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Diary Note /0049
Thursday 16 May 2002
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Final Emergency Edition (allegedly..) My Swansea PC has had to be stripped out, rebuilt and modernised, process not yet over, problem never resolved - this is a further Emergency Edition published by samizdat techniques from a PC in Bath, relying on ol' steam floppy-disk technology - hold onto your hats! roger we

Quickie Plaudits

Rapid recognition and approval for a few worthies, before moving on to Main Menu. 

To Parliament for granting full rights of access and abode in the UK to the 200,000 remaining holders of British Dependent Territory passports. There are fourteen remaining "colonies", including Gibraltar, the Turks & Caicos Islands, Pitcairn, Tristan da Cunha, and the British Antarctic. The new British Overseas Territories Act 2002 comes into force next Tuesday 21 May - let's all raise a glass to a liberal decision, for which the Government deserves the credit.

To the Board of Halifax Bank of Scotland for giving their shareholders the chance to vote on the Board's bonus package, at their General Meeting on Wednesday 15 May - the bonus package (under which the 130 top Managers were authorised to steal bonuses worth 200% of salary) was approved (only 51%-majority needed) but dissident shareholders voted strongly against the give-away, with a No-Vote of 25%. I believe that if more shareholders were given that opportunity, and if proper prior publicity was given to the issues, Management would find it far more difficult to swindle the shareholders, as they regularly do...

To Nicholas Raynsford Minister for Local Government at DTLR for coming up with a liberal solution to the commercial exploitation of the Electoral Register - a retired chartered accountant had successfully used the Human Rights Act to challenge the Government's commercial exploitation of the Electoral Roll, arguing that his name should not be used for onward commercial sale - the Raynsford Compromise will allow the Main Roll to be used for verifying credit checks, but for no other private purpose - the City and the Banks are therefore satisfied, but other mail-order interests are kept at bay - they will be able to buy only a truncated version of the List, omitting details of anyone who has objected - I shall certainly object - as from December 2002, two separate versions of the Electoral Roll will be published - that's a good example of how "Human Rights thinking" has stopped an unthinking state in its tracks, and forced a sensible compromise.

To Martyn Jones MP the Labour Wrexham MP, the man backing the conversion of the whole of Llangollen to the Euro for the duration of the Llangollen Folk Festival in July - over 6,500 competitors from 47 countries will take part, and those from the 12 Eurozone countries will be able to use their Euros - demonstrating just what a non-issue this has become - my view is that we should NOT have a Referendum, because there is really no "Euro" issue left - the whole Referendum would simply become a xenophobic rant by misplaced English nationalists against the European Union as such - triggering every worst feature the British have to offer - Blair/Brown should do everything they can to avoid a Referendum, and to allow the matter to be decided as an integral part of the 2005 General Election. That's what I think.

To Kofi Annan for flying to Cyprus, with one more attempt to re-start negotiations over the Partition, which has now been pickled in its present from since 1977 - an awful tragedy - I spent one whole happy year of my life in Cyprus in 1955/56, spying by radio on Russian submarines in the Black Sea, and the tragedy of Partition breaks my heart - in Spring 1956 I rode around Cyprus on a hired bicycle, with my guitar on my back, singing Greek folksongs to disbelieving local residents - the UN has a heavy responsibility to crack this diplomatic impasse - my every good wish goes with Kofi Annan.

 To Richard Goldstein the New York author writing in The Guardian, to whom I am indebted for a new insight into the Pim Fortuyn assassination, namely the combination of libertarian individualism, gay rights, and "the Right" - Bush was supported by 1,000,000 gays in the Presidential Election because they identified "the Right" with the cause of individual liberty, equating "the Left" with collectivist views and an insensitivity to personal freedoms - that is undoubtedly an element in anti-Left thinking, and one that the new Socialist Civil Liberties Association seeks to counter - socialists of the future must demonstrate that state power is deployed in the pursuit of the equality of individual freedoms, and that there is no inconsistency between the two positions. The goal should be that of a liberal, individualist socialism, rather the earlier collectivist versions.

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Wrong Apology, Wrong People

David Blunkett should not have apologised to the Police Federation. You will by now know of my "natural" affinity with the Police - I am the classic middle-class boy who spontaneously sides with the Police, my father was Chairman of the local Bench in Cardiff, and I took easily to my Barrister role - indeed, I readily confess to being "pro Police", and proud of the great civilian policing traditions of the UK.

But I am appalled by the behaviour of the present Police leaders - the combined Forces are displaying an anti-democratic disloyalty and thuggishness which is without parallel in my lifetime. They have been freed of any real oversight by local authorities, and the Home Office cannot deliver any coherent disciplinary framework - and a surly Police workforce is unashamedly taking advantage of this power vacuum.

David Blunkett is right to take the gloves off with the Police. Senior officers have been behaving with an intolerable lack of respect for our elected Government, outright political prejudice, and a profound contempt for democratic processes. Fred Broughton, this year's elected "trade union" leader of the Police Federation, was guilty of appalling behaviour at this year's PF Conference - undermining public confidence and the authority of the Courts in a quite disgraceful manner, as Sir John Stevens (Metropolitan Police Commissioner) had before him. Having been uncritically mollycoddled by Margaret Thatcher, and given very large salary increases over a large number of years, they have lost all sense of respect and proportion - I am deeply disappointed with this generation of Police leaders, and I am sorry that David Blunkett did not hold his nerve. He should never have apologised. Labour must show our Police Officers that their authority flows from their acceptability to the people, and that their current phase of high-handedness, autocracy - and sheer impudence - will not serve the interests of their profession well.

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Wrong Prisoner, Wrong Cause

The imprisonment of Patricia Amos shames us all. The mother sent to Holloway for 60 days, as punishment for the truancy of her two teenage daughters has been grievously wronged.

But it is not the Magistrates who are responsible. We are responsible. You and me. Because the truth is that secondary education should not be compulsory in the first place. Our# system of education is running into the most appalling problems, of discipline, violence, wrecked lessons, school exclusions, attacks on teachers - all because we insist on using coercion - imprisonment, criminal sanctions, Police intervention - to foce teenagers to attend school in the first place. That is the real error of judgement. Coercion in education was an idea uncritically imported from Bismarck's Germany in the 19th Century - it ought now to be abandoned. Teachers should be expected to attract children into school, and perhaps an attendance allowance should be paid throughout the whole of secondary schooling, instead of just the Sixth Form, as in the Gordon-Brown experiment.

I am convinced that, for reasons both of personal freedom and educational effectiveness, all school attendance should become voluntary. My hope is that the obvious outrage of Patricia Amos' imcarceration will awake the wider community to the inanity of current policy.

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Sperm Donors

I'm with Warnock. I think Professor Mary Warnock is right. Children born by AID should have the right to trace the identity of their natural father - it is immaterial to the child's sense of curiousity whether its begetting was a test-tube or a one-night stand - the curiosity repreesents an overpowering human drive, and it is wrong that it should be thwarted - it's another matter of personal freedom - and I am quite sure that supply would not disappear, with the threat of eventual publicity, years after the event. The law should be changed to permit access to this information.

 

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