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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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041108 Make sure you
have not missed
the previous edition
Check it out
And the
one before that?
Other recent topics
highlighted here
Week 47 Thursday
18 November 2004
Embedded Police
Labour is trailing its new communal law-and-order
strategies for the next Election: see
Blunkett's Press Release. He makes
liberal use of the term "embedding" the Police in the local community,
just as BBC reporters are now "embedded" with the advancing Coalition
troops in Iraq.
Now: I approve of these changes, in principle. But
there is not a single mention of greater democratic accountability for
this rapidly expanding Police force.
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New Treaty needed
I am wholly disoriented by the global warming debate. I
don't know where to start, where to focus my attention, where or how to
act. The plethora of different disaster scenarios, regularly rehearsed in
the media and becoming more imminent by the day, seem to destroy
motivation, inhibit commitment.
 A
new approach is needed. We should accept that the
situation is going to deteriorate for another fifty years, sea-waters will
indeed rise, the ice-caps will melt, and new weather patterns become
established. We must first come to terms with that, and address the
consequences. A great deal of damage and destruction is already
inevitable, and we must first manage that. At the same time, we should
target a reasonable horizon (say) 2075 and aim to stabilise global
deterioration by that date.
Labour's
NEC Secrets
 Ann
Black of Oxford is a fearless scribe. Like Dennis Skinner, she is an elected "Left"
member of Labour's National Executive Committee, and an active trade
unionist. But she is also rigorous in her regular reporting "to the
outside world" what goes on within the NEC.
 Her personal commentaries are
principally of interest to other Party members. But I bring you
November's "Black Report" because it bears worrying signs of a
cocooned complacency within the Party which could still
cost Labour the Election...
Managing Migration
Joining the One Per Cent Club
 Recent figures from the Office of National Statistics throw new light on
patterns of international migration. They explain the number of
UK
citizens who leave the UK each year - to live abroad.
-
1994 125,000
2001
161,000
2002
186,000
2003
191,000
That represents less than one three-hundredth of the population, each
year. Each year, the emigrants leave 99.66% of their fellow-citizens
firmly ensconced in the UK, albeit with an increasing propensity to
travel. These figures are very small indeed.
Compared with that, the incoming asylum figures are running at only 50,000
applications per year, many fewer approvals. Another 150,000 enter each year on official
work permits, and many more for the purpose of further and adult
education – one of the
UK’s
strong “exports”.
 These low figures are set to rise, for movements in both directions. I
belong to the “One-Percent Club”, which argues that all contemporary
nation-states should be organised to accommodate population movements of
at least 1% in each direction each year.
We should be reconsidering the ground-rules of our institutions,
most of which are designed to handle static, resident populations. To
develop dynamic systems, to plan for greater mobility, greater flexibility and
cultural diversity, is far more demanding.
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The politics
of religion
With very large electorates, the mobilisation of voter-support is a
crippling problem for professional politicians. Democratic election, with
all its faults, may well be the least objectionable way of appointing and
dismissing Governments. But the larger the electorate, the more difficult
it becomes to focus electoral attention on a specific proposal, a specific
“Government”.
The US and Indian electorates have long been the largest in
the world, and have therefore had to pioneer new electoral techniques.
 It
should not be a surprise that “religion” has come to play a key
role, in both electorates. With huge electorates, the search for
high-level unifying themes takes the spinners easily into the realm of
quasi-religious generalisations, and then into religion itself. In the 1990s, the Hindu BJP
Government took power in Delhi, having played the religious card.
And the US electoral process has now been hi-jacked by a crude
fundamentalist Christianity. This right-wing Republican coalition is reported to have
been systematically organised, over a period of
four years, as the foundation of its electoral success.
As
a mere amateur scribbler
in political matters, I have often thought that
the mobilisation of common commitment, within large electorates, demands
thinking akin to “religion”. Politicians are called upon to generate a
series of persuasive generalisations which do not condescend to confusing
detail.
Those are the sought-after “ Big Ideas”
of democratic politics, the coherent narratives. Without them, it is
impossible to keep followers focused on the wider, unifying horizon – and
to get them to the polls. The US neo-Con Right has just clung
onto power by hi-jacking the ill-informed simplicities of American Christianity.
a new faith in human rights
and in the open societies which honour them.
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Right Direction
Wrong
Conclusion
 I
jumped too quickly, last week - to the wrong
conclusion. I welcomed Polly Toynbee's attack on the
UK drugs laws,
writing in The Guardian. And I cheered-on Canadian
Government's plan to decriminalise cannabis possession for personal use.
In these highly personal matters, State coercion will never work.
But on
reconsideration, I was too hasty, too enthusiastic. Polly Toynbee moved only as far as medicalisation, which is
no answer. While the medical profession might be prepared to tackle
"addiction", doctors would have no truck with the large majority of drug-users who are non-problematical,
non-addicted. The are not, and should not be treated as "patients".
And I see that the Canadian Government is not
planning to "decriminalise" personal cannabis possession - merely to
remove the threat of a prison-sentence, relying on fines instead.
And as for Canada, the criminal aura of wrongdoing will still haunt the
drugs world, destroying the best efforts of the harm-reduction lobby..
-
The only satisfactory solution is outright
legalisation, with controlled over-the-counter sales - as argued by
The Angel Declaration.
Take a closer look at the arguments, and if you agree - you can
sign up
on-line.
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One
Year Ago
17
November
2003
Right
Direction
Wrong Principle
"Alan Milburn has
attacked the polarisation of “State” and “private sector”. He argues that
“the voluntary sector” should become “the third leg of the stool” in
public service provision.
"But Milburn fails
crucially to
distinguish between the voluntary sector proper (where “volunteering” and
“volunteers” are critical, both for funding and management) and the
informal salaried
not-for-profit sector, which does not rely on volunteering for its support.
Two
Years Ago
18
November 2002
Workers’ Rights
not
Union Rights
 "As a young Labour lawyer,
I was a part-time Tutor and Examiner to the National Council of Labour
Colleges, in trade-union law and industrial law. As a result, I have always
differentiated clearly between rights (a) which attach to the individual
worker, and those (b) which attach to the trade union as a collective
organisation.
In Labour political debate, these two ideas are often
confused, rolled-up easily together. After all, given the individual’s “right
to join a trade union”, it is easy to argue that such a union
should have the necessary collective rights to render it effective.
The conflation is entirely understandable, is misleading.
"The winds from the
Continent are, I am glad to say, strengthening worker’s
rights - rather than union rights.
Part-time and agency workers in the UK are benefiting mightily from EU
initiatives, and long may that process continue. I am sure that our systems
are moving in the right direction, foreshadowing a major systemic
re-balancing of the employment relationship, a new work settlement
right
across Europe. "
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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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Impeach Blair
 I
am keenly aware that my support for impeachment will be seen by Party
colleagues as disloyalty. It is nothing of the kind. It is rather my desperation, both as a
concerned lawyer and Labour Party loyalist, that nothing else seems
capable of shifting the complacency of our professional politicians.
They
fail to confront a grave wrong, a "high misdemeanour", committed by their
Leader, by his exercise of the Royal Prerogative. Indeed, I tried to
launch an impeachment action myself, in June 2003, only for it to run into the
sand of solidarity and complacency.
I
regret (strictly in Party terms) that it has been left to the courageous Adam Price, one of our
local West Wales Plaid Cymru MPs, to make the key move.
Check
out the website. He and Dan Plesch have my support
Prescott
deserved to lose
I
like John Prescott. I have always shared his enthusiasm for constitutional
devolution, away from the political monopolies of London. I helped to
finance Prescott,
with donations to his Campaign Fund when he was contesting the Labour Party
leadership with Tony Blair.
 Both
Scots and Welsh devolution have, in my view, proved successful. Celtic
devolution was the right thing to do. But Prescott has been wrong about
English “devolution”. He accepted, and campaigned for, a joke form of
English devolution which had no constitutional substance whatever.
This misjudgement, sadly, was
Prescott’s.
He tried to sell his fellow-citizens a political pup.
Some other
topics
 Web-editing
is a habit: the more you do, the easier it becomes. And this week, I
have been able to find several hours to devote to this most modern form of
letter-writing. Almost essay-writing, I suppose, at times. Thanks for
taking the trouble to read - Ed
Are Public
Schools charities?
>>>
Taming
the Corporations
>>>
The Liberal
Socialist message >>>
Asylum-seekers abused
>>>
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
>>>
How to
counter anxiety
Take a look at The
Age of Anxiety, a major think-piece by Madeleine
Bunting, for
The Guardian. My only attempt at a philosophical essay
is on this subject, and I have a distinctive analysis to propose. I
say that, for mankind, states of anxiety are
endemic, and that as a species man has developed by evolution
and by socialisation a bewildering array of counter-measures. You will find
them all around at every turn, if you will only learn to spot them.
Royal Mail
Award
My accolade this week goes to the Royal
Mail, for re-issuing their magnificent "vegetable" stamps, with
images that cleverly oversail the serrated edges of each stamp - creative, ingenious,
and
beautiful. The idea is however tarnished, for me, by their issuing a sheet of
spoof "decorations", to be used by customers in creating their own
individualised stamps..
PS
I confess that, when these beautiful stamps were first issued last year I
experimented with the gimmick myself (this is from my 2003 archives) but
I was not convinced. What
do you think? Where does the greater beauty lie, in the decorated or
undecorated version? In nature or in "art"?
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Are you a Libri?
"My" new charity
Libri is firing on all cylinders, right now. I say
"my" - but although the idea was mine, the cause has now been taken
forward by marvellous body of other Trustees who are deeply
committed to the cause. Libri
challenges the Government to promote book-issues from public libraries.
Too many libraries, they say, are becoming Internet cafes, needlessly
competing with the private sector - and neglecting book-reading.
-
Interested? Concerned?
-
Check out
LIBRI
The Fabians
are a great, enlightened Left-Wing political community some 7,000-strong -
and we have many skills among our number.
Would
you like to be added to the monthly Fabian Update e-mail list?
Just e-mail
Fabian Research
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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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Activists' Update
November
2004
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
The Chartist - it's a slow burn.
Drop me a line
(b)
Questors
-
there is growing official interest in the
the birth of a new "citizens'
advisory" profession, as the lawyers continue to price themselves
out of the market - it is clear (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, although all our discussions
are at this stage strictly confidential. But we would welcome
contributions from those of you who share our concern at the
disappearance of the public loo...
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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Never miss Steve Bell! His cartoons, from
The
Guardian
- his wit and perception illuminate the absurdities of the
political scene... He's no lemon
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
041108 Make sure you
have not missed
the previous edition
Check it out
And the
one before that?
Other recent topics
highlighted here
Week 47
Thursday
18 November 2004
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