Showing posts with label Ed Milliband. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ed Milliband. Show all posts

Ed Milliband, Corbyn, and children as politically astute non-voters.


Shadow of a child blasted onto a wall at Hiroshima

I watched Ed Milliband being put in his place, politely, gently yet firmly, by a 13 year old boy, at the Power Inquiry Conference, London, in 2006.

The boy was at the front row and he had his hand up as the panel were discussing the voting age, discussing lowering it. Or not.

Millibland was against lowering it. Most of the panel was against lowering it. He intimated that they (under 17s) did not know enough to be trusted with a vote. He was not alone in that.

The boy held his hand up, for quite a while, patiently waiting for their attention.

Eventually, the panel asked the boy to speak.

The boy, 13 years old (worth repeating) said this :

"The money being wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan: wouldn't it be better spent to give it to pensioners whose pensions were being reduced by Government and bad banking?"

The crowd erupted in applause.

The boy was correct. Succinct. Polite. Spot on.

The war was not popular in that room. Most of the applause was for that, rather than for the way the child demonstrated to the adults his ability to think clearly and articulate that thinking in unambiguous terms.

The panel ignored his comment, and went on to someone else. The discussion did not refer to the boy again, or his point. They disenfranchised that child, and all children.They also disenfranchised our pensioners, and all Iraqi and Afghani citizens. Nice! Not.

The adults on the panel just passed by an intelligent, clear sighted child...... because they did not have the heart, the empathy, the self assured-ness to admit their inadequacies, to meet the boy as an equal .... they are callous smoothies, Millibland et al in Parliament.

Nice people, with attitudes that are dysfunctional.

Authoritarian. They smile, they preen, they soundbite to attract voters.

And they let Tony Blair and the British Establishment get away with mass murder.

Children are paraded to demonstrate the candidates adherence to 'family values' - children should be seen, and not heard.

Sadly this is true for many adults, who as children were treated in the same manner.

It is called 'traditional family values'.  The teacher as 'authority'. Reward and punishment as a parenting style.

Nudge theory. Religion. Indoctrination.

"I have the natural (God given) right to smack my children!"

The Law still permits this.

The complex of hierarchy of violence infects the home.

For me, parents have an inherent duty of care both to their children, and to society at large, to disinfect their homes of that hierarchy, not least to better equip them for the struggles ahead in their lives, dealing with what we as parents have not dealt with. Executive power that tramples on the communities best interests.

Iraq. Libya. Cutting funding to Community Voluntary Sector services, whilst privatising them. Care for profit.


Many, many parents need healing, and probably the best way to enable that is to inspire them to start really listening to and hearing their children as complete persons, growing and to help them see that how they were (mis)treated as children impacts and informs their parenting in the present, and that it does not have to be that way.

We grow together.

Politics, democracy, and sound healthy governance starts at home.

Corbyn

This ties into what is being done to Corbyn by the Establishment.

The underlying issue is less about Corbyn than it is about the stance he takes that policy decision making is a grass roots response ability - one that all hierarchies detest above all else.

That transfer of power to the grass roots is their greatest perceived enemy.
The technique of maintaining a narrative that is focused on Corbyn and 'leadership' is being run in order to keep that paradigm off the public radar. Every effing day!

Blame the immigrants, the victimised, the children, the convicts, the trots, the Corbynista's, the Blairites. All of us are prone to such judgementalism.

The power of Punishment and Reward.

So there is a need to de-activate that track, and set another discourse in motion, on social media, and in commentary on mainstream media.... and elsewhere.
"We pay their wages. We instruct our public servants."

If we fail to take that response ability up, then we are partly responsible for the adverse policies those who wield a distal power get away with.

We are not wholly responsible in that so much of politiking is the psychological manipulation of known vulnerabilities the exist across a population. Known vulnerabilities that are the direct result of indoctrination, bullying and much else that is mediated by power establishments through governance systems which we all fund.

That is what 'focus groups' are designed to tap into. Find those vulnerabilities, and leverage them.

The old politik is dying, not least because it is killing so many of us, and we need, our children and their children will need us to take up our responsibility towards them as an entire generation, not just for our immediate children, but for all of them, everywhere, to build a new politics that is about healthy governance and power sharing as a social response to the changing dynamics of our world rather than power as a central force dictating what happens.

Blair used PR techniques to get into and hold onto power - because those techniques work, and they work because of our vulnerabilities.... so we have to deal with our vulnerablities, we have to immunise ourselves from that kind of manipulation, as part of our process, moving forwards.

The EU referendum was a classic case of this technique - conning an entire population into a forced choice, where there was no evidence, no data with which to realistically compare the choices and their outcomes forced people onto opinions, personal opinions.

Choose to leave the EU, by all means. But make a choice based on sound evidence, rather than myth and fear, rage and desperation or sheer frustration. Demand that the discourse is evidence based.

That we allowed that to happen speaks volumes.


Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

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