|
|
Ruinous Prohibition Drugs prohibition is ruining our society. The damage is being done, not by drug consumption itself, but by the fateful consequences of its criminalisation. These are self-inflicted wounds. Our society, having sown the wind by deciding to prohibit a fundamental human trait, a basic human liberty, is reaping the whirlwind. The network of illegal high-profit dealing interpenetrates every neighbourhood, every street, fuelling local fears, provoking local disorder. Gun usage is spreading rapidly throughout the country, as drugs gangs compete for the illegal empires we have created. Gun killings proliferate, particularly among young adult men. Our civil liberties are being steadily eroded, homes invaded, private life violated, invasive Court procedures extended, public corruption encouraged, by the official pursuit of the “war on drugs”. Generational distance, between the young and their "elders" is increasing, the gulf of misunderstanding becoming more disruptive, more destructive. The moral ambivalence of prohibition inhibits the processes of public education and therapy which ought to be our principal concerns. Jury trial is under threat, because of the perceived need to counter the risk of juror intimidation, principally from the growing network of drugs gangs. Illegal drugs dealing continues to fuel and finance a thousand other illegalities, terrorism and all forms of political extremism. The profitable UK illegal drugs market continues to attract vicious foreign gangs – Yardies, East European, Chinese triad. The massive administrative burden of prohibition saps our enforcement agencies, Police and Customs. All these awful consequences flow from the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, and its predecessor the Dangerous Drugs Act 1920. As a society, in 1920 we made the awful mistake of mimicking the Americans, and we have never found the courage to correct that mistake. As a society, we continue to make the awful mistake of prosecuting the American-inspired “War on Drugs”. As a political community, our leaders continue to make the awful misjudgement of curtailing a fundamental human liberty, by the full apparatus of the criminal law. And we all share the guilt of their continuing misjudgment. The remedy is in our own hands. We must find the courage to repeal “Prohibition”, to organise legal supplies of all psychoactive substances, and to inaugurate throughout society of a coherent, remedial network of treatment for addiction, in those minority of cases where it arises. Nothing less will do. To express support for the repeal of Drugs Prohibition, sign in at the Angel Declaration
|
|
Renewing participatory democracy Multiple Differential Uncertainty |
Week 41
Hidden Blair Agenda 
What is Blair's game-plan? Bournemouth was characterised by a bewildering lack of substance. It is clear to me that in the longer-term radical Party constitutional reform is needed, if the political resources of the Party are now to be turned to creative effect. 
I think he is planning a High Noon show-down with the public sector unions. He knows how popular, electorally, that would be. Between them there is no "Big Issue" - but there is an accumulation of pin-pricks, and he plans to orchestrate them into a dramatic showdown...
From Caerphilly... Fiscophobia a crippling disease 
We are all trapped in the schoolboy politics of “tax”. The 1987 Double Whammy stalks the corridors of political power. We are in the grip of fiscophobia. Our new Labour salariat believes that their electors will sack them if they propose “higher taxes”. The Tory salariat believes, by parity of reasoning, that they will inherit Labour’s jobs if they promise the electorate “lower taxes”. The political contest is said to be as simple as that.
My chat with TB..
I did not get to meet Tony Blair at Bournemouth, nor have I ever met him. But I do long for the opportunity to engage in a sensible discussion about "New Labour" strategy, with much of which I agree - I am no partisan of the "Old Left", nor of the new wave of TU leaders - I am certainly not a revolutionary socialist, like so many who have penetrated the Labour Party since the "collapse of communism". I shall have to be content to use my own imagination, and pursue...Your visits Our end-of-September hit-counter figures were remarkable - it's great to have so many of you dropping in, given the "heavy" political material - for September, the monthly hit-count was - 1,356 as compared with 272 in September last year - I am taking that as a sign of encouragement... 
A new reader this week is 82-year old
Kevin Hendstock, from South Australia - it's great to get enthusiastic feedback like
Kevin's - check out our correspondence.
Busking
|
We are naive... ...to be surprised at the rapacity of company Directors. Over the last ten years, UK Directors have taken from their companies pay-rises of 288%, as compared with a rise of 45% for the population as a while. For we have given them the legal right, the indefeasible legal right, to plunder the assets of the companies in their charge - that is our doing. We have left the Board in charge of the bank-vaults, with the keys in their hands. Their actions are all perfectly legal. We - and our political leaders - are simply leaving the thieves...
Political no-go zones
My mind has been working overtime, during these two Party Conferences. Because I think a sixth sense has gone missing, in our political culture. It is a sense of what are, in respect of our personal and private lives, the proper limits of "Government" intervention. All Parties, including the LibDems, seem prepared to become much more interventionist than in past generations. Police Reform 
I do not dissent from Tory plans to re-localise the Police, though the detail will be important. The subject has long been on my string of worry-beads. Over a year ago, in August 2002, I set out my own Police localisation strategy. I believe we need two different levels of "local" Police. But remember - such moves will be resisted by the Police - there is among our professional policemen a real distaste for democratic processes, and paradoxically it was Thatcher who dismantled the last vestiges of local democratic control, in the late-Eighties. And the Police will not take kindly to the imposition of local "democratic" control.
Bournemouth 
The Lab our Party Conference at Bournemouth was remarkable for the issues that were never explored - the inadequacy of the State Pension, the abuse of corporate power, the fear of unemployment. I tried, in my selection of Fringe meetings, to pursue these concerns, but it was impossible. And even the Fringe has lost its sparkle, with most meetings devoted to listening to the salariat, and rank-and-file discussion severely truncated.
Blunkett
& me
You all know how much I deplore the baleful influence of the Blunkett Home Office. David Blunkett has, as a politician, fallen victim to those repressive and atavistic forces that have always roamed the corridors of the Home Office. But his record on asylum does have certain redeeming features, and I should acknowledge them. Because there are signs that he may be doing... It's my Party, I can We need a Labour Party with two Divisions, not just one. The professional political salariat has finally taken over the Annual Conference, eliminating all effective participation by the rank-and-file, the voluntary Party in the country. The dominance of the Parliamentary Labour Party, and Old Queen Street, is complete - and will not be displaced. They will remain the Premiership of politics, and I neither dispute nor regret that. There is no going back.But we must move on. And we now need a new First Division Conference, exclusively for the Party in the country, where the volunteers can debate and recommend, praise and protest, where the salariat treads only by invitation. Read my ideas for a volunteers'.. Pensions 
My hunch is that the inadequacy of old age pension provision - both public and private - is the greatest common political concern among our fellow-citizens. Yet Bournemouth was silent on the matter. Very few Fringe meetings addressed it - mainly those sponsored by the financial services industry salivating at the prospect of further business - as "State provision" loses momentum. The vultures are foregathering. Only Frank Field (a rare smile from him, here...) came up with a new perception, and a true shaft of realism. Unemployment 
Gordon Brown gave a great barn-storming speech last Monday. He revelled in the last six-years of "economic success", and he is entitled to do so. He is even entitled to take full credit for his welfare-to-work drive, with all its Scottish Presbyterian overtones. But this record obscures a key underlying systemic weakness of the UK system, which Labour should not ignore - namely, the woeful inadequacy of UK unemployment benefit. We should be learning lessons from the current debate about Directors' periods of notice - all workers should have a decent period of notice on full pay, to enable them to adjust to the loss of employment. That is what the bosses fix for themselves, and what's sauce for the goose...
Confronting
Nothing weakens this Labour Government more, in the eyes of both the electorate and the Labour rank-and-file, than its uncritical cosiness with the business world. Ministers talk of the business sector is pure Thatcherite terms, and seem incapable of acknowledging the gross abuses of power regularly committed by the corporations. Now - as a socialist businessman myself - I certainly do not wish to see any return to the old aggression towards the corporate sector, which still characterises much of the Old Left. But there are grave fault-lines in the global legal structure of the corporate sector which the Left must address. It will take a decade of international negotiation to effect real change - but we must make a start. We must seek the right language of reform, seeking allies both within the corporate sector and more widely. That is what my own campaign is all about Tame the Corporations.
Minimum Wage
I don't want to be a Party-pooper. And the New Labour cadres at Bournemouth were trumpeting the success of "Labour's Minimum Wage" in raising the incomes of the poorest households. I devoted one of my scarce Fringe slots to the Fabian meeting on Minimum Wage and the relief of poverty. But it confirmed my view that Minimum Wage is... "Two-tier" Workforces 
As with Minimum Wage, this is a subject which engages my perception of the operation of markets and trading systems. I disagree with the TU drive to impose public service terms and conditions upon the trading sector. If the maintenance of public-service terms-&-conditions is critical to the quality of any public service, that would be one good reason for not out-sourcing in the first place. I recognise that, and in my view the privatisation process has already gone too far in some sectors (I would, for example, reverse prison privatisation). But if the decision is made to transfer a function to the trading sector, the disciplines of that sector should be allowed to operate. We are wrong to impose upon this particular section of the trading sector, the constraints and rigidities... Mounting anxiety
Subtlety is needed, in the drive to deliver "reassurance" to our people. I have no doubt that Jackie Ashley (writing in The Guardian) is right: there is at large a mounting sense of anxiety and fear which is unsettling our lives. "Much of the developing Labour agenda for the next few years," she says, "seems designed to reassure insecure voters that the Government has a grip (on the situation)". And so it should. Countering anxiety is a key function of modern government. The methodology however is complex, and indirect - see my essay Multiple Differential Uncertainty.
Week 41 Sunday
|
|
|
Created by GMID Design & Communication COPYRIGHT NOTICE
|
New
T
Try
BBC News, the
Memories
of October 2002 - then, as now, I had attended the Labour Party Conference
at Blackpool - and looked forward to the recommencement of the political
joust at Westminster, for all its disappointments...
Rummaging at the back of a old desk drawer, I found these stamps from
earlier years - do you remember when Second Class Mail first went up to
20p, only to be reduced for several years to 19p?
These stamps,
celebrating the oddities of British domestic architecture, date from
then...
