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Renewing participatory democracy Multiple Differential Uncertainty |
Week 49 Sunday 
You're right!
This is Yours Truly, serving as Santa at the launch of
Christmas at Bath's Green Park Station, last week - my thanks to the
Bath Chronicle for an excellent
photograph. And before anyone protests, let me assure you that I have
been "police-vetted" to work with children.
Or rather, click here. Excellent politics this week, at Cardiff. Despite atrocious stormy weather, fifty Welsh Fabians foregathered on Saturday to debate politics and Government policy - eleven speakers, all drawn from the ranks of the Fabians themselves. And the new Fabian General Secretary Sunder Katwala met Welsh Fabians for the first time. This is the kind of grass-roots free-ranging debate which ought to be taking place within the Labour Party. Labour Links is a new ginger-group arguing for radical Party reform, releasing the Party in the country to enjoy freedom of debate, while constituting a new and separate "division" for all the professional politicians responsible for the disciplined conduct of government, at Westminster and at regional level. Politics must b e allowed to breathe again... My Mum was an asylum-seeker 
At least, she was in precisely the same position. David Blunkett has brought the memories flooding back, for me. In 1940, with two children, aged 3 and 5 (my younger sister Eleanor and myself) my mother Mary braved the perilous North Atlantic to escape to Canada, evacuated from the threatened ravages of war. But in Canada, faced with unforeseen destitution, she was pressured to put us both into care or adoption, and to earn her living as a teacher. She refused, and preferred the awesome risk of bringing us back to the UK on a troopship, through submarine-infested waters, in 1942. We survived, although many died, on that convoy. Blunkett has yet again shown his profound lack of judgment in threatening "failed" asylum-seekers with the loss of their children. It will be an effective threat (at least, it was for my mother). But it demeans the Labour Party, the UK Government and the man who makes it.
Public Primacy I share Nick Cohen's disgust at the Government's plans to sell off the internationally preeminent UK Forensic Science Service. The Government's obsession with "keeping taxes low" is leading to misjudgments like this (as it did with the London Tube...) In sorting out my own mind on these
matters, some eighteen months ago, I quickly found the need to formulate a
new and
specific Doctrine of Public Primacy
Third Term
Movements are afoot, in the Commons. At a recent Fabian meeting in Cardiff I heard Kevin Brennan, Cardiff West MP (and a long-standing Fabian) launch 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.
A new profession
Community 
"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...)
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.
One year ago
Pensions: no place for employers Blair's new "Government Party" 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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Publication Day 
I doubt if I will ever write the book I want to write, on the history of artificial personality. So much to do, so little time... But perhaps I get the second-best today: Greenleaf Books publishes an essay from me on the same subject, The Rise of the Abdroids. The text is also published on-line by Greenleaf, explore below - follow "What's New" and the book Something to Believe in..
Spotting Scams  Small business scams are nasty.
Small dishonest businesses preying on small
honest businesses. I
spotted a new scam this week, but thankfully did not part with my money.
The "Data Processing Protection Corporation
Limited" of Guisborough wrote to me demanding a
Registration Fee of £95, under the Data Protection Act, for one of my new charitable trusts (formed to
revolutionise public-toilet provision...).
I was suspicious. DPPC was an ordinary company-limited-by-shares, No. 3573127. On checking with Companies House I discovered that the company had never submitted trading accounts, and had changed its name in June 2003, from "Icare Limited". My suspicions grew, and I checked with the Data Protection Commissioner. It was a scam. The right fee, if you need to register at all, is only £35, and only official demands are valid. Ignore all others. It seems that this form of scam is quite common.
Everyone
If the two suggested "concessions" are made by the Government - (i) automatic extinction of re-payment obligations after 25 years (however little has been repaid) and (ii) no start until £20,000 pa - then every sensible middle-class student throughout the UK will be clamouring for these "loans". Rich kids will have the ideal escape from the tyranny of their Tory parents - just take out a Top-Up Loan instead! The scheme could become a great emancipation for the studying middle-classes, who will no longer have to be nice to their overbearing Pater and Mater...
Human Rights YES... Equality No 
The task of renewing Labour's political momentum is powering ahead. New Wave Labour is but one example. The TU movement, through the new Tribune, is seeking to play its part. But all these alternative manifestos sound old-fashioned to me, harking back to earlier political styles, earlier forms of political expression. 
I find no interest, among the young, in "equality", or indeed in "social justice" as a freestanding value. Liberty and personal freedom are more important, to our children, than any form of systemic "equality". What matters to them is the absolute injustice of the individual case, not its relative position among other injustices. The language of individual perception is paramount - and
that is not the same as selfishness.
Aneurin Bevan had the focus right, in coining the memorable phrase
This website continues to strike at well above the 1,000 hits-per-month - for November, the figure was - 1219 just topping the October figure (1184) so thanks for your continuing interest and support - stay with us! Hartlepool maturity 
I am non-plussed by public treatment of the "ghost ships" recycling issue. We ought to be proud that a Hartlepool company, Able UK, has had the courage, the confidence and the skills to tackle these nasty recycling issues. This poisonous debris is the debris of us all. Nasty environmental issues like this cannot be pigeonholed into "national" jurisdictions. These ships were part of the post-WW2 reconstruction drive, from which we all derived great benefit. We all share responsibility for their safe disposal.
Dialogue of the Deaf
It seems churlish to question the idea of a "Big Conversation", between Government and the People. Tony Blair, in Newport this weekend, asked us to hold a conversation with him about "health, education and combating social disorder". But none of these issues figure high on my political agenda at all! Top of my agenda is the State Pension - then democratic participation throughout society, coupled with constitutional reform - then better defences against unemployment - then combating the abuse of corporate power - then the rebuilding of an effective international order, rejecting the ruinous Neo-Con US Coalition - shall I go on? My Party seems to prefer a mind-numbing soporific domestic agenda of bedpans, playground disorder, and being nasty to asylum-seekers.
Curiouser 
This is 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"?
Where Jobs Go...
back
to top 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 Recent topics Economies to be responsive >>> Police Forces are dangerous >>> Iraq: Lawyers have failed.. >>> Taxis: Remove market management >>> Labour Links: Amend Party Rulebook >>> Countryside? Not a problem >>> Milburn gets "Third Sector" wrong >>> ID Cards remain wrong >>> Queen's Speech verbatim >>> Met Chief: I do not trust him >>> Lords Must Go! >>> 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
0146 Make sure you have not missed the previous edition
Check
it out Week 49 Sunday
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Created by GMID Design & Communication COPYRIGHT NOTICE
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New
A new
profession of Public Advocate
has been born. I predict that this will rise in the 21st
century, as the "barefoot advocates" of Europe, challenging the mainstream
legal professions for their lucrative monopoly of the advocacy sector, and
giving to ordinary people, at a price they can afford, the right to be
heard.
Yep
- I really do mean the "Student Top-Up Loan". No wonder Gordon Brown has
now come off-the-fence, to endorse the scheme. Because the
arrangement is not really a
loan at all. It is a favourable gift, followed by a legal obligation
to pay extra Income Tax, as and when the former student can afford to do
so, until the extra tax-paid has matched the gift - at extraordinarily favourable interest-rates! 
