Ironic then that they had a "ground-breaking" summit event to discuss the key challenges in putting human rights at the heart of Welsh public services in partnership with Public Service Management Wales.
Neil Wooding is is the Director of Public Service Management Wales, an organisation set up by the Welsh Assembly Government and public service organisations for the purpose of building 'leadership' and managerial capacity.
Neil Wooding, also Wales Commissioner for the Equality and Human Rights Commission before that was EOC Commissioner for Wales working with kate. They launched their new human rights inquiry in Wales!!! Any chance of an honest inquiry? Who dares speak? Hierarchy = human rights and equality.....don't think so. Don't need a enquiry to find that out. Give staff a voice.
Showing posts with label public services. Show all posts
Showing posts with label public services. Show all posts
Friday, July 4, 2008
Saturday, May 5, 2007
Politics outside the box
Politics Outside the Box 02 May 07 Hilary Wainwright
Hilary Wainwright takes a look at the agenda needed for an independent left to work towards an egalitarian vision of democracy in the UK.
Red Pepper's first issue came out 13 years ago this month, shortly before Tony Blair became Labour leader.
As we celebrate outlasting him, and prepare for a new phase in our development (more of which later), Hilary Wainwright sets the wider scene for the independent left.
Increasingly across the world you find people on the left coming together independently of party allegiances to try to set electoral agendas that break the boundaries of mainstream politics. Sometimes they’ve had a dramatic impact – like the trade unionists in Trondheim, Norway, (see Red Pepper, print issue March 2007) whose defence of public services was decisive in the election of a left coalition that has halted the privatisations of previous regimes. At other times they’ve set off a new electoral dynamic, as across America citizens alliances outside of party politics have worked to elect progressive democrats and make them accountable.
Their impact depends partly on the electoral system – Norway’s must be one of the most proportional in the world. It also has repercussions at the other end of the democratic scale, like the US, when people take responsibility for putting the democracy back into an electoral politics that (often wealthy and dynastic) politicians have effectively made their private obsession.
Talk of private obsessions leads on to Westminster, where we are currently confronted with the farce of MPs of varying brands of New Labour striding forward to declare the importance of ‘debate’, while in the background their supporters act out scenes from a parliamentary soap opera devoid of genuine politics.
On the left there are constrained and divided efforts to focus on the issues of inequality, war and peace, climate change and all the other issues about which there is genuine concern. In the Labour Party, left leadership contender John McDonnell is slogging his guts out trying to take a real debate to a steadily diminishing party membership. And Michael Meacher is contributing serious policy proposals on pensions, taxes and the environment. Let’s hope the chance of a serious left leadership challenge, leaving behind all the debilitating divisions between so-called ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ left, will induce them to do a deal.
But the future of left politics depends on efforts way beyond the Labour leadership election. Over the next months, Red Pepper wants to initiate a debate about the kind of independent, non-sectarian political initiatives that could bring down the pillars of the temple of Westminster, because – let’s face it – this is at the root of our problems, including our relations with the rest of the world.
We have a political system that is uniquely suited to a secretive military alliance with the US, and ideally favourable to the governmental arrangements that enable the EU to pursue neoliberal policies no better than those of the US. Its closed, unaccountable and elitist character gives the financial interests of the City unique access to the centres of political power and provides a nesting place from which corporate lobbies can shape policies and ensure a favourable environment for themselves.
Any independent platform must tackle this systemic problem on both a political and an economic level. We would need to start with apparently modest measures, such as opening up freedom of information, abolishing the royal prerogative, giving MPs power to recall parliament and introducing a proportional electoral system. (It is time that what’s left of the left in the Labour Party recognised that their continued adherence to ‘first past the post’ means that a huge opportunity is being missed to turn the present depth of popular disillusion into a concerted force for change.)
These constitutional reforms need to be combined with an opening up of state institutions to more direct forms of democracy. This would be far from the consultative processes favoured by New Labour, often as legitimation for various forms of privatisation. I’m thinking here of a real sharing of power between representative politics and autonomous institutions of direct participation that have real decision- making power over budgets and public administration.
This leads on to the economic strategies necessary to realise such an egalitarian vision of democracy. Participation in public life requires time and a reorganisation of work, the provision of a basic income and a reordering of economic priorities to favour the needs of a democracy. This in turn implies a direct challenge to the authoritarianism that is integral to the nature of wealth production in a capitalist economy. This tension between democracy and the realities of corporate and financial power has never been so glaring as now, with financial greed having been allowed to let rip and reveal its true grossness.
Information technology has opened up opportunities for a new leap forward in the development of a social economy – in which, at its most basic, many people already participate individually through peer to peer sharing of music, films and other ‘cultural goods’. It also offers exciting possibilities for making public services more responsive to individual needs, in a way that the market cannot. In itself, of course, a new technology doesn’t guarantee social and democratic progress. If we don’t take control of it, the same technology could just as easily provide the tools for an ever wider commercialisation of daily life and an ever deeper depoliticisation of power.
We are at a political and moral turning point in our social and economic development. But you would never know it from observing life in the political box.
Tell us what you think on our special Politics outside the box section at forums.redpepper.org.uk
From red pepper http://www.redpepper.org.uk/
Hilary Wainwright takes a look at the agenda needed for an independent left to work towards an egalitarian vision of democracy in the UK.
Red Pepper's first issue came out 13 years ago this month, shortly before Tony Blair became Labour leader.As we celebrate outlasting him, and prepare for a new phase in our development (more of which later), Hilary Wainwright sets the wider scene for the independent left.
Increasingly across the world you find people on the left coming together independently of party allegiances to try to set electoral agendas that break the boundaries of mainstream politics. Sometimes they’ve had a dramatic impact – like the trade unionists in Trondheim, Norway, (see Red Pepper, print issue March 2007) whose defence of public services was decisive in the election of a left coalition that has halted the privatisations of previous regimes. At other times they’ve set off a new electoral dynamic, as across America citizens alliances outside of party politics have worked to elect progressive democrats and make them accountable.
Their impact depends partly on the electoral system – Norway’s must be one of the most proportional in the world. It also has repercussions at the other end of the democratic scale, like the US, when people take responsibility for putting the democracy back into an electoral politics that (often wealthy and dynastic) politicians have effectively made their private obsession.
Talk of private obsessions leads on to Westminster, where we are currently confronted with the farce of MPs of varying brands of New Labour striding forward to declare the importance of ‘debate’, while in the background their supporters act out scenes from a parliamentary soap opera devoid of genuine politics.
On the left there are constrained and divided efforts to focus on the issues of inequality, war and peace, climate change and all the other issues about which there is genuine concern. In the Labour Party, left leadership contender John McDonnell is slogging his guts out trying to take a real debate to a steadily diminishing party membership. And Michael Meacher is contributing serious policy proposals on pensions, taxes and the environment. Let’s hope the chance of a serious left leadership challenge, leaving behind all the debilitating divisions between so-called ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ left, will induce them to do a deal.
But the future of left politics depends on efforts way beyond the Labour leadership election. Over the next months, Red Pepper wants to initiate a debate about the kind of independent, non-sectarian political initiatives that could bring down the pillars of the temple of Westminster, because – let’s face it – this is at the root of our problems, including our relations with the rest of the world.
We have a political system that is uniquely suited to a secretive military alliance with the US, and ideally favourable to the governmental arrangements that enable the EU to pursue neoliberal policies no better than those of the US. Its closed, unaccountable and elitist character gives the financial interests of the City unique access to the centres of political power and provides a nesting place from which corporate lobbies can shape policies and ensure a favourable environment for themselves.
Any independent platform must tackle this systemic problem on both a political and an economic level. We would need to start with apparently modest measures, such as opening up freedom of information, abolishing the royal prerogative, giving MPs power to recall parliament and introducing a proportional electoral system. (It is time that what’s left of the left in the Labour Party recognised that their continued adherence to ‘first past the post’ means that a huge opportunity is being missed to turn the present depth of popular disillusion into a concerted force for change.)
These constitutional reforms need to be combined with an opening up of state institutions to more direct forms of democracy. This would be far from the consultative processes favoured by New Labour, often as legitimation for various forms of privatisation. I’m thinking here of a real sharing of power between representative politics and autonomous institutions of direct participation that have real decision- making power over budgets and public administration.
This leads on to the economic strategies necessary to realise such an egalitarian vision of democracy. Participation in public life requires time and a reorganisation of work, the provision of a basic income and a reordering of economic priorities to favour the needs of a democracy. This in turn implies a direct challenge to the authoritarianism that is integral to the nature of wealth production in a capitalist economy. This tension between democracy and the realities of corporate and financial power has never been so glaring as now, with financial greed having been allowed to let rip and reveal its true grossness.
Information technology has opened up opportunities for a new leap forward in the development of a social economy – in which, at its most basic, many people already participate individually through peer to peer sharing of music, films and other ‘cultural goods’. It also offers exciting possibilities for making public services more responsive to individual needs, in a way that the market cannot. In itself, of course, a new technology doesn’t guarantee social and democratic progress. If we don’t take control of it, the same technology could just as easily provide the tools for an ever wider commercialisation of daily life and an ever deeper depoliticisation of power.
We are at a political and moral turning point in our social and economic development. But you would never know it from observing life in the political box.
Tell us what you think on our special Politics outside the box section at forums.redpepper.org.uk
From red pepper http://www.redpepper.org.uk/
Sunday, April 22, 2007
New Labour Tory polices & 2 Horse Lies?
New Labour leaflet tells me that it's a two horse race between New Labour and the Torys. See this story as it illustrates the dirty tricks New Laboutr has resorted to win votes.
- Fury over Plaid coalition 'lies' Apr 21 2007 Martin Shipton, Western Mail
PLAID CYMRU last night dramatically offered to hold talks with Labour to stop any prospect of the Conservatives entering government in Wales.The move was Plaid
PLAID CYMRU last night dramatically offered to hold talks with Labour to stop any prospect of the Conservatives entering government in Wales.The move was Plaid
leader Ieuan Wyn Jones's response to the "lies" he claimed Labour was peddling in suggesting he was willing to serve in a Tory-led coalition.
Insisting he would not contemplate such a coalition he said, "Labour keeps peddling this story and therefore they are calling into question, frankly, my integrity."In a sense they are calling me a liar... It's time for Labour to stop peddling this lie, make it clear that they accept my word and not repeat it again."
New Labour wants me to vote for Cllr Asbo Sophie Howe who can't sort out Whitchurch parking problems or a skate board park for young people as a councillor so what can she achieve in the Assembly? Her emphasis on anti social behaviour and all this talk of yobs and thugs is unpleasant and right wing. I think politicans should try and mollify and allay peoples fear of crime rather than exacerbate it.
Where did the idea to tackling anti-social behaviour using ASBOs come from? According to Will McMahon of the Crime and Society Foundation, Asbos were first touted by right-wing criminology think-tanks in the mid-1990s as a way of modernising an arcane and cumbersome body of statutes regulating housing law and neighbourly disputes. Though rejected by the Major government as unworkable, they found favour with New Labour.
Rising fear of youth crime saw 'ungovernable' or 'incorrigible' children ordered into a reform programme as far back as 1806, according to archive material made available by the young people's charity Rainer. The historical equivalent of 'anti-social behaviour' saw children as young as nine referred to the Philanthropic Society in an attempt to reform them before they became involved in crime.
New Labour is moving social policy backwards in two ways:
New Labour is moving social policy backwards in two ways:
first, through the re-emergence of the “problem family”, a concept stemming from the 1950s which blames families themselves for their social problems;
second, by the sense of déjà vu that long-serving social care professionals will feel as a result of the government’s approach. “The government is repeating the cycle of analysis by Sir Keith Joseph, Conservative social services minister in the 1970s, which is that problem families are 
the source of all our problems” Vote New Labour get New Labour Tories.
Now are public services better under New Labour in Wales?
Privatisation has led to Turkey Twizzlers and MRSA and not getting better.....Jobs lost in closed job centres Wales, regional pay so that workers in Merthyr get less than those in Cardiff and those less than Bristol?
PCS doesn't think our public services are safe with Welsh New Labour.
1. cut civil service jobs in the devolved and
non-devolved civil service in Wales.
2.provide well staffed local offices providing the public with the option of face to face contact.
3. stop privatising public services.
5. introduce regional pay in the public sector.
Privatised jobs = no job or worse pay = more child poverty in Wales
Notice that New Labour formerly 'Welsh Labour' now just Labour in 2007 Welsh elections?
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