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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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041011 Make sure you have not missed
the previous edition
Check it out
And the
one before that?
Other recent topics
highlighted here
Week 42 Thursday
14 October 2004
BA
web-editing (failed)
 This
"promising" business is much more difficult than
I thought, as Tony Blair might say. Last week I made you a promise to
which I have simply not delivered.
I
promised to return to the to the
web-editing desk from which I had been absent for several weeks. That
has not happened. The target has been missed.
I am
however more convinced than ever about the need to
cultivate the political Party as a pillar of our Constitution. It is
impossible to imagine any conerent from of elective democracy without the
articulation of Party. I remain convinced
too that the Labour
Party needs radical surgery. Power must be re-balanced, as between the
professional political salariat and the mass "Party in the country":
these
are my ideas.
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More Potted
Politics
Blogging is about immediacy, and my website
has lost the impact of immediacy. I must find
better ways of keeping in touch, in spite of the pressures of other work.
One problem is my failure to find a portable web-editing programme.
The effect of that is to limit my editing to those days when I am at my
Swansea desk. And that disrupts the flow of thought and initiative.
These are my quick-fire responses, to current political issues.
 Olympics
- at Brighton, I shunned all the promotion of London as the
2112 Olympic City. I would be quite happy to see Paris win. I am suspicious of the
nationalism with which "sport" so easily becomes associated. Of course,
there were Athens events which I thoroughly enjoyed. But I dread the
coming years, with their testosterone headlines, as the UK strives for the
ill-conceived prize of the 2012 Olympics.
-
I suspect the Government's motives in trying to
encourage greater preoccupation with sport, as a diversion akin to bread
and circuses.
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Tony
Blair - the parliamentary jousting
will soon resume. Tony Blair has laid the ground for his own
departure on health grounds: "that Interview" was a brilliant device, to
shift public attention to the future, and away from the past. His
awful Iraq error is becoming part of political history, and the future
will be conditioned by his refusal to concede one inch. His
reputation will suffer grievously, for that obstinate refusal. But
nobody will now say, when he retires following his third heart scare, that
he is leaving "because of Iraq".
- On that
score, he will have won.
TV
in the Courtroom? I am
against it. There is no parallel with the experience
of sitting in the public gallery. Communication by TV generates its
own multiple distortions, subliminal messages, and they would
irretrievably taint the judicial process. I would approve, however,
of a discreet radio coverage, with unobtrusive commentary.
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Examinations
- I favour the shift to a
British Baccalaureat, with a wider range of subjects taught
in the 16-18 period. Wales is already moving in that declaration,
with preparation for a change well advanced. Up to 15, the
subject-content of the syllabus should be reduced, and we should focus on
skills, language skills, basic maths and the use of documents
(map-reading, musical notation, mathematical formulae). I would reduce the School Leaving Age from 16 to 15.
Stem-cell
Research, human cloning - I
applaud the Government's openness in this sector.
This time, we have got it right.
Alcohol
licensing - I think the
Government is right to go for deregulation, reducing
further the dismal grip of "drinking hours". All societies, all
mankind, must come to terms with the phenomenon of intoxication, and
develop forms of social and personal control, by behavioural convention.
So the Government is right to deregulate. They should apply the same
reasoning to the decriminalisation of drugs, where the considerations are
precisely the same, and where a more liberal approach would show huge
societal dividends.
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Postal
Voting - I agree with the Electoral Commission, but
I would go further. We
should keep the Polling Stations open, allowing other methods to run in
parallel. But I would still require a reason to be given, for the
grant of postal votes: the "normal" democratic expectation should remain
the local Polling Station, and a personal visit on "Polling Day".
- Keep thinking - don't let the
holidays dumb you down
- And
drop me a line
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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My current
topics
Extending
the Welfare State
>>>
Adjustment Pay
for every worker
>>>
Pay
Guardianship Allowance
>>>
We
do not own
our children >>>
" Institutional Racism"
a fallacy
>>>
Pensions at 70 Good Idea
>>>
The Mischief of ASBOs
>>>
US/EU: Wrong market models
>>>
Immigration
Insights
>>>
Dodgy
Opinion Surveys >>>
Are Public
Schools charities?
>>>
Taming
the
Corporations >>>
Kalan Karim
The death of Kalan Karim, at the heart of
Swansea in the middle of the night, was a communal tragedy. But the
much-vaunted "March against Racism" came and went last Saturday without
making any impact upon the situation. I was attending my "asylum
surgery", where the simple task is to ensure that asylum-seekers, and
failed asylum-seekers, receive fair treatment at the hands of the UK
authorities.
The Fabians
are a great, enlightened Left-Wing political community some 7,000-strong -
and we have many skills among our number.
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
October
2004
.jpg)
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 -
the weakling is "Labour Party Reform", in spite of the evidence
from Brighton that radical reform is needed, if political Parties are to
survive as viable political institutions.
(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, but remains
stymied by other work commitments, just like my web-editing
generally - July
discussions at the Department of the Constitutional Affairs have
confirmed (a) that there is constitutional/legal 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 continues
to make progress, and I think and believe that we are nearing a
breakthrough in public toilet provision - as of 5th October, we have realistic prospects of finding two pioneering
Councils, willing test our ideas - watch this space Drop me a line
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(d)
Labour Links -
the Brighton Labour Conference decisively underlined the case for Party Reform - my
latest attempt was in Cardiff in mid-June
with the Fabians - but "Party reform" will face the implacable
resistance of the professional
salariat, and that
makes it highly problematical.
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.
Other r
ecent
topics
Nuclear power: the only option
>>>
"New"
New Labour Five Pillars
>>>
Students!
Get political!
>>>
US/EU: Wrong market models
>>>
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
041010 Make sure you have not missed
the previous edition
Check it out
And the
one before that?
Other recent topics
highlighted here
Week 42 Thursday
14 October 2004
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