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Week 38 Monday Absentee Editor For the last four weeks, I have been absent from the Editor's desk - removed, not by illness or by recreation, but professional inundation. Now qualified as an OISC Immigration Adviser Level 3, I have been working 15/18 hours a day, sleeping for five hours in every twenty-four. I have had no time to wed-edit, or to stay in touch with you: for that, I unreservedly apologise.
A meagre annual increase, but you are clearly keeping up your interest, although the September figures are bound to be weak, with my sluggish editing. Thanks for your continuing support. Roger Warren Evans Web Editor Religious Fallacy 
A new fallacy stalks our Press. It is that in "understanding the causes of terrorism", there is a special role for Christian church-leaders in working with their Muslim counterparts. Religion, so the reasoning goes, should talk unto religion. Last Sunday I attended, in Swansea's Guildhall, a civic service organised by the Swansea Interfaith Forum, which allied church and synagogue, chapel and mosque, Hinduism and Buddhism. It was a bland, insignificant event - even for the hundreds who came. For the truth is that the underlying problem is political, not religious. I reject the idea that "the problem" lies with religious extremism itself, whether Islamic, Christian or Jewish. The political issue lies rather with the creation of a political and social order which can accommodate the most diverse combination of individual views, beliefs, obsessions, conspiracies. Can we create un cadre neutre (to extend le pouvoir neutre model of Montesquieu) which can neutralise the destructiveness of all extremism, wherever it comes from? That is the question.
New Orleans 
New Orleans has spawned great agonies, for everyone, over the proper scope of the public realm. The hurricane has erupted into great political debate, about socialism, about inequality, about an impoverished public realm. In the States, it has generated real personal anguish for many, not least Michael Moore. But those agonies mesh with the European debate about the scope of "Rhineland" model of the Welfare State and the lighter Anglo-Social model. Also with the anxious searching of Liu Kaiyang, the young Chinese Communist diplomat whom I met last month at the Chinese Embassy in London. 
And in the UK, we seem smug about the relative "success" of our own model, carved out by Thatcher and Blair. Now: I do not wholly "disapprove" of that model: I think that it much to commend it, and Gordon Brown has much to be proud of. But it suffers two deep-running faultlines, which should wipe any smiles on British faces. First: Our model fails to address two central fears of everyday life - (1) Old age - the awful insecurity of old age, and worries about old age - the state pensions promise is still not determined, and it is the sheet-anchor of everyone's sense of personal security. (2) Unemployment - our State also fails to address the other great fear of everyone's lives, namely unemployment - for millions of people in the UK, unemployment means poverty, and new thinking is needed to address these anxieties. Secondly: we are steadily losing our sense of fair play, of equality before the law, of the primacy of civil liberties and their permeation of the entire quality of life. We are becoming a less tolerant, more authoritarian society. That process is being fuelled by the paranoia of professional politicians, who fear the loss of personal power above all else. They are prepared to sacrifice our liberties for the preservation of their power. The War on Terrorism and the War on Drugs seem to justify draconic measures which will surely change our liberal society beyond recognition. The jury system is threatened. The independence of the judiciary is threatened. Freedom of speech is threatened, with or without the awful crime of "glorifying" terrorism. Even our adherence to the European Convention of Human Rights is being questioned. Police forces are expanding in size, and their powers of intervention being increased.
Keep Sounds obvious, doesn't it? But it's not a Government aspiration for failed asylum-seekers. Having failed to "manage" the removal of failed asylum-seekers, the Government is now trying to terrify them into leaving "voluntarily". Asylum Benefit is to be withdrawn, throwing those families into destitution, with the consequence that local authorities must take the children into care. Parliament is taking the gloves off, using terror to achieve ends which they say cannot be achieved by management. Our MPs voted for these draconic powers, in Section 9 of the 2004 Asylum & Immigration Act. Parliament has abandoned the principles of ordinary human decency, in pursuit of a populist, and racist, objective.
Tory Leadership
Michael Howard is right to argue that Tory MPs, should choose their own Parliamentary leader. But he is wrong to deprive the Party grassroots of the power that they have so recently acquired, without offering them a genuine power-sharing deal. This is precisely the problem which was addressed by the reform proposals made by Peter Fitzgerald and myself, for the Labour Party. In both Parties, the political salariat has sucked all the power from the rank-and-file "Party in the Country", leaving Party members bereft - bereft of influence, of function, of political relevance. MPs need constituency parties to ensure their personal professional survival (i.e. electoral success) but not otherwise. And in both Parties, rank-and-file members are deeply distressed and isolated. Michael Howard has run foul of that distress. Without power-sharing, his reform proposals will fail. But in all parties, the issue remains to be addressed, and will not go away. The Party-in-the-Country must be given its own worthwhile share of Party power, with its own Chairman and Executive. The politicians should be allowed to manage their own "parliamentary Branch". Only the Welsh Nationalists, Plaid Cymru, have hit upon the right solution. For Labour, Peter Fitzgerald and I even drafted all the necessary amendments to the Labour Party Constitution, to achieve that power-sharing - for aficionados, they are set out here.
Simon not Alan
My view is that the glory of UK citizenship is precisely that it has no cultural content. We have traditionally resisted the awfulness of the American citizenship ceremonies. We have accorded citizenship simply to the person, without assigning any cultural content to that status. That is, in itself, a brilliant political institution, convention, practice. UK citizenship is a sparse, minimalist concept, and long may it last. Everyone should do that, so that the sting is drawn, from "identity politics".
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Corporate Theft by Proxy >>> A very Welsh Connection >>> "Moodmeter" measures confidence >>> 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 >>> Drop the school-leaving age >>> Countering Fundamentalism >>> Against Unreasonable Inequality >>> Abolish Wrongful Dismissal >>> Adjustment Pay for every worker >>>
The Guardian Two I would not ordinarily link Hattersley with Younge. The latter is far more creative, and perceptive, the former rarely innovative. But on a single page, this week, they combined to give two messages with which truly resonate with mine. 
Gary Younge warned against too much sentimental concern with "integration" in racial matters: the more important need, he argued, was fundamental equality - decent pay and living conditions for all, regardless of colour or creed. That was the best "integrating" factor, he argued. It is a powerful socialist piece, and I commend it to you. 
Roy Hattersley embraced the unpopular cause of legalising "secondary industrial action", or sympathy strikes. I am sure that workers should be entitled to make the sacrifices which a sympathy strike entails - in support of fellow workers. Employers ordinarily stick together, when faced with rebellious workers, and their "sympathetic action" is never considered unacceptable. And what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Our repressive TU laws have trespassed too far upon individual freedom of opinion and association - we should row back from this Thatcherite illiberalism. Sustained
Hatfield
Corporations, or artificial legal persons, can never be "managed" by conceptual methods designed for "natural persons", human beings, sentient, intelligent, and with some sense of morality. Corporations have none of these attributes. They are mere statutory slave-mechanisms, abdroids, manipulated by human intelligence for a diversity of ends - both legitimate and illegitimate. It is nonsense to think that such artificial constructs can be "held responsible" in any general sense. The "corporate manslaughter" fallacy nevertheless persists. It is a thread running through my personal concerns, over several years - check out my reasoning. Humphrys
As a fellow Welshmen brought up in Cardiff, and a political anorak to boot, I suppose I "should" approve of John Humphrys. But I do not. Humphrys' natural proclivity, when it comes to politics, is to trivialise everything, to besmirch motives, to sneer and diminish. He cannot help it - it's hard-wired into his character. James Naughtie has none of these crippling attributes, nor did the redoubtable Brian Redhead before him. But John Humphrys diminishes the quality of political debate and perception, for millions of people. He is well-suited to the after-dinner circuit, which is where he should stay. The sooner he leaves Today, the better I will be pleased. Flat Tax 
This debate has blossomed, and is now said to be the "coming idea" of the New Right. Angela Merkel is a convert, in Germany, and the idea has "miraculously" been adopted by several emerging Eastern European market economies. So the story runs... How short are political memories! Which was the first country to pioneer a "flat" rate of income tax, in the 1920s? You've guessed it: the Soviet Union. There was a standard-rate of 10% Income Tax, accompanied by a flat rate of 10% for compulsory savings.
In our modern Western States, in which
unacceptable disparities of wealth continue to disfigure our societies, and
Turkey 
I am dismayed at the strength of the anti-Turkish lobby. It seems that both Germany and France (perhaps joined by Italy) will gang up to oppose the accession of Turkey to the European Union.
If we seek to define Europe (or any of its component States) in "monocultural" terms, that will be a grave setback to the emergence of a truly successful social and political order. The future lies with creative diversity, secured by political and constitutional conventions. If Turkey otherwise qualifies, the doors of "Christendom" must not be closed against her.
Web Mining With web-logging, 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, in the middle of August in - 
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Make sure you have not missed
Week 38 Monday
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One
omission was my regular monthly hit-count check for August - there are the
August figures, historically - 
The challenge is to forge a constitutional order in
which every person is respected and valued without regard
for religion, or ethnicity, or gender. All extremism tests to the
limit our commitment to a generous, liberal, respectful - and
free - civic order. And at the
moment, we are failing to meet that challenge...
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
Simon Partridge
has been thrust to the fore,
by the London bombings. Yep! Simon, not Alan. Simon is
an independent political analyst, one of whose specialities is the study
of the very concept of Britishness. The bombings have brought a
surge of interest in this elusive subject, and Simon is pitching in with
the best of them. A new E-mail arrived from him on Monday, and 
Labour,
under the dismal Blair/Blunkett Duo, started down the slippery path of
substantive definition, with their "Naturalisation Ceremonies". I
think those ceremonies should be abolished, and we should return to the simple process
of issuing a passport when required, without formality and without cultural baggage.
That is the right way to organize a multicultural society.
And read my Big Theory itself, at 
Personal
E-contacts have brought to my desk a remarkable open letter from Michael
Moore to the US Republican party, on Bush and New Orleans. If you have
not read it, via E-networks,
The Hatfield Crash
jury verdict was given, while I was "away". No findings of
"corporate manslaughter", as public and TU opinion demanded. These demands, however, are
completely
misconceived. 
I also "missed" the fracas surrounding
John Humphrys' after-dinner speeches, about which I care not one jot.
But I do care about the perpetual trivialising and demeaning of public
political discourse for which he has been responsible. 