Being Accountable

Let me clarify. I do not believe in free enterprise. Our human desires and the consequences of achieving those desires requires to be tempered, we each have to exercise restraint. Or have restraint imposed on us. Neither do I believe in some centralised state control, equality for all. We are all too varied in our needs, access to resources and aspirations. No, what I been flogging over many of these blogs is the need to get back to belonging to a community. A caring community that is accountable and responsible to those that relate to it. A community that is meaningful and able to better the quality of life for each of us that belong to it. In this globalised world we exist within, this matrix society, we may belong to a duplicity of communities with varying degrees of weak to very strong bonds. Our membership maybe often be transitory but in key communities membership is non-cancellable, it is lifelong. Our life has to governed by the communities we bond with, with the obligations, responsibilities and expectations that their membership entails. You cannot be honourable and a freebooter. Holding your head up amongst your peers seems to be a core value requisite in each of us as members of a civilised society. Whichever way you frame it, membership has its price but also returns in kind.

Tythings I knew of as a word. I have just finished a book where, for the first time, I encountered an explanation where the full significance dawned. A tything was a medieval unit of ten households where the heads of house looked out for each other head of house and was held to account for any misdoings by anyone within that tything. Not just his own household but anyone properly tied to the group. A collective reprimand for any one individuals failings but also a caring supportive framework for each group member. An automatic support response, regardless of status, wealth or worthiness, just dependant on degree of need.

In arriving at a new definition of community, relevant to our century, we too could do with a tything concept. A core group we are responsible and accountable too. A group of peers bound by familiar circumstances and backgrounds. Able to relate, respond and reprimand as the occasion demands without judgement or censure. Membership where the group can achieve far beyond that of any one individual and can reach out and be significant in a much wider network of like minded groups. That is beginning to sound like a community structure where we can have a voice, a voice that counts, a voice that is tempered by consensus, a voice able to give as well as receive, a voice that can rebuked if too extreme. No room here for smug pleasure seeking self-satisfaction and gratification. Time to stand up and be counted.

Above all else, profit rules

The government has decreed that pension annuities can be cashed in. With stagnation in shares, next to nothing in interest rates where is this money released to go? Why, to buy houses to rent of course. It just so happens the developers have been given more or less carte blanche to build on any green belt, common, SSSI reserve, public open space or good agricultural field they choose. Just happens that first time buyers can no longer afford to buy the houses for sale. So the retired generation, using their pension  funds are snapping up, at highly preferential government incentives, any house for sale to rent out, to these first time home couples. UKplc economic 'recovery' is founded on building more houses. More houses means more furnishing, more white goods selling more means everyone feels better and jobs are generated to build the houses in the first place then all the goods needed to fill them. So simple! All boxes ticked, no one can possibly complain and everyone is happy. UKplc is all fired up.

Except it is not that simple. Another super container ship leaves China to restock all those emptying shelves. What we do not have is a resurgence in UKplc manufacturing for a world wide market. Worse still, to raise the money to buy the houses for rent requires new 'private' loans to be taken out, increasing our national indebtedness. Interest on those loans requires even more spending on stuff to pay the interest to keep the wheels turning. This then is the economic miracle that UKplc recovery is based on. Increase loans taken out so you can spend more. Developers are only in it for profit, profits come from quick turn round on easy green sites, take objectors out of the sequence and they can are performing miracles. House are shooting up all around the wealthier parts of UKplc. Towns are expanding at unprecedented rates just not necessarily houses to suit the homes needed nor necessarily in the right places.

Once apon a time UKplc used to have a vision, a view for a future and how to reorganise and arrange itself. How best to look after all its people and how to foster communities and encourage production. All swept aside. Now the only deciding factor is profit. Where can you make most profit and more quickly? These are the new ground rules that determine the future that we will pass on to our next generations. Scant else to pass on to them as all the inherited wealth we were given custodianship off has or will be sold off. National Park for sale, Stately Home for sale, Crown Estates for sale, national collections for sale. Any takers? You can name your own terms! This is not some Orwellian nightmare. This is reality, here and now.

going forward

Just read a lengthy wordy article. Inequality at a dead end. Setting out yet again the case for the damage being done by the growing economic inequality. Then, significantly moving on to assess whether or how the existing institutions could bring about the changes necessary. The conclusion was they could not, we are doomed to stalemate, there is too much invested into the status quo. However it then when on to explore the new ways that people are coming together to tackle one aspect or another of the impact of inequality. Hurrah.

Far from claiming to have any solutions, what my blogs over these years have been grappling with is, seeking out suggestions for alternate ways that we can work together. Smack on trend. Not solutions but indications of where and how. Looking back over my blogs you will see that I have been exploring different ways to raise finance, different ways to benefit and protect our resource, finding a different relationship to big corporation but most of all how we can come together to look after ourselves, locally driven, not imposed by a central authoritarian government.

This exploration in an age where we are all (largely) self-centred, seeking instant gratification and indifferent to the wider social needs. Yet despite this, I do believe, we do have to rediscover a new community connection, relevant to the 21C, where we can come together as a caring community and forge solutions meaningful to us.

To find those new solutions means having the courage to join the debate, exchanging views, sharing experiences. learning from each other and slowly working out answers together. United we can own the world. Silent or as individuals, we are at the buffers, going nowhere. So your view is............

Trust v Control

Control is by far away the easiest option. Lay down your parameters, set up monitoring systems and then apply punitive measures on selected defaulters. In principle. In practice entirely a different matter. Parameters have to hit a broadband of human activity which, because it is human and we are all unique, has to cover a wide range nuances. Being human each of us will challenge the parameter as to why it does not apply to us because our own circumstance is different. As individuals we need to be differentiated from the crowd. By claiming that difference we assert our distinction from the crowd we are lumped into. Monitoring has to find that fine line between being too overt, thrusting control too upfront, challenging all comers to defy it or so covert as to be missed, encouraging mass defiance. Then punitive measures have to be applied to carefully selected defaulters, too broad a sweep and the administrative systems are overloaded, to few key representative defaulters and too many other defaulters will consider they have immunity. Being inventive and creative humans, long used to labouring under the choke of authority, we too apply our skills to evade, avoid, confuse, misrepresent or dissemble, anything other than just accept to being controlled by that parameter.

Trust is entirely another matter. Just a broad parameter is all that is needed then each person interprets it application to them within their own framework of experience. All those nuances reflecting individual difference are no longer needed. Maybe an occasional dialogue, indicating some extreme of interpretation, might have to be initiated to remove common misplace understandings. The beauty of trust is that each person does their own self-monitoring but there is the downside. Being people most will comply scrupulously, some will get away will as little restraint as they dare and a few will flout and exploit any apparent laxity. Any overt monitoring will quickly be seen as confounding the trust. If you are going to be checking up then there is no point in my restraint. Come on, lets see how far we can push this. Equally if abuse is too wide spread then dissatisfaction rapidly sets in. "Look they are all getting away with it why should I bother" become the norm of the day. So there has to be covert monitoring to pick out those most public and extreme abuses. Engage in dialogue and it can become almost self-policing. Complaints will readily identify where and almost inevitably the who of the more troubling abuses. Then it is either a matter of corrective dialogue or punitive measures to make a public example of non-compliers. Rather than over-loading the administration with large numbers of defaulters to be processed, all that is needed is a showtrial which has wide spread circulation picking out a blatant defaulter receiving just and equitable punishment.

In the end we do have choices, we do all decide which type of society we want to live in. Either by silent submission or by the clarity of our voiced wishes. What is your choice? Monitors at each and every street corner with ever more draconian rules or a relaxed society able to live with itself and adapt to change?

Halting Inequality growth

At last there is now widespread discussion about the growing inequality gap and the social evils that come along in its trail. These messages are beginning to heard but what is missing are practical suggestions of what we can do tomorrow that will start to reverse the trend. This is the discussion that we now urgently need. In past blogs I have indicated several different ways in which our Economy has to change to better cope with today's pressures and social needs. Such change can be seismic, takes a while to gain critical mass, turn minds around, set aside trusted answer and face the new. What we need right now are immediate steps that work within the accepted norms. Here are my offerings. Things that could be done right away, that will make a tangible difference and whose impact will be felt within months not decades.

Housing is the new South Sea bubble, sucking in all the loose change cause that is the only market that is sure to produce dividends. Not just homegrown goldminers but gold seekers from around the world, House are bought to capitalise on it and matters not if they stand empty.

Step 1. All domestic property whose address is not recorded on an Electoral Register and cannot prove a minimum six month protected tenancy is taxed at an exorbitant  rate.

Our commercial core is being manipulated to provide instant profit to satisfy the demands of the investing institutions solely looking to todays deal. We have to break away and restore a longterm strategy back into our commercial core. Individuals are much more likely to take a long view and not the micro-second shifts in share values.

Step 2. Shareholder voting rights removed from Institutional hands. Votes only accepted from verified individuals, proxy voting disallowed.

Our economics have been distorted out of all recognition. Illusionary money made out of gambles on financial outturns is just lunacy, a fictional charade but unfortunately one that is self-perpetuating. It can never be a basis for building a countries future. We have to restore common-sense, investment in people and workplaces does matter.

Step 3. Sliding scale corporate tax introduced. Enterprises able to prove investment in building and equipment and people granted lowest rates with longterm write-off whilst those making money out of gambling on financial outturns paying a crippling high rate with no set-offs.

There are a lot of social injustices that have to rectified but as a first step we have to set a limit. How extreme, how polarised can we afford our country to be, between those that have nothing, not even hope and those who have everything plus the control that wealth brings?  

Step 4. A penalising high personal tax for any individual claiming residency in this country whose combined income or control of assets exceeds say 1:50 of that of the lowest paid.  

So here is my challenge to all you Electoral Candidates out there, come up with a better scheme to stop this iniquitous inequality.

Perspective

Whatever we do, wherever we go, whatever we think we carry our past with us. All of our thoughts and actions carry tendrils that reach back into the past. Most tendrils may only go back into recent living memory, a large number may go back a few generations, a few may go back a long way to medieval times, such as the times of the plague, and one or two may stretch way back into the mist of time, the stone age or even beyond. We are inescapably tied to our past. It shapes and determines how we think for the future.

Today we are plagued by short-termism. This country in particular has no long-term investment view. What is the least input required to be able take out the grosses benefit, that is the ruling mantra. Our ancestors took pride in what they produced, mostly, they put all their skills into making something to hand on to the next generation. What they produced was their measure of worth, their public mark of where they stood in their community. Not for them the quick cheap fix, stuff it in nobody will notice or care. We have inherited those quality products and now routinely trash them with contempt. Today the labour cost is king whilst thousands are idle or employed in lowgrade drudgery work. But hey technology is changing so fast there is no point in making things to last anymore and robots do a much more consistent and faster job than any human. What do I care, nothing to do with me, I will just buy the next model upgrade and see if that works any better.

Sitting on top of this economic model that drives our culture are the Supermarkets, exploiting to the very limits, promoting and using every psychological trick to encourage us to revel in this throw away society. Buy more, buy cheaper, buy because its not going to be there tomorrow, buy, buy. To placate the institutional shareholdings who only look for the percentage gain this minute to the next minute and most certainly have no stake in a week, month or even a years strategy let alone any long term goal. The Supermarkets need to keeping increasing the amount they sell day by day. Squeezing their suppliers and manufacturers to cut corners, to cut standards, to cut quality, anything to reduce costs by that pence here or there. Cutting until just before the point of customer drift. Maintaining high standards and expectations, promoting a strive to improve quality and experience just are not their agenda. Lulled as we are into this false security of trusting our run-of-the-mill supplier, the Supermarket outlet. They are doing what is best for us. Ha. In our name they are corrupting the quality of life we depend on. They do not have a balance sheet on the numbers of people kept in production employment, the plunder of raw resources, the wanton accumulation of discard's to be tipped, they are just exploiting the economic model. The model which states labour is an key expense and throwaway is cheaper then longevity. 

Just remember there is nothing intrinsic about labour being a dominate cost factor, just as there nothing intrinsic about cheap throwaway technology. We are bright enough and creative enough to devise alternative economic models, if we choose to. Models, just for example, that reward local production, that reward least use of raw materials, that have long shelf life's, that have upgradeable platforms or reusable core components. There are lots of other options to consider, if we had the will. If we chose not to treat our Earth as infinite landfill site and face the reality of diminishing natural resources. We could if only we cared. We might then rediscover a pride in what we passed on to our children.

Staking out who we are

In a barely scientific article I am indebted to the New Scientist "Imagine there's no countries" for opening up a new horizon for me. Enabling me to draw together several strands of posts that related but didn't appear to gel. In essence, the article proposes that, the idea of having a Nationality is a construct only a couple of hundred years old. Self identity is all about the pool of people you directly relate to and the lower echelons in the hierarchy of authority you are required to respond to. As Society became more complex, with the growing industrialisation and the Empire, so the need for an ever expanding bureaucracy. The idea of Nationhood emerged to symbolise this overarching administration. You deferred no longer to the Squire, or the Church or the local Lord but to Government. It hardly matters whether or not you accept this premise. Suffice that it raises the subject that there are alternative ways to view allegiances. What ties those allegiance's together is not some despot figurehead but the necessary administrative functions. What keeps the wheels turning, bringing in the finance, making laws and enforcing the rules of conduct. That is at the core of what bonds us, you to me and us to all the rest we recognise as being part of us. Our acceptance of being an essential cog in this great mesh of things that keeps us all healthy, safe and secure.

My fundamental starting point is that we are now a Matrix Society. Our allegiances are now multi-facetted between work, leisure, entertainment, family, friends, education, sport. Not one encompasses all our out there network of known people with all the separate obligations and expectations that arise out of all these disparate networks. Each facet will have its own distinct feel and set of rules. Where now our sense of one Nation?  In my Posts I keep coming back to exploring how we can have any sense of community, how that community has to learn to work together and how being a community can be the only answer to Totalitarianism. Just  dip into some of my past Posts that range over exploring different aspects of Community, living with each other:

• Keeping to Rules
• Checks and Balances
• Held to Account
• In Whom we Trust
• Centre Revolution
• Power to the People
• Of the Community

So the revelation is that we give up this novel idea of belonging to one particular Nation, it is far too limiting and restrictive. Instead under the umbrella of a European Convention we move in and out of differing communities. For example, our work world maybe global and that governs the where and how's of doing business. Our home life maybe regional and we look to the macro Region Administration for the provision of services we rely on. Our children's welfare and education may be District based providing the necessary access and contacts whilst our leisure maybe entirely local dependant on the immediate surroundings network of contacts. Each person with their own unique blend of communities, no rigid boundaries, differing sets of obligations and requirements applying to each community that in turn rely on its own specific authorities. Gone one Nation, welcome to a meld of Regions and clusters of Local Areas. Welcome to this New World.