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Renewing participatory democracy Multiple Differential Uncertainty |
Week 50 Friday Tale of Woe 
I am no killjoy. I do not want to hit the railways when they’re down. But I have a story I must tell you. On Monday 8 December I embarked upon my “usual” 0330h train journey from Swansea to Paddington, scheduled to arrive in London at 0635h. I reached London at 1040h – a delay of over four hours.
In Defence of 
Labour activists often find difficulty in getting to grips with the "individualism" of current public and political discourse. Having been schooled in the political advantages of collective action, they run the risk of rejecting the immanent individualism of the rising generations. And worse still, they easily mistake individualism for selfishness. Worthwhile reforms, they seem to say, must always proceed from collectivist principles of social justice and equality. Such reasoning permeates the majority of the Parliamentary "top-up fee rebels". Jenni Russell, writing this week in The Guardian, makes the same mistake - in spades. And Young Fabian Matthew Jenkins of Cardiff is cast in traditional socialist mode. Concerns with "equality" have not gone away. But they have become quite deeply embedded in the structure of political thought, certainly in mine. They are no longer near the surface, and they carry little linguistic clout - not good speech material. Most important, they no longer generate convincing electoral strategies, in wealthy societies such as ours.
Christmas was jollier in 2002
And here's the proof. Questions
have been asked in Parliament about the obscure, dull designs foisted upon
the public by the Royal Mail this Christmas - too clever by half, I
reckon. This is how this year's stamp
You're right!
That's me, serving as Santa at the launch of
Christmas at Bath's Green Park Station, last week - my thanks to the
Bath Chronicle for an excellent
photograph. And before anyone protests, let me assure you that I have
been "police-vetted" to work with children.
Or rather, click here. Join the thinking arm of the Labour Party. Actual membership of the Labour Party is not required - socialists from all corners of the world are welcome, provided they are not actual members of a different political Party... My Mum was an asylum-seeker 
At least, she was in precisely the same position. David Blunkett has brought the memories flooding back, for me. In 1940, with two children, aged 3 and 5 (my younger sister Eleanor and myself) my mother Mary braved the perilous North Atlantic to escape to Canada, evacuated from the threatened ravages of war. But in Canada, faced with unforeseen destitution, she was pressured to put us both into care or adoption, and to earn her living as a teacher. She refused, and preferred the awesome risk of bringing us back to the UK on a troopship, through submarine-infested waters, in 1942. We survived, although many died, on that convoy. Blunkett has yet again shown his profound lack of judgment in threatening "failed" asylum-seekers with the loss of their children. It will be an effective threat (at least, it was for my mother). But it demeans the Labour Party, the UK Government and the man who makes it.
Third Term
Movements are afoot, in the Commons. At a recent Fabian meeting in Cardiff I heard Kevin Brennan, Cardiff West MP (and a long-standing Fabian) launch a new parliamentary ginger-group, New Wave Labour. Fifteen up-and-coming Labour MPs have banded together to publish their own "manifesto". Others - not least Milburn and Byers - are obviously jockeying for position, from outside Government. These are signs that Labour politicians realise the present order is finished, and that they must start preparing for a post-Blair political environment. And there is safety in numbers.
One year ago
Pensions: no place for employers Blair's new "Government Party" 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 - I have added the English-language China Daily ... and I now offer you the leading English-language Indian paper The Hindu.
My diary
Never miss
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Pitiful Policing 
New proposals emerge this week for the Metropolitan Police to join forces with the City University. The object is to train our Police in the devious ways of companies and company operators, in defrauding and conning their way through their daily work. The first special courses will start in February. This is pitiful, because no policemen, however well-trained, can hope to out-gun the secretive insiders of the corporate jungle. The only way to counter City crime is to open up the whole system to proper public scrutiny - all major companies should operate on an open-books principle, giving the Press, the police and the public open access to their doings all the time, without reservations. Certain matters of high commercial confidentiality could on occasion be kept secret - but the norm should be open access and transparency, blowing away the cobwebs of deceit and crime.
Votes at 16? Yes! 
I am delighted to see this change emerging onto the political agenda. I have favoured it for years. I am sure that the principle is right, and that we should welcome our teenagers into the electorate at this earlier age. This is the one remaining great reform of representative democracy yet to be undertaken.
"University Top-up Fees are wicked" That is what I wrote earlier this year, when first advocating a universal Graduate Tax, in January 2003. But if I were in Parliament now, I would not go to the barricades against Blair. I do not think that this new form of transaction will in the long run be perceived as a loan at all - indeed, itwill become an alternative general framework for financing profit-generating learning. And I would not wish to be party to a manoeuvre to use this issue to bring Blair's premiership to an end (though I believe the time is right for that...)
Publication Day
I doubt if I will ever write the book I want to write, on the history of artificial personality. So much to do, so little time... But perhaps I get the second-best this month: Greenleaf Books publishes an essay from me on the same subject, The Rise of the Abdroids. The text is also published on-line by Greenleaf, explore below - follow "What's New" and the book Something to Believe in..
Financing local government 
This hoary old subject has raised its head, yet again. It ruined Margaret Thatcher, and it could seriously undermine Labour. The difficulty stems from our confused Constitution - properly understood, this is rather one of high constitutional principle, masquerading as a humdrum question of taxation. Ours is a profoundly centralised Constitution and will remain so, in spite of current devolutionary pressures. That means that the overwhelming weight of taxation will remain UK-wide general taxation, with other elements remaining minor and subordinate.
Spotting Scams  Small business scams are nasty.
Small dishonest businesses preying on small
honest businesses. I
spotted a new scam this week, but thankfully did not part with my money.
The "Data Processing Protection Corporation
Limited" of Guisborough wrote to me demanding a
Registration Fee of £95, under the Data Protection Act, for one of my new charitable trusts (formed to
revolutionise public-toilet provision...).
I was suspicious. This was an ordinary company-limited-by-shares, No. 3573127. On checking with Companies House I discovered that the company had never submitted trading accounts, and had changed its name in June 2003, from "Icare Limited". My suspicions grew, and I checked with the Data Protection Commissioner. It was a scam. The right fee, if you need to register at all, is only £35, and only official demands are valid. Ignore all others. It seems that this form of scam is quite common.
Hartlepool maturity 
I am non-plussed by public treatment of the "ghost ships" recycling issue. We ought to be proud that a Hartlepool company, Able UK, has had the courage, the confidence and the skills to tackle these nasty recycling issues. This poisonous debris is the debris of us all. Nasty environmental issues like this cannot be pigeonholed into "national" jurisdictions. These ships were part of the post-WW2 reconstruction drive, from which we all derived great benefit. We all share responsibility for their safe disposal. If we behave in this blinkered way, what is the hope for Russia? The Friends of the Earth are wrong to have led a strident, populist campaign against this operation. Only a minor planning issue (relating to the construction of a dry-dock bund) stands between Able UK and the successful completion of this contract.
Recent topics Police Forces are dangerous >>> Iraq: Lawyers have failed.. >>> Labour Links: Amend Party Rulebook >>> Countryside? Not a problem >>> Milburn gets "Third Sector" wrong >>> ID Cards remain wrong >>> Queen's Speech verbatim >>> Met Chief: I do not trust him >>> Lords Must Go! >>> Check out New Wave Labour >>> My pessimism as investing Trustee >>> "Equality?" An electoral non-starter >>> Uphold doctrine of public primacy>>> Public Advocates: a new profession >>>
And read my Big Theory itself, at Multiple Differential Uncertainty... Or try my snappier and more practical analysis of the Corporations and the Left Coming to Terms
0147 Make sure you have not missed the previous edition
Check
it out Week 50 Friday 
And let me sign off with another reminder of happier philatelic days, last Christmas.. Great stamps bring a flash of inspiration to the routine of the day, like the flash of a kingfisher across the evening pool (or so they tell me - as a committed city boy, I've never seen a kingfisher in flight...
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New
compares with the jolliness
of
last year - there is no comparison! Christmas is not a time for
cerebral symbolism - nobody has yet written to me explaining what these
various symbols mean, or what they represent.
Memories of happier times, when our stamp
designers had not lost their sense of judgment and perspective, and long
before the present awful Christmas stamps were issued. This was from
a series of English pub signs issued earlier in the year, but I missed it
then, and I now remind you of the
elegance that is achievable. I
understand the Royal Mail will now attempt to retrieve its tarnished
reputation by issuing a special England Rugby Victory stamp - watch this
space - but anything would be
better than this...
