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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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040809 Make sure you have not missed
the previous edition
Check it out
And the
one before that?
Other recent topics
highlighted here
Week 35 Monday
23 August 2004
Replacement
to cost £64m
This is not the value of a good marriage, depicted here by Elizabeth
and me tying the knot in 1966. That is today's replacement cost of
Hackney Town Hall - which is in the background, where we were married, on a
sunny Whit Friday - and where I was later a Labour Councillor. Those
were the days of Little Moscow
on Thames, when out of 60 Hackney Councillors,58 were Labour - and the other two
were Communist...
Blast against Blair
No great weight should ordinarily be placed on August political
articles. They are penned to occupy a political vacuum, the great black
hole of the August holidays.
- But this is
an exception.
Writing in Monday's Guardian, the Editors of the Labour loyalist
publication Renewal have
unleashed a great howl of anguish and
protest,
against Tony Blair.
They say everything I think about the sheer vacuity of the Blair regime,
the triumph of form over substance, the steady destruction of the Labour
Party and the morale and motivation of its traditional loyal supporters -
like me, for goodness' sake!
Public Schools
Charity Status
The Government’s attempt to remove the charitable status of “public
schools” has run into trouble – again. This issue has dogged the Labour
Party throughout my 41-years of membership. Every initiative has
foundered on the rocks of fuzzy thinking. And the current Charities Bill,
floundering its way through Parliament, could meet the same fate.
mindless
Prohibition
As
a society, we are addicted to prohibition. "Government by prohibition" is
deeply embedded in our political style: modern Governments love to “send
for the Police”, and to pretend that that will solve the problems of
society.
The nonsense of prohibiting “pirate” radio operations has now been exposed
by the new media Regulator Ofcom.
Ofcom has now offered to legalise the
hundreds of UK pirate radio stations (there are 180 "illegal" stations in
London
alone) simply by charging them £600 for a “licence” (see
The Guardian, 3
August). Just like a dog licence (another little prohibition, now
thankfully abolished…) Yet the Authorities are currently carrying out “an
average of three raids a day on such stations, seizing equipment and
arresting those responsible for the illegal broadcasts…”
A
quoi bon? What good does that do? I acknowledge the case for “management” of the radio spectrum -
the importance of avoiding frequency clashes with emergency services, or
the military or even Secret Services. And I acknowledge the desirability
of reasonable waveband “spacing”, to permit easy listening. But
otherwise, why should the airwaves not be like Speakers’ Corner at
Hyde Park? Bring your own soap-box and get on with it?
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.
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political
anorak
Not him -
me!
You can tell I'm a political anorak. I got up at 3.00 am 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.
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Cobber comes home
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...
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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.
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.
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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 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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I need allies,
volunteers
Can
you help me? I am currently preoccupied with the
injustices of the UK asylum arrangements - see "Insights",
below. Far too many asylum-seekers with deserving cases are being
deprived of a fair hearing, by the Home Office and Legal Aid rules.
There are already several "lawyer"
organisations seeking to assist - Asylum Aid,
Immigration Advisory Services, the
Refugee Legal Centre, and the
Refugee Council, both in England and
Wales. But all suffer the disadvantage that they are limited by the
Government's deployment of legal aid - they are led by enthusiastic and
committed young lawyers, who must be paid.
And
there's rub. Because, with the Government tightening
the Legal Aid purse-strings, all "representation" of asylum-seekers is being
effectively curtailed.
What is needed is a new force of
Asylum Volunteers, combining both
lay and legally-qualified volunteers, willing to devote their time
pro bono (i.e. without payment) to ensure that asylum-seekers
are not simply left alone to confront an increasingly hostile
Administration. Where lawyers cannot be paid to do the job, they
should be ready to step in.
It is now only by using volunteers
that justice can be done, and a fair investigation assured. There is a
desperate need for lay volunteers, for example, willing to accompany the
asylum-seeker to the initial Home Office interrogation, held at Croydon,
Birmingham or Liverpool - often before a lawyer has been appointed at all.
Volunteers willing to donate one-day per week, or even half-a-day, could
form an invaluable workforce.
If you are, please drop me a line
More
means worse
George Monbiot is a passionate and committed campaigning
journalist. True, I am often
infuriated by his other-worldliness, and inability to generate practical
political solutions.
But I respect his passion, and his perceptions. And
I accept his current analysis, which contends that current generations may
well be enjoying the best of global existences, never to be repeated. Global warming and climatic
degradation, he contends in this week’s
Guardian, are bound to bring far
less satisfactory conditions beckoning, for our grandchildren.
Immigration
my new insights
 I have complainants, two in fact. Their beef is that I
have not properly “reported back” to you on my July fortnight in London, studying
asylum and immigration law.
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.
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“Cheapie”
Opinion Surveys
The political media live by leaks, rumour and “surveys”
of public opinion. The Gallup and Mori polls have a high order of
reliability, using time-honoured quota sampling methods, albeit not true
“random” 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.
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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.
The Fabians
are a great, enlightened Left-Wing political community some 7,000-strong -
and we have many skills among our number.
PS
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...
Activists' Update
July 2004
.jpg)
As the August political recess beckons, let's take stock.
Three of my four pet reform projects are decidedly "alive", but the fourth
is floundering, and will probably have to go onto the back-burner - this
is just to keep in touch...
(a)
Company Reform Coalition
In this, I am targeting the stimulation of
a new UN treaty - nothing less! This difficult project has attracted a
little more understanding in recent weeks, and will be the subject of an
article from me in the September edition of
The Chartist - it's a slow burn.
Drop me a line
(b)
Questors - the
birth of a new advocacy profession has come a little nearer - July
discussions at the Department of the Constitutional Affairs have
confirmed (a) that there is constitutional space for such a creation
and (b) that there would be no legal or institutional obstacles to
its emergence - this leaves the ball unambiguously in my court, and
I need allies...
Drop me a line
(c) Charitable Public Loos - my new
charity Hygeia is making
progress - we now have realistic prospects of finding two pioneering
Councils, willing test our ideas - our aim is to
develop the charity sector, to replace the collapsing local authority
provision of public toilets.
Drop me a line
(d)
Labour Links -
the case for Party Reform is proving difficult to make - my
latest attempt was in Cardiff in mid-June
with the Fabians - but the prospect of taking deliberate action
to re-structure the relationship between Party Members and MPs is deeply
unattractive - and I am making no progress at all.
Drop me a line
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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.
Recent
topics
Extending
the Welfare State
>>>
Adjustment Pay - for every worker
>>>
Pay
Guardianship Allowance
>>>
We
do not own
our children >>>
Nuclear power: the only option
>>>
" Institutional Racism"
a fallacy
>>>
"New"
New Labour Five Pillars
>>>
Pensions at 70 Good Idea
>>>
The Mischief of ASBOs
>>>
Students!
Get political!
>>>
LIBRI
and public library reform
>>>
US/EU: Wrong market models
>>>
"Planning"
over-egged >>>
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
040809 Make sure you have not missed
the previous edition
Check it out
And the
one before that?
Other recent topics
highlighted here
Week 35 Monday
23 August 2004
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