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Renewing participatory democracy Multiple Differential Uncertainty
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Week 22 Stop Press The future is on hold for a day or so - I have been totally immersed in the organisation of a three-day maritime festival - Navy Days - for my home-town of Mumbles, on Swansea Bay - it finished at 10.00 pm on Bank Holiday Monday, and I am now back onto this website.. RWE Glaxo, Schmackso Why are we so lily-livered? Why does the rare, amassed majority of the Glaxo shareholders not have the right to decide the remuneration of its Board and senior management? 'Twas a famous victory, but it did not deliver change. The shareholders' vote is not binding - it is "only advisory", because Patricia Hewitt refuses to embark on the more difficult task of changing the balance of company power. The errant Chief Executive Jean-Pierre Garnier already has a contractual right to his £22m Failure Pay - and the company must now obtain his consent to abandoning his contractual rights - so don't hold your breath! My campaign is for shareholders to be given the power of prior approval for all such matters. It is nonsense that the owners of the company should have to go cap-in-hand, forced to negotiate with an overmighty manager...
Rowan's
Yet what does "our" mean? Who are "we"? In this case, it means the Community Council of Mumbles, the elected "parish" council for my home-town - of which I am proud to be a Member, Councillor. We acted on behalf of our proud community. Elected bodies do so much more than provide services - they represent their communities, articulate, symbolise, bring thoughts to public expression, convey mourning, mark celebration. On 21 June, we shall throw a great party, for Dr Rowan Williams. When the next New Labour Cabinet Minister tells us that local government is all about the efficient delivery of services, I shall scream.. 
Just send $1,000… I have been invited to attend a two-day seminar in Plano, Dallas Texas, entitled “Coping with Governments, as Regulators and as Partners”. It is a symposium about Private Investments Abroad (i.e. outside America) and a team of international lawyers, bankers and consultants will brief you on all the tricks of the trade. The seminar series started 55 years ago, right after WW2. Quite apart from travel and accommodation, the tuition per-person will cost you just £1,000 ($950 if you pay before 3 June…). 
I shall not, of course, be going. But the event exemplifies
the manipulative approach of capitalists to "governments". Governments are
just another means to an end, the end of low-risk private corporate gain.
The primary aim of capitalists is to sink their
teeth into the soft white flesh of “sovereign debt”. It's far tastier than
lending to fragile private corporations. For
Governments are always able to use force against their own people, to
collect the taxes necessary to pay you back.
Flagging  The reason why
global economic prospects are poor is precisely that ordinary consumers - in
Europe, America and Japan - are genuinely
worried about the future,
 and the monumental mess that Bush and Blair have created, in the Middle East.
Successful suicide bomb attacks, flight bans, and the excessive media
coverage they all receive, add to the sense of of personal anxiety,
throughout the world. American
aggressive behaviour, while satisfying the baying mobs at home, is unsettling the rest
of the world, tuned in to CNN. They may not all understand what is
going on, but they can pick up from TV coverage that all is not going well.
Global systemic uncertainty is now a prime
cause of weak consumer demand. PS On a lighter note, I thought this was a very pithy
cartoon, from the business pages of The Guardian.
De Gaulle, Tony Blair  This is not what you think. This is
is no attack on Tony Blair for his Presidential proclivities. It is to
commend to Labour the ingenuity
of Charles de Gaulle, when faced with the task of reviving the residential
rented sector in France, in 1958. The absurdity of the Government's
mortgage subsidies to young teachers and other public professionals
 in
London must be apparent. We should not
be crucifying our young people by forcing them, early in their adult lives,
into crippling mortgage commitments What they need above all is good-quality,
reasonably priced rental accommodation.
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 manifestoes, both on the Right and on the Left, in terms which make sense globally. “Politics in one country” is no longer enough. I have made my own attempt to shape such an international political agenda, which would bring hope to all the peoples of the world... 
Public trading, a real third way 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.
The Old Civil Service In response to my concerns about the quality of the Home Civil Service, you have asked me to remind you of my own experience of being recruited as an Under Secretary in the Department of the Environment, in 1974. 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 -
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)
Diary 2002, 2003 Now up to date! I have re-structured my Diary to give you a day-to-day
means of looking back, throughout the year What are your thoughts? Drop me a line
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I must confess that a number of search-calls which find this site are looking for the top bed company, Warren Evans of Camden. 
This is the excellent Warren Evans bed that Elizabeth and I bought a few years ago - a
snip at £1,150. It was an odd feeling, writing out a £1,000+ cheque to
Warren Evans from Warren Evans - particularly as there is no
family relationship whatever between us...
fog is dangerous... ...and fog abounds, in the debate about "corporate manslaughter". The Government has a manifesto commitment to penalise corporate manslaughter - but there is a problem! What on earth does the term mean?
Bread, Circuses, and Hackney Stadium Labour is wrong to enter London for the 2012 Olympics. The decision is woefully vainglorious, financially reckless, bent only on diverting the minds of the populace from more serious concerns. My reasons for opposing the scheme are practical and managerial, and I spelt them out last December, at the turn of the year. This is a lightweight decision, taken for lightweight reasons, which we will all regret.
Euro, Euro Everywhere  It is impossible to avoid the Euro debate.
I am firmly pro-Euro, regarding most opposition as obscurantist,
ill-informed or xenophobic. My advice to
Tony Blair is to let Gordon Brown have his day - promise no further
Referendum before the next Election - and then bring the next Election
forward. Once this June deadline is passed, there is no continuing commitment to hold a referendum at all. And there are now no substantive issues raised by joining the Euro - it is the biggest non-issue of contemporary politics. Labour would win a 2004 Election, even with a strong pro-European position. And the timing of an Election is indisputably a matter within the unique discretion of the PM.
Drugs: US attempts to interfere in Canadian politics, to prevent a sensible minor liberalisation of the drugs laws, will backfire. It is American evangelicals who were behind the first campaign in 1919, and they are still blocking liberal reform. Will Hutton this week highlights the baleful influence upon American civilisation of the Religious Right. We should adopt a strategy of supply interdiction, and challenge the Americans to follow.
"The voluntary Party in the country..."
That terminology reflects my view of the future for political Parties. There are in practice two political forces in play, and they should both be given political expression. There should be "lay" citizens' Parties, engaging the hearts and minds of activists throughout society, and differentiated from the professional Party systems of the new salariat. The Party salariats should regulate their own business, as "parliamentary parties", getting on with the business of Government and Opposition, forging new links with the voluntary parties in the country. Our political systems would be diversified and enriched if such a dual system were to be developed.
I warm to Warren Buffett… 
When I last praised
Warren Buffett, I was reprimanded by one of our correspondents – Adam
Somerset of Aberaeron, whose impressions of the Buffett phenomenon were far
less complimentary.
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 unbeatableLeave charities alone  As a "natural"
radical,
I have ideas about changing most things about our civic order. But I
shall be resisting the current fashion for "modernising"
charity law. Leading commentator Malcolm Dean backs the cause of radical
reform, writing in
The Guardian.
I stand accused... 
... of being more Blairite than Blair, in
my approach to the diversification of UK state structures,
Foundation
Hospitals, and all that. What is the truth? I have many misgivings about the Government's plans for these changes - but I share Ministers' perception of a new plural network of local provision, free of domination by the "local Council state". Peter Preston categorises all these changes, in The Guardian, as a reversion to 19th formats - and although one can "never go back", there is some truth in that. But state systems are generally changing, to make room for international networks and new international institutions. It should not be surprising that the "local Council state" also requires reform. Try BBC News, the public service website
Other recent topics
Multiple Differential Uncertainty Tuesday 27
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Created by GMID Design & Communication COPYRIGHT NOTICE
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New
The Archbishop of Canterbury has accepted
"our" invitation to visit my home-town Mumbles, where he spent many of his
formative years as a young priest. He will be here in Swansea, on Saturday 21
June. 
I love stamps...
I am indebted to the perceptive Tory defector Crispin Blunt
(MP for Reigate) for this
telling phrase. Reporting on his consultations within Tory circles, he affirmed his belief
that "the voluntary Party in the country"
had lost faith in Ian Duncan Smith.
I love stamps...
I am sure
you will want to
keep in touch with what Steve Bell is drawing, in
