Substandard Housing, the NHS and the Health of the people - solving problems by nurturing people's homes.

It is estimated that more than 8 million people live in substandard housing across the UK.

It's not a bad deal to invest £9 billion to improve the lives of 8 million citizens, who will put all of that back into the economy, twice over, and repeat. People in happy secure homes contribute to the economy on many levels.

I think that on a fundamental human level, radical security of home, hearth and table is a key building block of healthy community. Every one is at home.
A little empathy and a budget of £9 billion could go a long way in terms of designing and delivering a policy that could bring about a direct social material improvement in the living situation for a significant population of fellow citizens, those 8 million souls currently living in substandard housing.

Update Edit : As we roll into the Autumn and Winter '22 and energy price speculation drives homes and business energy bills into outrageous levels (the costs of producing have not changed much in the past three years), the adverse health impacts are clear. Sir Micheal Marmot lasy them out.

'This is not airy-fairy stuff, this is shortening lives.'

Former WHO chair Sir Michael Marmot tells LBC that cold homes this winter will cause 'permanent damage to the lungs of children'.@TomSwarbrick1 | @MichaelMarmot pic.twitter.com/1nntnowhhT

— LBC (@LBC) September 1, 2022

One irate caller rang in just after the Marmot segment had finished to say "we 'ad it tough and we survived!" Tom Swarbrick has not having it.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/01/generation-britain-long-term-illness-cold-poor-winter-cost-of-living-crisis

"All I want is a room somewhere./ Far away from the cold night air …/warm face, warm hands, warm feet. Oh, wouldn’t it be loverly.
To Eliza Doolittle’s lament we can add, not just “loverly”, but healthy, too. George Bernard Shaw, whose play Pygmalion was the source for the film My Fair Lady, was writing about Edwardian London. Yet cold and poor is the reality facing 66% of the population this winter in 21st-century Britain.
Both “cold” and “poor” will contribute to worse health and greater health inequalities. It is a humanitarian crisis. One that will not be solved by tax cuts or removing levies that favour green energy, as seems to be the “solution” proposed by our likely next prime minister. We need to act on the immediate crisis, but we also need to ask how we got here, and what to do to solve the problem of fuel poverty, and its effects on health inequalities, in the longer term.
Fuel poverty has three components: the price of fuel, the quality of housing and ability to pay. The definition used to be having to spend 10% or more of household income to heat your dwelling to an acceptable level. Some variant of that is still used in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. In England, the definition changed, which makes comparisons difficult: a household is fuel poor if the property has a low efficiency rating and the household disposable income, after housing and energy needs, is less than 60% of national median income.
For the cold part of cold and poor, the causal chain is simple. Inflation in general, and the cost of heating, will lead to fuel poverty. Fuel poverty will lead to cold homes. Cold homes will damage mental and physical health. The health effects are considerable, as laid out in our report, Fuel Poverty, Cold Homes and Health Inequalities in the UK, published today by the UCL Institute of Health Equity.
The health effects start in childhood with lungs damaged by cold, but also by mould and damp that tend to accompany cold in substandard housing. Children who live in cold, damp homes have more respiratory illnesses than children who do not. This higher burden of illness is likely to continue through into adulthood.
Cold damages mental health. Children growing up in cold homes have more psychological symptoms than children in warm homes. They also perform less well in school. A combination of days missed through illness, inadequate conditions for study and homework, and the effects of cold on mental health and development all contribute."
Grift and Wealth Extraction.
First, take a moment to enjoy this satirical Pythone scene of grandees celebrating their past poverty and current wealth, Who among the Tory Party will celebrate after electing Truss or Sunak, both of whom are more or less ignoring the poverty being imposed on millions of British households by rising energy prices, years of wage stagnation, austrity, privatisation of social care and grift, warming in the glow of their extra-large shareholding dividends and low taxation.

"We 'ad it tough!"?

How callous is that?

How much money was lost or or how much wealth was extracted by the corrupted VIP PPE contracting to cronies? How many millionaires were minted? At what cost, was the failure of Test and Trace in impeding spread of the Virus, beyond the 'lost' money? 200,000 avoidable deaths, often of vulnerable people. 1.4 million cases of long COVID. Economic disaster for 3 million small businesses.

What does it mean when the the loss of what it could have been used for, had it been deployed in practical and proven ways to suppress transmission which would have saved lives, prevented chronic disease is of so little interest to our Rulers?

It bears repeating. Minting millionaires whilst negligence 'allowed' 200,000 horrific deaths, each death a catastrophic trauma event. 1.4 million cases of Long Covid. Poverty increasing. Minting Millionaires and celebrating the fact with Wine Fridays! #torydeathparties  NHS on it's knees.

Johnson advises the poor to buy a new kettle, during his self congradulation tour. 

This Parliment, and this Government, is unfit for purpose if the purpose of Government and democracy is Justice and Healthy Governance.

To be honest, and to be fair, all of that negligence, waste and grift is unforgivable; injustice prevails as long as those new millionaires still have those millions to hand, and as long as the grifters in power remain unindicted.
They - we know who they are - must be sent to trial for Misconduct in Public Office, Corruption, Corporate Manslaughter by Negligence and the newly minted millionaires subjected to class action civil litigation claims to return the misappropriated wealth to the States coffers.

Substandard Government, Substandard Housing, Top Notch Wealth Extraction.
With regards to substandard housing, we do know that such an investment - £9 billion, maybe £12 Billion given recent rises for materials and labour - would pay for itself. 
It would, in terms of tax expenditure and future returns as peoples lives are improved, provide a decent and orderly base from which those 8 million people could operate. And, in terms of the savings arising from preventing the harms of substandard housing going forwards means, it makes for a sound economic public health policy.
Avoiding avoidable harms is a sound axiom of healthy governance. An a priori ethical stance. Avoiding avoidable harm is common sense.

If we become aware of a harm, then we cease causing that harm. We look again, and we find another way to do whatever it is, a way that does not cause harm.
And that is why taking reasonable action to assure that the security and comfort of a comfortable, clean and econimically sustainable home is an actualised and lived Human Right, that it is fully met and upheld, has to be an essential element of a healthy democracy.  
There is no good reason to not devote such a small part of total government expediture to significantly reducing levels of chronic stress, distress and unhappiness substantively, in quantifiable observeable reality, for millions of people by improving the material standards of 2 millioon substandard homes.
In some sense that reflects how bio-logical life on Earth works. Everyone is at home.

And yes, our civilisation is flawed, and our circumstance as citizens, varied. We all know now that England in 2022 is far, far from a healthy democracy. It is a kleptocracy, it's governing system is operating as a bully cult, and it's people are being bullied by billionaire wealth extractors.

Who will stand up to the bullies?

It is estimated that 8 million people live in substandard housing across the UK.
Which brings me to the matter at hand. I live in substandard housing, have done for 19 years. My landlord finally put in central heating four years ago. I wage a constant battle against mould and damp. I am being evicted because the landlord wants to take the capital gains he has made in the past 20 years, by selling the property, and of course he will not share any of that with me, in spite of the rental income he has gained in that time. I serve merely as an object from which he extracts wealth.

My government supports that wealth extraction, by refusing to legislate fair social rents and by encouraging buy-to-let landlordism to maintain property value increases in order to serve the lenders, more wealth extraction.

I am one in 8 million, powerless to affect the situation, voiceless in policy discourse, marginalised and dehumanised by the billionaire press and broadcast media.
https://www.bregroup.com/press-releases/bre-report-finds-poor-housing-is-costing-nhs-1-4bn-a-year/

Substandard housing costs the people who have to endure living in such conditions more than the rent they are forced to pay. People in substandard housing bear a burden of ill health and chronic stress through no fault of their own.

Substandard housing also costs the NHS billions annually in terms of illness, accidents and injuries, and the costs go further, in  terms of chronic stress and psychlogical health, all the while a group of landlords rake in wealth, extracted from poor, low income folk and from Housing Benefits.

This is unjust. It is an atrocity. Good decent people, our fellow citizens are being exposed to avoidable harm. 8 million people, individuals, families, men, owmen and children, entire communities... cities of people living in disrepair, trapped by a refusal to invest as the landlord extracts wealth, a trap, a socially and economically  structured trap. It is not right. It is not fit and proper.

Perhaps the money paid to landlords for Housing Benefits of people living in substandard housing ought to be ring fenced, matched with Government funding, and spent on upgrading these houses to a good standard, to include forward planning adaptations towards lower carbon footprints, and only after that should landlords be allowed to take full profits.

There's a few good arguments for nationalising aspects of housing, as a common resource, maintained by the society as a social resource, a commons that good folk would choose to cherish and nurture. 
Contrast the unhappiness and ill health of those who endure substandard housing to the fact that landlords have the increased value of the property which can be used as collateral for further borrowing to buy more property to let, an 'entrepreneurial dynamic' that builds a wealth extraction web of activity, supported by neoliberal legislators whose primary concern appears to be the interests of Wealth Extraction. Unhappiness of renters and the happiness of wealth extractors, the former feeding the latter. The profit of others tears.

Another way to put this is to say the chronic ill health and distress of people living in sibstandard housing is an externalised cost, part of the economics of profiteering of some landlords. The people pay the price, they bear the burden, millions of us.

Is it true that middle class, medium and high earning working class folk tend not to understand exactly what substandard housing means? How could someone who has never lived in substandard cousing really understand what this aspect of England is really like.

It certainly does not have to be this way Resolving the situation would build a happier, safer more civil society.

The following is taken from the article linked above.

BRE report finds poor housing is costing NHS £1.4bn a year - 9th November 2021
BRE report – ‘The Cost of Poor Housing in England’ – quantifies the cost burden to the NHS caused by hazards arising from poor quality homes in England.
Findings reveal that 2.6 million homes in England – 11% of the country’s housing stock – are categorised as ‘poor quality’ and therefore hazardous to occupants
Most common hazards are those that cause injuries on stairs, while the costliest issue for the NHS (£857million p/a) is poor quality housing leading to excess cold
According to BRE’s analysis, more than half (£857 million) of this annual NHS treatment bill can be attributed to defects in poor homes which expose residents to excess cold, while the second biggest cost to the NHS comes from hazards which cause people to fall and injure themselves, predominantly on staircases. 
Both issues are particularly dangerous for the most vulnerable in society, such as older people and families with young children.
BRE was able to quantify the cost of poor housing to the NHS by combining existing data from the 2018 English Housing Survey (EHS) on health and safety hazards in the home, with NHS treatment cost figures. 
According to the latest EHS, an estimated 2.6million homes in England – 11% of the country’s housing stock – contained at least one ‘Category one hazard’ and were therefore considered ‘poor’. 
Today’s report follows a similar study by BRE published in 2016.
The most common Category 1 hazard is the risk to a fall on stairs, such as disrepair to, or a lack of a handrail or balustrade, with over 1 million such cases recorded in 2018. 
Fixing this issue alone would save the NHS £219million a year in treatment costs. Dampness is also a common and costly issue for the NHS, with 75,000 homes in England suffering from the most serious dampness in 2018, leading to a £38million annual bill for the NHS. In addition, there are many more homes with non-category one dampness (less serious) which have an impact on people’s health.
The cost of addrressing this vs the costs of allowing this situation to continue.

source: article linked above

As part of the study, BRE also calculated the total cost of eliminating each Category one hazard.  
From this, we can see that the cost of mitigating risks associated with dampness, for example, would effectively be paid back in seven years, thanks to costs saved. 
In total, BRE estimates that the total cost to remedy all Category one hazards in homes in England would amount to £9.8billion – which is around seven times the cost the NHS faces annually for first year treatment costs from these hazards.
Within its report, BRE also identifies that, beyond the cost to the NHS, there are ‘societal costs’ brought on by poor housing, such as those relating to long-term care, mental health and poorer educational achievement. BRE’s findings indicate the cost to wider society of poor housing could equate to £18.5 billion per year.

So it is quite clear that for a relatively small direct investment, the Government could transform the lives of millions of people.  Investments that engender best physiological and psychological health, work that will offer a boost to local community level construction industry. Adaptations to existing stock that can add to better carbon foot print for the nation's rented housing stock.

A government enacting a policy to do all of this will walk away with the kudos and warmth and respect of having achieved genuine social improvements that also support the NHS and improve educational outcomes - did I mention that children living in substandard housing do not fare so well at school as do their contemporaries living in good standard housing?

That is a win-win situation for any Government.

That is a win-win situation for tennants and landlords alike.

Failure to take action on this matter is criminally negligent and socially stupid.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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Dunces with Wolves

This article is about the vulnerability a knowledge gap represents, and what can happen when a knowledge gap is not recognised, and what can happen when a knowledge gap is exploited by a malign actor. 

I once thought that I was a Climate Sceptic.
Not because I understood the science - I clearly did not. I was not a climate sceptic.

I was a climate dunce.

I was ‘sceptical’ because I believed the ever present dynamic of war mongering, which is symptomatic of the odious cult of competing industrialised militarised powers  and Externalised Costs (a global institutionalised psychopathy), would make global cooperation on action needed to adapt for oncoming climate change practically impossible.
Honesty
Co-operation and honesty are essential to the efficient regulation of toxic institutional behaviour of any kind, on a global scale.

This cannot be done without legislative processes designed to confront harm causation and to support repair of environmental damage, and to prevent further land, air and water pollution. And nothing useful can be done without funding the social material action and support  needed to protect people from the avoidable harms ahead. 
Poverty must be abolished, to reduce chronic stress and to free up human potential that could be harnessed to the vocational task of repair and recovery, to build a better future for all our children, by taking action, substantive action, in the present.

War as a tool of foreign policy impedes all of that. No question that the adversarial dynamic and the waste of materials, brain power and time of war making impedes healthy action on a range of problems we face, as nations, and as a species.

I was a Climate Change sceptic.
I was a sceptic because I  thought the focus on Climate Change was a deliberate distraction from War Mongering.  It was obvious to me that the shift to  'the war against terror' (TWAT) was pushed out at the same time as American political concern about Climate Concern went 'mainstream'. For that reason I did not look at the Science of Climate Change much. I was obsessed with my anti-war stance. I wilfully maintained a knowledge gap that I ought not to have.
Bush and Gore
Gore gave way to Bush in 2000. Al Gore ceded to George W Bush without a whimper, to a  move by Bush that was clearly illicit. Why did Gore back down, after all the effort? 
Gore literally handed the control and the budget for the US Military Machine to Bush. Bush and his sponsors had 'The New American Century' as their global policy document and it was a war mongers charter using war as a tool of global political hegemony. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century
Then Gore went Climate Change. 

He did not mention climate change or pollution during his election campaigning.
I do not recall Gore campaigning in the 2000 presidential election on Climate Change, do you? 
I thought "that’s too convenient."  
I thought the truth about American, British, Russian and Chinese Militarism - and the industrial Wealth Extraction cult that spawned such war mongering - was too inconvenient to be faced up to. That was my 'inconvenient truth' and that enabled me to side line the other 'inconvenient truth'.

Truth is always inconvenient to those whose lies protect their status.
Looking back, I can see the irony in my own position. I thought that there was a stitch up in America to get the war makers into power. I thought then it made perfect sense to orchestrate a clever distraction to take attention away from war makers plans. Hence my ill-informed scepticism. Ill informed because I really did not understand the science that describes Climate Change.

The truth of war is inconvenient.
The wars that were prosecuted after 9/11 were planned long before 9/11. 
The plans for War on Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria were all on the books already. War planners know that it takes years to prepare for war, and that once The War starts, the plans go out the window, because wars do not go according to plan - they go according to who can take the most pain, absorb the most damage and still stand afterwards. 
Wars are chaotic and tend to go according to unplanned, and those who can take the most punishment tend to be the one's still standing at the end of combat operations. 
Often all sides will claim 'Victory' in spite of the massive trauma innocent civilians are subjected to. 
Assad claims victory in Syria, as does the US and Russia. ISIS is still active. The civilians pay the price.
Nobody really 'wins' a war. People survive a war. Many do not. Furthermore, given the prevailing cult of competing powers, one has to understand that no war is an isolated event, they are all part of a larger cultural behavioural dynamic.
I am not a climate sceptic today.

I understand more of the science. 
Climate Change is a species level problem. As are war, poverty, racism, misogyny and wealth extraction that is based on externalised costs. They are all part of the same problem.
The issue of War remains a major block to global cooperative action on climate, and many other matters, including Covid. 
Remember when the UN called for a cessation of all war activity in early 2020, so that the world could turn together and deal with the pandemic as a collective?  
Who rejected that call? 
Covid is still telling us "work together for mutual aid, or you are lost." 
The Pandemic is not over, in spite of frequent declarations of that fantasy by right wing lunatics in power across USUK and EU.
I was not a climate sceptic: a sceptic understands the science and says 'nope, I see too many holes here so I remain sceptical'. A good sceptic is a well informed sceptic.
I was a Climate Dunce. 
I really did not know enough to be sceptical about the scientific claims of Climate Change, either way.
A dunce is not capable of rational scepticism. 
I have been a dunce on many, many issues. I am a dunce on a whole range of issues. I know nothing about the biology of venomous frogs. 
I knew nothing about SARS, let alone SARSCOV2 back in March 2020, even as I was dealing with a severe infection of SARSCOV2. Ihad not been paying any attention to the news frm China, or Northern Italy, or Spain. I was truly a COVID dunce. Which is why I decided back in March 2020 to look to the experts who know what they are talking about. 
Dunces are easy targets for grooming gangsters. 
Dunces part with their cash readily if carefully groomed. Knowledge gaps produce vulnerabilities that can be exploited.
The problem is that it’s not the dunces fault when the dunce is being exploited via a vulnerability by a dedicated grooming operation. 
Grooming is the activity of targeting a vulnerability and heightening it in order to drive behaviour that can be exploited.   The Wolf of Wall Street is a movie that looks at this behaviour.
Grooming to exploit is a double cruelty - rather than help the target heal the vulnerability, the vulnerability is heightened, and then the target is exploited.
The people who exploit others vulnerabilities are really evil. They are as the archetype of the Human Wolf, who preys on the vulnerable. Real wolves are nothing like this, of course. 
The Political groomers, the Wolves of Wall Street, are a really serious problem
Political Grooming Gangsters
Study the tactics of Cambridge Analytica, and many, many others.
1. Target - seek out and find - angry, ill-informed, passionate and vocal people, through their online activity. Micro-targeting is enabled by on line activity, where what is called 'behavioural surplus data' can be gathered, analysed and then processed to produce detailed psychometric profiles, which allows those who can see that information to target people quite precisely,on an individual basis, and present curated content to trigger biases, insecurities, hatreds and knowledge gaps.
This is gold dust for advertisers. Predictability is a key goal of advertisers. If I spend X can I guarantee a return of Y? 
Predictability is also the currency, the raw material upon which exploitation is built.
2. Heighten and exacerbate the anger or knowledge gaps of those being targeted with content directed to them. Micro targeting allows the grooming operators to measure the targets reactions, fine tune the content, and over  time present content to drive or nudge the targets behaviour in ways which can be predicted and exploited.
3. Set up online groups so they can be angry together, chat online about their anger, and form emotional bonds.Ensure they are exposed to a flow of content designed to heighten their biases and affirm their self righteousness. Online contacts can become friends.
4. Set up small real-world meet ups via focus groups, discussion groups, clubs. Form up groups of around 30 people, which can be easily led and managed. Nurture these gatherings so that to the participants, who rarely gather with that many people of similar outlook, the gathering feels like it’s part of a bigger group, part of a larger network, and then part of a movement. This engenders ‘courage’ to take action.
5. Suggest actions, set up local 'activist' groups to carry out the action, start crowd funding to drive bonding, to fund materials and signage, produce professional content supporting the action, organise transport etc..
6. Start with small local actions. Photo and video the events, and ensure these are well set, photogenic. Make small crowds seem bigger. Promote the material by advertising spend. Get targets to write to local officials, to comment on news threads, to share the content. Tell them they are making real change possible. Make it seem bigger than it is. Push for more crowd funding. When people give money they make a deeper emotional commitment. They feel like they are taking action, doing something.
7. Push out more content to deepen anger and self righteousness, especially if the small events draw criticism. Use the criticism to harden the targets positions, deepen their emotional attachment to the cause, heighten their sense of righteousness.
8. Repeat until targets are febrile.  Fever pitch. The groomers can see the degree to which targets are enervated, how long they stay up at night, how angry their online exchanges get.
9. Then ask them to raid government or media buildings in larger numbers, appoint some organisers, pay them from the crowd funding, that way the money trail does not lead back to the groomers.
10. Keep the crowd funding going. Someone has to pay the organisers, the copy editors, the graphics people, the video makers : might as well be the victims of the scam.
That’s been done in 68 countries during 100 elections between 2008 and 2016. 
By a British firm, Strategic Communications Laboratories, who honed their skills doing ‘Hearts and Minds’ campaigns post 9/11.
Cambridge Analytica was one of their illegitimate children. SCL meets Robert Mercer, and goes to work for various Free Market personality politicians.
Then Trump, Brexit and now Covid misinformation. Many State are engaged in this activity, we are told.  I think the bulk of it is being run by Free Market Fundamentalist Oligarchs and their think tanks and minions and operatives.
So what to do?
Grooming is psychologically abusive in and of itself, and the exploitation of people amounts to a second layer of criminality.
We need legislation defining grooming as a criminal offence, an act of profound psychological abuse. We need to impose a criminal penalty for such behaviour.
We need to make that penalty very serious indeed - because grooming is cruel and exploitative.  Defining grooming as a criminal offence would make it far less likely that social media platforms and News and Press media would carry such materials. Making them liable for any harms caused by such content would be a useful inducement to avoid such activity, without impeding Free Speech.

Grooming should not be protected by claiming it is Free Speech.

We also need to explain what grooming is to our people, starting now online, in news media and in all our schools.

The best way to prevent people from being groomed is to develop our awareness, our critical thinking skills, our understanding the nature of logical fallacy arguments.

This is part of building socially coherent grass roots political solidarity movements based on evidence, seeking to elect legislators who will bring in legislation and over sight mechanisms to regulate Toxic Industrial practices, to repair harms caused, to prevent new harms. and who will remove the excessive and corrupt influence of Wealth Extraction class from our legislatures and other governing bodies, from our schools and universities, from our media.

Let them influence legislation and other areas, if they wish, but on an equal footing to the citizens and scientific community. Levelling up, as they say.

A short article look at how the Swedish and Norwegian working and middle class curtailed the power of the Oligarchy during the 1930.
https://wagingnonviolence.org/2012/01/how-swedes-and-norwegians-broke-the-power-of-the-1-percent/

A study of one strike action by Swedish workers, demonstrating the difficulties they faced at the time. The work of building coherent grass roots political movements is difficult enough, logistically and made much, much more difficult by the violent repression of Oligarchy dominated Governments. 

https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/swedish-workers-general-strike-economic-justice-power-shift-dalen-1931

Recent moves by the Westminster Government seem to be preparing for such struggles, by making them illegal, by making electoral participation more difficult, by gerrymandering constituency borders and other tactical plays...

Kindest regards
Corneilius
Thank you for reading this blog.
"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."
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Letter to New Zealand From London : hold your course, be courageous

Letter to New Zealand From London, Plague Island, Exporter of Variants

Dear New Zealand,
I have been watching you, China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Korea, Japan and others do your level best to suppress community transmission of the SARSCOV2 Virus and it's variants.
I watched as you did so to protect your peoples Right to Health, which you correctly and humanely set as critical to the health of your economy. Avoiding avoidable death and disease is the duty of the whole of the nation. Upholding a populations Right to Health is the legal and moral duty of every Government.
I watched as others chose not to take the same approach, chose not to adopt that sane attitude. And I watched as they did not avoid the avoidable harms you did avoid. I cried, along with others, as the human costs of that failure mounted, and continue to mount. The pain is immense. My heart aches for the loss of life, the additional disease, the missed treatments, the education disrupted, the broken businesses, the shattered lives.
On every measure, your populations health and your economy's are in better shape than those who wilfully allowed the virus to spread, to mutate and to wreak havoc.
Now, as Omicron reaches into your community, I note that Media in England is not urging your success. Pundits are writing articles whose subtext is hoping that you fail, hoping that you too will succumb, hoping that you will 'be more like us'. It ranges from outright hatred of your success to subtle hints that the 'inevitable' has finally arrived. Spite and fatalism abound.
Ignore them. They are callous, and wilful and ignorant. Their cowardice has cost us dearly.

Comparing Johnson to Ardern is impossible - two entirely different cultures, one a vulture, the other a dove of peace. A nuclear super power, and a nuclear dissident.
My advice, my prayer to you is that you maintain your diligent care for your population's right to health, in spite of these odious monsters that Rule in England and elsewhere. Be courageous.
The Virus is telling us we must work together to look after each other as human beings. Climate Change carries the same message. World poverty likewise urges we look after one another. Mike Ryan of the WHO constantly reiterates these two obvious messages.
We are all in this together, in this life. 
My kindest regards
Corneilius
London

---

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Why are the Oligarchy at War against Health and Democracy?

Why? The Oligarchy are at War against Healthy Democracy.

I wrote this as a short explanation of Healthy Governance - if it existed at all healthy governance would regulate toxic industry and excessive wealth extraction.

It's just basic common sense.  However currently the worlds political and economic system is controlled by a toxic combination of owners of industry operating working with a wealth extraction oligarchy, who use that wealth as a political utility and as a weapon.

They understand that climate change has changed everything - the externalised costs that underpin excessive wealth extraction cannot be allowed to continue to undermine our stability as a species. 

They know this.

However they are unwilling to cede their power or change their behaviour, and they are placing the species in great danger.

The SARSCOV2 virus, and indeed Climate Disruption, is telling us that if we do not co-operate and work for each others mutual aid, we are lost.

Boris Johnson is the perfect symbol of this loss.

What's his game? 

Who are his sponsors and and what do they want?

Why the West rejected suppression of the virus.
To carry out such a policy - effective, continued suppression of community transmission of the virus, so that people can work, live, play and not spread the infectious pathogen SARSCOV2 - requires that the State supports the population's Right to Health with economic support, logistical support and local empowerment to operate the find, test, trace, quarantine and isolated treatment. 

It also requires that the State works with the population as partners, equals in the effort. Ruling over a population will not deliver the social cohesion necessary to supress the virus.
This means the Industrial, Finance and Corporate Services sector must also support the people. 
Debt relief, mortgage rest, and other measures to abolish poverty are necessary to deal with the virus, and indeed, to deal with climate change, air, land and sea pollution and other system level problems.
All of these are Democratic Socialist Strategies.
These are humane strategies, designed to avoid avoidable harm to the people.
The West's Governance systems are dominated by the NeoLiberal Free Market ideology Oligarchy.
They know that if a  policy to protect the population's Right to Health was enacted, if  humane strategies, designed to avoid avoidable harm to the people were implemented they would in all likelihood succeed.
The lived experience of a population who saw a more humane policy stance functioning well, improving all our lives, that would bring the spell of the NeoLiberal Free Market Ideology to an end.
The Free Market claim to be the best possible economic system would be seen as the falsehood it is.
Egalitarian Humanity

The Free Market Fundamentalists have been writing about the collapse of the Welfare State for decades. 
Welfare systems and Health Care systems do not collapse, they get taken down. 
A well funded,  properly resourced healthy health care system caring for a healthier population is a sustainable reality, a practical solution. 

Which is ironic, because once again, they cannot but confess by their behaviour who they really are and what they are really like and how much disdain they hold for us ordinary people - by refusing to suppress the virus in the community, they have proved that the NeoLiberal Free Market Ideology will not protect the people's right to health, and that by choice, it does not support the people in a wide range of important areas. 
This is why the Wealth Extraction Grouping dominate our legislatures, making healthy governance impossible. They fear accountability, above all else.
The thing to understand its that healthy governance tends towards prevention rather than towards punishment. There is nothing to fear in facing accountability in a healthy way, for harms caused. Loss of power is not a healthy rational fear. A sense of superiority and entitlement is not healthy nor is it a rational sense of self to internalise. Inciting hatred is not a healthy or rational way for a human to behave.
All they have to lose is their dysfunctional behaviour characteristics and behaviour patterns. Why the fear? 
Don't they know who we really are?

I wrote a blog exploring a metric for genuinely healthy governance, based on evidence, nurturing community and environment, preventing harm. 

https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2017/05/a-metric-for-governance-uk-election-2017.html

"I think of Healthy Governance as being focused on the practical realities of administering a communities shared resources for the equal benefit of all members of that community. 

Healthy governance sets the context of governance as operating within the dynamic of a shared responsibility of duty of care for one another.  In that regards healthy governance has to be evidence led at all times. Opinion and belief are insufficient to meet the responsibility of duty of care.

Healthy governance sets the global context of governance as nurturing, caring for and stewarding of the habitat within which the community lives and from which that community draws living materials and other resources. 

In the case of States, and in relation to healthy Governance we can apply this metric of care to taxation, which is collected from all, in one way or another, by the State, and is therefore a primary community shared resource. Healthy governance will determine that that resource is deployed with wisdom and equity to nurture the whole population."

The Oligarchy refused to take the correct action because they feared that they would lose traction. 
Democratic regulation of toxic industry in order to prevent avoidable harms, which is also a rational and healthy policy stance if enacted would Wealth Extraction - which Wealth Extraction Grouping would oppose on every footing. 
When Greta Thunberg said "I do not want to believe that!..(You are evil)" she was on the cusp of the most honest expression of the political truth of our era. We all were. We still are.
Even when a human does monstrous things to another, repeatedly, aware of the harm he or she is still human, what they do is monstrous, they are not monsters. They are human beings, they are people... we all are. 
Solidarity among the people, the families and communities and language groups and faiths and cultures  has to be deeper than any other political loyalty on the menu. We must really love each other to do this. A lot more.

Billionaires funded Cambridge Analytica and Trump and Brexit.
The majority of Covid and Climate misinformation networks are funded by the Wealth Extraction Oligarchy. 
So too so much of our News Media, Magazines and Publishing Corporations, through advertising revenue, and though direct ownership, and then there are their networks of pseudo-intellectual think tanks and a range of NGOs, large and small, all driven by the Oligarchy lobbies...
They know if democratic regulation to meet climate change happens, they will lose the ability to extract wealth firstly be by being forced to pay externalised costs. Then through a reparations process, to account for the harms caused to date, their entire wealth might be reduced to less than needed to exercise such great power to such adverse effect, and they would become disempowered. 
Royalty no more. Elites not more. Just people with more than enough to get by on. But no.
They prefer war to the loss of that long held capacity, intent and ability to extract the Wealth they need by exploiting populations, deploying a significant part of that wealth as a weapon to maintain a dominant position in political establishments and legislatures, and thus protect Wealth Extraction. At a terrible costs to humanity and our shared environment.
This is not a conspiracy, it is not a theory - it is simply describing what is happening.
Brexit is about unilaterally breaking from international treaties, by grooming a population. 
For the Oligarchy, the Wealth Extractors Freedom from the 'tyranny' of sensible, evidence based regulatory policy designed to reduce harms caused by industry is their goal.
To achieve that they must break social democratic solidarity and sow layers of belief based emotionally charged divisions across the available electorates.... when ordinary people hate each other driven by fear, anger, distress, chronic stress, the Oligarchy retain their power.
To protect the Hoard, the Herd must take it on the chin, again and again and again.
Suppressing the virus requires fully resourced pro-social human centred policy, which if the population experienced it, would be another example that would undermine the obviously false Neoliberal free market claims about the 'Free Market' being the best of all possible economic systems.
So we - the ordinary folk with little material power, you and I, and everyone else we meet, day to day, we must pay the price, so that the Oligarchy don’t have to carry the cost of avoiding avoidable harm...
Climate Change is entirely a matter of avoidable harm not avoided - they knew 50 years ago fossil fuel was going to alter the climate and they did nothing. They externalised the costs. They must be held accountable for that. What they did was criminal in intent, lethal in outcome and they persist.
That must cease. That state of affairs cannot be permitted to continue.

Social belief divisions
Anti-mask, anti-suppression of the virus, Covid Hoax, Lab Virus bio-Weapon, Global Tyranny Conspiracy obsession, pro-Brexit, anti-State, Freedomeers, Woo Woo New Age, Libertarian, Racist, Misogynists, Nationalists,  - ,all emotional belief based - are all enrolled through the Oligarchy grooming operation which has found a series of psychometric keys into their emotional hooks associated with quite understandable distrust, anger, fear, knowledge gaps, beliefs, biases....
These different groups are all forming adversarial  belief position divisions within the electorate - the available population who are entitled to vote and who, if they voted together could remove the oligarchy political establishment in our legislatures and councils, and instead elect honest, evidence based men and women who would write laws to protect the people from the excesses of the Wealth Extraction Class.

They are not at war with Russia, but with us, their citizens, over Climate Change and Covid.

That's the struggle we are in.

Solidarity and evidence, and grass roots political organisation and action, and the taxation stream of democracies are the powers the grass roots can muster.
Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

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Freedom from democratic regulation of externalising costs - the driver of anti-masking ideology.

Observing what has been happening, I have made an assessment that the use of the language of 'restrictions,' if it is deliberate, is most probably designed to trigger the 'my personal freedom from tyranny' emotional hook. Nobody likes to feel restricted. It's a way to nudge an opinion set that dismisses evidence.

In this blog piece I want to explore how that trigger works, why I think it is being exploited for political reasons, what the effects are of such intentional triggering and why I think it is lethal to all our futures. I want to show how it relates to a constellation of problems as a key, as a critically important distraction, deflection, obscurant strategic weapon.
The ability and willingness of certain agencies to exploit this trigger more or less guarantees that this pandemic will run on and on and on causing incrementally more harm, with no end in sight.

I say incrementally causing more harm because the assumptions about the nature of the virus and it's impacts are incorrectly assessed and thus measures to limit those harms - measures to uphold the populations right to health - are conflated with undermining personal liberty, even as this government outlines very real legislation that undermines civil liberties and diminishes Government accountability.

"who will we not save?" as they sought to 'protect the Hoard'..

The effect of saying "We are imposing restrictions" is quite different the effect of "We are implementing preventative public health measures to protect the populations Right to Health."

If the strategy is to allow spread to achieve herd immunity, then it would be useful for the Government to create a scapegoat and exploit that vector to insulate the Government from the costs such a strategy will incur. The Government must not pay the price, and so others will be made to carry the cost. This is an externalised cost exercise.

Non-Essential Travel is Tinder for the Virus.
In the most simplistic terms, if SARSCOV2 cannot meet a new host, it will die out.
Suppression of  transmission of the virus in the community is the most effective strategy in dealing with an epidemic of an infectious pathogen.

Stopping the spread is spreading the love.

However, in global terms this strategy is only as strong as the weakest or least effective implementation of it. Any country that allows spread of the virus will generate variants, and successful variants will select for more efficient replication, transmission. Where we have huge unknowns is the virulence of new variants - we cannot predict future virulence and this means allowing spread is taking a terrible gamble. England has been a significant weak link in terms of global transmission suppression, as has the US and EU.

This takes on another dimension when it is a question of travel between countries or within countries, in the midst of a pandemic of  new highly infectious air borne virus, when we cannot predict long term outcomes, even as we observe short and medium term harms. International Travel, because it always involves enclosed spaces and a mix of people who are exposed to each other for significant periods, operates as a dating app for this virus. This kind of travel is inherently risky for spread of SARSCOV2.

Right to Health.

When powerful lobbies with immense economic interests advocate for their interests at the expense of the whole population, at the expense of the populations Right to Health, we see a conflict of interest, and an externalising of costs occurs. The people pay the price. 

What is one years economic activity in the great scheme of things, compared to many, many years of life lost to death and long term disease?  This kind of question arises in other areas. What is the value of high processed foods industrial economic activity and profit taking that leads directly to dietary disease, compared to the costs of dietary disease?

If we had regulation that limited high processed foods, that removed them from our food shelves, would that be a 'restriction' or a 'public health measure'? New Zealand is going to ban sale of tobacco. 
Is that a restriction? Is it a rational public health measure? Do the 'rights' of Tobacco Company shareholders trump the rights of people vulnerable to addiction who are being exploited?
Here we see the choice of the word 'restrictions' clearly has a political and economic meaning.

Economic liability, externalised costs.

In the case of a loss of business imposed by a Government 'restriction' - an order to cease flights - the Government is liable to some degree for compensation to those adversely affected. 
The affected Business lobby will have a reasonable claim that since the Government is restricting it's ability to function it deserves adequate support for the duration of that limitation.  That was not the case with the travel lobby - they lobbied for continuation of their business, they lobbied for spreading the virus as one outcome of that stance. It was not their intention, yet that is precisely what happened.

I know of someone who flew to Thailand this week, for a holiday. Upon arrival he was tested, and found to be infected, and infectious. It is likely that he picked up the virus just before he flew out, in public transit or at the airport, and was incubating during the flight, totally unaware of his condition.

That person had to quarantine for 12 days and do regular tests. He was without symptoms. He was bored. He tried to bend the rules. He was more concerned with his personal freedom, the irritation he felt because he had to quarantine than he was with protecting the Thai population. His reaction is quite typical among wealthy westerners who think international travel is their right. The sovereign individual. Me, me, me.

It's not his fault, it is the culture that has acculturated him so that he behaves as he did. He could easily have taken a holiday anywhere in the UK. He felt an entitlement to undertake international travel, travel that is spreading the virus, in the middle of a global pandemic. He is one of millions.

Throughout this pandemic there has been no travel lobby seeking to protect the population's Right to Health. The travel lobby is happy to externalise the costs of spreading the virus - the travel lobby was unwilling to share those costs.

Tourist travel spreads the virus
Since February 2020, I have had a sense that something was off about the insistence  upon maintaining tourist and holiday travel - non-essential travel -  because I could not help but notice  how much of a vector of spread of the virus such non-essential travel was, precisely because effective quarantine arrangements were resisted and were not put in place. 
The first two waves of SARSCOV2 spread within the UK are entirely down to the Government's deliberate choice to reject quarantine, to reject precise tracking of where the virus was, to reject mass testing to chase down the virus, to reject support for isolation and to allow open, unchecked borders.

It was that choice more than any other that seeded SARSCOV2 into the UK. The media were full of the narrative 'the China Virus' when by February 2020 it was the Spanish, Italian and Austrian Ski Holiday Virus, even as the East Asian countries were proving that suppression of community transmission is the most effective way to avoid the avoidable harms which the USUK Governments did not avoid - by choice.
Where there were proven suppression of community transmission strategies put in place, community transmission was much more reduced. That's the basic scientific truth here.
Measures designed to reduce harm in an epidemic of infectious disease are more correctly described as preventative public health measures. They are not necessarily restrictions. When viewed in this context they are not sensed as restrictions - even as they do require temporary limitations on behaviour - it is understood that the measures are protective and that they are temporary, and that once the threat has subsided, the measures can be withdrawn, and the limitations thus evaporate as they are no longer necessary.
That protection that could have been organised, and funded if Governments and travel lobbies had put populations right to health at the top of their priorities. The protection evaporated. 
Freedom to trade trumped the Right to Health. 


How selfish, and to be honest, how cruelly reckless.
The Oligarchy are waging a war against democratic legislative regulation of Wealth Extraction grounded in toxic industrial practices which incur costs when they are not cleaned up or prevented. Those costs are kept at a distance. Those costs are externalised from the economic activity of the operations from raw material sourcing through processing, manufacture, distribution, sale, consumption and end of life of product.

The Free Market Fundamentalists and Industry leaders choose to see such regulation as might be required to prevent those costs from being incurred in the first instance, let alone dealt with when they are incurred, as a form of tyranny. "We will not let you restrict our Wealth Extraction by reducing our profitability by demanding we pay all those costs." 
They understand that the demand by a growing and significant cohort of reliable scientists, concerned citizenry, NGOs and some government officials for corrective and adaptive action on climate change, on environmental degradation, pollution of air, land and sea, on species loss and other related matters, including mass poverty, low wages and corrupt influence of legislators represents a threat to their 'liberty' to carry on extracting wealth even as it causes harm and to externalise the costs of that harm. 
Democratic legislative  regulation is deemed to be an enemy of their ability to extract wealth and their capability to and willingness influence legislatures to protect that wealth extraction. Democratic regulation is a threat to their political power, power which stems from their Wealth Extraction.

However they cannot stand in the town hall and make that plain. They must find other ways to protect their interests and this puts them into conflict with our collective interests.

Political Grooming Gangsters.
By deploying emotional hooks that conflate emotive notions of individual freedom within existing democratic systems with a vaguely defined Libertarianism, the Oligarchy have been able to enroll the 'Mask is a Muzzle Freedomeers' in a process that is undermining democratic regulation to protect the populations right to health, and this is inextricably linked to the protection of their Wealth Extraction Systems and their toxic industrial practice of Externalised Costs. 
Trump, Brexit and anti-masking, anti-vax, anti border quarantine, open up the economy, let the vulnerable take it on the chin - these are all views that are underpinned with funding and logistical support from the Oligarchy of the Wealth Extracting Industrial giants. They are not emergent concepts, that have popped up from the grass roots of society, as an organic awareness and movement. These ideas have been developed and promoted by the Oligarchy, and seeded into vulnerable parts of the population through a process of political and ideological grooming.

Percentages or persons?
There is a pattern where people opposed to public health measures cite that only a small percentage of people die from Covid - they ignore the reality that a small percentage of a massive population is a lot of people dying avoidable deaths.  The Covid Freedomeers dismissal of the lives of so many vulnerable people is a good example of externalising costs
The vulnerable must pay the price incurred in the strategy of allowing spread of the virus beyond control in order to keep the economy open. The cost is externalised. 
The people who will gain from keeping the economy open in ways that place the vulnerable at greater risk that they ever needed to be placed at, will not pay the price. 
The vulnerable pay the price.

The Covid Freedomeers do not draw attention to how many of any given population have pre-existing conditions, which elevates their risk of death and disease and harm, exponentially. That is why they cite percentages. To evade the human realities.
The vulnerable will pay the price of the Freedomeers ill-advised reckless endangerment.

Then there's the matter of post infection chronic disease, which is rarely discussed in honest detail - as I write close to 2% of the total population of adults across the UK are suffering with varying degrees of Long Covid. 1.3 million people, who did not have this chronic disease burden prior to January 2020. 1.3 million people whose condition could have been avoided.

Not avoiding avoidable harms - externalising costs.
The Freedomeers claim that protecting the vulnerable undermines their Freedom, even though the evidence is that where States and populations have adopted best practice public health measures, and have pursued strategies to suppress transmission of the virus within the territories of the State whilst protecting borders with effective quarantine and screening, both economy and civil liberties fare much, much better - not to mention the right to health of the population is upheld and preserved.
Here's some of the evidence for my observation.
a) www.99-percent.org/what-is-the-market-fundamentalist-agenda/ - a detailed blog examining the ideological stance of the Free Market Fundamentalists, drawing on their own published writings and legislative action.
b) https://bylinetimes.com/2021/02/02/cambridge-analytica-psychologist-advising-global-covid-19-disinformation-network-linked-to-nigel-farage-and-conservative-party/ - the same people who orchestrated the vast manipulative targeting operations that 'won' Brexit and Trump's Election are also heavily involved in COVID misinformation and disinformation, and keep the economy open lobby groups with privileged access to senior ministers in the Government.
c) https://bylinetimes.com/2021/10/01/inside-the-radicalised-anti-vaxxer-network-influencing-government-vaccine-advisory-panel/ an exploration of one of these groups and their direct links to Government, allowing them to influence Government policy without adequate oversight, and with a decidedly malign intent.
d)  https://graphika.com/reports/ants-in-a-web/ - just one example of many, where wealthy billionaires and states operate psychological manipulation campaigns that undermine healthy democracy, and attempt to drive behaviour that can be exploited.

"Exiled Chinese businessman Guo Wengui, who fled China to evade trial for Corruption, is at the center of a vast network of interrelated media entities which have disseminated online disinformation and promoted real-world harassment campaigns. The network acts as a prolific producer and amplifier of mis- and disinformation, including claims of voter fraud in the U.S., false information about Covid-19, and QAnon narratives."
e) https://blog.f-secure.com/the-psychology-of-election-hacking/ - a concise blog that looks at psychological targeting operations.

"Election hacking is perhaps the most topical example of what the combination of hostile information-technological and information-psychological activities can mean in the modern information environment. It has government officials asking whether malicious information activities targeting elections could be the new normal."
f) https://bylinetimes.com/2021/02/15/gb-news-funder-legatum-linked-to-koch-climate-denial-network-us-race-baiting/ - US Free Market Fundamentalists linked to UK News Press Media operations spreading Covid misinfo and climate denialism and other fallacies, designed to divide electorates and thus weaken or impede democratic solidarity to evolve regulation of toxic industries.
g) https://bylinetimes.com/2020/12/02/ministry-of-defence-funds-man-behind-great-barrington-declaration/ - Weaponised mass communications in a Covid setting. Government, Military and extreme right wing free marketeers working together.
h) https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2021/06/grooming-how-it-operates-why-it-works.html my own blog examining how grooming works, why it works, using Brexut as  a case study (not exhaustive) and suggesting ways to prevent profoundly psychologically abusive such campaigns
Cognitive Disssonance Weaponised.
There are a number of internalised conflicts inherent in the Anti-mask Freedom lobby, not least that they are being exploited by the very people they most often claim are engaged in a conspiracy of tyranny - the Oligarchy.
By triggering emotional hooks related to vague notions of personal freedom, they blind the Covid Freedomeers to the Freedom the Oligarchy desires - freedom from rational democratic regulation of Wealth Extraction and Toxic Industrial practices - and enrol the Covid Freedomeers in demolishing rational democratic governance.
Now, to be honest, as much as I find the position of the Covid Freedomeer an irritant, I was myself fully hooked into Conspiracy Theory, New Age Woo and other belief systems that ignored evidence, and that exploited my vulnerability.
I do have deep reservations about the nature of State power as it operates within the current  historical context, understanding as I do, as many of us do, that the origins of The State System are steeped in blood letting, that the evolution of the Rulers localised institutionalised 'right' to  exercise violence, to 'defend' their realms from external and internal enemies and to engage in war fare runs counter to egalitarian principles and usually causes great harm to workers, and rarely do the Ruling Class bear such harms.

Of course, I and many, many people see the potential for healthy democratic development of a truly equitable social power system as it has played out in the past, and  is playing out in the present. 

We are all aware of the potential trajectories of a more democratic system of Governance focused on Justice, Equity and Humanity,  into the future (Power Inquiry 2006, UBI, Blockchain Policy Fora, People's Assemblies, Egalitarian Democracy).

We live within an historical context that is the struggle to end oppression.
Trade unions were an expression of that struggle, as were The Suffragettes, Martin Luther King, the struggle against Apartheid and the struggle of workers to attain decent working conditions, education for their children, health care systems for their communities and much else besides.
In the 21st Century, the Unions of the grass roots will need to expand well beyond the work place and working conditions...
Schools, Hospitals, Care Homes, even our own homes are the new political battle fields, fora for dissent and laying the ground work for collective change, countering oppressive corruption, building healthier democratic systems that serve all our futures, that nurture our world instead of exploiting and damaging our world.
The Grooming Operations are a very important element of the way oppressor class maintains it's hegemonic stance, a very potent weapon and we must understand why so many are vulnerable to that kind of persuasion, because we need to help them and us to break free of that persuasion, in order to build social grass roots solidarity that we need to confront the problems of Power.
https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2021/11/the-industrial-system-is-inherently.html
"The Industrial System is inherently adversarial: it treats those who are harmed by the Industrial System, those who bring attention to the harm, in order to stop the harm, as adversaries. 
Insulate Britain
The custodial sentences imposed on Insulate Britain activists for contempt of court are clearly a contempt of our collective welfare. In the same way that Shell's move from Holland to England is. In both cases, those who drew attention to harm and suggested ways to prevent the harm are being treated as adversaries.
Another way to put it is like this: political power struggles undermine healthy governance - adversarial dynamics inhibit co-operative dynamics. Any relationship that has a power struggle within it is likely going to be toxic.
Industrial political Power is inherently adversarial in that it is profitable only because its foundation for wealth extraction is created by externalising costs.
Those who bear the pain of the costs and bring attention to that pain, and those costs, are considered as adversaries.
When those who are harmed find a voice and become advocates to confront the harm causation, with an eye to stopping the harms, the industrial cult treats them as enemies to be crushed. 
This is a reactionary stance - the cult wishes to preserve the extraction of wealth above all else, and will attack anyone who questions the morality or wisdom of extracting wealth at such a cost. 
It will take every measure available co-opt anyone who proposes solutions in order to control any proposed change.
Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

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

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

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