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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 36 Crippled by Guilt 
This week, the week of the TUC Conference, is always a bad week for me. Because I am always made to feel guilty about my failure to find any socialist inspiration in the modern trade union movement. For the Labour Left, it is a sine qua non to believe that true inspiration is to be found in the fountainhead of trade unionism. Yet I find the modern movement barren, stylised, uncreative and backward-looking. And I feel guilty about that. When Bill Morris' TGWU successor Tony Woodley wrote in last week's Guardian about the TU alternative to New Labour, I was dismayed. I could find nothing in his "manifesto" which contained any real pointers for a more socialist, egalitarian future for society as a whole. Workers' rights, Yes. Union rights, Yes. Occupational pensions, Yes. Class struggle, Yes.
Complex Conspiracy 
Michael Meacher's Guardian attack on the American Right is dramatic. Michael is a great inspiration to all OAP politicians. He relies heavily on the plans (check them out here) of the Project for the New American Century I am unconvinced about conspiracy theories, but I am satisfied that pragmatic politicians always exploit - for good or for evil - the daily round of "events", "circumstances", chance happenings.
Am I a US target?
But I have also noticed that the US Department of Defense has started to track this site, with 13 visits. Now - that could be just coincidence, the haphazard effect of Googling. But thirteen separate hits is beginning to look more than coincidental....
Language is
And two languages are better than one. I ask you to encourage your children and grandchildren - without being under any compulsion to do so - to immerse themselves in different cultures, different ways of thinking about life, different insights, different experiences. Therein lies the biodiversity of the human spirit.
MARS and my magical Uncle Lawrence
This week’s preoccupation with the planet Mars has triggered rich memories for me. Memories of my favourite uncle, Uncle Lawrence. I remember Uncle Lawrence principally for one reason. His gift was to talk to me as an absolute equal. There was no condescension, no “talking down”, no concession to childhood. Most adults seem, however unconsciously, to modify their style in their communication with children, with many using a different tone of voice, even different forms of speech. There was none of that with Uncle Lawrence. He would explain everything to me, invite my contributions and debate them, on the footing that I was self-evidently his equal.
More than three
But I suspect that it was Greg Dyke that triggered the BBC's current descent into competitive tabloid journalism, resulting in the David Kelly tragedy. And I am also doubtful about his analysis of the TV medium as a jungle in which "three gorillas are needed", to maintain a competitive balance.
I woz there! 
Last Thursday, at 6.20 pm, I walked straight into the Great London blackout. I was on a No.8 bus, travelling from the City towards Oxford Street, where I planned to change buses, to get to Paddington and home to Swansea. In Oxford Street, it quickly became clear that something was seriously awry, just as the rains came down. The crowding was intense, the buses full to overflowing. I became scared of the human press of Oxford Street - I escaped into a much quieter Wigmore Street and walked to Paddington in the rain, vainly looking for a taxi. In that part of town we were lucky: the street-lighting and traffic-lights stayed on. The Paddington trains were all on time. This was no "New York". Ken Livingstone may have exaggerated a bit, milking the situation.
Principles challengedI am much exercised by the management of electronic surveillance. These systems are expanding very rapidly throughout our society, and yet there is no satisfactory framework for the political debate that is so essential. I recently spelt out my own proposed principles - I hope you will check them out. But immediately, a challenging report appeared in The Guardian. Right here in Swansea, random Police surveillance identified a nasty case of child neglect, which really put me on the spot.  My penchant for new stamps
strikes again - I have never collected stamps, but I am intrigued by their
aesthetic impact in the hurly-burly of
ordinary life - flashes of light and colour flitting across the screen -
this pub-sign series is the Royal Mail's theme for this month, although I
will never understand how it can be
profitable
to produce such beautiful creations - for whom are they intended? For
the collectors alone? For customers, to persuade them to buy more? For
me? Does anyone know?
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 - we had a visit from three Chinese graduate students from Swansea University - so I have added the English-language China Daily ... and with the awful bombings and crowd stampedes in India, I now offer you the leading English-language paper The Hindu.
My diary Now up to date (well, more or less...)
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The Blair Psyche 
Jackie Ashley comes closest to my own reading of Tony Blair's state of mind, writing in Saturday's Guardian. Her fascinating insights point to an early resignation. Spin
is in the medium  What
is your image of The Meeja? I perceive the meeja as if
I were in government - indeed,
as if I were Prime Minister -
which is my wont. Mine is essentially a managerial
approach. And my image of the Meeja of is of a thousand
whirlpools disappearing down a thousand plug-holes. They are spinning all
the time, like boiling rapids, piranha-infested waters. I suspect that
this imagery would be accepted by Friday's Guardian assessment, by Polly
Toynbee.
And the global acceleration of all meeja connections has transformed the speed with which images are spun, created and destroyed. “The public” is like a gigantic stadium crowd, watching partly the live game, partly the big screen, partly the Action Re-play – and partly the pundits' predictions of what is to happen next.
Falconer sets about the Judiciary...
Charlie Falconer is making great progress, in opening up the Judiciary. There could be a touch of radical steel about him after all. Judicial appointments are to be made by an Appointments Panel with a lay majority, drawn from outside the legal profession. But he should go further. The judicial process is far too important to be left to lawyers.Blair successfully
Tony Blair has successfully rebutted the accusation that Downing Street intervened to doctor the evidence of Saddam's military potential. But that was never the real charge, at the bar of history. The case against the Prime Minister is that, in making his public political case for war, he wrongfully over-egged the pudding. He went too far. He may not have doctored the evidence, but he certainly did misjudge it. As the supreme persuader, he pulled out all the persuasive stops, grossly exaggerating the effect of insubstantial information..
Alistair Campbell 
I want to "move on", as they say, and forget about Alistair Campbell. I have considerable admiration for Campbell, because he was good at reading the contemporary media-dominated political arena. He successfully steered the Labour Government through many meeja shoals and rapids. But he did nothing to solve the underlying problem of over-concentrated power. Reasserting Ryanair, and Cancun
What does the withdrawal of Ryanair’s Strasbourg Airport subsidy have to do with Cancun, and the World Trade Organisation Summit Conference in September? They both raise the same central political question about about the primacy of democratic sovereignty. When is it reasonable for Governments to aid “their own” economies, by favouring certain trading initiatives?
Pricking our Leaders 
I favour more pricking, in our public life. Juries are "pricked" (i.e. picked at random from the electoral roll). And the Commons Public Administration Committee, under the chairmanship of the excellent Tony Wright MP has commended pricking, for other purposes. Its report on the random selection of Quango members makes a crucial political breakthrough - one which in August 2002 I advocated for the NHS..
Ralph Erskine 
I have a special relationship with the Byker Wall in Newcastle, which has just received Listed Building status: see The Guardian. The genius of its Architect, Sir Ralph Erskine of Drottningholm (nr Stockholm) once illuminated my life. He was my architect for the brilliant Bovis Homes estate, at Eaglestone, Milton Keynes. Keynesianism
Welcome back to Steve Bell! He has re-joined The GuardianTeenage Concourses? Caerphilly replies...
Peter Fitzgerald, a Labour Party colleague from Caerphilly, questions the practicality of handing over Concourse management to teenagers themselves, particularly in areas of urban deprivation - check out our correspondence. One year ago
Human Rights
There My own senior Civil Service induction At our local "live" surfing site, you can check out the state of the surf in Mumbles, at my local Langland Bay, with the live webcams installed there - check out www.surfsup-mag.co.uk... Other recent topics Multiple Differential Uncertainty Sunday D id you miss last week's copy? Check it out
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New
This month has been a fantastic month for
"hits", on this website - much visiting from two "serious" chatrooms (one
US, the other Canadian) boosted the figures. My August 2002
hit-count was 166 - and this year the August total is -
My heart is breaking, at the steady decline of
foreign language studies in our schools. 
From all sides, I hear murmurs of
a new approval for
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