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Renewing participatory democracy Multiple Differential Uncertainty
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050516
Make sure you have not missed the previous edition Check it out And the one before that? Other recent topics highlighted here
Week 20 Sunday Parliament 
It is real privilege to speak from the plinth of Nelson's Column. I spoke there, with Barbara Castle and Jack Jones, when I was organising the Pensioners Marches of the mid-Nineties. It has taken ten years to get the subject of Pensions Reform to the top of the political agenda. Drugs Reform may take as longer, perhaps longer.
Creaking Census
Asylum Justice Things are moving fast, at my new charity, Asylum Justice. We have expanded the Swansea Saturday "surgery" to a full 10.00/5.00 day, and we are planning a full surgery-day in Cardiff on Fridays. I am receiving offers of volunteer support for the Cardiff centre, which will probably have to serve Newport as well. It is not yet clear what use the Home Office will continue to make of South Wales dispersal facilities, and that is making the task of innovation more difficult. If you can help, either in South Wales or in your own home town or city - then please - please... Keep the books... The campaign of
LIBRI, the public libraries charity, is clearly hitting home.
Kindred Spirits
I have just received a plea for funds from Refugee Action, and I shall certainly contribute - check out their website. They are providing a wide support service for refugees, although not operating in South Wales. My hunch is that my new charity Asylum Justice will have several points of overlap with them. I will be seeking to make common cause. Damascus Road
But the 2005 Result has convinced me that our voting system no longer delivers legitimacy to our Government - and that is deeply disturbing. Low turnout and multi-party participation is eroding the very legitimacy of government upon which civic order depends. I am not particularly concerned with "fairness" in a traditional playground sense: in the past, a logically unfair system has worked pretty well.
Amnesty! 
This week'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. .... drop me a line
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.
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Burmese welcome 
One of David Blunkett's unsung victories, as Home Secretary, was his cooperation with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, to accept an experimental annual quota of 500 refugees. Not "asylum-seekers", but those whose refugee status had already been established by the United Nations (UNHCR). This points the right way forward, for the international administration of refugee issues, and Charles Clarke should put all his weight behind it. This week, the first 51 "UN" refugees arrived from Burma to settle in Sheffield, David Blunkett's home city. To the eternal shame of the British, only two local authorities (Sheffield and Bolton) have so far had the political courage to welcome these oppressed refugees into their midst..
Capitalism The maverick features of "capitalism" were on show again this week, for all to see. For it simply means "plutocracy" - that is, "dominance by rich men..." 
Malcolm Glazer, in taking over Manchester United, was content to treat this great members' club as a mere item of private property, an organisation which had put itself into play in the capitalist game, by floating on the Stock Exchange. That single move made it the target of every merchant venturer, maverick, marauder. Glazer has played his capitalist cards right, by placating other capitalists - and ensuring that those employed by, and those those supporting, the Club counted for nothing. That's capitalism, Folks. Money talks. Private property rights talk. And while I reject many of the anti-capitalist proposals of the Old TU Left, my heart is with them - I share many of their value judgments about this seedy dominance by private property. But it is so powerful that it will require consummate political skills for its defeat... 
Lord Clive Hollick was the other marauder, condemned this week by 76% of his shareholders for having milked his own company United Business Media of £250,000 as a personal " golden goodbye" bonus. But the vote of the shareholders will count for nothing, because the artificial person (i.e. the abdroid, the "company") of which he was Chief Executive and Managing Director had already done "its" deal with him.
Bollocks, Clive. Deserve it? As the Financial Times said last week, you were only doing your job, for which you were already paid many hundreds of £'000 a year. It's sheer, unmitigated, greed, Clive, and you know it...
STOP PRESS! 17/5 Clive Hollick's sense of decency got the better of him in the end: he has agreed to give up his bonus after all - read the full story.
Blair's too old-fashioned >>> Wrong man for Pope >>> Corporate Kleptocracy >>> Drop the school-leaving age >>> Countering Fundamentalism >>> Against Unreasonable Inequality >>> "Corporate Manslaughter" fallacy >>> Abolish Wrongful Dismissal >>> Adjustment Pay for every worker >>>
.... drop me a line
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 -
050516
Make sure you have not missed
Week 20 Sunday
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NOTICE |
Work
has already started on the 2011 Census. But the 10-year Census formula, invented in
1801, no longer
fits our needs. Like the French, we should switch to taking a 10%
sample Census every year. The French also started in 1801, with a Census
every ten years, but they have now abandoned that. The modern welfare state requires much more sophisticated
population data that the minimal wartime State of 1801, and our figures
need regular, authoritative, updating.
I
surprised myself, last week. At our local Labour Branch meeting in
Mumbles, when we were picking over the Election results, I announced my
conversion to electoral reform.
I
have always been a traditional first-past-the-poster, wedded to the
single-member Constituency. I have refused to have any truck with
the PR people. And I still distrust the term "proportional
representation", because I think it misses the point.
Clive Hollick is a nice guy, and a Labour
peer: I've met him several times, through the Labour Party and the Labour
Finance & Industry Group. But on this occasion, as a senior manager
exploiting the corporate system, he has simply lost his way, his sense of
principle. He says he will take the money - "I would not
have accepted the bonus if I thought I did not deserve it." 
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.
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