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Renewing participatory democracy Multiple Differential Uncertainty
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0159 Make sure you have not missed the previous edition Check it out And the one before that? Other recent topics highlighted here Week
9 Saturday Blair loses his touch 
Blair is right to call for greater imagination, and greater flexibility, from the Home Civil Service. He is entitled to castigate the old MAFF for its disastrous performance during the Foot-and-Mouth outbreak, and for its being out-managed by the Army. His major speech this week on Civil Service reform is well focused, well targeted. But in delivering his message, and in spelling out its practical implications, his fabled “touch” has let him down. I have served as an old-style Under-Secretary myself, and I do understand his desire to induce a stronger sense of innovation, of drive, of energy – of an entire “can do” philosophy – into the senior Civil Service. That ambition is entirely legitimate.
The Prince 
.... but I am not. The first of the Government's misconceived Citizenship Rituals for the Newly Naturalised took place in Brent last Thursday. The Home Office, with all its classic insensitivity, has created a special website for those undergoing the ceremony, duly inculcating grovelling subservience, and threatening to withdraw the offer of citizenship if the hapless applicant does not rush to attend, to tug the forelock. And David Blunkett fixed it for HRH to attend the first of these nationalistic jamborees. I am deeply ashamed that it should have been my Party, the great UK Labour Party, that should have succombed to this trivialising mumbo-jumbo, glorifying the Crown.
EU
"Immigration" Well, YES... It was Lord (Chris) Haskins who said “You have to watch David Blunkett: he does awful things, then suddenly out of the blue, he gets something right!” 
That has happened this time. In January, the UK faced progressive betrayal on EU enlargement by thirteen other EU states, many of whom caved in to popular xenophobia over the year-end. They left UK and Ireland with the only states with “open doors”, and that dramatically changed immigration forecasts for EU enlargement on 1 May.
Blunkett’s compromise is a good one - but it is undoubtedly weak in parts. And those weaknesses will come back to haunt us. New Migration Data
I have this week visited the ICAR, at Kings College, London. In recent years, a nasty rightwing unit MigrationWatch UK, purporting to mobilise the legitimacy of "Oxford" University", has commanded far too much media attention. ICAR (and its Director Kirsteen Tait) can deliver some limited competition, although constitutionally limited to the issue of asylum refugees, rather than a broader migration brief.
Public
Advocates On Saturday 21
February, the General Meeting of
the College of Public Advocates decided
to accept criticisms of their choice of name, and to change course. In
future, it will be the College of Questors.
This is their new Constitution - take a look. The title of Quaestor
or Questor is an ancient Roman one, continued into mediaeval times.
It will be revived by the College, having fallen into disuse over the past three
hundred years.
The new professionals, who will be trained to assist clients with a wide
range of civil processes, will not be qualified lawyers, but they will
receive a broad training in advocacy, representation and and the discharge
of advisory and informative functions. They will operate at a
fraction of the cost of qualified solicitors and barristers. They
will be trained to answer the widest possible range of questions
of civil entitlement and rights - hence the adoption by the College of
the term, and new title, Questor. Watch out!
Filofax
DECEIT Filofax
users are used to being exploited. The astronomical prices charged
for Filofax "accessories" have always been a stain upon the good name of
the business sector. But now
It
looks like the presentation
common to other
No it does not. This is a
special cardboard "imitation" page, designed and printed to
look just like
the other Filofax on-shelf presentations. Even imitation punch-holes
are included, cunningly camouflaged and printed to look as if they are being viewed
through the cellophane. Two of these heavier pieces of
cardboard are included, front and back, within the cellophane package.
The effect is to give
the slim pack a very substantial "feel", of thickness, therefore
of quantity - concealing the fact that there
are just 25 thin sheets of A5 paper within it. The
volume of the package is doubled by this useless cardboard, sold for £2. That is
the equivalent of 16p for an A4 sheet of paper. But the actual number
of sheets is not even shown on the outside of the pack.
So you
cannot check arithmetically, you can only feel. But in feeling the weight of the
package, you are being most grievously deceived. These
One-Stop Nightmare I
distrust “One Stop Shops”. The
latest idea comes from Sir Peter Gershon, the Government-retained business guru who has come
up with £16bn-worth of savings in the running of public services.
Many of his ideas are sound.
Public service procurement could be greatly improved. His challenge to
the ethos of “regulation” is sound: as a socialist, I argue that it often
reflects sloppy thinking about the true nature of public service. More
auxiliaries and paraprofessionals should be introduced to public service
functions, making better use of trained personnel, notably in education
and policing. And Government should adopt a single Means Test, valid for
all purposes. All these ideas are sensible.
But his proposal is barmy, to convert Jobcentres into “one-stop shops” for
all citizens of working-age in
their relations with the State. Certainly, we all now have complex
relations with “the State”, and their management is certainly a vital
issue – with which socialists should be in particular concerned. But we
should all have multiple opportunities
of managing those relations. We must have choice in that relationship,
diversity. The idea of giving the task to one team of civil servants is
absurd – what happens when a one-stop shop
comes to a stop? By incompetence, or internal dissension,
inadequate funding or industrial dispute? What happens to the citizen
then?
We would do better to invest in better communications all-round, and
welcome multiple sourcing.
Congestion Charge misconceived I am delighted that Ken
Livingstone has had such success with his
"Congestion Charge" in London. Other cities are seeking
to follow his example, and his CREEM (Campaign to Re-Elect the Mayor)
builds mightily upon it. But its significance does not simply
lie in the management of local traffic jams. Far more important: it
serves as a dry-run
for the national Daily Usage Charge for which I have been campaigning
since 1997... If the entire Queen's Highway were brought into the
scheme, it would work like a dream, without the tensions of partial
implementation, and if a cheaper collection system were used, it would be
a major source of UK tax income, for the Treasury. 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.
One
year ago
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Asylum Yesterday, I had to appear before an Asylum Adjudicator, in Pontypool, as a McKenzie Friend, although I was woefully ill-prepared to do so - simply because the Appellant (a political refugee from Baluchistan, seemingly from the "IRA" of Iran) has totally failed to find a South Wales Solicitor willing to accept his case.
Billy Bragg and I
The Fabian meeting at Westminster last Wednesday was excellent, if inconclusive - an audience of 200 overflowed the largest Committee Room. Billy Bragg has come up with a new idea for elections to the House of Lords. I am in principle an abolitionist, although in the spirit of compromise I have in recent years been trying to find an alternative policy which I can wholeheartedly support.
But every solution is a fudge of some kind - except simple abolition, and the adoption of a single-chamber legislature.
Trade Union Inspiration  My
own union GMB, has adopted the most uninspiring slogan imaginable - "Experts
in the world of work". USDAW, on the other hand, for the
retail sector, wins my accolade, for retaining some of the inspiration of a campaigning
union movement. Their slogan is Freedom from Fear –
that’s more like it!
There are huge challenges facing the TU movement, political and industrial. But they will not be met by desk-bound “experts”. GMB must try harder... 
The trial has been adjourned, of the seven Doctors from the Stapleford Centre, who are appearing before the General Medical Council on charges arising out the treatments they offer for drug users, in particular heroin. This was the announcement -
That should give time to search for a sensitive and sensible solution of the awful problems raised by this case, and the appalling strategy of criminalising a minority of "dangerous drugs". If a picture is worth a thousand words, how about this picture? 
These are official Government statistics.
Methadone kills many more people than heroin, so does paracetamol. Ecstasy
deaths are a tiny figure. And just look at the ravages of the "legal"
drugs, alcohol (wine-coloured) and tobacco (light blue
smoke-coloured...)
Classroom Police I am appalled at Blair's most recent plan to introduce random drugs-testing in schools. In spite of the Guardian cartoon, this is no laughing matter. Children will be exposed to the compulsory criminal investigations, without the possibility of giving their valid consent. That is because their parents, in these sensitive matters, have no right to abandon their children's rights, whatever the letter of the law may say. The parents may well be part of any problem, in any event. The case would be different if drugs had been decriminalised, and the issue were one of health, and medical treatment, alone. But that is not yet on the agenda.
Letter to Prescott
John, please don’t go there! There is nothing wrong with the Council Tax, in principle. Throughout Europe, citizens are accustomed to pay some form of tax according to the value of the property they own or occupy. As politicians, we should not easily forego that “propensity to pay”… And the real problems with the Council Tax is not its level.
 Will the "retail" financial services industry ever be
honest enough to be allowed to trade?
I am beginning to doubt
it. The arcane wording of all "financial instruments" will always be
liable to misunderstanding, disappointment and deceit. I am beginning
to doubt whether ordinary private companies will ever prove to be reliable
enough to look after the savings of ordinary people.
Deceit and dishonesty are endemic to the financial services sector. No attempts at statutory regulation have yet been successful. Maybe the only course is for the State to become the repository-of-last-resort for ordinary "retail" savings, giving some minimal guarantee of security.
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, February'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
Recent
topics
Extending
the Welfare State
>>> Greg Dyke was to blame >>> GMB loses campaigning zest
>>> "Culture" is a dangerous concept
>>> Speed Bumps - legal cock-up!
>>> We are all Federalists now
>>> "Localism" for the
wrong reason
>>> Asylum: Inadequate legal aid
>>> Territorial v Membership States
>>>
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 I
enjoy dipping into informed US West Coast chat, always up to
the minute, which can be found at
www.metafilter.com.
0159 Make sure you have not missed Week
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