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Diary Note /0038
Tuesday 2 April 2002
for previous DiaryNote/0037

Easter Holiday Edition
Emergency Editorial

I have been “off the air” for a reason which may interest other amateur WebEditors. On Good Friday, for the first time in my Web life, I reached the limit of my standard “free webspace”, the facility included in the standard ISP annual payment (in my case, with Netcom). Capacity: 6144K, Good Friday Usage = 6136.5K– hence disaster!- ‘twas a simple case of an internet Micawber, running out of cyber-readies. Over the weekend, I could not buy additional webspace, and had to resort to emergency editorial measures. Albeit belated, then, this is my light-hearted holiday edition.

Easter Lunch

Psst! Wanna free lunch? Forty top business executives in London assembled for lunch on the Tuesday before Easter, at the invitation of their host, to discuss recruitment. Nothing unusual about that - after all, generous business lunches remain a feature of City life, whatever CBI spin may suggest. Life at the top remains sweet.

Except that on this occasion you and I paid for the lunch. The chilled Chablis, the canapés, the prime beef, the syllabub, the Hine. Because the host was MI6, our own secret Intelligence Service, seeking help with the recruitment of spies, to fight terrorism.

Now: don’t get me wrong. I approve of the strengthening of MI6 for this purpose. Peaceful covert investigation is the right way to counter terrorism, which undoubtedly threatens our civic order. Open military aggression as practised by the USA is both morally wrong and ineffective as a means of countering terrorism. I will continue to protest against the planned bombing of Iraq. So I welcome the MI6 recruitment initiative. But I do not think that organising a boozy City lunch is the right way of going about it. And I certainly do not think that you and I should have been required to pick up the bill.

Avoirdupois Anonymous

My ground-breaking Plan to Become a Thin Person did make some further progress in March – the going is now very tough, but the campaign continues – this is what the record-books say -
19 st 6 lbs (1st January)
18st 5 lbs (1st February)
17 st 12lbs (1st March)
17 st 7 lbs (1st April)
Wish me luck, for April...

Stolichnaya Stymied

Smirnoff is the UK’s top-selling Russian vodka. But competing strongly is Stolichnaya , selling 400,000 bottles in the UK last year on the back of its success in Absolutely Fabulous. But horror! Supplies have fallen foul of Russian inexperience in managing the legal concept of “property”. 67,000 cases of Stolichnaya have been impounded by Court Order at the Port of Kaliningrad, on their way to Britain.

The success of capitalism turns on the effective enforcement of private property rights. And trading with Eastern Bloc countries is hazardous, precisely because of their hazy concepts of “private property”. The ownership of land and buildings (i.e. “real property”) continues to give rise to the most basic conflicts, hampering business. The ownership of movables (i.e. “chattels” or “personal property”) is less problematical, because even Communist regimes had to develop such laws, and enforce them.

But when it comes to abstract property (i.e. “intellectual” property rights – copyright, patents, design and botanical rights),business faces serious pitfalls. And Stolichnaya has fallen foul of one of them. In 1992, the Russian State (in the form of the Ministry of Agriculture) sold the “Stolichnaya” brand to a private Russian company SPI Spirits – indeed, the sale included 42 other brands of vodka, indicating the diversity of Russian vodka consumption. But over the last ten years, as the brands have become more successful in the West, legal disputes have raged over what the 1992 sale really meant.

In late January, the Moscow Arbitration Court ruled that the1992 contract was invalid, and that the brands still belonged to the Ministry of Agriculture, thus purporting to "renationalise" the whole package. Hence the Court Order. Sainsburys and Oddbins are both running out. Threshers, Wine Rack and Victoria Wine (all owned by the same company, First Quench), hold several months’ supply.

I do not know the details of the legal dispute. But I am sure that no UK Court would have done the same. To purport to reverse the effect of a sale, ten years after the event, is clearly absurd. Life must go on. English law has a different approach: if an item of “property” has been transferred from A to B, and the transfer subsequently proves legally defective, the matter is dealt with by an award of damages. Once the sale has been put into effect, everyone deals in practice with the purchaser – and that confidence should not be upset. Life must go on. That’s English pragmatism for you.

Those 67,000 vodka bottles are therefore stuck in Kaliningrad, all because of an unrealistic Russian judge! SPI Spirits are confident that they will win on appeal. So am I. But in the meantime, the vodka could be held on the wharfside for two years , says Agriculture Minister Vladimir Loginov – waiting for the appeal hearing. O dear o dear o dear.

Shout .eu for Europe!

Erkki Liikanen may not be a household name. But he is over the moon this week. As the Brussels Enterprise Commissioner, he has just announced the creation of a new EU domain-name – for both business and domestic use. The new suffix, finally agreed with the international domain managers, will simply be “.eu”. The .eu option has not yet appeared on the Netnames schedule – I did a search over Easter - but I shall certainly “go European” when the arrangementsare in place.

If you are yourself on a “co.uk” E-address, using the “UK national” suffix, you will soon have your websites recorded for posterity. The British Library announced in March that it was now archiving all such websites. All print publishers are required by law to deposit copies at the British Library (or the National Library of Wales, at Aberystwyth) - but websites are exempt. The law has just not caught up with them.

It does not make sense, though, to select suitable archive material simply by use of the “co.uk” suffix. This Diary (for example) is published as “.net”, simply because I like that name. The sensible course would be to require by law all UK-based web-publishers merely to register their websites with the British Library – regardless of their web-address. That would make this new Archive significant, and worthwhile.

"Work, rest and play!"

This Mars jingle did indeed mark out a particular generation. “A Mars a day, helps you work, rest and play” (launched in 1959) was one of the most successful slogans of its time. But forty years is a long time in business, and it is now to be changed. It is too “bloke-focused”, say the experts elegantly, partly because of its long association with the Olympics and the London Marathon. The recipe has been changed and lightened, to increase its appeal to women. The new slogan will be - “Pleasure you can’t measure”. M’m. M’m. Well, girls – did the earth move for you? Let me know what you think

Free parking in France

Amnesties are perilous. At home in the UK, the prospect of an “amnesty” for IRA fugitives has caused great offence. In France, another amnesty is in the news. Custom has it that successful Presidential candidates should grant an amnesty for minor traffic and parking offences. This time, however, both Chirac and Jospin have promised in advance that they will grant an amnesty in May, following the April 21 Election – it has become part of the electoral bidding process! The upshot is that everyone is ignoring the law now, knowing that an amnesty is on the way…

Jean-Jacques Pagnard, the exasperated Maire of Villefranche-sur-Saone near Lyon, has just given up. He has cancelled all law enforcement until 5 May, the planned Amnesty Day. "The amnesty is a scandalous custom", he protests. "It encourages uncivic behaviour, and penalises those who are public-spirited enough to put money in the meter. If the Head of State is going to promise complete impunity to motorists, then we might as well let them park where they hell they want." So no parking tickets then, in Villefranche, until after 5 May…

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Public Primacy for Parks

For many, public parks offer their most accessible form of recreation. Physically accessible, and free at the point of use. Applying the test of Public Primacy , park provision is unambiguously a public function. It is not possible to conjure up an alternative “trading model” of a park, because free, informal access is of the essence of its use, and no “notional market” could never be convincing. Parks defy Thatcherisation.

Parks do not, however, require administration by directly-employed public servants. Park management is not a “personal service” where quality turns on the ethos, commitment and calibre of each individual member of staff. Nor is there any element of national monopoly – indeed, quite the contrary: my home city of Swansea has 43 public parks. It follows that, although park provision is essentially a public function, park management is suitable for contracting out (if the park authority so wishes).

Our municipal parks, many of them a great Victorian innovation, are getting very run down. A recent Government-funded study (Public Park Assessment 2001) has shown that if expenditure were merely to be restored to its 1980 level, it would require an annual budget increase of 83%. In other words, over the last twenty years, annual public park investment has been almost halved.

The hard-nosed will argue that many other leisure pursuits are now on offer, reducing the effective demand for public parks, which is probably true. But the Victorian rationale was not recreation but public health, and Professor Alan Barber of Bristol argues that the health rationale is still cogent.

Socialists should also recognise that our public parks remain a primary recreational resort for many of our fellow citizens, particularly those on low incomes. The Thatcherite run-down of investment was wicked, and wrong-headed. It should be reversed.

Press Freedom 2
Human Rights 0

I am annoyed with the sheer incompetence of the UK media, including BBC Radio and TV. In reporting the “privacy” cases of Naomi Campbell and Gary Flitcroft, the Meeja gave the impression that the law was in disarray. Lawyers were said to be in despair, judges terminally confused.

That is simply not so. The message of Easter Week was quite clear. Press freedom was decisively enhanced and consolidated, enabling the media searchlight to be operated fearlessly. Gary Flitcroft, the obscure footballer who wanted to keep his marital affairs secret, was sent packing by the Courts. In the case of Naomi Campbell, the DailyMirror was decisively supported in its decision to publish and condemn her dishonest concealment of her drug addiction. It was certainly a matter of public interest, said the Judge, because she had consistently denied the story in public. That denial was therefore open to public challenge, and the Mirror was entitled to challenge..

Both Gary Flitcroft and Naomi Campbell learnt that the price of celebrity was publicity. We live by our celebrities, both commercial and political. They provide us with our entertainment, our political education, material for our moral development, and the content of our day-to-day conversation – and they are paid very well for making themselves available for those purposes. There was no sign of the Courts’ developing a legal doctrine of “privacy”, in reliance upon the Human Rights Act – although in the case of “truly private” persons, the Courts’ view might well be different.

The Courts added only one qualification. And that related to property rights, not to any personal law or human right. Details of Naomi Campbell’s medical record were, Mr Justice Morland ruled, matters of “confidential information”.  Confidential information is a branch of intellectual property law, affecting confidential relationships both in private and business life. The learned Judge ruled that details of her attendance at a Narcotics Anonymous clinic did “bear the mark of confidentiality…,” – he said that the Mirror had resorted to “surreptitious covert photography”, and that the information had been relayed to the Mirror by someone with an “obligation of confidence”. It was typically English that the Judge should resort to an arm of property law, to de-limit Press freedom.

The "confidential information" constraint is of limited effect, and will not inhibit Piers Morgan (Mirror) or David Yelland (Sun) or Alan Rusbridger (Guardian) in their fearless pursuit of justice. Press freedom has been decisively upheld and confirmed, and the human rights arguments suitably contained. And for my part, I am content with that. Where is the confusion?

Equality Defined

Fellow non-philosopher Michael McCarthy challenged me, last week, to spell out more specifically my concept of equality – see his letter at Exploring Equality . Literal equality of material outcome is rarely argued as a practical ideal for humankind. Right-wingers escape into specious alternative formulae, such as equality of opportunity, equality of aspiration. And modern socialists seem embarrassed to embark on further definition. Let me try to overcome that embarrassment.

For I also reject any literal “equality of material outcome”, even as an ideal. It does not reflect the essential individuality of mankind, the incredible diversity of human motivation. Provided that no foundation value (equality, fraternity) is infringed, I regard the pursuit of wealth as a matter of individual freedom. Diversity of personal wealth is integral to a “free society”, where a satisfactory degree of individual freedom is assured. The possession of great personal wealth does threaten conflict with other socialist principles (e.g. democracy), and reconciliation is not easy (as in the current debate about Party political donations, and the socially-exclusive effect of the Internet itself). But the balance can be struck.

If inequality is endemic, how is the socialist principle of equality to be defined? I say that it relates to certain key dimensions of the human experience. Equality, I say, means the assurance, to each citizen, of adequate provision of -
food
clothing
shelter
education
medical treatment
leisure time
support in old age
Your eagle eye will have spotted my escape into relativity, with the use of the term “adequate” – that is a theme to which I will return, after the hols. And these Seven Assurances really make fourteen. For each value embraces both actual provision and the anticipation of adequate provision. That was the perception of Aneurin Bevan, whose socialism was encapsulated in the remarkable phrase In Place of Fear. Living “in fear” means having to worry about the future provision of these prerequisites of human life.

Socialism embraces both the anticipation and its eventual realisation. For example, my Labour Government has greatly improved the actual support provided for poorer pensioners, through the extension of means-tested benefits. But it has done little to assure the middle-aged that old age provision will, for them, be adequate when old age comes to them. The Government has delivered one-half of the socialist package, but not the other.

I hope I have risen to the McCarthy challenge. This should be read together with my overall New SocialistSettlement , which is an attempt to define my own "core philosophy" - Let me know what you think.

State Holidays

State holidays? Yep! We have just had one. When the right-wing fulminates about red-tape and State constraints upon the labour market, we should remember the third greatest market intervention of all, namely the enactment of compulsory holidays-with-pay (the first was the abolition of child-labour, the second was the Factories Act). All three interventions were condemned by right-wingers, as threatening the competitiveness and viability of British industry.

Yet the Bank Holidays Act 1875 was a vital piece of State intervention, which has stood the test of time. Indeed, Michael Jacobs, General Secretary of the Fabian Society, has argued for the creation of further Bank Holidays, on both social and economic grounds. I agree with him: I think we should add a February Monday (for Valentines Day), a July Monday (to kick off the Summer Holidays) and two extra holidays to brighten up October and November, in the run-up to Christmas. The change would strengthen the economy, improve the quality of people's lives, and add to the general merriment of society. The employers and the CBI would oppose it, as they always do - "the busybody State", an' all that. But it would do no harm to Labour's prospects of winning a Third Term...

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