|
|
Back to Home Page
|
|
Renewing participatory democracy Multiple Differential Uncertainty
|
050613
Make sure you have not missed the previous edition Check it out And the one before that? Other recent topics highlighted here
Week 24 Thursday 
I have left the Labour Party. After 42 years of loyal membership, through thick and thin, I have resigned. I joined in June 1963, while studying German administrative law in Dusseldorf. And today, 15 June 2005, I resigned, because of Labour's appalling record on human and civil rights. I am immersed, every day, in the wrongs committed in my name, by "my" Home Office.
Asylum Justice These two words account for these static pages, unchanged for fourteen days - until now. I have been overwhelmed by a tsunami of asylum work, culminating in the first meeting for local volunteers last Friday 10/June, in preparation for growing the organisation, when all necessary official consents are to hand.
Yet most of the charitable sector is also trapped by the Government's constraints, because they have become dependent upon Government funding for their salaried legal staff, via the Legal Services Commission. Hence the crying need for a genuine volunteer service, with volunteers willing to give their time and money to by-pass the Government's vicious restrictions, in the pursuit of elementary justice.
... Drop me a line Wotta lorra fuss!
I say "so-called", because this document, properly understood, was never a full "Constitution" at all - it's just a bit of diplomatic tinkering. It was dressed up as high politics, to assuage the vaunting vanity of Valery Giscard d-Estaing. And the spinners had their come-uppance.
As the "Constitution" contained little of substance that was new, apart from the new 25-nation voting system, Brussels will soon be able to work its way around this French defeat. Some kind of working protocol will be agreed to deal with the voting system, and measures to strengthen the European Parliament will be put on hold, as will the five-year Presidency. No big deal. There were also improvements in the arrangements for EU States to cooperate in civil emergencies, and in taking military action outside EU borders - those will have to wait too, as will the supercharged Minister for Foreign Affairs. But little will change, of substance. ... Drop me a line Creaking Census
|
Magnificent May May is a good month for weblogging. The highest-ever monthly hit-count for this website was in May 2004, with 1580 hits. This year, I suspect some of you got bored with with the more static screen, as my asylum consultancy work took over the month. The counter reached 1475, but stopped short of last year's record... rwe
My uncle, in the Assam Cabinet >>> Raspberry for Raffarin >>> Electoral reform My conversion >>> New principle Public Primacy >>> Blair's too old-fashioned >>> The Power of Private Property >>> 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
Keep the books... The campaign of
LIBRI, the public libraries charity, is clearly hitting home.
Web Mining New selection, this week! 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 -
050613
Make sure you have not missed
Week 24 Thursday
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Created by GMID Design & Communication COPYRIGHT
NOTICE |
The so-called EU "Constitution" got its due raspberry from the French
electorate, which is in 
Giscard
is the silly old man who first borrowed a tin-pot title from his wife
(the Lordship of D-Estaing, one of the thousands of titles for sale in
France, for fools to buy) and then proceeded to buy the crumbling
castle in the village of D'Estaing - just to complete the image.
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.
And read my Big Theory itself, at 
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