|
|
Back to Home Page
|
|
Renewing participatory democracy Multiple Differential Uncertainty
|
050725
Make sure you have not missed the previous edition Check it out And the one before that? Other recent topics highlighted here
Week 30 Monday Returning
This is the adverse side-effect of a law which was in itself sensible. In the late 1990s, there developed a shady market in immigration advice, with many asylum-seekers exploited by unqualified "legal" advisers, charging exploitative fees. The Government stepped in to create a new paralegal profession, that of Immigration Adviser, supervised by a new regulator, the Immigration Services Commissioner. Anyone who was not a practising Barrister or Solicitor had to get a new qualification, if wanting to operate legally. The problem is that the new law strikes at everyone, whether charging fees or not.
Two Women Two of my favourite women are delighted this week. Delighted at the perception, courage and eloquence of Lord Justice Brooke, who gave the Government short shrift when he overruled its miserable, authoritarian teenage "Exclusion Zones". They are both delighted that this authoritarian gimmick has been de-railed, by a liberally-minded Judge.
|
A very Welsh Connection >>> "Moodmeter" measures confidence >>> 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 >>>
Theft by Proxy
It was the incredible salary inflation which occurred, throughout the BBC, when ITV was launched. BBC salaries trebled - at a stroke. As the Directors and senior managers of ITV began to pay themselves telephone-number salaries - BBC salaries "had to follow suit". It is now commonplace to keep a rolling comparison of top public and private sector salaries, dragging public service salaries up to similar astronomical levels. Yet corporate Board remuneration-fixing is nothing less than theft, with monopolistic managers exploiting both shareholders and the "the workers": see Corporate Kleptocracy. Company law, nationally and internationally, permits Directors to steal systematically from their own companies - without legal challenge. And their criminality has the effect of inflating public sector salaries, including the remuneration of MPs.
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 - Dear Mr. Evans... 
Tony Blair has at last replied to my resignation letter. Well, I say "replied" - rather, acknowledged. And I say "Tony Blair" as an abstraction. Judge for yourself ...
050725
Make sure you have not missed
Week 30 Monday
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Created by GMID Design & Communication COPYRIGHT
NOTICE |
I have acquired a new profession,
at the age of 69. As of 12 July 2005, I became an
Immigration Adviser Level 3,
examined and then
registered by the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner. I
had to complete this process, in order to avoid prosecution for the
criminal offence of assisting asylum-seekers. 
Yep!
It is a criminal offence for anyone to assist an asylum-seeker with his
case, even as a friend, without charging any fee. Every other person in
society, who for whatever reason faces legal proceedings without a lawyer,
it is possible to enlist the held of a friend - commonly called a
Mackenzie Friend, or Litigation Friend, or Next Friend.
But not an asylum-seeker:
anyone who assists an asylum-seeker, without being properly qualified,
commits a criminal offence, punishable with imprisonment.
There
are three grades of Immigration Adviser, Levels 1,2,& 3: at Level 3, I am
now qualified to do everything which a practising Barrister or Solicitor
can do. Next week, I have five cases pro bono before
the Newport Tribunal, returning to the courtroom as an advocate after a
break of 36 years...
The first is my own daughter Katharine,
who has been a consistent and fearless campaigner against ASBOs, and the
ruthless demonisation of teenagers, led by a Government bereft of
constructive and humane thinking. Katharine is Policy Officer
at the Childrens Society, and deeply committed to teenage rights.
Successive Labour Home Secretaries - Straw, Blunkett, and Clarke have sunk
lower and lower in their search for nastier, more authoritarian, thuggish
methods with which to demonise our young people. Why do they do it?
Because it plays well on the streets, like flogging, and the death-penalty
and xenophobia.
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 
The scandal of BBC management bonuses
brings back memories. They are of 1961, a key year in my political
development - all because of TV, and BBC. 
The time is ripe for new company
legislation, to counter managerial wrongdoing
Have you
ever resigned from the Labour
Party? What happened?