There is Another Way

Just read an article that has given me hope, great hope, 'Evolution of Inequality, New Scientist, 28.07.2012'. I am no longer that nutter aspiring to impossible dreams. There are alternatives, so they are achievable if only we want them enough. Our capitalist based society of the winner grabs the lions share and gets to dictate has only been around for some 5,000 years. Whether or not you accept the premise that prior to that our hunt gatherers ancestors lived an egalitarian lifestyle  matters not. What does count is that there is an alternative to grab first and hoard. He with the biggest hoard gets to take his pick of what is available,  grab more and then use his hoard to buy fealty. The rich just get richer and richer off the backs of the poor, too poor and weak to resist.

The alternative is an egalitarian society where we look out for each other and make sure that what we have is no more than what anyone else has. No one is left in need or want, the group looks after it kin, as the weakest bring them all down, but together they have strength beyond the sum of their parts.

Just the required fresh new way of looking at our world as we have passed beyond the tipping point, where our plunder of its resources exceeds its capacity to replace or regenerate. We have to get back to a more frugal way of life. We have to stop putting our own little clique first and start to ensure all people born on this planet have some hope of a life not too disparate from our own expectations. A way to minimise our use and waste of scarce earth resources. A chance to rein in the incomprehensibly wild extravagances of the few and to look carefully at what the earth is able to offer so that we can all have a comparable share in it. Not equality. Not match for match, but comparable, not so disparate as to give rise to resentment, but a rough and ready fairness dependant on global position, climate and ease of access to resources.

Of course the bully boys and their cohort thugs have ruled the roost for millennia. Each generation is born with them as their only their role model of, take what you want and answer to nobody, as the possible viable route to follow. They are not going to give up their inherited accustomed rights and privileges. Yet their excesses can only be fuelled by the acquiescence of the masses that go without. So it is mutable, but whether peacefully or their rush to force can only be countered by a matching force, is the question to be addressed.

There are prospects, not everything we value in life is based on what can be obtained by force. Appreciation, respect, attention, these give an inkling of an Achilles heel that could bring the capitalist tyrants to book, maybe. Assuming, as a daydream, we overthrow our capitalist society and replace it with a society founded on egalitarianism, the battle is not over. There is always, in every society, it is in our human nature, the small percentage of cheaters, who claim full shares but hold back and conceal their gains. Or even worse steal or take by force when no one is looking. Nothing new here I guess. Like our hunter gatherer ancestors before us, the consequences of becoming a social pariah has to outway any advantage gained by stealing a march. When we all share in the same comparable distribution of resources, when we all know what we are entitled to, it does take the heat out of the need to go one better.

The longer you contemplate an egalitarian society the more it reveals in it a new calmness, the need to work together rather than to complete. How the world could begin to start out afresh in a new dimension. Inspirational but not beyond realisable.

Hiding behind words

It is so disengaged, remote, coldly clinical, the descriptions 'surgical strike', 'precision targeting', 'terrorist threat', 'neutralising a real risk', but setting aside the contrived and deliberate detachment of the words, the end result is still the same, a person, a human being, is to be killed. A person with parents, relatives, maybe a spouse probably with their own children has been selected to be killed.

Man facing man with comparable weapons it could be seen as, almost, a glorious and honourable trial of strength, both with an opportunity to overcome the other and to be the victor. But we have moved a long way from man against man. The weapons have led to increasing distance between the men confronting each other. Now the opposing men do not even see it other and it has been, for a long time, not a matter of one man skills pitted against another, but simply who has the best weaponry and tactical support.

Now a man sitting in a room three thousand miles away, in front of a bank of screens can control a drone that picks out it target and then kills it. No chance to retaliate, the target probably even unaware of their imminent death. Back across the world the man goes home to hugs with family, settles infront of TV with a cold beer and life is very normal. Selective targets with known terrorists links, only picked out for death after the most serious of cross checks and only after Presidential authorisation. This not a casual killing campaign but very carefully premeditated and double checked. Sure there is the odd co-lateral damage. That is to say unintended bystanders, men or women or children also are killed but that is their risk for associating with known terrorists. It is essential for the security of the USofA that these people are killed without further risk to American personnel. Except there is a higher overriding concern. Justice.

Our system of Justice, flawed and rough edged that it is, has evolved over centuries to balance all the complexities of human actions with that need, by us all, that the guilty should be exposed and shown for what they are. The Justice system recognises that you cannot not simply take one side of the argument. It has to be challenged by the opposing version. It is not even simply totting up all the incontrovertible evidence on one side as against the other. Even evidence can be skewed, depending on your point of view. It is not even who is the most believable and presents the most likely account of events. It is all that plus the intangibles, of people, how we as an individual perceive and have a sense of their trust and worthiness. That is why in the more complex cases we bring in twelve decent men off the street and leave the outcome for them to decide. Flawed because even unimpeachable evidence can turn out to be just wrong and seemingly good decision can be eventually shown to be wrong. The wrong person judged to be guilty. There simply are no absolutes, guilty or not entirely depends on your point of view, where you choose to place the emphasis, where you decide credence of truth best fits. At least, with the abolition of the death sentence, it is possible to make retribution for those persons who suffer the rough edges of our Justice System.

The Terrorist is our later day Witch where the ducking stool has been replaced with a death drone and all the hi-tech mumbo jumbo wrap arounds to reassure any waverers that this is all clinical, precise, beyond doubt or question. Except it is still based on 'Prove you are not a Witch/Terrorist' on pain of death. Except the selected target is not give any chance to protest their innocence. At least when the executioner looked the condemned in the eyes he was able to reassure himself, by the demeanour of the condemned, that they accepted their fate and guilt. Not with the remote controlled drones. The victim is killed without any chance to protest, to set out an alternate chain of events to the ones assembled by his judge, jury and executioner. All is fair in the cause of a 'War on Terrorism'. As if that expression defined a tangible cohesive body of people who were united, armed and seeking confrontation. Just as in the War of Witchcraft, it justifies all means and ends. History tells us otherwise. For all the hundreds of witches slain for failing to prove they were not witches, witchcraft was not eradicated. Instead their pursuers were besmirched by their abandonment of all basic rights and restraints. Evil continues on as ever but just pops up under another label with other objectives.

When Mr President of USofA next reviews the daily list of people to be killed by the death drone, he would do best to pause for thought. Is this justice I am administering here or just sanctioned slaughter?

Rip off GB style

I have this very nasty taste in my mouth, been with me for several weeks, try as I can to rinse it out, the bile keeps coming back. Something just is not right. The idea of people at the peak of their physical achievement contesting with others to see who is best is inspirational. So gladiatorial a match needs to be restricted to just once every five years. To host such a contest for the world should be an honour, a celebration of your Nations stature and achievements. So far all so good.

The cost of providing state of the art facilities, accommodating all the athletes with attendant followers, the media and not forgetting all the officials on their jollies is eye-wateringly huge. Just a pared down version let alone a full on lets swank and show the world what we can do version. The returns are proportionate, many immediate in increased traffic, visitors and all those logistics of making a large event happen. Some less tangible and down stream, the shadow of prestige, a heighten world wide awareness of the image put out there and the after effect of gung-ho we can that we can do anything.

Contrary to all the nay sayers, GB Ltd won the rights, has built on time to a budget that retains some allusion of credibility, without the hostage strikes of past decades, a worthy venue. Brilliant. National pride should be soaring. Instead I have this bile in my mouth. Quite rightly the government has chosen not to fund it all out of the public purse and has invited sponsors, large sponsors so inevitably commercial sponsors wanting to make a buck on the back of the biggest circus in town. No problem here either. For all its flaws the commercial world helps keep this world spinning and giving people what they think they need.

My problems stems from that having invited in sponsors it was not then necessary to roll over and grant them cart-blanc, a licience to riff off all and sundry as their prize for being a sponsor. No, their reward is supposed to just come from being intimately associated with a winning event. Instead we have restrictions, no liquid to be brought in, no food to be brought in, no alter logos to be worn, only the sponsors and their products are to be allowed once inside. I have good memories of families with a packed lunch for all going to a national event and having a great family time. Sorry but MacDonalds or coca-cola  are not my idea of healthy wholesome food fit to feed my family on. This is a celebration of commercial greed and a total disdain for freedom, liberties and an empowered citizenry.

It does not stop there. These games were supposed to be for all the people, to enjoy and to have lasting benefit from. The host cities were expected to make sacrifices for the greater good. Putting up with rushed through building sites, giving up transport access and accepting disruption to the norm chaos. Who would be so mean as to put at risk a great celebratory national event just for a few days of inconveniences. Surely everyone would squeeze up a little tighter to ensure the athletes, and the marshals, got to the event in time to perform at their best? Except of course all things are not equal. Who signed up to and agreed that the sponsors clients could also join in on the Olympic Expressway. Who thought it fair and equitable that there very best seats, up close to the favourite finishing lines should be set aside for sponsors clients? These best seats that were never offered to Joe Public. Joe Public never got even a look in. That Joe Public, who in their own small ways, made and are making, bigger contributions to the success of the games than the commercial sponsors who merely sliced off a piece of an already planned advertising budget, which was probably tax deductible in any event. A large cheque for sure, but minuscule and insignificant in corporate operating costs. What puffed up buffoon thought it necessary to seek legal sanctions against anyone with the temerity to refer to or incorporate a reference to the London 2012 Olympic Games, unless of course they were already on the sponsor list. This is not an individuals, a collection of individuals or even an London Games delivery committees, preserve. These games can only happen with the good will, support and acceptance of all the inconveniences of all of the people living in the host cities and of the Nation as a whole. It is a National event. We should all be joining in and sharing to all the tumultitude of excite and references to these, once in our life times, games. Not to be harangued by a jobsworth commissar for daring to make a reference to 'our' event.

Obviously these are not the result of actions of a sole individual or even a small clique, this is a tier apon tier of decision makers and decision ratifiers. What astounds me is that no one has stood back and said hey this is out of hand, this is commercialisation gone crazy. Clearly there was not amongst all those tiers a person with any sense of social propriety, with a sense of fairness and, rough, equity. The blanket assumption seems to be that milking the market for all it is worth and to hell with ethics is perfectly proper, even natural.

Let us hope and even pray that the London Games 2012 will be remembered for superb outstanding athletic achievements and not the crass, rampant, unchecked blatant squalid commercialisation at every single opportunity. A mood so far away from the soaring aspirations driving the Olympic movement (outside of GB Ltd). Not a reflection on GB Ltd I would wish our visitors to take away. I would rather hang on to the old fashioned, fair, generous, inclusive and welcoming GB Ltd that I used to know.

P.S. Just watched the opening ceremony. A complex story told with style, pace, humour, energy and panache. The flame cauldron will take some beating and the river of gold will last as a visual image. So almost embarrassed to be carping on but this grand opening still does not excuse or make acceptable the tacky squalid profit before people approach behind the organisation. Even heightens it, the GB Ltd image of the Opening was so right in so many ways whilst the elevating of sponsors over the people is just so wrong an image of GB Ltd.

Going On One Hundred

There was a charming TV programme, 'How to Live Beyond 100', all about people still able to live active lives when they were 100+. So good to have positive images rather than the usual downbeat doom and disaster ahead. Taken with other strands that are also running, it time to pause for thought, there are a lot of threads running behind this issue.

First off, for everyone that is still 'active' at 100+, there are manyfold others who are trapped, trapped in bodies or minds that do not permit them any active role. They have subsided into a total dependence on others for the daily chore of living, see also my post Waiting to Die.

Secondly as we 'baby-boomers' decline into old age the demographics rockets sky high. From being a rarity to survive until 100, now there are some 12,000 and shortly this will become 90,000 was we get into our stride. By the time our grandchildren grow to old age 100+ will have become the norm of life expectancy.

Thirdly it is incontrovertible that as we age beyond the 60's to 70's our bodies and minds are no longer able to perform as they once did, see also my post Retire at 70+!. All past excesses and poor gene choices come to haunt and rack a frail body or mind. Maybe science, medicine or better life choices might stave off the day, but mechanical or mental failure is the inevitable and inescapable consequence of ageing. We will each need support in some form or other to get by. Logistically large numbers of frail old people will have to benefit from support.

In the meantime our Government considers it appropriate and fitting that the retirement age for all is deferred to the 70's or even later. As a blunt answer to the economics of funding an ageing population it is unchallengeable but the social consequences are horrendous. The physical and mental deterioration that occurs with advancing age means you simply cannot compete with younger work colleagues. The end result is you have to step down, accept to be sidelined, reduced to taking on menial roles, pushed aside whilst watching others more productively undertake what was once your domain. That is a big ask, to carry on pushing a increasing frail body to do work but being surrounded by evidence of your failure to undertake it. Does this reflect a caring society with a compassion for its elderly? Or a society that is only looking at balance it books, to hell with the personal consequences?

I had hoped the programme would open the window of how these centenarians saw and viewed the changing society around them. Not to be. There is no ducking it, this ageing poses two crucial dilemmas. Why live to 100+ and what do we do when 100+. We live to 100+ because our skills have made it possible and there is no other alternative. Medical interventions ensure all the easily curable diseases are cured. There are no knock out illnesses or diseases left, other than the ones beyond the reach of medicine, that used to mean death by the 70's was the norm. All we are left with are causes of death beyond cure, such as the cancers, or parkinson, alziemers or dementia. Not for everyone, but what is left for the large majority who do not succumb to these killers, what is left to bring their long lives to an end?

In the meantime they face the inevitable, inescapable increasing dependency on other to support and provide the means you can no longer cope to provide for yourself. Surrender yourself into the hands of salaried carers. Now our Government has decided that this should not be a charge on the State, if you have independent financial means. You should pay for your own care first off. Apart from weasely caveats, this begs several questions. Where is a line to be drawn between say a terminal bedridden cancer patient or confused wanderer with no conscious recollection putting themselves and society at larger at risk, both clearly in need of constant medical support. As against an impaired person, mentally sound, but physically unable to carry out day to day tasks of feeding cleaning and dressing. Sound like a Solomon's judgement to me. Inherently unfair.

We as a Society, through our Government, have decided that the family home, invested in, harbouring precious memories, a depository for all the family hopes and expectations must be sold to pay off a russian lottery outcome. You are decreed insufficiently incapacitated and it has been decided you have the means, so you shall pay. How outrageously unfair and inequitable. Never mind that with the Governments connivance house values have gone beyond the reach of youth and their only hope to claim a home of their own is a share in their parents inheritance. It tastes exceedingly bad to me. Society is so much more than economic book balancing. It has to be about respect, compassion and a rough but overal even equity.

The final part I want to raise is why would anyone choose to live upto 100, let alone beyond a 100. If life has a meaning, it is about being able to contribute. Plenty of avenues to agree or disagree on the significance of contribute and to what. The ageing are no longer able to physically or mentally compete. They now require support and assistance just to get from day to day. We as a Society have chosen to turn our backs on the one significant contribution the aged can still offer. They have accumulated experience, wisdoms and a longer perspective having seen many iterations of events and peoples reactions to those events. In a youth centric world, these views from a past are brushed aside, marginalised even laughed at for being quaint and so irrelevant. The arrogance of youth. With their one gift trounced our aged are left nothing to contribute but their memories. Instead of being revered for being pillars of wisdom with a canny understanding of how life works, they are dismissed as a costly drain taking up precious and unaffordable human resources better spent elsewhere.

In life we make, or have made for us, choices which set up a flow of consequences. We have chosen to intervene and use our medical skills to take away natures calling card. There is no longer a natural end game for most. We have chosen to marginalise our elderly so they can longer contribute meaningfully into society. We have chosen to regard them as a cost liability to be born by society rather than a debt of honour. We must now face the consequences of those choices and we have to replace natures calling card with a calling card of our devising so that our tired elderly can say, in their own time, enough is enough, and then let them go peacefully, without financial harassment. In peace and in dignity. Tough call. Get it right because in due time you too will incur the consequences.

Living the Make Believe

In what century did Vince Cable acquire his I-Spy primer to the financial world? The idea that the shareholders make a positive influence in the banking institutions remunerations is laughably naive. Pension or Investment Funds, Insurance Companies and Banks themselves hold the greatest majority of shares in the Gilt-Edge companies quoted on the StockMarket. They have no interest or commitment to the companies they hold shares in other than the immediate shortterm one. Will their investment make them more money than any other option? They do not have any long term concerns as to the growth and sustainable development of the companies invested in. Worse, they work in an incestuous world where their key figures are on the executive board of the major companies invested in. Nominate me and I will nominate you in turn. The scratch my back and I will scratch yours rule being first and number one rule of their closed club. So these investment institutions, the overwhelming majority shareholders, are going to police the remuneration packages of the Banks? Only to the extent of seeing who got paid what then making sure they got more when their own pay rise comes round. 

Which is not to say the small individual investors cannot make an impression, as they did just few months back. Collectively they registered a minority protest vote at the remuneration packages proposed. The institutions block votes had the overwhelming majority. The 'small' investors protest vote was duly noted, their obvious concerns would be given consideration, but at the say time, it was pointed the Board was not bound by it in anyway. They had their comfortable, legal, majority. 

The old model of the shareholders with an interest in and a financial commitment to the long term success of a company, collectively voting for a long, stable and secure future has gone. The investment institutions have sidelined them and institutions goals are way off the health of the company invested in. We need to tinker with the share-holding model. Only individual shareholders to be allowed to vote for remunerations, reserves, dividends and appointments to the Boards. Any shareholder with shares in excess of x,000's being required to prove that they are an individual and their address is not shared with any other share holder. That way the incestuous insider nominations will be broken together with the leap-frogging of ever higher salary deals. We might just get back to investing in companies for their survival and long term success.

Hands that do Dishes

Once we led the way to an industrialised society. Utilising the skills of all our craftsmen and artisans honed over the centuries, we fashioned new ways to meeting tomorrows desires. Now we hardly make anything or at best assemble some others production. Too puny to take on the world markets with an exhausted worn out industry that has since been pulverised. Just the memories of a once rich trading nation linger on.


End of the line? Relegated forever to being a service provider, licking the boots of those nations with the wealth? Not my view of our Nation. We do have to reinvent ourselves of course. As a staring point then, an inventory. An inventory of our handworking skills, not our software or accounting, but those skills we have had to make or fashion objects. As a nation we are noted for being creative, skilled in adapting, having a high technical competences and a wealth of generations of passed on craft skills. 

This is the resource pool we need to capitalise on before we lose everything. We promote ourselves to do what we are really good at. The one-off, the proto-type the pre-production modelling, the mould maker, the pre-production test bed, this is our forte. Able to access and modify the electronics and software controls with the craft skills to fashion hightech products out of raw material or re-cycled spare parts. With the ingenuity to see solutions where others see impossible problems and a high design backoffice to call on. This is what we take to the world market and flog. Got an idea, let us flesh it out for you and demonstrate how it can be turned into a marketable product and on to mass production.


We have to seize this vision of a future and invest in the infrastructure to make it happen. Invest in apprenticeships in all the old and current production techniques, encourage the setting up of production plant and develop the skills to operate them. So invest in schools, training, materials sciences, production techniques and electronic and software controls. Certainly not directly by central government who have a proven deadhand in the status quo but making start-up grants and loans readily available with generous extended paybacks for 'successful' businesses. Let our budding entrepreneurs seek out the rich seams, let them use their ingenuity to overcome market obstacles. Government being there, consistent, supportive, encouraging, being helpful when needed and quick to network problems to solution finders. That way we might still have a meaningful future as a Nation.

Flawed Model

Recently I flirted with Twitter. The more I looked the more concerned I became. It seems to me that Twitter is fundamentally flawed, it operates like an inverted pyramid selling game. In the long run is just is not sustainable. Eat my words?

Social networking is the new buzz, the new way to be free, express ourselves and make undreamt of connections. Unlike Facebook, Twitter requires you, as your starting point, to select six person whose tweets you most want to follow. Then, based on that initial selections, encourages you to select other related tweeters to select to follow. 

This is in direct contrast to Facebook which start out with the friends you do know and offers to extend your circle to other connections which have a connection back the the friends you have. Your choice, your pool, you decide pond or ocean.

Back to Twitter then. How does any one person end up with 20 million people following their every cough and sneeze of a tweet? Do they have something that is so original so earth shattering to say that 20 million people are agog for their next pronouncement. I think not. 

Your own tweet is just a grain of sand on the beach, indistinguishable from all the other grains, lost in the sea of sands. Only your tweets that are ripostes to that some august body count and might possibly get noticed. How to be become an august body? Why by being promoted as a person being offered for selection. Who gets to decided which persons tweets are worth being offered for selection? By the originators of this pyramid scam. It is all very self-referential. Only the deemed noteworthy are offered and therefore only they can increase their followers, which then pushes them up the ranking to become an even higher favourite selection. That is why a Miss Withnothingtosay can end up having 20 million followers. Not as a direct response of her undoubted wide and universal popular appeal but just the way the network is stacked. 

In my world a twit was a fool, a numbskull who made wrong choices. Or a twittering was the raucous sound made by a large flock of sparrows. By either definitions, Twitter certainly has found the right word analogies to rest amongst.