Election special ….

This week saw the UK lurch from the expenses debacle into the European and local council elections. Despite predictions that the expenses scandal would precipitate a high voter turnout to ‘punish’ politicians and send a clear message that these sorts of abuses won’t be tolerated, it looks like the turnout will be at a record low.

Why should this be? Is voter apathy making democracy irrelevant, or is a lack of perceived true democracy driving voter apathy?

I’m not sure there’s a simple answer.

Local council elections are rarely well supported. Certainly, where I live, you could put a Conservative badge on a donkey and it would get elected, so there’s little incentive for supporters of opposing parties to stand up and be counted, because there’s never enough of them to make a difference. And, if the main parties can’t make a dent on the Conservative stranglehold, then there’s little point in independents making the running, either. It was sad to see the likes of UKIP and BNP putting candidates up locally, and even worse to see them attracting votes – I find it disturbing that UKIP did better than Labour, though I’d imagine those are votes that would have otherwise gone to the Conservatives, rather than anywhere else. One does wonder, though, which way the 62% of the local electorate who did not vote would have gone, and whether that would actually have made any difference to the overall outcome. It is, perhaps, unsurprising that they didn’t turn out to vote. Aside from the general perception of the local result being a pretty much foregone conclusion, I think there is a general understanding that local councils really have very little power.

I’m not sure that this is correct. Certainly, in terms of big-picture politics, local councils are pretty much hamstrung by the increasing degree of state centralisation in terms of both budget and target setting for local services, but certainly I’d say that local councils are the state bodies with which most people have most direct contact, AND the state bodies who have most impact on the day-to-day lives of most people: things like road and public transport provision and maintenance, refuse collection and environmental services can have a huge impact on quality of life. Grumble though we do at the council tax, it does fund a raft of services that make life workable, and I’ll be the first to say that we are fortunate to live in an area with high property values and therefore proportionately high council tax incomes – this means that the local councils have the luxury of extensive green policies in terms of sustainable development & energy policies and recycling facilities which I know are not common across all councils.

These, then, are worth voting for.

It would be a happy day if control over emergency & healthcare service provision and education could also come back to local councils, instead of being driven by central government. The one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work, and it makes a mockery of the supposed ‘user-chooser’ model the government promotes. The reality is that there is little choice available – certainly, in the education system, it is all very well and good that in our local area we have Specialist Colleges at secondary level – one in the sciences, the other in sports – but that is meaningless if secondary schools are, by-and-large, allocated on a catchment basis rather than student aptitude or parent preference. If these came back to local level, and there was the ability to make a real difference in the provision of these services depending on which way one voted at local council elections, voter interest and turnout might well increase.

And this touches on the key of it: potential electors do not vote in local elections because there is a widespread perception that the power of local government is so limited, it makes no difference who is in power, and which is why, in turn, votes for those parties who are not the dominant party in the area tend to be protest votes and/or votes recorded by staunch supporters of the minor parties.

The same could be said of UK national elections. The expenses scandal has exposed a parliamentary system that appears to be almost completely morally bankrupt. Yes, very few of the MPs exposed actually broke the ‘rules’, but when the rules themselves are set so as to allow and encourage a degree of self-interest that few, if any, employments would permit. Here is a system that is secretive, self-supporting, and with little or no accountability, and no sense that any of its component members feel any sense of personal responsibility. I have written before about how large organisations cause personal responsibility, accountability and autonomy to dissipate, and the same thing is happening here.

Yes, the electorate is pissed about the expenses, but it’s more that the expenses furore is just the latest in a long line of political incompetencies, idiocies and downright corruption. But when it comes down to it, who do you act against? No one party is cleaner than the other, so there’s no alternative. One party is much the same as the other – there’s so little political ground between Labour and the Conservatives, that it effectively comes down to personality politics. Cameron is no Barack Obama, but when you compare him to the dour Brown and the lacklustre Clegg (who is he? I couldn’t pick him out of a line up – could you?), he’s downright dazzling.

And there’s another nail in the coffin of UK democracy.

There’s no real difference between the main political parties, so what does it matter which one of them is in power?

And it’s true. Not only is there a widespread belief that government exists to support the interests of business and property over the rights of the individual (and an examination of the legal system supports this perception), but there is also the fact that membership of the EU has brought the UK to a point where large swathes of national policy are dictated by Europe-wide treaties. This, in itself, is not a bad thing. Common European social policies should allow for the formation of a huge common ground on which all participating nations can connect with and build on each others’ diverse, unique and precious cultural heritages. Common European trade policies should allow individual nations to play to their own strengths, whilst taking advantage of the wider influence and power of a bigger trading bloc, so that a group of otherwise geographically, demographically or economically small nations can compete with the bigger global powers in a way not otherwise possible.

It is a beautiful dream.

It is shame the reality doesn’t live up to it. When I voted last Thursday, I was saddened to see that of the 14 possible choices, 7 were anti-EU right-wing organisations, committed to taking the UK out of the EU altogether. In part, one can see why. The EU, as an organisation, is broken. The idea of the individual nations coming together to determine progressive social and economic policies, guidelines that enable & facilitate success, is struggling to be seen against a backdrop of non-accountability and personal advancement that makes the Westminster expenses scandal look like a vicarage tea party, and it is this lack of accountability, and the predominance of a few powerful national figures who are interested only in protecting and advancing their own interests, that have opened the door to let the invidious miasma of these xenophobic organisations waft through our political awareness. They feed off the anger and awareness that a large number of our rights to self-determination have been eroded, without the corresponding payback of the benefits that such a union should bring us.

I am not anti-Europe: I think that only by acting in concert can individual nations make a real difference to the globalised environment in which we now all live and work – that is an unescapable reality. However, to make that difference, nations still need to have the ability to take local actions which are right in context of their own populations, economies and environments, and the wider EU organisation needs to have both the flexibility and accountability to deliver that. The hearts of pro-Europeans sink to hear tales of MEP expense claims, and the preponderence of good legislation that is either diluted or defeated by national or business interests, or bad legislation that is passed without debate or consultation at national level by unelected commissioners who hold more real power than the elected representatives.

This is something that needs to change.

However, the voices of the reformers (rather than the refuseniks) are few and far between, and so the electorate is left with no choice and no voice. It should not be a surprise, therefore, that voter apathy is rife. Our democracy is an illusion: not all members of society have equal access to power, and our freedoms and liberties are being gradually eroded in a system with such an uneven distribution of political power that the right to vote has become a meaningless gesture that has no real impact in terms of how that system is adminstered, or in how it responds to internal and external pressures.

We are in a system that is bankrupt in so many ways, that the attempts to patch and salvage it look increasingly desperate and futile, on an economic, social and environmental level. Until the political mechanisms start to accept that, and offer real alternatives to get us out of the current mess, alternatives that recognise the needs and rights at individual and local level whilst taking a broader, strategic and long-term perspective, the electorate will continue to vote with its feet and find better things to do with its time on election days.

Warning! Cheese contains milk

It’s been one of those days today.

I took Honey and her best friend into town to see ‘Race to Witch Mountain’ – I enjoyed it rather more than I expected I would, which is a bonus, but it still wasn’t the greatest film I’ve ever seen – I thought that both The Last Mimsy & Nim’s Island were better both in terms of acting and storyline, but as an introduction to your general blockbusting thriller, it was pretty good. (The girls both had a wonderful time, which I guess is the main thing).

Anyway.

What bugged my bear was the immediate demands that we visit McDonalds, almost as soon as we’d arrived in the town centre. I was appalled. Not so much by Honey’s friend, but by the fact that HONEY wanted to go there – I’m blaming advertising and peer pressure on that one – and not all my arguments about the unhealthiness of the food, the environmental impacts of the production processes of that food, the unnecessary packaging &c held any weight with them. It got to the point where I thought that if I held out on them, then I’d have a major scene on my hands & I didn’t feel up to coping with it, so I caved in and we went in. It was every bit as bad as I remembered, and the handful of healthy options didn’t actually bear much resemblance to the cheery pictures up on the walls. They both had Happy Meals (I wasn’t happy, I can tell you) & I had a coffee. The coffee was like dishwater – just vile (the only coffee worse than that I have ever tasted, I had at Brooklands Museum last week) – and the food they got was horrendously oversalted (I use *no* salt in my cooking, ever) to disguise the fact that, actually, it had no taste. Honey’s friend wanted coke, and I actually phoned her mum to double check because I was so horrified by the request. IMO, children shouldn’t drink it, but her mum was fine & seemed a bit puzzled by my call. So, she had coke and I kept my opinions to myself. I don’t think Honey really enjoyed her meal (and she was hungry again 2 hours later), but I don’t think she’d ever admit that.

After the film, Honey’s friend came home to play for a while, and we were all out in the garden enjoying the sunshine. I was sowing seeds and generally puttering about in the garden, and Honey’s friend was watching me …. I invited them to help, and they both joined in quite happily with putting in the seeds and watering them and sticking in the plant labels on the end of each row. But I nearly knocked myself out falling over backwards when Honey’s friend announced that she didn’t realise carrots grew in the ground, and on that basis she wasn’t going to eat them any more ‘because they are dirty’. WTF?!?!?!? I know not everyone has the advantage of outdoor space to the same extent that we do, but we’re not a deprived inner-city urban area by any stretch of the imagination, and the school is quite hot on environmental issues and gardening etc – the children have their own veg garden at school, and suchlike. So it amazed me that the child was so ignorant of where food came from. And it took me aback that she viewed anything coming out of the ground as ‘dirty’ and hence not edible.

So, when it came to tonight’s dinner, and desert of apple-pie, with cheese on the side, and cream, and ice-cream, I was gobsmacked to see warning labels on the cheese, cream and ice-cream: “This product contains milk”. No kidding. (Do people really not know that?)

The whole sorry series of events has got me thinking, and drawing some pretty big pictures in my head. Firstly, about how detached we, as a society, are from food production, and secondly about a sort of squeamishness around dirt and food and our bodies which is, I think, connected to the first and not entirely healthy.

When children don’t know that carrots grow in the ground, something must be wrong with how we are buying our food. When food that is produced to the lowest possible cost, stuffed with fat, anti-biotics and growth-hormones, and then oversalted to disguise the bland taste, there is something wrong with how we are thinking about our food. When you can buy a whole chicken in the supermarket for £3 and no-one stops to think about how little it must have cost the farmer to get that chicken to the supermarket for so little money, there is something wrong with the way we produce our food.

All of these things make me feel that there has been, at some point, a fundamental disconnect between the production and consumption of food. It has ceased to be a means of fuelling our bodies, and has become …. I don’t know what. A leisure activity, that competes with other leisure activities for our time and financial resources? But somehow joyless, when flavour and texture and variety are replaced by some kind of homogenous paste calculated to be somehow inoffensive, rather than a healthful delight, and when it becomes more about consuming as much as possible of a given item, rather than anticipating and savouring rare and seasonal delights.

My asparagus is just starting to come up. I will have a month, maybe a little more, of asparagus frenzy, and then it will be over for another year. It’s worth the wait, and that single month of ecstatic gorging on my tiny harvest sees me through. I don’t get the same pleasure from supermarket-bought asparagus, forced on out of season and flown in from who-knows-where, and ultimately flavourless and unsatisfying, because it has been robbed of its unique rarity value. The same goes for strawberries, raspberries and the other soft fruit, and though I do preserve some of it, there’s little that can beat the joy of a sun-warm strawberry straight from plant to mouth. It seems to me that in our quest for instant gratification, we’ve lost both the pleasure of food, and the connection between ourselves and the earth.

The squeamishness and overly-fastidious obsessions with cleanliness seem to go hand-in-hand with that. Any number of friends think it’s appalling that I generate my own compost rather than buying it (sterilised) from the garden centre. Honey’s friend thinks it’s appalling that carrots grow in the dirty ground. My neighbour is appalled that I let my children pick and eat the (dirty) blackberries growing wild in the wood the other side of our garden fence. People don’t like to think about the food they eat coming from the ground, or walking about on it. They want it neat and clean and with no trace of a natural origin on it. They want it processed and neat, so that it gives no clue to its provenance. A friend of mine won’t handle raw meat unless she’s got latex gloves on her hands, won’t make stock because it means handling the bones.

These are not particularly enjoyable tasks, but they are not as disgusting as she makes them out to be, and what bemuses me is that her attitude is not untypical. The preference is for the ready-meal, so that the consumer doesn’t have to think about or handle the food in order to eat it; so that the food bears little resemblance to the plant or animal from which it came and the consumer doesn’t have to think about where it came from and what’s been done to it to get it to the table, totally divorced from the production process.

The fact that there even *is* a “production process” is appalling. Food is *grown* not *made*. It comes from the ground, not from factories, and the more steps there are between ground and plate makes it *worse*, not *better*. Just because these processes disguise the food so that our squeamish sensibilities aren’t offended by the identification of plant or animal matter on our plates doesn’t make it better – each step reduces the healthfulness of the food, both in the process itself, and in terms of the quality requirements of the original product. Arguments that there is insufficient land to support greater simplicity in the food chain simply don’t hold water – large-scale industrialised agriculture is massively inefficient in both land-usage and yields, and unsustainable in the longer-term because of the need to compensate the efficiencies with increasingly toxic chemical fixes.

The best food is the food that has not been messed about with, that comes off the land and onto our plates with the minimum of distance, time and interference, that has not been subjected to artificial growth enhancers and/or disease inhibitors and that takes account of natural growing rhythms, seasons and locality. I think we need to fundamentally rethink our attitudes to food and set aside our squeamishness to recognise that we cannot divorce ourselves from the growth of our food: we are all part of a great circle – from dust we came and to dust we return. The compost cycle is the quickest and easiest way to grasp that ….within a short period of time, plant matter is broken back down into earth, it goes into the garden and nourishes the food we grow that in turn nourishes us, and the plant waste is composted. And so it goes on. If it can’t be composted, then we shouldn’t be using it, IMO.

To make that connection again, to return to that sustainable cycle of knowledge and understanding  that the earth supports and sustains us rather than offering us a disease-ridden threat is something we need to do, urgently. To change our thinking so that we view food as an essential part of nourishing our minds and bodies rather than a leisure activity, is something we need to do, urgently. To turn away from over-processed zero-benefit food to fresh, healthful alternatives benefits us, and it benefits the planet. 

It’s time to change.

Cook from scratch, eat local food, in season, bought from local producers and *not* the supermarket.

It doesn’t take a lot of time, it will save you a lot of money, and it might just save your life.

Economy & ecology, home and heart

I’ve been a reader of Satish Kumar’s blog for a while now, and the current situation has reminded me of a post from last year, in which he examined “the relationship between Economy and Ecology. Just like Nature and Nativity, Economy and Ecology come from the same Greek root – oikos meaning home, nomos meaning management, and logos meaning knowledge”.

The level of related meaning suggests that we cannot manage our homes without some degree of understanding – both what we are doing within it, and how it impacts on the external elements with which it – and we – come into contact.

In a period of turmoil – in environmental, social and religious terms as well as purely financial - it feels increasingly as though we are attempting to manage a runaway train, with no understanding of the message that we are out of control. Rather than attempting to stop the train, we are throwing more track down in front of it, in a cartoon-like display of frantic fire-fighting. Will we realise we’ve gone over the cliff when it’s too late to turn back, when we have the awful moment of realisation that the world has dropped out from beneath our feet and we’re running on thin air, and there’s nothing more to do but face the camera with a rueful shrug and plummet into the abyss? Or will we recognise that we need to make some fundamental changes to what we are doing to address the situation, and save ourselves?

Have we mortgaged our future for a cheap rush of consumer satisfaction? It seems increasingly obvious that the current economic model is not sustainable: the jenga tower of resold debt and speculative derivative gambling is tumbling, resources are starting to run low, and the negative, destructive impacts of our energy addiction is poisoning our children. Here in the developed world, we live in a bloated and - both financially and morally -bankrupt society, and there is little if no recognition at government level, nor amongst senior business, financial and institutional figures, that there is a need for fundamental change.

Greed, growth and increased consumption are not clever evolutionary or economic steps, nor do we have some sort of fundamental, inherent right to consume FMCGs and processed food at the current astonishing rate.  Rights are not inherent at birth, nor are they a fact of existence. Rights come into existence as a result of human interactions and agreements, and are codified and given weight by the guarantees and sanctions of legislation. The UN Convention on Human Rights, the over-arching text on which most states and individuals would concur in terms of civil and political rights attempts to guarantee such basics as rights to self-determination, equality, privacy, liberty, freedom of thought, movement expression and association. The later Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural rights for individuals and nations include rights of entitlement to wages that support a basic standard of living, equal pay and opportunities, and rights to own, trade and dispose of property freely, not to be deprived of means of subsistence. Considering those terms, it is perhaps unsurprising that this Covenant has never been ratified: it would present a major barrier in the exploitation of third world labour and resources for the greedy developed world. It is interesting to note, though, that nowhere in these two declarations is there any mention of a right of consumption. It is also interesting to note that in certain developed countries, some of these basic civil and political rights are being eroded. Our freedom is not measured by how much we are able to consume, it is measured in terms of those rights. As we start to lose rights in terms of privacy, freedom of thought, movement, expression and association, increased ability to consume is inadequate compensation.

There are those who would argue that, from an evolutionary perspective, survival of the fittest is defined by those who can acquire, secure and consume the most resources. It is ‘natural’ to be competitive, and it is therefore ‘right’ to strive for a continual increase in the amount we can acquire, secure and consume. In a competitive world, with an exploding population, it is ‘right’ and ‘natural’ that those who do not have the economic power to acquire, secure and consume resources should fail. Even though they never get the opportunity to do so? Are we really no more than acquisitive hungry monkeys? Or, do we have these highly developed pre-frontal lobes that allow us to reason, to take control of our impulses and wants and self-regulate so that we take and use what we need, rather than what we want? Is it a clever evolutionary step to strip our territory of all the resources that can sustan us, or is it more sensible to manage our own behaviour and resources to secure our long-term genetic survival?  Is it a clever evolutionary step to gorge ourselves on the oversupply of convenience foods stuffed with chemical additives, sugars, salts and starches which we know have negative long-term health impacts, or should we move away from these back to a simpler, slower, whole-food approach to nutrition that is less ruinous to our health and to the environment, that requires less intensive farming and minimal processing, that requires a greater degree of integration and understanding between consumer and producer? Is it a clever evolutionary step to create vast social divisions, insurmoutable levels of exclusion and hatred, and then hope that disease, famine and war will address the resultant over-population problems, or is it more sensible to work to implement social, cultural and reproductive rights for all women, acting on the evidence from the developed world that improving social conditions, economic opportunities, education and life expectancy and reducing infant mortality actually lowers birth rates to sustainable levels?

I would argue that a more co-operative model is a fitter way to survive, a recognition that we are all a part of the same tribe, and that we are all in the same boat – we sail the seas of space on the same planetary vessel, and if it founders, we all go down with it. In that scenario, it won’t matter how many millions of dollars you have in your bank: it’s not the sort of crisis that you can buy your way out of. By that token, we should start to distance ourselves from the current financial/economic model and adopt a more egalitarian, compassionate, inclusive and sustainable approach to the overall management of our home – this planet.

What does this mean? I think that this means, by and large, that our governments should stop trying to prop up the failing banks and businesses that got us into this mess in the first place, and focus their efforts on stimulating areas of the economy that will reap long-term benefits. Yes, I think more banks should go to the wall, and yes, I think that, for example, at least one of the big car manufacturers should be allowed to fold rather than be propped up artificially with taxpayers money. To do so would be consistent, after all, with the capitalistic proposition put forward by Adam Smith, and it would be consistent with the evolutionary model as well – survival of the fittest, not survival of the fattest.

And yes, I do appreciate the impact that this would have on countless individuals, those employed directly by the collapsed entities AND those employed in both vertically and horizontally integrated businesses. I don’t deny that such a measure would be drastic and painful in the short term, but where there is good historical evidence that suggests recessions and depressions trigger massive social change (Industrial Revolution, Great Depression & FDR), and we recognise that there is a need for vast social change, it might be prudent to take the pain and let it happen.

I read an article somewhere recently (and I apologise for not being able to give the appropriate credits) where someone said that they found it hard to feel sorry for Chinese workers losing their jobs (because the demand for Chinese manufactured goods has gone through the floor) when there was so much unemployment and hardship caused locally by the availability of cheap Chinese imports. I found this attitude hard to comprehend. Surely, a more appropriate and compassionate response is one borne out of understanding such hardships and recognising them as a bond that links us, a shared experience of our common humanity, rather than a vengeful satisfaction that they should suffer too? I think the same goes for all the big manufacturing entities currently experiencing pain. Those of us involved in the ‘green’ movement should not sit back and think that these individuals are suffering a well-deserved come-uppance for their involvement in an unhealthy industry. Instead, there should be compassion and understanding for a plight any one of us could experience – the pain of rejection, the fear of loss, the dread of being unable to feed and clothe and shelter one’s family.

The Chinese worker in question still had an ancestral pig farm in the grim remote province of Sichuan to fall back on – it would make no money, but it would feed him and his family. Such options are not available to all those in the urban, industrialised developed world, who have lost contact with rural roots, nor is the land available to all who might want it.  The puts an onerous requirement on us to address and mitigate the suffering that allowing the current model to fall away would generate. We could and should extend the hand of mutual aid to those who might otherwise fall by the wayside, recognising a wider familial and tribal boundary than we have done before. We should look to even out the peaks and troughs of the haves and have-nots to a more equal, balanced stability. And we should shift our stimulus activities into businesses, enterprises and initiatives that are more people-intensive than resource-intensive, that are labour-using rather than labour-saving, that work to propagate and nurture the earth that propagates and nurtures us, rather than stripping it of everything that gives it value.

We should make sure our inquisitive, acquisitive brains start to work towards constructive, sustainable solutions to the current crisis, rather than just blindly laying more track in front of the runaway train of consumption we’re riding into the abyss. What do you want to do?

(photo credits: greek villa, David Geddes (Picasa). Bedu Woman and child, Hugo (Flickr). Tree – Vista Sample)

A winter-storm of discontent

The last week has, in any terms, been pretty crappy and I’ve ended up getting totally derailed in so many ways and on so many different fronts it has been a real act of bravery to remind myself what it is that I’m doing and WHY it is that I’m doing it.

Last Monday, I started a pain in the junction between my neck and shoulder. Initially, I thought I’d slept on it  funny, but as the day went on it got progressively worse, so that by the time I’d got the kids off to bed I was a whining, snivelly shell of a woman, stinking of self-pity and wearing my misery like a leper’s bell. Paracetamol and wheatpacks just didn’t cut it in the pain-relieving stakes, and my general sense of wellbeing was further eroded by the news that some evil bastard had nicked my name, address and credit card details and was quite happily ordering stuff for themselves and billing it to me. So, on top of all the pain, I had all the stress of contacting the company concerned and telling them to cut off this putative Ellsea, cancelling my card and all the associated CIFAS aggravation. I am sure it must have been online somewhere that it happened, but having virus checked the laptop and computers here AND checked back through my transaction histories the last couple of months, I’m totally stymied, which is a real worry, because now I don’t know which of my regular purchases I can’t trust.  I hate stuff like that, people taking advantage and using me to get what they want. It’s a real invasion of privacy. I’ve had to work for what I’ve got, why the bloody hell can’t they? Scum.

On Tuesday, the pain was much, much worse. I couldn’t turn my head or move my neck without enduring total agony, and I had arranged to drive to London (I know, total lunacy) to see my sister and brand-new nephew, delivering several bags of baby clothes and other gubbins in the process. I should have known the fates were against me when I hit a traffic jam on the way out of the village where the children go to school and sat there for 30 minutes making little-to-no progress. When we finally got moving, I bless the satnav makers who provide me with such goodness as trafficmaster and detour planning, because it took me backroads and put me on the A3 literally 100yards ahead of the accident that was causing a tailback as far as the junction I usually would get on at. Euphoria shortlived, because of course as soon as you get past Roehampton, you’re effectively into London and driving becomes a teeth-grinding test of nerve and endurance. I’m a pretty relaxed driver, I like to go fast when it’s safe, but I’m not competitive and I like to be courteous. So, of course, I’m like a lamb to the slaughter in London traffic. I have *never* been so scared in my entire life. The levels of stress, aggression and risk-taking associated with driving in London, the lack of space, the snarl-ups, the lack of proper signalling, road positioning and other standards that ensure a smooth and safe journey are so enormous that I honestly think that driving in London ought to be a certifiable action. I mean, you’d have to be mad to do it on a regular basis, or else it is something that would make you insane? And then there’s the parking. Now, I know that it’s a cliche, and it’s been said so many times before, that the parking permit and traffic warden (except they are now called Civil Enforcement Officers) system is purely and simply a revenue generating exercise for councils, but in cliche there is often truth, and in truth there is always mileage. So. I acquire my one day visitor parking permit. I scratch out the necesary boxes, careful to scrape all and only the appropriate ones. I fill in my reg nr etc, check I’m parked in a bay relevant to the permit, check that I’ve displayed the thing in the appropriate place. As I’m getting Bellaboo out of the car, one of these CEO’s watches me, I see him looking at the permit, I ask him if it’s OK. He’s noncommittal (perhaps they are only allowed to talk if they are issuing a ticket?), so I take this to mean that there is not a problem – otherwise he would have told me, right? (yeah, right). And off I go to visit my sister and the delightful baby, who is very cute and still at that all-curled-up newborn stage (but man, when he’s hungry, he knows what he wants!!) Bellaboo was very sweet with him & kept kissing him on the head and was generally intrigued, and since we came back has been carrying around Honey’s little Baby Bjorn and kissing it a lot and pronouncing ‘babby’ very proudly. Ahhhhhhh. ANYWAYS. We get back to the car after a lovely, lovely visit and lo and behold: A BLOODY PARKING TICKET. Apparently, my permit was invalid. In what way? I have no idea. Now I have a couple of choices. I can appeal. Who knows how long that will take, which puts me in a  quandary regarding the fine. If I pay within 30 days, it’s £40, but it doubles to £80 if I take longer. If I appeal and lose and it takes longer than 30 days, I have to pay £80. Which makes it tempting to sod it and just pay the fine, which I guess is what they are counting on. I don’t want to pay it, and I don’t think I should pay it, but I’m not sure I have the energy to tackle any further bureaucracy at the moment, because on Wednesday . . .

I received my Child Tax Credit award notice. And I immediately notice that I have acquired two children under the age of 1. Now, I know I don’t have twins, and that’s the only way it ought to be physically possible (though I guess mathematically it could be done, it’s just not something I want to contemplate). So, I have to phone the tax office to correct the erroneous dates of birth. Great. I just *love* hanging about on phone lines waiting to talk to someone. I honestly have nothing better to do with my time. (NOT!). I phone up, and start to jump through the hoops of security questions. My bank is quite happy with 2 questions, as are most other on & off line service providers. Not so the Inland Revenue, who want to know, it seems, my last recorded weight, height and hair colour before they will talk to me. Tellingly, the one piece of information I have to provide is the number and dates-of-birth of my children. I tell her, and explain very nicely that this may not coincide with their records, because they have incorrect information on their systems for those same dates of birth (this information is not shown on the form they have sent me, so I don’t know what they have input). The woman on the phone apologises and tells me that she is now not allowed to talk to me because I can’t correctly answer the security questions. I point out, very politely, that I have answered 5 other security questions correctly, and that I can’t give her the information she wants because I don’t know what her co-worker input erroneously into the system. Again, she apologises and says she can’t talk to me any further. I ask to speak to a supervisor, but am told that I will get the same response. I ask if I can write, and am told that they only accept phone correspondence and will disregard a letter. So I ask her how I am meant to solve this problem, and she again apologises and tells me that she is not allowed to help me. If it wasn’t for the concern that at some point in the future I am doubtless going to get shafted by the IR for providing false information on this subject, I’d think it was the most hilarious farce. Coming on the back of everything else, it is just annoying and bloody typical of the faceless bureaucratic bullshit that is rife in this country. Personal responsibility and accountability and autonomy dissipates in the face of enormous inflexible computer systems. In my mind, this has just strengthened my internal conviction that we should give the database state a huge heave-ho. Imagine if that had been the entirety of my personal records, and I was completely unable to access them? Coming on top of having my identity hacked (I refuse the word ‘victim’, I don’t like it. I will not be made into a passive receptacle of someone else’s vitriol), this is particularly worrying.

Actually, the rest of the week started to pick up, insofar as no fresh annoyances crawled out of the woodwork to plague me. The pain in my neck and back, however, showed little sign of letting up and turned me into the most dreadful whiny creature, and it was so bad I couldn’t write and couldn’t exercise, so all those goals started to slip, and I even struggled with sewing because looking down hurt. So, with everything slipping away, I fell into the awful vicious circle of pain-stress-misery-comfortbiscuiteat-guilt-stress-pain-misery-comfortbiscuiteat-guilt-misery-stress-pain-comfortbiscuiteat-guilt- (you get the picture) and it crippled me far, far worse than the actual pain did. I was trapped in this cycle and just drowning (or perhaps wallowing?) in this sea of awfulness. It made me realise just how quickly and how easily I could slip away from the path I wanted to be, when I had felt so up and good and empowered, into this black void of depression – and I could feel it sitting there, waiting to jump on me.

I think I got lucky this time. Some timely advice from twitterific friends (thanks @Sally & @TrevorMendham) got me onto icepacks and voltarol pain relief gel and reducing the pain helped me get focus back. I’m still clinging on by my fingertips a little, but in the last couple of days I have caught up (finally) on my How to Think Sideways coursework, AND finished a short story that ended up breaking the 20k barrier (and my o my is that going to need some major editing!) AND finished a couple of refashions – a black wrap with embroidered purple border to go around Bellaboo and I when she’s in the sling and a cute little tunic top for Bellaboo – AND I saw an advert for “power pramming” which looks like it could be good fun AND good exercise, AND I did a major declutter of our loft, AND read Anne McCaffrey’s Crystal Line (and enjoyed it, too).

So, despite the potential for derailment, I did manage to get a lot done in the week so I feel like it hasn’t been wasted. I guess the BIG learning points for me are:

1) Shit happens, deal with it and move on

2) Plans are not set in stone, I need to be flexible and change things around as and when needed

3) I should acknowledge and value what I have done, instead of dwelling on what I have not done

4) As long as I keep my key words – COMPLETE and ENJOY – as my guiding lights, I’ll stay on track

Point 3 is a huge step for me. I am always far too quick to step up and give myself a kicking over the things I have not done. Based on looking over the list of what I *did* do (and that leaves out all the normal, house-and-family-daily-maintenance activity I handle), I can’t even begin to describe last week as a waste of time or opportunity. I used my time in a slightly different way to how I had planned it. That doesn’t make it (or me) a failure.

I feel lucky. This is the second set of events that could have set me off into a massive downward spiral, but I’ve managed to pull myself. I know I need to get more on top of my personal health and fitness – not exercising has had a big negative impact on me, and I know I neglect myself, and particularly that my diet suffers horribly, when I’m miserable. *That* is something I will need to get to the bottom of, but I’m holding it off for now. I don’t think I’m ready to go there just yet. I don’t think I’m going to like what I have to deal with. And yes, that is a head-in-the-sand approach, but it feels right for now. (Terminally chicken? Damn straight).

The big task for this month is the Serpent of Colchis edit. And guess what? Serendipitiously, over at ForwardMotion, there’s an edit dare. I am *so* in that. I have a little crit-and-submit catchup to do, but I’m pretty much back on track. It’s looking possible.

Politics, nonsense

Errico Malatesta

I used to be a bit of a political firebrand in my youth (ha! quoth the graybeard), and ran the usual coming-of-age gauntlet of anarcho-communism. Actually, I still think anarchy and the ideal of mutual aid is actually a good one, so long as you take human beings out of the equation (at least until we learn that maybe, just maybe, our next evolutionary step is to learn that co-operation rather than competition is the winning strategy). I still don’t think that governments are a good idea, basically because the bigger an organisation becomes, the more I’ve noticed that any sense of personal responsibility diminishes in the component humans who make up those entities. ‘Computer says no’ syndrome, I suppose, when dogma and policy overtake compassion and need.

But I digress.

I gave up on politics when I realised that I was approaching it all wrong. I was interested in a discourse, in a pragmatic, logical examination of a given social or economic problem with an open-minded, genuine desire to reach a mutually satisfactory resolution. (A part of me still thinks that’s how it ought to be, but there you go). When I finally realised that it was actually an argument, where the objective was to defeat one’s opponent by refuting every single point they came up with (and vice versa) until one of you eventually makes some monumental error of judgement or logic, or contradicts oneself, or reduces oneself to absurdity, or loses patience and calls the other person a fascist (or nazi, or whatever insult is flavour of the moment) – and loses the argument by default. I discovered that I had little interest in such yah-boo nonsense, and gave the whole thing up in disgust. Though I reserve the right to snipe from the sidelines every now and again.

Thus now.

Urban Wild Flowers, Or Hiltch (Flickr Creative Commons)

Here we are, and the Israel/Palestine conflict flares up again. Yawn. Yes, yawn. I’ve been through the whole thing too many times before to get worked up over it again. Attempting to come up with any sort of analysis has only three possible outcomes:

1) Israel’s supporters decide you are being anti-jewish and call you a nazi

2) Palestine’s supporters decide you are being anti-palestinian/anti-muslim and call you an imperialist dog

3) Both sides decide you are sitting on the fence and therefore they both shoot at you

My point is, really, that the latest infarction is just another in a long line, and from where I’m sitting there’s going to be a hell of a lot more. I don’t mean to diminish the personal and real tragedy affecting the “ordinary” people (are there any other kind?) on either side of the divide, caught in the middle of another battle, I’m just saying that I can’t find it within myself to go into a detailed examination of why this latest episode has ignited, and the rights and wrongs and ins and outs of it. I’ve been there too many times before, and I just don’t have the energy.

This is politics taken to a violent and absurd extreme, and it becomes just such a grand, operatic, epic disaster that all one can do is throw up ones hands and wait for the climax. Only it will never come, because each side is now so firmly entrenched in their respective positions that neither can move, so they are chained to this stupid, ever-growing hamster wheel of tit-for-tat petty bloody vengeance. Hamas will never move from their position that Israel has no right to exist, even though it has now reach pythonesque levels of ridiculousness for them to continue to maintain that position. And Israel will never defeat Hamas, no matter how many troops they send into Gaza, because Hamas is like the hydra – for every one head they cut off, another hundred spring up. And even if they do defeat the organisation currently known as Hamas, the ethos will only be reincarnated in another group with the same philosophy but a different name until change in terms of both civil rights and economic opportunity is realised.

I’d say that the truth is that neither side can hold the moral high ground, and that neither accomplishes much by the continuous recitation of grievances in an emotive attempt to justify their stance by proving they have been wronged more than the other side. As it stands, both sides look set on a path of mutually assured destruction, and I’d be tempted to let them get on with, if it weren’t for the nagging sense of conscience that tells me it’s not fair on the people not directly involved in the fighting, and that there’s a risk it could drag the whole region into conflagration with it. It annoys me too, that instead of trying to solve the problem, the world’s leaders come down on one side or the other, and do nothing helpful, whilst the UN sit around endlessly talking, a toothless cur with neither bark nor bite, that no-one either fears or respects any more.

The only people who can bring about change are the people directly involved. The problem is, that until they get tired of fighting each other and sit down and really talk about a solution with a genuine and open intent to bring about a peaceful solution, it will never change. I can’t make them do it, and I’m bored of arguing with people who aren’t listening to anything except the sound of their own self-righteousness. So I wash my hands of the whole business, and will quietly hope that the change will come sooner rather than later, if only for the sake of all the mothers over there with children the same age as mine, who would like to see them grow up.

Crying Angel, Annikaleigh (Flickr Creative Commons)

The evil of Insurance

Health and safety has gone mad: I bought a poppy today, and got a lecture from the poppy seller about the correct method of attaching the poppy to my person with the pin, in a way such that I avoid injuring myself with said pin! I was torn between hilarity and irritation. Hilarity because as a textile artist I regularly accidentally prong myself with either a needle or a pin (I have learnt to work with a thimble and finger-guard, but I still regularly stick myself) so I’m not particularly concerned about one more prick (if you’ll pardon the expression). Irritation, because surely the majority of people are intelligent enough to figure out for themselves that pins are sharp and should not, generally, be stuck into oneself. And, that, if one chooses to attach a poppy to oneself with a pin, that one accepts that there may be a slight risk that one sticks oneself occasionally with aforementioned pin. Actually, I felt sorry for the poppy seller – I was faffing about with one of the kids and heard the poor woman repeat the same speech at least five times to subsequent purchasers of poppy. And almost every one of those five people made some sort of derisory comment about the need for her speech. It’s not her fault: she has to do it to comply with health and safety regulations, apparently.

I’d be fairly sceptical of there being a HSE directive regarding the use of pins with poppies, but I’m pretty willing to believe that the charity is wary of any activity which may be perceived as being dangerous and may, in some sort of freak incident where some imbecile either doesn’t know pins are sharp or doesn’t know how to use one, cause a serious injury.

We live in a blame culture. Accidents are not acts of god or fate or karma or some sort of vengeful nemesis. They are no longer random accumulations of bad luck, or bad circumstance, which add up to a calamity causing chaos and injury to some poor unsuspecting body on the receiving end of a cosmic backlash. In times gone by, I suppose we blamed god (or the gods) for such things, shrugged, mourned, and got on with our life. Not any more. Each one of these incidents is now SOMEONE’s fault. For every trip, fall, crash, flood, burn, injury or accident there is a single person or corporation (or person within a corporation) who can be singled out as being the direct cause of the severity of the accident. And where blame can be allocated, compensation can be claimed.

Compensation?! I’ve read endless articles decrying the litiginous society we now live in, and a lot of commentators pointing fingers at the culture of claim/litigate/compensate prevalent in the US and how this invidious practice has permeated the UK and further. I disagree. Yes, I think that this trend started in the US, but the UK is to blame.

Why?

Because the UK invented insurance. Uh-huh. Where there is compensation, very often it is the insurance company that is paying out, not the individual. And when it comes to parting an insurance company from its money (our money, actually), the words ‘blood’ and ’stone’ come to mind. If blame can be attached to a third party, then it is not the principal’s fault, and therefore his or her insurance company does not have to pay out. That is a good thing for the insurance company, and a good thing for the principal – their premiums do not go up, they do not lose their no-claims bonus/discount.  AND they get a cash bonus to compensate for their loss/inconvenience. Now, when we’re talking cars or fences, or even roofs and stolen bicycles, cash can and does compensate for loss and inconvenience.

But when we’re talking about lives and businesses, does it really? How much is the life of a child worth? How much is the life of a partner, or a parent worth? Or the loss of a limb or some other vital function? How does a cash payment help when it comes too late to save a small business that’s been flooded or burned or burgled?

I’m not convinced that cash is the answer. What helps the grieving and healing process is an acknowledgement, a recognition, an acceptance. Cash in lieu of an apology is not enough. It doesn’t bring back what has been lost, and it doesn’t help the healing process.

The problem is, that we are no longer allowed to apologise. Our car insurance policy gives us a little card that gives us some handy phrases if we are involved in an accident. “Are you OK?” is an acceptable phrase. “I’m sorry” is not, because it could be construed as an admission of liability. And of course, that means that the blame can be pinned to you, which makes it your fault, which means that you must pay. It’s got to be the single biggest fueller of anger going. What’s wrong with a simple sorry?

When insurance was first conceived, it was a mutual savings pool intended to protect a given community against a specific loss. It was universal, and generous in intention: if a house burned down, the neighbours helped rebuild it. Merchants distributed their cargos across a number of vessels to reduce the loss if one capsized. In ancient Greece and Rome, benevolent societies paid for the funeral expenses and cared for the families of members. Friendly societies in England, the first modern versions of insurance, served a similar purpose.

That purpose has been subverted so far by the organisations that now try to present themselves as caring, protective beneficial safety-nets for us – to protect our health, our homes, our cars, our businesses – our reputations, even – when in actuality they have become massive profit-orientated entitities whose objective appears to be avoiding paying out any of the premiums they’ve earned from us in whatever way possible. And that way is to try to shift blame: nothing can happen anymore that cannot be allocated to the action of an individual. And until that individual’s insurance company can be brought to accept that they individual is both responsible and liable, and that the policy of that individual covers the event in question, not a penny leaves.

It makes us a poorer society. Poorer, because those businesses hit by fire or flood or other catastrophe cannot be confident that they will recoup their losses. I declare an interest: the craft gallery which recently agreed to sell my work got flooded, and is now caught in a three-way scrap between insurance companies over who should pay out. In the meantime, the business is closed, and will remain so until there is agreement: without out, nothing can be cleaned up. Customers drift away, stock deteriorates, artists move on. The business goes under. Not fair? Damn straight. Poorer on another front: fear of insurance liability has made us overly-cautious. We cannot purchase our poppies without warnings anymore. We cannot be involved in accidents any more and say sorry, or take basic, courteous care of our neighbours without worrying if we will fall foul of our insurance by doing so. It’s wrong. The profit motive is driving our behaviour, and tight-fisted grasping is driving out decency and courtesy.

I don’t like it. I think there has been enough of this name and blame and shame. It’s time to call an end to it. If it’s your fault, apologise and be damned for it. Your insurance company won’t love you for it, but people will. It’s time to stop the double dealing and to start trying to be honest with each other.

British Manufacturing

British manufacturing is in decline!

Now that’s a news item I’ve heard so many times it’s sometimes hard to take seriously, but this time I think they really mean it – depending on what sort of manufacturing you are talking about.

Competition from countries where wage and resource and energy costs are a fraction of what they are here has meant the loss of almost all but the most tenacious of mass-manufacturers of FMCGs (fast moving consumer goods), and heavy industry – shipbuilding, for example – has again been cut out almost completely by foreign competition (even if a lot of the design and technology of these foreign factories is UK-generated). The motor industry (Rover Group failure notwithstanding) appears to be reasonably healthy, although it is questionable whether it can be called British, given it is now almost all in the hands of foreign owners. The traditional concept of mass-manufacturing, particularly when compounded with the current financial situation, is one that is no longer sustainable in this country. It has been declining steadily for decades, and I think it is pretty much in its death-throes. The UK is just not big enough to compete in a mass-market, and our resources are too costly.

Is the picture really as gloomy as has been painted? Have we truly become a nation of shop-keepers and service-providers? I’m not convinced. I think that there is a steadily growing undercurrent amongst those self-same expensive resources that is starting to build a new manufacturing industry. It is not a bulk industry, it is not aimed at the mass-market, and it is not high volume. Rather, it is a swathe of specialised products across a range of different sectors, who are delivering sophisticated, high-end, high-spec, technology driven products and supporting services coming from an enterprising, problem-solving and innovative group of diverse people.

The fact is that the UK remains the sixth largest manufacturer in the world, and manufacturing accounts for around half of all exports. A good proportion of these exports are high-technology products and components, more than the US and Germany, even. Only the US attracts more foreign direct investment into its manufacturing industry, and 3/4 of all business investment in research and development comes from this sector. Globalisation may have brought some problems, but it has presented UK Manufacturing with some significant opportunities, which have been grasped with both hands.

The increasing sophistication of both processes and products have had one key negative impact. The proportion of graduates employed in manufacturing is steadily increasing, alongside investment in intangibles – training, research and development, etc. As automation and productivity levels have increased, and as complexity and specialisation have increased, so the need for large quantities of unskilled manual labour has steadily declined: there is no longer a need for the large volumes of labour industry once required.

So what impact does this have on our society? The scaremongers are right, to a degree. The decline of British Manufacturing as a mass employer has effectively done away with the need for a working class. In times past, landowners and industrial entrepreneurs of all kinds have been dependent for profit and success on a large pool of flexible unskilled labour that can be drafted in to carry out vast quantities of simple, repetitive tasks. Now that is no longer the case, we are faced with a problem.

The working class is still there.

We still have a large pool of unskilled, and as a general rule poorly-educated, labour. Unfortunately, the number of jobs requiring unskilled, poorly-educated labour are steadily declining. With the loss of traditional agricultural, domestic and manufacturing employments, no new source of employment has come on-line. And in the jobs that are available, there is stiff competition from foreign migrants, generally from other EU countries, willing to work harder and for less money than our own working class.

I heard the MD of a firm of heating engineers complaining recently about foreign workers and how dangerous they were on site. I challenged him and asked him if they’re such a problem, why does he employ them. Why not employ English workers? The simple answer is that he cannot find enough English workers to fill the vacancies, and when he does they want more pay and work less hard than their foreign counterparts.

Close to where I live, an old filling station that had been derelict for a number of years has been taken over by a group of East Europeans who are now running the most fantastic hand car-wash service. It’s stunningly quick, outstandingly good value, and they’re friendly and do a great job.

What does this have to do with anything?

Well. It’s by way of an illustration. Here’s another.

A friend of a friend told me that he would have to get a job earning at least £20k p.a. (before tax) for it to be worth him taking it, because at any less than that, the amount of benefits he would lose by working would make him worse off. This enforced dependency on the state seems absolutely insane to me. Surely it would be possible to balance the two so that there is incentive to work, rather than a disincentive?

I am not for a second proposing that benefits should be cut to those who are unable to provide for themselves and their families, and whole-heartedly agree that there should be some sort of state safety-net to help those who need it. I do not buy into the Daily-Mail-generated benefit-scroungers judgement tags. I don’t think those on benefits have it easy. I do think that there needs to be a radical change to this culture of dependency, which to me is directly linked back to the old paternalist tradition, a view of the working class as helpless ignoramuses who need to be protected from themselves by those who know better (but who aren’t actually interested in helping them to help themselves). It’s a view based “give a man a fish and he’ll eat for today” rather than “teach him how to fish and he’ll eat forever.” What I see is that this approach is starting to become dangerous. There is an increasing opt-out from society amongst the youth of that class who see themselves effectively excluded from success by virtue of their background – and in a culture where success is measured in material possessions, that opt-out is taking them beyond the law (and further disenfranchising them in the process). Criminalising an entire class is not a good solution, in my view.

What I do say is that we need to take a good hard look at our society and ask ourselves a couple of questions:

1) If the Victorian economic model no longer holds true, why is paternalism still so prevalent in this country? Why do we still feel that we have to ‘look after’ the working class? Why can they not be empowered to look after themselves?

2) Given the change in the economic model, and a shift to a problem-solving, innovative, knowledge-based business culture, why are we still running the mass-education, info-dumping programmes started by those same paternalists? Sure, it’s been tweaked around the edges, but it’s still essentially the same: corrall as many children as possible in one place, and stuff them with whatever information is needed to make them effective corporate drones.

It doesn’t work any more. Certainly not in this country, anyway. We need a wholesale culture shift in the education system that takes advantage of our strengths and plays more towards a local-based, small-scale, sustainable and sophisticated society, where teaching is more challenging – a drive to think rather than just to learn, where philosophy and logic have a clear place, and there is more focus on hands-on, craft-driven, apprentice-master style leadership and inspiration, where children are allowed to identify and explore and follow their passions. Logic dictates that such an approach cannot be carried out in the huge secondary schools servicing our communities currently. We need the shift back to small schools, where a close relationship is possible and necessary between teacher and pupil, where an individual has the space and time to explore their own understanding and sense of self in partnership with school and parents and peers. And not just a priveleged few: everyone should have this sort of opportunity.

Yes, it will cost more in the short term, but  surely in the longer term it will save a fortune in benefits, and in healthcare costs too, if one accepts the assumption that an educated population is a healthier one – and will generate more in taxes given higher employment levels at higher levels of earnings. If we have a generation of ambitious, empowered and energetic entrepreneurs creating and problem-solving and innovating, then we have an incredibly bright future.

I wish I could believe it might happen.

The sky is falling

or so we must believe . . .

I’m irritated by this financial crisis on so many levels – and I think all my various irritations come down to a simple, fundamental statement: the people responsible for it are not being held accountable, nor are they suffering as a result of their actions. This seems so profoundly unjust, particularly when it is those who ARE suffering – we the people, the taxpayers, the prudent savers, the responsible homeowners – who are being made to cough up to cover the cost.

Take the banks. (somewhere, anywhere, please). We lend them our money on the understanding that they are able to invest it wisely for us and keep it safe for us until we need it. They, in turn, lend our money (accumulated and aggregated) to responsible types who will use it to either grow their businesses or invest it in their property – all to be paid back in the proper manner. We even have regulators who are supposed to make sure that this all happens in the proper way. What we hadn’t noticed (or we had, but everyone seemed to assume it was OK) was that actually there are/were a group of people (stupid white men, perhaps) who treated the whole thing as some sort of macho casino game, and they have gambled big-time with our hard-earned. On the way, they have earned themselves some major bonuses and more money than I can ever dream of earning, lifestyles way beyond the means of ordinary people, as a reward. It has always seemed to me to be profoundly unjust that they earned these sorts of sums – what does it say about our values as a society if the people who earn the most, who get the biggest rewards, are not those who help and nurture others – nurses, teachers, police officers, fire-fighters, social workers, childcarers – but those who handle money? Now it seems even more iniquitous.

These people are the ones whose reckless behaviour has got us into this mess. These people are the ones who turned blind eyes to irregular accounting, gave credit where it could not possibly be repaid and thought that short-term paper profits could justify it all. These people are the ones who said that regulation could be relaxed, that the free market and survival of the fittest was a good model to follow. 

Funny that. Survival of the fittest means that those who fall by the wayside should get left behind, not that they should be picked up, dusted off, and set going again.

And now these people are the ones sitting in their SUV tanks and their £m houses laughing at all us poor shmucks who have to bail out the banks. Are they taking any of this pain? Hell no. The bank always wins. It’s true in casinos, and it’s true here.

And the bailouts? The governments are handing them over – the cycle of debt must go on. Not one bleat about changes that must be made, though lots of empty ‘this must never happen again’ rhetoric. Is anyone asking searching, painful questions of the toothless, spineless regulators who sat back and let this happen? Is anyone asking searching, painful questions of the governments who led by example – showing us that living beyond our means was acceptable, necessary, even, to our wellbeing as public borrowing on all levels soared? Is it a surprise that private borrowing followed suit when economic prudence was thrown out of the window, when the government effectively forced a generation into debt (student loans), and when popular culture taught us that only material possessions and the right labels validated us as people?

No.

What is a surprise is that no-one, not one single commentator, is saying that those responsible for this whole fiasco must be held to account. NOBODY is saying that we must change our ways and live within our means, adopt a more prudent, sustainable way of life that avoids such calamities in the future. And nobody is saying that the bailouts we’re handing over must have some serious strings attached to make sure the reckless behaviour of these bankers (that’s a silent ‘w’) doesn’t get us into another, worse, mess further down the line.

That is because our entire society is built on debt – built on the concept that we borrow the future to finance the present. It’s absolute nonsense. The farmer cannot borrow next year’s seeds to grow this year’s crops. He must sow this year’s seeds, the ones he saved from the last crop or that he has bought with the money he made from the sale of that crop, manage his crop well, and use his harvest of the next year to fund his future. It is insane to think we can continue in this cycle of ever and greater debt, but to change it means changing the whole edifice we have constructed, to reveal it as illusory and flawed and to admit that we made a mistake on a massive level. Perhaps this crisis has shown the edifice to be crumbling on  foundations of sand, or perhaps this will pass and we will all forget about it and go back to doing what we were doing before.

There is always that question. Ever since the Northern Rock collapse that triggered this whole thing, the media have been in a feeding frenzy. The whole media business thrives on this sort of affair, and I cannot help but feel quite strongly that the constant spinning, retelling, analysing and speculating done by the 24-hour media culture (they have programmes to fill, after all) must take some of the responsibility for inciting the actions of the public that have caused this massive failure of confidence in the bank. It’s like telling a small child not to press a big, red, shiny button. Of course they’re going to do it. And the end of the world makes great copy. And again, is there any sign of responsibility or accountability here? Of course not. These people are innocent bystanders, dispassionate commentators and speakers of truths. Hah! Like heck they are. Maybe once, but the media serve different masters now, and what are their interests in all this mess?

I guess it comes down to personal perceptions. We can either ignore it and hope it will pass, or take this as a wake-up call, a realisation that there is something prfoundly rotten about the way we are living our lives, that we cannot continue to set-off the present with the future – it is not infinite, though it will always remain nebulous, and what is happening now is so deeply and profoundly wrong on so many levels it needs to be addressed at a basic, fundamental level.

We do not need more/better, and we do not need to aspire to fantasy lifestyles to be happy, or to be content. We should not waste what we have in the fruitless pursuit of what can never be – we waste our time, our money and our lives if we do.

Small is beautiful, less is more and debt is for dummies.

Black holes and revelations

I was reading Someday Syndrome this morning, and read the Madonna article over there. I was thinking about the apparent hypocrisy of Madonna’s stage tour vs her eco-message,

I don’t necessarily condemn her actions as hypocrisy, partly because I don’t like to judge people, but mostly because I am aware how easy it is to drop into black holes, or blind spots, if you like, when you do things without thinking, out of habit, because you’ve always done them that way and haven’t paused to think if there’s a different/better way, because so-and-so is your friend and you don’t want to hurt their feelings by changing, for a thousand different reasons which all boil down to a lack of mindfulness. For example, the people who complain about the wastefulness of energy & resource consumption implicit in the production of the tour & associated merchandise - but still went, contributing to the demand for that product, and increasing (presumably) energy use by travelling to and from it.

This is an example of a black hole. It’s when our actions are triggered by our feelings, without first passing them by our rational, thinking, mindful self. Corporate advertising is very skilled at doing this, at pushing illusions of better, more perfect lives if we have product x y z. It’s insidious, pervasive and so subtle we don’t really notice it unless we’re really paying attention. I’ve become more aware of it since I stopped watching television, but I still get knocked sideways by it from time to time.

Yesterday I bought 4 pairs of shoes. I did need new shoes – my everyday slopping-about ones and my boots are literally coming apart at the seams, and we have an ‘event’ coming up that requires smart shoes. But these are excuses and justifications as I try to wriggle out of it.

I saw, I wanted, I bought.

Did I ask where they had come from? No. Did I ask if the leather in the uppers came from nicely-treated cows? No. Did I ask if the wood in the heels came from sustainable forests? No. Were the dyes toxic? I don’t know. Did I ask if the person in the factory (wherever in the world it may have been) received a decent living wage and enjoyed union rights? No. Does the company from which I bought the shoes have an ethical policy, any sort of green credentials? I don’t know, I didn’t look.

So, for all my eco-tastic other things – the recycling, the local shopping, the avoidance of waste, supermarkets and excessive energy use, and my absolute commitment to pursuing a greener way of life, more mindful, more in touch with the earth and the systems that support us, more careful about what we use and how it can be disposed of and reused – I still fell into the old consumerist trap, seduced by the pretty sparkly things, and fell crashing off the wagon.

I guess a part of this comes of being a child of the seventies/eighties, one of Thatcher’s breed, with an innate belief that I am entitled to anything I want, and greed is good, and worth is measured not by what you are, but by how much you have. I find this an unpleasant outlook on life, and I am trying to escape it, but I think my generation are a tainted generation, the generation that was force-fed the idea that the self-interested pursuit of gain is some sort of basic right. It’s a big hole to climb out of . . . but I feel like I can see the light outside and I’m heading for it, and trying not to give myself a hard time for slipping from time to time, but letting myself learn from it. The lesson today is that old habits are hard to kick – it’s like being in recovery – and that next time I go into town (I can’t avoid it altogether – their big PO is only place to get IRCs!) I need to be more aware of the seductions and temptations and the effect they have on me.  It’s a buzz, sure, but it’s expensive, and it doesn’t really do me much good in the longer term.

These thoughts really chimed in with a discussion on Radio 4 about the state of the economy and the banks and the credit crunch, and the one thing that really struck me was that not one of the experts stood up and said that living on personal debt was wrong, and that we need to address/reduce that. All of them appeared to be stuck in the mindset that debt for cars, houses, college, possessions was OK, and normal, and needed to be maintained, and that actually what the world needed was to find a way to make sure everyone could get that debt as easily as before but without as much risk. It’s insane. The amount of money they were talking about – hundreds of trillions of dollars (total debt, not just the bad stuff) - is all theoretical. It’s not real, it’s an illusion. It’s debt, money people owe to other people. Trouble is, there’s not enough money in the world to pay it all back, ever, so there must be more debt and more debt and more debt just to stop the whole thing collapsing in on itself. Surely, it has got to stop? But there are no real solutions. I heard Bush called a ’socialist’ today (eh?). The politicians play at problem solving, but they’re just as guilty. Last I heard, the election campaign had a combined cost of some $94 million. And it’s not even really got started yet. That’s obscene. Just think of how much good that money could do. Where’s it going? TV advertising? Where’s it coming from?  Heh. The bank never loses. The rich men who got us into this aren’t suffering, and no matter who wins the election, they won’t be affected.

As the immortal New Model Army lyric would have it (Ballad, 1986) “We’re the ones who knew everything, still we did nothing, harvested everything, planted nothing . . . floating in comfort on the waves of our apathy . . . until we mortgage the future, bury our children . . . but still we can’t feed this strange hunger inside greedy, restless, unsatisfied”.

I don’t understand why more people are not standing up saying that actually, living in constant debt is lunacy. We must, as a society, CONSUME LESS. Have nothing in your home that you do not know to be useful and believe to be beautiful (William Morris). And debt is for dummies – that’s a lesson I can’t let go of, and other than a mortgage I live debt free. Opt out.

Simple, and our grandparents had it right: if you can’t afford it, don’t have it. You don’t need loads of clothes/shoes/books/cds/THINGS to make you a valid person, to make you happy, to make you content. These things come from within and you either have it or you don’t.  (Emerson: nothing can bring you peace but yourself). I guess: consume less, live more – be mindful of what you do and what you need – people make people happy, not things.

I was talking to Rumpus on the way home from school today. Tomorrow is the weekend. He was happy.

“That’s good,” he said. “Me and Honey don’t have to go to school. Daddy doesn’t have to go to work. We can all stay at home with you and Minni Babaloo.”

“What about me? Do I get a day off?” I asked.

“You have a day off every day, mummy,” he replied.

And you know what? He’s right. I’d never framed it like that before – seeing the sometimes relentless routine as work work work. But actually, it’s not. I do what I want all day long, I get to stay at home and be there for the kids, and I get to do the things that are important to me, without having to worry about where the next meal will come from, and without having to do a crap job that just brings me stress. I AM INCREDIBLY LUCKY.

It was a moment of glorious revelation, and I’ve been high on happiness ever since. Just seeing the situation from a different angle, a new perspective, seeing it as a strength not a weakness, an opportunity, not a threat or a problem. I think it’s a valuable lesson I can apply everywhere in my life. Strangely, it also links in with a part of my How To Think Sideways course. Suddenly, an awful lot of things in my life are starting to link up together and make sense – my writing, my art, my lifestyle – all a part of a coherent whole. Actions and words are coming together, finally, into an integrated whole.

I know I still have a long way to go, but I am certain of my values and principles, and I want to keep my integrity intact. And I want to live in the moment – loving it – not hung up on the past or stressed by the future. So I’m going to, because today is my day off and I’m going to please myself and do what I want to do and what I think is right. I feel a hell of a lot closer this evening than I did yesterday. But it took the wise words of a small boy to complete the train of thoughts started this morning.

It’s all so simple – I don’t need to complicate it, I don’t need to question it.

It just is.

Taking the pledge

I have become increasingly concerned about the proposed use of the National Idenitity Register here in the UK. State surveillance, and it’s more or less totally unapologetic about it. I do not buy the government’s claims that by sacrificing my freedom to have a private life free from state intervention and surveillance (at all levels) I will be more secure (and nor, apparently, do security experts or the police).

As Benjamin Franklin said: “he who sacrifices freedom for security is neither free nor secure”.

So, I joined the No2ID campaign some time ago, and have done everything I can to secure my opt-outs where possible. However, the announcements yesterday by the government that despite the massive compromises on data security in the last couple of years AND the spiralling costs AND the general opposition amongst the population it is still ploughing on with the scheme. And it starts with foreign nationals, because we all know they’re untrustworthy, right? PAH! Makes me sick to my stomach, to think they’ll whizz that right on through because they think no one will protest the fact that foreign nationals have equal civil rights to UK citizens.

I do.

I have hesitated to fully take this pledge for some time now, because as a parent I have to think through the implications: if this iniquitous piece of legislation is implemented and I do not comply, I will be imprisoned. I need also to consider that I and my family may well be excluded from accessing some forms of public service: education services, the NHS, for example. I may lose some civil liberties: the right to vote, for example. Do I feel strongly enough about it to put my kids in that position? After yesterday, the answer to that is yes, I do.

And so, I solemnly and publicly promise that:

• I shall not register for a national identity card
• I shall not supply personal details or fingerprints to a National Identity Register
• I shall not apply for any document or service if joining the National Identity Register is a condition of obtaining it
• I shall not co-operate with any Identity and Passport Service Interview concerning my identity.

and furthermore, I will not allow any agency to register my children’s personal details and fingerprints, will not allow them to apply for any document or service if joining the NIR is a condition, and I will not co-operate with any attempt of the IPS to interview my children concerning their identity.

I will encourage others to do the same.

And that is my pledge.