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Roger Warren Evans
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You are in the company
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item0027E 578,579 578 30 December 2002 London Incapable City The Government would be right to oppose the drive to bring the Olympics to London. It is said that the Go-No/Go decision will be made by the Cabinet on 30 January, and the pros and cons are being actively canvassed. It would be foolish to put London's hat in the ring, that's what I say. But the reason is not lack of ambition, or any mean Treasury desire to save a few £-billion. The reason is that the ramshackle system of London Government could never manage the operation. For Labour failed to create, when the opportunity offered, a strong system of governance for London. Compared with the other great cities of the world, from New York to Paris, from Hamburg to Moscow, from Berlin to Lyon - the "government of London" is an ill-coordinated joke. The Greater London Act is an embarrassing apology for government - the London Authority has no tax-raising powers, no planning powers, no housing powers, no statutory regulatory powers - it is far less powerful than the Welsh Assembly.Labour's reasons may have "seemed good at the time" - the desire to avoid constitutional tensions, Blair's messianic believe in strong central government, the desire to avoid the emergence of a competing centre of power across the Thames, dislike of "Red Ken" - there must have been a myriad reasons. But it was still the wrong decision. It has left London without any unit-of-government capable of organising a modern Olympics. The only option would be the creation of some kind of Cabinet Committee, or another "Dome Supremo" - and that would both (a) be politically risky for Labour and (b) would expose to the world the UK's incompetence in the matter of city government. Paradoxically, Manchester City Council was far better placed to orchestrate the Commonwealth Games than London would be, for any future Olympics. So stick to your guns, Tony. Stay timid. Stay out of the kitchen. And start on the much more important task of strengthening city government throughout the UK.
What do you think? Drop me a line
579 30 December 2002 Global mountains to climb New boy Brendan Barber takes over as TUC General Secretary, as John Monks heads East. Confronted with corporate “management” in global disarray, trade union leaders need a new balance-of-power strategy. And tinkering will not do. The need is for a sea-change in the character of corporations themselves as legal entities – that is the principal 2003 bee in my campaigning bonnet - I shall be inviting Brendan Barber to sign the Newport Manifesto, and you can sign up too – see Tame the Corporations.For the legal “constitution” of the corporate sector is in almost unimaginable disarray. The world’s companies operate according to over 200 different systems of company law and taxation. Their interaction generates an impenetrable thicket of legislation, national statute and international convention. And it is in that thicket that the crooks, gun-runners, confidence-tricksters, drugs-dealers, money-launderers, tax evaders – as well as legitimate businesspeople - can so easily hide. But that complexity is not the principal problem. Far worse is the permissible power structure of each company – the unaccountability of management even where the law is properly applied. Because all the great scams of the corporate sector are perfectly legal: the crippling and overriding secrecy, the manipulation of shareholders, the abuse of Board power, the subornation of Governments, the disregard of employee and customer interests – these are all perfectly legal. When the Nestle management can make the sort of mistake they are now making in Ethiopia, and when the US Government can back the big drugs companies in their refusal to permit cheap unbranded AIDS drug-supplies to Africa, the writing should be clearly visible – on the wall. This is a corrupt system of law, in the final stages of disintegration, and threatening the power-base of its leaders. Politicians should be waking up to the scale of the scandal which afflicts our world. And to the scale of the reform needed to tackle the crisis.That crisis is still bubbling under. It has yet to break. The corporate lobbyists are desperate to contain popular revolt by making cosmetic concessions, and timid elected politicians - including our own hapless Patricia Hewitt, presumably with Blair support - seem willing to swallow their bait. But the Enron and Worldcom accounting scams, and the appalling Wall Street analyst deceptions, were mere peccadillos, compared with the deceit, obfuscation, tax evasion and systematic dishonesty that is endemic to the corporate sector.If you are one of the few who understands the scale of this conspiracy, please check and sign the Newport Manifesto at Tame the Corporations. Do it now! And let me know what you think. PS I will contact Brendan Barber myself.. .
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