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Renewing participatory democracy Multiple Differential Uncertainty |
Week 38
Sunday Impoverished Imagination
I feel sorry for David Blunkett. He is a man struggling with one of the most demanding jobs in Government, but without the cultural equipment to do it properly. He really believes that immigrants should be put through the most absurd "British" Citizenship Tests, completely ignoring (I suspect, ignorant of...) the great traditions of the UK Constitution, its endemic individualism and liberalism, the profoundly civilised character of its "bare" conventions. Blunkett clearly does not understand what awful damage he is to doing to the precious conventions of the UK State. That's why I feel sorry for him.
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.
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. 
Barefoot Advocates
We need a new advocacy profession, a third . They should be the "barefoot advocates" of society, not a highly-qualified and over-paid legal profession, but a new para-legal profession whose practitioners would operate in the salary-bands of, say, professional teachers. I have dubbed them "Public Advocates".
You are invited to join the Launch public meeting in Swansea at the Mumbles village Hall at 11.00 am on Saturday 22 November 2003. Come and enjoy a day at the seaside! From little acorns, an' all that jazz... And if you support us, but cannot come - 
Principles challenged
I 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.
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...
One year ago
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.
Recent topics Crooked Companies >>>Building many more houses >>> Concourses for teenagers >>> Economies to be responsive >>> Business names? The law >>> Shareholders are powerless >>> Brazilian Immigration Fiasco >>> Keynesianism Re-visited >>> Broadcasting Reform needed >>> Treating children as equals >>> And read my Big Theory itself, at Multiple Differential Uncertainty... Or try my snappier and more practical analysis of the Corporations and the Left Coming to Terms My diary Now up to date (well, more or less...)I have re-structured my Diary to give you a day-to-day means of looking back to January 2002 - just click through Welcome back to Steve Bell! He has re-joined The Guardian team after his hols, and his wit and perception will again illuminate the absurdities of the political scene... |
Abdroids in the family 
This weekend, this sketch is striking terror into tens of thousands of UK small-business households. Clever accountants have over the years devised a myriad schemes of tax avoidance, based on this sketch. They have introduced, into the lives of ordinary business families, the abdroid - or "artificial personality" - that's the dotted circle. Now, the Inland Revenue (who are very clever people, as University Challenge has conclusively proved...) has refused to accept the sophistries of the accountancy profession, and the Revenue is unpicking their tax avoidance schemes. Is the Revenue rolling back the advance of the abdroids? Which way is "Left"? 
Tony Blair is said to have denounced a "Labour Government of the Left" as a delusion, in his approach to the TUC at Brighton. But which way is Left? In my view, the path to political success now lies in devising key socialist strategies which will appeal to everyone, including the English middle-classes. The trade unions are the ones trapped in the old politics, without socialist perceptions. They are certainly not on the Left.
Reshuffle II 
"Hutton" may have obscured the political changes that have recently taken place, down among the policy wonks, in the boiler-room. Blair has brought in, to help mastermind the next Manifesto, three very gifted men. I have met, and have high opinions of them all - Pat MacFadden, Geoff Mulgan (above) and Matthew Taylor. I reckon the Labour Boiler Room is in good hands. 
This is Matthew Taylor. I was always sceptical about Blair's choosing to fight the Second Term on the bread-and-butter issues of health and education. Their very complexity makes an outright "win" impossible - and they are very dull topics. They cannot excite political passion, engage active enthusiasm. The political idealism of the young will never be fired by better exam results, or improvements in bedpan supply. Labour is stuck with that strategic decision, and will have to muddle through, this time.
Spin
is in the medium 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.
Phillips the Thunderer 
Lord Phillips of Sudbury, an old friend of mine, is an Old Testament prophet, out of his time. Andrew is a top solicitor by profession, and a Liberal by life-long political conviction, he now devotes great energy to his work in the Lords. Writing in The Observer, he rails against the withdrawal of the wealthy from civic and social life, into a class of the super-rich, dishonestly exploiting their power-base in the corporate and business sectors. He sees corruption and moral decay all about him, with Armageddon looming. “The question is whether implosion is preventable”…
My own view is that the crooks of the corporate sector are merely taking advantage of company law loopholes which we are deliberately leaving open. We ourselves are responsible for leaving the doors open, leaving the crooks in charge of the kitchen. The creation of a new global regulatory system for the corporate sector is an urgent political priority.
Bournemouth Ahoy! 
My preparations are in hand for the Labour Party Conference in Bournemouth. I've had a new passport photo taken this week (left), to comply with the strict anti-terrorist security measures which now dominate the occasion. "Conference" constitutes, for me, a ritual commitment - to the Party as a great traditional movement, certainly not to the present Cabinet. This is how I will appear, on my Security Pass... 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. After Campbell
What I meant was “dispersal, or redistribution” of power and influence in a much more general sense. To minimise the destructive effect of the Westminster rapids, Labour should deliberately disperse the power of Westminster, however sweet its attractions may sometimes seem to the present generation of Ministers.
Nor would anything be gained by the recent proposal to "decentralise Whitehall", put forward by a non-political group of regional geographers. The need is not to redistribute public administration, as an act of grace and favour.
Are you a C-Driver? 
For at least five years, I have been wrestling with the problem of aggressive, un-cooperative driving. And not just my own - everybody's. I have not come up with any solution. Our roads are unpleasant and dangerous places simply because they are an amoral universe. In spite of the Highway Code, conflict is endemic, confrontational driving is rife, few drivers evince any consideration for each other. 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.
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Week 37 Sunday
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New
My
heart is breaking, at the steady decline of foreign language
studies in our schools. My own intellectual abilities have all been honed in the study of language,
and of languages – I even regard “law” as an exercise in the deployment
of language. 
Try
BBC News, the
Now
for September 2002 - I was preparing to attend the Labour Party Conference
at Blackpool - I am planning to get to Bournemouth at some stage this
year, though still dismayed at the complexities of "security",
which are unsettling... 
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.
In
dissecting the underlying Alistair Campbell issues last week,
I was wrong to have
used the specific term “devolution”. To judge from your response,
this has become a term with a very narrow current meaning, conveying provincial
devolution, Scots/Welsh style.
And Labour's problems are not restricted to No 10: the Home Office
under Blunkett is a festering sink of nastiness and social
authoritarianism which is eroding the common decency of the Labour
movement. 