Carrilion, Democracy and Competing by Eating the Competition

We hear this week, yet again, the narrative of a business, by the cool name of Carillion, handling billions of pounds worth of Government contracts and outsourced public services in known financial difficulties, still getting those contracts, which were used to provide the illusion of a thriving business, while a group of executives were re-writing the terms of their contracts to indemnify them against future indictments for any failures of any kind which caused, or failed to prevent, those avoidable financial difficulties, and thus protecting their various bonuses the company paid them, unless fraud can be proven.

A get-away car. 

'Mistakes and errors can look like fraud, but they are not legally fraud."

So one way to do the job is to make obvious and not so obvious errors, make it look like incompetence.

Privateers and their off-shore Carribean treasure troves..... The Panama Papers, a  Rizla (tm) of what exists today.

The original privateers were a much earlier version of 'outsourced military capability' on behalf of the State. The East India Company also operated as a Legislative, and as a form of Governance, which provided the infrastructure to bring resources to factories and goods to market, as well as supply lines for military operations. Cue G4S being suggested as a back up police force... 

And, of course, there was direct involvement, and therefore responsibility and liability in and for these failures by Government officials and the 'civil service' departments who carried out their orders. 

The Minister does not prepare the detail of the contracts, does not visit the detail of the policy, or look at the adverse outcomes as information that would alter the implementation of the policy - the Minister sets the 'course' and then bends the civil service to make that shape appear. The course must be maintained and the Minister has that legal right to impose policy, and the frontline staff and managment must follow orders, or lose their job.

In all of this, where is Democracy? 

No matter who one votes in or out, this obvious revolving door between the Corporate Sector and Government continues. The voices of the people are nowhere else in the process.

Democracy for the 21st Century.

Democracy in the 21st Century - what would it look like?... if one took a material, rational, evidence based approach to Governance funded by a shared subscription, funded by ordinary grass roots humanity, which is what we have - we are society's true beating heart. and if we took that situation, irrespective of its past, irrespective of the extant inequities, that we are funding Goverment, as the basis for moving forwards.

We pay their wages, we instruct them.

We have a direct socially shared responsibility, to one another, as funders of the Government and Civil Services, as it'scollective financial guarantors - the Government borrows on that basis.

We pay their wages, we instruct.

To step up to that plate.

That is our praxis Our task.

The setting of an evidentiial basis for policy deliberation based on our collective deliberations demands that the sordid adversarial political bi-polar behaviour be diagnosed - it is bullying and only transparency can confront that.

For example the isssue of Brexit ought be an exploration of the existing situatiion, a deliberation rather than a adversarial debate. Winners create losers. The urge to wn begest lies and deceit. That is not healthy Governance, and belies the claims of 'British Democracy' as a leading edge in the world.

Pitting peolle against each other is not healthy, and it is certainly not Democracy. Labour vs Conservatives. It's blatantly ridiculous, and unfit for the purpose of healthy 21st Century civil Governance.

What we have is a mime of true democracy, a shadow of a genuine and socially nurturing democracy that serves the people, and preserves justice and equity.

Reducing political engagement to a vote is X-factor thinking.

The Tories, New Labour, the propaganda, the media and the carefully crafted narratives and our consumption of these is a symptom. The Systemic, Institutionalised Competing Powers dynamic, the competing bully system is the problem. The fact that this very concept is fully accepted amongst Governments is hugely problematic, as the resources diverted from the common, shared pool to maintain that 'game' cause untold harms.

Countering that must never become an ideology, It must always be a cintinuum of dynamic response, learning and growth matched with effort.

The 21st Century AD and the 60th Century BC are calling for egalitarian, healthy human societies to emerge from oppression memory, knowledge and collective effort, rather than force (which has only ever maintained the cycles of violence, natruallly enough).

Privateers are well named.

If you know your history. Outsourcing military capability and resource capture.

This kind of behaviour is a core abuse of power pattern that is institutionalised, normalised.

It is given a pseudo-science validation by way of 'survival of the fittest'. This is done in ways that suggest that the fundamental biological drive of 'competition' is all encompassing, where it's not so much about being better or growing and maturing ans nurturing, as it is about (b)eating the other.

This, of course, is a blase caricature of what happens in biology, rather than an accurate, science based, experience based assessment.

I blame 'education' for maintaining that misunderstanding.

So yeah the culture of dog-eat-dog is a social construct that the bullies project because that is what they do. Problem is that it causes avoidable harms for all the ordinary folk, the grass roots, the indigenous and aboriginal, men, women and child - avoidable harms.

Any shared or collective resource diverted away from the common weal undermines the functioning of that weal.

Turning public service into private enterprise is no more than prostitution and mercenarianism.

Privateers are well named. If you know your history.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe"

Thank you for reading this blog. All we need to do is be really honest, responsive to the evidence we find,and ready to reassess when new evidence emerges. The rest is easy.