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Webmasters unite! These are this week's Missing Persons, taken from The Big Issue. If you recognise anyone, contact www.missingpersons.org or ring 020-8392-4592 - and this is surely a free service which volunteer Webmasters could offer more widely - put the idea around! |
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Renewing participatory democracy Multiple Differential Uncertainty
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040524 Make sure you have not missed the previous edition Check it out And the one before that? Other recent topics highlighted here
Week
22 Sunday Lovelock is right 
I have always felt guilty about my support for nuclear power generation. But the famous Gaia scientist James Lovelock CBE FRS (now 84) has now dramatically endorsed the case for a rapid expansion of nuclear power -
I well remember attending, almost surreptitiously, a meeting at Blackpool Labour Conference in the mid-Nineties on The Case for Nuclear Power organised by the Power Workers' Union. It was addressed by that great and courageous advocate of "nuclear" - Tam Dalyell. It was held at 9.30 am on a bleak rainy Sunday morning, and there was an audience of only half-a-dozen in a dismal hotel-room, including me. Tam had driven overnight, from Scotland. All the New Labour luminaries (from Tony Blair to Stephen Timms...) were in Church. I consider that the right course is to confront the undoubted technical problems still besetting spent-fuel disposal. We must phase out the burning of fossil fuels as a top priority. Battery-driven cars can be powered by ample supplies of nuclear-generated electricity.
What do you think? Drop me a line
I have received a very remarkable letter, following my support for the Stapleford drug addiction clinics. It is a tribute to Dr Colin Brewer, from a former patient, a heroin addict now "clean" - Annmarie Jordan. Dr Colin Brewer is now arraigned, with several colleagues, before the General Medical Council, accused of unprofessional conduct, for running his successful addiction practice. I was a patient of Dr Colin Brewer. I had been a hopeless heroin addict for about five years – so were my brother and my cousin. We all saw Dr Brewer in 2001: we all did the “home detox” - which , for my family, was a very difficult task. But nevertheless, after a few days of being locked-in and given the medication prescribed, we all in turn succeeded....
If you are willing to play a supportive role in supporting Dr Brewer's Defence, contact
Compassionate 
I am delighted to report the courageous radical position of London's Camden Borough Council. Since 2001, the Council has been committed to the legalisation of cannabis and Ecstasy - and is now seeking Home Office permission to provide heroin injection facilities. Our feeble MPs remain in a dead funk about advocating any move towards the legalisation of drugs. Camden Councillors have shown the way.
Rowe Evans Rampant 
No relation, you understand. But a legal action in Sumatra which demonstrates the key role of law, and of the Courts, in sustaining the very structure of modern international capitalism. The three pillars of capitalist success (private property, contract law, and the manipulation of artificial personality) are all on parade, in the Rowe Evans case. The case is poised to go to the Sumatran Supreme Court of Appeal.  The
Pensioners Parliament met in Blackpool last week, as it
does every year at this time. The main business was a huge debate on the
new Pensioners' Manifesto, inspired by their new President Rodney
Bickerstaffe. But I also found great support for my new
charities to promote (a) libraries (Libri) and (b) public toilets
(Hygeia). But why
is the 11m pensioners' movement so ineffective, politically?
I suspect the National Pensioners Convention focuses too narrowly on "the problems facing pensioners today". And it misses the real political problem - which is the loss of confidence experienced by the young and the middle-aged in pensions systems, indeed all the supportive institutions of old age. Any radical perception must find a way of meshing the aspirations of the old with those of the young and middle-aged. My search is for a coherent and guaranteed cross-Party "zone of certainty" surrounding old age, offering a realistic aspiration to all workers, and a sense of justice to those who have finished their working lives.
Check out Mike Davis, below...
The Government has shown real imagination in dealing with middle-teen education. I am proud to give my positive support to Labour’s two new “flagship” measures. They are –
(b) the revised These initiatives carry attractive flavours of both socialism and liberalism – indeed, this has been a good week for Liberal Socialism…
And I am delighted that Labour's position has attracted the support of favourite cobber Mike Davis - he also advocates new EU educational initiatives - make sure you check out his long-distance perspective... 
Can there be anyone left cold by the sight of great ships? The Royal
Mail stamps for May mark the launch of the new Queen Mary.. Great
ships bring out the best in everyone.Council Election Special Battle is now fully underway, for the City Council Elections. In the event, there were only four nominations for my four-member Ward for the Community Council (as "Parish" Councils are designated, in reformed, non-conformist Wales....) - so I have been elected unopposed, without having to undergo an election after all. That means that I shall be a Community Councillor as from Election Day 10 June. But four candidates are contesting the City seat for Oystermouth - Labour, Tory, LIbDem and Green Party. That is an excellent contest - but with the continuing prospect of a poor turnout. The Fabians are a great, enlightened Left-Wing political community some 7,000-strong - and we have many skills among our number.
Special Footnote 
I love the online newspapers, which are my access to the world - share them with me - click through to their 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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Susan Greenfield Scientist? Politician?
"While it may appear that the cyber world is beginning to merge with reality, human beings must continue to be seen as individuals. After all, no two persons have the same personality: no two people can judge exactly what the other is thinking. Your brain is evolving and changing every moment that you are alive, so you are not the same person as you were five years ago, one year ago, six months ago or even a minute ago. "It is this individuality, along with personal experience, that creates our identity. Your imagination is the most marvellous thing, and more authentic than the artificial film or the cyber world around us. As computer chips are more readily able to read our thoughts and minds, as human beings we must treasure our imagination, and the individuality that defines each of us."
Civil Rights
British civil rights sensitivities are developed in ways poorly understood on the Continent. We are far more sensitive to the physical practicalities of "civil rights", of personal freedom in a quite literal sense - unlawful detention and imprisonment, unnecessarily violent or intrusive Police behaviour, abusive crowd control, wrongful entry to private property. This is a practical and honourable tradition. 
Why do I raise this subject with you, this week? Because of Brussels pressure to introduce random breath-tests, in pursuit of drunken drivers. We resist random testing, because of its blanket extension of Police powers, over every moment of our mobile lives, every traffic movement. Our instinct is to resist an unnecessary extension of intrusive Police powers. For the EU administrators (lacking our traditional sensitivities) random breath-testing seems a no-brainer, an obvious method to be deployed "in the cause" of sobriety. Yet we resist, because of the adverse side-effects of extending Police powers.
Anxious children
Let the
The appalling collapse of civic order in Iraq during May is of our own making. The prospect of a US puppet takeover on 1 July is just as objectionable to Iraqi opinion as the continuing retention of Coalition troops on Iraqi soil. As the slaughter of potential puppet "Ministers" continues, with two more dying this week by assassination, the Iraqi case could not be more clearly expressed. This cannot be dismissed as "Al Quaida making mischief..." Elections could and should be held in September. The security situation would undoubtedly improve, straight away. I do not accept that the organisational problems are insuperable. And there should be no handover of sovereignty before then. Nor should the United Nations become implicated in this discreditable retreat.
A federal Constitution should be offered to the Iraqi people, just as we offered a federal Constitution to the German electorate in 1948. We should listen to those persuasive Iraqi experts who advise that only a three-unit Constitution will work - a Kurdish region, a southern Shia region, and a central Sunni region, enjoying devolution within a unitary federal framework.
Blunkett is 
I am delighted that more and more of you are taking the trouble to respond on-line to my thoughts. Darren Andrews is clearly a passionate opponent of State Identity Cards, and has uncovered that great old American dictum, which I had forgotten -
Darren Andrews restates the case against ID cards, time-honoured liberal theory, from the very first of first principles.. 
with acknowledgment to: South Wales
Evening PostThat's me , at the top-left of the picture - at the inauguration of a new refugee support service in Swansea. Much agonising preceded this launch, and the invitation of public attention - would we aggravate race relations, or not? My judgment was that we should not hold back, merely for fear of racism, real as that might seem to be.All our citizens should be challenged to react, and be faced down if necessary: they should have the opportunity to show tolerance, and understanding. The next few weeks will be yet another liberal litmus test, for South Wales society...
Left Activists' Corner
I have three moderately-left political projects to engage your interest, as 2004 advances to mid-point - nothing too revolutionary, you understand - and now illustrated by the high diplomacy of our relationship with France, which adorned our mail during April.
Extending the Welfare State >>> Prison last! That's my policy >>> Adjustment Pay - for every worker >>> Citizenship rituals wrongful coercion >>> St Paul's Epistle and the LibDems >>> Iraq must have Elections NOW >>> Class is on the way out >>> Managing Migration >>>
Jimmy White's cocaine amnesty >>>
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
040524
Make sure you have not missed
Week
22 Sunday |
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Created by GMID Design & Communication COPYRIGHT
NOTICE |
"I was a hopeless
As my scanner has been on the blink, you
have been deprived of my customary running commentary on our beautiful UK
postage stamps. The anniversary of the Entente Cordiale between
Britain and France went unnoticed, on the philatelic front - let me make
amends. Normal service can now be
resumed...
Baroness Susan Greenfield CBE, Director of the Royal
Institution, who delivered this year's Bronowski Lecture, is
undoubtedly a scientist. But as a science lecturer, she has formulated
the most marvellous manifesto for
the individualist cause. Just read this...
When it comes to civil rights,
British is still best. I
know that sounds complacent, jingoistic, even reckless (in the
light of David Blunkett's awful civil rights record at the Home Office).
But remember that I have lived in
both France and Germany, and had legal training in both countries.
So let me explain.
Some of you were clearly sceptical, when last
March I suggested that the increasing numbers of obese children might have
something to tell us about 
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