|
|
Back to Home Page
|
|
Renewing participatory democracy Multiple Differential Uncertainty
|
050404 Make sure you
have not missed the previous edition Check it out And the one before that? Other recent topics highlighted here
Week 14 Monday 
Catching up No more excuses! My timetable has made contemplative web-editing an impossibility. The pressures of pro bono work on the asylum-seeker front have come to absorb my week, with problems that are personal, pressing, demanding, exhausting. My application to the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner for registration as a Level 3 Immigration Adviser is still pending. I still face the awful restrictions of trying to assist asylum seekers as a "Next Friend" or "MacKenzie Friend", seeking at all time the consent of the Court, without formal status. It is a wearing and stressful process. This is a "quickie" round-up of my position on the issues that confront me. (1) Asylum Justice I have triggered this week the establishment of a new national charity, Asylum Justice, to mobilise others to join me in this work. The Government's relentless nastiness to asylum-seekers gets worse this month, as time-limits are cut and legal aid resources further reduced. My thanks to the excellent 
City Solicitors Bates Wells & Braithwaite for backing me with a commitment to do the necessary legal work for its establishment on a pro bono footing. I am also working with the new Young Foundation of Bethnal Green (Geoff Mulgan and the Michael Young succession and inheritance). I am deeply grateful to both organisations for their understanding and support. If you have ideas, or can assist either as a lawyer or a layman, please... (3) Death of the Pope 
In my own spiritual journey (and we all have one, of some kind or another...) I have preferred the simplicities of Quaker fellowship, and the rejection of all ritual, pomp and circumstance. I feel far removed from the priestly procedures of Catholicism - I suppose even share the traditional non-conformist suspicion of Roman Catholicism. But of one thing I am sure. This life is the only one we have. All the mysteries of life are enriched by the recognition that each individual consciousness comes into existence with birth, and terminates with death. I have no doubt either that there is some element of common consciousness which we do not understand, reflecting our common spiritual inheritance, binding us all in common humanity and linking us with all forms of life, indeed with the energy of the entire universe. It is that energy, which is the deity we all divine, and strive to understand. Flawed
I have nothing more to say, on the destructive spat about the legal opinion of the Attorney General, over the legality of the Iraq invasion. I said my piece last month.
Michael & 
This is a new political act. "Michael" is Michael Howard, who has led the Tories in their opportunistic assault on travellers and gypsies - and even more remarkably, on the Human Rights Act. "The Maloneys" are the gypsy family whose legal action has triggered this seedy political spat.
Never miss
"Old" Federalism
|
Ralph Erskine The Great >>> Darwinian " strangers" >>> "Corporate Manslaughter" fallacy >>> Labour's philosophical vacuum >>> Forget Iraq? No fear! >>> Camilla's Wedding - go ahead >>> Bangladesh legal bombshell >>> Disabled-friendly websites >>> Language the music of the mind >>> Asylum destitution grave injustice >>> I will vote Labour, but... >>> Migration should be legal >>> London dysfunctional city >>> Referendum? Wrong question >>> How politicians abuse "contracts" >>> Abolish Wrongful Dismissal >>> Adjustment Pay for every worker >>>
.... drop me a line
(2) Resigned to ResignationTo make way for the work of Asylum Justice, I have this week resigned two of my major charity Trusteeships - the one at Aquaterra Leisure, the other at LIBRI, the charity for libraries. Both take me regularly to London (it's 400-mile round-trip, from Swansea) and I am finding the regular commuting both time-consuming and demanding. Shelf-space must be cleared for other concerns. And the needs of asylum-seekers are now my higher priority... (4) It's not
My concerns are essentially about Blair himself. They are not "about the Iraq War" as such: I am not a pacifist, and I can understand the arguments for "toppling" Saddam Hussein, if that is what was done. I meet too many Iraqis, in my asylum work, who praise the invasion - and I do not take their testimony lightly. My concern is with the evidence of Blair's character weakness, and flawed morality, displayed in the abuse of power that triggered the invasion. He showed that he was capable of enormous, almost insane, self-delusion. He subordinated means to ends, in pursuit of an unmeritorious end. He is a brilliant political showman, capable of persuading even himself. He will go down in political history for his awesome conceptual and verbal dexterity, which is both his strength and his weakness. I simply wish he was not leading my Party, in spite of his proven political dexterity. For he has failed the probity test, and his capacity for self-delusion, coupled with his unprincipled pragmatism, remains a threat to all of us. It is telling that so many Labour MPs are opting to omit his picture from their Election manifestos.
Gordon's
Lucky, or what? It turns out that the Office for National Statistics had been double-counting the large £3bn-per-annum bill for highway repairs, from the Highways Agency. That sum had been both put aside, in some kind of sinking fund and deducted from the value of the nation's highways each year, by way of "depreciation" (i.e. the amount by which the network wears out, each year).
Well, yes...
Lucky Gordon.
But how could such a massive error come to be made in the first
place? How long has it been going on? It's hardly rocket science, after all. I have checked the
ONS
website, but (surprise, surprise) they do not feature it.
The Public Accounts Committee this week tried
to pin responsibility on Gordon Brown, for fiddling the books - but he
would have none of it. The Office for National Statistics is a
wholly independent agency.
050404 Make sure you
have not missed
Week 14 Monday |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Created by GMID Design & Communication COPYRIGHT
NOTICE |
How
did it all happen? 
And read my Big Theory itself, at 
As the General Election campaign starts, I am gearing
up to "do my bit" for Labour. I will work for Martin Caton, Labour's
candidate for Gower, help to finance Caton's local campaign, and canvass
for him (principally by telephone...). I want to see a strong
Labour Government, not significantly weakened.
But
I am clear that the Labour Party deserves to survive this
episode in its history, and to stay in power - and I will do all that I
can to ensure that it does.
Spare a moment to get to grips with the
happy £3bn accounting error that this week brought an
extra £3bn into the public accounts.