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Renewing participatory democracy

My Little Red Book

A New Socialist Settlement

Bevan
Re-visited 

Multiple Differential Uncertainty

Week 32 Saturday
7 August 2004

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Editor  Web hit-count - I suffered the penalty of "web-inactivity" during July!  With one week on holiday in Ireland and two weeks in the London legal training sessions, you obviously got a bit bored during July with the static pages - the hit-count was down again, perhaps also beginning to reflect your own holidays...

February   1223
March       1115
April         1109 
May         1576
June         1305
July           1125 

But thanks for your continuing interest and support - and in particular for your response and personal reactions - rwe

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Could I vote  Tory?

Probably not.  But I was entranced by the Rifkind Manifesto, Malcolm Rifkind's credo, published in Sunday The Observer this week.  He was clearly making a pitch for the Tory leadership, post-Howard.

"I hope the Tories will also outflank Labour on civil liberties and personal freedom...  Under Labour we have people imprisoned without trial.  We are all to be required to carry identity cards, though that will not have the slightest effect on any terrorist or serious criminal.  We are told what sports we can enjoy, where we are allowed to smoke tobacco, what discipline we can impose on our children, and a whole host of other petty and serious infringements on our freedom.  The Tories must be seen in the vanguard of the campaign to protect the traditional freedoms of the British people".

I suspect these are weasel words, upon which no Tory Party would seriously attempt to deliver. But apart from assaulting children (where Labour has not gone far enough, to block parental brutality), I applaud the Rifkind Manifesto, albeit unconvinced of its serious intent. 

• Read the whole Credo for yourself.

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Conduct unbecoming

I am ashamed of my Government.  My recent asylum/immigration training has alerted me to the Government's hidden agenda.  In order to make the UK an unattractive target for those seeking asylum, the Government is systematically stifling off publicly-funded representation for asylum-seekers.  Even the most committed, idealistic lawyers are in despair at the prospects.

• Immigration advisers are already subject to impossible time-constraints in the preparation of appeal cases, with the Government now paying for just 300 minutes of their time, an allowance which is pitifully inadequate for most cases.
• They now get no funding whatever for time spent attending the key first Home Office interview (at Croydon, Birmingham or Liverpool);  they are forced to leave the asylum applicant without support at the key initial stage of the proceedings; for those speaking English there is not even the presence of an interpreter.
• Each Immigration Adviser must, as from next April, prove formal "Accreditation" (passing a Home Office exam reputed to be highly technical), a process which is likely to reduce adviser-numbers drastically.

Proper asylum representation will soon become the exception, rather than the rule.  My Government is resorting to nastiness by the back-door.

• And I am ashamed.

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Five Year
Blarney

I was dismayed by the last week of the Parliamentary year, just passed.  I know it is exploited by Government, to make one-way pronouncements without the possibility of effective reply.  But even so, I am speechless, pole-axed, by the events of this week.  Blair's pedestrian speech at the Party's Saturday "Policy Forum", the sham show-down with the Unions, the unprincipled promotion of Mandelson, the re-cycling of repressive and elitist policy ideas as pretentious "Five Year Strategies" - it all dried, like cardboard, in my mouth.  I was left breathless by Blair's claim that the Labour Party "had never been more united.."

• It will take a few days for me to get my breath back.  But watch this space..

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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...

• Would you Adam an' Eve it?

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Natural Europeans

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. 

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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 mischievous 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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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.

• Guardian
• Daily Telegraph
• Independent
• The Times
• New York Times
• Le Monde
• Die Welt
• Moscow Times
• China Daily
• The Hindu

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Immigration
my new insights

And they are right. The truth is that I was so overwhelmed by the experience that I am still coming to terms with it, digesting it.  But it is important that I should share my conclusions with you.

political anorak

Not him - me!  You can tell I'm a political anorak.  I got up at 3.00 am on Friday to listen to John Kerry's acceptance speech live, from the Democratic Convention in Boston.   I had not heard him speaking before, and I knew that a 55-minute speech would be a real indicator of character and style.

I was not disappointed (although I was much less impressed with smoothie John Edwards, on Thursday).  Kerry is sound, decent, intelligent, sane, balanced - with a good grasp of foreign affairs, and a commitment to social justice.

• He's the man to beat Bush.

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“Cheapie”
Opinion Surveys

But a new method has emerged, pioneered by YouGov and now used by ICM – the rigged telephone survey.  It is cheap, relying on only 1,000 telephone interviews for each survey.  But it is a shady method, upon which far too much reliance is being placed. 

Rigged telephone surveys (YouGov, ICM) are a truly appalling method of researching public opinion.  The margins of error (which are never stated, because they are incalculable) could well be as high as 7%, which means that only a difference of 15-percentage-points should be treated as significant at all.

• Read all about it!

The eloquent Mike Davis is back at his Australian desk, following a Far Eastern tour.  He is a professional Immigration Agent, and he and I seem to share many current concerns, albeit reaching different conclusions.  Mike argues for a new international treaty, incorporating the Roman ius soli, giving every new-born child the certainty of entitlement to the nationality of his birth-place.  I disagree, much as I am attracted by the simplicity of ius soli: I suspect that initial nationality will have to be inherited, merely because that corresponds with common sense and common perceptions...

• But Mike is always worth reading...

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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

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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COPYRIGHT NOTICE
The originating content of this website is my own work, and subject to my copyright. But on one condition only, I hereby give my consent to its unrestricted reproduction for any purpose: the condition is that its source is subject to proper acknowledgment, giving my name, my assertion of copyright, and the name of this website as its source, namely: www.warrenevans.net - is that a deal?  Roger WE