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Psst! Wanna Weltanschauung? I have
just re-published my treatise of 1992 which explains my view of the world
and its machinations - when you have the chance, take a look at
Multiple
Differential Uncertainty...
Reshuffle, and no shuffle
No sideways shuffle, of course, for the Monarch. The Jubilee would have been the
ideal moment for the Queen to abdicate, in favour of Charles. And that
is what she should have done. Although I favour the retention of an
hereditary monarchy, I have little sympathy with the current half-hearted and
anachronistic "celebrations" - see
One Palaver
Too Far
Blair's reshuffle was much more interesting. In explaining Byers'
departure, much was made of the "power of the Press", but that missed the mark.
Byers' character was simply incapable of withstanding the media exposure
that senior political office now brings - see
Byers' High Noon - he will be happier, out of that intrusive limelight.
Alistair Darling could do well at Transport, if he is prepared to be
sufficiently radical - see
my advice to him.
More important, Darling's move gives the Government the chance to change
tack on the Old Age Pension. I do not suggest that we go as far as the
leading Continental economies, in terms of pension levels. But the State
must once more assume responsibility for the provision of a decent flat-rate
£150-per-week Old Age Pension entitlement, without any of the uncertainties of
means-testing. Alistair Darling had set his face firmly against such a
solution. We now have a chance to persuade Andrew Smith. And it is
good to have John Prescott back, with the local and regional government brief.
Finally, I was sad to see the end of the ministerial career of Graham
Stringer. Graham who? I hear you cry. Graham Stringer.
Once the energetic and creative Leader of Manchester City Council, he was
enticed to leave local government by the lure of Parliament. But this
week, having reached the heights of office as a Junior Whip, he was sent
packing, back to the Back-benches. City government desperately needs
councillors of talent, like Graham Stringer, and it was tragic that he felt
impelled to move to Westminster. City government needs the Stringers back,
at the helm - that is why I want to see strong city regions, created within each
"Province", throughout the UK - see
Weaker Provinces, Stronger Regions
Talk nasty, act sensible. That seems to be Government policy, on
immigration. Heaven forfend, Ministers seem to signalling, that we
should be thought to be acting decently. Labour is understandably apprehensive of the UK's huge
reserves of racism and xenophobia, so easily triggered - in common with other
parts of Europe. I am a realis: I understand that the psychology of European white supremacy runs very deep
indeed, and all Governments must take it into account.
What matters is how they do it - the morality, the method, the style. It is quite wrong
for the Government spin-machine to leak stories about sending gunships to
intercept refugees in the Mediterranean, and about preparing giant Hercules
military transport aircraft to send "them" packing again quickly.
And Blunkett is quite wrong seek Parliamentary approval for his absurd plan to
prevent the conduct of asylum-appeals within the UK. The scheme is
bound to be found invalid by the Courts on human rights grounds - and I suspect
that Blunkett
knows that perfectly well.
The first-instance asylum hearings are
lamentably cursory, and the appeal hearing is in practice the only substantive hearing of an
applicant's case, generating a very high success-rate. And it is no good
simply using a White List of countries of origin - an individual may suffer
oppression at the hands of Police authorities, even in a "democratic" country. The wheeze will
however give the whole Government eighteen months' leeway for nasty populist rhetoric, in a short-sighted attempt to appease racist opinion. And when
the Courts finally intervene, the Government will be able to blame "the
Judges" for interfering with the will of Parliament. Clever, huh?
Meanwhile, Blunkett is making sound changes to the immigration control
system. He is extending both the two-month Temporary Overseas
Workers Scheme and the two-year "Working Holidaymakers Scheme", increasing the
country-of-origin scope and increasing the quotas. Lord Rooker
(before the reshuffle, at the Home Office) said rightly -
"By opening up routes for people to come and work here legally, we can
help reduce unfounded asylum claims".
Quite. These are valuable systemic changes. Labour must create a broad statutory framework for migration control which is
much wider than "asylum-seeking". Most immigrants are not
asylum-seekers. Asylum-seekers are merely one category of legitimate
migrant. And this must be done at UN-level, not
Europe - see Managing Migration.
But the perception is, I believe, much wider. We have placed
huge powers in the hands of a questionable new cadre of Regulators, who are said
to ensure that justice is done and the public interest pursued, objectively, in
the conduct of great commercial and industrial projects. Margaret
Thatcher, obsessive in her drive to reduce the role of The State, passed
far too many powers to such Regulators, such judges.
When Stephen Byers announced that as a matter of policy he would
always follow the advice of the Office of Fair Trading (as he did in the
Richard Desmond pornography case) that was a craven abdication of
responsibility - conscious of his own lack of legitimacy, he was trying to hitch
his authority to the higher authority of the OFT. That was unwise, because
everybody asked "Why, then, have the Minister in the loop at all?"
That was an example of the power of the dicastocracy...
Last week the House of Lords finally threw out her appeal. I
suspect they have got their law right, but the law is in a disreputable mess. Read all about it in the
Daily
Telegraph. It should be a matter of shame to Labour that the post-WW2
Welfare State settlement never did create an enforceable right to receive an old
age pension, regardless of the scale of NI contributions. Our concepts of
individual entitlement were flakier then, human rights thinking less
well-developed. It was the same legal flaw that made it possible for Margaret Thatcher to attack the State
Pension in 1981, cutting it by linking it to the Retail Price Index rather than to average
wages. If there was no enforceable legal right to receive a pension in the
first place, how could her robbery be challenged - as a matter of law?
But we should all be outraged, as a matter of judgment, and morality.
To suffer mandatory deductions by way of savings (i.e. National Insurance
contributions) for forty years, and then to be cheated of your pension
constitutes a gross injustice, a gross indignity. And it is a wrong
perpetrated by the State, against its own citizens. An estimated 430k UK pensioners are in this
position. 250k are in Australia, 147k in Canada, others in New Zealand and
South Africa. Where bilateral inter-governmental deals have been done,
payments are made in full - Spain and Portugal are covered by EU commitments.
But if not, not.
Labour should acknowledge the wrong, and put it right. Our legal
sloppiness in 1947 created the problem - our legal skills, and our reserves of decency
and fair play should resolve it.
Another month gone, in the gruelling campaign - this is what the record-books say, since the date of my New Year
Resolution -
19 st 6 lbs (1st January)
18st 5 lbs (1st February)
17 st 12lbs (1st March)
17 st 7 lbs (1st April)
17 st 2 lbs (1st May)
16 st 9 lbs (1st June)
In spite of all my efforts, the loss-rate is now down to about 1 lb per week - have you any advice for me? And even at this
weight, I still incur the social opprobrium of remaining clinically "obese" -
it's such an ugly word - a
BMI (Body Mass Index) of over 30 is classified as obese, and
with a height of 1.676m, my BMI remains stubbornly at 37.
Take your weight in kilograms(mine now = 105.5 kgs), and
divide by your height (in metres) squared - that is 1.676m, therefore =
2.809. Hence 37. What's
your BMI?
It is with sadness that I report the commercialisation of the Web-version of
the FT, the world's greatest newspaper - I can no
longer bring you articles from the FT.com - it has become a
subscription-only service, so all my hyperlinks to the FT will now simply confront
you with a demand for money - just like The Economist, which also forms
part of the monetised economy. The FT has abused its property (namely,
its copyright), and should revert to granting free access to its columns.
The narrow pursuit of private gain serves the media ill. The Guardian and
The Telegraph remain freely accessible, here on the Net.
Media Negligence
We are badly served by our radio/TV media, including the BBC. They
should be providing much more background information about breaking-news
reports, more hard facts. Consider three "foreign" news events
this week, where I have longed for background information, to help me get the
issues into perspective.
Kashmir What is the Line of Control? Why is Kashmir
divided at all? What is the population of each of the "halves" of Kashmir?
I am indebted the excellent left-wing weekly Tribune for explaining that
that in 1947 Kashmir was left out of the original India/Pakistan settlement.
With a largely Muslim population, it was ruled by a Hindu maharajah Sir Hari
Singh, who could not decide what to do, favouring continuing independence. but later in 1947, he sided with India,
and fighting broke out straight away. It has always been the intention to
hold a referendum (then called a plebiscite) on Kashmiri independence, but that has never been done. In January 1948, both India and
Pakistan appealed to the United Nations, and in 1949 a ceasefire was brokered -
that is the Line of Control which still dominates the territory.
Guerilla warfare (now just labelled terrorism) has been the norm
ever since. There is a plethora of partisan Kashmir-related websites on
the Internet - resident population is c 12m, with another 1.5m Muslim refugees
in Pakistan. BBC News Online redeems the Corporation with an excellent
online
Kaliningrad, or Konigsberg This little coastline enclave on the
Baltic Sea could prove to be a real thorn in the side of the European Union.
The diplomatic problems are already mounting up. Kaliningrad is a little piece of
Russia that has got left behind by politics - and with the accession of Lithuania to the
European Union it will be landlocked, squeezed between Lithuania and Poland,
with no right of access to the Russian Motherland. But how and why has
this happened? How big is Kaliningrad now (Press estimates vary from
500k to 1.3m)? Vladimir Putin is reported to be much distressed about
the problem - his wife Ludmila comes from Kaliningrad. I have
discovered that Kaliningrad was formerly Konigsberg, part of Imperial Germany's
East Prussia, was picked up by Stalin after WW2, consolidated as part of the
USSR, and now isolated by Lithuania's entry to the EU. After entry, Russians will need
a Lithuanian visa to "visit" Kaliningrad. Sounds like a
nasty problem, to me. And I should be told more about it.
Senegal The now-famous World Cup winners over France. This media
omission is perhaps more understandable, because so recent. Senegal is a former French colony
of 10m souls (half as big again as Scotland) right at the centre of the
big-bulge part of the West African coast. It is the centre of the African
film industry, but otherwise principally agricultural in its economy.
Capital is Dakar. Population 90% Muslim. Official language, French.
The Americans do a spookily good summary - check out the CIA Handbook
The drugs reform debate is attracting some remarkable participants.
Just consider the evidence. David Cameron, Conservative MP for Witney,
having been a Member of the Home Affairs Select Committee, writes a deeply
liberal and sympathetic piece in The Daily Telegraph.
Cambridge playwright and regular clubber Johann Hari writes about his sheer
exuberant enjoyment of Ecstasy (not published on The Observer
website, presumably because it was originally in the Evening Standard, and they
probably retain copyright control) -
"I find it simultaneously blissfully happy and hectic. My heart
beats faster, and I feel a lot of energy and excitement. I feel an
irresistible urge to do things, especially dance. The drug makes me feel
extraordinarily at one - almost affectionate - with the people around me, even
large crowds. It is very easy to bond with people when 'loved-up'"
These are the public words of a First Class Cambridge graduate, who never
touches alcohol or tobacco, but likes his ecstasy (MDMA, a formula developed in
Germany in 1912, when everything was perfectly legal). Yet the Government
continues to criminalise him, and hundreds of thousands of others like him, who
every weekend enjoy the E-experience, and do no harm to anyone. Yet the
Government categorises Ecstasy along with heroin. How long can the
authority of "The Establishment" survive such stupidity?
Finally, Lord Bingham, our senior Law Lord, this week called for cannabis to
be fully legalised. "It is stupid having a law which isn't doing what
it's there for." Stupid is the right word. Those who are in
close touch with the operation of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 know that
the whole Prohibition strategy is a dismal failure, nationally and
internationally. Just read Lord Bingham for yourself, in The Guardian.
And if you want to register your own position, in support of legalisation,
you can sign-in on-line at The Angel Declaration.
The
glorious Welsh language
is, tragically, one of the footballs of Welsh politics. Wales, like the
rest of the UK, needs a comprehensive language policy (I am working on it...)
A robust policy framework is needed, to rebuff absurdities like David
Blunkett's English language tests for immigrants (tutoring I can accept,
but not testing) And it would also strike at this week's absurd
proposal from the Welsh Nationalists (The Welsh Society, an active pressure
group) to compel all private companies to operate bi-lingually, just as
Welsh public authorities have to operate.
The
Labour Assembly Government must accept
responsibility for finding a solution. That will need a new primary
legislative settlement, embracing Welsh broadcasting (currently not devolved)
and covering every aspect of public life. And
it should keep language politics firmly out of the business world.
Taming the Corporations >> My
Welsh socialism >>