Monthly Archives: January 2019

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: WHICH ONE OF YOU IN THE ENGLISH PARLIAMENT WILL TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE FIRST DEATH IN NORTHERN IRELAND.

29 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by in Brexit v EU - Negotiations., Brexit.

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(Five-minute read)

This is the real cost/consequences of ripping up the Good Friday agreement an international treaty not the 1 billion bribe to 10 DUP Unions.

We now have to watch with great concern as politicians in London consider policies that would upset the peaceful resolution reached by all sides two decades ago.

From the beginning, the EU has given virtually unqualified support to Ireland’s case that Brexit would bring about upheaval and disruption that threatened the Good Friday Agreement.

We now appear we have a situation that the UK wants a trading deal or no deal while inventing solutions “upstream.” 

That means having a negotiation with the UK which, under the terms of Article 50, is not allowed (because the negotiation is only about a Withdrawal deal).

This conveniently ignores the fact that the backstop was enshrined in a negotiated treaty.

It ignores the fact that the Irish protocol was not just about preserving cross-border trade and maintaining alignment on the likes of agrifood rules. It was about preserving the hearts-and-minds achievements of North-South cooperation, reconciliation and the maturing notion of an invisible, irrelevant border.

The Uk as a permanent member of the Security Council, says it abides by and respects the precepts of international law, so it is necessary that Ireland and the EU absolutely insist that the British government has these responsibilities, and these responsibilities do not evaporate in the event of no deal.

The United Kingdom is supposed to be a democratic state as such the Uk most acknowledge that if the UK wants to establish a trade relationship with the EU once the dust of no deal has settled, that the Irish border question will loom large, even as a precondition for talks.

While Brussels can anticipate – and talk about – the volumetrics of the Dover-Calais crossing and try to prepare accordingly on the EU side, the 500km Irish land border, with its 200 crossings, is an entirely different creature.

Take meat exports.

If the UK is a third country, under EU rules any consignments of beef, lamb or poultry would have to come with an EU certificate, from an EU-approved abbatoir, staffed by an EU-registered vet.

There is “no way” the EU can start insisting that Dublin close some of those crossings in the event of no deal. But how are you going to manage if you have a completely porous border with no infrastructure on it?

It’s a contradiction in terms.

We would end up in a situation where EU and Ireland and the UK would have to come together, and in order to honour the commitment to the people of Ireland that there be no hard border, the Uk would have to agree on full alignment on customs and regulations, so after a period of chaos we would perhaps end up where we are now, with a very similar deal.

If not the UK could be hobbled in its future trade deal ambitions if there remains an ambiguous situation in part of its territory. The same issue, it should be said, would be a problem for the EU as well if there was one part of its single market frontier was suspect.

The acrimony and recrimination from a no deal scenario blamed on the backstop will cast the Uk in such a poisonous light that it could take years for the issue to be revisited.

The EU, for now, remains fully supportive of Ireland’s position.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of no deal border ireland"

If not resolved there is nothing else for the EU to say other than goodbye.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: WE ALL KNOW WHY THE WORLD IS IN SUCH A MESS.

29 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by in Capitalism, European Union., Fourth Industrial Revolution., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Inequality., Life., Modern Day Democracy., Our Common Values., Politics., Populism., Post - truth politics., Reality., Social Media., The common good., The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., Wealth., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., WORLD POVERTY WHERE'S THE GLOBAL OUTRAGE

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(Ten-minute read)

Looking at the world right in front of our eyes it would be fair to say that it is currently falling asunder while we all turn inwards in the fourth technological revolution that is not just undermining world institutions but creating social inequality that is linked to racial inequality, gender inequality, and wealth inequality, not to mention world conflicts.

This is a ringing indictment of our global economic system and there is no justifying it.

So the question is as it has been for the last couple of decades is there enough being done to bring about a more equitable distribution of income on a global scale.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of inequality and poverty"

The answer is a resounding No. To the extent that it is now hard to imagine any kind of economic miracle that could shrink the worldwide income gap.

Where is global inequality going?

By 2030 the richest 1% will own two-thirds of global wealth.

World lottos, created new billionaire every two days.

The world’s 10 richest billionaires, according to Forbes, own $745 billion in combined wealth, a sum greater than the total goods and services most nations produce on an annual basis.

Between 2009 and 2017, the number of billionaires it took to equal the wealth of the world’s poorest 50 per cent fell from 380 to 42.

But more than 65 per cent of the world’s millionaires continue to reside in Europe or North America. 

WHAT IF ANYTHING CAN BE DONE ABOUT THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH – OR RATHER THE LACK OF IT.

It’s true that wealth inequality has always existed, no matter what the design of the society. Whether capitalist or communist, democratic, autocratic, or plutocratic, it will exist.

Yet many of the extremes we see today are avoidable.

Income disparities have become so pronounced poor health and poverty go hand-in-hand.

It is tempting to see the rising concentration of incomes as some sort of unstoppable force of nature, an economic inevitability driven by globalization and technology.

There is nothing inevitable about untrammelled inequality.

It is the result of an unlevel playing field, the direct consequence of certain government policies.

There is no longer any simple solution.

Nowhere has the distribution of the pie become more equitable.

Increasing the incomes of low-wage workers produces stronger beneficial economic ripple effects than boosting bonuses for the rich.

Excluding Quantitative easing, 97% of money has been created through lending. When somebody borrows money – even just by spending on a credit card – new money is created. No wonder our economy is so geared around finance.

Yet we penalise labour and subsidise both debt and the ownership of assets.

The question is, how fast can developing countries grow in the future? The answer, unfortunately, is not fast enough.

The richest 1 per cent of humanity reaped 27 per cent of the world’s income between 1980 and 2016. The bottom 50 per cent, by contrast, got only 12 per cent.

If you ever wanted to understand where climate change came from, why there are so many wars and the unrest we are witnessing the above figures say it all.

This will only get worse in the near future with the most powerful force driving the distribution of income on a worldwide scale will be raw economic growth:

Will poor countries make sufficient progress relative to their rich peers to bring more balance to the distribution of global income?

Or will rising inequality within countries dominate?

It depends on three forces: countries’ economic and population growth, as well as the evolution of inequality within them.

This is no longer true. The forth Industrial technological revolution is going to require more aggressive redistribution through taxes and transfers.

Why because social inequality is now very different from economic inequality, though the two are linked.

Areas of social inequality include access to voting rights, freedom of speech and assembly, the extent of property rights and access to education, health care, quality housing, travelling, transportation, vacationing and other social goods and services. In the quality of family and neighbourhood life, occupation, job satisfaction, and access to credit.

All of these areas are now been data mined for profit by you know who with us supplying the data scot free.

We all know that more inequality means less wealth for everyone. .. but are we seeing countries deciding to push vigorously back against inequality. No

Ballooning wealth inequality is a threat to society.

globalization has also upended the agricultural and manufacturing sectors in many countries.

“In every country, just about, the disproportionate economic clout of those at the top has provided these individuals with wildly disproportionate influence on their countries’ political life and on its media; on what policies are pursued and whose interests end up being ignored,” Obama said.

He is right!

Wealthy must contribute or be forced to the larger benefits of society.

Inequality is not inevitable – it is a political choice.

It represents social and political issues that no party or government can afford to neglect.

Foot Note: To us Europeans.

Europe, unfortunately, has not been at the forefront of this battle, at least not EU institutions.

On the contrary, it has for long remained complacent, as EU treaties require unanimity on tax matters and as the bloc includes countries such as Luxembourg that have benefitted massively from corporate and individual tax avoidance.

For decades, the EU was dominated by an unholy alliance among three types of governments: those that rejected the very principle of international tax coordination as an infringement on sovereignty; those that benefitted from tax competition; and those that used it as a way to overcome domestic reluctance to the reduction of redistribution.

For an institution that is supposed to be based on values and that hails the European social model, this is humbling, and the EU is now paying a political price for its long inertia.

Social inequality can also be established through discriminatory legislation.

Things have started to change.

Thanks to Yellow Jacks and Brexit we may witness only if we truly want it some improvements.

In the battle for fairer globalisation, with more and more Foodbanks and homeless people, it is far too early to claim victory.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of inequality and poverty"

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S. WE WHO ARE ALIVE TO DAY ON THE HUNDRED DAY OF REMEMBRANCE OF THE HOLOCAST.

27 Sunday Jan 2019

Posted by in Holocaust 100 remembrance day.

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There is no single wartime document that spells out how many people were murdered.

With the last living survivors the precise understanding of the Holocaust, estimates of human losses may change.

Succeeding generations have striven to understand how such a horrific event as the Holocaust could have taken place.

The scale of ignorance about the Holocaust is shocking. White nationalists march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.

One in three people know little or nothing about the Holocaust and an average of 5% said they had never heard of it.

In France, 20% of those aged 18-34 said they had never heard of the Holocaust; in Austria, the figure was 12%. A survey in the US last year found that 9% of millennials said they had not heard or did not think they had heard, of the Holocaust.

Number of Deaths

Group Number of Deaths
Jews 6 million
Soviet civilians around 7 million (including 1.3 Soviet Jewish civilians, who are included in the 6 million figure for Jews)
Soviet prisoners of war around 3 million (including about 50,000 Jewish soldiers)
Non-Jewish Polish civilians around 1.8 million (including between 50,000 and 100,000 members of the Polish elites)
Serb civilians (on the territory of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina) 312,000
People with disabilities living in institutions up to 250,000
Roma (Gypsies) 196,000–220,000
Jehovah’s Witnesses around 1,900
Repeat criminal offenders and so-called asocials at least 70,000
German political opponents and resistance activists in Axis-occupied territory undetermined
Homosexuals hundreds, possibly thousands (possibly also counted in part under the 70,000 repeat criminal offenders and so-called asocials noted above)

MAY THEY:  REST IN PEACE.

Our responsibility to honour their experience, to educate the uninitiated grows ever greater if we are to ensure that Jews can live as safely as all other European citizens.

It is no wonder we see the rise Right-wing Parties.

We still have a long way to go to become an equitable and fair Europe that lives up to the values that it proclaims to the rest of the world.

Map showing rise of populist and nationalist parties in Europe

 

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: HERE WHAT YOU CAN LOOK FORWARD TO UNDER WTO AGREEMENTS.

26 Saturday Jan 2019

Posted by in Brexit v EU - Negotiations., Brexit., Democracy, England EU Referendum IN or Out., European Union., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, World Trade Organisation, WTO.

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( A Twenty-minute read)

The UK is now stepping up plans to trade with the EU under WTO terms in the

the event of a no-deal Brexit.

The Brexiteers can’t see the huge damage that trading on WTO terms would

inflict on the UK economy.  I don’t blame them.

Because we all have a superficial understanding of the rules of WTO.

Because the UK’s terms at the WTO are enshrined in its membership of the

EU.

Why?

Well, you only have to look at what is involved to realise why very few if any understand the operations of WTO.

10-year interim agreement doesn't make sense

One of the WTO’s key rules is that countries should treat their trading partners equally. In WTO jargon this is called most-favoured-nation treatment (MFN) — favour one; favour all.

So what is the WTO:

It’s a system of trade agreements, which discipline governments’ trade policies so that international trade is not a free-for-all — the rule of law rather than the law of the jungle.It’s 164 member governments (the present total).

Decisions among those 164 member governments are by consensus, if anyone among them, big or small, cannot accept a decision, there’s no deal.

In fact, each country may have more than one opinion on a particular issue, but let’s not get into that here.

Some people think the WTO Secretariat is the WTO, but strictly speaking, that’s not correct. The Secretariat is a bureaucracy set up to help member governments operate the trading system.

It’s true that the head of the Secretariat is called the Director-General of the WTO, because the WTO is also an international organisation, like the United Nations, UN Environment Programme or the World Bank.

But the WTO DGs are still the servants of the members, a cause of frustration for some of them.

When the negotiators get down to specific subjects such as agriculture or fishing subsidies, those sessions are chaired by ambassadors or other delegates.

It is sufficient to say that Brexiteers misunderstand Britain’s past when it comes to trading under WTO.

They believe that Britain has a “special relationship” to world trade, this narrative ignores the prologue to the story, in which the British empire first accumulated wealth through gunboat diplomacy and enforced markets over the 18th and early 19th centuries.

Britain only embraced unilateral zero tariffs once its geopolitical power had been built up, and it would quickly depart from free trade and move towards protectionism at the start of the 20th century through the policy of imperial preference, encouraging trade within the empire.

All of this has long passed, with the result that the Brexiters are now unable to fathom the damage that relying on WTO terms to govern trade with our largest trading partner will do to the economy.

While other countries struggle to understand why any nation would willingly leave the world’s largest trading bloc to trade on WTO terms, we must understand their attraction to the myth of how in centuries past, Britain became rich through “global free trade”.

Even if it is obvious to the rest of the world it is not possible to ring up the WTO and say, “Hey, WTO! We’re negotiating a free trade agreement. It may take 10 years. While we’re doing that, we might violate some of your non-discrimination rules.”

The UK is currently a WTO member in its own right.

The issue is it does not have an independent schedule of concessions for the WTO – that’s the menu upon which Britain trades with the rest of the world.

So any future agreement has to contain details, including a plan and timetable for concluding the final agreement. This means that any formal WTO agreement between the UK and EU would obviously mean that the EU would have to be on board too.

In fact, there is no WTO definition of an interim agreement.  No country wants to go through all the above unnecessarily, which is why interim agreements are never notified to the WTO.

In theory, the transition customs union and the Protocol on Northern Ireland / Ireland (the “Backstop”) in the Withdrawal Agreement could qualify as an interim agreement.

The attached non-binding political declaration on the future relationship would not, since it’s not an agreement.

On the face of it, this is about protectionism versus access to markets (or to imports)

So what the problem?

The EU has around 100 tariff quotas:

Tariff quotas have emerged as part of the UK’s need to re-establish itself as a WTO member independent of the EU. In particular, the UK has to separate its own tariff quotas from those of the EU’s, and even if the UK wanted to take this complicated route, there’s little chance the EU would agree.

Under the WTO agreements, countries cannot normally discriminate between their trading partners.

Grant someone special favour (such as a lower customs duty rate for one of their products) and you have to do the same for all other WTO members.

Britain says it will stick to the EU’s tariff commitments, which are currently its own too, as an EU member.Seattle protests 1999 Seattle Municipal Archives, (CC BY 2.0)

Britain referendum on the left side was sold on many lies with one stating that the EU is non-democratic.

Is the WTO Democratic?

This is a difficult one:  The short answer is yes and no like the EU.

With the WTO if a country is a dictatorship, then I’m afraid the representative is probably not elected (allowing for multiple shades of grey over what those words actually mean)

In the WTO world no wants to interfere in that, so it just accepts whatever each country’s domestic system produces.

The WTO is definitely democratic among its governments.

The consensus rule means all members have equal say. Voting is available as a fallback, but so far members have rejected that option.

But does it represent the people?

At least as much as any other international organisation. Some governments are democratic; some are not.

One of the problems is that in the Brexit debate people are comparing the WTO with the European Union, which has an elected parliament as well as a council of member states meeting regularly at ministerial or head-of-government level.

The comparison is false.

The EU has a bureaucracy with executive power and a legislature which handles laws.

The WTO’s bureaucracy — the Secretariat — has no executive power.

The closest equivalent to legislation in the WTO is its trade agreements and they are negotiated by all the governments together.

Is it a good idea for the WTO to be run by directly elected representatives?

Only if you believe that directly elected politicians are better at negotiating some pretty technical and complicated trade agreements than our trade ministers and their officials. Or if you believe in world government.

Then we come to the question of Tariffs:

Tariffs remain a feature of trading under WTO rules and the EU charges a range of tariffs depending on the product or service.

For example, the tariff on food products and beverages imported into the EU is 21% of the value of a shipment. The UK’s fishing exports to the EU would be subject to a 9.6% tariff under WTO-only rules. Clothes manufactured in the UK and exported to the EU would be subject to an 11% tariff.

WTO rules on non-tariff barriers (things like regulations on product safety, rules of origin and quotas) are very limited and not recognised universally.

For example, they do not prevent the EU requiring certification for a whole host of goods and services that originate from outside the EU.

Things such as medicines, product and food safety standards in the UK are currently recognised as EU ones. But when the UK leaves the EU, UK manufacturers may need conformity assessments from the EU recognised body, which is a legal responsibility of an EU importer.

This would mean that UK exports would take longer to reach the EU markets and the UK products would be more expensive in the EU.

Under WTO-only rules, the UK will not be able to have a frictionless border with the EU.

Exporters would have to prove they meet all of the EU’s product standards and regulations, which will be costly and slow down business.

One suggestion has been that the UK scrap all tariffs and regulations for EU imports and continue to accept all products from the EU without checks. But, according to the WTO rules, the UK should extend this approach to products from all other WTO members (it has to treat everyone equally).

WTO rules barely cover trade in services, including financial services and transportation.

So, trading on only the WTO terms would mean no deal on air transport. Access to the EU single aviation market requires airline companies to have their headquarters and majority shareholdings in the EU so airlines would have to relocate.

There is also nothing in WTO rules that would allow UK-based banks to keep trading across the EU. This is why the government has said banks could set up subsidiaries in the EU.

Under WTO terms, the EU should treat the UK like any other country without providing any preferences and applying WTO tariffs – a big change from the zero tariffs that the UK has now.

FINALLY:  Where are we now.

The EU is the UK’s biggest trading partner.

In 2017, 44% of UK exports went to the EU and 53% of all UK imports came from the EU.

Both the UK and the EU filed documents in Geneva outlining the terms they will use to trade with the rest of the world after Brexit – and the two submissions are fundamentally different.

A major sticking point for them is the fact that the EU and the UK share a quota system that limits imports of sensitive goods like beef, lamb and sugar.

The UK cannot simply replicate these quotas and has proposed to split them with the EU based on historical trade flows.

All of this means that if and when any country object and ask for a better deal, Britain will be simultaneously be negotiating a trade deal with the EU and the WTO.

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT THE STATE OF OUR WORLD.

24 Thursday Jan 2019

Posted by in #whatif.com, Artificial Intelligence., Climate Change., Environment, European Union., Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Happiness., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Innovation., Life., Modern day life., Natural World Disasters, Our Common Values., Paris Climate Change Conference 2015, Politics., Populism., Post - truth politics., Reality., Refugees., Sustaniability, Technology, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The Refugees, The world to day., World Organisations.

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(Fifteen minutes read.)

After decades of globalisation, our political systems are becoming obsolete.

Half a century has been spent building the global systems on which we all now depend.

The question is-  are they here to stay or do we need a new world system in order for it to serve the human community.

If so it must be subordinated to an equally spectacular political infrastructure, which we have not even begun to conceive.Image associée

Without political innovation, global capital and technology will rule us without any kind of democratic consultation, as naturally and indubitably as the rising oceans because any alternative to the nation-state system is a utopian impossibility.

This is the main reason we will not be able to tackle Climate change.

We have to move away from the Nation by Nation Paris Climate Promises Agreement with its new rules to a Collective World undertaking not a state by state input as there is no ecosystem immune to another.

When we discuss “politics”, we refer to what goes on inside sovereign states; everything else is “foreign affairs” or “international relations” – even in this era of global financial and technological integration we are unable to act like one.

Exhaustion, hopelessness, the dwindling effectiveness of old ways: these are the themes of politics all across the world.

In each country, the tendency is to blame “our” history, “our” populists, “our” media, “our” institutions, “our” lousy politicians.

This is understandable since the organs of modern political consciousness – public education and mass media – emerged in the 19th century from a globe-conquering ideology of unique national destinies.

However, it is becoming clearer every day – the real delusion is the belief that things can carry on as they are.

Distracted by wars, the magnification of presidential powers and the corresponding abandonment of civil rights and the rule of law.

We may all use Google and Facebook, but political life, curiously, is made of separate stuff and keeps the antique faith of borders.

All countries are today embedded in the same system, which subjects them all to the same pressures: and it is these that are squeezing and warping national political life everywhere.

The current appeal of machismo as political style, the wall-building and xenophobia, the mythology and race theory, the fantastical promises of national restoration – these are not cures, but symptoms of what is slowly revealing itself to all: Nation states everywhere are in an advanced state of political and moral decay from which they cannot individually extricate themselves.

National political authority is in decline, and, since we do not know any other sort, it feels like the end of the world.

Why is this happening?

In brief, 20th-century political structures are drowning in a 21st-century ocean of deregulated finance, autonomous technology, religious militancy and great-power rivalry.

Meanwhile, the suppressed consequences of 20th-century recklessness in the once-colonised world are erupting, cracking nations into fragments and forcing populations into post-national solidarities: roving tribal militias, ethnic and religious sub-states and super-states.

Finally, the old superpowers’ demolition of old ideas of international society – ideas of the “society of nations” that were essential to the way the new world order was envisioned after 1918 – has turned the nation-state system into a lawless gangland; and this is now producing a nihilistic backlash from the ones who have been most terrorised and despoiled.

The result?

For increasing numbers of people, our nations and the system of which they are a part now appear unable to offer a plausible, viable future. This is particularly the case as they watch financial elites – and their wealth – increasingly escaping national allegiances altogether.

Today’s failure of national political authority, after all, derives in large part from the loss of control over money flows. At the most obvious level, money is being transferred out of national space altogether, into a booming “offshore” zone. These fleeing trillions undermine national communities in real and symbolic ways. They are a cause of national decay, but they are also a result: for nation states have lost their moral aura, which is one of the reasons tax evasion has become an accepted fundament of 21st-century commerce.

The unwillingness even to acknowledge this crisis, meanwhile, is appropriately captured by the contempt for refugees that now drives so much of politics in the rich world.

In my view, it is unjust to preserve the freedom to move capital out of a place and simultaneously forbid people from following.

The ensuing vacuum can suck in firepower from all over the world, destroying conditions for life and spewing shell-shocked refugees in every direction. Nothing advertises the crisis of our nation-state system so well, in fact, as its 65 million refugees – a “new normal” far greater than the “old emergency” (in 1945) of 40 million.

After so many decades of globalisation, economics and information have successfully grown beyond the authority of national governments.

Today, the distribution of planetary wealth and resources is largely uncontested by any political mechanism – thanks to fourth Industrial technological revolution platforms with their algorithms, profit for profit sake is alive and growing while the inequality gap grows and grows.

Since 1989, barely 5% of the world’s wars have taken place between states:

National breakdown, not foreign invasion, has caused the vast majority of the 9 million war deaths in that time. Climate change will enhance those 9 million deaths and perversely might save the planet.

Even if we wanted to restore what we once had, that moment is gone.

We need to find new conceptions of citizenship. Citizenship is itself the primordial kind of injustice in the world.

It functions as an extreme form of inherited property and, like other systems in which inherited privilege is overwhelmingly determinant, it arouses little allegiance in those who inherit nothing.

97% of citizenship is inherited, which means that the essential horizons of life on this planet are already determined at birth.

National governments themselves need to be subjected to a superior tier of authority:  Oppressed national minorities must be given a legal mechanism to appeal over the heads of their own governments.

Nations must be nested in a stack of other stable, democratic structures – some smaller, some larger than they – so that turmoil at the national level does not lead to total breakdown.

The EU is the major experiment in this direction, and it is significant that the continent that invented the nation-state was also the first to move beyond it.

The EU has failed in many of its functions, principally because it has not established a truly democratic ethos. But the free movement has hugely democratised economic opportunity within the EU.

Finally.

If we as the custodians of the world are to address any of the major problems – Fresh Air, Freshwater, Clean Energy, Soil erosion, to name but a few and are unable to act as one we must put financial rewards in the path of those who do so.

Without this, our political infrastructure will continue to become more and more superfluous to actual material life.

In the process, we must also think more seriously about global redistribution: not aid, which is exceptional, but the systematic transfer of wealth from rich to poor for the improved security of all, as happens in national societies.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of the state of the world"

We’re all responsible for the state of the world.

Creating this sense of ownership, connection, empathy and compassion should not be left to chance, but should be bred into all of us through the education system and how we raise our children.

In a landmark climate report last year, the United Nations last year called for “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.” It warned the world has only 12 years to avert a climate disaster.

“The enormity of the problem has only just dawned on quite a lot of people … Unless we sort ourselves out in the next decade or so we are dooming our children and our grandchildren to an appalling future.” David Attenborough.

All human comments appreciated. All abuse and like clicks chucked in the bin.

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASKS: HOW LOW WILL ENGLAND STOOP- PAY TO STAY.

21 Monday Jan 2019

Posted by in Brexit v EU - Negotiations., Brexit., Uncategorized

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(Four-minute read)

You need to note this moment in your history.

This moment when your gov’t asked EU families to pay £65 for those over 16 and £32.50 for those under 16 to stay in the UK.

“Brexitland”, is becoming really a place that I could indeed picture as a country in between Wonderland and Neverland for the absence of grown-ups.

At some point, they could live in an independent Scotland or in two Irelands reunited, both being full members of the European Union. But unfortunately, these potential solutions do not appear feasible or realistic in the short term.

Meanwhile, Brexitland and its blue-passport Brexiters will be the shame of Europe, of humanism, of its values, of its project, of its spirit, of its dream and of its fulfilments.

One more lie of the Leave campaign, which had promised that “There will we no change for EU citizens already lawfully resident in the UK. EU citizens will automatically be granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK and will be treated no less favourably than they are at present.”

Not content with depriving their own British citizens of their rights as European citizens, not content with ignoring the vote of two nations (Northern Ireland and Scotland), not content with their incapacity of providing the EU citizens living in the UK with anything but uncertainty and fear about their own future, the British government has reached a new stage in indecency.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of eu citizens in the uk"

If you ever wanted to influence people and make friends this is the way to go about it. 

Around 3 million EU citizens currently living legally in the UK why not force them to pay to stay. 

To continue living in a country which has become their home. In which you contributed so much to over decades.

They “elegantly” called it the “EU Settlement Scheme”.

Tell me who would want to trade with a country that charges £32.50 for kids that are born in it to stay, based purely on the ethnicity of the parents.

The word apartheid means “apartness”

After The “Boer War leaders Louis Botha, Jan Smuts and J.B.M. Hertzog introduced Apartheid to South Africa.

In the system, the people of South Africa were divided by their race and the races were forced to live apart from each other.

Across the world, racism is influenced by the idea that one race must be superior to another.

Numerous laws were passed in the creation of the apartheid state.

Here are a few of the pillars on which it rested:

Population Registration Act, 1950.

This Act demanded that people be registered according to their racial group.

This meant that the Department of Home affairs would have a record of people according to whether they were white, coloured, black, Indian or Asian. People would then be treated differently according to their population group, and so this law formed the basis of apartheid.

Resistance to apartheid came from all circles, and not only, as is often presumed, from those who suffered the negative effects of discrimination.

EU nationals will have until 30 June 2021 to confirm their status.

I personally have had enough of their idiocy, bad faith, cowardice, and even xenophobia and racism.

Giving up any attempt to stop Brexit (or at least to avoid a no-deal) to let them keep running straight into the wall they’ve built themselves would be tempting, if it had no consequences on EU citizens and British Remainers.

The past two years and a half have been disheartening, but I still hope that Europe will build enough bridges to counter this wall. And I hope that the calls that EU citizens living in the UK will remain protected and welcome will eventually come to be.

But for such a referendum to happen, the British government should be brave, clever and lucid enough to hold it.

We were wrong to hope that EU citizens’ established rights would eventually be protected.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "who introduced apartheid system in south africa"

Shame on you for any status. Nelson Mandela will be moaning in his grave.

My advice to fellow EU citizens living in England is to offer themselves for arrest, to have your rights back and to be treated decently.

Applications will cost £65 and be half that cost for children under 16. EU citizens and their family members to obtain UK immigration status.

Update:

Just announced. You can stay for free.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S : IS BREXIT SHOWING UP A DECREPIT POLITICAL SYSTEM IN ENGLAND.

20 Sunday Jan 2019

Posted by in Brexit v EU - Negotiations., Brexit.

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(Twenty-minute read)

Without a written constitution Britain can only understand itself through the prism of the royal family and this will become more and more apparent if there is a no deal Brexit.

For better or worse I am sure long after Brexit there will be many a written appraisals both false and otherwise as to why it happened in the first place.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "picture voting poll"

The whole process is now boiling down to what value or power does a vote have in a country with a constitutional monarchy and a parliament in a system of first past the post which suppresses the true majority vote.   

Therefore the term “the government” can be used to refer to all politicians who have been appointed by the monarch. 

That means it is a country governed by a king or a queen who accepts the advice of a parliamentary and democracy which has been elected by the people.

All members of the government belong to the same political party. They are  collective responsibility. (That is, every member of the government, however junior, shares the responsibility for every policy made by the government.)

The Queen appears to have a great deal of power, in reality, she has very little.

The Prime Minister, on the other hand, appears not to have much power but in reality has a very great deal indeed.

But this is not quite true. 

The position of a British Prime Minister (PM) is in direct contrast to that of the monarch.

For the evidence of written law only, the Queen has almost absolute power, and it all seems very undemocratic.

Every autumn, at the state opening of Parliament, Elizabeth II, who became Queen in 1952, makes a speech. In it, she says what “my government” intends to do in the coming year. And indeed, it is her government – not the people’s. 

As far as the law is concerned, she can choose anybody she likes to run the government for her. 

If she gets fed up with her ministers, she can just dismiss them they are all “servants of the Crown”.

Furthermore, nothing the parliament has decided can become law until she has agreed to it.

The Queen also has a special relationship with the Prime Minister, retaining the right to appoint and also meeting with him or her on a regular basis.

There are often mentioned three roles of the monarch.

First, the monarch is the personal embodiment of the government of the country. This means that people can be as critical as they like about the real government, and can argue that it should be thrown out, without being accused of being unpatriotic.

Second, it is argued that the monarch could act as a final check on a government that was becoming dictatorial.

Third, the monarch has to play a very practical role as being a figurehead and representing the country.

The Prime Minister will talk about “requesting” a dissolution of Parliament when he or she wants to hold an election, but it would be normally impossible for the monarch to refuse this “request”.

So, in reality, the Queen cannot actually stop the government from going ahead with any of its politics.

The sovereign reigns but does not rule. 

Britain is almost alone among modern states in that it does not have ‘a written constitution’.

There are rules, regulations, principles and procedures for the running of the country – but there is no formal document that could be called the Constitution of the United Kingdom or which can be appealed to as the highest law of the land.

However, because Social media power is moving more and more to the people these rules are now changing. 

Keeping the above in mind a popular claim by many supporters of the Leave campaign is that the EU is run by ‘unelected bureaucrats’.

Part of the misunderstanding about the power of the Commission perhaps stems from a comparison with the British system of government.

How much truth is there behind that claim?

This claim mainly refers to the EU Commission: the EU’s executive body.

It is true that the Commission President and the individual Commissioners are not directly elected by the peoples of Europe. So, in that sense, we cannot “throw the scoundrels out”.

It is also true that under the provisions of the EU treaty, the Commission has the sole right to propose EU legislation, which, if passed, is then binding on all the EU member states and the citizens of these member states.

The truth is that the Commission can only propose EU laws in areas where the UK government and the House of Commons have allowed it to do so.

Unlike the British government, which commands a majority in the House of Commons, the Commission does not command an in-built majority in the EU Council or the European Parliament, and so has to build a coalition issue-by-issue. This puts the Commission in a much weaker position in the EU system than the British government in the UK system.

Finally, once invested, the Commission as a whole can be removed by a two-thirds ‘censure vote’ in the European Parliament.

Also, ‘proposing’ is not the same as ‘deciding’.

A Commission proposal only becomes law if it is approved by both a qualified majority in the EU Council (unanimity in many sensitive areas) and a simple majority in the European Parliament.

The problem in Britain is that the Commission President does not feel very democratic. But in many ways, the way the Commission is now chosen is similar to the way the UK government is formed.

Neither the British Prime Minister nor the British cabinet is ‘directly elected’.

Formally, in House of Commons elections, they do not vote on the choice for the Prime Minister, but rather vote for individual MPs from different parties.

Then, by convention, the Queen chooses the leader of the largest party in the House of Commons to form a government.

This is rather like the European Council choosing the candidate of the political group with the most seats in the European Parliament to become the Commission President.

Then, after the Prime Minister is chosen, he or she is free to choose his or her cabinet ministers. There are no hearings of individual ministerial nominees before committees of the House of Commons, and there is no formal investiture vote in the government as a whole. From this perspective, the Commissioners and the Commission are more scrutinised and more accountable than British cabinet ministers.

None of the main British parties are in the EPP (the Conservatives left the EPP in 2009), and so British voters were not able to vote for Juncker (although they could vote against him).  But, we can hardly blame the EU for the Conservatives leaving the EPP or for our media failing to cover the Commission President election campaign!

There was also very little media coverage in the UK of the campaigns between the various candidates for the Commission President, so few British people understand how the process worked (unlike in some other member states).

So, it is easy to claim that the EU is run by ‘unelected bureaucrats’, but the reality is quite a long way from that. Although, having said that, I would be one of the first to acknowledge that the EU does not feel as democratic as it could or should be.

This is perhaps more to do with the stage of development of the EU than because of the procedures that are now in place for choosing and removing the Commission, which are far more ‘democratic’ than they were 5 or 10 years ago.

So at the risk of repeating the previous post on the subject of Brexit here is in my view the main contributions.

Most if not all reasons for Brexit can be put down to social changes over the past 50 years.

The loss of empire and of world power status, a weaker sense of collective British identity (devolution as both cause and consequence), an increase in immigration, first from the newer Commonwealth countries and now from new EU states, and the growth of multiculturalism and changes in the balance of the population ( the decline of manual work, the increase in the number of women in the workforce and rising numbers of the elderly) and the Forth Industrial technological revolution exposing the have and have nots.

Resulting in Society becoming more individualistic split between the south-east versus the rest divide in terms of economic wealth and opportunity.

London has gained greatly from the globalising economy, while the north remains heavily dependent on public spending on jobs and economic activity.

Can the mess be resolved without Constitutional changes, without a Backstop, without the Union breaking up, without a general election, without a peoples vote?

It would be foolish for the government to marginalise groups and to pursue a top-down style of policy-making when faced with the truly huge task of deciding what to do about the massive amount of EU legislation that will remain in place on day one of Brexit, albeit as British law.

Interest groups, above all, know best which EU laws are working well, which are not, and which are no longer needed.

Thus, Brexit should usher in a return to governance, a return to the European Union to engage in reforms that are needed.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "picture voting poll"

To honour the Good Friday agreement an international treaty. 

There are no large trading blocks lining up to do trade deals. 

There is no such thing as a Sovereign nation in the Forth industrial revolution.  

Just think of what else you could have done with all that time and money, including the £4bn you are spending to guard against the entirely avoidable and self-inflicted calamity of a no-deal crash-out from the EU.

Surely you can already see that Brexit is doing the opposite from being Great Britain, to turning your gaze ever more inward, shrinking your horizons – and yourselves.

It remains disturbing to see the media held captive by Brexit.

If news bulletins, front pages and social media feeds were your guides, you’d think climate change had gone away, quietly resolved while we were obsessing over the Northern Ireland backstop. Not so. It barely made a ripple, but last week came word that the oceans are warming at a rate some 40% faster than previously understood.

How many episodes of this show are there going to be before you realize the capabilities of your decrepit political system?

In reality, it is of course very different. if no action is taken to change the timing of withdrawal under Article 50, Britain will go its Brexit way with no deal.

God save the Queen.

All human comments appreciated. All abuse and like clicks chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: WE NEED MORE DREAMS THAN MEMORIES .

18 Friday Jan 2019

Posted by in #whatif.com, Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Education, Environment, Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Google, Google Knowledge., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Innovation., Life., Natural World Disasters, Our Common Values., Reality., Sustaniability, Technology, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Politics

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(Six-minute read)

Why?

As we journey toward the undiscovered country called the future we are witnessing a world of terror, violence, greed, exploitation, pollution, and algorithm annihilation wreaking havoc in our world.

It’s no wonder in the face of such horror. that most of us feel minuscule and completely powerless.

But the world is glittering with possibility which can’t afford to wait for a generational change.

We’re clearly at a moment of great global transition and transformation as we attempt to help solve massive emerging issues we need more dreams than memories.

Help the world and the world will help you back.

In addition to globalization, technology, social changes and government policies that have all been instrumental in determining who benefits and who loses out from global economic integration in past decades we now have giants that deal in data, the oil of the digital era.

These titans—Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft—look unstoppable.

We can dream of a world rich enough to pay everyone a living wage as a birthright, of thriving human creativity, and of thrilling new ways for humans to build on and collaborate with machine intelligence but are we fooling ourselves.

There are no quick answers.

It may take a revolution in education; we may even need to rethink capitalism itself.

Certainly, we’ll need ideas to address the growing inequality that is driving so much of the anger we see in the world.

It seems clear now that millions of people around the world are rejecting a global order that they feel was foisted on them and has given them nothing.

We need to give a platform to dreamers and reformers who are thinking outside the box as the current system is in danger of breaking.

One in every nine people goes to bed hungry each night.

Up to one-third of the food produced around the world is never consumed.

Every 10 seconds, a child dies from hunger.

We are witnessing a massive shift of humanity unlike any seen before.

Today more than 68 million people around the world are displaced from their homes.

If you compare your size to the size of the universe, you almost don’t exist.Image associée

As Martin Luther King, Jr said, “We must learn to live together as brothers, or perish together as fools.”

What happens to society when the focus of culture is on the self and its icon, the “selfie”?

And what happens to morality when the mantra is no longer “We’re all in this together”, but rather “I’m free to be myself”?

What happens when Google filters and Facebook friends divide us into non-communicating sects of the like-minded?

What could possibly be gained from ignoring the global view, that, the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere is the sole reason that humankind’s ecological footprint is larger than Earth itself?

I would like people not to be satisfied with the current ecological footprint and try to come up with measures that really track the water, soil and all the ways we degrade ecosystems in a way that would become management metrics.

The dream of one world is not threatening, but beautiful.

Once one person does the “impossible”, thousands of people follow only because their mind starts believing it’s possible.

It means you must take the time to:

a) Define your values and guiding principles.

b) Understand your nature and individuality.

Define the experiences you want to have in life. Then, do everything you can to realize those experiences.

Try and leave this world a little better than you found it.

We must start extending our sense of shared identity to all of humanity.

We’re battling here for the survival of an idea on which the world’s future depends, the idea of humanity as one connected family.

But how do we get there?

First and foremost we must start breaking the cycle of poverty.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "what does the world need more than anything"

So let’s seek out those with compelling ideas to offer here other than like clicks and abuse.

The key may be to stop framing this dream as a top-down system driven by faceless global elites who tell us all what to do, but instead as a flourishing of human possibility that’s happening right here on the ground.

Ideas can’t be contained by borders.

Most countries are in ecological deficit.

We have technologies that can inflict global harm, our very survival now depends on it.

The potential and pitfalls for digital identity must be addressed. Holding the earth

All comments appreciated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. WHO CAUSED BREXIT?

17 Thursday Jan 2019

Posted by in Brexit v EU - Negotiations., Brexit.

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(Four-minute read)

NO MATTER WHAT THE END RESULT IS OF ALL THE VERBAL IN ENGLAND SURROUNDING THE RESULT OF THE IN OUR OUT REFERENDUM. THE EUROPEAN UNION CANNOT BE BLAMED FOR WHAT IS TO ARRIVE.

BACKSTOP OR NOT ENGLAND IS IN AN UNPRECEDENTED CONSTITUTIONAL CRISES WHOSE ROOTS  CAN BE FIRMLY PLACED ON THREE LADIES AND ONE WANKER.

Most people’s decision on how they would vote was made up years before the referendum was even called.

Mrs M Thatcher set the background:

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "mrs mary thatcher"

The weighing of her legacy divided the country deeply.

“I have only one thing to say: you turn if you want to; the Lady’s not for turning.

She destroyed Britain’s manufacturing industry and her policies led to mass unemployment.

The destruction of community and way of life was total. – and still does.

Mrs T May the foreground:

British Prime Minister Theresa May at Downing Street on January 16th.

Even with bribing the Unionist her extreme political weakness is underlined over the last two days.

Mrs A Foster: the playground:

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "mrs foster dup"Strangely, at about £15 a person across the UK the ten Unionists Northern Ireland, rebelled the previous day by voting against the Brexit agreement.

They have returned to the ranks, which make up the majority but at what cost?

Then Mr Farage:  Résultat de recherche d'images pour "Mr ukip"Résultat de recherche d'images pour "Mr ukip"

Love him or loathe him he fronted a racist Party financed by Mr Banks.

“We’ve not just changed British history. I’m sure that the EU project itself will now come tumbling down.  I would like to think and hope that right across the globe what we’ve done is to prove that people power can beat the establishment.

Then Fake News:

The right to quality information which is a cornerstone of our democracies.

We need to find a balanced approach between the freedom of expression, media pluralism and a citizens’ right to access diverse and reliable information. All the relevant players like online platforms or news media should play a part in the solution.

So should the people vote again.?

Could the EU survive another member leaving after Brexit?

The Eu needs to change its shift dramatically.

I don’t want to live in a corporate trade deal dominated Europe, I want an EU that respects and supports the differences between us and within our societies.

All human comments appreciated. All abuse and like clicks chucked in the bin.

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: WHAT NEEDS TO CHANGE FOR DEMOCRACY IN THIS AGE OF TECHNOLOGY.

15 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by in Democracy

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(Three-minute read)

These days how is the will of the people manifested and defined? Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of vote"

There are two sides to this argument.

Firstly, social movements and groups devoted to progressive issues and social change use technology to improve democracy.

The other side of the argument is that new advances in technology can be
distinguished from the media that preceded it as it is relatively cheap, easy to use, difficult to control and interactive.

Technology does not only divide the haves and the have-nots but also is important to facilitate democratic transitions by creating a more open political culture.

As a result, there is the problem re-striking a balance between state, market and societal control of IT, where the state and society emphasise the equality of access, while the market emphasises efficient development of technology and production.

As the capabilities of technology increase, so does our dependency on it.

Nowadays, we find yourself looking at our iPhone almost every ten minutes.

So what leverage does technology have on our democratic proceeds or institutions?

Without physical human interaction, we fall subject to potentially losing our sense of real connection. We’ll become desensitized, numb, and oblivious to the social cues that we would have witnessed had only the conversation been made in-person.

Is the democratic system more to do with how the app works?

Is digital technology leading us into a new dark age?

Will it be thanks to technology, politicians are no longer essential to

the formation of organized society?

Look at initiatives like Democracy. Earth, Asgardia, and Artisanopolis are envisioning new forms of society in which the people govern themselves.

These societies could have economies that are powered by Bitcoin, governing documents that are drafted through peer-to-peer networks, and decisions that are recorded via blockchains. They needn’t apply declarations written centuries ago to today’s unique landscape — they can start from the ground up.

These are the technology incubator of a new democracy.

But are technology and democracy compatible?

 Illustrative: A hacker in action. (BeeBright; iStock by Getty Images)

Social media manipulation of elections.

Politics has become far more emotional, as a result of our total

immersion in information at the cost of a more rational view of things.

Voter data mining, online polling, electronic voting booths, and, of course, twitter, facebook and emails.

All these communications have left the door wide open for misinformation to seep into the public consciousness, clouding what was already complicated and leaving many unsure of where to look for the truth…or what the truth even looks like.

Brexit being the current prime example, which is turning into a power struggle camouflaged in democracy called the will of the people.   

The average citizen will need to work even harder to separate fact from fiction on the internet over the course of the next four months of Brexit.

“We the People” online petition.  People no longer need to wait for an issue to bubble over before taking action.

It’s probably too early to reach a conclusion about the correlation between
technology and democracy but it is evident that technology can shape challenges in the political, social, military and economic environment of the political system.

In essence, if democracy is impacted by technology by way of a systematic
the application of knowledge to resources to produce goods and services, it will enhance stability and equality.

Therefore, it can shape challenges in the environment of a democratic political system.

There is no doubting as technology advances, humans will increasingly delegate responsibility to intelligent machines able to make their own decisions.

This entails considering various ways of adjusting the organisational structures that are relevant for economic productivity, political participation and cultural diversity in line with preferred social scenarios; and the cultural.

As far as technology is concerned, any definitive claim whether it is utopian or a Luddite when it comes to democracy can only succumb to technological
determinism.

Finally, the technology could in future greatly benefit society if its advancement is harmonious with national democratic imperatives and if it is intended to serve the needs of the people.

The goal for the future will be to somehow bridge the theoretical possibilities
with technological capability.

This involves creating information technologies that reduce the threat and
vulnerabilities and encourage environmentally sustainable applications of IT.

The most obvious problem is that information and communication technology companies will have little incentive to develop new products to meet the needs of people who cannot use or afford their existing services.

Thankfully, we have no shortage of ways to discuss the topic.

All human comments appreciated. All abuse and like clicks chucked in the bin.