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Renewing participatory democracy Multiple Differential Uncertainty
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050307 Make sure you
have not missed the previous edition Check it out And the one before that? Other recent topics highlighted here
Week 10 Saturday Double Losers
For Rowan Williams, it was his weak
backtracking on the appointment of the
And the same thing has happened to Charles Clarke, over executive internment - "house arrest", and a dozen other civil indignities. The experience of this week will scar him for life - because (like Blair on Iraq) he was on the wrong side. And I suspect he knows it. Home Secretary Clarke, like so many other Labour leaders "old" and "new", displays a fatal insensitivity to civil rights and liberties, and that has already cost him dear. This week, he has seemed weak, vacillating. He has been undone, by the moral maze of "fighting terrorism" - and by a seedy electoral manoeuvre, devised in Downing Street.
Jamie Oliver 1906 
I am reminded by the Jamie Oliver Show of the 1906 Labour MPs. Their second Manifesto commitment, entering the Commons in February 1906, was the provision of free school meals. This was the Labour movement's second most important parliamentary objective. I suspect they would have wept to see today's dereliction of duty, as revealed by Jamie Oliver.
Will Hutton recalls... 
I always enjoy reading Will Hutton, and this week in The Observer was no exception. He took a very broad look at the collapse of the "old Left" and of the Trade Union movement, prompted by the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Miners' Strike, in 1985. I nodded agreement as I read. The collapse of the old collectivism now seems complete, and the winners and losers better identified. But the Left has found no alternative banner around which radicals can re-group. I believe, against the odds I admit, that the human rights agenda, internationally and nationally, offers the Left an alternative framework of convincing principle, well adapted to current political challenges. The language of human rights is now universal, universally comprehensible, and compelling.
Refugees 
Public concern is mounting at the Government's new Manifesto strategy to force refugees (i.e. successful asylum-seekers) to live for five years in limbo in the UK, pending a final decision on their claim. Fear and uncertainty are even now the distinctive hallmarks of their early lives in the UK. But that uncertainty is usually resolved - one way of the other, within twelve months. To be forced to remain in limbo for five years constitutes harsh and unreasonable treatment. Such Government action would be excessively harsh, as well as socially corrosive and disruptive. Consider the arguments of the Refugee Council.
Never miss
Jacques' I enjoy the clear intelligence, as well as the political perception, of Martin Jacques. Writing in The Guardian, he casts his mind forward to the period after the Tories return to power on an ultra-right, racist, nationalist agenda. New Labour will inevitably run out of steam, he argues, succombing to sheer philosophical vacuity. And what would Labour do then? How would the Party recover? The Party's traditional springs of political energy would have run dry, in the process of outbidding the Tories for the centre-right ground. The renewed Tories would be even nastier than Labour, where Labour had been trying to compete with them. Where could Labour re-group?Jacques does not suggest an answer. But I know precisely what Labour should do.
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Forget Iraq? No fear! >>> Bangladesh legal bombshell >>> Language the music of the mind >>> Asylum destitution grave injustice >>> I will vote Labour, but... >>> Migration should be legal >>> London dysfunctional city >>> Referendum? Wrong question >>> How politicians abuse "contracts" >>> Abolish Wrongful Dismissal >>> Adjustment Pay for every worker ;> >>
The Mischief of ASBOs >>>
.... drop me a lineI backed
My reasoning, which seems to coincide with the Registrar's ruling, was this. The 1998 Human Rights Act requires the Courts to interpret all ambiguities in prior statute law, if possible, so that the Act is "compatible" with the European Convention of Human Rights, now fully incorporated into UK law. And Article 14 of the Convention reads as follows - "Men and women of marriageable age have the right to marry, according to the national laws governing the exercise of this right". Now, in creating the modern option of a Registry Office marriage, the 1836 Act merely declared that "Nothing in this Act shall affect the conventions governing the marriage of members of the Royal Family". That is to say, the respectful 1836 Parliament simply declared that it was not intending to change those Royal conventions, at least not that time 'round. But the 1998 Parliament said something quite different, deliberately creating the "compatible interpretation" requirement for the Courts. And there is no prohibition, anywhere in the legal system, upon Prince Charles' choosing a Registry Office marriage. There is more than ambiguity - there is silence. Therefore, we all say, the principle of Article 14 should apply, the "compatibility principle" applied, and the legality of Prince Charles' path confirmed to the Registry Office confirmed. The law has been "modernised"...
Falconer II
The same should hold good for higher judicial office. There is one European country which has a rule that, for appointment to its Supreme Court, lawyers are actually disqualified.
Disability Expertise
 I
asked for help with fine-tuning this website to assist the
visually-impaired, as required by the Disability Discrimination Act. It turns out
that the DDA expertise was "in the family"
all the time! My daughter Katharine clearly knows
what she is
talking about.
One Year Ago
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Both
these men suffered a
crippling loss of authority by making a single huge misjudgment, shortly upon
reaching high office. 
gay
cleric and fellow Welshman Jeffrey John as Bishop of Reading. The
Archbishop, whom I enormously like and respect, suffered a grievous loss of authority. 
A little brain-teaser
for you. What was their first
political priority, achieved before the end of
the 1906 parliamentary year?
And read my Big Theory itself, at 
On the arcane subject of the
1836 Marriage Act, I was right
to back Charlie Faulkner. On 8 March, the Chief Registrar Ken Cook
upheld Falconer's view of the validity of the forthcoming royal Registry
Office marriage. 
PS
Remember the Salvation Army's problem? In September 2000, just before the
Human Rights Act came into force, the Sally
Army revoked its rule that a serving Salvation Army officer could not
choose to marry anyone other than another SA serving officer.
Why?
Because the rule would have been overruled, under the Human Rights Act.
The entire phenomenon of the English speed
"hump" was triggered by lawyer's errors. Errors of statutory
interpretation. Now that the errors have been corrected, these awful
highway obstructions should be dispensed with. I joined Ken
Livingstone in his anti-hump drive, during his re-election campaign.
Older readers will recall that I was very
active, two years ago, campaigning for drugs legalisation.
My commitment has not changed.
But I am dulled by the bovine obtuseness and lack of principle displayed
by our MPs, afraid of every electoral shadow. Here, I celebrated the
11 MPs with the courage to identify with the liberal cause of drugs
legalization. They are still, to my knowledge, the only 11 to stand
out from the bovine herd.