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Renewing participatory democracy Multiple Differential Uncertainty
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050718
Make sure you have not missed the previous edition Check it out And the one before that? Other recent topics highlighted here
Week 29 Friday Two Women Two of my favourite women are delighted this week. Delighted at the perception, courage and eloquence of Lord Justice Brooke, who gave the Government short shrift when he overruled its miserable, authoritarian teenage "Exclusion Zones". They are both delighted that this authoritarian gimmick has been de-railed, by a liberally-minded Judge.
We can learn 
I have learnt much from the London bombings. There is a grim satisfaction in knowing that I guessed right. I have learnt that the mind of the suicide bomber is entirely understandable, accessible. I have learnt again that the future of civilisation does indeed lie with a generous, liberal, individualist socialism, which alone can address the "wrongs" perceived by the bombers. I have learnt that the most extreme malfunctions of the human spirit can occur under our noses, in our own backyard, in the private places of our own minds. And I have learnt the sheer bloody irrelevance of ID cards, and the wickedness of Labour's actions in introducing them.
Iraq Occupation
Robin Cook
TheGuardian
15/7
Thank heavens for Robin Cook. He now adds his voice to the "Troops Out" cry, in Iraq. Last week, I drew your attention to an intriguing article by Sami Ramadani, who is a political refugee from Saddam's Iraq, now lecturing in London. He argued that we are now being "sold" the idea that a continuing US presence is essential to the maintenance of order in Iraq. Just as we were "sold" the myth of WMD. Theft by Proxy
It was the incredible salary inflation which occurred, throughout the BBC, when ITV was launched. BBC salaries trebled - at a stroke. As the Directors and senior managers of ITV began to pay themselves telephone-number salaries - BBC salaries "had to follow suit". It is now commonplace to keep a rolling comparison of top public and private sector salaries, dragging public service salaries up to similar astronomical levels. Yet corporate Board remuneration-fixing is nothing less than theft, with monopolistic managers exploiting both shareholders and the "the workers": see Corporate Kleptocracy. Company law, nationally and internationally, permits Directors to steal systematically from their own companies - without legal challenge. And their criminality has the effect of inflating public sector salaries, including the remuneration of MPs.
Kenneth Harris and us
For me, the link was a debating one - through a common love of debating, evidently also a Welsh trait. We both "did" the American University debating tour in our respective times, organised by the English Speaking Union. He represented Oxford in 1947, I represented Cambridge in 1959. After America, I met him in the context of the Observer debating "Mace" competition. I think I was a guest Judge, one year.
Web Mining As web-logging proliferates, a new form of modern history becomes possible. I can now give you an insight into what was "in the news" for the matching week, one two, and three years ago. This is how the world looked to me,at the end of April -
Nobody has The ID Card debate is generating valuable commentary, at least in TheGuardian. One of the most disarming arguments ("If you've nothing to hide, why object?") is tackled head-on in a perceptive "leader" by Muriel Gray. We all have things to hide. And our personal lives, and our personal freedoms, are the richer for the right to do so. Those freedoms will be undoubtedly whittled away by the ID Card system. "Police State" is an emotive term, which does nothing to further the debate. But Labour is certainly constructing the threatening infrastructure of a surveillance society, with the new NHS database offering an even more sinister backdrop to the venture. And congratulations to Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, for his strong stand against it.
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What do interest rates mean? >>> Labour Party my resignation >>> My uncle, in the Assam Cabinet >>> Electoral reform My conversion >>> New principle Public Primacy >>> The Power of Private Property >>> Corporate Kleptocracy >>> Drop the school-leaving age >>> Countering Fundamentalism >>> Against Unreasonable Inequality >>> Abolish Wrongful Dismissal >>> Adjustment Pay for every worker >>>
Dear Mr. Evans... 
Tony Blair has at last replied to my resignation letter. Well, I say "replied" - rather, acknowledged. And I say "Tony Blair" as an abstraction. Judge for yourself ...
Turning the Tables 
I gotta theory! With economic indicators weakening, the analysts study investment rates and intentions, international capital movements, industrial productivity, return on capital employed. And occasionally, they take a sideways glance at "High Street spending", just to see how we (as shoppers) are reacting. They have got it wrong. It's the other way 'round. Everything is driven by the High Street. Over 70% of global demand is consumer demand, with the remainder accounted for by government spending. My own model is of an economy principally driven by "consumer" demand, with Government expenditure a supplementary and compensating factor. "Consumer" is a much-maligned word, with overtones of excess, conspicuous and pointless expenditure. But that is misplaced: it relates to everything we choose to do with our money - walk the hills, recycle our waste, play hockey, build a home extension, tend the garden, go to the theatre, drink cheap wine, take "drugs", learn the piano, collect bottle-tops, visit prostitutes, play Bingo - anything and everything. And our propensity to consume lies at the heart of every modern economy. It is of course limited by the amount of money we each have available to spend, or how much we can borrow - but that is a secondary factor. What matters is whether or not we are minded to consume, rather than save. And that propensity is determined, differently from country to country, by a thousand different factors - my full theory is spelt out in a 1992 essay of mine.
The result would be a running commentary on public (and therefore "consumer") confidence. It would not be unlike the audience-reaction measures used by political advisers to monitor the effect of each phrase, each gesture in a political speech. Central transmitters would pick up this avalanche of feel-good and feel-bad factors, and assess the balance between the two. If the balance were persistently negative, the economy would be heading for deterioration - and vice-versa.
Highland
clearances This is "code-name" I have given to my current campaign to clear my attic. I am turning the house upside down. I have had to clear out the detritus of
the last ten years, to make room for my current obsessions.
Out have gone the records of
my Directorships of Aquaterra (the pioneering charitable leisure
trust, in Islington and Bath), and of Pondskater Limited, the
innovative canal-transport company which will yet transform inland
waterborne transport in the UK.
050718
Make sure you have not missed
Week 29 Friday
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Created by GMID Design & Communication COPYRIGHT
NOTICE |
The first is my own daughter Katharine,
who has been a consistent and fearless campaigner against ASBOs, and the
ruthless demonisation of teenagers, led by a Government bereft of
constructive and humane thinking. Katharine is Policy Officer
at the Childrens Society, and deeply committed to teenage rights.
Successive Labour Home Secretaries - Straw, Blunkett, and Clarke have sunk
lower and lower in their search for nastier, more authoritarian, thuggish
methods with which to demonise our young people. Why do they do it?
Because it plays well on the streets, like flogging, and the death-penalty
and xenophobia.
What
have you learnt?
The scandal of BBC management bonuses
brings back memories. They are of 1961, a key year in my political
development - all because of TV, and BBC. 
The time is ripe for new company
legislation, to counter managerial wrongdoing
Both Elizabeth and I had "connections" with the late Kenneth Harris,
who died this week, aged 88. For Elizabeth, the connection was Welsh
aristocracy of birth: she was born in the same tiny enclave of
Aberaman as he was, on the
road from Cardiff to Aberdare, near Aberdare. In our long
single-highway valleys, every distinctive stretch of of the road claims
separate village identity, and Aberaman
is no exception. 
Having
discovered this remarkable NASA website, linked with the Hubble Telescope
and the NASA Mars exploration vehicles, with its current photographs from
outer space, I am reluctant
And read my Big Theory itself, at