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Diary in date order Jan 2002 to date
but you also find this search
engine useful, in keeping track of events
Renewing
participatory democracy
My Little Red Book
A
New
Socialist Settlement
Bevan
Re-visited
Multiple Differential Uncertainty
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040329
Make sure you have not missed
the previous edition
Check it out
And the one
before that?
Other recent topics
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14 Sunday
4 April 2004
STOP PRESS
At March-end, although my monthly hit-tally was fairly constant, I
sense that I may not have grabbed your attention effectively this month -
'twas a "long month", and yet the hit-count was a little down.
What can I
do to win you back? Any suggestions? Could you
pass on the occasional recommendation? RWE Ed.
December 1116
January 1267
February 1223
March
1115
Council Election
Special
The countdown for the 10 June Council
elections has started. I have been adopted as the prospective Labour
candidate for Swansea's Oystermouth Ward, in Mumbles - if you are a fellow
political activist, follow my -
Voter apathy
a new perspective
I do not subscribe to current theories
about "voter apathy". I am in the process, this weekend, of writing
my own Ward Manifesto, for my election campaign in June, when I am seeking
election to Swansea City Council. And I know that the issues raised
are of keen importance to local residents - everything has a city focus,
is comprehensible, and relevant.
What if
the electors, in staying away at General Elections, are simply
reluctant to endorse a highly-centralised London Government machine,
staffed by career politicians? And what if
at local elections, abstention is driven by the parallel perception
that Councils no longer "make a difference", given the dominance of
Westminster?
What if centralised governance
has fallen victim to its own ubiquitous success?
What if the voters are, albeit
subconsciously, deliberately refusing to bestow
legitimacy upon an unpopular constitutional settlement,
which offers them no effective involvement?
- Would they respond more
enthusiastically to a
localised, federal Constitutional settlement, in which more genuine power
were vested -
in Swansea?
I suspect the answer to that question
is YES.
Grave
error of judgment
What an impertinence for this man to
criticise "Islamists" for their lack of intellectual and creative
innovation, "over hundreds of years"!
What a crass, prejudiced
generalisation! And this, from a cleric who brought to the See of
Canterbury only an uncreative, rigid, repressive, populist evangelical
ideology which held back religious innovation, and the cause of a more
liberal society, for over a decade. I give thanks for his successor,
Rowan Williams. And Carey's bland apologias, showing no
glimmer of understanding of the damage he had done, have made it all so much
worse.
- I offer my
own apologies to the Muslim communities, particularly of
Swansea, for this gratuitous insult.
back
to top
Berlin Ahoy!
I am organising a Fabian Study Tour to
Berlin, to arrive on the very first day of the new enlarged European Union
-
1 May 2004.
"Organising" is one service which
we older citizens can offer to the busier, younger generations.
And I have enlisted the help of a Fabian travel author
Neil Taylor (and retired
travel agent) whose guidance has
been invaluable - you can buy his Berlin
Handbook online, you will find a rich range of travel
guides and advice, including Neil Taylor's work, at
www.footprintbooks.com.
The Fabians
are a great, enlightened Left-Wing political community some 7,000-strong -
and we have many skills among our number.
back
to top
Teaching atheism
Many
good letters-to-Editors never receive the oxygen of publicity, spiked unceremoniously
every day. My daughter Katharine wrote to
The
Guardian in February, only to have it spiked. And her letter has
only just come to my attention.
In the context of drafting the
new RE school syllabus, and in response to the zealous Mary Kenny, Katharine sets out her own perceptions -
as an atheist.
back
to top
Left
Activists' Corner
I have three moderately-left political projects to engage your interest,
in 2004 - nothing too revolutionary, you understand - and for your
delight I retain the Royal Mail stamps for February, which are
light-hearted and good fun...
(a)
Company Reform Coalition targeting a major Easter pow-wow in
London;
(b)
Questors - the birth of a new
profession, group planning expansion;
(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
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
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.
back
to top
One
year ago
 We
are hurtling through the year - and my cross-check on 2003 seems to throw
up more and more about the Iraq War. But I will try and give you a
flavour of what else I was thinking about, in February 2003 - when Robin
Cook was still Leader of the House of Commons...
House of Lords
Reform
Return to my
"Old
School"
Regulating
electronic surveillance
Exaggerating
risks of terrorism
City dynamism
ignored
back
to top
 Having
discovered this remarkable NASA website, linked with the Hubble Telescope
and the NASA Mars exploration vehicles, with its current photographs from
outer space, I am reluctant
to let it go
Never miss
Steve Bell!
His
cartoons, from
The
Guardian
- his wit and perception illuminate
the absurdities of the political scene...
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
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My Ballot Paper arrived today! If you are a LIBERTY Member,
and entitled to vote in the current Council Elections, hear this!
I have just received (from that redoubtable civil-liberties campaigner Michael Ellman) this year's Reform Slate.
He has asked me to circulate it,
which I do herewith.
I have voted the Slate, myself. If
the incumbent LIBERTY ruling
clique ask me to publish their slate as well, I will gladly do so - I favour transparency,
openness, level-playing fields, and all those strange old-fashioned
virtues..
-
NB I was most impressed with
the E-voting system, which I used, run by Electoral Reform Services -
quite an education! 'Twas my first-ever experience of voting, in a
proper election, by Internet...
And I also ask you
to consider throwing
your weight behind the human rights cause... You
can sign up here,
as -
a Member of LIBERTY
"Prison Last!"
....that's my policy
The brutal truth is that prison has never worked.
Ever. When in the 1840s the
Victorians ran out of penal colony options, and execution became less
acceptable for minor crimes, the rapidly-growing Victorian State was
desperate to dispose of its criminals in other ways. Bereft of
ideas, they built prisons, starting in the 1850s - many of them the very
same ghastly buildings which endure today, now grossly over-crowded.
- And our society, and our political class, has become addicted to
government
by prohibition. They cannot think of anything else to
do.
But it will never work. Imprisonment is a counsel
of despair, without coherent rationale of any kind. Cherie Blair has called for
the imprisonment of fewer women. But we also imprison too many
children, too many intoxicant-addicts, too many of the mentally ill and
too many of the educationally backward. Our imprisonment rate is by
far the highest in Europe.
We are challenged to develop
new methods, new social philosophies. On all sides, evidence
accumulates of the failures of prohibition.
back
to top
What is
Tony Benn for?
 Indeed, what are any retired politicians
for? It takes a huge intellectual effort (as I can
testify) to put the past behind you, and conceive a realistic image of the
future. Yet in making today's political judgments, that
future
image is of decisive importance. The past can very easily get in the
way, however instructive a study of history may be. The greatest
political asset is an open mind, open to the ebb-and-flow of current
events. Roy Hattersley's nostalgic
musings
make it more difficult, rather than less, to chart the Labour Party's
future. Tony Benn is a one-man sentimental
Trip Down Memory Lane,
and Ted Heath seriously
confuses the issues facing the Tories. They are
all re-living their glory days, of greater influence and relevance.
My own position, as a retired failed politician, is quite different. I simply ask myself - what
can a "mature" gent do, to further the Party's cause?
And I have charted my own Sixfold Path.
- Do you (particularly if you are of my
generation) agree?
Lacking
the gift of silence
 Sadly, Mervyn King, the career central
banker who succeeded "Steady Eddie" Wotsisname as the Governor of the Bank of England,
feels compelled to say something..
He should follow the example of the 78-year-old US Head Banker Alan
Greenspan and either say nothing or ensure that his language is so opaque
that nothing of substance can be discerned. His reputation is
consequently for great wisdom. This week, King most unwisely referred
clearly to an interest-rate rise in April, thus increasing uncertainty and
anxiety (and the risk of speculation) for everyone.
- He should cultivate, most assiduously,
the gift of silence.
back
to top
America
is
desperate...
 ...to
protect its self-serving plan to "hand over sovereignty" in Iraq on 30
June. As the constitutional negotiations continue to flounder, the
US has announced that it will simply "appoint" an Iraqi Prime
Minister who will formally accept
the transfer of sovereignty. This
whole seedy process is designed merely to ensure that the US privatisation
of Iraqi national assets becomes legally binding before any
democratically-elected Iraqis can reach office.
We should dissociate ourselves from this
seedy manoeuvre, and insist that sovereignty is transferred only to a
democratically-elected Iraqi Government.
back
to top
Mass Action
on Drugs
planned for
May Day
European drugs-reform campaigners are
planning mass marches on May Day.
I am delighted to hear of the work of ENCOD, a Europe-wide grouping of drugs reform campaigns, targeting the
infamous UN Conventions which prevent any liberalising initiatives in this
field, enforcing adherence to crass prohibition.
Sheffield
22
March 2004
This date and place will go down in
political history. For on this day there arrived in
Sheffield the first of a new category of refugee. I
applaud the Government's move to accept for UK
settlement a number of refugees (just 500, in this first year)
whose refugee-status has been determined by the United Nations itself (UNHCR) -
and not by the UK at all.
This is how it should be
done, in the longer-term. The UN assigns
refugee-status, and every UN member undertakes to accept its fair
proportion of the total, for settlement. Having become closely
involved of late with the UK asylum-appeal process, I am keenly aware of its
inadequacy. I am convinced that UN
tribunals should be encouraged to develop specialist skills in making
the asylum-decisions, country-by-country, and then negotiating with host
countries for the appropriate reception of confirmed refugees.
back
to top
Recent
topics
Extending
the Welfare State
>>>
Territorial v Membership States
>>>
Iraq the
critical July time-slot >>> Labour
improves Housing Benefit >>>
Child obesity could mean
anxiety
>>>
Injustice
at Cross Hands >>>
September 11? No real change
>>>
Universal Inheritance:
Capital for all
>>>
LIBRI
Rescuing public libraries
>>>
Don't save -
SPEND! >>>
Housing Crisis
My prescription
>>>
Managing LIBERTY Elections
>>>
IRAQ
What I think now... >>>
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
040322
Make sure you have not missed
the previous edition
Check it out
And the one
before that?
Other recent topics
highlighted here
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