Here’s a glimmer of hope, Paul Coterill on his Medium account, in an article called “Hope for Revoke”, talks of Parliament changing the UK’s legal default from “No Deal” or more accurately whatever’s on the table on the 29th March, bit like a secret santa, to Revoking Article 50; I’d drop my support for a 2nd referendum in exchange for Revoking Article 50. …
Lewisham’s Democracy, it could be better
Writing up what I think for Lewisham’s Democracy Review is proving harder than I thought, the source material i.e. Lewisham’s Constitution [www] is very long(483 pages), it’s .pdf, can’t easily be indexed or highlighted, so item No. 1. is to increase the transparency of the rules so citizens can understand how decisions are made.
This is a very Un-British way of doing things and all our instincts are wrong. Every decision is reserved for the Mayor who must present a number of plans to full council. the decisions are then taken in the context of the agreed plans which only require ⅓ voting in favour. The Mayor delegates all their executive functions to the Cabinet as a collective but also to the council’s principal paid officers. The backbench Councillor’s Scrutiny Committees can only delay these decisions. There, apart from criminal sanction, is no way to recall the Mayor. The Mayor does not hold office due to their ability to command a majority, they do not need to get many decisions agreed by Council. This is not just a first-amongst-equals “Leader” with a different mandate, it’s an alien form of government, lifted from the US & France and designed to reduce the accountability of the decisions from people and their political parties.
My first proposal would be that the Council agree to ask the people of Lewisham to abolish the Mayor and return to a collective committee led Council. It might seem to be less democratic but a committee led council has to maintain its mandate throughout it’s term of office, a Mayor led council supported by a just ⅓ of the Councillors can ignore civic society and wait for the next election.
The other ideas I need to develop, and we’ll see how much detail I can research, would cover Recall, maybe requiring a more than 50% vote of the Council, Term Limits, something about an Ombudsman & Compliance Committee and independence, having the Cabinet appointed by the Council, the move to a Green Paper/White Paper process for decision making, improved citizen communication, the web site is shite, smaller wards and some thing on the need to use the powers in the Localism Act to get the changes in law that some of these things would require. …
London Labour and the hostile environment
Yesterday, at Lewisham Deptford’s General Committee, we took the decision as to what we should propose as policy for Labour’s London Regional Conference. We passed the following motion on the use of “On-Site Immigration Officers” by local authorities working beside the teams responsible for financially supporting children under the Children’s Act. As the motion states, many local authorities prioritise the safe guarding of funds, and the location of Immigration Officers in the local authority teams was originally proposed by Hostile Environment Working Group.
The words of the motion are presented below and further evidence as to both the iniquity of the policy, and Labour’s collusion is presented. 😆
I would ask any London Labour activists to ask/mandate their conference delegations/clps to support this motion in the priorities ballot.
Download –> LewDept Lab NRPF Motion for London Labour Conference … 
This has also been reported by the Labour Campaign for Free Movement.
The text is also below/overleaf. … …
How long does Labour’s candidate panels last?
Some times I wish I hadn’t started this, but I was looking up teh Labour Party’s rules for someone else and came across this gem in Appendix 4 NEC Procedures for the selection of local government Candidates, which as I discuss at length cannot be varied by the NEC, although maybe it can!
Rule Appendix 4.A.iv
The panel remains in existence following an election until a new panel is nominated and endorsed. The panel is therefore available for any by-elections in this period. This later date (iii.g above) is so that LCFs can plan for a period without new endorsements whilst high priority selections are taking place. The panel cannot be closed as such so all nominations must be dealt with at an appropriate time.
This is about the panel list and its existence. It is created in the run up to an authority election and those not selected remain on the panel until the list is dissolved. …
The ground is shifting
This is doing the rounds, “In a hole and still digging: the left and Brexit“, it’s quite long and I summarise it as follows,
…The extra Parliamentary Left, unlike in the 70’s is now not strong enough to be relevant; Brexit is a right wing project and the Left cannot sustain the space to make Lexit any different from the right’s project. The long look at the psephology proves that Leave’s ideology is not hegemonic amongst the proletariat/working class and that the Leave vote is not part of the downtrodden masses waiting for the lightening bolt of revolutionary consciousness to strike. Opposition to Brexit is growing, and by sticking with the Lexit position, Lexiters isolate themselves from this growing population. A no deal, or May’s Deal, Brexit will be shit, all who eased its path are going to be blamed including the leadership of the Labour Party if that’s where it is seen to stay.
Candidates for London Labour’s Board
And we begin the run in to Labour’s London Region Conference, Momentum are indicating who thy’d like supported here. I shall be supporting this list and believe that most of the Left will also do so. As ever, this is a two stage process of nomination by CLPs and then voting at Conference.
In addition, CLPs can also make nominations for the positions of Chair, Vice-Chair, Women’s Officer, Disabilities Officer, Ethnic Minorities Officer, LGBT Officer, as well as two representatives on the National Policy Forum. These positions will be elected by an electoral college, of which CLP delegates will hold 50% and affiliates will hold the other 50%:
- Chair – Jim Kelly
- Vice Chair – Seema Chandwani
- BAME Officer – Taranjit Chana
- LGBT Officer – Lucio Buffone
- Disability Officer – Rob Lugg
- Women’s Officer – Alison McGarry
- NPF – Adrian Weir
- NPF – Elly Baker
Lewisham Deptford is in CLP Division 4, together with the London Assembly constituencies of Greenwich & Lewisham and Bexley & Bromley, we are supporting the candidacies of Munir Malik and Dorinda Duncan as Board members representing Division 4.
Featured Image Credit: CC Mark Seton 2012 BY-NC …
Newly in the public domain
Today is a great day; in the USA, works written/created in 1922 become available under the public domain as the 1970’s extension laws durations expire. This is recorded by Ars Technica, in an article entitled, Mickey Mouse and Batman will soon be public domain—here’s what that means. This headline is misleading since these properties won’t become PD until the 2030s. Don’t quite get the maths myself since the international treaties talk of 70 year durations and this looks like 95 years but we do know that this was an exercise in corrupt lobbying power but it would seem that “I’ve got you Babe”, written by the Congressional sponsor of the second extension law, yup, they did it twice, expires in 2060; don’t think I’ll be around to enjoy it for free. What a greedy twat!
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In Canada, on copyright
Torrentfreak, always worth a read, highlights a debate in Canada where they propose to lengthen copyright duration to the Berne treaty maximum. Bryan Adams, for those of us who remember him argues that long copyright duration benefits intermediaries and distributors, not creators. TF notes that the Canadian law proposes that the creator’s estate can revoke a copyright grant at 25 years after the death of the author and suggests that this should be at 25 years after the initial grant. Sadly unlikely to happen. Very similar to my proposal to Top of the Manifestos at #lab13. …
How democratic is the UK?
While writing and thinking about Labour Party governance, I asked myself the question how does one measure democraciness? My reading for that article pointed me at two data sets that allow one to answer this question for Nation States. These are the Polity IV index and the Economist Information Unit’s Democracy Index. The key white paper for Polity IV is, CONCEPTUALIZING AND MEASURING DEMOCRACY Evaluating Alternative Indices, by MUNCK & VERKUILEN, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 2002 and the Economist defines its methodology in this paper, The Economist Intelligence Unit’s index of democracy by Laza Kekic dated 2007 which lists their 60 attributes of democracy.
I have decided to examine the Economist’s methodology to see if it can be used to help understand the democraciness of non-Nation State entities. However, I went through the questions and scored the UK according to my own judgements. The rest of this article looks at the Economist’s methodology and my findings about the UK’s democracy. … …
Democracy in the EU and the Trilemma
While writing up the last article, I also looked at “Labour’s Brexit trilemma: in search of the least bad outcome” on the Open Democracy web site. It refers to Rodrik’s trilemma., which was designed to examine the Bretton Woods currency regulations and the international trade regime it spawned. I have marked up the first of these article with what I think are the interesting bits on diigo which can be viewed here. The OD article adopts the trilemma and sees a Lexit option as maximising (national) democracy and national control of economic policy and poses it against a “remain and reform” position which it argues maximises economic integration.
My biggest problem with the trilemma, which was designed to describe the Bretton Woods global currency regime is that it seems to believe that the UK’s democracy is superior to that of the EU. Within the EU, British Citizens are protected by the Charter of Fundamental Rights and EU’s Court, which as I an others have mentioned is chock full of the children of the opponents of fascism and Stalinism. It is also a republican construct without a House of Lords, without First Past the Post and without a hereditary Head of State. The people elect the European Parliament, the biggest party in the Parliament nominates the President of the Commission, the members of the Council and Commission are nominated by member state governments and the latter are confirmed and can be removed by the Parliament.
The Open Democracy article, also asks some tough questions of the Lexiters, not the least important being what makes you think that a more independent UK can manage Capital and the economy more effectively; it is clear that the Bexiters in the Tory Party don’t believe this. It also points the impossibility of being independent; the WTO places constraints on Trade Policy and if we want to sign a Trade Agreement with the EU, most of their same red lines will exist. …