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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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040712 Make sure you have not missed
the previous edition
Check it out
And the
one before that?
Other recent topics
highlighted here
Week
29 Monday
12 July 2004
Just back from a few days' real relaxation in County Kerry - for a
Welshman, it's home without the overtones of Chapel...
Dangerously misinformed
"Planning", in its popular sense of town-and-country planning and
development control, is poorly understood. As a specialist planning
barrister by profession, I can understand laymen's confusion over a number
of its key concepts.
But I cannot and do not forgive senior politicians who peddle
mischievous and ill-informed fallacies about what "planning" can and
cannot achieve. The system has become grossly overloaded with
popular expectations, which ill-informed politicians do nothing to dispel. Among the most destructive current misunderstandings
relate to -
= Losing school playing-fields;
=
Imposing quotas for "affordable housing";
= Housing for "rural residents"
Politicians continue to mislead the public in these sectors, remaining
stubbornly misinformed...
Natural Europeans
I have just returned from a great week in Ireland, in County Kerry.
The Irish have proved "natural" Europeans. They share with the UK an
easy assumption of international horizons, as well as a clear sense of
responsibility towards that wider world, and for its proper ordering.
They have seized without cavilling the opportunities which the wider
alliance gives them.
It is often difficult to believe that, at just 3.6m population, Ireland
is much smaller than Scotland and just a little bigger than Wales.
Irish politicians have made played leading international roles, accepting
personal responsibility easily. Over the
Euro, there was none of the ridiculous nationalist
posturing that still characterises the UK.
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In spite of the new hustle and bustle of the new Irish economy, Ireland
continues to generate for me a real sense of relaxation, and perspective.
EU? America?
Both models are wrong
Our "new" younger TU leaders are seeking
to push the UK economic debate in precisely the wrong direction. They
argue that under Blair, Labour has swung too far towards the unfettered
capitalism of the USA, and that we ought to swing back towards the more
protectionist EU labour market model, with strong Union rights and
powerful firing constraints.
I think they are right about Blair, but
wrong about the EU. I do not buy the pendulum imagery. EU
labour market models are far too rigid, too protectionist, too much of a
deterrent to new investment and enterprise.
The need is for a new view of our fellow
workers, and their "economic" significance. There is no such thing as a
"labour market" comparable with commodity markets: that is a misleading,
capitalist parallel. We must accord to each fellow worker the
dignity of equal partner, enjoying more powerful
individual rights, new and better forms
individual security - enjoyed
as of civil right, without the necessity of mediation by trade unions.
I readily admit that this personalised,
dynamic view of the economy is nowhere fully formulated. Older
misleading models still prevail, particularly the mishcievous doctrine of fixed-cakery.
- Part of the solution lies in my
prescription for Adjustment Pay. But in designing the new model,
there is still much thinking to be done.
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Lords
fudge smacking
 While
I was away in Ireland, their Lordships fumbled this important issue. The Irish media were scathing about this "fudge", and I confess I do not
yet understand what happened, politically. It seems that, faced with
the prospect of a "traditionalist" backlash, the Lords adopted Anthony Lester's
amendment - to permit the smacking of children, but not injury.
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I
enjoy dipping into informed US West Coast chat, always up to
the minute, which can be found at
www.metafilter.com.
 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
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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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Possible
new direction
Just to keep you in the picture.
This week I embark upon a new venture: I shall be training to become an
Immigration Adviser, under the special Home Office scheme, designed to
accommodate those specialising in this field, both as lawyers and otherwise.
I shall be attending at the Immigration Advisory
Service, in London. My own local timetable in Swansea
is becoming increasingly filled with difficult immigration cases, acting as
a "litigation friend" - but I need to know more about the subject, and
improve my performance. So it's back to
the blackboard...
214,592
It's official.
That is the membership of the Labour Party, as reported to the
National Executive Committee at the end of June.
And I am still one of that number.
Hardly a day goes by, when I do not
question my continued Party membership. I stay, because I know that this
great party, finally constituted as a serious force in February 1918,
represents a radical UK political institution which it would impossible to
replace. Current pressures within the Party are intense, not least
because a number of "new" trade union leaders are advocating a seductive
"European" brand of TU protectionism which is itself misconceived - indeed,
it is responsible for much of the sluggishness of the EU economy. And there
are growing pressures generated by the dominance of the
political salariat. But
they must be confronted and resolved - from within.
It is true
that Blair has misjudged, not only Bush and Iraq, but the Party's uncritical
relationship with the corporate sector. It
is true that the Party must strengthen its commitment to
working people and their families, enhancing the quality of their lives.
It is true that Blair has
allowed the Party to drift into a new and nasty phase of social
authoritarianism, which must be countered.
It is tragic that an in-Cabinet clique
should have missed the chance to secure Blair's resignation.
- But I regard it as
my job to put all that right.
I'm not abandoning my Party to others...
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It is perhaps the mark of a smaller economy that "special stamps" are few
and far between, in Ireland
Taming the
Corporations
The Chartist magazine has given me the
chance to seek support for the Company Reform Coalition.
It will require
a new UN Treaty to secure concerted international agreement on the
integrated reform of company law, to address and moderate the overweening
power of the corporate sector. The challenge to radical reformers is
to find a way of putting company law reform firmly onto the UN agenda.
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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
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 Never miss
Steve Bell!
His cartoons, from
The
Guardian
- his wit and perception illuminate
the absurdities of the political scene...
Left
Activists' Corner
.jpg)
I have three moderately-left radical projects to engage your interest,
as 2004 passes its mid-point - nothing too revolutionary, you understand - and
now illustrated by the high diplomacy of our relationship with France,
which adorned our mail during April.
(a)
Company Reform Coalition
a
new opportunity to promote the cause comes
with the next edition of
The Chartist.
(b)
Questors - the
birth of a new profession, group planning expansion - in July, we are
due to see top officials in the Department for Constitutional Affairs,
to progress the idea -
watch this space;
(c)
Labour Links -
the case for Party Reform is proving difficult to make, because Party
members still yearn to reassert the powers over MPs that they think they
once had - it would be much better to recognise the change in the
character of representative democracy, and move in other directions
- our latest attempt was in Cardiff in mid-June,
with the Fabians.
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Recent
topics
Extending
the Welfare State
>>>
Adjustment Pay - for every worker
>>>
Pay
Guardianship Allowance
>>>
We
do not own
our children >>>
"I was a heroin addict.." >>>
Teenage Education Successes
>>>
Nuclear power: the only option
>>>
"Public"
Schools are not charities
>>>
" Institutional Racism"
a fallacy
>>>
Elimination of Roman
ius soli >>>
Asylum:
Injustice abounds >>>
EU: New Withdrawal Options
>>>
"New"
New Labour Five Pillars
>>>
Pensions at 70 Good Idea
>>>
The Mischief of ASBOs
>>>
Students!
Get political!
>>>
LIBRI
and public library reform >>>
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
040712 Make sure you have not missed
the previous edition
Check it out
And the
one before that?
Other recent topics
highlighted here
Week
29 Monday
12 July 2004
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