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Renewing participatory democracy Multiple Differential Uncertainty |
Week 48 Sunday It's me wot done it! 
"A thriving not-for-profit sector is part of the fabric of a modern democratic society. My government will introduce a bill to create Community Interest Companies which will enable social enterprises to meet the needs of their communities in new and innovative ways." These are the words I was waiting for, from Her Majesty in the Queens Speech. Because this is my very own campaign. I was the one who invented the idea of a "public interest company" (check out the launch of the idea at my original website.. - designed when my web-editing skills were more rudimentary...) and with the support of top City solicitor Stephen Lloyd I pushed it through, by persistent lobbying.
New Corporate Campaign 
The Government will tinker with company law reform, as set out in the Queen's Speech - "Legislation will be introduced to modernise company accounting and audit arrangements". Patricia Hewitt has postponed any radical company law reform for this year, but will be tweaking "accounting and audit arrangements", post-Enron.
My judgment 
This week I have had to confront my own view of the future. As trustee of a charity holding trust funds, I am legally required to review regularly the investment of those funds, which have been held in "safe" money market accounts for the last couple of years, during the bear market. Is this the time, we had to ask ourselves, to make a move into equities, and re-invest part of our resources in stocks and shares? We deliberated long and hard, with the best available professional advice.
A Tax by any other name doth reek... 
The Government is hoist at its own petard. Having studied the new university top-up fee formula, I am convinced that it is a tax. It is a special Income Tax supplement, payable over a period of years by any student who borrowed from the State to finance college studies. The State steps in to offer favourable funding terms, on condition that an Income Tax supplement is paid until the sum is repaid, together with minimal interest. The moneys cannot be reclaimed in any other way - only through the tax system. The problem is that the Government is viscerally pledged not to increase Income Tax. That means that the dreaded "language of tax", however accurate, cannot be used. So the Government is lumbered with the misleading language of "student loan" - which has its own destructive overtones... Labour's Shame 
The Queen's Speech does nothing to conceal this awful stain on Blair's record. I refer to the perpetuation of the House of Lords in a wholly undemocratic form. The hapless "Lord" Hattersley (who persistently refuses to use his shameful title), returned to the subject this week. I advocated the abolition of the House of Lords at the age of 15, in my first-ever major political speech. I adhere to that position. The difficulties of democratic reform are formidable, but the retention of a separate nominated House is wholly indefensible.
Third Term 
Movements are afoot, in the Commons. On Monday at a Cardiff Fabian meeting I heard Kevin Brennan, Cardiff West MP, launching a new parliamentary ginger-group, New Wave Labour. Fifteen up-and-coming Labour MPs have banded together to publish their own "manifesto". Others - not least Milburn and Byers - are obviously jockeying for position, from outside Government. These are signs that Labour politicians realise the present order is finished, and that they must start preparing for a post-Blair political environment. And there is safety in numbers.
Bill Lawlor & I
On Thursday, I did get to the Bush-Blair March in London. And that is precisely what it was, a Bush-Blair March. We had a long wait in Malet Street to get started, before the Long Walk down to the Aldwych, across Waterloo Bridge and back over Westminster Bridge. It was good to see LIBERTY there, with appointed Official Observers. But make no mistake: this was a personalised attack from the Left. It was essentially a grudge march, against the twin personalities of George Bush and Tony Blair. It was the character of both these men, - their moral vacuity, their arrogance, their insensitivity, - that powered this protest. The march was not anti-American, it was not anti-Republican. It was directed at Bush and Blair personally. And that is, I confess, how I see it too. I marched alongside an Irish socialist Bill Lawlor from Richmond, an accountant and long-standing Labour member who like me marched in sadness and regret, without banner and for the most part in silence. We shared the same deep apprehensions for world order, and hi-jacking of our great Party by the Blair cabal. I ran out of time before reaching Trafalgar Square. But it was right to have joined the march, and registered my own protest against the Bush juggernaut.
What is the question, to which ID cards are the answer? 
Do you want to see FEW? A Fully Enumerated World? I do not. Erstwhile opponents of ID-cards are gradually switching to support the Blairite authoritarian cause – even Government Minister Fiona MacTaggart, once proud to be a LIBERTY officer, writes plaintively of her conversion, in The Guardian. But I remain 100% opposed. Nothing has happened to change the balance of the argument. There is no point in treading this path unless compulsion is eventually intended. And compulsion would be a disaster for future forms of human civilisation.
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Right
Direction 
Alan Milburn has attacked the polarisation of “State” and “private sector”. He argues that “the voluntary sector” should become “the third leg of the stool” in public service provision. He is partly right. But he is also partly wrong, and he makes a very significant mistake, as many Labour Ministers do (and he is trying to get back into the Ministerial fold…) For Milburn fails to distinguish between voluntary sector (where “volunteering” and “volunteers” are critical, both for funding and management) and the informal salaried not-for-profit sector.
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 - I have added the English-language China Daily ... and I now offer you the leading English-language Indian paper The Hindu.
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A new profession
Curiouser 
NOTE - for the conspiracy theorists among you. My web-counter tells me that my hit-count from the US Department of Defense has risen from 13 to 16, and that in addition I now have 8 (eight) hits from the US Government itself - is this all part of the "War against Terrorism"? Nobody phoned me... I am a Labour activist, still more active than most. But the Party's much-vaunted "telephone tree", explaining the politics of the Queens Speech, certainly did not reach me. Will you let me know if you were the actual recipient of such a call? And will you report to us on the experience?
"My Government will..." I believe in checking
the actual wording of the Queens Speech.
The language is politico-speak. But it is carefully
crafted, and repays study. If you have missed it so far,
you can - I do Sir John Stevens is Chief of the London Metropolitan Police, the country's top policeman. Yet I have no confidence in his judgment, his loyalty, or even his basic decency.
Darcus Howe, writing in the New Statesman with experience and authority, remains deeply critical of the Metropolitan Police and its racism. And don't buy the flawed and evasive concept of "institutional racism". Racism is a matter of personal prejudice, of flawed personal values.
Horses 
I am fed up with those who merely tut-tut at the crimes of Lord Black, in stealing from the companies he manages. These high-level corporate crimes are ultimately the fault of our own politicians, who deliberately leave in place systems of company law that are so defective that they invite corporate theft on a huge scale. At a domestic level, Neighbourhood Watch encourages every householders to instal double-locks and burglar alarms. For companies, our politicians are happy to leave the doors wide open... Please pause, to read -
Maudsley rejects the 
Just to report that my “appearance” last Wednesday at the Maudsley Hospital Debating Society was successful. I was proposing the motion (drafted awkwardly by others…)
This was the 24th Maudsley Debate, with a superb attendance of
over 130 – quite an achievement, these days. It is marvellous that
the Maudsley strives to keep alive the tradition of formal University
debate. In the “before” vote a
majority rejected the motion – but we (Dr John Marsden and I) succeeded in
turning it around to a Proposition Majority – 62-51, with 20 abstentions…
You can check out my arguments at But doctors, I fear, wear political blinkers. They treat us all, not as thinking, sentient principals, but as patients...
 The countdown to Christmas is firmly
underway, with the Post Office selling its "Christmas" stamps.
Nothing conventional, though, about the puzzling combination of crystalline forms
which will adorn our mail for the next eight weeks!
Are there
prizes, for the first identifications?
Where Jobs Go...
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 -
Never miss One year ago
Recent topics Economies to be responsive >>> The Spin is in the Media... Planning system in disarray >>> Police Forces are dangerous >>> Better Census data essential >>> Re-drafting Labour's Constitution >>> Iraq: Lawyers have failed.. >>> Immigrants OK, says GP >>> Taxis: Remove market management >>> Labour Links: Amend Party Rulebook >>> Countryside? Not a problem >>>
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
0145 Make sure you have not missed the previous edition
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it out Week 48 Sunday
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