Adolescence marks the onset of another of our most powerful driving forces brought in with the raging hormones of puberty. If you are lucky a few dry matter of fact explanations are on hand to help understand these experiences felt but not recognised. Except the huge curiosity generated by these hormones into everything sexual are fuelled by widely available, indeed inescapable, provocative sexually charged raunchy images. Used to sell anything as only virtual erotic images can. Images that promise and tease yet are governed to reveal nothing. An implicitly sexually charged forethought expressed in a straitjacket of prudish conformity. So where do our adolescence go to get see and imagine what this burgeoning sexuality means to them? As Society deems they are too young to explore, naturally, amongst theirs peer group.
It is normal for youth to turn to their elders for guidance. We, the elders, have surrounded ourselves with sanctimonious prudery, false moral judgement strictures. We are unable to offer good wholesome, true to life presentation of our naked bodies, shorn of all exploitation, let alone that culmination of love and emotion expressed in the sexual act.
Bye the bye who is this person, that is so above moral corruption, that they can view material that I must be shielded from seeing because I am so more corruptable they they are. Material, not prurient nor voyeuristic, but carefully, thoughtfully crafted by another decent person who spent considerable time and effort to offer it for adult viewing for them to make judgement on its relevance.
No, the only alternative we leave our youth to explore their inevitable normal and natural curiosity is through the only freely accessible material left, pornography. Nasty, crude, totally false images of how humans relate. Even though we distant ourselves, and our youth, from this obscene unpleasant material, the crudity of its unreal images now feedback into our santisied morally correct depictions of sexual engagement, tastefully stripped of any explicitness. The self same pornographic cliques are now the soundbites norms used to signify 'intercourse', the lunge, the sucking of entrails and the pelvic ramming whilst tearing off of clothes. These are the images we give our adolescents to learn from about what their raging hormones are urging them to do. Unless of course you are of the old school brigade with a cold shower and total abstinence beliefs of cloud cuckoo land.
Time we all grew up and recognised that love, emotion, nakedness and sexual intimacy are powerful and natural forces capable of beautiful, wholesome and wonderful emotions and expressions. Time we learnt to live with our sexuality, explore its complexities and celebrate in all its richness whilst helping our youth grow up surrounded by good example and natural normal outlets for their inevitable curiosity.
Wednesday, 16 April 2014
Saturday, 1 March 2014
Of the Community
At the time we were too pressed with the urgency of bringing up children, holding down jobs and keeping a wheel on the wagon to notice or comprehended. Those twice a day rituals of meeting at the school gate to drop off or pick up the children were crucial. There were many other subsequent meetings, whether at youth activities, secondary school, sports days, village fetes, but this one, the meeting at school gate was decisive. Now much longer in the tooth, having gone through the many stages of maturing, I have the records to look back at. I can see so clearly how our paths, our children's paths, their friends paths and the social network that I find myself working within are to a very significant degree derived from those early school gate gatherings. This is when we met, got to know each others names, found out about where they lived, gained an inkling of their work and lifestyle. Through these early contacts we got to meet up with others all moving around in similar related circles. This is our community dynamic, the social network of interconnected families with some commonality of past experience or interest linking us together. I not saying lasting friends, I am not even saying companions sharing mutual values, just people who know and can recognise each other and have some basic instinct of the others likely response. Sufficient to give us a common bond, our community, we know you and you are part of us.
Of course in my lifetime we have gone from a plurality of community meeting opportunities, sharing a convivial drink together, to the routine church attendance, to of course the schooling, but also the village shop, doctors surgery, the village social life, to our present state. Even the gathering of parents at school gates is now to be discouraged, children are dropped off out of cars, closure of so many village facilities transferred to remote detached outside communities, a withdrawal from localised activity and diversification to remote anonymised centres. Before my time it was even more intense, you worked where you lived, you seldom travelled beyond your own community and your employer was your load and judge about your moral conduct. I am not bemoaning about changing times, but we do need to understand the processes that meld communities together before we can hope to plan how to reforge community connections in this new dissipated age. Dissipated, because we are longer bound to place but follow our economic fortunes, we are not tied to family and now have serial families and our place of work can be anywhere around the globe working at anything from a smartphone to a command centre. How in a loose fit society do we develop any sense of community? Is it even possible we can find anything we can bond too? Is the only resolution a drift to Totalitarianism, when some detached remote authority determines and controls each and everyone of our freedoms to act. A total loss of all independence because without a tying in to a community the options are only Anarchy or Totalitarianism.
I talk of village life. A town and even a City is but a collection of villages, the collective of villages have another dimension, their relationship with the greater whole of the Town. There are finite limits to how wide a group of people you can relate to and still feel sufficiently close as to bond as a group of Us against Them, the outsiders. No hard and fast figures, different for each of us, the individuals that we are. But there are limits, that number, that distance, that crossing of the line is just that too far. A finite village is clear and simple, a Town is a lot more ambiguous with a lot more factors coming into play. In the end we have up until now related to the place we recognise as our place that we stayed in for some length of time, sufficient to have made some contact with other members of that place. As we withdraw more and more inwardly, within the secure four walls we inhabit, we have less and less connection to the community. The communal actions appear to become increasingly irrelevant. We are isolated islands and Others control all things beyond our island. This then is our challenge. How do we in this fast changing age break down the island defences and help people to reconnect with all those around them that they actually do depend on for the quality of their actual life? Clearly not by central Them government. The Us of the Community have to be given back meaningfully the reins of their own destiny. Not the current government vogue of tokenised responsibility whilst the real control and purse remains tightly held by Westminster, but actual devolved power and accountability. If is important enough to tangibly affect their quality of life, then just maybe the island drawbridges might come down to see what they can influence.
Of course in my lifetime we have gone from a plurality of community meeting opportunities, sharing a convivial drink together, to the routine church attendance, to of course the schooling, but also the village shop, doctors surgery, the village social life, to our present state. Even the gathering of parents at school gates is now to be discouraged, children are dropped off out of cars, closure of so many village facilities transferred to remote detached outside communities, a withdrawal from localised activity and diversification to remote anonymised centres. Before my time it was even more intense, you worked where you lived, you seldom travelled beyond your own community and your employer was your load and judge about your moral conduct. I am not bemoaning about changing times, but we do need to understand the processes that meld communities together before we can hope to plan how to reforge community connections in this new dissipated age. Dissipated, because we are longer bound to place but follow our economic fortunes, we are not tied to family and now have serial families and our place of work can be anywhere around the globe working at anything from a smartphone to a command centre. How in a loose fit society do we develop any sense of community? Is it even possible we can find anything we can bond too? Is the only resolution a drift to Totalitarianism, when some detached remote authority determines and controls each and everyone of our freedoms to act. A total loss of all independence because without a tying in to a community the options are only Anarchy or Totalitarianism.
I talk of village life. A town and even a City is but a collection of villages, the collective of villages have another dimension, their relationship with the greater whole of the Town. There are finite limits to how wide a group of people you can relate to and still feel sufficiently close as to bond as a group of Us against Them, the outsiders. No hard and fast figures, different for each of us, the individuals that we are. But there are limits, that number, that distance, that crossing of the line is just that too far. A finite village is clear and simple, a Town is a lot more ambiguous with a lot more factors coming into play. In the end we have up until now related to the place we recognise as our place that we stayed in for some length of time, sufficient to have made some contact with other members of that place. As we withdraw more and more inwardly, within the secure four walls we inhabit, we have less and less connection to the community. The communal actions appear to become increasingly irrelevant. We are isolated islands and Others control all things beyond our island. This then is our challenge. How do we in this fast changing age break down the island defences and help people to reconnect with all those around them that they actually do depend on for the quality of their actual life? Clearly not by central Them government. The Us of the Community have to be given back meaningfully the reins of their own destiny. Not the current government vogue of tokenised responsibility whilst the real control and purse remains tightly held by Westminster, but actual devolved power and accountability. If is important enough to tangibly affect their quality of life, then just maybe the island drawbridges might come down to see what they can influence.
My island person
I had always understood that my one inviolate sanctuary, where I had to account to no one, were the thoughts in my mind. It seems that just because they can our Government have decreed that our personal thoughts are too important and must be monitored. Not just monitored of course, but reacted to should they imply what they consider to be inappropriate. Over any period a gamut of thoughts surge through my mind, shape shifting, getting stronger, weaker, changing focus, convolving to tangent ideas, narrowing down to a focus then off again. To manage my thoughts, to challenge them to see whether there is any substance in them, to consolidate them so they can be subjected to review, I need to try to set the more important ones down. Many people need to share ideas, to test the air, to see where the consensus lies, to confirm a mutual concurrence, to reassure a commonality of experience. Whatever, people chatter, nowadays they bounce words around, just a flux of ideas bouncing around responding to or creating stimuli for other ideas or tired old just going round doing the rounds. Our Government have given themselves the tools and taken the right to monitor all this electronic chatter, shifting for data trends, hotspots and of course making judgements on inappropriate ideas, who might be making them and jumping to (informed?) guesses on possible outcomes.
It is crystal clear to me that there are three key distinct stages, the initial thought which then translates into an intention and finally becomes an idea that is implemented. That tip over point, no longer an abstract thought but an actual observable committed deed that can be held up, scrutinised and the perpetrators of it held to account, for good or bad. So amongst the medley of thoughts that rummage around in my head are the concern about the homeless, hankering for expensive kit and annoyance at a prominent role model so shamefully brushing aside any self-restraint. These shapeless thoughts morph into ill-defined intentions; to donate 10% of my income to charity; to become a millionaire and to proactively promote a Republic State when Prince Charles gets to succeed.
With their routine surveillance of all us, our government monitors may well pick up on all these intentions of mine and flag me as a person who needs to closely watched. Pre-emptively, so they can get their water cannon in place before any protest kicks off, for the security of the greater good, of course. But intentions can be all, or more often, nothing, anything from empty boasts, still born at inception all the way to imminent implementation over a timescale of immediate to never in a million lifetimes. Logistically how are our government monitors to evaluate me, along with all the other huge number of daily potential targets? No matter how sophisticated their data mining is in identifying hotspot, fluxes of interest there is no algorithm to convert an averaged potential into an actual tipping point of action. Knowing with statistical certainty what the median of that personality profile may do, does not translate to the actual behaviour of any one individual in that sample. Whilst we may all conform to some stereotype or other we are each unique individuals with our own unique set of reactions and triggers. We are not interchangeable, I may be similar to you in shared interests but my responses will produce a different outcome to yours.
Now my ill-defined intentions may spark off a search for information to firm up my intentions into plausible courses of action. Still no commitment, still on the fence, open minded just looking around to see what options are out there. My wish to donate to charity might take me from the usual frontline providers to looking into the politics of poverty, how it arises and how others think Society needs to change to minimise poverty. My intention to become a millionaire may take me quickly from evaluating all the free-ride tickets games of chance, to assessing the distribution of wealth and who controls access to it, to spending a lot of time in my local Banks getting to know all the front office staff on familiar terms. As only a tepid monarchist I will easily find all the other dissent groups who oppose the monarchy and very easily become familiar with all the alternate society models together with all various routes, tacit to active dissent, as ways of changing the status quo. With such an array of potentially highly suspect contacts and potential alliances with groups out to thwart government authority I must surely pose a security risk? With all those alarm bells ringing how is any risk analyst going to know with any credence whether I have become radicalised or remain aloof to counter cultures? A presumption of guilt unless proven otherwise can only have one outcome, a ballooning of potential targets followed by a ever burgeoning security monitoring service increasingly hyper-active and hyper-sensitive.
The only reliable safety valve we have, is the community we live within. That community has a past knowledge, a current expectation and a fairly robust future prediction of where I am and what I might be capable of at any period of time. No amount of data trawling can get anywhere near close to that level of community introspection. There is a catch, of course, as being one of us, part of their community, the community will cut me slack and make allowances for me, if challenged by Them (the Them of an outside of the community authority), for some transgression. A level of latitude that would not have been offered had I transgressed against the Us of the Community. An insider Us is protective of the outsider Them, (think again about a Locally Based Policemen being one of us as versus a visiting Policemen coming in from Them of the outside).
Intentions are ephemeral, to chase the ephemera of electronic chatter is as mindless as the Inquisitors chasing down Witches. Instead of yesterdays Witches we have the now current bogey of the Terrorist. Prove to me you a not a Terrorist is just as inane as proving I not a Witch! Only tangible discrete actions can be examined, challenging intentions leads to only to the morass. Anything that distracts or diffuses from that key transition point when an intention morphs into an action is to be deplored. When my charity intention is translated into actual action, dropping a 50p coin into a tin; hoisting a republican flag in my garden or strapping on a pretend body bomb to hold a Bank hostage, then you need to stay alert, to be on your marks. Not wasting resources chasing fantasy ghosts of your own creation. What we do all have to fear and remain ever vigilant to is the maverick loner. The loner living beyond reach of the community he lives within. Rather than expend wasted resources monitoring all electronic chatter, far, far better by miles is to trust in the local community. For the community to know and police their members. Do everything conceivable to reinforce, encourage and dissipating culture barriers so the connections within any community between its members, can flourish.
In the end, this is the only reliable safety net we have. Meanwhile I must have the freedom to think the unthinkable, so I can arrive independently at my own moral judgements, yet safe, with the knowledge that the community I live amongst will keep me rooted in what is acceptable. No amount of electronic eavesdropping while ever provide a better secure safety net.
It is crystal clear to me that there are three key distinct stages, the initial thought which then translates into an intention and finally becomes an idea that is implemented. That tip over point, no longer an abstract thought but an actual observable committed deed that can be held up, scrutinised and the perpetrators of it held to account, for good or bad. So amongst the medley of thoughts that rummage around in my head are the concern about the homeless, hankering for expensive kit and annoyance at a prominent role model so shamefully brushing aside any self-restraint. These shapeless thoughts morph into ill-defined intentions; to donate 10% of my income to charity; to become a millionaire and to proactively promote a Republic State when Prince Charles gets to succeed.
With their routine surveillance of all us, our government monitors may well pick up on all these intentions of mine and flag me as a person who needs to closely watched. Pre-emptively, so they can get their water cannon in place before any protest kicks off, for the security of the greater good, of course. But intentions can be all, or more often, nothing, anything from empty boasts, still born at inception all the way to imminent implementation over a timescale of immediate to never in a million lifetimes. Logistically how are our government monitors to evaluate me, along with all the other huge number of daily potential targets? No matter how sophisticated their data mining is in identifying hotspot, fluxes of interest there is no algorithm to convert an averaged potential into an actual tipping point of action. Knowing with statistical certainty what the median of that personality profile may do, does not translate to the actual behaviour of any one individual in that sample. Whilst we may all conform to some stereotype or other we are each unique individuals with our own unique set of reactions and triggers. We are not interchangeable, I may be similar to you in shared interests but my responses will produce a different outcome to yours.
Now my ill-defined intentions may spark off a search for information to firm up my intentions into plausible courses of action. Still no commitment, still on the fence, open minded just looking around to see what options are out there. My wish to donate to charity might take me from the usual frontline providers to looking into the politics of poverty, how it arises and how others think Society needs to change to minimise poverty. My intention to become a millionaire may take me quickly from evaluating all the free-ride tickets games of chance, to assessing the distribution of wealth and who controls access to it, to spending a lot of time in my local Banks getting to know all the front office staff on familiar terms. As only a tepid monarchist I will easily find all the other dissent groups who oppose the monarchy and very easily become familiar with all the alternate society models together with all various routes, tacit to active dissent, as ways of changing the status quo. With such an array of potentially highly suspect contacts and potential alliances with groups out to thwart government authority I must surely pose a security risk? With all those alarm bells ringing how is any risk analyst going to know with any credence whether I have become radicalised or remain aloof to counter cultures? A presumption of guilt unless proven otherwise can only have one outcome, a ballooning of potential targets followed by a ever burgeoning security monitoring service increasingly hyper-active and hyper-sensitive.
The only reliable safety valve we have, is the community we live within. That community has a past knowledge, a current expectation and a fairly robust future prediction of where I am and what I might be capable of at any period of time. No amount of data trawling can get anywhere near close to that level of community introspection. There is a catch, of course, as being one of us, part of their community, the community will cut me slack and make allowances for me, if challenged by Them (the Them of an outside of the community authority), for some transgression. A level of latitude that would not have been offered had I transgressed against the Us of the Community. An insider Us is protective of the outsider Them, (think again about a Locally Based Policemen being one of us as versus a visiting Policemen coming in from Them of the outside).
Intentions are ephemeral, to chase the ephemera of electronic chatter is as mindless as the Inquisitors chasing down Witches. Instead of yesterdays Witches we have the now current bogey of the Terrorist. Prove to me you a not a Terrorist is just as inane as proving I not a Witch! Only tangible discrete actions can be examined, challenging intentions leads to only to the morass. Anything that distracts or diffuses from that key transition point when an intention morphs into an action is to be deplored. When my charity intention is translated into actual action, dropping a 50p coin into a tin; hoisting a republican flag in my garden or strapping on a pretend body bomb to hold a Bank hostage, then you need to stay alert, to be on your marks. Not wasting resources chasing fantasy ghosts of your own creation. What we do all have to fear and remain ever vigilant to is the maverick loner. The loner living beyond reach of the community he lives within. Rather than expend wasted resources monitoring all electronic chatter, far, far better by miles is to trust in the local community. For the community to know and police their members. Do everything conceivable to reinforce, encourage and dissipating culture barriers so the connections within any community between its members, can flourish.
In the end, this is the only reliable safety net we have. Meanwhile I must have the freedom to think the unthinkable, so I can arrive independently at my own moral judgements, yet safe, with the knowledge that the community I live amongst will keep me rooted in what is acceptable. No amount of electronic eavesdropping while ever provide a better secure safety net.
Wednesday, 26 February 2014
Axis of Power
It is absolutely clear China with a developing independent space programme, including its own GPS system, having been highly proactive in buying up or obtaining primary access to most of the key materials and rare materials around the world and with most of the developed nations credit held by China, China has entered the World Stage in a major way. They are not bit players on the sidelines but has put itself in a position to dictate terms to the rest of the World. When the rest of the old Western former powers eventually pull themselves out of their stupor they are not going to relinquish their previous world dominance. We have the classic power struggle building up with China determining its allies to form its axis and the rest of the west developed nations lumbering into some coalition axis of opposition. The key questions are the buffer nations caught up inbetween these two axis, the Middle East and Australia/New Zealand, naturally a western alliance but too close to the China axis and too far for close support but perhaps most of all Russia sharing common borders.
We are not talking political arm wrestling, the west will not accept subservience to China without a fight. Can you really imagine the USofA meekly submitting to China's terms? I think not. We are talking about a walk towards WWIII. The only possible setback to China's progress to world dominance, planned or coincidental, is whether it can successfully continue to exercise total authoritarian rule and sit and contain the bubbling ferment of all their numerous minority racial groups. A resentment against the power and privilege the ruling Hans have surrounded themselves with.
Tuesday, 18 February 2014
Working with it
Maybe we just cannot remember far enough back or maybe unprecedented, which ever we will have to learn to live and cope with weather extremes we are now experiencing. Does not matter what you attribute the cause to, no point kidding ourselves, this past six weeks of continually showers and gale winds is not a one-off freak. This is our new weather pattern, but how do we live with it? Re-learning past forgotten lessons, for one. Farmers of old who lived, worked and spent their lives on the land, knew their land, knew where water collected, where ditches worked and where to create courses to take water off their land and away. Modern farmers take profit out of the land, hiring contractors to do the bulk work and from their tractor cabins surrounded by technological aids have lost that direct contact and feel for their land. So we have to rediscover that direct contact with our land again, watch and listen to what it tells us. Point one, clear out all your ditches making sure that their outfall is clear beyond your own borders. Next is to dredge your rivers to stop them getting choked up with all the sediment taken off the fields. But we know that is not sufficient, fast off the land means fast into water courses then fast down to the next settlement along the water course. We have to reinstate flood plains to absorb that initial fast run-off giving the now reinvigorated rivers a chance to do their work. Hopefully flood plains that just have to take flood waters for a week or two and not for the months the Somerset Levels are having to endure. Managed and controlled flood plains. Or natures random flood plains generated by Beavers cutting down trees that choke the streams and rivers. Either way, but slowing down the run off into the rivers. Lest we forget, we have covered vast areas of our land in hard impermeable surfaces, that too is adding to our problems of a lot of water wanting to flow downstream and all at once.
The rain will come as it comes, we have to learn to live with it. One solution to softening the impact we should have done hundred years ago. But it still not too late to act now for our grandchildrens benefits. Plant lots and lots of trees. Trees take the sting out of the wind, calm down its energy and diffuse the rain, softening it impact, increasing the prospect of it being absorbed before it runs off. Trees can be our giant country wide blanket soaking up the wind and the rain. Not solving but helping to dissipate the wind and rain, giving our flood plains, ditches and rivers a chance to work. Trees can take a long time to achieve any stature but not all. Some trees, that people might know as hedgerows, such as Elder, Damson, Wild Cherry, Crab Apple, Hawthorn, Sloe or Blackthorn are fast growing. We just need rethink how we go about growing our crops, perhaps between harvesting lines of 'trees' but what ever we do need to plant a huge number of trees and right now. We will of course also learn how to manage them better so we do not flail them to within four feet of life.We can get smart and learn how to live with our new weather or procrastinate, hold on to our old comfortable ways, hum and haw while Nature just carries on and determines our future. Better to act, anyone for Elderflower Presse, Damson Cheese,
Crab Apple or Hawthorn Jelly or maybe some Sloe Chutney?
The rain will come as it comes, we have to learn to live with it. One solution to softening the impact we should have done hundred years ago. But it still not too late to act now for our grandchildrens benefits. Plant lots and lots of trees. Trees take the sting out of the wind, calm down its energy and diffuse the rain, softening it impact, increasing the prospect of it being absorbed before it runs off. Trees can be our giant country wide blanket soaking up the wind and the rain. Not solving but helping to dissipate the wind and rain, giving our flood plains, ditches and rivers a chance to work. Trees can take a long time to achieve any stature but not all. Some trees, that people might know as hedgerows, such as Elder, Damson, Wild Cherry, Crab Apple, Hawthorn, Sloe or Blackthorn are fast growing. We just need rethink how we go about growing our crops, perhaps between harvesting lines of 'trees' but what ever we do need to plant a huge number of trees and right now. We will of course also learn how to manage them better so we do not flail them to within four feet of life.We can get smart and learn how to live with our new weather or procrastinate, hold on to our old comfortable ways, hum and haw while Nature just carries on and determines our future. Better to act, anyone for Elderflower Presse, Damson Cheese,
Crab Apple or Hawthorn Jelly or maybe some Sloe Chutney?
Thursday, 6 February 2014
Caring for Customers
The Media churn out another lazy rehash of the old familiar story, Mr Good trying to save money whilst Mr Bad wants to stop him firing all his workers, in this case all the London Underground Ticket Sales staff. If like me, you are an infrequent traveller to London, you always use the Underground as it is the only way to get about. As an aside, in fairness the Buses are getting better organised, (fantastic 'London Journey Planner' App) but still the dilemma of which Bus, where to get off and electronic display saying next due in 5 minutes whilst you wait for 25 minutes and still no Bus in sight. Back to my theme. A welter of overlapping tiers of travel options and an automatic ticket machine with an interface devised by the Devil himself, evil incarnate. I regard myself as reasonably technically competent, an average commuter, but my lack of routine familiarity with all the London travel options means I am defeated each and every time I attempt to use the automatic ticketing system. I need the human, even if scowling, face of the Ticket Sale Office to translate my simple travel plans into a sensible Ticket to Travel. Unless London has decided to commit suicide and turn its back on all those tourists that flood the Underground every day, what is it thinking.
Our Society is being driven top down by Accountant Rules. Sure, absolutely, the Money In has to exceed the Money Out, no argument. But Accountants do not have any formula to tell when Customers have had an unsatisfactory experience that they choose not to repeat. In the real commercial world out there, struggling to get by in the ongoing recession, they are highly tuned to the customer experience. They go out of their way to ensure the customer's residual recollection is favourable to them. Not that mistakes do not happen, of course they do, but it is someone's job to proactively respond with more than a smiley face and 'Have a Nice Day' to ensure any problem is fixed and they are left satisfied. Not so our quasi-private companies running our essential services. They are only in it for profit, customer, or consumer, satisfaction is of no account. Sure a stone-walling complaints procedure that at most logs the complaint then dead files it away. Their remit is not to provide a good quality service that meets the needs of the users, just to return a profit. Not just London Underground but a plethora of quasi-private service provider have all been hitting the news for failing to address their 'customers' needs. Take the water utility boards, responsible to safe discharge of sewerage, brushing aside one of several householders that have repeated (five times), raw sewerage flooding into their homes; or Environment Agency with responsibility to manage our natural resources, failing in their duty of care by allowing the Somerset Levels to be inundated for weeks on end; or our treasured NHS failing to provided basic care robbing their elderly patients of dignity; or Local Authorities not allocating sufficient Care Hours to enable carers provide a decent quality of assistance and so on, rail failings, postal failings and on and on. Staffed by dedicate people who joined to serve the public but in the end are undermined by administrations that can only see the profit line and have no motive to meet the needs.
As I argue elsewhere, (All Change)(Time to Stand Up) quasi-'competitive' private companies have no place in running essential services. The 'competition model' is an entirely false fabrication, no real viable alternate options exist, the customer is stuck and stuffed. Nothing wrong, in fact overwhelming reasons why, essential services should be State organised. Just a new leaner model of how to go about organising and arranging them and making them accountable. There is hope that we can get back to providing all the customers, that is us, with services that aim to at least meet the needs of its customers. Now that would be a refreshing change.
Our Society is being driven top down by Accountant Rules. Sure, absolutely, the Money In has to exceed the Money Out, no argument. But Accountants do not have any formula to tell when Customers have had an unsatisfactory experience that they choose not to repeat. In the real commercial world out there, struggling to get by in the ongoing recession, they are highly tuned to the customer experience. They go out of their way to ensure the customer's residual recollection is favourable to them. Not that mistakes do not happen, of course they do, but it is someone's job to proactively respond with more than a smiley face and 'Have a Nice Day' to ensure any problem is fixed and they are left satisfied. Not so our quasi-private companies running our essential services. They are only in it for profit, customer, or consumer, satisfaction is of no account. Sure a stone-walling complaints procedure that at most logs the complaint then dead files it away. Their remit is not to provide a good quality service that meets the needs of the users, just to return a profit. Not just London Underground but a plethora of quasi-private service provider have all been hitting the news for failing to address their 'customers' needs. Take the water utility boards, responsible to safe discharge of sewerage, brushing aside one of several householders that have repeated (five times), raw sewerage flooding into their homes; or Environment Agency with responsibility to manage our natural resources, failing in their duty of care by allowing the Somerset Levels to be inundated for weeks on end; or our treasured NHS failing to provided basic care robbing their elderly patients of dignity; or Local Authorities not allocating sufficient Care Hours to enable carers provide a decent quality of assistance and so on, rail failings, postal failings and on and on. Staffed by dedicate people who joined to serve the public but in the end are undermined by administrations that can only see the profit line and have no motive to meet the needs.
As I argue elsewhere, (All Change)(Time to Stand Up) quasi-'competitive' private companies have no place in running essential services. The 'competition model' is an entirely false fabrication, no real viable alternate options exist, the customer is stuck and stuffed. Nothing wrong, in fact overwhelming reasons why, essential services should be State organised. Just a new leaner model of how to go about organising and arranging them and making them accountable. There is hope that we can get back to providing all the customers, that is us, with services that aim to at least meet the needs of its customers. Now that would be a refreshing change.
Saturday, 25 January 2014
Battle Lines
The rich elite, and their aspirant hoping to join them politicians, continue to enjoy the products of the financial squeeze on all the rest of us. A squeeze that is due to tighten even further, as our government, elected to promote and protect our interests, draws up plans to combat the anticipate civil unrest! Officials are actively looking into the purchase, the deployment and how best to utilise water cannon to be used against their own citizens. This would seem to be a perfectly okay, matter-of-fact and reasonable step to consider. Obviously if your citizens are rioting, you need to be able to control them, perfectly logical and commendable, maintaining law and order is surely a prime purpose of government.
Pause for one moment and ask why the government anticipate their own citizens might rise up and riot? The government policy of squeezing ever harder the lower income groups, slashing essential benefit, castigating all those that fail to endure their imposed restrictions as cheats, fraudster, idle and lazy, is central to this growing unrest. The government with head in the sand pursues the 'proven' past practices of avoiding recession by encouraging consumer spending, by taking out more loans which inflate house prices even further. Their only other action is to frenetically cut their own spending on the easy targets, why of course, all those wilful people who refuse to get jobs and look to the State for support. Cut back on all those wasteful and unnecessary social support measures. If only those people got off their backsides and worked they would get along just fine. Mean while the government must encourage consumer spending, what better way then ensuring those successful people with money to spend are shielded from the economic savings being made else where, so they can get on and spend even more.
People will put up with hardship and endure intolerable conditions providing it is fair and equitable, we are all in it together, each taking their own share of the burden. Clearly this is not happening. You only have to lift you head a fraction to see all the evidence that we are in an ever growing unequal society. Never has the gap between those that have and those who cannot survive been so large. The government, instead of rushing to halt this growing gap, is intent on ensuring its increase, because, in their view, that is the only route to economic recovery. Hence a growing ground swell of intense dissatisfaction with an unequal society on one hand and the government taking steps to contain civil disorder on the other. Use Water Cannon on your own citizens to prove you are right. So Vote to support or Revolt to find a better solution.
Pause for one moment and ask why the government anticipate their own citizens might rise up and riot? The government policy of squeezing ever harder the lower income groups, slashing essential benefit, castigating all those that fail to endure their imposed restrictions as cheats, fraudster, idle and lazy, is central to this growing unrest. The government with head in the sand pursues the 'proven' past practices of avoiding recession by encouraging consumer spending, by taking out more loans which inflate house prices even further. Their only other action is to frenetically cut their own spending on the easy targets, why of course, all those wilful people who refuse to get jobs and look to the State for support. Cut back on all those wasteful and unnecessary social support measures. If only those people got off their backsides and worked they would get along just fine. Mean while the government must encourage consumer spending, what better way then ensuring those successful people with money to spend are shielded from the economic savings being made else where, so they can get on and spend even more.
People will put up with hardship and endure intolerable conditions providing it is fair and equitable, we are all in it together, each taking their own share of the burden. Clearly this is not happening. You only have to lift you head a fraction to see all the evidence that we are in an ever growing unequal society. Never has the gap between those that have and those who cannot survive been so large. The government, instead of rushing to halt this growing gap, is intent on ensuring its increase, because, in their view, that is the only route to economic recovery. Hence a growing ground swell of intense dissatisfaction with an unequal society on one hand and the government taking steps to contain civil disorder on the other. Use Water Cannon on your own citizens to prove you are right. So Vote to support or Revolt to find a better solution.
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