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.
    

 my   < Back to Home Page  



New
Living Diary
Index

Renewing participatory democracy

My Little Red Book

A New Socialist Settlement

Bevan
Re-visited 

Multiple Differential Uncertainty

Who am I? Biography  

     


0152  Make sure you have not missed
the previous edition  Check it out   
And the one before that?   
Other recent topics highlighted here

Week 2   Sunday
11 January 2004

Trivial Pursuits

I find it difficult to understand what all the current fuss is really about. The "headline issues" of our domestic political headlines - first Foundation Hospitals, now top-up University fees - are minor, insubstantial political issues. They generate differences of view, but no great clashes of "principle".  They certainly  do not justify the political investment being made in them.  How is it that both Government and "opposition" have got so hung up on them? 

  • They are trivial pursuits. 

But that, in turn, makes me nervous.  Because they can only be smoke-screens for the "real action" - which must be going on elsewhere.  And that, I suspect, is the awful and unjustified aggression in Iraq, the construction of "Western" police states, the consolidation of a deeply oppressive State of Israel, the erection of an new stranglehold of professional politicians over people, under the guise of a spurious "War on Terror".

  • And that makes me very
    apprehensive indeed.  I hope
    I am wrong.

Reforming Corporations

It is literally just twenty-four months since the US Enron scandal "broke" - does it not seem longer? These are the eyes of the whistle-blowing accountant Sherron Watkins, whose vigilance and courage first revealed the awful truth behind a massive, "well respected", corrupt American corporation. That was in January 2002.

While Governments have huffed and puffed, no radical reform is yet on any national or international agenda, sufficient to prevent the same corruption occurring again, and again, and again. 

back to top

This is my religion

I am in awe of the Hubble telescope and its revelations - in awe at the world of energy and massive activity that it reveals - and convinced that I must find the link between that "Hubble" world and the mundanities of everyday human life, of everything we can observe on this planet - that energy seems to me to be benign not malign, ordered not chaotic.

I consider myself religious because I am committed to the search for an "eternity" for life itself - I believe that such an enabling coherence exists, in whatever terms it may be designated - man's task (my task) is to cultivate ways of life which will ensure the eternal continuity of life as we know it - and although I acknowledge that I am "culturally-conditioned" by my upbringing, I find the teachings of Jesus the best guide to eternal survival in that sense - that's politics too, for me. 

 I can also see that man's current behaviour is more likely to lead to extinction than to eternal  life.  That is the challenge we face, and it is both spiritual and political.  That is why I post for you this "new" New Year's Day 2004 photograph, from the Hubble telescope.  That blue "cloud" is 60 light-years wide - this should be our real source of "shock and awe"..

back to top

I am not a grumpy old man.  Not even my worst enemies accuse me of that.  But I became very grumpy, over New Year's Eve, when our neighbourhood was engulfed by noisy, explosive fireworks, unleashed by private parties.  I have come to the conclusion that the over-the-counter retail sale of explosive fireworks should be banned, as they are in Northern Ireland.  The pretty ones, and the whooshy ones, are OK - but not the explosions.  There has been a great increase in their use, over recent years, in residential neighbourhoods. 

It is wrong. The public order disruption, the noise, the apprehension, even the distress, caused to both humans and pets by this rash of explosions should be outlawed.

  • Ggrrrr...

back to top

I understand Lord Saatchi...

I think I know what Saatchi is getting at, with his Credo Michaelis.  Saatchi has sensed voters' disillusionment with career politics and the political salariat.  Michael Howard, he is saying, is different: he is an old-style leader, whose motives are not materialistic or selfish.  He is not "in  it for himself".  Saatchi's aim is to persuade us that Michael Howard really does believe in whatever he says - that he is not merely pursuing a career, exchanging Courtroom fees for a ministerial salary - he is a leader with a real mission to improve the lot of society.  It does not matter what he believes in - the Credo after all, is quite absurd in its emptiness.
  • What matters is that he believes it, and is believed to believe.  He really does.

back to top

Green Belt?
 It's all class humbug

The latest attack on our absurd Green Belt conventions comes from the University sector, where many colleges are desperate to build on convenient Green Belt land, to handle their welcome expansion: New Year's Eve produced a new onslaught upon brainless planning obstacles.

Young couples in the South East are being crucified by runaway house prices - all because "Green Belt policy" prevents sensible peripheral development - when the land is useless for agriculture and performs only the function of defending the manors of the upper middle class.  "Green Belt" is a misconceived planning doctrine, which stands in the way of the rational, egalitarian, socially-equitable expansion of our great cities, notably London. The interests of the young and the poor are systematically sacrificed to those of the established, the wealthy, and the old.

I enjoy dipping into informed US West Coast chat, always up to the minute, which can be found at www.metafilter.com.

back to top

One year ago

Nothing quite matches, for me, the thrill of the early days of each New Year.  I am a sucker for the sense that dreams can still be achieved, old battles won, new causes undertaken.  It's more important, for me, than Christmas itself. For those of you with a moment to browse, this what I was thinking about - this time two years ago...

back to top

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. 

They are all just a click away.

Never miss Steve Bell!  His cartoons, from The Guardian - his wit and perception illuminate the absurdities of the political scene...

back to top

 

      

ABUSE OF POWER

This developing story becomes more and more circuitous.  It turns out that the issue is NOT commercial confidentiality, as I thought, but "official" concerns about unsettling passenger confidence. Each Government, in this internationally-coordinated verification system, makes its own "disqualification decisions" in the light of inspection results.

The UK Government has published its particular Black List, although it does not include Flash Airlines.  The UK list is set out in The Guardian - but without being coordinated with other national lists, it is peculiarly uninformative.

Reforming
the Welfare State

Last week, I spelt out my own New Year priorities, and put at the top of my list “Improving the Welfare State”.  That has prompted some quizzical reactions from friendly Labour “modernisers” who think of the Beveridge Welfare State as a 1950s phenomenon, now somewhat anomalous, quaint, outdated.     

That view is misconceived.  I recognise that the principles of the 1950 Welfare State are in some respects now inappropriate.  But the concept of a Supportive State, which stands ready to lend support to individuals where needed, particularly in the vicissitudes of life – that concept will not wither away. 

back to top

On Christmas Eve...

... a momentous change was announced in Beijing, and went unnoticed in the hubbub of the Western Christmas.   The Constitutional Committee of China's leading State Council, thus the top organ of the Chinese Communist Party, submitted proposals to the National Peoples' Congress, to legalise private property and amend the Chinese Constitution.  The proposed text reads - "Private property obtained legally shall not be violated". 

  • Private property law is the bedrock of "capitalist" trading systems, especially when the property rights are vested in abdroids.  Light the fuse, and stand back.  Chinese company law reform will be next.

Another Christmas Eve announcement...

Just a few pre-Christmas words in The Guardian alerted the world to this Christmas Eve tragedy.  I retrieve them for you, because this tragic image of three dead in a toilet, killed by contaminated drugs, ought to haunt us.  There was a "bad batch" circulating in the area, said the Police.  We, the upright, mainstream, "established" citizens of the UK, steadfast in our Parliamentary support for the American evil of "Prohibition", are responsible for their deaths. 

  • If you want to register your own protest, in favour of drugs reform, sign in at the
    Angel Declaration.

Ni cheir da
o hir gysgu

I should translate. The headline means No good comes of long sleep. In Welsh, of course.

Most proverbs reverberate throughout Europe, popping up in similar forms in several different languages. Stitches in time save nine, early birds catch worms, birds in hand are preferred - in many different European languages. But it is only in Welsh (not French, not German, not Russian) that I have ever found the proposition that No good comes from long sleep.

Yet that is precisely what has been reported to the American Association for the Advancement of Science "Too much sleep can kill you", Daily Telegraph   This survey, with 1.1 million participants, was the first large-scale six-year study to take into consideration variables such as age, diet, exercise, health problems and risk factors such as smoking. You are at greater risk of early death, the study says, if you find yourself sleeping more than 8 hours a day, or less than 4. The study average turned out to be 6.5 hours.
  • Good to know that Welsh traditional medicine got it right first time.

Suburbs in decline

Alarm bells are being sounded about the impending implosion of many faceless suburbs, particularly in Greater London.  They are simply decaying. Top architects and planners. the Great and Good of the Design World, are being mobilised to "address" the problem.

But the real answer is a political one.  Parliament has always made it illegal for community councils to be formed within Greater London - and that ban remains in place, to this very day. 

If Government were ever to have the courage to empower the 350 communities of London, and allow them to elect their own community councils, a tidal wave of democratic energy would be unleashed, and the suburbs would get on with looking after themselves.

back to top

Left Activists' Corner

I have three moderately-left political projects to engage your interest, in 2004 - nothing too revolutionary, you understand...

(a) Company Reform Coalition targeting a major Easter pow-wow in London;

(b) Public Advocates - the birth of a new profession, group also to hold its first London meeting in March;

(c) Labour Links, seeking to unlock the resources of the Labour Party - and I seek the opportunity to speak to Party groups about Party reform

  • Let me know what you think    

back to top

Surfing my Diary

For the first time in the two-year history of this Weblog, my diary was 100% up to date,  at Christmas!  'Twas a big effort, over the break, but you can now browse back over the entire 24-month period - just click through

..or rather - click here. 

Recent topics

"Equality?"  An electoral non-starter >>>

My Mum was an Asylum Seeker >>>

Individualism is here to stay >>>

Are you monovascellarist? >>>

Will political parties survive? >>>

What is creativity?  >>>

Greenleaf Books, and Abdroids >>>

Territorial State v Membership State >>>

My Sikh ideal >>>

Negotiating migration management >>>

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

back to top

0152  Make sure you have not missed
the previous edition  Check it out   
And the one before that?   
Other recent topics highlighted here

Week 2  Sunday
11 January 2004

 

  

 

 

 

   

 

  
 

 
 Created by GMID Design & Communication

COPYRIGHT NOTICE
The originating content of this website is my own work, and subject to my copyright. But on one condition only, I hereby give my consent to its unrestricted reproduction for any purpose: the condition is that its source is subject to proper acknowledgment, giving my name, my assertion of copyright, and the name of this website as its source, namely: www.warrenevans.net - is that a deal?  Roger WE