I was on call all week project managing the NCAB Project...the client has received the Danish and Finnish translations of their webtext, the Spanish has been lost in translation, the Russian is due in mid-week and completion of the Norwegian has been promised for Friday. A bulletin on our delivery promises and an invoice for 25% of the fee went out to the client.
But today an interesting flurry of e-mails turned my attention to my political pillar...to use Brussels jargon. Kirkpatrick Sale has put me on the spot for his decision not to attend the conference in September...so I anticipate some firecrackers from Purton on this. Here is Kirk to John Papworth.
John. I am indeed grateful for your offer, and flattered, but after much thinking I've decided not to be on the radcon program. The small reasons are that I hate flying intensely, I'm supposed to go to a Nuclear Free Conference in New Mexico then, and I need to prepare for my Secessionist Convention soon after. But the main reason is that, having read William Shepherd's excellent laying out of the radcon agenda in his March 17 posting, and its emphasis on local control, and working from the Real Communities Charter...with the conclusion that people will have to actually go into their neighborhoods with one or another agenda.
I don't think I would have anything really to say or add. It is specifically British, and can best be handled by Brits, and I don't see that I could be of much help, except to cheer you on from the sidelines. What you will need there is someone(s) to get the attendees to commit to neighborhood action, not some Yank talking about secession and scale. I wish you luck with the event, and I trust you understand. And I will be cheering you on from a distance. Thanks, old man. Warm regards, Kirk. My March 17 posting went like this.
I think we should try to keep Any Real Questions focussed on the Real Communities Charter side of our concerns rather than going for the global concerns of our Real Nations Charter as I want to see Local Governance as the principal focus of this year's radcon and the setting up of the Edward Goldsmith Institute is to be the jewel in the crown of the Press Release following the Final Plenary so the questions we arrange to be asked should be communities charter oriented.
I am not quite clear how to bring in Dele's concerns but his thinking is much broader than Nigerian Union vs EUnion...and I think he might welcome the opportunity to talk about local communities charter issues from a Nigerian perspective...besides the principal of cantonisation and managing power seems to me to be something that needs to be developed as much at the local as the international level...perhaps Dele Oguntimoju could give this some thought and prepare a paper that brings Kohr's relative size and cantonisation principles on nation states down to a village scale? The Breakdown of Local Government?
Making Local Government Local is the focus of the conference and the idea was to aim to look for action solutions on a range of issues...hence the list of workshops that went out with Fourth World Review...which were all Real Communities Charter oriented...'Two days of intensive workshops on Food, Health, Police, Money, Environment, Schools, Transport, Employment and Shops' to quote the FWR leaflet. There was an article from Dick Body advocating this sort of direction for FWR around the time of radcon I that I particularly liked...a paper for radcon III perhaps...Chris Wright produced some specifics on healthcare in response that were particularly interesting...they too should be papers for radcon III. I also think my article in this month's Rye's Own entitled Local Power is beginning to push in the right direction by trying to link Kohr to the specific of present local governance.
We should also commission a paper about the Local Government Act 2000...my Rye’s Own article might be complete nonsense in the light of this development...I just don't know...and don’t know nobody who does...has anyone you know read it and understood it?...the 2000 act includes the idea of Local Referendum that Jakob Von Uexkull got excited about...but clearly never read as a cursory look at the small print indicates that existing authorities are given de facto veto power over all stages of the referendum process so it is the reverse of power to the people.
Perhaps we should also add in some of the Ghandi Institute forums from the 1981 Fourth World Assembly which were: 1. Human Scale Economics; 2. Politics and Community Empowerment; 3. Communications; 4. Ecology and Bioregionalism; 5. Urban Life; 6. War, Non-Violence and Community Power; 7. Ethnic People and Decolonisation in Asia and 8. Village Development. I also like the idea of taking your Village Democracy Chapter Five and having a forum look at this in conjunction with the Rowntree Report and a revision of the Real Communities Charter. Incidentally I have persuaded East Sussex County Libraries to download a copy of the 311 page Rowntree Report, print it and make it available in their Reference Libraries...although I had to argue until I was blue (red) in the face.
An e-mail from John Papworth this morning went like this: The Rowntree Trust have refused our application for a grant. Kirk Sale says he will not be able to attend. I am about to go to press with FWR 137. We need to send out a Radcon Programme, which means deciding a new keynote speaker and also deciding the titles and the Chair names of our two main workshops. Any suggestions would be helpful. Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold. W.B.Yeats.
