The new government in Scotland is faced with its first public, though doubtless not first unpublicised, problem with the Labour party Executive in Westminster not grasping what is no longer within its jurisdiction.
The Libyan convicted of involvement in the PanAm Lockerbie plane bomb has been the subject of discussion between the Westminster Prime Minister and the President of Libya. Unfortunately the Prime Minister at Westminster has no say in the fate of a prisoner held in Scotland, convicted in a Scottish court, of a crime committed in Scottish airspace.
Attempts by English Foreign Office civil servants to advise the Labour Westminster Prime Minister that this was a matter for Scottish Prime Minister Salmond were not accepted (or understood).
The Libyans have got it now though and, according to the Sunday Herald, are not best pleased. The Herald notes in a leader,
'...Alex Salmond is using the full authority of his position to challenge Westminster's ways of doing things - from leading talks with Europe on fishing to signing memoranda on prisoner transfer with Colonel Gaddafi. The SNP government will shortly publish its white paper and bill for a referendum on independence.'
The MP for the Scottish constituency of Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath and Leader-designate of the Labour party is looking ever weirder as candidate prime minister at Westminster.
Showing posts with label new order. Show all posts
Showing posts with label new order. Show all posts
Sunday, 10 June 2007
Saturday, 9 June 2007
Not Just Doing Their Jobs
High-ranking civil servants are more than tools for carrying out the will of their political masters. The very continuity of their service to changing Executives has caused these outstandingly clever men and women, with their experience, education, and honed skills, to be pushed aside in favour of political appointees with narrower learning and inferior training, by the current Executive in its almost paranoid suspicion of the Home Civil Service having its own agenda, separate from that of the New Order.
Senior civil servants act under at least two kinds of constraints from which the New Order is wholly free: the constitutional and legal structures of the United Kingdom, which the Labour Executive sees as an obstruction to their purposes and to be peremptorily removed from their path whenever encountered, rather than the product of centuries of controlling and blocking despotic tendencies in the use of power; and an awareness of their service to the state itself, i.e. us, in a pluralist democracy, and our political and cultural longterm objectives and achievements, rather than to temporary holders of elected office.
Unsurprisingly it is the lawyers and the very senior civil servants who have broken ranks first. Elizabeth Wilmshurst's resignation from the Foreign Office and her distinguished career there, on 18 March 2003 ended ...' I cannot in conscience go along with [this] advice - within the Office or to the public or Parliament...' and '... am therefore discussing ...whether I may take approved early retirement. In case that is not possible this letter should be taken as constituting notice of my resignation ...I joined the Office in 1974. It has been a privilege to work here. I leave with very great sadness.'
What of the lawyers who are Parliamentary Counsel? One has remarked, [The]'analytical function of the drafter is vital. The capacity to stand back and to question is one of the greatest qualities needed in legislative drafting. But it is not enough simply to destroy ideas. The capacity to contribute fresh and constructive ideas is also important. Of course the basic policy is for others - ultimately for ministers. But it is a definite part of the drafter's job to point out any traps inherent in the policy, and where possible to offer solutions. It is sometimes surprising how much the drafter contributes in this way to the formulation of policy.'
How are they reacting to drafting the measures that abolish our civil liberties? What do they do when the policy they are helping to formulate puts people in prison without any of the legal or constitutional former safeguards that are being legislated away? Does the belief that '..members of Parliament want to avoid any possible injustice. For instance, if a Bill infringes people's liberties safeguards will be needed.', hold now ?
In the higher echelons of the Foreign, Diplomatic, and Home Civil Service people have resigned, been sacked, spoken out to newspapers in frank language. “Stalinist ruthlessness”, "Brown, like Blair, requires not just loyalty but total obedience ".
If, as all the evidence shows, the objective and determination of the Labour Executive is to retain power permanently, these people are as much in the way as the electorate and the judiciary. Cleansing a professional and highly competent administrative class requires time, so that at entry level there can be vetting on conformity (usually accompanied by a fall in achievement quality of entrants), at intermediate level a promotions policy that favours the acquiescent and disappoints innovative and independent thinkers, and at senior level the favouring of early retirements, and/or forced resignations.
Ten years. Nearly there.
Senior civil servants act under at least two kinds of constraints from which the New Order is wholly free: the constitutional and legal structures of the United Kingdom, which the Labour Executive sees as an obstruction to their purposes and to be peremptorily removed from their path whenever encountered, rather than the product of centuries of controlling and blocking despotic tendencies in the use of power; and an awareness of their service to the state itself, i.e. us, in a pluralist democracy, and our political and cultural longterm objectives and achievements, rather than to temporary holders of elected office.
Unsurprisingly it is the lawyers and the very senior civil servants who have broken ranks first. Elizabeth Wilmshurst's resignation from the Foreign Office and her distinguished career there, on 18 March 2003 ended ...' I cannot in conscience go along with [this] advice - within the Office or to the public or Parliament...' and '... am therefore discussing ...whether I may take approved early retirement. In case that is not possible this letter should be taken as constituting notice of my resignation ...I joined the Office in 1974. It has been a privilege to work here. I leave with very great sadness.'
What of the lawyers who are Parliamentary Counsel? One has remarked, [The]'analytical function of the drafter is vital. The capacity to stand back and to question is one of the greatest qualities needed in legislative drafting. But it is not enough simply to destroy ideas. The capacity to contribute fresh and constructive ideas is also important. Of course the basic policy is for others - ultimately for ministers. But it is a definite part of the drafter's job to point out any traps inherent in the policy, and where possible to offer solutions. It is sometimes surprising how much the drafter contributes in this way to the formulation of policy.'
How are they reacting to drafting the measures that abolish our civil liberties? What do they do when the policy they are helping to formulate puts people in prison without any of the legal or constitutional former safeguards that are being legislated away? Does the belief that '..members of Parliament want to avoid any possible injustice. For instance, if a Bill infringes people's liberties safeguards will be needed.', hold now ?
In the higher echelons of the Foreign, Diplomatic, and Home Civil Service people have resigned, been sacked, spoken out to newspapers in frank language. “Stalinist ruthlessness”, "Brown, like Blair, requires not just loyalty but total obedience ".
If, as all the evidence shows, the objective and determination of the Labour Executive is to retain power permanently, these people are as much in the way as the electorate and the judiciary. Cleansing a professional and highly competent administrative class requires time, so that at entry level there can be vetting on conformity (usually accompanied by a fall in achievement quality of entrants), at intermediate level a promotions policy that favours the acquiescent and disappoints innovative and independent thinkers, and at senior level the favouring of early retirements, and/or forced resignations.
Ten years. Nearly there.
Comment is Unnecessary
June 9, 2007
Comment is Free - But Not That Free
I wondered how the Guardian would react to my criticism of their editorial staff on comment is free. What they appear to have done is attempt to delete the entire article altogether. I tried to do that with a posting on this blog, but found that if you had the exact url it would still appear, no matter how comprehensively off this server. So this link still works -
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/craig_murray/2007/06/reids_new_best_friends.html
The remarks in question come in a comment I added at the end of the thread.
The Guardian has removed any reference to the article from the home page and cif listings, so there is no way anybody visiting the Guardian today knows it is there. I don't know whether it is still possible to post a comment below it.
So I am asking everybody with access to a blog or site to post the above link over the course of the next week, to defeat the Guardian's attempt to cut off dissent at its abandonment of its liberal tradition.
We have now mirrored the Guardian page just in case they do manage to find a way to scrub the original
http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/CiF/reids_new_best_friends.html
People can also, of course, post on other Guardian comment is free threads protesting at the deletion of this article. Then we will see how free comment really is at the Guardian.
Posted by craig on 9:41 AM 09/06/07 under UK Policy | Comments (1)
Comment is Free - But Not That Free
I wondered how the Guardian would react to my criticism of their editorial staff on comment is free. What they appear to have done is attempt to delete the entire article altogether. I tried to do that with a posting on this blog, but found that if you had the exact url it would still appear, no matter how comprehensively off this server. So this link still works -
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/craig_murray/2007/06/reids_new_best_friends.html
The remarks in question come in a comment I added at the end of the thread.
The Guardian has removed any reference to the article from the home page and cif listings, so there is no way anybody visiting the Guardian today knows it is there. I don't know whether it is still possible to post a comment below it.
So I am asking everybody with access to a blog or site to post the above link over the course of the next week, to defeat the Guardian's attempt to cut off dissent at its abandonment of its liberal tradition.
We have now mirrored the Guardian page just in case they do manage to find a way to scrub the original
http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/CiF/reids_new_best_friends.html
People can also, of course, post on other Guardian comment is free threads protesting at the deletion of this article. Then we will see how free comment really is at the Guardian.
Posted by craig on 9:41 AM 09/06/07 under UK Policy | Comments (1)
Wednesday, 16 May 2007
Corporatism
Familiarity with Italian political and religious culture has given little insight into British political life, until the last decade. This evening the United Kingdom is on the verge of becoming a fully blown corporatist state. At the close of nominations for the leadership of the Labour party at noon tomorrow a corporatist political party will crown its stalinoid candidate for the office of prime minister, and all the executive powers of Crown prerogative will fall under their control.
It is a truism that history never repeats itself; but the evils associated with authoritarian state corporatism will act, are acting already, even if in a fashion transformed but recognisable from over half a century ago.
Individual liberties have been abolished, even habeas corpus; evidence obtained by torture is readmitted into legal proceedings; the right to be secure from delivery into another criminal jurisdiction has been abrogated; trial by jury limited; the freedom to go about lawful business without a requirement to identify oneself is gone; failure to proffer information on statuses and wealth is criminalised; no one may conduct their life within the law without constantly proving their conformity.
A network of appointed state officials has siphoned off the authority and funding of elected local authority; large sectors of society no longer form their exchanges and relationships with one another in families and familial structures, but with the state as it advances into every aspect of private life by means testing and regulation, the creation of moral hazard.
We never experienced the first round of these systems' establishment - indeed our grandfathers fought them. So they are not recognized for the threat they present to a proper and democratic political system, and a moral way of life.
It is a truism that history never repeats itself; but the evils associated with authoritarian state corporatism will act, are acting already, even if in a fashion transformed but recognisable from over half a century ago.
Individual liberties have been abolished, even habeas corpus; evidence obtained by torture is readmitted into legal proceedings; the right to be secure from delivery into another criminal jurisdiction has been abrogated; trial by jury limited; the freedom to go about lawful business without a requirement to identify oneself is gone; failure to proffer information on statuses and wealth is criminalised; no one may conduct their life within the law without constantly proving their conformity.
A network of appointed state officials has siphoned off the authority and funding of elected local authority; large sectors of society no longer form their exchanges and relationships with one another in families and familial structures, but with the state as it advances into every aspect of private life by means testing and regulation, the creation of moral hazard.
We never experienced the first round of these systems' establishment - indeed our grandfathers fought them. So they are not recognized for the threat they present to a proper and democratic political system, and a moral way of life.
Tuesday, 1 May 2007
From pluralist democracy to dictatorship of the state
1 First make your nomenklatura
Since the end of the eighteenth century there has been long drawn out resistence to democracy as the means for settling conflict of interests. Through the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century democracy carved a way through institutions and settled power relations across the world. This force, fragmented into the hands of all of us, is still the target of power elites - acting for our own good, acting for the greater good, in truth acting for themselves.
Power elites have many names - nomenklatura is that most associated with avowed statism. To deny democracy, a nomenklatura is essential.
Method
in making a nomenklatura the mind should hold the image of making a hand-beaten mayonnaise. Obsessive narrowness of focus, attention to detail, constant monitoring of condition of the outcome, and infinite patience in the steady drip, drip of the process are pre-requisites.
Process
take two lists: one of positions of authority and of influence in the target structure, the other of those who might be introduced into it.
As you progress in building your mass you will encounter other clots and agglomerations: these will be either weaker than you, in which case they can be whipped into the mass; equal , when alliance is the temporary measure; or more powerful. With the more powerful any accommodation should be made to permit continued smooth growth.
You will be part of a highly unstable overall structure made up of petty hierarchies and your dynamic is to move upwards through them all, while taking their mass into the whole. As you progress those you have subsumed pay in loyalties and should be required also to pay in cash insofar as their means allow.
Agglomeration with the more powerful, often nomenklatura of earlier regimes or extra-territorial power elites, can be achieved principally by purchase (straightforward corruption), by profitable alliance (giving access to the profits from power you have acquired in return for equality of status, and further funding by means of introduction fees), or by exclusion.
By this time you should have achieved sufficient mass to create climates unfavourable to embedded and unresponsive, if not opposed, elites such that they either lose their statuses, and/ or leave. Leaving should not be discouraged in the first instance but later, as your mass grows, it should not allow departure holding any useful wealth or capacity to command service. Later still these, taken by earlier leavers, can be gathered in, as may be the leavers themselves.
At all times an ambience of democratic validity must be maintained until control of a stable power mass has been achieved and a shadowing network of reliable appointees to match democratic institutions at every level has been installed, and is funded and operating.
Once this is so, you are in a position to begin harvesting the benefits of democracy’s over throw (first choice of means is usually the corruption of election processes or their outright denial in the name of some over-arching emergency or threat to the existence of the state itself), and to reinforce your power system with further rewards of appropriate redistribution from the wealth producing sectors. Should the attention waver, or ambient factors intervene such that the mass goes mad, these nomenklatura structures will be sufficiently agglomerated to maintain your power base while restorative homogenisation measures are used.
Control of the military and civil authorities usually offers the quickest way to contain mass breakdown into loss of control and madness.
Next
2 Appropriating resources
3 Going global
Since the end of the eighteenth century there has been long drawn out resistence to democracy as the means for settling conflict of interests. Through the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century democracy carved a way through institutions and settled power relations across the world. This force, fragmented into the hands of all of us, is still the target of power elites - acting for our own good, acting for the greater good, in truth acting for themselves.
Power elites have many names - nomenklatura is that most associated with avowed statism. To deny democracy, a nomenklatura is essential.
Method
in making a nomenklatura the mind should hold the image of making a hand-beaten mayonnaise. Obsessive narrowness of focus, attention to detail, constant monitoring of condition of the outcome, and infinite patience in the steady drip, drip of the process are pre-requisites.
Process
take two lists: one of positions of authority and of influence in the target structure, the other of those who might be introduced into it.
As you progress in building your mass you will encounter other clots and agglomerations: these will be either weaker than you, in which case they can be whipped into the mass; equal , when alliance is the temporary measure; or more powerful. With the more powerful any accommodation should be made to permit continued smooth growth.
You will be part of a highly unstable overall structure made up of petty hierarchies and your dynamic is to move upwards through them all, while taking their mass into the whole. As you progress those you have subsumed pay in loyalties and should be required also to pay in cash insofar as their means allow.
Agglomeration with the more powerful, often nomenklatura of earlier regimes or extra-territorial power elites, can be achieved principally by purchase (straightforward corruption), by profitable alliance (giving access to the profits from power you have acquired in return for equality of status, and further funding by means of introduction fees), or by exclusion.
By this time you should have achieved sufficient mass to create climates unfavourable to embedded and unresponsive, if not opposed, elites such that they either lose their statuses, and/ or leave. Leaving should not be discouraged in the first instance but later, as your mass grows, it should not allow departure holding any useful wealth or capacity to command service. Later still these, taken by earlier leavers, can be gathered in, as may be the leavers themselves.
At all times an ambience of democratic validity must be maintained until control of a stable power mass has been achieved and a shadowing network of reliable appointees to match democratic institutions at every level has been installed, and is funded and operating.
Once this is so, you are in a position to begin harvesting the benefits of democracy’s over throw (first choice of means is usually the corruption of election processes or their outright denial in the name of some over-arching emergency or threat to the existence of the state itself), and to reinforce your power system with further rewards of appropriate redistribution from the wealth producing sectors. Should the attention waver, or ambient factors intervene such that the mass goes mad, these nomenklatura structures will be sufficiently agglomerated to maintain your power base while restorative homogenisation measures are used.
Control of the military and civil authorities usually offers the quickest way to contain mass breakdown into loss of control and madness.
Next
2 Appropriating resources
3 Going global
Wednesday, 25 April 2007
chocolate files
My files are like a box of chocolates without the centres leaflet; once I've bitten into each one to find out what's inside I'll post again. Sigh.
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