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Renewing participatory democracy Multiple Differential Uncertainty
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050509
Make sure you have not missed the previous edition Check it out And the one before that? Other recent topics highlighted here
Week 19 Monday Amnesty! 
Today's news from Spain shows the way ahead for the UK. The Guardian reports that Spain's Socialist Government has just granted an immigration amnesty to 700,000 illegal immigrants, who have been living and working clandestinely in Spain. "We can feel very satisfied", said the Labour Minister Jesus Caldera, "almost 700,000 jobs brought out of the black economy - that represents 80/90% of all such jobs held by immigrants to Spain" Officials stressed that more than a million people (i.e. including family members) would no longer have to hide from Police or labour inspectors. I wish that had been the UK. Our Government should grant an amnesty to the 250,000 failed asylum-seekers now surviving in the UK, some literally stranded by international events. They are in a worse position than the Spanish immigrants. In a smaller country, their work-ban is strictly policed. They are virtually imprisoned by poverty in their bare Home Office accommodation, living on £38-worth of State luncheon vouchers per week, and no legitimate cash. My Labour Government should end this scandal, these indignities deliberately inflicted by the State.
The smaller majority will be good for the Labour Party, with the prospect of some real internal debate, for the first time in years. Rebel MPs like our Gower Martin Caton will gain in influence. There were two signal Fabian losses - Stephen Twigg, and Calum MacDonald of the Western Isles - both will, I hope, stick to politics, and find a way back. Labour doubters used the LibDems as a safety-valve of protest, or abstention, rather than swing to Tory. We can be proud of a sophisticated exercise in the use of votes to change the course of politics.
I have recently come across more evidence of his onshore career. He became a respected Secondary School Headmaster in Assam - and was invited to join the Royal Cabinet. So, in spite of my own lack of political success, it has been shown that I do have illustrious forbears - a Minister in the Assam Cabinet, no less. 
This Indian tombstone Nepal tombstone suggests a ripe old age: if Sarah was 35 in 1891, he must have been over 80 when he christened me, in 1936... And he went back to Nepal afterwards. Family rumours used to abound about his having two wives "when in India", but the new evidence does not support that.
Never miss |
Wrong man for Pope >>> An Election without principle >>> Corporate Kleptocracy >>> Wicked Tory immigration policy >>> Drop the school-leaving age >>> Michael Howard v The Gypsies >>> Countering Fundamentalism >>> Living Wills >>> Against Unreasonable Inequality >>> Ralph Erskine The Great >>> Darwinian " strangers" >>> "Corporate Manslaughter" fallacy >>> Labour's philosophical vacuum >>> Forget Iraq? No fear! >>> I will vote Labour, but... >>> Abolish Wrongful Dismissal >>> Adjustment Pay for every worker >>>
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Public Primacy
The fine-tuning of the sectors, and their constitutional inter-relationship, is a proper subject for socialist inquiry and debate, both nationally and internationally.
April Showers I confess I was a little disappointed with the hit-count last month, which just crept up to 1310. That compares with 1103 for April 2004, a rise of just 18% - not good enough! Editor Web Mining As web-logging proliferates, a new form of modern history becomes possible. I can now give you an insight into what was "in the news" for the matching week, one two, and three years ago. This is how the world looked to me, in at the end of April -
Blair's too
Now it can be told! Geoff Mulgan, now Director of the new Young Foundation, inheritor of the Michael Young mantle, and former Head of the Downing Street think-tank, declares that New Labour has not been radical enough. Writing in Prospect, he claims that Labour's "radical reformer" has yet to surface.
050509
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Week 19 Monday
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I am content with the campaign, and the
Election result. Blair
can be left in no doubt about the moral judgment that the electorate has
made of him over Iraq. He looks a broken man, broken from within
by his own suppressed doubts. His protestations that "I really
believed it, I really did.." do not ring true. The Election
has hastened his departure, although if he stays for long, Brown's
chances will inevitably fade. 
My full name is John Roger
Warren Evans. That is because I was christened by my great uncle
John, my father's paternal Uncle, Rev John Ceredig Evans,
who was a Presbyterian Missionary in the hills of North India.
Originally a sailor from New Quay in West Wales (now Ceredigion), he had quit the sea
for the pulpit, and settled in North India. 
He was on "home" leave from Nepal at the
time of my arrival in this world in December 1935. As the only
man of the cloth which the family had ever produced, he was
quickly pressed into service for my christening, in Tabernacle, the
Calvinistic Methodist Chapel, in Whitchurch, Cardiff.
And read my Big Theory itself, at 
This is to put down a marker with you, for
future debate, for there is no time today.
I acknowledge that the new Labour Government will continue to
explore the provision of public services "by contract", both with private
companies and charities. Indeed, I applaud that, for socialists
have no interest in engaging State administration in sectors where it is
unnecessary - I am with Tony Blair, on that point. I dissociate
myself from the blanket rejection of PFI which occasionally surfaces, on
the old Left.
But where is
the "right line" to be drawn?
That is the question, and it is an important one. It may be a matter of sector (for
instance, I consider the out-sourcing of prison construction and
management to the private sector is wrong, and should be reversed).
On the other hand, I am perfectly content with the outsourcing of leisure
centres, and some NHS specialist treatment centres, given appropriate
contract terms (and I recognise, as a lawyer, that those contracts are
not easy to draft...). And it may be a matter of method: I do not approve of 100% bus-service
deregulation, but I do approve
of "London regulation", where key control powers are retained by the
State, yet the buses are privately owned and operated.
That
has been my own theme for some little time, starting in January 1997
(i.e. before Labour's first win) with 