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Renewing participatory democracy Multiple Differential Uncertainty
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0157 Make sure you have not missed the previous edition Check it out And the one before that? Other recent topics highlighted here Week
7 Sunday
Naether's Letter 
I love receiving your letters, triggered by this website - they bring alive the many different lives reflected in the readership of this richest of media. You will, like me, be moved and impressed with this letter from Robert Naether of Llanelli, home of the mighty Scarlets. He has a very distinctive story to tell..
“Enforcement” 
On all sides, there is mounting concern about deceit and fraud in the business sector. The headline corporate scandals are only the tip of a fearsome and deceitful iceberg. And the costs of after-the-event “enforcement” are escalating: the City’s Financial Services Authority has just announced that it will be increasing its 2004 enforcement budget. This conventional “policing” approach is bound to fail. Too many horses are regularly permitted to leave the stable, quietly and unobtrusively, before the doors can be bolted. Tinkering will not do - what is needed is a radical change of system. The only long-term remedy is greater transparency, greater openness. We must open up to media and public scrutiny the widest possible range of company books and records. There is no alternative to the fresh air of public scrutiny. These great corporate “affairs of state” are far too important to be allowed to remain in the shadows of the “private property” sector. The secretive, collusive, conspiratorial style of the corporate sector must be radically transformed, by new legislation forcing all major companies to open their books, and answer to the public for their decisions.
Go Federal Everywhere one turns, the federal challenge is becoming more pointed. Northern Ireland is, at base, a problem of federalism – how to retain a disparate province within a unitary “State” framework. In Wales, the Richards Commission will soon publish its conclusions, addressing similar issues. The elected regional assemblies of England will pose new federal issues, as will the continued success of Ken Livingstone in London. 
But we are not alone.
France
has Corsica, which screams out for a satisfactory federal solution.
Chechnya,
 within Russia, will be accommodated only by way of an
imaginative federal solution. In Iraq, the search is for a federal
formula which can accommodate the political aspirations of three deeply
divided “interests”. The South African state is underpinned by a range of
imaginative federal features. Germany, Canada, Australia and the United
States are already practised in the ways of federalism. The European
Union is searching for a new workable federal solution, to accommodate the
ten states due to accede on 1 May. Federalism is about the integration of competing sovereignties, competing democratic mandates. It is about sharing the cake of political power. Faced with the demands of growing political and commercial integration, the 6,000m inhabitants of this small globe have no option.
Pickling
"Culture" It was the 19th century English
anthropologists who first popularised the concept of "culture". They
wanted to find a way of describing
the totality of each "strange" tribal
life-style which they came across, in their exploration of the world's
peoples. The concept of "culture" was in that context a
sympathetic one, seeking to convey to "Western" readers a
holistic understanding of an entire,
wholly different, way of life - a "culture". They created the academic subject of
anthropology - their successors sought to create
sociology - and the term "culture" has survived, and become
entrenched in our thinking.
Speed bumps
Ken Livingstone has declared war on sleeping policemen, the dreaded
speed-bumps. And I sign up to
his campaign. But the speed-bump disease was only contracted, in the
1970s, because of an awful legal muddle, a professional lawyers’ error. If
only we had understood the law properly, they would never have...
Hyperactive, Overweight I
am sensitive about my weight. All fatties are, and are made to be.
Yet I rarely recognise myself, in the studies of overweight that are
regularly published.
Until now. One researcher
Karen Collins, working for the American Institute for Cancer Research,
claims to have come up with a correlation between overweight and short
sleeping. Her theory is that, if you have less than your eight hours’
sleep, your body simply does not have time to process your food intake
properly, and you put on weight. She advises dieters simply to stay in
bed longer.
“I am not saying that the weight will just drop off if you get
one hour’s more sleep, but I would expect to see changes within weeks
rather than months”.
That resonates with me. I have
always suspected a connection between my excess weight (I was always
“Fatty Evans” at school…) and my long hyperactive career – as a
hyperactive child and adult. If I attempt to sleep for more than 6 hours
in 24, I simply lie awake planning further activities. Five hours is
often nearer the mark.
Karen’s observations ring true.
Special
Footnote I love the online newspapers, which
are my access to the world - share them with me - click through to their
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.
I
enjoy dipping into informed US West Coast chat, always up to
the minute, which can be found at
www.metafilter.com. |
Mandelson
... to lecture the Labour Party on "moving on", "putting Iraq behind us", "closing ranks". We are confronted with an issue of political morality, and he has no moral authority. Our Government has been responsible for colluding in one of the most dangerous and destructive acts of aggression that the world has seen for decades. The threatening clouds of Middle East conflict are still building up as a result. That cannot be allowed simply to "rest there". If Blair would somehow concede that the Iraq invasion was an error of judgment, we could perhaps as a nation "move on". We could work to re-assert the authority of consensus, and of the UN, rather than reinforce the doctrines of unilateral thuggery which Labour has now espoused.
Extraterritoriality rules OK...
Our increasingly integrated globe is raising new questions of extraterritoriality all the time. And they are particularly difficult for English lawyers and politicians to handle. For English law, unlike American law, has consistently resisted doctrines of extraterritoriality, and certainly avoided creating such jurisdictions.
Shift to Plan B If Barrister Blair is to defend himself and his Government against the charge of "illegal aggression", he must shift his ground. He must now use the fall-back argument, offered to him by Attorney General Barrister Lord Goldsmith, namely that the Invasion was justified in any event by Saddam's failure to comply with an "old" 1991 Resolution of the United Nations. If this is correct, the Imminent Threat Defence can be allowed to collapse - because it would not be relevant. Barrister Jack Straw, conscious of the tactical dangers of the emerging situation, is already talking up the Goldsmith Defence, and the old UN Resolution. This is a hazardous course, because the Goldsmith Defence is accepted by no authoritative international lawyer except Lord Goldsmith himself. But Barrister Warren Evans points out that this is the Government's only remaining Legality Defence - and it will have to be used.
HAIN BELEAGUERED 
Peter Hain had a torrid time at the hands of the 750-strong audience at last Saturday's Fabian New Year Conference, at Imperial College in London. His "straight bat" defence of the Prime Minister, and of Labour's "Iraq position", drew only jeers or sullen silence. He tried the Government's new line, namely that the presence of an "imminent threat" was never the real issue, but that flopped. The air throbbed with disbelief. I did sympathise, however, with his attempt (also rejected by the audience, last Saturday) to blame the media for their own spinning. This is not the right time to say so, but the criticism is correct - and Government Ministers must deal with the spinning "media" as they find them.
Left Activists' Corner 
I have three moderately-left political projects to engage your interest, in 2004 - nothing too revolutionary, you understand - and by the way, this month's new Royal Mail stamps (First Class only) are now on sale - a light touch, after the dismal railway stamps, last month...
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
One
year ago
Recent
topics "Equality?"
An electoral non-starter >>> My Mum was an Asylum
Seeker >>> Will political parties
survive? >>> Territorial
State v Membership State
>>>
Extending
the Welfare State
>>> Hutton missed the point
>>> Greg Dyke was to blame >>> Local Tax: my letter to the "Indy"
>>> In defence of the BBC
>>> Not New Business - "Foraging"
>>> What is the
meaning of "Risk"?
>>> GMB loses campaigning zest
>>>
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
0157 Make sure you have not missed Week
7 Sunday |
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Created by GMID Design & Communication COPYRIGHT NOTICE |
New
This month the Royal Mail
stamps have been hi-jacked yet again, to dismal effect, by its resident
railway fetishist...
A word of warning.
I shall be seeking, increasingly, to raise with you issues of
"extraterritoriality". The term refers to the assertion of a state's
jurisdiction outside the limits of that state's territory. It has
nothing to do with Daleks or other creations from outer space - they're
extraterrestrial. And it is all because the
consequences of the French Revolution (and this man Montesquieu)
are still being worked out...
Make
no mistake. Barrister
Blair has decided that he can
no longer justify the Iraq aggression by arguing the presence of an
"imminent threat". The current manoeuvres are all
about legality, not about the
process of political persuasion. The 45-minute claim was a pillar of that
legal
justification - and it is coming apart in his hands, even by his own
startling admission in the Commons this week. The fragile construct which
he had built in his own mind is clearly crumbling, He is becoming increasingly entangled in its inconsistencies. He must bail
out, and look for another argument.
Barrister Geoff Hoon has bailed out already, declaring that
the 45-minute claim was never of significance.
Never miss
House of Lords
