Austerity and the Independent Living Fund - Inhumane Bureaucracy and Lies.

A friend of mine, who is wheel chair bound as a result of her life long disability, has been told that both her care provided by care workers and her Independent Living Fund will be reduced.

Savings must be made. She must live a more austere life for the sake of the Nation's Finances.

The Independent Living Fund is being cut back, for purely ideological reasons. Her life is being curtailed for purely ideological reasons.

Here is her statement:

"I am an absolute wreck today! Finally saw a Social Worker yesterday about the impending closure of the Independent Living Fund, which Social Services are supposed to replace - they are proposing to not only Not replace my ILF Care (7 hrs per day), but to reduce the care they themselves currently give me, from 5 hrs per day to just three, and worst of all to put me into adult nappies to 'increase my independence'(!), as I won't then have to depend on anyone taking me to the toilet during the day or the night!

I am devastated! They say they will also refer me to the health team as they may be able to provide some other interventions and may even provide me with some care....

It's all so demeaning, dehumanising & wrong & utterly, devastatingly traumatising! I don't know how I or anyone else is supposed to function. Saying that, I think that is exactly the point! They don't want us to function, so we cannot challenge & contribute to society and the debates on welfare, the NHS, etc., etc! They want us to be dead, or at the very least to be silent & hidden away from society!

And this doesn't just affect me, but my carers too, who will lose some or all of their livelihood - one of my carers is a single mum: you cannot imagine how bad I feel about how this is going to hit them all, especially her & her daughter! And, as if this isn't bad enough, Osborne is also considering cutting Child Tax Credits, which are paid to people who are already in work, further cutting & hitting poor people with children who are working & struggling to survive & to provide for their children.

I feel like a bear in a trap & want to chew off my own hand so I can escape! I think maybe I should give them what they want & die - what use is living anyway? Thousands have already died* and even still, most people, most of my friends included, are not yet aware of the terror of this situation and are blithely getting on with their own lives oblivious of the fact that their voices & actions are vital & crucial to changing this situation. How many more must die before enough of the population dare to care enough to stop this happening? 

This living on handouts is soul destroying at the best of times, when they propose to start hitting you from every direction & you don't know how hard they're going to hit you, or from which direction, or how long for & how many times and you are trapped & have to just wait in agony of anticipation & fear, it is the most unbearable & exquisite torture. I'm being hit by the closure of the ILF & loss of the care support I depend on to live with dignity & independence & which enables me to participate & contribute to society, as well as the ending of Income Support & DLA, without knowing if I will even get anything from ESA or PIP to replace them....

I don't know how much longer I can keep going, or how I'm going to cope, or how much more pain and loss & fear & worry I can bear! I just keep crying and/or trying not to cry!!

In essence, my friend is being asked to sit with her feces and urine next to her skin until a care worker attends to her, some hours later.

How does sitting in you own feces and urine foster dignity for one's life?

How can this be called ‘support’ and how can anyone suggest that this will increase her independence?

Where is the caring empathy of the strong for the vulnerable?

What kind of bullying bureaucracy can drive an official to even make such a suggestion?

‘Austerity’ translates into willfully ignoring the pain, stress and fear created by the way these policies are being implemented, in the pursuit of purely ideological aims.

This is but one of many tens of thousands of similar incidents, all 100% avoidable.

Our Government is behaving with cruelty towards vulnerable people.

It has no mandate to enact this kind of situation, this kind of cruelty. Nor does it have any evidence that the Austerity Cuts are necessary.

Indeed there is ample evidence suggesting otherwise, published by right, center and left wing media.

Our Government is behaving with cruelty towards vulnerable people in pursuit of ideological aims.

Those Government Ministers, Civil Servants and Advisors who initiate and design the implementation of this policy are acting on personal prejudice and that is a psychological problem, a matter of personal dysfunction intruding into Governance.

We are being ruled by sick people.

And it would appear that morally weak and vulnerable people being put to work to implement that policy.

Would Iain Duncan Smith or David Cameron sit in their own feces and urine as they debated the issues of the day in Parliament? 

Would you?

Why is Iain Duncan Smith fighting a legal battle to withold Government data on deaths of disabled people that are correlated to this 'austerity' campaign?

Disabled people and their carers are trying to hold the Government to account. Will you help them?

Petition to protect the Independent Living Fund

and

Tomorrow, Wednesday 24th June a group of disabled people will go to Parliament to lobby the Government.

You can follow what happens through their facebook page.



Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Magna Carta, fables and misrepresentations.

There appears to be some variance in the interpretation of Magna Carta.

As I understand it, Magna Carta was a contract, drawn up by the Barons and the Catholic Bishops, setting out the relationship between the three ruling hierarchies - The Church, The Monarchy and The Barons. It had a number of versions, and all were abrogated or broken by the signing parties sooner or later.

Ordinary folk were not included. 

That same relationship persists today, with unelected Bishops in the House of Lords, unelected Lords in the House of Lords, Corporate Barons in the House of Lords as well as Corporate influence over the MPs in the House of Commons and those who form the Government of the day.

The Monarchy stands as a symbol of National Unity and National internalised Identity. 

The only articles from Magna Carta that are currently on the statute books, and thus active in Law, are the two which relate to the position of the Church and the City of London, both of which imply an acceptance of the status of the Monarchy as Head of State.

The reason why proportional representation or any other genuinely democratic voting system does not exist is to preserve that triumvirate of Power. You can vote, yet you have no real say in how laws are made, and what laws are made. You and I, dear reader, are excluded from the exercise of political and economic power. That is deliberate. Your vote is engineered to be impotent.

Cameron words must be read with that understanding...

"It falls to us in this generation to restore the reputation of those rights... It is our duty to safeguard the legacy, the idea, the momentous achievement of those barons."

This coming from a leader who is overseeing the privatisation of the NHS, who bombed Libya needlessly, whose Government is placing psychologists in Job Centers to mask the bureaucratic bullying of vulnerable people in pursuit of an ideological stance that is fundamentally institutionalised cruelty and utterly inhumane. Austerity is a lie. Austerity is Tory bullying of the vulnerable writ large.

What is the legacy of the Barons?

It certainly is not genuine participative democracy for all the people, where the people are treated as equals in the discussions and processes of decision making at the level of Governance.

Is the privatisation of the NHS into the hands of people associated with David Cameron's Cabinet and social class mandated by the people of the UK?

Or is it closer to the kind of trade controls the Barons would have seen as appropriate to their standing?

Was the bombing of Libya mandated by the UK electorate? Likewise the invasion of Iraq in 2003?

They were not. Indeed there is very little of Government legislation in recent history that has been fully supported by the majority of the electorate in the UK.

I could be wrong.

I also know that Government has been undermining those constituencies that were behind the Power Inquiry of 2006 through the Big Society campaign.

This is because they - the Community Voluntary Sector (CVS) - presented the most cogent, well articulated and well reasoned appraisal of the flaws in the current systems of governance, flaws which render it un-democratic. 

Take for example the Office of The Party Whip, and anti-democratic institution which has no place in a genuine peoples Democracy.

The Power Inquiry proposed a series of proven, tested and tried reforms that would safely devolve decision making powers to the grass roots of Society through deliberative processes that would build bridges rather than create divisions.

The CVS had decades of self governance experience to draw from - dealing with provision of services, listening and responding to clients, managing funding and treasury transparency, dealing with Government and European bodies and legislation, handling crises, developing evidence based policies and implementing those... a vast body of experiential knowledge and wisdom, with a more defined and exact database than currently exists for climate change as a direct result of only fossil fuel use.

I also understand that Government and the Establishment ruling class do place activists to distract, dissuade, and otherwise obscure the realities of history in order to confuse the activities of genuine activism, as a standard practice that has a long, long history.

There is much talk of Freemen, of Maritime Law, of Natural Law and of supposed rights of ordinary people inferred in Magna Carta that generates much attention, yet delivers nothing useful in terms of Democratic progress towards a more humane system of Governance.

The lack of delivery of anything useful is the proof of the pudding.

Here is a song that explores the idea that before the emergence of Kings (the original knife crime syndicates) human culture was Egalitarian, for the vast majority, because it is a highly evolved state of being, one that assured human communities would flourish and thrive over hundreds of thousands of years.

Industrial Hierarchy of Violence Culture is less than 300 years old, and is already threatening all living systems on this gorgeous planet with enhanced toxicity, multiple extinctions and vast harms to people and place. We would do well to remember who we really are.

I write songs like this because part of folk music is the honest recording of the lived experience in history as it really occurred, as a source of wisdom and strength. That is a core duty of the folk musician.

A good friend of mine commented that "Half the pieces on the chess board carry the same title as those who sit in the Lords..."

To which I replied...

"The key skill in Chess is predicting your opponents moves into the future, and then laying a trap for them to fall into through your own moves."

Government policy appears to be short term in the manner it is announced, yet behind the scenes that is not the case. We know that those who rule present an acceptable persona, a façade for public attention and consumption.

Our activism has to understand this, read past the headlines, and perceive what is coming and plan for it whilst being ready to adapt and change.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Working Mothers, Hard Working Families and Power Establishments

Working Mothers and Hard Working Families

"Working Mothers" implies that Mothering is not work worthy of remuneration or reward or support. The mother must also work and pay taxes and contribute to the 'economy'. Otherwise she is a 'shirker'.

Healthy empathic parenting is a profound contribution, not only to our social economy, (albeit a different kind of economy) but also to world peace, human dignity and the creation of a loving society. It is probably the most important contribution of all.

"Hard Working Families" implies putting the children to 'good' economic use... that the children must submit to the demands of the 'economy' as a matter of primary importance. They must be trained, from the earliest age possible, to work hard for the economy.

"The psychology of any given family, community, Institution or Society is both revealed and perpetuated in how they relate to and treat the children and the most vulnerable. Change that and you can change everything."

The question then is what changes does Government policy intend in terms of long term outcomes?

There is a biologically mandated experiential process of bonding between mother and child that is absolutely the core of how the child develops self empathy, empathy for others, and that most healthy sense of self and of autonomy which underpins true co-operation and nurturing, and the degree to which this process - attachment - is stressed or disrupted correlates very strongly with adverse outcomes in later life, often emerging as behavioural issues in youth, dysfunctional relationships or serious health issues in mid life.

This affects both men and women. We are all born of the womb. All of us.

Within the womb, if our mother is subjected to chronic stress or trauma our physiological and psychological development is adversely affected. Mothers are advised by Government Health Departments to quit smoking, to cease drinking alcohol. This is healthy advice.

Research has revealed that any air-borne pollutants the mother is exposed to are concentrated in the developing baby's body by up to 100 times the levels within the mother. The same applies to any pollutant, such as pesticides, additives, colourants and so on.

Why then does Government enact social and economic policies that have been proven to induce chronic stress for mothers rather than enact policies that not only reduce chronic stress but also increase dignity, peace, safety and happiness for mothers, and their children, knowing full well the adverse outcomes of chronic stress on both mother and child?

What is the effect of the Iraq Invasion and war on the mothers of Iraq and their children? Ask this question in relation to any war mongering, in relation to the Arms Industry which is so heavily subsidised by Governments.

The Dominating Society - the Ruling Elite, Corporate, State and Religious Institutions - feel threatened by that natural process of empathic development because it is also part of the development of the clearest sense of justice, and it is part of the development of personal autonomy, and empathy and it is clear that the intent behind Government policy (and much Religious Indoctrination) is to deepen the Governments ability to exercise control over people by inducing chronic stressors that will reduce empathy, making people more susceptible to psychological manipulation and further atomise communities, thus reducing the perceived threat.

Mothering is a critical role in human relationships, and deserves full evidence based support, which should include support for empathic fathering and parenting in general.

We do not need to work more and parent less.

There is more than enough wealth  in our systems to go around to cover all living human beings true needs, and then some.

The then some is the intentional creation of a kinder, more empathic and robustly just social reality where people are nurtured, given dignity, enabled to live lives that are peaceful, loving, co-operative and nurturing, even across variations in culture, faith, outlook, mirroring the natural diversity and creativity and fecundity we see in biology, in nature.

What's not to like about that?

Power and languaging.

"Under Disability Living Allowance, applicants who could not walk 50 metres unaided qualified.

But as a result of David Cameron's benefits cull, the threshold has now been reduced to 20 metres."

Those alterations were made by accountants, financial advisors and statisiticians suggesting that a reduction in the test length would create savings in expenditure which is the bottom line of the Governments actions.

The effects on real human beings is omitted from that analysis.

When those effects become apparent, the refusal to adjust the limits becomes an act of Institutional Cruelty.

The psychology behind this is known as 'Scientific Management', a factory based management approach that is wholly unsuited to real human beings. Hence the language of 'benefits units'.

In Nuremburg a new wording was heard - 'office language' aka bureaucratic language - which the German bureaucracy used to ignore the human realities.

"In Hannah Arendt's book, Eichmann in Jerusalem, Eichmann was asked, “Was it difficult for you to send these tens of thousands of people to their death?” And Eichmann answered very candidly, “To tell you the truth, it was easy. Our language made it easy.”

His interviewer asked what that language was, and Eichmann said, “My fellow officers and I coined our own name for our language. We called it amtssprache – ‘office talk.'” When asked for examples, Eichmann said, “It's basically a language in which you deny responsibility for your actions. So if anybody says, ‘Why did you do it?' you say, ‘I had to.' ‘Why did you have to?' ‘Superiors' orders. Company policy. It's the law.'


The Nazi's won WWII. The ideology won, in spite of the rhetoric.

The same psychology, languaging and approach dominates Government in the UK and the US, and in many other places.

As this example reveals....

Paralympic teen to lose mobility car because she's not disabled enough

Changes to benefits rules mean Kayleigh Haggo, 16, no longer qualifies for her car - because she can walk 20 metres unaided.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

The Dysfunctional Family and the kind of politics of Power I abhor.

I have often written that the dominant structures of political, economic and religious power seem to behave in patterns that are similar to a dysfunctional family within which abuse occurs.

A thought experiment  on Political Role Play: Can you identify Politicians and sectors of the electorate who demonstrate any of these behaviours?

Pick a descriptive sentence from the list below, preface it with a politician, and a link to a story or comment they have made that reveals the behaviour pattern.

• "Using" (destructively narcissistic parents who rule by fear and conditional love)

• Abusing (parents who use physical violence, or emotionally, or sexually abuse their children)

• Perfectionist (fixating on order, prestige, power, and/or perfect appearances, while preventing their child from failing at anything)

• Dogmatic or cult-like (harsh and inflexible discipline, with children not allowed, within reason, to dissent, question authority, or develop their own value system)

• Inequitable parenting (going to extremes for one child while continually ignoring the needs of another)

• Deprivation (control or neglect by withholding love, support, necessities, sympathy, praise, attention, encouragement, supervision, or otherwise putting their children's well-being at risk)

• Abuse among siblings (parents fail to intervene when a sibling physically or sexually abuses another sibling)

• Abandonment (a parent who willfully separates from their children, not wishing any further contact, and in some cases without locating alternative, long-term parenting arrangements, leaving them as orphans)

• Appeasement (parents who reward bad behavior—even by their own standards—and inevitability punish another child's good behavior in order to maintain the peace and avoid temper tantrums "Peace at any price")

• Loyalty manipulation (giving unearned rewards and lavish attention trying to ensure a favored, yet rebellious child will be the one most loyal and well-behaved, while subtly ignoring the wants and needs of their most loyal child currently)

• "Helicopter parenting" (parents who micro-manage their children's lives and/or relationships among siblings—especially minor conflicts)

• "The deceivers" (well-regarded parents in the community, likely to be involved in some charitable/non-profit works, who abuse or mistreat one or more of their children)

• "Public image manager" (sometimes related to above, children warned to not disclose what fights, abuse, or damage happens at home, or face severe punishment "Don't tell anyone what goes on in this family")

• "The paranoid parent" (a parent having persistent and irrational fear accompanied by anger and false accusations that their child is up to no good or others are plotting harm)

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Empathy and a sense of justice : the true threat to hegemonic Power.

I think that Empathy is a biologically mandated ability, a complete embodied sensory capability, that enables an organism to read the world, the environment that is lived in.

It is learned,through experience, initially, in human beings and primates, and probably all mammals, through the experience of being treated with empathy as an infant...

Self empathy in human beings is self understanding in a complete, embodied and pre-verbal way that can also be verbalised or expressed or articulated, as well as projected into others as a sensory capability. The feeling comes first, before the words.

Very useful indeed in the bush, jungle, desert etc in terms of discerning what is useful, nurturing or harmful.

Absolutely necessary for healthy human relationships.

Hunting demands empathy and calm.

Parent demands empathy and calm.

The core of empathy is in self empathy, from which empathy for others develops out of the acute sensitivity that self empathy is.

With that sense of self comes a sense of autonomy and of course, a sense of justness (or justice).

In terms of optimal human biological health for individuals, families, communities and societies, these qualities are core components, essential in all respects.

In terms of Hierachically Violent Societies and Institutions, these qualities represent a direct threat to the psychology of Power that Rules over the people.

It is this that lies underneath the exclusion of Aboriginal peoples from any decision making process on matters that affect their lives enacted by conquests inheritors who rule today across the Earth, and it lies behind the careful manipulation of selected assimilated Aboriginals to push for deeper assimilation.

The 'good indian' vs the 'bad indian'; 'hard working families' vs 'benefits scoungers'. We are at 'war'; they are 'terrorists'.

And it's also why so many so-called Democracies refuse to move towards a truly participative Democracy that empowers the shared responsibilities of Power across the grass roots.

Empathy and a sense of justice : the true threat to hegemonic Power.

And with the emergence of the internet as a forum for exchange and dissemination honest experience and insight, as well as leading research formerly locked away from public view within Academia,  the democractisation of information has led to a surge of empathy and a greater articulation of the felt sense of injustice.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Post Election 2015, and the challenges we face, the work we must do.

The Problem

The 'problem' is way more than the actions of one man, or one party or even of the power elites.

We are in a social system that has all the symptoms, relationships, politics and denials of an abuse family dynamic, a system of power that is psychologically dysfunctional and profoundly unhealthy that is pretending the family is ok.

We are in a social system that is driven by unresolved past trauma, that re-inflicts that trauma repeatedly, quite often intentionally ( The Shock Doctrine)in the institutional desire to maintain Power over people.

We are all affected by this, through social, religious and ideological conditioning, through trauma inflicted by Power, through the disruption of natural bonding and learning processes that embed empathy and autonomy, gratitude and pleasure, and the desire to nurture all for all, which are all markers of optimal human biological health.

The resolution is not and never will systemic reform; it must be both personal and communal, and it must be a recognition of and a healing of the old wounds, the suppressed pain, the almost rampant rage and anger of which we see plenty of in movies, novels, violence. This must lead towards kinder social and institutional behaviours ....

Viva Le resolution. The old revolution concept is inadequate to the task ahead of us.

The Vision

I want to see a psycho-social healing movement that is practical that addresses the social trauma and conditioning that is inter-generational, and that feeds the urge to Power over others.

I want to see a societal model that nurtures people as persons, that articulates empathy and love, that is robust in dealing with abusers, that seeks to prevent more harm emerging, that can respect the older cultures and back of conquest of their lands for 'exploitation' and 'development' and observe and learn from them.

They have been around for a lot longer than this system has existed,and have many examples of living close to the biological optimal human health state.

The old sordid politics of the struggle for Power over the people, rather than power shared with the people*,  to nurture ALL the people as healthy loving persons by right or left is inadequate to this task.

Hatred and fear are inadequate to this task..

* (which was the primary mode of human society for the majority of our existence as a species, in spite of what most are led to think, based on the indoctrination typical of ideological compulsion schooling and mono-theistic power religions that claim to to have the 'right way' for all human beings)

I want to see a society that heals the old wounds, rather than a social institutional system that seeks to capitalise on them.



Rage or Outrage!

If we think our anger, rage and despair is going to resolve or improve matters, we are truly participating the continuation of the problem rather than the resolution of it.

Those emotions are the tip of the iceberg, and can so easily be manipulated by those who are powerful, who are abusive, who are predatory.

Those emotions are flags, calling attention to deeper feelings, to the pain, the wounding.

Harness the anger, examine the deeper feelings, resolve the matter within ourselves.

Then we can begin the work. That is the beginning of the work

The Work

"It is a failure across the progressive left in England to articulate a distinct plan that is anti-austerity, anti-cuts and anti-poverty "

I would add that there is not an adequate articulation across the so-called progressive left , of what the Community Voluntary Sector brings : empathy, care, attention to detail in meeting vulnerable peoples needs, self governance, maturation, healing; there is not enough articulation of what constitutes a healthy humane being, and there is almost no articulation of what social conditioning is, how effective it is, how it is effected.

Without these, railing against injustice has no traction.

There is also the matter of education systems, and mainstream media systems that ignore,suppress or mis-report on what is being learned in the fields of Anthropology, Neuroscience, Child Development, Trauma and Recovery studies, Biology and History as well as healthy technologies that nurture the world around us.

Plans are merely concepts, if they are not backed by the actual psychological progression I am writing about.

And for Labour the removal of the Party Whip system and a dedicated assault on that Institution in all other politcial groupings where it exists would indicate that psychological progression.

And this is where the Green party is genuinely different - I see that in Caroline Lucas, and the fact that the Green Party has rejected the concept of the Party Whip in it's entirety ... we cannot accept any practice that amounts to bullying or coercion, when it comes to decisin making processes on matters that affect our lives and the lives of others.

I see that there is a growing recognition of all of the above, every day, and am I no longer dismayed or hopeless. That is not to say I am not appalled at what goes on in politics. I am.

I have gotten over that expectation of an instant change, an easy win. I understand how deep the conditioning goes, how personal it is, and how difficult the resolution of that is as well as what helps the process of healing. I am learning to only point out the escape route rather than damn the conditioned for being conditioned. Could I damn my younger self for being conditioned, frightened, confused?

So we need to ask ourselves what we are FOR, we need to examine our conditioning, and we need to stand for that healing above all else, in the face of what ever comes... the worst outcome is we grow as people, the best outcome is we build a base of psychologically healthy solidarity as each generation passes, and in time, Society will reflect that.

Viva La Resoultion!

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Ancient 21st Century Skills: optimal human biological health

21st Century Skills : This list was posted by a friend, on face book, without the comments after the colon...

Those are mine.

problem solving, : not taught in schools

analytical thinking, : not taught in schools

systems-thinking : not taught in schools

credibility and judgment of information : not taught in schools

technology fluencies : only taught in terms of consumerism, in schools

the ethics of fair play : taught in schools, yet not applied, oracticed in a meaningful manner, and so a sense of basic injustice and outrage is common in all school leavers, they sense the hypocrisy but find it difficult to pin it down.

collaboration in cross-functional teams : not taught in schools

accessing knowledge networks : not taught in schools beyond the limits of approved texts.

Compulsory Indoctrination masquerading as Education ... is a real problem, and we are seeing the symptoms of that problem across this election, and in many other places...  I don't blame the indoctrinated, I blame the intentional indoctrinators,they know what they are doing.

problem solving, : identifying the problem, critical thinking, access to reliable data, testing of solutions, responding to new information

analytical thinking, : critical thinking, sourcing data, questioning assumptions, avoiding opinion
systems-thinking : being able to investigate and describe accurately how systems function, or how they are dysfunctional

credibility and judgment of information : comparing data sources, access to and understanding of research methodologies, assessment of outcomes, observation of what is

technology fluencies : understanding what is being used, what is available, the limitations of extant tech, what is appropriate

the ethics of fair play : self empathy, empathy for others, and a sense of humane responsibility, do no harm

collaboration in cross-functional teams : how to work with others who have experience in different areas, and how to learn from others within a diverse group, when the need arises.

accessing knowledge networks : knowing where to search for information, knowing where to find people who are skilled in any given area, feeling centred enough to approach those with the knowledge

These are all skills a healthy Aboriginal child in a healthy human community would have developed by the age of physical maturity, when they are ready to become parents.

That these skills are largely inhibited, limited, ignored or avoid in compulsory schooling says a lot more about schools actuall function in this Hierarchcially Violent Society, and we can all see how they impact each generation of parents, who send their children to schools to learn the same lessons, to submit, to obey, to fall into line, even as they love their children, as they assuredly do.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Power, decision making, ethics and humane living: a choice

Interesting ideas are a starting point for this necessary discourse.

There ought to be a place in Parliament for some pensioners, disabled folk, some children and teenagers, and other vulnerable people, providing a commentary on the proceedings, a bit like the two old geezers at the end of the muppet show, humorous but with more bite.

PR, NOTA, and many other progressive and humane practices regarding a humane democracy are all possible.

Ask the disabled what they need, let them decide on policy on the disabled.

Ask the 'disruptive children' in schools what they need, let them inform how they are helped.

Ask the renters what they need, and let them inform how renting is regulated.

Ask mothers what they need, and then let those needs inform policy on family and community.

Ask elders what they need, and let those needs inform policy on family and community.

Ask Survivors of trauma and criminal abuse what they need, and let that inform policy.

Tell the banks what we need of their services, and ensure they comply to the 'market' : those who need their services (apart from criminal organisations, speculative betters etc etc )

Tell the police how they ought to relate to troubled youth, as carers as well as protectors, and let the troubled youth inform how they are to be treated.

Ask the Military how they can best help Society, and let that inform how they are deployed (Chavez did this in his 'exile' in the remote parts of Venuzeula, and directed the military under his command to build infrastructure, schools, wells, etc etc... which built his base from which he re-emerged to engage in Democratic Governance.)

There are a myriad of genuine examples of all of this kind of democratic behaviour that demonstrate it is both practical and effective.

We, the people, are the majority tax payers, and we need to take up the responsibility of how we organise our part of Society and not devolve that to others. We ought to employ some to do what we decide, not vote for others to decide for us. That's infantile.

The current political paradigm represents peoples fears more often than their needs or 'interests' as a means to manipulate the electorate, to gain Power over the people.

A truly representative figure head is a spokesperson carrying the message of those who have decided. Not a leader.

We need to become leaders who can select spokespersons, who can employ civil servants and politicians and direct them.

There was a time when those skills lived within the community. Amongst people known who could be trusted because if they bodged the job, you would come around to their house. This is oversight.

The time for grass roots oversight has come. Be part of it. Participate in decision making, in deliberation, in the exploration of the issues, the problems, the solutions and be a learner, a grower, a fully matured human being.

I want to live fully humanely. I do already, to a large degree, and recognise that I need to take up my shared responsibility, to all other living humans, my family to mature fully and become fully participative. I need to do this to honour my connections to you all, to honour my sense of self and to exercise the loving care I feel for all humanity.

What do you want?

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

The central question of power - your choice.

A more humane approach threatens the old paradigm of political power, which operates on the private assumption of exercising Power over the people they claim publicly to serve.

A person centred approach would have made the Invasion of Iraq impossible to conceive, let alone actuate. A person centred approach would preclude western support and tolerance of the Saudi Wahabist head chopping Regime, or western

 support for Saddam that put him in Power in the first instance.

A person centred approach would have inhibited any cover up of the activities of Savile, Smith or Janner, and indeed would have dealt with those as the first signs, or allegations of abuse, emerged.

Voting for others to make a decision is not a genuine exercise of democracy, at least not in the classical Greek sense, nor in the manner the 5 Nations, both of whom are quoted as sources of Western Democracy and Federalism.

The modern Democracy is a sham – an illusion designed to give power over the people to a self selecting elite, and it demands the infantilisation of the electorate: in as much as a mother or father will make all the decisions affecting an infants life, and the infant has no power.

A toddler might play one parent off the other, to effectively give that power to his or her preference, yet still the toddler has no real power.

Is this what you want?

Is this what you are willing to accept, and all that goes with it : Iraq, Libya, corruption,  institutional cover-ups of horrific child abuse by powerful people?

To remain infantalised, in real political terms?

Or are you willing to mature, as The Power Inquiry suggested many millions of UK citizens are?

The choice IS yours!

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Beyond Voting: the central issue of Power laid bare.

"To vote or not to vote, that is  a good question to start a conversation, an exploration, to express a desire to understand how democracy functions and how it ought to function."

The Power Inquiry of 2006 looked at this is a lot of detail.

By asking people why they don't vote.

Seems like a good approach.

If done well, and if people are being honest, the it would produce useful information, evidence... it would test current public domain assumptions on the matter.

They did it very well.

It's amazing what listening to people, what hearing and understanding with feedback can create, in terms of expressing and identifying needs, and then helping people to meet those needs, if they need help, if they request help...

What they found was that people's perception of professional politicians was accurate.

Liars, cheats and crooks who represent those who lobby them with cash incentives, who protect entrenched Power to Rule the People through the control of social and political institutions and exonomics, whilst pretending otherwise.

What they found was that a growing constituency of people were ACTIVE in their local communities, providing short and long-term support services to the poor and vulnerable, and the community at large, which had .historic roots in victorian local philanthropy mixed with a tradition of peasant self-reliance, how communities of peasants and later workers have long organised to help each other...

What they found was that for many people political activism was action on the ground to deal with issues in their area. Voting does not convey the same degree of social committment, and could be said to be inferior in many ways, if a citizens political action was limited to voting.

The Power Inquiry found that the Community Voluntary Sector was larger than membership of political parties by a massive margin, that as a diverse commjunity, it was politically and ethically aware and was taking active responsibility in their local areas.

They found that the Community Voluntary Sector was well versed in delivering services those they helped really needed, fund raising, consciousness raising, treasury management, listening and learning from those the served, in essence the skills of self-Governance.

What they found was that the Community Voluntary Sector crossed all age and income groups.

What they found was that the Community Voluntary Sector was also versed in real democracy, in real decision making and policy creation and implementation.

What came out of The Power Inquiry was a series of recommendations for meaningful changes which would devolve power as a SHARED RESPONSIBILITY to the grass roots.

One of which was removal of the official post of Party Whip. 100% anti-democratic post.

One of which was no private funding of parties for Elections. A fund based on the number of the electorate registered, to be split equally between all candidates.

One of which was a re-call at every level of Public Office. A form of oversight.

One of which was lowering the voting age to 16. Inclusion of the young because they are not represented, and quite often are very well aware of the issues of the day, and yet excluded.

One of which was introducing Democratic Power to students in secondary Schools, to give them a responsibility and voice on matters that affect their lives. You cannot exercise or share Power unless you have some MEANINGFUL practice.

A NOTA segment on the ballot box. We ought to be able to register non-confidence in those offering themselves up for election.

And much else besides....

The Three 'leading parties' Lab/Tor/LibDem attended the conference in 2006, and praised the initiative and content of The Power Inquiry report, before an audience of more than 500 people.

Two days later, they dismissed the Power Inquiry as 'impractical.'

'Impractical'!

And then the assault on the Community Voluntary Sector was initiated, by people who KNEW the crash of 2008 was coming, and who knew they could use that to justify the cuts to the Community Voluntary Sector, and the privatisation of much of the work being done by the Community Voluntary Sector.

In other words, a clear manipulation and assault on pro-Democracy activism at the local level, designed to stress the Community Voluntary Sector, which they KNEW would also harm many of those whose lives were being supported by the Community Voluntary Sector.

And this has been carefully ignored by mainstream media, because it was and still is intentional professional cruelty designed to undermine REAL democratic intelligence within the UK.

The Greens, SNP and Plaid are gaining ground BECAUSE their policies are HUMANE, above all else.

The issue of voting/not voting is being manipulated to mask this cruelty and intentionality.

That The State and Established Power are willing to be cruel to protect, enhance and expand their power is OBVIOUS - Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and our own bloody history (when read accurately, away from school texts and media history programs).

Few people ever fought and died for freedom, the majority fought and died because they were enlisted, or because they were socially conditioned to support the State. None of the political leadership fought, other than the likes of Churchill who fought the Boers and treated their civilian population with horrific abuse.

The treatment of Greek Resistance fighters post liberation of Greece, by UK Military and State, ought to be standard subject in school Histories. The UK Military and UK State enlisted those within Greece who had collaborated with the Nazis to slaughter those who had resisted on the basis that the resistance was largely populated by 'communists'.

The response to African Democratic Nationalists post WWII discloses the nature of Power in the UK. The response to Iraqi Democratic Nationalists in late 2003 disclose the nature of Power in the UK.

They plunged Greece, Africa and Iraq into a nightmare of Authoritarian Government proclaiming LIBERTY! They KNEW exactly what they were doing, and remain unapologetic about it.

Russel Brand said WHY he doesn't vote, rather than urging people not to vote per se.

And his intention was misrepresented. Willfully misunderstood.

I will vote Green, not because I think the Green candidate can win, but because the Green Candidate represents a humanist approach that is humane, that is kind, that is more empathic and that is practical, and I'd rather lose standing for that, than win a Pyrrhic victory claimed by excluding the Tories from Government, when in fact Government is the entirety of Parliament and Local Councils, and our acceptance of them as our Rulers, with the grass roots excluded from real decision making.

I vote for the entire community, not for my special interest,or traditional alliance.

I vote because I think on these matters, deeply and I care about all the people in this country, non excluded.

And I vote Green because I despise the political culture, in power and on the streets, that enables the protection of serial pedophiles in Church and State Institutions, the cover-ups, the wars, the profiteering, the lies.

I am not hopeful of an outcome based on one election.

I am hopeful because there is a growing awareness of all that I have indicated above, and it will continue to grow, year on year, generation on generation.

I vote thinking of long term outcomes, thinking of my grandchildren and their contemporaries.

I totally get why so many people do not vote, and I would not dare suggest to them that they are incorrect, given all that I have indicated above.

This election is 100% illegitmate BECAUSE of the cover-ups of the War Crimes, the cover-ups of priofteering and cover-ups of the sexual abuse of children by members of the Power structure (it also happens in families, the cover-ups..) has not been tackled head-on., Not by Power and not by the people at large.

The only reason we know what has been going on is because brave SURVIVORS broke the stories, again and again and again, in the face of opposition within the Police, within Councils, Schools, Churches and the great offices of State.

We all need to think and think again on this. Not least because we are adults with a core responsibility towards each others welfare that defines our very humanity. Whether we like it or not.

We need to act as mature responsible adults. Way beyond mere voting.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

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