A primer on how to alienate

11% pay rise for MP's! Tragegically and laughably out of touch but then see also my post on salaried MP's! 

A minus 5% decrease would be a start to bring them a whiff of reality. But only if it came with a fresh contract ultimatum. Resign, thereby losing all rights to insurance and benefits, or accept a new, (that so popular and well supported), zero hour contract. Each weeks continuation of employment subjected to renewal by their electorate. With their role open to anyone to claim it who speaks a form of English, will toe the Party Line and is prepared to work for less. Of course as they are now self-employed consultants there is no holiday pay, no pension plan and naturally any expenses come out of their own pocket.

With this new contract there is just a chance our MP's will emerge from their  protective bubble of privilege and get a taster of the conditions they are instrumental in setting up for us ordinary folks, that is everyone else that is not part of the super rich elite. When their feet are fully grounded in reality maybe our MP's might be trusted then to legislate for us again.

Compare and Contrast

First off a story I have just heard, a man arranged a German car-sharing trip with a stranger, as is common-place over there, to a ferry port. This stranger calls off the trip, car is not ready. So our man takes the train to the ferry, missing the last ferry, to catch the ferry the next day. Arrives in England and is hauled off and subjected to a strip search, a thorough search of his luggage and some five hours of interrogation, where his denials were dismissed with disbelief and hostility. What is even worse, a female passenger, he just happened to exchange a couple of polite pleasantries with, sharing the hazards of travel sort of stuff, was also given the same treatment. His crime? He had by mischance managed to exchange a couple of EMails with a suspected drug dealer! What do we have, the planned car journey manifestly did not take place, the two individuals never met and we are left with secret snooping on private EMails giving rise to a suspicion, just a possibility with no tangible supporting actual physical evidence. Just a person somewhere being suspicious.

That evening I watched a documentary about benefit fraud (Britain on the Fiddle). Of the three cases offered up for our entertainment was the case of a man with two identities, one of which was also receiving disabled benefit, all fraudulently claim benefits. The hard physical evidence was there, double passports in two names, video recording of man working easily and physically with no sign of impairment, photo records of living at different addresses to that claimed, variety of cars all in use by him yet the investigation drags on because there is not yet enough evidence to ensure a conviction and the Police are too busy to bother with such a minor contraventions! So plenty of hard evidence but whether by incompetence, sloppy documentation leading it open to challenge or just too overwhelmed with work to fit in bringing the cast to court, a man manifestly living out a fraud, is allowed to continue. Eventually yes the wheels are in motion, months down the line and he does go to jail. But just compare and contrast. The overt working of the legal systems and the covert unaccountable systems.

If you have emotional hype on your side, think drugs, terrorism or even pedophilia, then  anything can be justified, perpetrators are beyond any compassion, beyond any hope of even the most radical do gooder defending some basic civil right. No, for fear of condoning, we willingly acquiesce  to secrecy, to abandonment of all rules of proof and justice being seen to be done. In our name we will allow unknown, unaccountable individuals to trash the rules that have been crafted over centuries to give everyone a chance to protest their innocence. Not to be subjected to the whim and fancy of a Another's suspicion.

In this oh so PC world we are tripping over our feet of zealous correctness and have lost our confidence to know right from wrong. So the burden of proof has to be able to withstand so many minor technicality challenges. For fear of giving offense we lean over backwards to allow the legal counter-challenges that then grind our system down so that fraudsters can wriggle this way and that way. 

To interpose authority into someones life, to prohibit their freedom to carry on seeing a dying mother, or making that interview, or declaring their love or just travel for the joy of it, there has to be significant cause, not just an idle suspicion.

Brush with Democracy - another shade

After losing at two appeals and on the fifth application a local site nearby has finally won approval to form a new vehicular access, and, incidentally create yet a further habitation. Which side of the coin do you see? Persistence rewarded or sheer bloody mindedness, contrary to all local wishes, eventually winning out?

The background. The main road out of the village is narrow, only a car and half width, no verges, with hedges or low walls on either side. This section has a blind corner at either end of a some two hundred yard length of road. Towards the further end the road crosses a stream with stone parapets to either side. All typically Somerset. The local residents find this road difficult to drive and even more dangerous to walk or cycle. No forward visibility and nowhere to go to, or make room to pass. The initial application for two houses to one side of this narrow section of lane had many objectors, eventually it was approved on the basis that no vehicular access should be allowed off this narrow section of lane.

So after a further five applications and two appeals the Planners Officer recommends Approval to the forming of a new access off this same narrow section of lane, just before the bridge. Apparently car speed monitoring demonstrated low risk and visibility splay requirement were achievable. I have a smidgen of sympathy for the Planning Officer. If it was refused again and went to Appeal and if at the Appeal the Applicant could now show compliance with those same reasons used to refuse it last time, the Council could incur considerable costs for being unreasonable. All in all a bad decision and the thugs in our society, prepared to defy all to take what they particularly want, win. The initial decision, no road access of this stretch, was the right one.

Local democracy is a fragile thing. It is hard enough to marshal and focus opinion when freshly engaged to resist a bad application. But to have to return to the same subject time and time and time and time again when you thought you had won first time is beyond the possible. People do have lives and cannot keep going back over the same issues with fervent militancy. The trouble is that Planning decisions are not based on the degree of support or objection to any one proposal by the local residents but rely on the wording of obscure Planning Polices and detached objectives. More on that shortly.

If Planning was only just about what the local residents or even surrounding community thought, there would be no development. It would always be in someone's back garden, therefore to be objected to. You just cannot keep placing all developments, objected to by the vocal organised, near to the weak and ineffectual who are not able to organise a protest. Who would welcome a school, factory, fish and chip shop at the end of their garden? Sure there are bound to be lots of ideas where else they might be located so long as not there at the end of my garden. In the simple early days of Planning there were clear well understood objective principles that guided the application process. Certain areas were decreed suitable for certain type of development so long as specific criteria were met. Residents could object but would have to show that these criteria were breached in some way. A lumpen handed fairness to the community in general but not to the individual.

With time the process has become hugely complicated and complex. The vagaries that follow from this complexity allow a high degree of parochialism, with objective rationale being the loser. What we have now are a series of interrelated Policy Statements. Each Policy Statement being a huge cumbersome document, the result of a prolong and intense period of inspection, challenge, appeal, review and approval. Finally some years down the line, the plan is published and for those few weeks when everyone can remember what it was supposed to enshrine, it remains relevant and the working tool.

The District Council publish their Local Plans for each settlement based on the Structural Plans published by the County Council setting the framework for each of its areas and which in turn it to is based on the government's own published planning strategic objectives for the nation and the regions. From bottom up each is fully referential and compliant with the Policies of the next layer up. So well honed words severally checked for compliance with all relating Policies and stripped of vagueness and ambiguity to the point of course that they become meaningless generalities. Reading any Policy statement from one tier or another, there is no way you can see what is meant and intended when it comes to the specifics of planning in your own patch. Their sweep is too broad and general, stepping well aside from the specifics that might give a clue to the usual conflict of interest arising out of any patch of ground. What is worse we get sweeping aspirational design generalisations that apply totally inappropriately or to some nowhere place. Designs in our patch are to be based on guidelines set up for the Exmoor National Park! Chalk and cheese indeed. Now I like some of the chalk I have seen within the National Park but it is an irrelevance when sorting cheese from cheese in our patch.

Reflecting a view from a contrary stance to that expressed in my Brush with Democracy, we end up in the similar position. An over-blown, bloated planning system no longer responding or recognised by the communities on the ground on one hand. On the other intransigent individuals that are belligerently resist the common good when it compromises their own selfish aspirations find the chinks amongst those generalised words to drive in their wedge. As decisions have to founded on those same words, the Planner is left wrong footed and commonsense flies out of the window. A through spring clean is overdue. Get back to simple objectives with Planners working alongside with the community to help the community understand its planning problems and to achieve it's aspirations. Explaining any National or regional strategic requirments for their local patch and winning support. Not perfect, rough and ready, we may even have to wait before another airport, barrage, power station, motorway can be built. In the end only words can win and keep communities united.

Baffling silence

Just had our three major political parties annual conferences where they address the prevailing issues of the day. Not a mention of social inequality and the desperate need to reduce the gap. I confess I did not pay close attention, certainly did not read cover to cover all the various speeches. Yes I did pick up on one or two minor concessions that could be interpreted as paying a token lip-service to giving the underprivileged just a tad more. However the extremes between those that have and are getting more and those who do not have and are getting less, are so wide with the gap increasing at such a worrying rate.Nothing but a seismic shift in policy from any of three parties is going to even begin to change the present courses. That would have hit the headlines. Even I would have notice that. No, our political leaders attuned to the cares and worries of our Nation, are indifferent to the loss of self-respect, lack of hope and disassociation for the growing army that are having to give up more so that the few can enjoy. Those that have seek to isolate themselves from those that have not, ring fencing their privileged access to the key essentials of life, education, health and homes. A polarised society with a ghettoed rich isolated from the morass is a dangerous society, everyone is degraded by it, rich and poor alike.

The only word I hear is we must stay on course to ensure this slow recovery continues. All parties seem well content and satisfied in continuing to follow this Alice-In-Wonderland economic policy. A pyramid selling type of policy that is founded on creating money so we can spend more. That spending pays off the interest on past loans, so we must take out new loans to create the more money we need to spend to keep the wheels turning. If only we can increase our spending we can, we might, keep ahead of the spiralling debt interests that have to be paid. Just another pyramid selling scam but this one brokered by government.

Spending disproportionately of course, those with get even more while those with a little have to give up that little and those without have to do with even less. Never mind the rich spendings will trickle down as swill to feed the masses. Except that is not how it works. The rich are in a catch up race with the unseemly rich. The unseemly rich are grabbing ever more to show a gap and distance to those on their heels. Their spending is in the realm of the stratosphere, buying up banks that create money or controlling lead industries to set the prices that others must pay. You get the drift, the poor that have to give up are giving up even more to the outlets that the rich control and directly benefit from. Trickle down just does not trickle, another aspect of this crazed Alice-in-Wonderland economics. Economics based on principles where the real life consequences that fail to conform to theory are then assumed not to apply to the theory and can therefore be safely excluded. Told you Alice-in-Wonderland rules.

Institutional lunacy

I just dont get it, a massive loan is taken out to buy a company at some extortionate eye-watering price and then the costs of paying the interest of that massive loan is dumped on the company who struggle to pay it, or more often fail and go bankrupt. In the meantime all the fatcats along the way are creaming off their bonuses for putting together all the different components of all these massive deals. This is supposed to enrich us and make us a wealthier nation? This is not a one-off, this has now become a routine practice. A companies stock value is something to play with, to generate a higher stock valuation or manipulate a fall in value before a buyin. Welcome to the russian roulette of the stock market. Except the bullet ends up in all our heads. We are the losers, irrespective of whether the gamblers win or lose.

A companies stock should be there to help it grow and sustain itself for the long term, any stock value rise reflecting its successful strategy should be a bye reward. The stock market player and their institutional backers have stood this on its head. Today's stock market value is the only thing that counts and the consequences for the company, short term or long term, its survival, prosperity or it imminent bankruptcy are all of no consequence, other that how those situations can be best exploited to gain a stock market increase. It is sheer utter lunacy.

These massive loans that a company has to default on (its business just cannot not feed that amount of interest payment), get traded on, as if they are real assets, an illusory promise to pay is used to raise yet more money. Crazy, absurd but it is going on and no one is saying stop, this is plain stupid. The politicians are silent, we are on the road to recovery! The institutions are silent, so long as their investors see growth who gives a toss about a companies or a nation's future. The company, its employees and we are all helpless as our voice counts for nothing. The Stock Market is run, controlled, mediated by and serviced by the Institutions, who are answerable to zilch.

Yet interest payments are not wealth, increasing debts, good or bad, are not wealth. Wealth comes from producing goods or services that others want to buy. That takes the long game, time, care, commitment and a long term investment in renewing, updating and streamlining the provision in this increasingly competitive global market. The demands for this long game view could not be higher or more important. Instead we saddle companies with unnecessary debt loans that kill them off, the good with the bad. Their goes our future. We have to make it stop. Institutions have to be reigned in and their dominance of the Stock Market taken away. No Institution should be allow a shareholders voice. All decisions of a buy-out must have a majority of (non-institution) shareholders voting in agreement. Put people back in control. Invest in and support all those worthy companies who are working for our and our children's futures.

sovereignty

We like to think of ourselves as an island community, just nicely nestled off the coast of Europe, contained, masters of our own destiny and far from all the turmoil, strife and the argy-bargy of having to live up close with the neighbours next door on the continent. We are safe and secure in our island. Not anymore.
Though the pipes that link Europe up with the massive servers that feed the internet traffic pass through and across our shores, we are just as dependant on this other server farms for our continued internet access as is the rest of Europe. The USofA holds the world to ransom. Though it may well be not in their interest to terminate service any time soon, let us never lose sight of the fact, our internet, our means of living, is now dependant on the USofA continued goodwill. The best we could do to retaliate is to cut the pipes, damaging Europe but of course cutting ourselves off as well. No, we are well and truly beholdened to the USofA. So much for our sovereign independence.

Worse still, we have entered an age when our GPS location has become a central feature in arranging our lives. It has gone well beyond just SatNav's for car journeys. The GPS fix is becoming an essential element of all the wonderful Apps that let you move, explore and communicate with the world around you. GPS that is of course satellite dependant. How many GPS satellites does UKplc own. Zilch. How many have we contributed to and can rightfully claim part ownership. Zilch., Who do we totally rely on for access to all our GPS fixes, the USofA.  We are probably beyond the point when we can turn back and say we can live without the GPS. It is now integral, yet UKplc is totally dependant on others goodwill for a vital service. No backup plan, no partnership deals just the hope goodwill suffices. A supplicant nation.

I doubt whether we can even claim any degree of independence in the servicing of what is now vital Ecommunications. Though we do have UK front offices that offer Ecommunications I very much suspect that a peek behind the curtain would show that yet again we are totally dependant on the goodwill of USofA for any continuity. Europe would not be able to step in and offer a alternative route for connecting up with the rest of the world. One price we do have to pay for using the USofA as our gateway for all our Etraffic is to allow them to look at all our nations traffic. That is the deal. Come through us but only if you permit us to a look at anything at all we fancy taking a peek at, anything, no courtroom check, just on a whim or a fancy. Oh and inaddition to prove what good buddies we are, you must also show us (USofA) everything that you (UKplc) have been having a peeking at. Fair does, we are friends, we trust each other, right.

With the continuing and inevitable slide of USofA off the top dog spot there are a couple of emergent nations that are arm wrestling to grab this soon to be vacated top dog spot. In the resulting milieu of wheeling and dealing, relationships, even long term relationship are going to have to be renegotiated. Is this the time for a wake up call, we are no longer that independent island goings it own way? We are now totally dependant but also have become lazy about who are our real friends or need to be. Who do we need to cultivate to retain any degree of autonomy is this crazy mixed-up interdependent electronic world we emerging into.

the Bogeyman cometh

The recent serious loss of service experienced by many social network site, I include Google in this, could simply be due to the paranoia of nations states as they try to syphon off the ever increasing chatter, within their own country and equally that of friendly or foe states. The secret state surveillances that we know are taking place may be failing top keep up with the traffic growth. It is possible that their collective snooping has crashed the very sites they are so desperately keen to snoop on.

All for our own good and safety of course. If it was not for their constant vigilant monitoring we would be overwhelmed by all those terrorists out there for ever creating ever more sophisticated plots to overthrow us. On the scale of probabilities I am most likely to die in a car accident than encounter anything even peripheral to terrorist action. Set aside the probables in life and let us look at more extreme scenarios. I am much more likely to be raped or knifed in a street brawl than suffer even a minor graze resulting from a terrorist action. The collective paranoia and the accumulative hype about terrorism far exceeds the capacity of the terrorists to action. They do not have any super-powers, they do not have laboratories with highly skilled technicians dreaming up ever more complex devices, they do not have a highly organised and covert secret organisations able to baffle and confuse, no. They are relative simpletons, bumbling along making it up as they go along, limited to a few devotees and preying on the disaffected, disillusioned and despairing youth who are willing to commit suicide by strapping bombs to themselves. This is the true cost of the social inequality that is being so vigorously promoted, disaffected youth beyond hope.

We live with the awareness of unimaginable horrors, large numbers of people dying unexpectedly in dreadful circumstances, but we get on with life, we dont freeze up and cancel life. Not just natural disasters either, but man disasters. Planes do fall out of the sky, from time to time, we carry on flying, learn the lessons, but life carries on as normal. A few extreme acts of terrorism have been carried out, no one can forget the shock of 9/11, shocking but isolated, yes and in the scale of daily events exceptional. Sometimes through our own inefficiencies they get in their view, lucky. But terrorist acts are not the norm, they are not a constant in daily life. Despite what our security services would have us believe. This motley incompetent collection of the disaffected, that talk big, boast about their 'elaborate' plans but seldom have the nonce to succeed, are talked up by the security services. They promote them to arch enemy status and invest in them all the skills needed to justify the ever more elaborate defensive screens the security services think would be nice to employ. The Government, being the government, have to be seen to act, so can only support the only advice they can turn to, and up the security screen to the next level. There by confering on the bumbling terrorist the prize of being taken seriously and more credible than they are in reality.

The collective fear that has been talked up is just a later day version of the witch hunt. The Inquisition were on the hunt for witches, our Security Services are on the hunt for terrorists. The Inquisition were on the look out for covens, our Security surveillance seeks out terrorists cells. The Inquisition duck boarded witches to prove their innocence, we water-board our suspects to prove they are not terrorists. The Inquisition had to protect society from the evil spells cast by witches, the Security Services have to protect us from being radicalised. The Inquisition required everyman to denounce his neighbour, the Security Service listen in to all our gossip and speculations. The Inquisition looked for trademark features of witches, the Security Services check suspects against their radicalised muslim profile. The Inquisition and our Security Services justify their actions for the safety and peace of the State. We are degraded by their actions in our name. We are intimidated into giving up precious freedoms and rights for fear of the dire consequences that otherwise will arise, or so we are told. The terrorist wins the long game when we close down every day actions in anticipation, when we abandon cherished high ideals because of what they might do. When fear enters the mind and displaces rational thought, the terrorists have won.

Drawing a line

Eddie Shah's plea of foul sounds hollow, just because he was caught doing what a lot of others were doing at the time does not absolve him for being responsible for his own action. He is right of course there is a distinction to be made between the actual act of violating another person against their wishes and a technical definition of a act against a minor.

An adult of course has an overiding duty and a responsibility to protect the innocence of youth, to understand their immaturity, their gush of unchannelled surging hormone and rising desires with their lack of perception of the realities against the fantasises in their so vivid minds. That is why we have the technical definition of rape with a minor, consummated or not, to protect our not yet adult and mature young. Fine.


If an innocent and naive pubescent youth decides to strip off their clothes and gyrate infront of a adult male to draw their attention to them and that that adult male decides to consumate their sexual arousal, it is not an unexpected consequence. Maybe the youth had no comprehension of what consequences might follow but they had put themselves in a very vulnerable and highly sexually charged position, not the best spot for cool dispassionate reflection. Still not right. The adult being the adult should control their desires even when provoked by a 'willing' minor clearly lacking in modesty or inhibition. Not right , not defensible but understandable perhaps in the circumstances.


What we, our society, has to ask are the harder questions. Why is a minor so free of all restaint or guardianship as to be alone with a unknown adult, so free as to be able to shed their clothes? How come our minors consumption of sexually provocative images and behaviours are so common place that they think it right or natural for them too to act that way? Why do our youth reject the counsel of older and closer family members and instead become fixated with illusions of celebrity razzmatazz. Why are our teens so resentful of authority and so willing to flout any self-control, getting so blinded out of their minds as to be incapable of making any judgement of their exposure to risk. We have a youth mentoring problem. This cult of the youth, this rapacious selling to the youth market, this capitulation to a youth driven agenda has supplanted the norms of restraint and caution. 

So clearly Eddie Shah was wrong to take advantage of a minor, offering what a minor should never ever have been in a position to offer, but we too are to blame for allowing our minor's to get so beyond our reach that they feel no constraints on their actions. Our duty is to protect them in a safe enough environment until they have matured enough to make their own mistakes when they have some skills in realising the consequences. We, not just Eddie Shah, have failed them all.

Got a pram?

Not so long ago, maybe as little as ten years back, when a major significant government plan was announced, we gasped when the number of millions it would involve were revealed. Nowadays millions are ten a penny, still large but no longer significant or a rarity. How many home owners in the home counties now have a pad worth a million plus, can you still buy a property in London for less than a million? Today's currency is now billions, but large corporation toss around their billions will a devil may care attitude, a billion is coming to be small change for governments and our multinationals. The trillion is beginning to creep into our every day vocabulary.  

Look in your pocket, do you any longer bother to count the pennies? No. Their value has become worth so little they are just a nuisance loose change. It will not be long before the penny drops out of our currency and a ten pound coin is introduced. So what is going on. Quantitative easing, that is what is going on. Sounds so technical, so solid and so reassuring no need to inquire further what is quantitative easing. Just a fancy name for printing more money or as we used to call it, inflation. Lots of quasi professors of economics theories are strutting around telling the world about these wonder clothes that solve all the world problems, clothes called 'quantitative easing', invisible to all but those who cling on to hope that they are real. How they oooh and aaah about the beauty of these invisible clothes and how they smooth out all their problems. Just fantasy.

Cast your mind back to the Deutsch Mark pre-WWII, remember how we laughed at the germans having to wheel their pram loads of money to buy a loaf of bread only to find they now needed two prams of money for the same loaf when they got there. That is called inflation. That is the 'rescue' path we are now on. Print more money, keep on spending and the pains of excessive loans will just disappear. Fine if you are locked into the gravy train that shovels more money into your account for every new shed load of money printed. For the likes of you and I where our income is frozen, or more likely reducing, the ever escalating prices of all those goods we need to survive put our very survival into jeopardy. Got a pram anyone, I need to buy a loaf of bread?

Salaried MP's

I have no axe to grind whether MP's get a salary increase or not. What really worries me is the idea that an MP is in salaried employment. A career MP! Old fashioned as I maybe I thought politics was all about being driven by some principal, some sense of social well being, the desire to serve the Nation and to its citizens. I cannot square these two views. If you are salaried, your career depends on you hanging on in there, going with the flow, keeping hold of your job by finding the middle non-contentious ground so you are always in employment. Surely this is the exact opposite of what our MP's should be doing?

The vary last comparison I would want to make with an MP is a Bank employer or even a Doctor or Teacher. A career requires you to compromise, to fit-in with the aims of your current employer, to subsume your own aspirations and get behind what ever is the current corporate objective, no matter what your personal views. I really do expect an MP to have ideals, to believe in and standby those ideals, to argue and fight for those ideals and to be prepared to stand-down if those ideals fail to win majority support.

Everyone should be eligible to stand as an MP, irrespective of background and certainly not restricted only to those of independent means. Therefore so that those in the lowest paid sectors of  society too have the real option I can agree that a non-discriminatory income needs to go with being elected. Clearly the cost of representing a northern seat is of a different order to the cost of that in one of the Home Counties. The incurred costs of representing your seat should be funded by the Nation. Why does a healthcare worker on or near the minimum wage need to put on a salary scale on par with a Doctor, Bank Manger or Teacher just to serve as an MP? If you are not on the minimum wage you can afford the gamble, if your passion to serve is strong enough, to resume your career if the gamble fails. You are sufficiently well cushioned that you do not need any state intervention to be able to stand, if chosen.

Being an MP opens many doors of opportunities. It gives you an unparalleled access to a wide network of contacts that would never be possible without serving as an MP. Many perfectly legal opportunities open up, during and subsequent to your seat as are very many more totally unacceptable and highly dubious opportunities to cream off the top. That is why we want our MP's to be driven by principle and not by greed. So an income just above minimum wage, sufficient to ensure all can serve. The running costs actually incurred and verified to be reimbursed. If gifted person are thereby discouraged from offering themselves because they might lose out on the deal then the Nation does not need them and is far better off without their opportunism. So principled persons with a desire to serve, roll up roll up!

Postscript. Should MP's use First Class travel? No, no, no special privileges to set them apart. They must live the lives of all other citizens who have to cope with the rules they pass through parliament. If anything their lives should be made more onerous, be wide open to the full wrath of the state against the citizen. I would like to see MP's sign on weekly and then have to justify that they were working full time as an MP and did attend parliament session before they could claim their wage and expenses.

Smug to Judge

A scientific study has shown that the wealthy sic successful become desensitised to the real problems other 'unsuccessful' people face. They become harsher and more willing to be critical of failure to achieve without those benefits that their own success bestows on them. Quickly forgetting the past struggles they had to surmount those same problems that suddenly disappeared when they had the added clout of success. Success does indeed breed an attitude of success which then surmounts obstacles.

Vince Cable generally gives the impression of someone who has ideas and does test them before mouthing out. So I was taken aback when he took a neutral line with Zero Hour Contracts. How can you be neutral? This is abusive advantage taking of the vulnerable. It is disgraceful, how can any MP condone such practice.

The unemployed are pressurised and intimidated by the real possibility of benefit withdrawal unless they can weekly demonstrate they are seeking work and are willing to take work any offered. There are no middle grounds. They are subjected to weekly scrutiny by uncivil servants to see to just that. Uncivil servants that are no doubt themselves performance monitored to ensure they wrinkle out the target margins.

Potential Employers can hang out the bait of work and can then haul in a rich harvest of unemployed desperate to keep their benefits alive. All without cost or commitment from them, just hang this out on the line of hope and expectation. Zero hours means they contract nothing but the lure of a promise, yet require the applicant to to commit to making themselves available at a moments notice. To be plucked, at their leisure, if and when they have a passing moment off work increase. Outrageous. Totally an unfair terms contract.

The most evil act one person can play on another is to falsely raise hope and expectations. All the more so when that other person is vulnerable, threatened and in need of hope. A hope that is going to based on the shallow insubstantial offer of a possible something in the wind. Wake up Ed Balls there are no positives, this is an evil manifest.

Nothing Changes

Just watched ITV Secrets from the Workhouse. You make up your own mind about the worth of the show. What struck me so forcibly was the Victorian attitude to the sick lame and the poor. Demonised and publicly judged to be malingers, the shiftless workshy who had to be punished and humiliated back into a proper wish for work.These same Victorians that I had always assumed had such proud high moral standards and lived within such very straight-laced ethics. These Victorians from the security of their mansions, surrounded by a bevy of servants with access to all the riches from across the world felt able to judge those that failed to succeed.

Despite a brief interlude where the Welfare State put such judgemental views firmly behind us and set out to help all those that fell, back onto their feet to gave them support for another chance to make a go of it. We are back at square one.

On our behalf, our government sets out to demonise all those out of work or taking benefits of one kind or another, casting them as lazy, work-shy fraudulent abuses of the system. We have turned a full circle and are back with the Victorians attitudes condemning all those that have not yet leapt onto the gravy train was worthless. Sanctimonious hypocrisy.

If the government cannot learn and understand that we are all dragged down by the poor and deprived within our society. That all our lives are degraded by the consequences of having a sector of our society without hope, despair, loss of self-esteem. We shall have to teach them. We shall have to speak loud and clear to them and tell them that giving the rich even more access to even more riches can only be done by taking more from one sector, the least well off. This is not sustainable. You cannot blame the sick, lame or poor for failing. You have to help them, you have show compassion, not condemnation.

Entitlement

We all live with the presumption we are entitled to certain basics in life, be it shelter, food, education, employment, care, security, privacy or dignity. Should you live in a deprived part of our globe none of these can be taken for granted. That you are alive at this moment and might reasonably assume you will be alive for the next hour or perhaps the rest of the day is as far as you can presume anything. We however take our entitlements to the life we have for granted and are so casual to the point of indifference in seeking out and protecting what we have. After all it is our birthright.

We are entitled to nothing. Everything we do get comes only from the goodwill of society and that it is prepared to fund. It may well be in societies long term best interests to arrange everyone to have dry warm shelter, to have access to good nutritious food, to ensure children are educated. Without these basic steps the scale of consequential problems soar and scupper any societies attempts to hold the line. Does not turn it into a right, just a self-interest to do what is seen to be possible.

What is possible is all in the eye of the beholder, not the supplicants, not the egalitarian evangelist, not the pressure groups, just the one beholder who has the gift of deciding for that moment. Okay not entirely free choice as they too have to bow to media reactions, funding limitations,  public opinion, world expectations and their own sense of destiny. How our basic needs are catered for come down to whim and fancy. A far cry from any right and not even an entitlement.

Of course our one core entitlement is our privacy, that is sacrosanct. To have your privacy invaded is equal to being raped. Yet the State takes on itself to enter you anally, take you without notice and lock you up without any contact with the outside world, read all electronic communications, now and in the past, irrespective of subject or address, store your gene record to be read for whatever purpose its see fit and all in the name of some ill-defined Security of the State. Not just the State of course but any number of other bodies, even private commercial firms, are too granted the right to enter your property, with or without your consent, to take information or property it deems necessary. Your right to privacy is pretty shallow based. Just dont show your head above the parapet! Remember these things do happen to just ordinary people, just like you and me, not those evil twisted people, just ordinary guys caught up in some maelstrom they little know about or understand.

Never mind an englishmans home is his castle, so pull up the drawbridge. Not quite.  For example, the software you buy does not give you ownership, in many cases it just a licence to use with even restrictions on how you sell it on. Of course your music, video, DVD have restrictions on where or how you use it or make copies of it. Without touching on leases and ground rent, your house, the house that you own, may well have a charge on it. That charge might permit some other body to seize it and evict you from your own home. Extreme maybe but do not blithely assume just because you have bought something it is yours for ever and a day. It all depends on the sinuous threads of attachment other bodies have wrapped around your purchases.

We have no rights, we have no entitlements just many expectations, reasonable and wide spread expectations. The fundamental expectation that the you will be treated fairly and not significantly disadvantageously from any other person in your social milieu. Time for you to look around. In this rapidly increasing unequal society where those with take even more whilst those without, the least able to give anything, have to give up so they can have their more. Fairness and equity have gone out of the window. Your protectors of your rights, the MP's, have abandoned principle and sold out to personal betterment, financial clout or the mindless middle ground of dont rock the boat as we too might still climb aboard. Greed and self-interest abound. You are a drift at the mercy of whim and fancy without an entitlement to your name. Be afraid, be very afraid.

Take responsibility

If you are in a sharp suit, carrying a logo emblazoned handbag and are heavily bejewelled when you turn into a dark unlit street, with no passing traffic or other pedestrians, it should come as no surprise when you are mugged. Not that you wanted it, not that it makes it right because you put yourself in a position to be a target, nonetheless society still owes you a duty to track down the perpetrators but you did rather ask for it.

When you tumble from the club late of night out of your tiny skull with drink or drugs, unable to composure your standing or your mind, when you are dressed to display off your fine physique, broad shoulders, narrow waist accentuated lined eyes. That you are picked by a stranger, taken somewhere then raped should come as no surprise. It is not that your asked for it, it is not that it in anyway makes it right just because you exposed a vulnerability, nonetheless society still has a duty to treat the assault as a violation of you and to track down and punish the perpetrators but you did rather put yourself at risk.

When you as a non-parent adult put yourself into a position where you are with a child alone in a non-observed spot for a length of time it is within the realms of foresight that that child could go on to broadcast tales of abuse, whether fantasised, imagined, misconstrued, culture clashed or overreacted, it hardly matters, clearly, as a responsible adult your actions would be constrained, but we all know that children or even young not yet adults have vivid imaginations and can slant events beyond any reasonable interpretation. Nonetheless society has a duty to protect the young and prosecute any potential violator or predator of the young and vulnerable.

When you design your store so that in every direction the eye meets a continuous cascade of inviting and mouthwateringly tempting candy and when you place the only cash desk in some deep remote spot, way out of the way of fast selling lines, manned by one overwhelmed cashier with a six deep queue impatiently waiting their turn, dont be too surprised if customers take to walking out with your candy and not paying for it. Clearly you do want payment for your candy, offering it so temptingly does not confer any rights to take without payment and of course society must seek out and reprimand those who do succumb but you do rather ask for it by making it so easy to take, yet so tortuous to make payment for.

If you do not have a head for heights, dont climb rocks, you will fall. If you cannot swim dont jump into the water at the deep end, you will drown. It really is that simple. We all have to take responsibility for our own actions, we all have to constrain our hopes, desires and enjoyments so as to not put ourselves at undue risk. Just because society has a duty to sweep up and care for those those unfortunates who by mischance, lack of judgement, inexperience befall fates they did not expect does not confer any rights on anyone of us to be reckless. Just because society takes on itself a duty to apprehend and chastise those who set out to deceive, trick, entrap or overpower those who are weak, gullible or naive does not relieve each one of us of the need to exercise caution, a degree of circumspection, when dealing with strangers. Society is there as the backstop to pick up all those weird, wonderful and totally unexpected twists that life throws up, not as a day by day buffer shielding us from our own stupidity..

If your display of wealth is ostentatious, you take care. If your are sexually desirable, make sure you can stay alert to the risks of unwanted attention. If you let yourself be put into a compromised position do not rely on charging the other party of misconduct. If you rank making the sale way above protecting your stock dont claim the public are thieves. We all have to take responsibility for our own actions. It not for society to bail us out each and every time. 

Misrepresentation

We arrived back for the first time into Gatwick and then had to make our way across into London. Gatwick Airport Rail Station is very confusing, very difficult to make visual sense of what platforms are where and when are the next trains. Usual long queues at the few manned ticket sales so tried the ticket machines. Very clunky, unfriendly and so slow in response. After several offers of alarmingly overpriced tickets, must have made a wrong choice, succumbed and asked for help. Got a through ticket to the underground. Several departure displays all showing trains to Victoria. Took the earliest, rushed down to the platform only to be greeted by man who explained the train had left several minutes ago, but it was still showing on the departure screen. So this elderly couple had to manhandle heavy suitcases back up staircase. Okay station is undergoing refurbishment. Bewildered as to which platform to now use asked and was directed to another platform. Train standing there, got in and was taken to Victoria. Only to be greeted by a big red penalty fare display board and an eastern european uniformed member of staffing barring exit until a penalty fare had been paid for using the Gatwick Express.

So what is wrong? I am well used to an integrated train system, where non-stopping trains or slow stopping trains both take you to your destination, all for the same ticket price. An integrated system where your ticket on one train is also valid on another. An integrated train system. Gatwick Express is happy to put display boards up and staff an exit point to extract a penalty fare but is not prepared to differentiate itself at the point of boarding. No members of staff here warning of a fare supplement, no differentiation here on the platform that this was a special platform for a differentiated service, no ticket machines here to check you had a valid tick before entering that platform or train. No. Gatwick Express are more than happy to exploit an integrated service, lull unaware passengers into using its service and only then declare itself to reap its rich harvest of penalty fares. What is wrong? I was denied choice. I was deliberately misled, mis-sold a service misrepresenting itself as an integrated service. I was not out to exploit or take advantage of something I was not prepared to pay for. I was just catching a train, the next train to Victoria but then was ambushed by Gatwick Express.



Not that either the train or the service or the platform were in any way remarkable, just a permutation on any other 'franchise'. Gatwick Express could not even bother to explain on the train electronic display what tickets were not valid nor what premium ticket was required. No they are more than happy to take the penalty fare money, at the end. This is what riles. It is rampant abuse of innocent travellers. Gatwick Airport supplies a constant stream of new innocent travellers for them to abuse and extort their excesses. Judging by the exit staff bulging belly pouch stuffed with money, Gatwick Express is on to a well paying earner. Several hundred innocent victims an hour fall into their extortion trap. Adding an annual bonus £1M into their coffers. Why should they spend money to alert passengers before boarding their cash cow.

Because it is not fair play, it is not the British way of doing things. We should not take advantage, financial of otherwise, of foreign guests or from the unaware. The government, that oversees the provision, should be very concerned at this tarnish to our nations image.

Time to Share.

We look at it, we know it, we are almost bored with the thought but we carry on doing nothing. We humans have replicated to such a point that our capacity to plunder exceeds our limited Earth's capacity to provide. Been like that for a long time and what do we do? We sail on stripping the Earth of its irreplaceable assets as if there is no tomorrow. At least no tomorrow for our children now born, us, oh we will be all right, be enough to see us through! But we put so much time and energy into protecting our children and giving them best start out possible why bury our heads and ignore that that we know is going to happen? 

It is too big a problem? We are many, we are the cause and we can also be the solution. 'They' will sort it out. No, too set in a rut, 'they' can only carry on the way they always have, too much at stake for them to want to change. Ignore it and it will go away? It just gets to be an even bigger problem the longer we leave it. Scaremongering, just another false crisis made up for some political agenda? No. This is for real. There are so many fronts, each are telling the same story. Many, not just oil, essential minerals have a known finite reserve. Climate is going to change and our food sources are going to suffer. We strip the Earth of its lungs, the rain forest, we trash the soils with monoculture, we poison the ground with insecticides and fertilisers, we drive species to extinction just for our greed, it goes on and on. Wherever you are on the political spectrum, you cannot deny every single aspect. We have a problem.

On another tack we in the West have expectations of what we need to surround ourselves with to cope with life. The whole gamut, homes, furniture, food, transport, leisure activities, technology, we want it, we need it, we cannot survive without our access to it, to it all. China's millions are now waking up to these self same expectations. Their government pro-actively is out there now buying up rights to resources around the world, so their people can have what you take for granted. Not just China, but India, Africa and the S.America's are all looking and their appetite's to have also are awakening. The stuff they want does not come out of thin air, is not 're-cycled', it all comes out of the Earth, in one way or another. We have a problem.

We have to change tack. Put an end to this winner takes all attitude. The biggest, the most powerful take all they want. Be it hundred times, one thousand times, one million times more than the next person. It is their sovereign birth right to take it, to have it, protect it and stop you from getting a morsel. Whether we are thinking about individuals, companies, bank bosses, governments, continents, the same attitude applies. Those with the power take, take all they have a fancy to and those without, do with that much less.

We have to stop. We have to begin to care for that person next to us. They have as much right to what we have as we have to it. Nothing, nothing at all, gives us the right to have more, more than our neighbour. We have to share to make sure that what we enjoy is not disproportionate to what everyone else has. Only when we can be satisfied that others have had the chance to take their portion are we free to go back for more. This is the heart of being human. Whether we think about person to person or country to country, this is the true spirit of humanity. The takers have usurped us, now it is time for all of us to stand up and shame them for what they are. To claim back, on behalf us all, what is rightfully ours. To say no you are not entitled to that bonus, to use those share to your own advantage, to enact that legislation which is inequitable, your title deeds do not allow you sole occupancy, call it out as it is. Stand up, together, and shout out loud, "Fair for All or None at all".

Learn Circumspection

Once facts were immutable, cast in stone. You referred to your trusted fonts of wisdom, be it textbook, encyclopaedia, reference manual or even your grandpa. That was it, the word as it was, beyond any question. Not any more. We are the lucky generation that has been freed from the formalised, ritualised and so often discipline restricted access to precious information. Digitally we have the freedom to access all the world's knowledge almost within our ken. Except we are in overload, we are all at sea in an information morass. Dip your hand in and let all the gems of information trickle through your fingers until one of two tasty or more interesting bits stick out. Then share those bits with the wider world adding to this ever growing morass of information. Very much of this information is just that regurgitated, a few words added there, maybe a spin adjusted here and viola a new author claiming ownership of a unique piece of information.

Not all the information in this morass is bad, there are many pearls, nuggets of wisdom, insightful, understandings that you could hug to your heart they are so insightful, so relevant, so mind expanding. Trouble is these precious nuggets get so easily lost in the morass or so quickly overlaidened with dross. We, the so lucky ones to have the access to it, we now have to train ourselves about how to use this deluge of information. There are a few simple disciplines we must train ourselves to follow when dipping in our toes.

The very first question to ask when presented with any information is what is their authority to speak on the subject, be it proven experience, acknowledged authority, sanctioned spokeperson, lead researcher to gifted paraphraser? Know and understand the source of their authority and therefore their limitations to speak to the subject.

The second question is ask yourself what is not being said. We all talk to agendas, we have information to relay and do not want to sidetrack or confuse that message with stray aside issues, irrelevances that do not reinforce the central message. We all do it, some open handedly striving to be objective some deliberately setting out to obfuscate and some are so partisan they can only see down their narrow tunnelled vision agenda. So the what is not said is almost as important, possible more important than what is being said. We have to use our life skills to wrinkle out what are the corollary issues that have not been touched on.

Thirdly where is the opposition, the alternative contradictory opinion? Their arguments against the pro position are just as revealing as the pro position itself. Again it is our life skills that will enable us to weigh up in our minds the strength of their case against the information we want to trust. Our personal skills are in balancing contradictory positions and then coming to a measured view.

Then finally the weight of probability, how many other minds just like yours have bought into the information. Numbers do not make it right trustworthy information but you can build in a measure of credence. To follow a one in a thousand line of information is a lot riskier than a one in five. Does not confirm or deny but you do have a perception of how much risk is at stake so you can balance that with your reliance on it and the cost of any outcome when using it.

Hey that is all very long winded, drawn out and all I want was the date of the Inquest. Make this your discipline, your routine, have it in mind for all information presented to you whether from the government, insurance company, a comparison website to Wikipedia. The extent that you articulate, check and observe each step is only relevant when the cost of using that information begins to bite hard. Date of the inquest? I'll run with Wikipedia.
What is the cheapest car insurance? I wont be taking a comparison sites word for it, I will certainly be looking around. Which career to take up then I might explore my options spread over several days. You see we have been doing it all along but with so much more information on live stream we need to learn to be more circumspect.

 

An aside

I am seething underneath over two issues.
The amount of adulatory comments about that woman who destroyed so much of the fabric of our society.
The bland dismissive contempt of the government minister telling benefit claimants they should seek work.
Arhh!
 
So she died and so has to be buried. Please spare us all the pomp and circumstance of a feted funeral parade. I really feel like finding a large source of rotten eggs to throw at her coffin I am that incensed. She had her way not from ignorance, nor arrogance but just by contempt and manipulation of all those surrounding her, getting to do her thing, no matter how wrong, misguided and so lacking in a longer term view. Amongst her many crimes, she destroyed the unions, she politicised the, up until then, democratic quasi objective planning system, she gave full reign and encouragement to self seeking gratification, she gave away our social inheritance to profit makers and did everything to encourage greed and nothing to promote compassionate support. The limp wristed that lapped up the cream washing over her rights of passage are the self same trundled out to glorify her 'achievements'. History will condemn them and her in due course.


How dare anyone stand up in public and without a twinge of conscious say to the nation that those on benefits should seek work, That they, the government want to work with them, the benefit applicants, to seek employment. What utter sanctimonious bilge. Does the Minister have any sense of shame? Are their lives so far out of touch with real life exigencies that they actually believe all benefits supplicants have to do is get off their couch and just look for work? That then they will find ample work opportunities and 'it' the benefit problem will magically go away. Are these, the imbeciles we get to vote for and put in power, to make such crass, insensitive and so very out of touch pig ignorant statements to the nations media? Rise up and shout back. Tell it as it is. 


Once the gilded lillies have taken off their rich cream bonuses, what we are left with is a bankrupt nation, in a double dip recession, ruled by a government that sees no merit in stimulating employment and where we scrabble and fight over the few menial jobs left. Ever fearful of being undercut and replaced by the next even more desperate person underneath us. Deal with the rampant excesses and compassionately support the underdog is not a bad replacement policy.

Taking Advantage

Standby I am angry across several fronts. So UKplc is spending much more than it earns. Right. To bring the economy back towards a better balance the spending has to be cutback, quite hard so it is going to be painful. Right. I get all that. One significant area of spending that has 'got out of control' is welfare support. So the most vulnerable, least able to make any lifestyle changes, the sector totally dependant on the government support to pull themselves out of their problems will become the sector of our society in the frontline to make more savings, to rescue our failing economy.

That is all perfectly alright because as we all well know people who live off benefit are liars, or if not liars, fraudster, or not that then at least workshy or at the best living an extravagant lifestyle beyond their limited means. A lifestyle that any other sane person would immediately recognise as inappropriate. Our government, our high salaried politicians living a comfortable lifestyle look down on these lower income classes, distance themselves and actively promote the demonisation of these awful hopeless people dependant on welfare. They are to blame and therefore have put themselves beyond any compassion. Their own worst enemies. You and I of course realise that, though there are bound to be the odd individual that (is allowed to) get away with abusing the system, the majority are decent people trying very hard in impossible circumstances to give their children a safe and sheltered upbringing, to ensure the best start in life possible for them. Government speak is that they are workshy, afraid to do a decent days work, preferring the easy benefits income. The lack of any work opportunities are a direct result of the double dip recession the governement has been administering these last years. Somehow the victims of their policies are to be blamed for not 'wanting to work'.


It gets worse. Over many past decades the governement has funnelled money into social housing and built predominately three bedroom houses. The 'best' return for effot put in. Suddenly, with the demographic changes and the rise of single parent families, we have all these big houses under-occupied, rooms to spare. Brilliant, we will penalise these the weak and vulnerable for the failings of the governement past choices where they cannot justify the number of rooms occupied. Outside of the cities, there are almost nill alterantive to a three bedroom social house, right payback time, they have no choice, no where else to go so a nice steady cashstream. That will teach them, depending on the fair even handedness of the state benefit system.


Meanwhile of course, our mates, those affluent members of this society that our salaried politicians now aspire to mix amongst, adopting their lifestyle choices, continue to get their winter fuel payment. Unless they have voluntarily opted out. Now is that cynical or what. In a wide variety of ways the income streams of the very rich are explicitly protected by government actions. Afraid that any negative actions will frighten them away to other shores. Forgetting of course that everyone of us in this society has had to give up some, so that they, the wealthy minority, can take ever more of their entitlements.


I urge you to watch this video, Wealth inequalities in USA, because it is relevant to UKplc and a real eye-opener. It compares what people think is a fair distribution, low to high income, then contrast that with what these same people think is the actual gap between the lowest and the highest income and finally to reveals the actual and increasing gap between the highest and lowest. We are talking twenty fold. Eye-watering difference between the majority, including all the comfortable off middle incomes groups and the tiny few percent who are taking, not just a lions share but almost all of the available income. Watch the video, it sets it all out clearly and objectively, no party tub thumping. Relevant because for the last two decades our government has set its objective to increase the income divide. The rationale goes something along the lines of, those with get even more then they will spend more and it will trickle down and we all get to benefit. I have no objection to one favoured person having a gilded lilly, an incentive. When that gilded lilly is re-gilded and then again and again because what else do you do with wealth beyond contemplation. It cross over from being an incentive to being a obscentity. Which is where we are now. There is an ever increasing gap between those that have and those do not. An increasing gap, maybe not yet to USofA proportions but we too are well headed down the same route.


So what? Envy! No, because a society with big income inequality, is a sick society. The Spirit Level has explored exhaustively the relationship beteween all those social maliase we worry about. Binge drinking, under-aged sex, single parents, aggression, crime, you name it and failings within our society are aggravated by the extent of the divide. Does not make sense, yet it does. Low self-esteem, low self value and isolation from the heart of the society does result in self-deprecating behavior. The link is irrefuteable. The breakdown of our society we all sense but cannot quite pin down arises out of this ever increasing gap between the haves and the have nots. Social cohesion is just one aspect. We have to take a new tack and start to reduce the income inequality. We cannot pull all the poor up, the gap is too great, we have to rein in by big steps the wealth of those rich minorities. We must start to medicate our sick society back to health. In doing so we might even resolve some of the governments current problems of spend exceeding income. A spend not from the poorest sector of society I guess.

We have to put UKplc into reverse. Return once more to support the desperately needy in our society, give them the lifeline to help themselves out of their predicament. If for no other reason than that their despair taints and spoils all our enjoyment of the society we live in. Support that can only come from severely reining in the extravagant indecent wealth of the top earners. Do not think for one moment you can safely sit back and your government will blunder into the right lines of thought. They show no signs of understanding or sharing the evils that our poorest are forced by their policies to endure. Their focus appears to be how quickly they can get to lap the cream they are pouring into the coffers of the well off. 

No the reverse gear will only be found through people power. It is well past time for each of us to speak out and make sure your voice is heard loud and clear. Income inequality is immoral, unchecked wealth is a cancer in our society, it is wrong and it is harming us all. A divided society is a spoilt society.

Pulling Together

When a concern hits the Nation I have been surprised how, from across a very wide spectrum, all the people you talk to, from the extremes to rock solid traditionalist, there is a centralised opinion which conforms on the right response. Very pragmatic, largely conservative with a knuckle down and deal with it approach. Across the Nation we are more united in our responses to affairs that trouble us than you would think from the presentations showing our divided Nation. Within that broad spectrum of agreement on the direction needed as a response there are of course huge and passionate differences on how that response might be best implemented. That is were our diversity shows itself but that then is a healthy arena for debate, compromise and reaching consensus.

So long as there is a pause button. In highly charged situations say where a girl has been assaulted we do need a check to the Nations emotive response of tying the culprit to the whipping post. We need time for passions to cool and logic, reason and doubt to surface. Just maybe the culprit was a boy of same age and they had just finished playing a computer game, or the girl was a self harmer and it brought her pleasure, or a parent slapped her shin once for excessive outburst and the girl was given to drama, or a schizophrenic patient missed medication and found themselves in a wrong place and time or just that act of a middle aged immigrant known sexual repeat offender. We need time to pause and review before jumping in with solutions, no matter how overwhelmingly right they seem at the time in the heat of the moment.

So not a fast-response Nation, slow but not therefore ponderous, more measured. Neither uniform across our lands. Let us not reach a one size fits all solution but rather rejoice in all our regional differences, those nuances that lie between city, town and rural communities. Far better for a wide range of permutations on a theme than one lumbering insensitive road-roller of a solution. Variety brings the opportunity for novelty, freshness that new take that might just provide the right approach. Of course it also brings mistakes, erroneous conclusions, inept or inapt, which is where we need to talk. Tell each other what we are doing, compare and contrast with others, learn which ways work best, where and how. Together we can work towards ideal solutions for all of us, modified and adjusted to suit our local needs and limitations. We can work together, not under the weight of top heavy centralised bureau's of control and regulation, but collaboratively and confidently finding our own solutions whilst listening and learning from others in similar circumstance. Now that is what I call Politics.

Not Alone

Just one of those chance things in life, came across The Spirit Level and it has revealed an insight into society that I have been struggling with over all these posts.It has introduced a clarity of view as to where the problems lie. Not for me to paraphrase a carefully constructed argument, see for yourselves, but clearly the message it sets out is that the underlying root of all those problem we sense, fume against, feel impotent to do anything about, is, social inequality.

A couple of key thoughts perhaps to get you thinking along the right lines. We have long ago passed the point where any increase in wealth (you decide how you want to determine it) equates to a commensurate increase in security and health. Think, by way of comparison, of a third world person where a tin of clean water or a bowl of rice has immediate and large impact on their state of well-being. Next, our own personal insecurities are directly related to where we feel we are within the social order. Top dog struts proudly, whipping boy nervously peeks here there to see where the next put down is coming from. This social insecurity has been heightened by the breakdown in communities and knowing where and who you belong to. Then, the wider the gap between the haves and the havenots the more extreme are the symptoms that manifest themselves. It is almost counter intuitive, but low self-esteem, as a result of being low down in the pecking order, directly impacts on your personal well-being, likelihood to abuse, commit crime, the list goes on. Not the sole cause, not the only reason, but social deprivation, real or imagined, is a major driver.

At this point, poised to shout eureka, there are other minds out there all looking in roughly the same direction, I get a reality check. On past performance it takes fifty years from the first wave of enthusiasm for a new political understanding to work through up the layers of conservative rebuttal until it becomes the accepted norm when finally it can enter into the mainstream to become universally accepted and adopted. Fifty years!

What we all have to do is to use our own mastery of this new interconnected world to get the word out there. Spread as widely as possible. Take what you see and like and promulgate, contruct your own vision or borrow another's, it matters not. Just spread the word that we, us as a society, want a better place, a more equal place, a place where we are treated with the same respect we wish to give to others. It is just possible, together, we can foreshorten the fifty wait before something happens.

The other way

Standby for the long haul. For time to time I have lost heart. Those with power and or privilege have such a firm grasp on the Establishment as to rebuff all pressure to change. People power as evidenced by 38Degrees or Tweets that go viral have shone a light. Not by plaintive 38Degree appeals to the better nature to those in power, who have shown by their sanctimonious platitudes, to lack compassion. To be devoid of all empathy. No people power as demonstrated by the overwhelming strength in numbers.

When all the Establishment has left is the preservation of the status quo, the power redistribution is over, job done. If the masses and just as important, the income generated by those masses refuse to accede to demands of those who have subsumed power to themselves, finally power reverts to where it always has been, with the will of all the people. Not just a select, self-protecting clique minority but all of the people. Clearly the Establishment is going to fight, fight dirty and there will be causalities along the way. The Establishment will use wontedly against it own citizens every vestige of power it has accreted over the years, indefinite detention without charge, body orifice search, seizure of assets, denial of service, search and exploitation of a digital material, injunctions, you name it and they have given themselves the uncontested power to do as they choose to any person that courts their displeasure. All in the name of the security of our State, the State that belongs to us, not 'them' that have arranged amongst their cohorts to be in charge.

Logistically if enough people come to together and agree on a course of action there is nothing that can be done to stop them. The mass will always win out against the minority no matter what weapons the minority choose to fight with. In the end, sheer overpowering numbers, overpower. There is no other outcome. Until now mobilising sufficient mass to overcome the forces set against them has been the restraint, (think the miners strike). Now we can have instant mass action or reaction, dynamically fluid, ever moving orchestrated by mass appeal, not along designated channels. IT savvy, entrepenual and able to respond in kind to Establishment attempts to throttle the communication pipes.

Not banner waving protests either that accede and are subservient to the powers assumed. No, but by mass refusals to comply, refusals to accede to domination. Emphatic rebuttal of this or that directive issued by those seeking to exert power and control. Masses that refused to be demonised as fraudster, cheats or liars and stand their ground and claim recognition for what they are, loyal, hardworking, honourable and worthy citizens. The will of these people do not consent to what you have granted to yourself. Not just a negative reaction either but a rejection along with an alternate action that the people will support and put their will behind. 

My hope is that the people will choose to move towards an egalitarian society. Where each looks out for the other and helps them to realise their potential for the great good of all. Where no one is left distressed or disadvantaged, each one helps the other. No elites, no protected tiers of ring fenced wealth, power and influence to buffer against the just claims of all those majorities without. My belief is in the common person. They would not tread down those below them just to get on the next ladder up. In the end, the people, just the people will decide. Now that really would be a welcome breath of fresh air.

There is more to life.

More than just a bit taken back to hear the President of USofA, Obama declare one of his three objectives for his new term, as the pursuit of happiness. How incredibly shallow, vapid, doomed to disillusionment and dissatisfaction. The ultimate chase for the end of the rainbow that can never be caught and is such a huge let down even if you were ever to get near to it. Despite contrary claims I am all for happiness, take grreat pleasure in it when it comes my way and would grant everyone, if it was in my power, a sprinkle here and there. But not outright hedonism as a way of life, the prime target to see you through life.

It may be my puritanical up bringing or just a reflection of my being so out of kilter with today's thinking but happiness was that incidental that came as the unexpected reward for so more worthy effort. Targeted happiness seldom delivers. You cannot make, organise, precondition that people will respond to any situation and experience happiness. How many miserable, or flat evenings have you endured after going out on the town with all the mates intent on a good time? No amount of booze, food, cheap thrills or provocation can elicit that happy high so sought after. Happiness is a state of mind that arises out of the feel good factor of those around you. That cannot be manufactured or scheduled to order.

The surest way to feel happy is to go beyond the normal routine and push and extend yourself for something worthwhile. From the simplest most mundane, just setting the parameters so your kid can feel safe, secure and enveloped in trust and affection. All the way to loftier ideals. Such as doing some little thing to alleviate the dejection and outright misery of so many peoples lives, to do your bit to maximise the benefits from our amazing technologies, to setting back a fraction this planets plunge into chaos, to striving to attain new heights of imagination or intuition or to offer a small insight into better tolerance or understanding. Whatever from the gamut of possibilities, as long as your aim and objective is to help others, not just to promote your own well-being. Happiness is one of the arisings out of trying to selflessly help others. Their enjoyment on what small relief you have brought engenders your happiness.

Turn your back on hedonism and make it your life mission to help out all those others less fortunate than you are. That is the only sure way to happiness.

What it is worth

We should be daily on guard against our instinctive presumption that what we asked to pay for something equates in anyway to what it is worth. By the time the seller has added on his profit, made allowance for stocking space and expected rate of turnover, the distributor has taken off his slice for double handling, storage waiting for and then transporting, and, assuming there are no middlemen taking a slice before handing on, the prime producer has to cover the advertising, product packaging, verification of standards met, recoup his product design, plant rightoff and premises, insurance against adverse events, stocking levels only then do we get to the nitty gritty, the payroll to produce and the purchase and stocking of the raw materials;finally we get close to the 'value' of the product.

We expect an intimate relationship between what we pay for something and it what it costs in terms of labour and raw materials, yet what is costs actually is ethereal. A figure derived from gut or more probably prior experience of what degree of ancillary costs can be born by the expected market, and still sell and still make a profit. It has a lot closer relationship to the vagaries of house selling, what does the market bear or expect for this size house in this location. Pricing is not hard wired to actual costs but is pitched at market expectations and precedences. 

This divorce from the actual cost of things is not just about the products we buy, but as I have explored previously in Government Savings, it is also true of the cost of how we choose to manage and administer ourselves. The 'cost' of government is not a balance sheet figure derived from what it takes to run or administer a set of procedures but reflects a historic norm. This is what has been relied on in the past to produce this end result and that with these adjustments this what it costs us now.

We got here for a sliding progression of perfectly reasonable and at the time right and fully justifiable choices. Right here and now being required to pay what others expect is their due and entitlement just does not seem right. Clearly we cannot go back to barter. Can you imagine the furore at the Supermarket as we all came in with our trade goods to exchange for our weekly shop. Equally we just cannot make and keep contact with the worldwide spread of sources and suppliers to individually barter an exchange for all those everyday items we now so desperately depend. Yet we have to get back to making some connection to what it actually costs, for something, as against what the marketplace thiks it can get away with.

I take heart from EBay. There is a model here, the dutch auction, products are offered at an optimum price then, depending on stock levels, degrees of demand and closeness to spoiling date, the price decreases until the consumers decides that it is worth it. Services might operate in an inverse way, with the rate for the service increasing until some provider snaps it up. Quality is the bug bear, we know only too well how the supermarkets dumb down the specification until it is a pale shadow of its former, introductory, self. With the growth of consumer feedback and instant consumer vitriol when things are wrong, maybe there is is this growing tool that will keep suppliers and providers sharp on their toes. Maybe, just maybe they can claim back from the domineering supermarkets, accountability for the what they provide. That would be the dawn of a new age.

Man the Stockade

Walking down the High Street that person talking loudly for all to hear into their mobile is speaking eastern european. The people standing in the middle of the pavement deep in some detailed account, oblivious to the inconvenience they cause to all passer bys, are talking in eastern european. The accents of all those people you encounter in public places, behind tills, behind bars, serving food or drinks or cleaning rooms, are all heavy european accents struggling for a minimal command of our language. It might be the 'Ford Factor', buy one and then every other car you see is also a Ford. Or just maybe we are drowning in a flood of immigrants. Alarmed? Resentful? Far from it, it is just yet another invasion of economic or political refugees coming here in the hope of a life and bettering themselves. A long trail going back into the mists of distant times, Turkish, West Indian, Ugandan, Chinese, Pakistani, Jewish, German /Swiss, Huguenots and so on.

We need these workers willing to fill all those lowly menial jobs which are beneath our contempt or so badly paid as to jeopardise the state handouts. We need them to do those jobs, and to do them better, as we will not deign to stoop to undertake them. Giving them a chance to make a new start give us in return those creature comforts we cherish. Their ardour to overcome whatever circumstances forced them to leave the comfort of home, the familiar, friends and family places brings them to us. Where once here they can maximise those opportunities we can offer but are ourselves blasé and blind to. We need them just as much as they need us.

If we choose not to welcome them into our open arms and go out of our way to help them to see and understand this strange new society they have landed in, who can we blame if they congregate for comfort and mutual support? To seek comfort, support and security amongst those that are familiar with your native tongue and background is natural. By congregating in enclaves they become prime targets for cultural resentment at best or abuse at worse. On a level playing-field the following now British born generation would assimilate into their born-in culture, and, driven on by their parents struggles, will seize vigorously the opportunities our society offers to make entrepreneurial leaps. We win win. New blood, stronger gene lines and the excitement of new ideas or slants on old ideas.

We have to rediscover tolerance and keeping our eye on the long game. No matter how irritating their flouting of our traditional reserve and public good manners we must realise they are strangers to our ways and need time to learn. To keep the playing-field level we must push back against over zealous PC correctness that wants to ensure an ethnic and cultural past for children born in this our country. Also resist vehemently all attempts at racial discrimination, stereotyping and racial intolerance. The key word is assimilation.The sooner they meld into our culture, adopt our ways and begin to vehemently defend our corner the stronger and more resilient we are as a nation and the closer we can grow as communities. Absorb not reject.