A baby is for life

Caught a breakfast item the other morning about a girl bemoaning that the NHS will not fund her IVF treatment for the baby she so desperately wants with her new partner. The significance of the two children she successfully had but with a previous partner escape her self preoccupation. Babies are a necessary and an essential status image to show off to the world how successful you are. It is your right to have as and when you choose.

Maybe, just possibly there are other considerations that have got lost along the way and need to be taken down and dusted off. Yes, having a child is the single most important life event for man or woman. Our society needs strong healthy children to sustain its population, provide the labour and wealth generators to keep the social infrastructure rolling on. We need stable, well-rounded and confident children that fit easily into the established social networks and patterns. The few odd-ball adventurers or opportunists can be absorbed. We know that children with a single parent or possibly worse serial parents do not grow up to become stable, well-rounded and confident adults. The parenting skills or wants have a huge impact on how that child matures.

It is not about our self-centred personal whims and fancies. How lovely a baby would be. At its roots, it is only about ensuring a sound society can continue to grow and prosper. In the past sheer bloody economic necessity meant there was no option. You had to make do with the partner you ended up with. Woe betide you if you let your fancy wander to a peacock or a thrilling stud. Your life partner choice was critical. Get the best partner your circumstance gave you access to and your circumstance enabled you to seal against the competition. Choose well, then a well managed house and children with the best food from available resources and a regular income provider not tempted to dally elsewhere. Else you are stuck in all the flip sides. With a high mortality, where with luck three out of twelve children might survive into adulthood, unimpeded fecundity was the order of the day.

Not any more. We have to constrain our birthrate but a single child policy is not the answer either, as China's growing pool of 'Little Emperors' testifies. Our investment in marriage as a concept has to be overhauled. It used to signify family, the core and centre of society. Family, the start of the new generation and the handing on of all the inherited attributes. A big event where two gene lines meet, exchange and forge long term relationships. A hugely important event carrying the whole investment of the past and the hopes for some sort of future. Now sidelined as a show, a public display of current success, ephemeral, the oaths given as meaningless as the bouquet tossed aside. No wonder a gay marriage is on the agenda. A marriage is just a civil right, no more significant than casting a vote.

We have evolved, we have a plethora of weapons, so let us keep civic partnerships for all who want a legal sanction on their union, whether for one year or for life. Marriage needs to be upgraded given a special place. Marriage that is the rock bed of procreation and long relationships. Marriage only for couples willing to commit to stay together and bring up the direct results of their union, their children, no matter what.  Not an automatic right for all and sundry but a much sought after and highly regarded right only conferred on those able to demonstrate a long term commitment and likely to produce vigorous progeny.  A precious and hard-earned right then achieved only after passing a peer review and assessment on your suitability, your conformity and viable breeding. Your peers deciding whether you have what it takes to produce and hold a family together in your neighbourhood. With that granting, recognition by the State of that special status approved with additional health, housing, pension, tax rebate rights. Encouragement to provide that long term stable care that we all need our society to foster.

Nothing wrong with childbirth, fostering, IHV, adoption, whatever outside of 'marriage' but within a civic partnership, just lacking the state's sanctification and benefits. We must invest heavily into our future but be compassionate for the many that do not measure up.

Changing Banks?

Thinking of changing Bank Accounts? Choose not to be off-loaded to Santander in the RBS give-away? Be very aware, if you are receiving a State Pension. The glib promises of the banks to take all the stress out of switching Bank Accounts is all one-sided. They only look after the outgoings, you have to sort out all of your incomes. Not so stress free after-all.

Worse of all, before you even think of changing bank accounts your need to tell DWP (Department of Works and Pensions) as they are taking 'upto eight weeks' is the official line, to changing details! Unless you are content to miss maybe two months payments you are stuffed. You will not get your new account details until you have committed yourself. By then it is too late to get the DWP's to amend your account details.

Join the queue of pension receivers who have been notified of a returned payment just because the lumbering bureaucratic machinery has not got round to processing your earlier (in good time) notified account details. They are no short cuts. You will be sure to miss a payment. The only small upside is that after surviving the blind sampling of the automatic telephone response the humans you get to talk are very pleasant and almost proactive.

In this electronic age is it really acceptable for a government department to be working to stone-age time-scales? A woefully inadequate service and no one to complain to, just suffer.

Postscript. It seems that just maybe I have fallen into to the timewarp trap. Organisations are now setup to manange by telephone these essential detail changes. Whereas trapped in my past I assumed that such confidential and vulnerable transaction were best dealt with by the old fashioned letter. Speculation and untested. Maybe telephone is fast and best and letters are consumed to the slow lane.

Living a Now Life

In this era of information overload and instant vox pops by courtesy of the social network sites, putting a cross against some others nomination to signal your consent for the next five years seems just a tad limiting. Time to radically rethink how democracy must work in this era opening up before us. A democratic society is all about finding a consensual middle ground, inclusive of the widest majority. The twittering of tweets around a theme that has caught the public's imagination is as clear a demonstration of how a new democracy might work as could be found. The public have opinions, want to share it and most of all want their opinion to count.

Simple. One downside is the public are impetuous, rushing to voice an opinion so expressing a gut emotion rather than reflective thought. Sometimes the populous 'hang the murderer' on reflection is not the right response when eventually it emerges the youth was not the victim as initially seen but a drunk youth who fell into the path of a lawful car. So we have to steer away from instant polls to determine our future paths and find a more reflective and considered route. It takes time before all the shades of opinion really begin to emerge. The first headlong rush of 'me too' subsides and slowly other options and different takes begin to gather support. This is the point when we want public opinion to begin to influence our future.


Step up to the plate our leaders. We still need you to guide, gather and promote a future view for others to line up behind. The numbers of your disciples determining the impact you have in setting the national agenda. Of course large following will always be easily gathered by keeping close to the knee jerk responses, but does not make for good politics though. We have to re-educate ourselves as to the how's of debate, not character assassination, but about issues. The how to cut to the quick, compare and contrast and weight the strength of evidence for and against. Learn to listen to the nuances of those we disagree with, the better to confound their flimsy arguments. A sophisticated mature agenda but one I see every evidence of being attainable in this our society. A wrong path is not forever immutable, it is possible to change tack and find that other route.


The present media outlets own the political agenda, they determine what and the context in which any thoughts may be presented. That is despite any political parties strong resolve to address some other aspect of that issue. Our media controls the selection, the presentation and the target audience for any political announcement. In our new brave world, at present anyway, no one owns the ether and ideas are 'free' to spawn, gathering critical mass and attention focus. 'Free' because of course the search engines which decide what is at the top of your noticeboard is determined by their own objectives and criteria. So a hint of caution then, when nevertheless, a vogue posting can go viral just by being networked to friends.  Our new leaders have to sign up to this networked world and claim dominance amongst all those that profess to like their agenda. 


A different world, but still a world where we have to take long term strategic views of how to evolve and adhere to that policy for more than short term opportunism. I see a willingness to follow good leadership, I see loyalty prepared to weather bad times for the promise of good, I see a mature adult society that can rise to the challenges of being part of their societies evolution. What I also see are huge numbers of people disaffected by how the current system works against their interest. Where the 'X' fails to reflect the complexity of ideas they have about their and their families future.

Tax Array

Time for another dig deep session. It verges on an Alice in Wonderland incredulity the number of organisations, the variety of assessment / claims forms and the bewildering variety of benefits out there where the government, in some guise or other, pays money back to its beleaguered citizens. These byzantine arrangements, all arrived at with impeccable credentials of fairness, equity, non-judgemental compassion and social egalitarianism ends us up in this current mad house. Duplicates of civic servants or quasi scrutinising the minute of income, assets, disposable wealth and interpersonal relationships to arrive at not so dissimilar views. Yar, this person is in need of financial support to get through.

Some times, just occasionally, the sticking plaster on top of the sticking plaster approach to crisis management fails. This is where we are now. We have to dare to lift up the corner to see right back to the origins and be prepared to discard the past. There are the majority of people that sit within the norm sufficiently well as to not raise concerns. Then there are people that are well below the norm and, compassionately, need special considerations. Then there are those above the norm that require particular attention.

Below the norm people from time to time struggle. Whether from their own duplicity, bad luck or simply an act of god, they fail to cope. So often it comes down to failing to make financial ends meet. It is in all our best interests that they get some immediate relief, a crucial chance to sort themselves out. Extend them that lifeline to get back on their feet. Moving on from there, from whatever the cause, we cannot let any citizen slide into destitution. We just cannot stand by as another human fails to cope, to find the basics of shelter, food and clothing. Two situations then,  the first, hit the crisis button and immediate temporary relief whilst indepth investigations as to cause and remedy are conducted and your self-recovery attempts are monitored. Your crisis, your solution with the state in the background with advisory help. Not a state orchestrated rescue plan or a state ordained way of life, see also From Cradle to Grave. Second situation, you fail to manage your own recovery and slip further into the financial abyss. Until that point when others decide you need to be taken in. Given the minima of security, shelter, food and clothes in a community, with respect for privacy, for the family unit, though not necessarily your own personal private space. A scaling of support dependant on your willingness to help yourself and help all those possibly undesirables you now find as your companions, but always with that encouragement to work out your solution to your own problems. Shades of the workhouse. Inescapable, but a workhouse comparison diffused with compassion and support for the individual to find their own solution.

If we consistently fail to cope, it is right and proper that others begin to make decision on our behalf. It is the price of getting it wrong. One key questions is whether we are paying our way or living beyond our means. Your view is that you are perfectly entitled to a settee, or a wall screen HD TV, or convenience foods or an annual holiday. Others, that is the we of our society, may well judge that your life expectations are out of kilter to any realistic income. If you are unable to earn enough to pay for your desired lifestyle the State will make up the difference. Great. The downside is that the States view of what is required to sustain you or your family will be set eventually very low. A crutch for those in need but, and a very important but, not so comfortable that any one would choose to depend on it. There has to be that bottom line incentive, to get yourself out of your difficulties. It is your job, not the States job. So a sliding scale then, with interventions all along the way, from sustaining you in your present life style for the short term to a gradual reduction to a bare bones basic. Until the final support of some community based last resort shelter. Achieved simply with a tax credit as an income source. Scrap all the other benefits and allowances and special needs. We, this our society, decides a norm, below the norm, tax credit, on the norm, tax neutral, above the norm, tax debit.

Before turning to those in tax debit, an aside. It has to be all about our personal choices. If we choose, let events put us in a place, where we are a single parent, that is a personal choice. That choice has financial consequences which flow directly out of that choice. If we are born disadvantaged in some way, those are the consequences we have to live with and those are the limitations we have to find a sustainable life style to live within. That may well mean having to rely on support of the family, friends or community around you. Life does not come with  any entitlements. It is up to you to make the best of whatever the start you are given. It is not the states function to reinstitute you to some idealised lifestyle. Crisis support all the way for those crisis situations, caught out by the freak events of chance. Does your finding yourself in a relationship with a person with abusive traits amount to a crisis or a lack of judgement or necessary caution?

For people earning above the norm they pay the debit tax. Remember be are talking here about a pro-rata tax on wealth creation, see Tax, salaries and rewards and That Extra Mile. The more you have invested in skills or equipment the less you pay and the less you have invested in plant or people then the more. That pro-rata rate also on a sliding scale. We as a society will decide that no one shall take home a disposable income of more than 10 times, or 100 times or a 1,000 time more than the norm, whatever. We as the society set and control the divergence between the poor and the richest. The minority rich can only accumulate their wealth with the acquiescence of us the majority poor. We take pride in the unique opportunities our society offers. Those rich that recognise these benefits and are willing to make their contribution back into the society that nurtures them, will stay. Those other rich who are only interested in ever richer pickings will go elsewhere. When the 100% tax point is reached, that is you have arrived at the maximum rich to poor discrepancy society can tolerate, the options become simple. You either have to diversify and invest into less profitable enterprises or you spend on humanitarian good causes. This is a tax on wealth generation, not on the value of the pile of golden eggs but how much income is derived within this society from those eggs.

Society wins all round, it entrepreneurs are handsomely rewarded. The more successful they are the more the state recoups. A successful society is ripe for harvesting wealth. An equitable society that looks after all citizens is a just and stable society. Citizens that are motivated to self seek solutions are mobile and willing to try new opportunities. Win, win in principle. Our resourcefulness can mitigate the inevitable downsides. Better to try than continue to fail.

From Cradle to Grave

I have been brought up with the expectation that the State would look after my every needs from cradle to the grave. Clearly this is not possible. Just as a belief in Father Christmas, this is a wholly unrealistic fantasy expectation. Yet it is a wide spread, fervently held expectation, almost as a moral right of citizenship that this shall be delivered to me, if not everyone else. No politician, if they hope to survive,  dares to stir the foundations of this expectation. But for all that it is a fantasy, incapable of implementation.

The human condition is complex, diverse and we are only now getting glimmers of how it might work and come together. One persons needs are of such a different magnitude to another's. Those needs so real and pressing at the time are not immutable. Satiated, the need merely shifts and moves on to new arenas. The time, place and even the company can have a huge impact of the perceived desperation of the need. For some, having an need is a prerequisite to life, without a need to share, they are vulnerable, isolated, cut-off. Their need is their way of relating and claiming attention and reassurance from those around them. Little wonder then that the State has not the least chance of satisfying the needs of its citizens.

All needs are very real to those that live with there lack of resolution. It is rather like deciding on degrees of killing, which is the kinder or more humane method? You might think that providing a wheelchair to a non-ambulant person is a clearly demonstrably more real and justifiable need than reading a newspaper to an elderly person. It all depends on circumstance and expectations. If the non-ambulant person is really missing companionship, the wheelchair may not provide the answer. Hearing the newspaper read may be the last desperate cling onto reality in an otherwise slide into dementia. You tell me which is the real need. Meeting needs is not about cost, it is not about the practical ease of provision, it is not about the physical against the emotional, it is all about a person perception of their need and how it might be provided for. Whether it is a wealthy housewife unable to cope with dusting, a single mum trapped in unsuitable accommodation all across the spectrum to a severely disadvantaged person that needs help just to breath. How can the state cater for all its citizens needs? It simply cannot.

It is the citizen, with their supporting network they have drawn around themselves, that has to address and resolve their own needs, within the pool accessible to them of financial, practical or emotional assistance. Harsh but that is the reality. No magic wands to sweep you out of your circumstance out in to some fantasyland where problems have been banished. We have to live with what we have got and have to learn to overcome the disadvantages of being in that place we find ourselves. Unfair, inequitable but that is life, we do not get to choose were we are born. Which is not to say the State has to be uncompassionate, it has a duty of care to look after those that fall for whatever reason.

Those that fall due to no fault of their own, they are worthy of every possible support and assistance to get back on their feet. Just short of that support becoming a crutch is the catch. As humans we are always going to get it wrong, taken in by a sucker story, to refusing a genuine tale of woe because it appeared self-induced. Despite all the wrong calls, the majority will be desperate needs rightful for state intervention. For all those other self-inflicted needs the state eventually has to provided a final safety net. We cannot let our citizens slump into degradation and despair. There has to be a safety net. It is just that the safety net does not have to equate to  an equivalence of self-sufficient suburban life with own front door and fully equipped and furnished home. The horrors of the workhouse are real and current memories, no going back to that. Short of the workhouse, a place of safety not full of all creature comforts, but a supportive environment to provide shelter and reassurance, for the individual, or members of or up to the whole family,  during that struggle to get back onto ones feet. That is the states remit. That is the extent of the state meeting the needs of its citizens. Well short of support from cradle to grave.

BBC is on the Game

More and more of the BBC's 'light entertainment' output seems to be about indiscriminate product pushing. A media self-attractor appears, uses the format, whatever it is, to ruthlessly plug their book, CD, series, show, tour. The host for the format appears submissive and resigned to just being an escort from one plugger to the next plugger, waiting in the wings. Each plugger in turns taking every opportunity to thrust their product at the camera. At least the shopping channels are up front and open about it, they are just there to sell product. The BBC comes, or rather came, with loftier ideals. 

The BBC and its audience is in a deep relationship of free give and take, based on trust and goodwill. The BBC offers itself for free and the public accept that free offering  with the assumption it is untainted. Clearly a commercial programme maker is dependant on generating revenue and that need impinges on what and how it goes about making it programme offerings. Clear and understood by them and their audience. 

Its charter requires the BBC to appeal across the broad spectrum, inevitably its business is feeding the voracious appetite for 'celebrity' titbits and light entertainment new arrivals. They have to be in and on the media circus where the trade is "I make myself available to appear with you, in return I get to talk about my product". They, the BBC is inescapably in the selling game, of tease and seduction, a role that is as close as it gets to prostitution. Where the waters get muddled and muddied is the degree of how free and easy are you? Is the BBC there as a common-garden whore, harlot, hooker, strumpet or rather as some refined courtesan? 

The distinction that separates a slut from a courtesan is fine but hugely significant. The difference at the lowest point where anything goes as long as you want it and long as you pay for it, to the other highest discreet end, where an accommodation of desires is reached without overt commercialisation and all veiled in good manners and refined conduct.  Where prior selection, distinction or approval are the order of the day not the going rate.

One consequence of being on the game, at whatever level, is that it brings with it the attention of the pimps. Those that want control and influence on the money generated, the how's of the 'service's' provision and restricting who does or does not get access and to which aspect of the 'service'.  The courtesan, to retain self-respect and that right of prior approval and selection, has to negotiate a way past these leeches who seize every opportunity to coerce the abandonment of these lofty ideals.


In the beginning when everything was all corporately funded and sourced it was more like a marriage of mutual convenience. Then the BBC, no longer the sole provider, was seen along side and judged in comparison to the  'successful commercial' providers, brazenly displaying attractive wares each carrying clear price tags. To keep, up with the 'commercial successes', the BBC has whittled away its corporate distinction, in the process losing the sense of what set them apart. It has reached a point now when the question has to be asked, do they still set their own agenda or have they become a mere vessel open for exploitation by the commercial world?

It is no longer clear with any BBC programme whether it is freely sourced,  unbiased and presented purely from some artistic, cultural or educational endeavour. Or is it, as is now so often the case, linked or even tied to some other objective manipulated by others outside of the corporate BBC. We the viewers can no longer rely on the impartiality of the BBC. That trust has gone.  Every programme offering has to be assessed, is it given freely without qualification, is it a disguised free offer of inducement or is it just a blatant bribe? Lets be clear here. The BBC has opened itself up to commercial exploitation and joined the world of prostitution. It offerings can range from the benign, its own commissioned  programmes from independent producers, to buying an outsourced complete programme, to bidding in auction wars with rivals all the way through to accepting programmes just as vehicles to sell product. Where now is our courtesan?

Politics Without Parties

No apologises, this is going to be a long read. As it is central to all my political thoughts, stay with it, it might reward. I have previously set the challenge, Good Government, the Political No Vote, Centre Revolution, so how is it going to work? A democracy that is fully reflective of public opinion and is not carolled and strait-jacketed into a power base, survival at all costs organisation. As considered in my Consensus post, we need leaders, lots of them, all with slightly different take on issues. I am not even against political parties, per say, providing they are background support, not running and controlling what can or cannot be said and by whom. The over-arching objective is that the voters are offered individuals to choose between on their merits. In soliciting votes their views on the key questions of what makes a nation successful, are paramount. Not necessarily their own original views, just views that they understand and adopt as their own, with sincerity and not just for the voter appeal. Individuals who stand because they want to make a difference, not because of their wealth, connections or desire to win power or some popularity contest.
There is the first rub. Our media are fixated on failure or guilt that can be exposed in simple banner headlines. Subtlety, shades of opinion, complicated adjustments depending on degree are way out of their comprehension. It has to be either black or white. Either you are right, move on or you are wrong, in which case throw everything in, to prove how wrong. Not the vehicles to review a range of opinion or evaluate where a central position might lie, nor how extreme left or right any positions might actually fall. Not the place for measure considered debate, either right for that day, or wrong in which case lets seize on this error and display the weakness shown. Bully boy tactics dressed in grown-up speak.


The government of the day enjoys the luxury of a civil service, part of whose function are to present to the Cabernet minsters position papers. An elite cores review of any policy proposal, looking at all the consequence, knock-on events and implications for other policies. A whole gamut of allied and associated causes and effects that reverberate off the policy proposal. Likewise for any opposition counter policy proposals.
 
To escape the media blame game we need to get debate and objective critique of policy out into the open for all to see and consider. Not just government policy but any policy. Let us have the best informed and widest overseeing of all envisage consequences, benefits and penalties, so we can all reflect and judge the strengths or weakness of any policy put forward for the public dominion. Does not need a huge civil service army to effect. Nowadays we can exploit the on-line world. In a forum setting, ordinary citizens can lodge their reactions to any proposals, for and against. The forum moderator would be a small panel of 'civil servants' to hone the comments down to simple pro or con arguments. Voilà, a position paper is borne for all to see, to chip in, to tease, to test and reflect on all the varied responses. To arrive at their own opinion where the fair, pragmatic solution might lie. Ready to be persuaded to rise to another plane by their prospective candidate. Democracy might just work.


This then is the second rub. Money. To get ideas out into the public arena takes money. The more money, then the more effective, more attention seeking and more likely to wins the hearts of your target audience. Hearts, as you are only selling aspirations, not reasoned arguments. Money buys attention, buys respect and buys support. Money to buy media space. Money to buy slick attention seeking material and messages and money to buy audience research to iron out any misrepresentation's before launch. So a game only for a rich boy or organisation. 

Completely counter to the goal of any one being able offer themselves and their sincerity for election. First a commitment. No one stands unless they are so convinced of their need to serve that they are prepared to risk all. Secondly a cap, a very low maximum figure, topped up by the state if need be, to promote and draw attention to yourself and then a minimal salary if elected. Since the salary element came in for our MPs, the desire to serve has been supplanted by the greed for a cosy lifestyle. This salary has to be scaled back, so it is not a feather bed but an adequacy that all, irrespective of social background can afford to serve their country. Finally public online sites where candidates can be seen, their views and opinions offered and they can enter dialogue with their electorate.
 
The next and is it the final rub? There is no ready made political party to take up the electorates voting decision and to run a government.  Political parties are a lazy self-indulgent convenience useful to class based society. They no longer reflect our society. Our government should be a fluid alignment of the majority views, not cast in stone, a constant wheeling alliance of best interests, consensual views and trading off of benefits. That way we might just get a government that does actually reflect and respond to the society we actually live in. Not some ritualistic archaic left-over arrangements we currently toil under. A government in-touch and in-tune with its people, reactive and reflective of the constant changing moods, fears and aspirations.
 
No one suggested democracy was easy. No one claimed democracy gives you clear, decisive and consistent governance. We are after all herd creatures prone to take fright at the least alarm. It takes persons of stature and statesmanship to arise, be recognised, to lead and steady the herd, keeping them on track. That is democracy in action.