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Renewing participatory democracy Multiple Differential Uncertainty
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051219 Make sure you have not missed the previous edition Check it out And the one before that? Other recent topics highlighted here
Week 51 Monday Editorial opportunism
The accident of misdelivery has worked wonders with this Friday morning, and given me much to think about today, just as I hear the late-delivered Guardian arriving on the doormat... Happiness? It's about avoiding anxiety...
I suggest that the natural condition of the adult human is one of anxiety and pessimism. That is the inevitable effect of man's intelligence, self-awareness, and sheer inquisitiveness, the drive for understanding. Let's face it, it has never been easy, at any time in human history, to be a great optimist about the future. Job was quite right. But in evolutionary terms, pessimism and depression are killers: depression and despair can inhibit the urge to procreate. And so mankind is continually devising new ways of overcoming anxiety.
Marketing gone mad
"Law at the heart of Government"? Tell that to those who launched the Iraq Invasion. Tell that to those "rendered" prisoners, conveniently spirited through Northolt. Tell that to the failed asylum-seekers, hunted throughout the UK, moved from pillar-to-post to avoid legal intervention, arbitrarily arrested and arbitrarily released. The Law has abandoned them.
Pensions & Nuclear 
I agree with Tony Blair on two of the great issues of the hour - pensions, and nuclear power. On both issues, I believe that his nose is taking him in the right direction. On pensions, I agree with the strategy of going for a "high" basic universal pension, payable in full at 69 or 70. I agree with the principle of moving from contributory to a Citizens Pension at 75, to the massive advantage of older women with weak contribution records. I agree with the proposed voluntary "State" savings scheme, although I prefer some element of compulsory savings, as in the former Soviet Union. That system will bring confidence and peace of mind to the middle-aged, which is a key dimension of pensions policy: it is less a matter of eventual performance than the management of anticipation, and of fear, among the middle-aged. On nuclear power, we should continue to focus on solving the problems of nuclear power production and waste disposal. Nuclear power is the only option which offers a future for the entire world, offering the prospect of achieving greater global equality eventually, and realising the hopes of all future generations. I know that I have clashed with you, my readers, before on this issue - but do write again, if you still disagree...
But my overall position on "Blair" is complex, because I think I understand what he is trying to do. The tragedy is that he does not have the intellect or the right values to fashion his initiative into any kind of coherent whole. That is why he must go, and the sooner the better - regardless of David Cameron. WTO falters...
That is wrong. The corporations have flourished because Governments have refused to create the control-systems necessary to bring them under control. Yet all the legal ground-rules within which the corporations flourish are determined some Government, somewhere. They are all "artificial persons", existing only by leave of a nation state. Flourishing in a very benign legal environment (particularly in the UK and USA), their influence has grown like an unchecked cancer through our lives, particularly public life. The time has come for a root-and-branch reform of international company law.
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Christmas Fear
These tactics, which are wholly unnecessary, have the sole purpose of spreading fear and anxiety throughout the newcomer community generally, to frighten others to leave "voluntarily", without requiring the Home Office to spend money on the further forcible removal. And it is certainly creating great fear, particularly among families with children.
New History What were we thinking about, in this run-up to Christmas - last year, two years ago, three years ago - FOUR years ago? With modern web-logging, you can check that out - a new form of modern history becomes possible. These extracts are newly-mined today 17 December 2005. This is how the world looked to me, at this time of year, in - *Recent topics Asylum Management my reforms >>> Turkey should join Europe >>> What New Orleans means for UK >>> Josef Stalin and Flat Tax >>> Corporate Theft by Proxy >>> What do interest rates mean? >>> Labour Party my resignation >>> New principle Public Primacy >>> The Power of Private Property >>> Drop the school-leaving age >>> Against Unreasonable Inequality >>> Abolish Wrongful Dismissal >>> Adjustment Pay for every worker >>>
Busted flush
But I cannot refrain from observing that this is one of the penalties of having a political salariat in which every member is "in it for the salary". There are few potential leaders, because leadership is a high-risk enterprise, personally and financially, and most of our politicians are not in that business - check out the emergence of the political salariat.
Britishness?
Identity is a matter of individuality, an attribute of the natural person, a matter of precious human experience. It is not some compendium of collective generalisations which in the end apply to nobody. In race relations too, community is a fallacy - all the paraphernalia of multi-culturalism (or any culturalism) is destructive and distracting. Every individual seeks to be valued on a personal, individual basis - that is a constant affirmation of identity, and we all need that. That is our human birthright, the essence of the Human Rights philosophy (or religion...). There is no such thing (pace Durkheim) as a collective consciousness, une conscience collective - that way lies dictatorship, even fascism.
Bad Hair Month We bloggers live by hit-counts. And die by hit-counts. November has come and gone, with my having returned to the Editor's desk just once in the month. I have been duly punished, for lack of creativity. From a 2004 November high of 1515 hits, my miserable monthly hit-count has fallen to 1158 this year. The hit-count is ruthless - it takes no account of good excuses. But I shall return! Roger WE Editor....
"As long as drugs are illegal This is Polly Toynbee's headline The Guardian. Hers is a courageous and principled position. If you want the opportunity to make your own public declaration in support of the decriminalisation of drugs, check out and sign in at the Angel Declaration.
And Polly Toynbee is in good company,
the world over: many thousands of the world's leading citizens have
called for the decriminalisation of "drugs"...
 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
the previous edition Check it out And the one before that? Other recent topics highlighted here
Week 51 Monday
Take a look below.. This is a free-standing "island"
galaxy, and the
picture spans a width of 200,000 light-years. Just to get things
into Christmas perspective. More at
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Created by GMID Design & Communication ... in a manner of speaking... COPYRIGHT
NOTICE |
My web-editing has become opportunistic.
By that, I mean that I must seize every passing spare moment to bring you
up-to-date. It is Friday morning, 23 December, and a newsagent's
misdelivery has brought us The Independent, instead of
The
Guardian. I am bowled over by the quality of their three major
"political" features this morning. I was stimulated and
"provoked" by every one of them.
Steve
Richards writes a masterly analysis of the destruction
which is being
New research suggests that "success" in
life, in any sector, is a consequence
of happiness, not vice-versa: thus
reported The Guardian 
Indeed
every individual, I say, develops a distinctive combination of techniques to
combat anxiety. We are always deploying counter-measures, consciously or
sub-consciously, to relieve the anxiety which is our natural lot. Politics
and religion play their part, as does art, insurance, falling in love, being
around children, the creative arts and crafts, immersion in sports and hobbies,
seeking oblivion with drugs or alcohol, absorbing the continuities of history,
cultivating tribal loyalties, and the deliberate truncation of horizons.
Each of us has a distinctive cocktail of counter-measures, which keep us
sane and operational, if only in Darwinian terms. And the high
incidence of depression, in all societies is - I say - only to be expected.
It's natural.
The institutions of Government themselves
should not be "spun". It is demeaning to Government, and
disrespectful to the citizen. I have just received a letter from the
Treasury Solicitor, bearing this new logo: I am helping an asylum-seeker, as her "MacKenzie
Friend" to challenge a legal mistake by the Home Secretary. 
I do not want to be "sold" the agencies
of my own Government, as if they were chocolate bars. Government is
essentially a coercive institution, not a retailer seeking customers.
No prisoner "chooses" his jailer. And as for the Home Office's own slogan,
it is insensitive and distasteful - "Towards a
safe, just and tolerant
society" - what po-faced pomposity! Who approved
this strap-line? Tell that to those who are imprisoned without charge, or
destitute asylum-seekers on our streets, or those roughed up by the
Police, or subject to incessant stop-and-search. 
I believe that the morale and strength of
Governments is being sapped by the influence of the big capitalist corporations.
The failure of the WTO Hong Kong Summit is an indication of a lack of will
to support policies which are seen as "anti-capitalist", against the
interests of the corporations. 
For many thousands of failed
asylum-seekers, the key emotion this Christmas will be fear. Every
morning brings the fear of the knock-at-the-door, and of forcible
immediate removal, by armed officers, with no notice and no chance to say good-bye.
I am deeply ashamed of my country, and of my Government.
And read my Big Theory itself, at 
Charles
Kennedy should go. The rise in the Liberal Democrat vote
has had little to do with him, more with Blair's unprincipled dismantling of Labour morale, and the obvious incompetence of the Tories.
Kennedy has done nothing to articulate a coherent liberal position, when that
is what is urgently required, for the sake of British politics as a
whole. Cameron's perception is a correct one, although I dread to
think what his Strange Resurrection of Liberal England
would look like.
I value the Fabians. And
I encourage you to go to their open annual Conference in London, on
Saturday 14 January 2006. The theme is
Who do we want to be? The Future of Britishness.
And the keynote speech will come from Gordon Brown..
