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Renewing participatory democracy Multiple Differential Uncertainty
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050124 Make sure you
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Week 4 Friday Wrong
The Tories must be rubbing their eyes in disbelief. The Government plans effectively to ask the Electorate whether they wish to "establish a Constitution for the EU". And for the majority of voters, the answer to that misconceived question must be No... For that is simply not the issue. There is an EU Constitution already, which has regulated the Union for over 40 years. It exists, derived from multiple sources, and has been frequently revised and updated. And if this most recent Revision does not go through, simplifying its use and bringing all its provisions together between two covers, the Union will simply carry on with it present higgledy-piggledy Constitution. True, new powers to get tough on terrorism will not be covered, nor will improved third-world aid. The offices of President and Foreign Minister will not be enhanced as envisaged. But that's all. Peter Hain was, politically, unwise to have described the new Constitution as "simply tidying up" - but he was in essence correct. Apart from a few mechanical issues (definition of a "qualified majority", changed seat-numbers in Parliament), nothing is changed by this re-run of the Constitution. The Government is therefore barmy, if it wants to win the Referendum, to adopt this wording. The wording should have been -
That would be vastly more accurate.
Iraq Every day, I meet casualties of the Iraq War. Failed asylum-seekers in Swansea, young people who have fled the awfulness of life in Iraq, albeit without a strong UK asylum claim. Their applications have, quite properly, failed - yet they cannot go home. The UK cannot deport them to the worsening conditions in Iraq, and they are terrified of returning voluntarily - to what they see daily, on their TV screens. They are victims of the Coalition invasion of Iraq. They are trapped by international circumstance. Their lives are in limbo. They are banned from employment, and while some may find voluntary work to do, they live for the most part in enforced idleness, in growing depression. We must find a new solution, both for them and other failed applicants who cannot be sent home - to Zimbabwe, Burundi, and other war-zone from time to time. They should be granted Discretionary Leave to remain (say for two years) - and permitted to work. Abuse
Modern politicians, of both right and left, abuse this concept. Parents are required to enter into "contracts" with schools, governing their children's conduct or their own. Young criminals are required to enter into "contracts", as part of their probation or their punishment. Drug addicts are constrained to enter into treatment "contracts". And now Alan Milburn offers a new "Contract" with the people, as a means of winning a third term in power.
But there can never be a consensual contract between the individual and the State to whose authority he is subject. These parties are not equals. The fundamental parity of bargaining power is missing, depriving the "contract" of any arguable force. The use of term contract is a devious political deceit.
Planned Destitution 
My days are dominated by concerns about the deliberate impoverishment of asylum-seekers. It is crystal-clear that the Government is trying to use the instrument of deliberate impoverishment to deter would-be asylum-seekers, whatever the merits of their claim. Administrative practices proliferate which have no place in a humane and civilised society. And because there is no funding for legal action, these devices rarely come to the attention of the Courts. They are also using destitution to pressurise failed asylum-seekers to leave the country, trying to starve them out. There is an administrative jungle in the Home Office, which degrades us all.
As a policy, this "toughness" will fail. I understand the politics of it, much as I deplore its populist Machivellian flavour. It is no substitute for a considered, thought-through immigration policy. And it will fail for two reasons -
Of course, there are exceptions. But the truth is that our immigration policies lack all coherence, all principle. Nor are other EU members any more coherent. David Blunkett seemed to be making a start - but without any broad, humane vision of a system which might work smoothly and justly..
Is Gordon walking out? 
Has
the thought occurred to you? Is Gordon Brown laying
the ground for his departure from UK politics to the world stage, with a
key international institution? Some explanation is due, it seems to
me, for the remarkable latitude he has been given, to strut his own stuff
in Africa - even though the UK's own Aid record hardly justifies the
swagger... Once the next election has been won,
in reluctant tandem with Tony Blair, will we look back on these days
through different eyes?
Humanita!
The Asian Tsunami Disaster will have a number of political consequences, all related the mobilisation of global political action. Our political systems, "our little systems", are simply not large enough to encompass the necessary global action, organisationally or philosophically. Nation States trip over international public agencies, who in turn trespass on the turf of the great charities. And it is also clear that there is lacking any coherent framework of principle within which to coordinate the response of humankind to such disasters.
"Participatory democracy" is one of the great ideas of mankind which has not yet been effectively tried. Every citizen should in some way become involved in the ordering of human society. We must devise systems in which millions upon millions of our fellow citizens develop a sense of responsibility for their own society by playing a personal part in its governance.ASBO ALERT
My daughter Katharine is deeply "embedded" in the ASBO issue, in the course of her work with the Childrens Society. Last year I published a lecture of hers on the subject. It's always exciting when a theme is taken up by another reader, and developed. That is what Rona Epstein of Kenilworth has just done: she has written in to link the lecture with a damning article on ASBOs by a practising defence solicitor, Matt Foot, writing in The Guardian.
One Year Ago
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Normal Webmaster service interrupted this week by a virus - definitely not flu, probably the vicious "winter vomiting disease" which, The Guardian tells me, affects one million people a year in the UK. And "numbers tend to peak in January". A nasty little bug, as I can testify. Please try to avoid being one of that million. Abolish Wrongful Dismissal >>> Impeach Blair sign up here < >>>"Groupism"
Religion
Are Public Schools charities? >>> Extending the Welfare State >>> Adjustment Pay for every worker >>>
The Mischief of ASBOs >>>
I agree
with 
The immigration system he proposes is one that I have often advocated, here on this website. I agree that UNHCR should be equipped to decide who has a valid asylum claim, under the 1951 Refugee Convention. It is nonsense that every national Administration should have to build up all the information to process applications from over 100 countries: I am keenly aware that the UK decision-making process (though probably, one of the best) is very fragile and ill-informed. The UN would do a much better job. Nor do I disagree, in principle, with the idea of overall national "immigration quotas" (although Howard's choice of 15,000 pa is fanciful, and brutal). Such quotas should cover the total admissible each year, whether by way of study- or work-permit, or the grant of asylum. The real problems are all practical, and are all ignored by Howard. He repeatedly ignores the vital difference between those those on Work Permits (i.e. already permitted to enter, by the UK State), and asylum-seekers, who are simply fleeing oppression, and seek no permit. For the permit-holders, a Conservative Government could simply close down the system (although they would not, because the workforce is needed). But for asylum-applicants, the position is quite different. Where will the asylum applicant reside, while waiting for a UN decision? At whose expense? By definition, the Applicant cannot stay at home; and Labour Minister Des Browne has warned that there was no possibility of negotiating safe havens with third-party states, just to solve a UK problem. My view is that if the Applicant chooses to come to the UK, the UNHCR should decide the case right here, with jurisdiction transferred from our own tribunals. Successful Applicants (i.e. then refugees within the strict meaning of the term) would be allocated by the UN within the framework of a quota system pre-agreed internationally. Howard has simply taken the germ of a viable international system (which would take perhaps ten years to negotiate) and jumped the gun with his own half-baked version. The result will be to increase social tensions, damage the good name of the UK, and cause untold anguish to thousands of vulnerable immigrants. He has a heavy burden of responsibility to bear.
Glaucoma 
I
have just been diagnosed, at 69, as having glaucoma - well, my right eye
is showing signs of the loss of peripheral vision which is characteristic
of glaucoma. My Swansea grandfather, it transpires, had glaucoma,
and it has visited me. There is every prospect, I am advised, of arresting any
further worsening of my sight by appropriate treatment, but damage which
has already been done cannot be reversed.
But I do have a gift. It is the ability not to expend any energy on things that cannot be changed or affected. I seem to be psychologically equipped, by accident of personal history, to worry only about things that I can change. And this is not one of them.
OFCOM gets busy liberating local radio... 
This man,
Nigel Reeve, is setting Swansea alight. The local radio stage is buzzing. Remember
Swansea Bay Radio, just before Christmas?
Preparing to compete for the new local franchise, to be offered this
year? I broadcast a chat-show, on local business matters...
As a mere wordsmith, and journeyman of the TalkRadio community, I do not want to burn my boats by commitment to any of the competing capitalists. Does anyone have any advice for me? PS I am very interested in this type of syndicated investment, and would welcome your examples. The method is used on the Continent by the excellent bargain-hotel chain Campanile but it has failed miserably here, seemingly because it does not meet investors' required returns-on-capital - your thoughts welcome. Kalan Karim
My home-town of Swansea has been doubly shamed by the death of Kalan Karim, an Iraqi refugee. He was killed last October by a single blow to the head by a drunken local racist, in the very centre of the City. His killer was brought to Court this week, and the Court accepted a plea of guilty to manslaughter.
The first is the racism which interpenetrates Swansea life. It is real. We are 200-miles from London, removed from many of the multicultural influences that civilise our larger cities. And I acknowledge that the racism of Swansea is statistically "normal" in that one must routinely work to overcome its incidence and influence. Given our geographical isolation we may be a little worse than comparable English towns - but not, I suspect, by a large margin. There is no doubt that this was a racist killing, and that was fully acknowledged, this week, in Court. But second, there is the shame of the plea to manslaughter, accepted by the Prosecution and the Judge. As a lawyer, I am quite certain that this killing was murder or nothing: a violent death, from a single heavy blow from behind, to the back of the skull, coupled with a very evident desire to do serious harm, alcohol or no alcohol. The crime of murder has never required proof of intention to kill, merely to inflict serious harm. And I have tried to understand why the Prosecution settled for manslaughter, on the grounds that there was no intention to kill... The second shame is, I suspect, related to the first. What if a Swansea-empanelled jury turned out to contain enough racist jurors to scupper a murder verdict? There might have been an acquittal, or a re-trial - which would have been a race-relations disaster. I have agonised this week over what my decision, as Prosecutor, would have been. The "right" course was to press the murder charge - and yet the price of failure would have been high. The pragmatic course would have been to accept a manslaughter plea, put the killer quickly behind bars, move on, and allow the wounds in the community to heal.
Conduct Unbecoming
The dismissal of bookseller Joe Gordon, from the Edinburgh branch of Waterstone’s, demonstrates the need for a more comprehensive commitment to "human rights", along the lines of the UN Declaration. Joe is an instant Humanita hero... That is because the European Convention of Human Rights (now incorporated into UK law, by way of the 1998 Human Rights Act) is limited to the infringement of human rights which are committed by a “public authority”. Joe Gordon's human rights were infringed by his own "private" employer, Waterstones, because of comments about Waterstones in his own private blog The Woolamaloo Gazette . That means that under UK law he has no remedy for the human rights breach. Redistribution...
The latest theme is the possibility of engaging millions of citizens in the governance of their own lives, by way of super-parish Councils. Prescott's commentaries are not encouraging, but at least the theme is the right one.
Cities Resurgent
Political interest is turning again to the empowerment of our great city regions. The BBC transfer to Manchester (< this is Manchester City Hall) is a brilliant and perceptive move, a trailblazer. And I make no apology for republishing for you, my own proposals for city regional government, made in 1996.
The Fabians are a great, enlightened Left-Wing political community some 7,000-strong - and we have many skills among our number.
050124 Make sure you
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Do
you approve this latest Revision of the EU Constitution, which strengthens
the EU in the war against terrorism and as a humanitarian aid donor, and
accommodates the increasing number of European member States?
Be
suspicious of any politician who claims to have a "contract" with the
people. For the 17th century John Locke, the grand concept of a
Social Contract served a
particular theoretical purpose. He argued that the authority of
government itself arose from an implied contract between the people and
their sovereign, the Government. The people agreed to obey, the
Sovereign agreed to protect - there was there a certain parity. He
rebelled against the legitimacy of armed conquest, or Divine Right, so he sought a source of political
legitimacy in the peaceable civil concept of contract.
This
is dangerous, authoritarian nonsense.
And Milburn's latest opus is
positively menacing: it
appeared in The Guardian last week, offering contract terms
to the electorate: "If you play by the rules, you get a chance to
progress", says Milburn. 
Are
you a potential recruit for
Yet
the necessary principles and values can all be found in the UN Declaration of 1948.
Historically, that was a moment when the primacy of personal freedom and
dignity was better understood than now. The perceptions of the UN
Declaration are therefore of particular value - and we can draw upon them
for political inspiration. 
And read my Big Theory itself, at 
My own politics are unashamedly
structural. I believe
the key malaise of modern public life is the over-centralisation of power -
in London, in Whitehall, in Westminster, in Cardiff, in Edinburgh. For
power to be constructive, it must be spread around, re-structured and divided
in new ways.
We need a
radical redistribution of power, throughout civic society.
This is essentially a socialist cause: markets will never achieve it, nor
will the Tories. It is now as important as the redistribution of wealth - far more citizen
participation is needed, in newly designed institutions. Also a drive
to rehabilitate the profession of public administrative service, at all
levels - akin to the radical reforms undertaken by the Victorians (Northcote-Trevelyan
reforms, of the 1870s).