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| You are in the company of Roger Warren Evans, Welsh socialist lawyer and company director, on a journey to work out a new socialist order capable of generating equality and freedom for the world. Nothing less will do. |
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Renewing participatory democracy Multiple Differential Uncertainty
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Annette Carson The Internet is wo-o-nderful. This week I heard from James Nelson (from Leongatha, Victoria, Australia) who represents the British Australian Pensioner Association. They are backing a UK legal action by Annette Carson, who is a UK Citizen now living in South Africa.Her UK state Old Age Pension was arbitrarily frozen, when she emigrated to South Africa, as it has been for 430,000 wronged British pensioners living abroad - the balloon goes up again this week. Received Saturday 29 March 2003 G'day Roger,
You write great pages, referring to Annette Carson. Not only are our
State Pensions frozen here in Australia but we have the triple whammy of
seeing our SERPs and Graduated Pension frozen also. Like Robert Maxwell's
Daily Mirror pension fund, we are short-changed - the Derrick Prance - MullalooWestern Australia 6027 War numbs our senses Those blurred TV images of Baghdad seem to dominate the vision, preoccupying the mind. Yet there are other huge issues to demand our attention, if seemingly sidelined for the moment.
Those of us with political pretensions must find the energy, and the thinking time, to address these other issues, while continuing to resist the new imperialism of the United States.
It’s my Party, I
can
The Labour Party is dwindling
numerically, down from its 440,000 peak at the time of the 1997 General
Election.
Welsh Rugby
For most of you, this will seem a petty concern. But relief is at hand for the Welsh national game. We put up a good performance on Saturday against Ireland, but the structural problems of the Welsh game run deep. Now, the divisive small-community structure of Welsh rugby is to be supplemented by five major teams - three in SEast Wales and two in SWest Wales. This will give each team a reasonable base, in terms of residential following -
The big challenge will now be to agree on team names. Apart from Cardiff and Llanelli, I suggest Gwent Valleys, Glamorgan, and Swansea Bay.. Mumbles Limelight
Try BBC News, the public service website Retail inequity
Congratulations! This time to Patricia Hewitt... It is reported that she is "not convinced" by the case for letting market forces rip, in the community pharmacy sector, in spite of the recent recommendations of the Office of Fair Trading. Open market operation would eleminate pharmacies from many poorer and dispersed communities.
New voices of Europe European politics are moving. The Brussels Commission has had the idea of polling the entire European population, with a common set of political questions - last November, about the role of America, and relations with Europe. Suddenly, there emerged a remarkably coherent picture of European public opinion - and the European majority sees the United States as a danger to world peace, rather than as a force for good - check it out in The Guardian.
Special Footnote I love the online newspapers, which are my access to the world - share them with me - click through to their Homepages from here -
Week 13
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Workers’ Rights, not Union Rights My prescription for the Labour Party, explored below, would shift its centre-of-gravity away, slightly but perceptibly, from its TU origins - as matters both of policy and procedure. This line disturbed one of my readers Matthew Jenkins, a 26-year-old young Fabian and Labour Party activist, working in Cardiff. He challenged me..
New Party
Try BBC News, the public service website Liberal Socialism means to me..
A deliberate move will needed, I say, to establish common ground between traditional socialist perceptions and the human rights agenda, informed by a deep respect for the sovereignty of the human spirit and a common perception of the primacy of social institutions. Earlier this year, I explored the fertile intellectual ground for such a confluence. Now is the time to think in more practical terms...
America
What the The Daily Telegraph carried a nerve-racking report, to give us all pause for thought...
 The
Guardian's Madeleine Bunting gave the most perceptive analysis so
far of Tony Blair's attention-seeking personality..
The Financial Times carried a very pessimistic analysis this week, by a leading City figure, of American financial capacity I am sure you will enjoy another peek at what Steven Bell is drawing, in The GuardianUS companies I have found a new ally in the cause of radical company law reform. None other than my namesake Warren Buffett, the arch guru of US investment, the Sage of Omaha. WB is the ultimate "active shareholder", and he wants American shareholders to intervene more often to prevent the abuse of power and position by fat-cat Company Directors: read Julia Finch in The Guardian. 
Without radical changes in company law, however, he is whistling in the wind. He should sign up to my Newport Manifesto -
Try BBC News, the public service website Other recent topics
And read my own Big Theory itself, at Diary 2002 Now up to date! I have re-structured my Diary to give you a day-to-day means of looking back, throughout the year
Follow my August 2002 Russian Tour Diary, now unfolding in splendid technicolor - capacity problems have so far limited the scale of how much I can E-publish, but there is still plenty to read - St Petersburg Novgorod Moscow Tallinn (2) |
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New
The systemic weaknesses of the European continental economies,
and Japan, remain to
be addressed.
Catherine
Zeta Jones' Oscar thrust my home village of Mumbles, where I was born and
where I live, well into the limelight The Mumbles Book is a
pioneering community website, where you can find out everything about local
community life...
The formation of a new political Party is
always greeted with scepticism, in the UK. Emerging sporadically on
both the Left and the Right, from Scargill to Goldsmith, they come and they
go. But the process is instructive to ol' Party hacks like me - because each
new Party must try to carve out its own distinctive "popular" position, to lay claim
to distinctive political territory. And the Manifesto of the new
Is a new focus thinkable, for the Labour
Party? My answer is YES.
Indeed, the Party's inner turmoil will have to be confronted, once the Iraq
War is over. Both principles and structures will have to be reviewed.
The 139 dissenting MPs represent a powerful voice, and are not to
be ignored.
America
is not strong enough, economically, to survive a war. The problem is
not the "Armed Forces Invoice", but the devastating effect of modern war upon
public confidence in