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Renewing participatory democracy Multiple Differential Uncertainty
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050711
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Week 28 Wednesday Our back yard 
I have not shifted from my initial hunch. Which was that this was the work of an ad hoc local UK group, determined to make their personal mark on history, and strike a blow against "the West". I believe that bombers are young men from our own back yard. They are able to draw on sophisticated explosives, through "The Network" (which is all Al-Quaida means, in Arabic, I understand).
I am sad to say that this sent a veritable shiver down my liberal Quaker spine, however "sensible" it sounds. Indeed, it was precisely the calm, unruffled, certainty with which these views were uttered that unsettled me. For I am unaccustomed to 100% certainty. I, for my part, am on the lookout all the time for a more perceptive truth, asking questions all the time - for me, there can be no religious or philosophical finality, and each is entitled to make his own search.
Every religious faith carries the potential for fanaticism, but some seem more prone to fanaticism that others. And when last week I sat listening (paradoxically in the Quaker Meeting House at Swansea), absorbing the total, settled confidence of the senior London Imam who delivered the message, it sent a shiver down my spine. Such conviction makes me feel uncomfortable, precisely because of its chilling certainty. It is easy to see how such shining personal confidence, such overwhelming and convincing faith in the jurisdiction of the Almighty, could inspire young, frustrated, disregarded and resentful young men to "great" deeds of daring and personal sacrifice. Including indiscriminate slaughter.  Me?
I prefer self-doubt - the ever-questioning journey
through life - in the words of the Quaker Advice - "I beg you to
consider the possibility that you may be wrong"... The best
hope for a peaceful world lies in the emergence of a more tolerant,
liberal Islam, which can be truly at ease with religious diversity, and atheism, without any
assertion of "final" systemic superiority.
Iraq Occupation
Instinctively, I know this to be true. Sami Ramadani is a political refugee from Saddam's Iraq, now lecturing in London. And you should read this piece. He argues that we are now being "sold" the idea that a continuing US presence is essential to the maintenance of order in Iraq. Just as we were "sold" the myth of WMD. And it is indeed a myth, he argues. The opposite is true. Only Coalition withdrawal will create the opportunity for civil order and the peaceful resolution of these conflicts.
Kenneth Harris and us
For me, the link was a debating one - through a common love of debating, evidently also a Welsh trait. We both "did" the American University debating tour in our respective times, organised by the English Speaking Union. He represented Oxford in 1947, I represented Cambridge in 1959. After America, I met him in the context of the Observer debating "Mace" competition. I think I was a guest Judge, one year.
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,at the end of April -
Nobody has The ID Card debate is generating valuable commentary, at least in TheGuardian. One of the most disarming arguments ("If you've nothing to hide, why object?") is tackled head-on in a perceptive "leader" by Muriel Gray. We all have things to hide. And our personal lives, and our personal freedoms, are the richer for the right to do so. Those freedoms will be undoubtedly whittled away by the ID Card system. "Police State" is an emotive term, which does nothing to further the debate. But Labour is certainly constructing the threatening infrastructure of a surveillance society, with the new NHS database offering an even more sinister backdrop to the venture. And congratulations to Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, for his strong stand against it.
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What do interest rates mean? >>> Labour Party my resignation >>> My uncle, in the Assam Cabinet >>> Electoral reform My conversion >>> New principle Public Primacy >>> The Power of Private Property >>> Corporate Kleptocracy >>> Drop the school-leaving age >>> Countering Fundamentalism >>> Against Unreasonable Inequality >>> Abolish Wrongful Dismissal >>> Adjustment Pay for every worker >>>
Turning the Tables 
I gotta theory! With economic indicators weakening, the analysts study investment rates and intentions, international capital movements, industrial productivity, return on capital employed. And occasionally, they take a sideways glance at "High Street spending", just to see how we (as shoppers) are reacting. They have got it wrong. It's the other way 'round. Everything is driven by the High Street. Over 70% of global demand is consumer demand, with the remainder accounted for by government spending. My own model is of an economy principally driven by "consumer" demand, with Government expenditure a supplementary and compensating factor. "Consumer" is a much-maligned word, with overtones of excess, conspicuous and pointless expenditure. But that is misplaced: it relates to everything we choose to do with our money - walk the hills, recycle our waste, play hockey, build a home extension, tend the garden, go to the theatre, drink cheap wine, take "drugs", learn the piano, collect bottle-tops, visit prostitutes, play Bingo - anything and everything. And our propensity to consume lies at the heart of every modern economy. It is of course limited by the amount of money we each have available to spend, or how much we can borrow - but that is a secondary factor. What matters is whether or not we are minded to consume, rather than save. And that propensity is determined, differently from country to country, by a thousand different factors - my full theory is spelt out in a 1992 essay of mine.
The result would be a running commentary on public (and therefore "consumer") confidence. It would not be unlike the audience-reaction measures used by political advisers to monitor the effect of each phrase, each gesture in a political speech. Central transmitters would pick up this avalanche of feel-good and feel-bad factors, and assess the balance between the two. If the balance were persistently negative, the economy would be heading for deterioration - and vice-versa.
Basic I have been devising ways in which we could convey our practical support for Africans remaining in this country, following unsuccessful asylum-proceedings. Last week, I suggested a special "Working Residency" which would benefit for them and UK society.
Highland
clearances This is "code-name" I have given to my current campaign to clear my attic. I am turning the house upside down. I have had to clear out the detritus of
the last ten years, to make room for my current obsessions.
Out have gone the records of
my Directorships of Aquaterra (the pioneering charitable leisure
trust, in Islington and Bath), and of Pondskater Limited, the
innovative canal-transport company which will yet transform inland
waterborne transport in the UK.
Prohibition of Drugs I confess I did not expect, from John Birt's Downing Street pen, quite the damning condemnation of "Drugs Prohibition" as was leaked this week, from the ever-leaky Cabinet Office. This outdated, illiberal 1920s policy is proving destructive, expensive, and an entirely predictable failure. In their hearts, Ministers must surely know that - and that a move to legalisation should be made before the end of this Parliament. Don't they? Must all these expensive "Wars on (Whatever)" continue to ruin our societies, merely to justify the public expenditure needed to prop up the flagging legitimacy of our political salariat?
050711
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It is pointless to seek for a motive, in
the sense of a
"strategic motive" - "What do they seek to achieve"? That is beside
the point. They are protesting, not governing the
country. This is, I believe, the work of a UK-based group of
young men, for whom Islam probably provides a social bond, as for Young
Conservatives, or Young Methodists. They are desperate to find some way of
doing something significant to
register their protest against the drift of world events, to assert their
values, to challenge the dominance of a seemingly "Godless" West, with its
seemingly vacuous and destructive philosophies. And as Islam, with
its fundamentalist streak, seems likely to be eclipsed, within fifty years, by the popularity of
Western individualism, combining with the humanist pragmatism of China, this problem is likely to get
worse before it gets better. Fundamentalism will go out of fashion.
But
I was unsettled by their emphasis on
the finality of Islamic truth.
Now that the full truth had been
revealed, in the Koran, following the revelations of Judaism and
Christianity, there was "no need to look any further".
For Islam, there was no "Second Coming" still awaited, so we could all
settle down and follow the Koran.
Both Elizabeth and I had "connections" with the late Kenneth Harris,
who died this week, aged 88. For Elizabeth, the connection was Welsh
aristocracy of birth: she was born in the same tiny enclave of
Aberaman as he was, on the
road from Cardiff to Aberdare, near Aberdare. In our long
single-highway valleys, every distinctive stretch of of the road claims
separate village identity, and Aberaman
is no exception. 
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
And read my Big Theory itself, at 
But in the clearing process, I came
across an intriguing "Advice"
which it seems that I published, in the very first week of the New
Labour Government, in June 1997. I had forgotten all about it.
I warned New Labour Ministers not to get too close to "business", and the corporate
sector -