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Renewing participatory democracy Multiple Differential Uncertainty
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Week 34 The price of illegality... 
The awful Baghdad bombing of the UN headquarters is the direct and tragic consequence of the illegality of the Coalition's attack upon Iraq. It is that illegality which continues to prevent the full-hearted participation of other leading UN member-states, leaving the US and UK, along with the UN itself, dangerously and tragically exposed. Even now, other States remain reluctant to help, for fear they be seen as "validating", albeit retrospectively, the illegality of the US/UK action. The USA must be brought back into the UN fold, and back into community of nations building a world order based upon law and legal principle. The UN Blue Berets should be maintaining order in Baghdad, not the gung-ho Americans. My hope is that the UK Government will lead that healing process, if necessary breaking with the US in the process. Jonathan Steele, writing in Thursday's Guardian, charts the same course.
Tragic Diversion  The
Hutton Inquiry is colonising the political desert of August. It has
already generated valuable insights into the working of modern Government,
and there will be more. But it is a tragic
diversion. The only question that matters is this.
Yet in the longer run, he lost. He now knows, as he faces his shaving mirror, that he was wrong. He remains so brilliant as a popular leader that the Labour Party will not remove him: MPs would be foolhardy to risk a change. His self-confidence, however, must have been deeply eroded by that momentous misjudgment - particularly if he played a part, however indirect, in the exaggeration of the evidence itself. Blair cannot fail to feel responsible for the deaths of British troops, sent wrongfully to war.
PS The Hutton Inquiry is giving powerful corroboration to my theory - namely, that as the authority of the political salariat weakens we are moving towards "rule by judges" - that is, a dicastocracy... Not flexible 
" Flexibility" is getting a bad name, in politics and economics. For the poor, flexibility means that it is too easy to become poor and stay poor. For the Unions, flexibility means that employers can fire workers too easily. For many citizens, flexibility means unpredictability of employment, greater uncertainty.
Identity Cards
Rowan was wrong... 
...to have accepted the withdrawal of Dr Jeffrey John, the nominated Bishop of Reading. Rowan Williams was admittedly put on the spot, brusquely and suddenly - but he should nevertheless have confronted the issue there and then. He should have adjourned the Jeffrey John decision, and convened a worldwide episcopal convention straight away. Now American events have forced his hand, and the Convention has been convened. His authority has undoubtedly been weakened by that momentary hesitation, but he is now moving to reassert it. He has authorised the republication of a 1997 essay challenging restrictive "evangelical" interpretations of scriptural texts on homosexuality. Issue must be joined. 
Shortly before his ill-fated Reading decision, the Archbishop was with us in our Swansea village of Mumbles, accepting the Freedom of Mumbles, and having his photograph taken - Obesity matters... 
I am terrified of the current fashion for demonising the overweight. This has been one of the most unpleasant themes of the Silly Season. Very few of us who are "medically obese" (according to medical diktat) are happy about it. We already suffer grievously from the prejudices of society - that we are unattractive, feckless, unworthy of promotion, weak-willed, gluttonous, stupid. Those prejudices are hard enough to bear, without having skinny young doctors and politicians feathering their career nests by leading campaigns against us.
Public Service Reform 
"Modernising" public administration is a European priority - for Germany, France and Italy, as well as the UK. But Europe does not face the problems of the Indian Government, whose 20m civil servants are contractually entitled to take paid leave on all the public holidays, for every religion recognised throughout the sub-continent.
Lane Rental telltale PFI faultline
How wrong could I be?
I confess! On my return from Russia in August last year, I rashly made a forecast about the United States, arguing that the Republicans would do badly in the Autumn 2002 Congressional Elections, and that Dubya would by now be struggling to build up his popularity for the Presidential Election in November 2004.
Moving into August - last year at this time, we were on holiday in Estonia and Russia - I will be updating my Russian Diary - but there's lots more to tickle your intellect...
Police Reform urgently needed Using our Canals for freight
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
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Correct Decision Wrong Strategy 
As a planning Barrister, I cannot fault John Prescott's grant of planning consent for the Bicester Asylum Centre. After all, it was not a greenfield site, and was already used to house large military concentrations - the minor "change of use" to an asylum hostel could scarcely be considered significant in land-use planning terms. And that was the only question John Prescott had to decide. But that is not the point. It is the Government's whole vicious anti-asylum strategy that is at fault. It is wrong that asylum-seekers should be isolated and corralled in large prison-type concentrations of this kind - anywhere in the country, not just in Bicester. I accept that it is more difficult, more time-consuming for the Authorities, to administer effective tracing systems where newcomers live in the open community - but that must be the right option. We should accord to asylum-seekers the full dignity of common humanity, and stop treating them harshly - merely as a deterrent to others who might come after.
No Joker 
I am sad that John Prescott has been sidelined by the Blair Project. I am reminded each August of his potential, although now an intimidated, perhaps even broken, man. He has been outrageously ridiculed for his inelegant speech. We will never know how he might have grown in stature, given the opportunity of the Premiership. I always listen to what he has to say. History will show (if History ever notices) that I backed John Prescott against Tony Blair as Party Leader - I even contributed the handsome sum of £250 to Prescott's war-chest, when contesting the leadership. Je ne regrette rien. Image? Or reality? 
Our great cities are very resilient. "Regional
devolution" should acknowledge their strength, and their place in the
hearts and minds of our people. In Liverpool, now being marketed as
the new European Capital of Culture, the use of the artificial term
"Merseyside" is being questioned - better to call it Greater
Liverpool, say the marketing people, to include Wirral,
Sefton, Knowsley and St Helens - see
Linguistic Conundrum What is "Welsh"? 
I spent last week in a very remote North Wales
valley, on the north coast of the Lleyn Peninsula, improving my fluency in
Welsh - with a tutor of brilliance, Howard Edwards, at the Welsh Language Centre at
Top Tutor? BBC Wales My fellow students At our local "live" surfing site, you can check out the state of the surf in Mumbles, at my local Langland Bay, with the live webcams installed there - check out www.surfsup-mag.co.uk... Oswald Mosley 
Just before he married the beautiful Diana Mitford (who died last week), Sir Oswald Mosley had dinner with my Dad, at his flat at No 16 Heoldon in Whitchurch, Cardiff. My Dad was a widower at that time, having lost his first wife in 1916, without having yet met my mother. And he was a leading "Independent" Councillor on Cardiff Rural District Council.
Binge Drinking 
I favour the relaxation of the drink-licensing timetables, for they remove unnecessary restrictions upon personal freedom. But publicans should not be permitted to promote binge-drinking, particularly by teenagers. A local Swansea "night club" sells a single all-in all-evening ticket for £8 - "for all that you can drink".
More than  The Welsh take "language" very seriously indeed, both
their own and everyone else's. The very institution
of "language" excites far greater genuine passion - affection and aversion
- than in England. I too take language very seriously
indeed. And I am sure that Labour in Wales will have to
come up with more sophisticated language policies, if we are counter the
amateur politics...
I believe that Welsh Labour should take the lead in developing a new form of generic "languages policy" for the UK, to steer the affairs of the entire multi-lingual UK state. If the Welsh do not take responsibility for this, nobody else will
Sheer Unilever cheek 
I was astonished to see the Unilever Board praised last week for its attack on its own shareholders, for their passivity in the company's affairs. In the appalling mess that is our law of corporate governance, the Unilever Board was just trying to score a few Brownie points, getting its retaliation in first. And the shareholders are right to stay away. Until "the authorities" (both in Europe and the USA) give shareholders real powers to act as a check upon the corporate salariat, shareholders should not try to exercise sham power.
Nice one, NICE
Recommending free IVF fertility treatment on the NHS has catapulted NICE into the summer headlines. NICE is the National Institute for Clinical Excellence.
I gotta'n idea! I am keen to get further response from you about my idea of creating new youth-managed community-centres - "concourses" - where teenagers can chill out and do their own thing - provided that they also accept responsibility for managing and financing the centre... Deceitful Service Warranties One of our readers has returned to the issue of Service Warranties, and in particular their commercial deployment by Dixons, and I am keen to help him. This is what I had to say about these shady practices earlier in the year, in May 2003. If you have any current experience of them, will you let me know? I am sure you will want to keep in touch with what Steve Bell has drawn, in The Guardian Other recent topics Multiple Differential Uncertainty My diary Now up to date (well, more or less...) Saturday
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New
My
Knowledgable friends sometimes praise to me the ingenuity of the Highways
Agency lawyers in incentivising road-contractors to work faster, by devising
the concept of lane rental.
It means that the contractor must pay "rent" for his occupation of each lane
of the highway, and can minimise his costs by keeping lanes open whenever
and wherever humanly possible.
Try BBC News, the 
