040426 Make sure you have not missed
the previous edition
Check it out
And the one
before that?
Other recent topics
highlighted here
Week
18 Friday
30 April 2004
Events,
dear boy, events...
I have failed you, this week.
Web-editing
has had to take a back seat.
I have been preoccupied by events, and inescapable commitments. LIBRI, the libraries charity which I founded
three years ago, has demanded my time, and has been hitting the headlines with
radical reform
proposals.
I am burdened
by the sheer obscurantism of our refusal to reform UK drugs
laws, following my address to the Cardiff Fabians last Thursday: today's
report of another Swansea death, attributed to rogue heroin supplies,
weighs heavily on my conscience.
I spent the whole of Tuesday "representing", as a Mackenzie
Friend, a Czech Romany
family before an Asylum appeal hearing at Newport, wrestling with the
absurdities of their treatment at the hands of the Home Office. Their Solicitors withdrew a few weeks before the hearing, after two years
of inactivity by the Home Office, during which the Romany children had
built a fine future for themselves in Swansea. The full
weight of "judicial proceedings" descended on them, just four days before
the European Union would be extended to include their country. And there
is now turmoil for them, in navigating the change of legal regime, to
supervene on 1 May.
- These concerns weigh
heavily upon me.
back
to top
Danger
Authoritarian at Work
You know of my dislike of David Blunkett’s seedy little “Citizenship
Ceremonies”. But when they were introduced earlier this year, I thought
they were merely harmless little rituals, take or leave ‘em.
But they are not. I now
realise that these new laws create, by a side-wind, a new definition of
what it means to be a “British Citizen”. Because this awful ritual
turns out
to be compulsory. The
immigrant is first
declared to be a British citizen, and then must be initiated. And
until you have gone through this gruesome initiation ceremony (for
which you have to9 pay a handsome Blunkettian fee) you cannot get a
UK
passport.
I rebel against that. I shall campaign
to get that changed.
Anger was
never enough
I
am tired of being told that “Whitehall”
is very cross indeed about the illegal invasion of Iraq,
and the thousands of Iraqi dead. Very
cross.
Richard Norton Taylor once more tries to bring Whitehall onto the side of
the angels, writing in The Guardian –
Whitehall’s
private anger won’t abate.
But where were they when it mattered? In June and July
2003, Christopher Smith of Islington and I strained our utmost, as retired
left-wing lawyers, to find some way of instigating legal action to get the
infamous Iraq invasion declared illegal. We searched every option, every
legal byway. It was quite clear that, as a matter of law, none of
his defences worked: this is what I wrote
at the time.
But we were on our own. Everyone looked the
other way. And for my part, I lost a number of good political colleagues
along the way: they considered I was being exploitative, abusing the
media, and disloyal to the Party and the Labour cause.
And now I am told that the gurus of Whitehall
shared the same views, all the time! Big, big deal.
They were no doubt
looking after their careers and their pensions.
The Shaming of Labour
As we doughty
Labour loyalists gear up to fight the 10 June Elections,
this uncritical lovey-dovey relationship between Bush and Blair sticks in
our gullets. Blair, having never understood the Labour Party, has
left us without values to fight for, without a vision of society to endow
that pavement-pounding drudgery.
back
to top
Why Bremer must go...
My
thanks to The Guardian
for giving me a platform last week. You will find my views
following those of Ali
Abunimah -
check them out!
I am outraged by the precipitate,
undemocratic handover of power to a Coalition puppet Government in Iraq,
principally to meet the demands of the Big Corporations.
back
to top
"This is a
historic
struggle"
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.
Threat to Medical Care
Appeal from Jill &
Ian Harris
In recent years the GMC, which is not
lawfully constituted to deal with such practitioners, has dealt harshly
with drugs-prescribing issues, frequently finding practitioners guilty of serious professional
misconduct for giving treatment for drug-addiction (in
particular heroin). Their patients are left with care, without
medication.
We are
determined to take legal action,
to secure justice for those patients. It is possible that Legal Aid would 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.
Jill
& Ian Harris
Tel: 020-8595-4375
Email:
jillandian@btconnect.com
back
to top
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 -
The Fabians
are a great, enlightened Left-Wing political community some 7,000-strong -
and we have many skills among our number.
PS If,
without joining, you would
like to be added to the monthly Fabian Update e-mail list,
just e-mail
Fabian Research
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
