have laid down
their political lives, in the cause of aggression against Iraq.
an even
rainier day. Who is to say that they are wrong? The whole world
economy could be brought to its knees by worry,
by uncertainty. In the
modern world, the fear of war can be as destructive as war itself. Bush needs to
settle consumers' nerves, and get them spending again. That's why
the veteran 77-year-old Greenspan, in the job since 1989, has been asked to stay.
If God's in his heaven...
...all's right with the
world.
Martin Rees is the eminent Welshman who is the current Astronomer Royal, and
he has just published his new Book
of Revelations, predicting that mankind has only a 50/50 chance of surviving
this century. Now that will do nothing whatsoever to