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Renewing participatory democracy Multiple Differential Uncertainty
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050926
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Week 39 Monday Charles 
Forget Vlad. Forget the impaling. There are now more sophisticated ways of inducing fear and anxiety in the minds of those seeking the haven and security of the UK. The administrative methods of the Home Office, in dealing with asylum-seekers, are not only illiberal (a badge now seemingly worn with pride, by Blairite Ministers) but are also cruel and inefficient. Paradoxically, if the system were fairer, and less intimidatory, it would also be more efficient, and quicker. The faultlines lie at both ends of the system. From the outset, there are systemic flaws in the decison-making and the injustice of the related Legal Aid rules. During the process, there is aribtrary injustice in the way in which asylum benefits are withdrawn. And finally, there are great civil-rights abuses committed in the very act of "removing" illegal immigrants from the UK. I have proposals for improvement to make, in all three phases of the Home Office process. My system would be quicker, more transparent, and would be regarded by asylum-seekers as fairer than the present system.
Religious Fallacy 
A new fallacy stalks our Press. It is that in "understanding the causes of terrorism", there is a special role for Christian church-leaders in working with their Muslim counterparts. Religion, so the reasoning goes, should talk unto religion. Last Sunday I attended, in Swansea's Guildhall, a civic service organised by the Swansea Interfaith Forum, which allied church and synagogue, chapel and mosque, Hinduism and Buddhism. It was a bland, insignificant event - even for the hundreds who came. For the truth is that the underlying problem is political, not religious. I reject the idea that "the problem" lies with religious extremism itself, whether Islamic, Christian or Jewish. The political issue lies rather with the creation of a political and social order which can accommodate the most diverse combination of individual views, beliefs, obsessions, conspiracies. Can we create un cadre neutre (to extend le pouvoir neutre model of Montesquieu) which can neutralise the destructiveness of all extremism, wherever it comes from? That is the question.
New Orleans 
New Orleans has spawned great agonies, for everyone, over the proper scope of the public realm. The hurricane has erupted into great political debate, about socialism, about inequality, about an impoverished public realm. In the States, it has generated real personal anguish for many, not least Michael Moore. But those agonies mesh with the European debate about the scope of "Rhineland" model of the Welfare State and the lighter Anglo-Social model. Also with the anxious searching of Liu Kaiyang, the young Chinese Communist diplomat whom I met last month at the Chinese Embassy in London. 
And in the UK, we seem smug about the relative "success" of our own model, carved out by Thatcher and Blair. Now: I do not wholly "disapprove" of that model: I think that it much to commend it, and Gordon Brown has much to be proud of. But it suffers two deep-running faultlines, which should wipe any smiles on British faces. First: Our model fails to address two central fears of everyday life - (1) Old age - the awful insecurity of old age, and worries about old age - the state pensions promise is still not determined, and it is the sheet-anchor of everyone's sense of personal security. (2) Unemployment - our State also fails to address the other great fear of everyone's lives, namely unemployment - for millions of people in the UK, unemployment means poverty, and new thinking is needed to address these anxieties. Secondly: we are steadily losing our sense of fair play, of equality before the law, of the primacy of civil liberties and their permeation of the entire quality of life. We are becoming a less tolerant, more authoritarian society. That process is being fuelled by the paranoia of professional politicians, who fear the loss of personal power above all else. They are prepared to sacrifice our liberties for the preservation of their power. The War on Terrorism and the War on Drugs seem to justify draconic measures which will surely change our liberal society beyond recognition. The jury system is threatened. The independence of the judiciary is threatened. Freedom of speech is threatened, with or without the awful crime of "glorifying" terrorism. Even our adherence to the European Convention of Human Rights is being questioned. Police forces are expanding in size, and their powers of intervention being increased.
Tory Leadership
Michael Howard is right to argue that Tory MPs, should choose their own Parliamentary leader. But he is wrong to deprive the Party grassroots of the power that they have so recently acquired, without offering them a genuine power-sharing deal. This is precisely the problem which was addressed by the reform proposals made by Peter Fitzgerald and myself, for the Labour Party. In both Parties, the political salariat has sucked all the power from the rank-and-file "Party in the Country", leaving Party members bereft - bereft of influence, of function, of political relevance. MPs need constituency parties to ensure their personal professional survival (i.e. electoral success) but not otherwise. And in both Parties, rank-and-file members are deeply distressed and isolated. Michael Howard has run foul of that distress. Without power-sharing, his reform proposals will fail. But in all parties, the issue remains to be addressed, and will not go away. The Party-in-the-Country must be given its own worthwhile share of Party power, with its own Chairman and Executive. The politicians should be allowed to manage their own "parliamentary Branch". Only the Welsh Nationalists, Plaid Cymru, have hit upon the right solution. For Labour, Peter Fitzgerald and I even drafted all the necessary amendments to the Labour Party Constitution, to achieve that power-sharing - for aficionados, they are set out here.
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*Recent
topics
Corporate Theft by Proxy >>> 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 >>> Drop the school-leaving age >>> Countering Fundamentalism >>> Against Unreasonable Inequality >>> Abolish Wrongful Dismissal >>> Adjustment Pay for every worker >>>
The Guardian Two I would not ordinarily link Hattersley with Younge. The latter is far more creative, and perceptive, the former rarely innovative. But on a single page, this week, they combined to give two messages with which truly resonate with mine. 
Gary Younge warned against too much sentimental concern with "integration" in racial matters: the more important need, he argued, was fundamental equality - decent pay and living conditions for all, regardless of colour or creed. That was the best "integrating" factor, he argued. It is a powerful socialist piece, and I commend it to you. 
Roy Hattersley embraced the unpopular cause of legalising "secondary industrial action", or sympathy strikes. I am sure that workers should be entitled to make the sacrifices which a sympathy strike entails - in support of fellow workers. Employers ordinarily stick together, when faced with rebellious workers, and their "sympathetic action" is never considered unacceptable. And what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Our repressive TU laws have trespassed too far upon individual freedom of opinion and association - we should row back from this Thatcherite illiberalism. Sustained
Flat Tax 
This debate has blossomed, and is now said to be the "coming idea" of the New Right. Angela Merkel is a convert, in Germany, and the idea has "miraculously" been adopted by several emerging Eastern European market economies. So the story runs... How short are political memories! Which was the first country to pioneer a "flat" rate of income tax, in the 1920s? You've guessed it: the Soviet Union. There was a standard-rate of 10% Income Tax, accompanied by a flat rate of 10% for compulsory savings.
In our modern Western States, in which
unacceptable disparities of wealth continue to disfigure our societies, and
Turkey 
I am dismayed at the strength of the anti-Turkish lobby. It seems that both Germany and France (perhaps joined by Italy) will gang up to oppose the accession of Turkey to the European Union.
If we seek to define Europe (or any of its component States) in "monocultural" terms, that will be a grave setback to the emergence of a truly successful social and political order. The future lies with creative diversity, secured by political and constitutional conventions. If Turkey otherwise qualifies, the doors of "Christendom" must not be closed against her.
Web Mining With web-logging, 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 the middle of August in - 
050926
Make sure you have not missed
Week 39 Monday
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The challenge is to forge a constitutional order in
which every person is respected and valued without regard
for religion, or ethnicity, or gender. All extremism tests to the
limit our commitment to a generous, liberal, respectful - and
free - civic order. And at the
moment, we are failing to meet that challenge...
But
our salaried leaders, ever zealous to protect their personal power-base,
will never accept it.
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 
Personal
E-contacts have brought to my desk a remarkable open letter from Michael
Moore to the US Republican party, on Bush and New Orleans. If you have
not read it, via E-networks,
