|
|
|
|
Renewing participatory democracy Multiple Differential Uncertainty
|
Week 19 Old Favourites  They
were there again, last Friday evening, the ageing
Great Western Paddington Band, filling the great arches of
the Station with a joyful sound. They caught my sentimental attention
last autumn, remember? The big corporations of the past have spawned
personal allegiances, friendships and institutions that have proved very tenacious,
long after the occasion has passed. Many of them have lived on, pearls subsisting long after the oyster has
been consigned to corporate history.
Finding light relief Life seems to be getting unremittingly serious. Does that worry you too? I reckon that Monday's Bank Holiday was good for the economy - with fine Bank Holiday sunshine, the feel-good factor was definitely re-emerging. But it will take much more than that to invigorate the whole economy. I have derived light relief from the new postage stamps - I wonder who decides... 
... which illustration is assigned to which value? This month, the theme is British Heroes... I can imagine great Committee debates in the Royal Mail Boardroom - the Everest Team won the coveted first-class slot, and Amy Johnson got to second-class.. 
Shackleton ruggedly adorns the 42p... 
Francis Chichester (I thought, rather generously) makes it on to the 47p - was there a Chichester lobby, in the Boardroom? 
And what was the significance of choosing, to adorn the special Europe stamp, one Freya Stark, of whom I have never heard! 
Does that cheer you up? The political scene does seem unremittingly gloomy - we are faced with a bullying, unprincipled and heavily-armed American Government, suborned by private business interests, supported by an ill-informed and fundamentalist "Christian" electorate.  The prospects for the emergence of a peaceful world
order seem bleak without a change of direction from the United States. The
NZ Prime Minister Helen Clark says everything week that I want to
say, about the disintegration of international order.
If correct then
Salariat Rules OK  This faces exemplifies a disruptive trend in our political life.
Laura Jones, 24, having studied Politics at Plymouth University and being
unemployed, was filling-in as a part-time waitress at an Usk hotel - when
she was elected as a Welsh Assembly Member. Her salary immediately
rose to £42,000 pa. The WelshTories, so desperate for candidates, had
put her on their "Party" (= wannabee salariat)
Regional List for South East Wales. The quirky logic of proportional
representation did the rest.
Cock-ups continue My suspicion is that the quality of the UK Government administrative machine, once legendary, is in serious decline. Civil Service morale is reported to be low. The Clarke-Milliband-Twigg Missing School Grants fiasco is only the latest in a long line of Civil Service cock-ups. What about the "missing population" fiasco, depriving city authorities are much-needed support? Then there was the Learning Account fiasco, an awful story of fraud and incompetence. Do you remember the incredible Passport Office fiasco? The Treasury sale of assets to tax-evading offshore companies was another. The implementation of AS-level examination changes, and the Exam Results fiasco attracted real opprobrium. Everywhere, the much-vaunted administrative skills of the "Home Civil Service" have been found wanting.
" Anti-racism" is not enoughWe are right to be concerned with last week's electoral success of the British National Party, with the popular resentment of refugees, and with the tendency of politicians to play the race card. But these nasty trends will not be countered by the barren language of "anti-racism", or by tired negativity of the old IS Left.
Try BBC News, the public service website for the best and quickest access to the news, as well as a huge political data resource, the BBC is unbeatableSpecial Footnote I love the online newspapers, which are my access to the world - share them with me - click through to their Homepages from here - back to top 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)
Week 19
|
|
Blair, revolutionary? Tony Blair commonly uses radical language, without true radical intent. In early 1997, Tribune published an article of mine, Blair is too old-fashioned for me. But there are certainly revolutionary changes now afoot, in the radical restructuring of "local government" - in the broadest sense of that term. The Blair strategy is clearly to weaken and by-pass conventional local
councils at every opportunity. The National
Health Service is being structurally reformed, but
without involving local councils,
either in England or in Wales.
Local education authorities are also being
undermined, blamed for the current school funding fiasco. Local spending
options overall are grievously restricted. It is to be precondition of
the introduction of regional government in England that the existing Council
structure should be drastically slimmed down. This process will create a power vacuum which the
new public-interest
companies will occupy. In Blair's new generation of
"democratic" public-interest and
community-interest corporations, I can discern the outlines of a new UK
state.
NB Some of my friends are puzzled by my seeming conversion to the Blairite Cause. Let me explain myself more fully.
public companies, The Government's "modernisation" of the welfare state is still seen in terms of "privatisation". The spectre of Margaret Thatcher looms, and that awful corrosive doubt about her motives. That is wrong. While there are indeed proper opportunities for conventional privatisation, the primary drive should be the shift to more flexible, more responsive, more local forms of dedicated public company.
T he InternationalOptimism Agenda Globalisation has one consequence which no UK political party has yet grasped. It is that we must now cast all our manifestos, both on the Right and on the Left, in terms which make sense globally. “Politics in one country” is no longer enough - as the EU powerfully demonstrates. I have made my own attempt to draft such an international political agenda, which would bring hope to all the peoples of the world (do not accuse me of timidity…) Subjects, not Citizens 
Populist media coverage, and the
destructive xenophobia of the UK Home Office, suggest that "too many
asylum-seekers" are the cause of the country's problems. But the truth
is that our laws of citizenship and nationality are generally in serious disarray, as
every Passport testifies...
Spinning the Economy
I offer you this excellent cartoon of Alan Greenspan and George Bush (from Nicola in The Guardian), as a piece of serious economic analysis. 
The modern economy is a self-sustaining vortex of busy-ness, the complex interaction of trillions of individual deeds each day. Thoughts are not enough - they must be converted into deeds. And the best that anyone can do, by way of the "management" of any economy, is to generate that popular confidence in the future which carries everyone forward - and induces each person to live positively and actively, each and every day. Governments can merely try to keep the plates spinning (often without knowing how they started spinning in the first place...). The real enemy of economic growth is simply pessimism, passivity, lack of confidence in the future. It is far more damaging than SARS, and far more difficult to counter.
Do you know who The English Courts must be given the opportunity to rule upon the lawfulness of the Iraqi War. But legal procedures will stand in the way of proceedings unless there can be found a specific cause of action within the jurisdiction of the UK. At the end of March, three British soldiers were sent home, ostensibly for refusing to obey orders which (they contended) involved the killing of innocent civilians.
One of those soldiers would make the ideal
"plaintiff", for a human rights action.
Do you know who they are? Do you know a man who does? They were all three from 16 Air Assault Brigade, stationed in southern Iraq to defend the oilfields [ see The Guardian ] community identity "Government" is about much more than the provision of services. And that is true at all levels - national, provincial, regional, communal. I am distressed at Westminster "spin" which nails local councils to the unpopular cross of service provision. Within local communities, the local council (parish, town or community council) can be the focus for local identity and allegiance, bringing form to otherwise unstructured communities, generating new perceptions. My own Mumbles Community Council is currently working hard to create a new Whitsun Community Festival - Navy Days, to mark our many links with the maritime world. Check out our local community website.
Unsettling intellect
It's all uncannily close to the theme of my own magnum opus thesis - Multiple Differential Uncertainty (which nobody ever reads...) Try BBC News, the public service website
Other recent topics
Diary 2002, 2003 Now up to date! I have re-structured my Diary to give you a day-to-day
means of looking back, all the way back to January 2002 |
|||||||
|
Created by GMID Design & Communication COPYRIGHT NOTICE |
New
It was a serious mistake, by the Labour
Party hierarchy, to move against George
Galloway. I bring you the full text of a penetrating
legal opinion by Rabinder Singh QC, Head of Matrix Chambers (Cherie
Blair's own chambers) spelling out the illegality of Blair's decision to
join America in attacking Iraq. Nothing has changed since
mid-March, when this Opinion was written. We
must find a way of bringing this issue before the UK
Courts. Blair's recent public soul-bearing and
sickening religiosity cannot stand against this stern judgment,
I am sure
you will want to
keep in touch with what Steve Bell is drawing, in
Sir
Martin Rees is the eminent Welshman who is the current Astronomer Royal, and he has
just published his new Book
of Revelations, predicting that mankind has only a 50/50 chance of surviving
this century. Now that will do nothing whatsoever to