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Renewing participatory democracy Multiple Differential Uncertainty
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040412
Make sure you have not missed the previous edition Check it out And the one before that? Other recent topics highlighted here
Week
15 Sunday When Bremer leaves...
I have attempted to raise the alarm, here on this website, and I have written this Letter to the Guardian.
"This is a  The
Prime Minister wrote last Sunday in The
Observer, describing the Iraq invasion as a "historic struggle", a key
assault upon civilisation and democracy, which "we must win". So faced with
the grave deterioration of civic order in Iraq, he perceives this struggle as "historic".
Well - No it isn't, actually. We are simply having to deal with the consequences of a sordid, misjudged post-Imperial military adventure. I agree that we have no option but to stay with the Americans and sort it out: on that, I have clearly stated my position.
My new frontier  New ground broken
this week, new water
anyway. For the first time in my life, I swam 1000m non-stop
in a 50m Olympic pool. Swansea benefits from a spanking new
international state-of-the-art swimming-pool, and there are special
sessions for "amateur" swimmers in the early mornings.Normally, we amateurs are in the smaller 25m pool, well away from the serious squad members - and I have to negotiate 40 crowded lengths to swim 1000m. This morning we were, for the first time, given the run of the 50m pool. No touching the pool-bottom for me today - there was none to touch! I was slower, because the boost of turning at each end had been reduced by 50%.
Human Rights
"Business" is understandably up in arms, as is the pantomime figure of Digby Jones on behalf of the CBI. But reforming Governments should stick to their guns. The whole theme relates to the radical Company Reform Campaign - a bee-in-my-bonnet lobby now scheduled to meet for more international plotting in London on Tuesday 20 April...
Threat to Medical Care Appeal from Jill & Ian Harris Medical practitioners who are providing care to addiction patients, at Stapleford Centres in London and Essex, are to appear before the General Medical Council (GMC) in the autumn of 2004. In recent years the GMC, which is not lawfully constituted to deal with such practitioners, has dealt harshly with them, frequently finding them guilty of serious professional misconduct for giving treatment for drug-addiction (in particular heroin), and applying punishments preventing their continuing care of patients. Once such a trial has started, we understand that it is difficult for patients to influence the course of events, or the subsequent maintenance of care programmes.
We are
determined to take action, to secure justice for
those patients. We have taken legal advice and understand we must act
to protect their interests, possibly by seeking an injunction in advance, against the
GMC. And in that context, it would be
very valuable to have additional patient support, enabling us to enter into a
Multi-Party Action (MPA, or "Class" action) against the Council. It is possible that Legal Aid will be available
for an action such as this. We are also
advised by the Health and Law Organisation (HALO), a body established to help
patients and practitioners achieve justice against the GMC.
Tel: 020-8595-4375 Email: jillandian@btconnect.com 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 - Roll up! Roll up! 
Here’s a new function, for Politico Pages – politico recruitment! The Fabian Society is currently recruiting for two good politico posts – a £30,000 pa Research Director, and a £19,000 pa Editor, for Fabian Review. Both extremely interesting and challenging appointments. You would be right at the heart of Westminster, well connected in Government circles, just minutes from Parliament. Closing date? 26 April 2004 PS If, without joining, you would like to be added to the monthly Fabian Update e-mail list, just e-mail Fabian Research For Tony Blair, "choice" is a means not an end... 
I want to say a word in defence of Tony Blair. Because I believe him to be - contrary to his own assertions - shallower that he seems. And that is to his credit. I can understand the shallow Blair: he just does not "do" profundity very well. Martin Kettle, writing in The Guardian, took Blair to task for his commitment to the promotion of "choice" in public services - but I think Martin Kettle has misread Blair's position. The Fabians are a great, enlightened Left-Wing political community some 7,000-strong - and we have many skills among our number. 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...
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.
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Quite a Cobber! 
I've heard again from the tough-talkin' Australian Mike Davis (this is not Mike Davis, just how imagine him...) And this time, he gives his full address. Mike has strong views, and some of them intolerant to our ears - views which no self-respecting Welsh Liberal Socialist like me would be caught dead with! But his arguments rollick along with great punch and tenacity - and if he provokes you, let me know what you think. I love his image of the Trooping of the Colour ceremony with an ethnic-minority majority...!
Why Trevor is wrong 
“Why Trevor is right” is the title of an article by Polly Toynbee, in Wednesday’s Guardian. With it, she seems to endorse the announcement by Trevor Phillips (Commission for Racial Equality, Chair) of the mischievous thesis (from David Goodhart) about “multiculturalism”. Phillips seems to have fallen for the malign Blunkett doctrine of monoculturalism, disapproving of Afghans and Welsh parents speaking their own languages to their children - even at home. Goodhart declared in Prospect that multiculturalism was dead, and that UK society should now proceed to inculcate social cohesion by promoting the emergence of a “British” cultural identity. The accident-prone John Denham followed, favouring the promotion by Government of a new and artificial form of "Britishness". Blunkett inaugurated UK naturalisation rituals, and Trevor Phillips want to extend them to every 21-year-old. And, not surprisingly, Lord “Polecat” Tebbit is applauding from the sidelines.
Trevor Phillips is an ambitious young politician, and deserves to succeed. So I am saddened that he has made this error of judgment, at such a critical time. Polly Toynbee is wiser than he is: I suspect that she does not really embrace this nasty thesis, and was merely fell for an eye-catching strap-line. The internal evidence of her article suggests that she is not really talking about a “new British identity” at all, but the acknowledgment of a number of liberal, egalitarian, individual norms.
 "Rarely
are my own thoughts expressed as felicitously by anybody else"
(say I, modestly) but I do commend Sir Bernard Crick's excellent
exposition of the sparseness of "British culture", and his criticism of
the Goodhart/Phillips theme in The Guardian.
Richards Commission Bad for Wales, Bad for Britain 
With the Report of Lord (Ivor) Richard's all-Party Commission now firmly in the public domain, you are right to expect a verdict from me. This is, after all, my patch. "Richards" recommends that constitutionally Wales should move broadly in the Scottish direction, with the devolution of "primary" law-making powers in a growing number of areas, and the right to raise taxes.
Anniversary VAT 
Fifty years old! The Guardian celebrated the French invention of taxe a valeur ajoutee (TVA), reported by Mark Milner. But Milner misses the Euro-point. The Continental states had a chaotic mixture of cascading sales taxes, before VAT was introduced. The French tax system really was superior to its other EEC counterparts, and it won the battle of the taxes before the UK ever joined up...
The upcoming 1,600 Sub Post Office closure programme is a massive challenge to social enterprise. Their time is running out. While running a post-office or shop cannot legally register as a charity, the Government's new Community Interest Company format will be ideal for this purpose. Local communities will be able to invest in and work voluntarily for their local post-offices, secure in the knowledge that they can never be privatised or sold-off for private profit, and must forever retain their public service status and commitment.
Easter Economic Last year, over Easter Weekend 2003, we were all just digesting a "late" Budget Speech from Gordon Brown (as I remember, because of the intervening birth of his child...) He gave an excellent summary of the outlines of the modern economy.
If you are a LIBERTY Member And I also ask you to consider throwing your weight behind the human rights cause... You can sign up hereExtending the Welfare State >>> Territorial v Membership States >>> Labour improves Housing Benefit >>> Universal Inheritance: Capital for all >>> LIBRI Rescuing public libraries >>> Housing Crisis My prescription >>> Managing LIBERTY Elections >>> IRAQ What I think now... >>> Letter from an Atheist >>> Old politicians have six options >>> Voters are perceptive not apathetic >>> Prison last! That's my policy >>> Adjustment Pay - for every worker >>> 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
040412 Make sure you have not missed
Week
15 Sunday |
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I
am dismayed at the failure of the UK meeja and our politicians to pick up
the real reason for Bush's 30
June handover to a hand-picked Iraqi "puppet" Government. The move
is essential, if Bush is to save the skins of the big US corporations, now
waiting in the wings. 
In the United Nations, moves are afoot to
develop ways of requiring international corporations to demonstrate the
most basic respect for "human rights". This is politically
difficult, because these legal principles have traditionally applied to
States and the like, public
agencies. In the UK, the 1998 Human Rights Act applies
only to organisations "performing a public
function" of some kind - a term which has already triggered much
litigation.
I
say that the Government of Wales Act 1999 was in broad
principle correct, although a number of tinkering improvements are needed.
Primary legislative should not be devolved. I say too that the Government of Scotland Act was
misconceived, with serious constitutional fault-lines.
I say that the Welsh
solution, with one major modification, ought to be the paradigm for the UK
as a whole.
Letter
