Carrilion, Democracy and Competing by Eating the Competition



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

A get-away car. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

In all of this, where is Democracy? 

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

Democracy for the 21st Century.


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

We pay their wages, we instruct them.

We have a direct socially shared responsibility, to one another, as funders of the Government and Civil Services, as it'scollective financial guarantors - the Government borrows on that basis.
We pay their wages, we instruct.
To step up to that plate.
That is our praxis Our task.
The setting of an evidentiial basis for policy deliberation based on our collective deliberations demands that the sordid adversarial political bi-polar behaviour be diagnosed - it is bullying and only transparency can confront that.
For example the isssue of Brexit ought be an exploration of the existing situatiion, a deliberation rather than a adversarial debate. Winners create losers. The urge to wn begest lies and deceit. That is not healthy Governance, and belies the claims of 'British Democracy' as a leading edge in the world.
Pitting peolle against each other is not healthy, and it is certainly not Democracy. Labour vs Conservatives. It's blatantly ridiculous, and unfit for the purpose of healthy 21st Century civil Governance.
What we have is a mime of true democracy, a shadow of a genuine and socially nurturing democracy that serves the people, and preserves justice and equity.
Reducing political engagement to a vote is X-factor thinking.
The Tories, New Labour, the propaganda, the media and the carefully crafted narratives and our consumption of these is a symptom. The Systemic, Institutionalised Competing Powers dynamic, the competing bully system is the problem. The fact that this very concept is fully accepted amongst Governments is hugely problematic, as the resources diverted from the common, shared pool to maintain that 'game' cause untold harms.
Countering that must never become an ideology, It must always be a cintinuum of dynamic response, learning and growth matched with effort.
The 21st Century AD and the 60th Century BC are calling for egalitarian, healthy human societies to emerge from oppression memory, knowledge and collective effort, rather than force (which has only ever maintained the cycles of violence, natruallly enough).
Privateers are well named.

If you know your history. Outsourcing military capability and resource capture.
This kind of behaviour is a core abuse of power pattern that is institutionalised, normalised.
It is given a pseudo-science validation by way of 'survival of the fittest'. This is done in ways that suggest that the fundamental biological drive of 'competition' is all encompassing, where it's not so much about being better or growing and maturing ans nurturing, as it is about (b)eating the other.
This, of course, is a blase caricature of what happens in biology, rather than an accurate, science based, experience based assessment.
I blame 'education' for maintaining that misunderstanding.
So yeah the culture of dog-eat-dog is a social construct that the bullies project because that is what they do. Problem is that it causes avoidable harms for all the ordinary folk, the grass roots, the indigenous and aboriginal, men, women and child - avoidable harms.
Any shared or collective resource diverted away from the common weal undermines the functioning of that weal.
Turning public service into private enterprise is no more than prostitution and mercenarianism.
Privateers are well named. If you know your history.




Kindest regards


Corneilius

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

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

Patterns, details, humanity. Toby Young.

Gangs... power structures.... hooligans.... Boris Johnson, Toby Young, Jeremy Hunt. Pinochet. Saddam. Nixon.
portrait of a neoliberal gangster.

- youth gangs and associated knife crime issue requires some social honesty

Persistent, institutionalised social inequity is directly correlated with widespread chronic distress, despair, powerlessness. The evidence for this is clear. Giving banks close to half a trillion dollars, whiist reducing support to poor and vulnerable people was not the choice of the people. So it goes.

Persistent, instutionalised social inequity is also correlated with emergent and increasing street crime, petty public violence and other signs of breakdown. The Community fragments. Resources are diverted away. The greater the sense of inequity, the greater the refusal to co-operate, the more intense the breakdown. This is just common sense. Visible Social Inequity is the driving pressure. Pressure. International relations between States, with dominant power blocks seeking hegemony, in an adversarial environment that is fully militarised. This robs peoples of resources, youth, respect and dignity and it absolutely influences local politics, to the very core.

Lateral Violence is a term that describes a statistical dynamic, where abuse within a hierarchy trickles down, and emerges as sideways violence and aggression, where individuals or groups pick on others at their own level or below, to vent their anger upon. Gay bashing, racism, religious sectarianism and much else falls into this dynamic, or emerges more often within the dynamics of a hierarchically violent power culture That is a pattern. Not an excuse.

Not every case is the pattern; they are more than that, and to understand what is creating the pattern, we need to be honest about the evidence, the dataset, and that has to include the journey of that individual, and of every individual we learn about, it has to take in the situation of his or her lived experience and social setting as see all the elements that come into play, as influencers on those lives. All of them, in both qualitative and quantitative research terms. Empathy, compassion,respectful distance: scientific.

First Minimum requirement to solve a problem is the full understanding of the problem.

The second is access to all available pertinent information. A news story will provide only a caricature of any situation it reports, A news story is not enough to base a diagnosis on. Yet we are all expected to do this, from reading newspapers,. etc to voting in that booth, we are told we have enough information make a diagnosis, and we vote with very little data.. Beyond each caricature of a criminal or murderer, a terrorist or a soldier there lies an invisible child, now an adult human being, a history. Do not let the bullies write that history. Or co-opt it to their ends. There will be some cases that are a mixture of all of this: that are to do with social care systems and punishment, with socio-economic status, with broken familial relationships, some might have disabilities, or emotional trauma, and all will have differently altered brains, trauma altered endocrine alterations.

Peer pressure, poverty, marginalisation, bigotry can all interplay and adversely impact any child, any developing brain.
These harmful elements running through a society do not proclaim the health of that society, do they?
The Media hypes stories, for an agenda, not for honesty, or justice.

Justice would remove the economic incentive for gang membership and operations. As a first step.

By dismantling any institutionalised socio-economic inhibitors on equitable economic engagement and arrangements, where being a low skill worker does not mean low paid, economically challenged .... every hour of our lives is precious. All equally so.
The pattern.
Take a public service. cut it. to save money.
Cut it again. then bash it, to save money..
Slice it, and cut it. Then twist it, to be more efficient.
Keep doing this, until it begins to fail.
Then suggest that a private contractor could step in and save the day.

A large corporate private contractor with a track record of fraud, bad practice, graft and inefficiency.

How can any adult  alive and literate, walking about today in 2018 Britain be unaware of this pattern?

Another fine example is this: The DWP plans to streamline benefits using sanctions as a mechanism in administrating efficiencies have cost more than they have saved.

of November 2016, they had blown £50,000,000 on administering sanctions, £200 million monitoring claimants, £35,000,000 hardship payments, running to a total of £285 million... and they had saved £132 million.

For that total net spend of £153,000,00 they have demonstrably increased chronic stress on 11,000 people who have died soon after assessments that applied reductions on their support. At least 11,000 people, who it can be said, did not need nor deserve any extra pressure and stress upon their lives.

How much of that £132 million was sequestered as corporate profits?

In other words, how much tax payers cash became shareholders profits?

Many others persisted, in spite of the system failures,  and pushed back. Which is why the UN took steps to document the tragedy unfolding.

Have they spent £153 million on bullying vulnerable people just because they can?

Is Toby Young  a natural ally of Donald 'PG' Trump, is his opportunist Toryism emblematic of the brown nosing revolving door of the neoLiberal Ruling Classes?






Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

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

Simple, Complex, Complicated : Love, Relationships, Power

Universe is simple. 

At the largest and smallest scale available to human conceptualisation as it stands. Simple.

This is what the best Physicists are telling us from their research into the scales of the material universe beyond normal human sensory capability.

The same simple sets of equations can be used to describe Universe, in minute and in macro detail.

Things in the mid range are complex. This, they also say, is what the data they are gathering is telling them. 

Simplicity is not primitive.

It is intelligence.

Intelligence is complex.

Academic rankings are complicated.

Things get complicated when...

,,, anyone has an agenda, regarding a population of people, because when presented with reliable evidence that counters the assumptions of that agenda or it's goals, that evidence will be dismissed, omitted, outlawed.

Biology is not complicated.

Our best scientists are showing this to be the case.

Complex, rather than complicated.

International relations are complicated.

East Enders drama's are complicated.

So many crutches. So much that us unspoken, unsaid, denied.

Explaining away the causes of chronic post traumatic stress by referring only to the symptoms presented, and deliberately ignoring the situational, enviro-social aspects of a diagnosis and prognosis towards a healing... is criminal.

And it's complicated. I I think the response to that has to be simple, and from that the complexity required to deal with the problem of political power and abuse of power will emerge, is emergng.

I think it's less evolution, as a biological process, as it is healing, a recovery process.

We are quite well evolved for loving, aware lives. It's mostly what we have done, within the biological optimal. Homo Sapiens. Primate. Healthy Biological organism. Behaviourally and physiologically.

We live under institutionalised bully systems that are hierarchically violent.

This afflicts us all.

This chronic stress is ubiquitous across our current social governance systems, and It's presence, it's dominance over our lives alters all our bio-markers for optimal biological human health as a species.

These systems are recent 'inventions'.. they can be undone, just as difficult as they were to create, and they have been, intolerably difficult processes, nonetheless they can be undone.

They are not, and never have been, inevitable.


Over the years, much of the natural behaviour of children has been pathologised.

In order to mask the political and psychological realities of the adult social world, there has been a trend of reframing any behaviour of children that is deemed 'difficult', as a medicalised behavioural issue, a matter of medicine.

Bored to distraction becomes a ‘symptom’ of something ‘wrong’ with the child or the child’s bio-chemistry.

Which is quite useful in terms of how indoctrination forms the core of any enforced social cohesion.

The stress of being subjected to the rigours of indoctrination is chronic, and it manifests over time in subtle and not so subtle behaviours. People break because they are broken by something. The powerlessness of a misunderstood child is a deep well of pain and fear, confusion and anger. When that misunderstanding is institutionalised, all hell breaks loose.

Children in primary schools presenting with symptoms of chronic stress attributed to their schooling experience, matching a similar increase in symptoms among the frontline teaching staff.

The problem of bullying is ignored.

-

“The very notion of the domination of nature by man stems from the very real domination of human by human.”

Murray Bookchin.

I agree.

"Anyone who could look at humans and say that there's certain inevitability to some of the most unpalatable things we are doing, doesn't have a leg to stand on. "

Robert Zaposlky (on Joe Rogan show.)>>

Awesome show....


Cats, Virus's and Human behaviour

Toxoplasma gondii is an obligate intracellular, parasitic alveolate that causes the disease toxoplasmosis. Found worldwide, T. gondii is capable of infecting virtually all warm-blooded animals, but felids such as domestic cats are the only known definitive hosts in which the parasite can undergo sexual reproduction.

A an infected cat will birth many more Toxo spoor, transmitted in their poop.

One of Toxo's 'tricks' is to migrate, somehow, to the brain of something a cat would hunt and eat, a rodent, or a gazelle, and end up in a cats tummy. The trick is to disinhibit the rodents fear of felines. Which it does.

Zapolsky's point? Behaviour has many affectors, many elements to it's bases.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obmt_PkIfBE

But the larger point is this - there are many, many factors that come into play in terms of human behaviour, and of critical importance is the lived experience,the environment, more so than anything that is 'genetically' indicated.

Hierarchies of bullying are neither inevitable nor are they healthy.

Class is a symptom.
Imposed Hierarchy, aka Bullying, is the problem.

Suppressing the symptom does not guarantee a cure.


Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

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

A poem, and a song, 'Sometimes I Wish Santa', and 'Christmess'

I get it. I get the gathering of loved ones, for a week of respite from the world of work and debt and worry and political  hypocrisy.




One knows we need  more of this, the gathering of lovers, friends and family, and less work to destrory the habitat in order to make Billionaires.

All the work that goes into consumer Christmas, consumer Hanuka, consumer Eid, consumer Paddy's Day, consumer Thanksgiving, whateva 'festival' it is, all that time would be better used just loving and being. No need for gifts or extra food. Just the love.

And nothing I ever say about this is to be taken as dissing that desire for family, for relaxing, for community in any way, shape or form. That desire is gem.

Connection is human, shopping is institutional cultural behaviour.

So here are two pieces, a poem and a song. 


 Secret Santa.

Sometimes I wish Santa was secret,
that no-one knew his or her name...

more secret that the CIA

so secret that no one knew of him, or her.

Or it.

It is a thing. A concept. Santa was always dead. He's a zombie.

I wish....

that millions and millions of microplastic tyred miles and tons and gigatons of plastic
 toys and wrapping would simply vanish.

They won't.

The plastic just gets smaller and smaller and smaller until we are drinking it without seeing it.

A bit like Christmess shopping  - we do not see the poison, it is covered in glitter.

The roads are still clogged with plastic shedding metal boxes moving flesh for more shopping.

Patterns.

Faith in the myth appears to be sapping, replaced by open lies, yet we still play the game?

Mental and emotional wrapping, a clingy film of cultural appropriation and toxic mimicry.

Do it!

Unwrap yourself.

Do it now!

Feel the relief!

Imagine plastic
created to miraculously bio-degrade, by clear thinking..

designed to be
re-
up

-taken,

(sorry Liam Neeson and Luc Besson!)

"we will find you and we will re-use you!"

thus, cycling nurture into a myriad web of living, making
the world safe for all it's children... all their lives.

I will not let you shrinkwrap my Earth!

I wish.

Wish is one thing, what we do another,
Some things are assuredly worth the bother.

Christmas?

I can't be bothered.

I am immune.

Though not immune to the pollution, not immune to the poisoning of the habitat, and not immune to the love of chocolate.

--

Christmess

Here is a song about Christmess..

This song contains a question, a situation, a stance, and then a nod to John Lennon, as a mid point, and a resolution.

It's a song I really like, and I think it's best sung as a poignant ballad,a sing of long term hope and resilience, rather than a protest song... I think this version is pretty much spot on in that regard, the recording was pretty slapdash.



All my own 'work'.... several limitations apply, obvs.

I send warmest regards, and kindest feelings to all my readers, whether you agree with my presentations or not.

We are all human.

This is our life together.


Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

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


Traumopbobia? An understanding of the limitations of the status quo of institutionalised healing.

Gabor Mate, interviewed on the matter of a behavioural analysis of Trump, Clinton and the symptoms of adverse behaviour patterning they present.



At issue is one one hand the madness of individual leaders, on the other hand a question about the kind of society in which such behaviour is not only permitted, it is promoted.

It's understandable that we tend to not want to look at hurtful experiences, or their outcomes, when they are so great as to be heart breaking, unspeakable.

And yet, in a safe place, one can see through that reluctance, and integrate, and move on more or less unencumbered by unconscious behavioural issues, and thrive fully alive again. That safe place is honesty, empathy, compassion, care, understanding.... and detailed knowledge of what is happening within any traumatised person, so that one can hear and trust..

Gabior mate says this:

" In most medical schools, although this is changing somewhat, although rather slowly, but encouragingly, most students never hear a single lecture on trauma.

For example, a few days ago, I met a young woman who was an emergency room physician in Detroit, and she had graduated from medical school in Michigan. Although I knew the answer, I asked her how many lectures she had received in medical school about emotional trauma. Not only had she not received a single lecture, but she also said emotional trauma wasn’t even mentioned once in any of the classes that she took. This absence is astounding when you consider the fact that trauma is the basis of most mental illness and most addiction. Also, and this should be obvious, there are all kinds of secondary physical consequences as well.

We just endure it and parent within it as best we can.

What is known, well established and proven scientifically, clinically and in practice on how trauma afflicts individuals and communities is a vast evidence base. The information is not that recent either.. rather the understandings have been deepened by solid reseaerch, energetic questioning of previous assumptions made possible by ever finer observation technologies, where we can see endocrine molecular biology in action, in real time.

The fundamentals have been known for at least 50 years.

And these learnings are not being integrated into the mainstream health or education systems with the same energy as the drive to privatise those same public utilities.Often what happens is a flagship example of some new understanding is workshopped, then is trialled and is bureaucratised and institutionalised, and it's original intent vanishes in material terms.

Why?

This is madness, and permitting it's continuation is also madness.

David Smail places this in the material world of lived and embodied experience.

He writes :

"
Hardly any of the 'symptoms' of psychological distress may correctly be seen as medical matters. The so-called psychiatric 'disorders' are nothing to do with faulty biology, nor indeed are they the outcome of individual moral weakness or other personal failing. They are the creation of the social world in which we live, and that world is structured by power.

    Social power may be defined as the means of obtaining security or advantage, and it will be exercised within any given society in a variety of forms: coercive (force), economic (money power) and ideological (the control of meaning). Power is the dynamic which keeps the social world in motion. It may be used for good or for ill.

    One cannot hope to understand the phenomena of psychological distress, nor begin to think what can be done about them, without an analysis of how power is distributed and exercised within society. Such an understanding is the focus of this web-site.
"
   
There are three principal strands to the site: literature and links in a) psychology and psychiatry and b) more general socio-economic analysis and reference to Smail's own work - well worth a reading....

What he is talking about is the callousness of power.

It represents an utter indiference to human suffering wherever it threatens their power, at the institutional level. This is a criminal omission.

It is a policy that is throwing accountability into the wind.

It IS a policy to NOT integrate this learning, this evidence base.

Look at the dehumanised slanging matches that parade themselves as political and civil discourse!

The bullying persists.

What does that tell us about the social dynamics of power.?

What David Smail, Gabor Mate and many, many others are saying is 'enough, already!'

The UN case on the UK's abuse of the Human Rights of so many vulnerable people with needs speaks to the truth of my observation. Much else does too.

Here is Gabior Mate's article in full. Well worth a reading.


In this article Gabor Mate joins the dots on the issue of leaders, unresolved trauma, coping with chrionic stress and our own political choices, and reveals, with some compassion the variance between opinion and evidence.

The mainstream opinion is that addiction is about the individual, whereas the evidence suggests it is about the individual in that given setting, within that given society, where power is mediated through a hierarchy, a hierarchy that reserves the right to organised violence and oppresses large groups of people. Our society is the problem, addiction is a symptom. That is what traumaphobia enables.

The pretence that the addict is the problem.

We see patterns in any population. Look at any behaviour, any action and patterns will emerge as an aggregate.

Yet the individual is not the pattern, and the response to the individual has to be precisely tailored to that persons lived experience, that persons needs and dignity, and all that goes with it.

When policy is pattern based, and it does not care to take that essential detail into acount, only harm can flow. Obviously.

Schools teaching History ought to be teaching how trauma from mass war effects behaviour, and ought to be told the story from all sides, especially those who suffered, rather than those who led the charge to war. A simple exercise in the truth, and so much misinformation, mistrust and caricaturing of  'others' would would be avoided, and indeed prevented.




Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

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

Bullying. Political Callousness, it's just bullying. Stop it!


Rather clear blog piece by the wonderful Sue Jones, on the realities of Universal Credit, Nudge (bullying people into 'good behaviour'), The DWP, and in generakl, looking at Institutionalised Bullying as a core component of the UK Government, collaborating with mass media, and active on a massive scale.



We really do need writers and people to understand the way bullying functions within our syste,m, what it's effects are, and how to counter it, with being drawn into the adversarial combat ring, the colleseum of public discourse.

Bullying is a political behaviour, and rationalising bullying is a daily academic exercise of the system.

Here are two key paragraphs from Sue's piece.

"The introduction of Universal Credit was aimed at ‘incentivising’ people into work and to work longer hours, by ensuring that for those needing to claim welfare support, the experience was as uncomfortable as possible. Under the Conservatives, social security has been transformed into a system that meters out discipline, coercing citizens into compliance with state-defined economic outcomes, rather than serving as a national insurance-funded provision to meet people’s basic necessities, should they need it – which was the original intention behind the welfare state.

The introduction of ordeals and harsh conditionality in the process of welfare administration was designed to ensure that no-one felt secure or ‘entitled’ to claim support. The Conservatives believe provision for meeting people’s basic survival needs when they experience financial disadvantage somehow produces ‘perverse incentives’ that make being out of work a more favourable option than looking for work. "

and 



"much research – both historic and recent – has indicated that unless people are secure in being able to meet their basic needs – such as covering the cost for fundamental necessities such as food, fuel and shelter – then it is highly unlikely they will be able to fulfil higher level psychosocial needs, including looking for work. In short, absolute poverty limits human potential. It’s therefore simply not possible to punish people out of being poor. The problem of poverty is structural and material, it doesn’t arise because of some kind of moral, character or behavioural deficit on the part of poor people. "

"The introduction of ordeals and harsh conditionality in the process of welfare administration was designed to ensure that no-one felt secure or ‘entitled’ to claim support. The Conservatives believe provision for meeting people’s basic survival needs when they experience financial disadvantage somehow produces ‘perverse incentives’ that make being out of work a more favourable option than looking for work. "
~~


An utterly clear and simple exposure of the bullying perpetrated by those who hold Power over Governance and Economics. They ignore the evidence. They set it up to intimidate people back into work. They set it up to kick away the support systems. They set it up to be privatised social welfare. It harms ordinary people, and they just do not care a fig.




Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

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