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Renewing participatory democracy Multiple Differential Uncertainty
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050314 Make sure you
have not missed the previous edition Check it out And the one before that? Other recent topics highlighted here
Week 11 Saturday Strange Death
The craven Commons majority showed no understanding of the key values of a free society: everything was up for grabs, for trading. Precious traditions were indeed traded, simply because our politicians were fearful of being blamed for a terrorist attack. They were intent upon saving their electoral skins. I was deeply ashamed of the Labour Party, the Party into which I am held by loyalty and optimism. And this was all for electoral gain. All that mattered, to most of those speaking in the Commons, was the verdict of the voters. What failed, last week, was not only the integrity of the Labour majority, but the very institution of salaried politicians. They are terrified of electoral defeat, because their very livelihoods are at stake. So terrified was everyone, of sending the "wrong message" to the electorate, that all sense of principle was abandoned.
Will Hutton recalls... 
I always enjoy reading Will Hutton, and his recent piece 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.
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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Mea culpa
Forget Iraq? No fear! >>> Camilla's Wedding - go ahead >>> Bangladesh legal bombshell >>> Disabled-friendly websites >>> 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 lineFalconer
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.
Corporate Manslaughter
Most crimes involve a person displaying some kind of "criminal intent" (mens rea, as the Latin tags have it). Yet that idea can apply only to "natural" persons, with minds, intentions, moral constraints: you make nonsense of it, if you try and apply it to an artificial person, like a company or a council. It is partly designed to influence a natural person in advance, to discourage the commission of crime in the first place. And as such, with natural persons it makes sense, and has some success.
It will always be like that. The way to influence an artificial person is to penalise "it" by heavy fines and restrictions upon "its" trading freedom, requiring standards to be observed which are scrupulously enforced by inspection - that is the only way. Standards should be defined in objective terms, the breach of which is obvious without any need to prove "intent".
My solution? A global campaign for company law reform that would remove many of the worst abuses of power at source.
17 March 2003 "Old" Federalism
050314 Make sure you
have not missed
Week 11 Saturday
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Something
certainly died, last week. It was a terrible week for our
politics, for Britain's distinctive contribution to the creation of a just
and egalitarian society. In the Courts, a young fuel-sniffing addict
was sent to prison merely for breaking the terms of an 
These
are dark days. This was a defeat for civilisation as
ruinous, in its own way, as George Bush's destruction of the United
Nations. It demonstrates that our politicians simply
do not understand the values
that they are called upon to defend - indeed, assert. The principled bonds
of civilisation the world over have been perceptibly weakened, by this
Labour Government. When Robert Mugabe
does the same thing, we will have no "high moral ground" left, from which
to address him.
"The
blame is mine" - that's all that means. I was
defeated by the timetable of last weekend, and the week only got worse.
I had to spent three hectic days in London, arrived home to find my car
soaked in cold sea-mist and incapable of starting Being a
webmaster is a demanding task: my theme song is "Message in a Bottle",
because I think of weblogging as sending many messages in many different
bottles, hoping that somebody, somewhere, will find a resonance and pick
them up. I know
this is a meagre offering, this week: the pressure of events is imperious, demanding, and frustrating.
And read my Big Theory itself, at 
Charlie Falconer is right to throw high
judicial office open to non-lawyers - that is an exciting and refreshing
prospect. Already, the bulk of UK justice is administered by
non-lawyers (i.e. the Lay Magistrates) and that is a fine
tradition. It is a cornerstone of our participatory democracy, along
with the jury system./gingerbread.gif)
The attempt to prosecute "artificial
persons" for manslaughter are doomed to failure. Government promises
to legislate for "corporate manslaughter" are simply ill-informed and
wrong-headed. Nobody in power seems to have grasped the absurdity of
what is being proposed.
But how can an artificial person, like a
company or a council, be so influenced? This week's example was of a
Council, not a private company - but a Council is similarly an "artificial
person", a construct of statute law, and has no "mind" to be influenced.
And so Barrow Borough Council was duly acquitted of all seven charges of manslaughter, arising out of the poor maintenance of a
local-authority heating system, which
triggered Legionnaires Disease, and caused seven deaths. It was a
waste of public money, simply to prosecute. The
architect i/c maintenance, Borough Architect Gillian Beckingham, a natural
person, was left
to face the music on her own.
This
is yet another example of society's failure to realise just how
destructive artificial personality has become, interpenetrating all our
lives. Since the Pandora's Box of artificial personality was opened
(1835-1860), mankind has been struggling to gain control over its
labyrinthine reach. Artificial personality has become a cancer
throughout global society,
weakening social bonds, facilitating crime and tax evasion, impeding the work of Government, a global vehicle
for fraud.