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To further the spirit of reform, I have three 2004 political projects to engage your interest -
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Renewing participatory democracy Multiple Differential Uncertainty |
Week 1
Sunday 2004 
The impact of China continues to reverberate, on all our lives. Three major steel plants in South Wales (Newport, Cardiff and Port Talbot) are being revived by the intensity of China's demand for steel, with hundreds of new Welsh jobs being created in the New Year. On Christmas Eve, the Chinese authorities indicated that they would allow the Chinese currency (renmimbi) to move more flexibly against the dollar, which will permit smoother global accommodation of China's explosive economic growth. The Chinese are coming! And I predict a growing media interest in all things Chinese - watch out for Chinese New Year, a 15-day period of celebrations starting on Thursday 22 January... This is my religion
I consider myself religious because I am committed to the search for an "eternity" for life itself - I believe that such an enabling coherence exists, in whatever terms it may be designated - man's task (my task) is to cultivate ways of life which will ensure the eternal continuity of life as we know it - and although I acknowledge that I am "culturally-conditioned" by my upbringing, I find the teachings of Jesus the best guide to eternal survival in that sense - that's politics too, for me. 
New Year Resolve
For the first time in the two-year history of this Weblog, my diary is 100% up to date! 'Twas a big effort, over the break, but you can now browse back over the entire 24-month period just click through
Parmalat
New Year dawns, new corporate scandal
breaks. The Italians should not feel guilty about it. The £7
billion scam was the usual tale of international abdroid folk, in which
artificial personality is used to hoodwink and deceive, on the grandest
possible scale. And on New Year's Day, the bad news kept rolling
in.
This was the Italian equivalent of Lord Sainsbury being
caught with his hands in the till, encouraging hundreds of his managers
(like me) to do the same. The old successful
entrepreneurial families like the Italian Tanzis are as easily led
astray by the siren calls of life with the abdroids as social upstarts like Asil Nadir and
Robert Maxwell and Kenneth Lay. Nobody is immune from their corrupt
call. Crime seems so appealing, so respectable, so
victimless...
How long will our
political leaders continue to turn a blind eye to all this, and obstruct
the necessary reforms?
The New Year's Eve
Guardian
carried an awful summary of the year's corporate abuses, listed coolly
and objectively. For an impatient radical politician like me, it
was almost too much to bear...
If you want to
do something about it, join
the rest of us at the
Company Reform Coalition.
Dangers of the "Membership State"
My passion for Welsh This time, two years
ago, I declared my passionate commitment to learning Welsh. It is a matter of sadness that I have made so little progress, in
these last two years - I can read extensively, and understand much that
I read, without recourse to a dictionary. But the music of Welsh,
the rhythms of the spoken word, its gentleness and strength, escape me.
I am still struck dumb, when confronted with the simplest question. But I will
persevere.
Will political parties
survive? This is no clever
2004 New
Year brain-teaser. I am reclaiming for your consideration an
excellent article by the Guardian's Jackie Ashley,
published in May 2003. As a Labour Party
animal
....
even if she has got her history wrong. Originally,
the parliamentary "parties" did indeed operate without corresponding "parties
in the country"... Compare
Tom Watson, Labour MP for West Bromwich, has attracted much attention for his hour-by-hour Weblog. Yet for my part, I find it quite difficult to pick up any sense of the real Tom Watson, from this sequence of single-issue comments - for my part, I shall stick to my strictly selective technique...
Never miss
Innovation?
Recent surveys report that British businessmen are “disappointed” with the failure of Government measures to promote “innovation”.
That is absurd. Simplistic. Naive. It must be self-evident that the promotion of “innovation” cannot be a matter for Government. For the truth is none of us really understands the processes of innovation at all. The term “innovation” refers obliquely to nothing less than creativity itself – and who understands that? What is distinctive about the creative drive? Do we all possess it? Or merely geniuses? Conventional educational theory is woefully weak at cultivating creativity. There is no credible “theory of creativity”, however successful Edward De Bono may have been with “The Power of Lateral Thinking”. Schools are more likely to crush their pupils’ creativity than to foster it.
that is the question. One year ago
Launch of the Euro Afghanistan: Corporate 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.
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Counting the "hits" Interpreting hit-counters is a notoriously difficult task. But there are definitely conclusions to be drawn from my own recent statistics. Let me compare the last four months of 2003, with the previous year -
This suggests that we have had a fourfold increase in readership this year, almost five. Keep checking in, now and again, in the New Year..
PS for E-Enthusiasts
I am delighted that one of my pages, the interview with Emmanuel
Todd, has been filched and re-broadcast by a leading Canadian website
vancouver.indymedia.org - in the tradition of the free
Internet, they did not ask for anybody's permission, but they
loyally put in a hyperlink to warrenevans.net - that's fair, and
in the same spirit, I
thoroughly approve...Sikhism Lesson in civilisation We all share the shame of the tragic Christmas Eve death of 78-year-old Sikh pensioner Sohan Singh, who was staying with his relatives in the UK, and working as a volunteer at the Guru Nanak Temple in Wolverhampton. Intruders murdered him, as he tended the Temple overnight. 
A Sikh Temple is a remarkable place. Sikhism holds that it should be open 24 hours every day, with four entrances open to all points of the compass, and with food always available to those who come - that is why Sohan Singh was at the Temple overnight. That is a powerful symbol of the kind of society I want to live in - warm, welcoming, liberal, optimistic about human nature. The brilliant Swansea mechanic who services my aged Mercedes, Tajinda Singh, tells me of the merits of Sikh philosophy, its openness and universality. And last week in London I had a chance meeting with an eloquent young Sikh Gurpal Singh, also from Wolverhampton, who was on a study-tour of Westminster, and hoping to become a lawyer.
292,287,454 
Just for the record, this was the official population of the United States of America on New Year's Day 2004. And the population has grown by about 1% in the past twelve months - i.e. by nearly 3,000,000. I tell you this, because I advocate the conclusion of a new international migration treaty, under which every signatory State would accept an obligation to accommodate immigration at an agreed maximum universal rate - ideally, that should be 1% per year, although at the outset, negotiators would have to settle for less. Our children will face a much more mobile world, and it is our duty
to lay the foundations for its effective governance. Suburbs in decline
But the real answer is a political one. Parliament has always made it illegal for community councils to be formed within Greater London - and that ban remains in place, to this very day. Every other UK city community can now create its own community (or parish) council, although this fact is little-publicised. I am a Community Councillor, for a 17,000-strong suburb (Mumbles) within my home city of Swansea. If Government were ever to have the courage to empower the 350 communities of London, and allow them to elect their own community councils, a tidal wave of democratic energies would be unleashed, and the suburbs would get on with looking after themselves.
What would you do? Would you empower the communities of London, and give them the same options as the rest of the UK?
My own 2004 We are all fascinated by time - both the past and the future. The past is subject to constant revision (as currently with the Iraq War), and "forecasts" always command the headlines. The historic pratfall constantly awaits... And at this time of year, we face a diet of past-year highs and new-year predictions. So I give notice of the subjects which I shall be tracking, in particular, during 2004 -
Robbie Williams
The Williams' machine is simply exploring another byway along that route. This represents a new twist in the burgeoning story of "intellectual (i.e. abstract) property". And Robbie will find that there is a major difference, in this respect, between the ultra-capitalism of the United States, and more moderate capitalism of Europe.
.. or rather Join my gang I am organising a five-day Fabian study-tour to Berlin (1-5 May 2004) for all those wanting to find out about German politics and public affairs, from a Left-of-Centre angle. It will cost you £335 for travel and accommodation - and you will need to join the Fabian Society first! This is a unique chance to explore contemporary German politics, with a structured study programme, in the company of 29-other like-minded travelling companions. First-come, first-served. Malcolm Wickes will regret this...
Get to know your neighbours, the Abdroids
 The Company
A short history of a revolutionary idea, by Mickelthwait and
Wooldridge, pub Weidenfeld & Nicholson -that was my Christmas
relaxation... After all, we
60m
"natural" persons share these islands with
1.1m
artificial persons, shadowy abdroids structuring our lives.
Mysteries revealed, compounded
Recent topics Police Forces are dangerous >>> Milburn gets "Third Sector" wrong >>> "Equality?" An electoral non-starter >>> My Mum was an Asylum Seeker >>> Uncoordinated Roadworks >>> Individualism is here to stay >>> Howard Dean, using the Internet >>> Are you monovascellarist? >>> Secular French, Mistaken secularism >>> Absurd Ryanair judicial verdict >>> "Equality for Abdroids!" >>> 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
0151 Make sure you have not missed Week 1
Sunday
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New
I am in awe
of the Hubble telescope and its revelations - in awe at the world of
energy and massive activity that it reveals - and convinced that I must
find the link between that "Hubble" world and the mundanities of
everyday human life, of everything we can observe on this planet - that
energy seems to me to be benign not malign, ordered not chaotic.
As my contribution to the party festivities of the Season, I am delighted
to bring back one of the Royal Mail's most playful initiatives of last
year. Just in case you missed them, let me explain that the basic
shapes were
printed onto the body of the stamp, and the user had to
decorate each fruit individually, with the sticker-shapes provided. It was a brilliant attempt to
introduce, into the most routine phases
of our lives (i.e. the printing of millions of identical stamps) a real element of individual creativity.
You will understand my enthusiasm for this, if you take a moment to read
A telling spat has developed, over John Reid's plans to charge foreign
visitors for their use of NHS services, except in the case of infection
or emergency. For it highlights the tensions between two great
constitutional ideas - the "territorial State" and the "membership State".
I find myself constrained, with a heavy heart, to support John Reid on this
issue, even though I suspect he is playing xenophobic politics. 
for the last 40 years, I share Jackie Ashley's conclusions
about the centrality of political parties...
Alarm bells are being sounded about the impending implosion of many
faceless suburbs, 
Did you see that Robbie Williams has registered his name as a
Trade Mark? Historically, the progress of capitalism has
been marked by the creation of property rights in everything of
value. If ££-signs can be attached to it, it
must be capable of ownership.
Malcolm Wickes
is a nice, middle-o-th'-road Old Labour politician. He is now