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0121 Make sure you have not missed the previous edition of LivePolitics
Check
it out
And the
one before
that?
Other recent topics
highlighted
here
Week 23
Sunday 8 June 2003
Stop Press:
Blair could implode
 Tony Blair is showing real signs of stress .
As he is a professional orator, that stress is evident in his oratory, in the style of
his delivery. His hands are being used more and more to supplement the
ineffectiveness of his words – he needs the comfort and
reassurance of exaggerated hand movements - he needs to act out the
assertions that he makes, without relying on the sheer force of his words.
Those are all telltale signs of inner uncertainty.
For the moment, he remains, for the Party, a quite remarkable electoral asset, it
would be madness to abandon him.
But at any time he could just cave in from within, as Harold Wilson did.
The extraordinary allegations of Secret Service duplicity are
unsettling.
Harmless flummery
 My inclination is to treat the Royal Family as an institution of harmless
flummery. Expensive, but harmless. I am satisfied that the Queen exercises no relevant political
power, and that she contentedly occupies a political vacuum which it would
be more difficult to fill in any other way. I am a pragmatic
royalist, no Republican I.
But I confess I was taken aback this week by the incredible performance of
the Royal Mail, issuing a set of ten different
first-class stamps, just to mark the 50th Anniversary of the Coronation.
I illustrate only two of them. And I return to my radical question -
Who decides on the pictorial destiny of
our stamps?
Not so harmless, censorship...And were they the same Bumbledoms who this week
have threatened artist James Cauty with dire retribution if he does not remove this picture from his
Brighton gallery? It was a protest against the War in Iraq, but the
Royal Mail claims it is a breach of "their" copyright! Look at it
very carefully...
James Cauty has been given until today, Friday June 6 to remove it!
What pompous,
vicious intolerance! Cauty says that the bronze bust is his own (and you
will see that it is embellished with skulls and crossbones...). I
say that it is a perfectly proper protest, published here with
acknowledgment to the
Daily Telegraph.
- If you can throw any light on these high matters of State, drop me a line.
Do we have a whistleblower from the Royal Mail, among our ranks?
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Too black, Too
white
"Temps" are testing our
political mettle, our socialist principles. EU regulations seek to give
"temps" equal pay and conditions with mainstream permanent staff, and the
Government, seemingly aligned with the CBI against Brendan Barbour of
 the TUC,
is using its Brussels veto to block the legislation. This is Brendan's
"first Big Issue", against the Blair Government.
Both sides are partly right. Temps should certainly
not be paid at a lower rate than permanent staff (and in my
experience are in practice paid more...) But employers should
equally not be forced to accord them the same contract conditions as
permanent staff. Employers should be free to make sensible
arrangements for temporary cover without disturbing other longer-term
relationships already established. In this respect, UK employment
practice is more flexible and in advance of - not behind - Continental conventions.
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The
International
Optimism Agenda
Globalisation has one consequence which no UK political party has yet
grasped. It is that we must now cast all our
manifestoes, both on the Right and on the Left, in terms
which make sense globally.
“Politics in one country” is no longer enough. I have made my own attempt
to shape such an international political agenda, which would bring hope to
all the peoples of the world...
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I am sure
you will want to
keep in touch with what Steve Bell is drawing, in
The
Guardian
Toddites
Unite!
I have been converted to Toddism.
I have become a Toddite.
Nothing to to do with Luddites. Everything to do with the followers of Emmanuel Todd, a radical French demographer who perceives (it
seems to me) the greater truths behind the stage-scenery of today's
international politics.
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Public trading,
a real third way
The Government's
"modernisation" of the welfare state is still seen in terms of
"privatisation". The spectre of Margaret Thatcher looms, and that
awful corrosive doubt about her motives.
That is wrong. While there are indeed proper
opportunities for conventional privatisation, the primary drive should be the shift to
more flexible, more responsive, more local forms
of dedicated public company.
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I love stamps...
I stand accused...
... of being more Blairite than Blair, in
my approach to the diversification of UK state structures,
Foundation
Hospitals, and all that. What is the truth?
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
-
Daily Telegraph
Independent
The Times
Financial Times
New York Times
Le Monde
Die Welt
Moscow Times
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I love stamps...
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