Category Archives: England.

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S. THEY THE TORIES ARE LAUGHING ALL THE WAY TO THE BANK.

23 Sunday Oct 2022

Posted by in 2022: The year we need to change., Brexit., England departure from the EU., England in five years., England's future., ENGLAND'S SNAP ELECTION, England., Inflation., The cost of the Tories., Uncategorized

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(Seven minute read)

On a annual salary of £115,000  and expenses Liz Trust lasted less than fifty days in office.

She can walk away with £19,000 in severance pay plus her expenses.

Tony Blair and John Major also received the annual salary of £115,000 pounds.

Gordon Brown £114, 800. David Cameron £111,400.

Theresa May a sitting MP can claim a parliament staffing budget of £35,000 on top of the annual  salary.

So what does it all cost?

The Gravy House of the Lords.

800 members/ peer costing £30,000 per member at a total cost of around £117.4 million.

They are entitled to £323 pounds a day just for signing into the Chamber.

Houses Of Parliament Wallpapers - Wallpaper Cave

The Poor House the Common’s.

The total spend of members of parliament was £132.5 million in the 2020-21.

The average cost of an MP was £203,880 in 2020-21, a 29.2 per cent increase.

The Royal House. Buckingham Palace.

It cost the taxpayer a mire £103 million ( 2021-22)

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The Tories are throwing away any right to claim that they are the careful custodians of the public’s money.

The inglorious history of their follies are crying out with horror at the cost, crying with laughter at the sheer stupidity of so many bad decisions. They are now making a very strong bid to be the most blunder-prone regime of the modern era.

The net cost of the bank bailouts—once you factor in money recouped by the government—was £27 billion. Separate figures from the National Audit Office (NAO) in 2018 estimated the sum spent to stabilise the banks to be £133 billion.

Most of the trade deals with non-EU countries that the UK has signed have been small in their economic effect, and have merely been “rolled over” from identical ones when we were an EU member.

The impression was that there would be no downside. We would thrive outside Europe’s bureaucracy which was strangling our companies with red tape. The huge benefits of the single market – trading freely across borders, with common standards – were never highlighted.

Two new carriers that has attracted criticism over its £6.2bn cost more than £2bn over the original estimate.

The latest estimate of the cost of HS2 has spiralled to between £72bn and £98bn.

Then came the dispute over the Northern Ireland protocol, an issue that so infuriated the EU it has refused to ratify Britain’s associate membership of the €95bn scheme.

The final cost of the Tories is that 70% of economic turnover was international before Brexit. It went from 70% to 50% to 30%,  it would be twice the size if it were not for Brexit.

Then came Covid which compounded Brexit’s disruption to British government, while Boris Johnson’s cavalier approach to leadership and to constitutional norms puts stresses and strains on all of its institutions. The books on the history of Covid-19 will show the ways in which money was blown in such spectacular style. It was a vast pyrotechnic display of borrowed moola such as we’ll surely never see repeated. Much of it, in the UK, as with other countries, was spent without apparent constraint.

Furlough – or the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, to give it a name – cost a staggering £70bn.

The fiscal year 2020-21 was the first one in which government spending in the UK surpassed a trillion pounds, reaching £1096bn. That was a one-year increase of 23.5%.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, said:

“Economic growth isn’t some academic term with no connection to the real world. It means more jobs, higher pay and more money to fund public services, like schools and the NHS.

Leave the Tories in power and the results will speak for themselves.

The north-south divide has now least 85 years.

The UK has higher levels of regional inequality than any other large wealthy country.

Levelling up like Boris it is absolutely miles away. It would cost  hundreds of billions of pounds over decades if done properly. its

Nothing more than rhetoric in a country up to its neck in Debt.

The cost of Boris Johnson’s ‘levelling up’: £2tn.

A drop in the ocean of inflation.

Boris Johnson said at the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre in Coventry that regional inequalities are an ‘outrage’

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S. BRITISH DEMOCRACY IS AILING. 

21 Friday Oct 2022

Posted by in England in five years., England's future., England., English General Election., Uncategorized

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( Three minute read)

Liz Truss was just the last in line. For the past dozen years, each leader has left the country poorer, weaker, and more divided than the last.

In her departure, Truss offered little defence and no apology, confirming her unfitness for office. The fact that she got there at all only reveals the smallness of the regime that awarded her the role.

So now Britain is once again looking for a new prime minister. Johnson is said to be flying home from the Caribbean to enter the fray, dreaming of a Churchillian redemption. The two men who declared him unfit for office—Rishi Sunak and Michael Gove—now also have another shot at power.

The genesis of Britain’s misfortunes could be dated to 1929, when the world economy imploded and a monstrous regime of little men took over in London.

The next prime minister, whoever that may be, will face an extraordinary set of challenges largely of their Conservative Party’s own making.

But when did this era of the small people begin? What was its genesis?

Calamities are always seeded by events that came before.

Some will argue it was the 2016 vote for Brexit, but that lets off the hook those who legislated for it without any plan to enact it.

Major’s European compromise left Britain inside the European Union but outside its single currency.

Tony Blair came to power. Blair proved unable to change Major’s compromise and pursued instead a series of radical constitutional changes that slowly undermined the unity of the country he thought he was building.

Gordon Brown, Blair’s replacement, watched everything explode in the great financial crisis.

For the past 12 years, Britain has been led by a succession of Conservative prime ministers—each, like Russian dolls, somehow smaller than the last—who have contrived to leave the country in a worse state than it was when they took over. By the time Liz Truss assumed office last month, she evidently had no conception of the damage done by this period of Tory rule, how exposed Britain had become, how fragile, how vulnerable. Without Truss realizing it, Britain had become too weak to cope with a leader so small.

Britain is now permanently under the threat of breakup.

Cameron had to keep his promise of a referendum on Europe, lost, and resigned. As with the Scottish case, he had refused to countenance any preparations for the possibility of a winning Leave vote. Cameron left behind a country divided and a Parliament that did not want Brexit but was tasked with delivering it without any idea how. By any estimation, it was a catastrophic miscarriage of statecraft.

Brexit became Theresa May’s. May was a serious, qualified, thoughtful Conservative who had opposed Brexit but now assumed responsibility for it. But she was simply not up to the job. Being prime minister requires not just diligence and seriousness but political acumen and an ability to lead. She had too little of either.

In 2019, Boris Johnson finally grabbed the long-sought crown—only to find a way to lose it in disgrace three years later. Despite his brief tenure, Johnson remains one of the most influential—and notorious—figures in post-war British history. Without him, the country likely would not have voted for Brexit in the first place, let alone seen it pushed through Parliament.

Now, surely, it is time for the CONSERVIT party that enabled the guilty of today to heed advice:

In the name of God, go!

Diagnosing the problem is one thing, and finding a way to deal with it is another.

Misperceive the views of one’s rival  political identity is formed more by despising the other side than by any particular affinity for the views of one’s own party.

What is now evident beyond doubt is the need for a leader to acting on his beliefs, rather than talking about them to get out of schizophrenia of announcements while nothing moves at the level of the means.

The White Saviour Industrial Complex of London allows white people of privilege to brush aside systemic racism, injustice, and corruption in favour of individual acts of charity..

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S. THIS IS WHY ENGLAND IS IN SUCH A MESS.

21 Friday Oct 2022

Posted by in 2022: The year we need to change., British Culture., England in five years., England's future., ENGLAND'S SNAP ELECTION, England., English General Election., English parliamentary proceedings., Uncategorized

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It lack a culture of consensus, and has now lost the means of building and developing one.

Why?

Because it has a democracy that is managed by a narrow elite who for centuries have put power and wealth before its people.

The Brexit referendum and the increasing ideological polarisation in both main political parties are a sign of this.

Britain is about the only country in Europe with a primitive ‘first past the post’ electoral system rather than a proportional electoral system.

Why has this mess developed only now?

I am sure that few people in England are now really nostalgic for empire, although a great many don’t realise just what a hideous mess it often left behind.

Nationalism and sectarian politics feed on nostalgia like vampires feed on blood.

One outcome of the inability to compromise in Britain, has been the ‘austerity’ economics practised over the last eight years. More than anything else this is what is driving so many people into poverty (20% now below the official poverty line) It degraded health and education services, shutting museums and libraries, causing physical infrastructure to break up and much much more.

Britain does not have a constitution.

It is therefore ruled by antiquated institutions such a the Crown.

The set of laws, rules and yes, that great British favourite, the ‘Gentleman’s Agreement’, that make up what amounts to a constitution has evolved organically over time, but has not developed to reflect a world driven by theological data or a country that is populated by immigration on low wages and benefits.

The system does not cope when politicians that are intransigent and ideological as they are now.

The system is now essentially ‘presidential’, i.e. the Prime Minister has the power and Members of Parliament follow the party line.

There is no expectation that Parliament takes the initiative, so when they have done, as now, there are no rules to call a general election, the ship of state is left drifting and rudderless without the voice of the people been heard, so the elite consensus that managed the binary oppositions starts to fall apart.

Its a country where anyone can call themselves a builder and start selling themselves as such, there are no identity cards so the government does not know who the **** we are.

There is no list of citizens. In fact the citizens are not really citizens at all they are surfs.

There is an electoral register (i.e. who can vote), passports (but if you didn’t travel you wouldn’t have one) and National Insurance numbers, which are about working and tax payments. There has never been a register of British citizens as such so in fact, government does not (or did not) really know who had a right to be here, and who didn’t.

Every country and ethnic identity is racist, that’s part of the human condition, but what is odd about a lot of English racism is that it is not directed so much at black or brown people but at other Europeans .

The ‘wogs begin at Calais’ attitudes, send them to Rwanda.

The EU is seen as a Franco-German plot, targeting Britain.

History shows that It made its wealth on the back of an navy that circumnavigated oceans and seas, which created an empire on the backs of slaves and sugar – a sad truth.

Who owns England?

Behind this simple question lies England’s oldest and best-kept secret.

It’s a secret that goes back to the Domesday Book – and an issue that goes to the heart of many of the biggest problems the country has – affordability of housing, unable to grow enough of its food, not much space left aside for nature. 

Rural landowners, meanwhile, are rewarded by the taxpayer for simply owning land through farm subsidies. The Common Agricultural Policy has paid landowners according to the area of land they farm, rather than the public goods they deliver, thereby propping up a system of intensive agriculture that has decimated wildlife and natural habitats.

For most of the 20th century, the aristocracy showed itself remarkably indifferent to the welfare of the nation, After democracy finally shunted aside hereditary lords, they found new means to protect their extravagant riches. For all the modern tales of noble poverty and leaking ancestral homes, their private wealth and influence remain phenomenal. 

The British aristocracy’s defining feature is not a noble aspiration to serve the common weal but a desperate desire for self-advancement. They endlessly reinforced their own status and enforced deference on others through ostentatiously exorbitant expenditure on palaces, clothing and jewellery. They laid down a strict set of rules for the rest of society, but lived by a different standard. Such is their sense of entitlement that they believed – and persuaded others to believe – that a hierarchical society with them placed firmly and unassailably at the top was the natural order of things.

The secret of their modern existence is their sheer invisibility.

According to a 2010 report for Country Life, a third of Britain’s land still belongs to the aristocracy.

The financial sector is hailed as the crowning glory of the UK economy. A massive financial sector on the tiny island is making a visible minority filthy rich but as it blooms, everything else withers.

The power of London finance is hurting Britain, to the tune of £4.5tn.

Many people in Britain, it is true, are ambivalent about all this. They rightly fret that the City is a global money-laundering paradise, harming other nations, but (whisper it quietly) they like the hot money and oligarchs it attracts to its shores. There is a trade-off, they think, between doing the right thing and preserving our prosperity.

Underpinning all this is the fallacy of composition, of a trickle down economy, whereby the fortunes of big businesses and big banks are conflated with the fortunes of our whole economy.

This is where the myth of great, finally dies.

As Liza Trust now knows economies, tax systems and cities are nothing like companies, and don’t compete like she might think – scrap TAX ON HIGHT EARNERS.

The finance curse of Quantize Easing shows that too much finance harms your economy, then pursuing more finance through the competitiveness agenda only makes things worse.

There is no trade-off WITH CREDITORS.

Blaming the problems on Brexit and the Ukraine war, or the price of energy, inflation, does not close foodbanks, or stop zero- hours contracts, or attract investment.

Rule of law, a healthy and educated workforce, good infrastructure, access to prosperous, thirsty markets, good inputs and supply chains and economic stability. All these require tax revenues.

The race does not stop when tax rates reach zero.

To prosper, Britain should increase its effective corporate tax rates, at least for financiers and large multinationals, plus a surcharge to cover the roaming members of the billionaire classes who won’t. 

By leaving the EU and joining the “competitive” global race England has not only been beggaring others – it has beggaring its selves, too.

In order not to be stuck in ugly race to the bottom, THE COUNTRY NOW NEEDS A MASSIVE RESET.

A good place to start to create a future of largely harmonious multi-cultural society, would be to abolish students debt and start educating its young for free.

I recently heard a Labour Politician advocate that England should create an sovereign wealth funds, Fund. With what? It’s too late now:

There is only one way forward simply step out of the race, unilaterally by appealing not just to national self-interest, by mobilise the biggest constituency of all its people and put finance back in its rightful place: Serving Britain’s people, not served by them.

Tragically we are watching a country of Plenty turning to poverty for the sake of short-term profit.

That last word, unilaterally, is key.

The land of the few.

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. WHO OWNS ENGLAND AND IS IT GOING DOWN THE PAN?

04 Sunday Sep 2022

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2022: The year we need to change., British Culture., Climate Change., England in five years., England's future., England., English General Election., European Union., EU_UK relations for the foreseeable future., How to do it., Human values., Life., Modern day life., Modern day Slavery, Money in Politics., Our Common Values., Political Trust, Politics., Privatization, Profiteering., Robot citizenship., Russia / Ukraine ., Stimulus package., The common good., The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The UK Class system., Universal values., We can leave a legacy worthwhile., WHAT IS TRUTH

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( Ten minute read)

This is a country that sold is nations assets to private enterprises – energy, water, rail, etc, (In the ideology of Maggie Thatcher, shop till you drop), believing that the free market would give its citizens the best deal.

The massive privatisations of public assets undertaken by Mrs Thatcher and subsequent Tory governments since the 1980s now with the help of multilabel other world problems have come home to roost.

Below are a few examples of this.

[ARM Holdings, one the key British companies for research and innovation in electronics, was sold off in 2017 for £24bn to the Japanese company Softbank.

Amazon, a US corporation, now dominates retail in the UK.

Apple has shifted its tax liability in the UK to Ireland.

The key national airports in the UK – Heathrow and Gatwick – are both in foreign ownership.

Liverpool, Glasgow and Great Yarmouth ports are owned by Deutsche Bank. Felixstowe, is owned by one of Asia’s richest men and incorporated in the Cayman Islands.

Even Associated British Ports, which manages many UK ports, is owned by the Singapore foreign reserve fund and Kuwait’s sovereign wealth fund and registered offshore in Jersey.

Waterstones, the only surviving national book chain in UK, is also Russian owned.

Facebook and Twitter are now the main source of news for most British people despite its biases and its inadequate constraints on the dissemination of fake news. Both of these companies are effectively unregulated despite their critical social media roles, and both make enormous sums of money from advertising that goes untaxed.

The NHS, which is thought of as the great British innovation, is also increasingly being infiltrated by American health providers. Social care Southern Cross purchased by Blackstone, a US company.

Boots, which has 2,500 shops in the UK acquired by private equity in 2007, asset stripped and saw its HQ moved to Switzerland to avoid UK taxes. It is now wholly owned by the giant US pharmacy chain Walgreens.]

What are the common elements in the above?

With London becoming the global centre of such transactions because of weak regulatory systems, especially in respect of privatised utilities, it has been price gouging at the expense of consumers in the UK.

It is now clear that some at least of the purchasers of domestic assets have used the opportunity to launder illegally acquired money.  Russian millionaires had a field day.

We are now looking at a country that recently spent nearly $8 billion building two new large, conventionally-fuelled aircraft carriers, spending between £72.1bn and £80.4bn, on a high-speed rail HS2 to save thirty minutes traveling time, while its people can’t afford their energy bills, to feed themselves, to house themselves, or afford the cost of a rail ticket.

A country that turned its back on the biggest market on its door step the EU with £25bn left to pay by 2057.

A country that in the first year of the pandemic, from April 2020 to 2021,  borrowed £299bn, the highest figure since records began in 1946, to save it economy more than its people with, the cost of Government measures announced so far range from about £310 to £410 billion.

Most of this extra money was spent on public services (such as the NHS), and support for businesses.

In the space of 15 months, from March 2020, the three main Covid loan schemes – bounce back, CBILS and a scheme for larger loans, CLBILS – handed out nearly £80bn to businesses with fraud losses estimated at £4.9bn at the end of March, money the government is unlikely to ever recover.

The UK government wasted hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on poor quality and unusable personal protective equipment (PPE) while leaving frontline workers insufficiently protected from covid-19. The decision to prioritise hospitals meant that social care providers were left exposed by the lack of PPE contributing significantly to deaths in care homes in the first wave.

Among the government deals was a contract with a jeweller worth £70.5m (€80.5m; $97.6m) to buy sterile gowns. It also signed contracts for millions of face masks, which were not usable in the NHS because they had the wrong type of fixing.

The question of whether greater investments in health care in non-crisis times may have reduced the level of emergency funding needed to respond effectively to the pandemic warrants important reflection.


Money

Now with more money going out and less coming in, the English government has only one option – to borrow.

When a government spends more than it collects, it runs an annual budget deficit. The level of the national debt in the UK equates to 108% of national output (GDP) and the average amount of debt owed per person in the UK to day is ten thousand pounds.

This is a country that sold it soul to consumerism,  which is still spending millions on football with millions of lotto funds spent to win medals, with a homicide rate was 11.7 per million population, while small businesses and charities are going bust.

Like most of Europe it is in a downward spiral economically, with inflation and energy cost mounting ( due in part to the Russian invasion of the Ukraine,) and will have to borrow another £200bn by the end of the year.

 Its’ no wonders it is going down the Pan.

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 In the back ground there are other reason for its troubles–  its class system, its colonial history, its antiquated education system, its benefits system, its first past the post election system, to mention a few.

Its colonial past making it a very ethnically diverse nation,( People born outside of the UK account for 10% of the UK’s population.)

It has lost its once dominance as an empirical power in the world.

Once a rich country the crimes of your past are catching-up with you.

Britain was the world’s largest market for transportation of human lives, bowing to the new citadel whose tentacles reached out into great swathes of colonial wealth – and steadily drank it dry until the slave trade was finally banned by an act of parliament.  The arrogance and greed of your masters could not go unnoticed – could not pass-by unatoned for.  Nor could the pacifistic stance taken by the greater populous when confronted with such frequent acts of national and international vandalism.

Like most of us it has now become enslaved to the smart phone.

Now a country of digitalized citizens, with short term ambitions, in desperate need of a written constitution.

Why?

Despite considerable social change, and strong policy intervention, it still have some way to go to address equality of opportunity and racism.

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In the next few days the Conservative party will elect a new leader to take control of the country, without a general election.

He or she is facing social, unrest, as the UK economy is now too weak for sharp spending cuts due to the recent financial crisis, and Covid  pandemic, it is now currently facing serious issues in terms of cutting its unemployment rate and reducing its national debt.

Not to mention other current issues such as immigration, internal ethnic relationship, internal security, economic recovery, and Britain’s relationship with the EU all acting as major blocks to the progress of the British society.

Whatever the next British government may be, these are the issues that party has to address and solve. 

Modern British society has to find ways to deal with these crucial issues in order to move towards a brighter future.

So who owns the country?

Private no right of way sign

Behind this simple question lies England’s oldest and best-kept secret. It’s a secret that goes back to the Domesday Book – and an issue that goes to the heart of many of the biggest problems the country face to day.

Central government owns more than 16 million square metres of property and land across the UK – six times the area of the City of London. There are over 97,000 properties owned by foreign firms in England and Wales.

Collectively, the Royal family owns 180,550 acres of land, or roughly 282 square miles with an elite of less than 1% of the population owning half of England with a few thousand dukes, baronets and City bankers now owning far more land than all of Middle England put together.

As Mark Twain once said, “buy land: they’re not making it anymore” – and in England, its scarcity has made it so sought-after that land values have increased fivefold since 1995.

Just over 400 hectares (1,000 acres) of central London’s super-prime real estate belongs to the Crown, the Church, and four wealthy aristocratic estates.

Over 200,000 hectares (500,000 acres) of the English uplands are tied up in huge grouse-moor estates owned by around 150 people. The Duke of Northumberland, whose family lineage stretches back to Domesday, owns 40,468 hectares (100,000 acres) – a tenth of his home county.

Corporations own around 18% of England and Wales.

The Crown Estate owns London’s Regent Street, including the freehold for Apple’s flagship UK store, from which the Crown collects more rent than from all its agricultural land.

The National Trust owns around a fifth of the Lake District National Park in Cumbria.

The Duchy of Cornwall owns London’s Oval Cricket Ground, Maiden Castle in Dorset (above) and Ham Hill in Somerset.

Paternoster Square in the City of London, home of the London Stock Exchange, is owned by the Church Commissioners.

The Crown still owns the freehold OF the Houses of Parliament.

The housing crisis hasn’t been caused by a sudden rise in the price of bricks and mortar, but rather in the value of the land on which homes are built.

The vast gap in living standards between the precariat and the executive class are all to some extent the result of increased foreign ownership of almost everything that continue to call ‘British’.

There is hope, however to be fair few countries will escape the fever that’s upon this world – Climate change.

A fever for which the only cure is the unconditional metamorphosis of man himself, washed through and through, cleansed of that reckless hubris which has brought us to this tipping point of all of us having to live without the all gentle arts that nature had so diligently taught us.

The tide is turning upon mankind. Now it is our turn to be on the receiving end.

In the coming years Climate Change will make the cost of living we see to day ingenuous, compared to what is in store.

No man or woman can turn his or hers back for long upon her simmering powers.

When it comes to climate no man can lay claim to having pacified and sold her soul – because passivity was not on her agenda, and her soul was never for sale. And those who sought to profit from her bounty will soon leave empty handed; for that time, prophesied of old, has finally come. And yes, nature it is that once again rises up in defiance of all attempts to bring her under the control of those who would use and abuse her for their private wealth and make of her a platform for staging their profit driven foreign wars.

Not even the vicious technologically engineered destruction of our climate can suppress the rising winds of change that are upon this scarred and battered jewel called Earth. It can only increase their velocity.

The result is only too obvious with unstable work, often poorly paid, and increasingly inadequate to support a family. It is unsurprising therefore that there has been a sharp increase in poverty much of it in families in full-time work.

Prepare yourselves for the deluge – a great cleansing is upon the island; a cleansing that will jolt befuddled minds into memories of great stories of other eras, when lands were not swallowed by mighty acts of nature.

You were so proud to turn away from nature and forge your industrial steel into the wheels of the brave new world of mass consumerism  you new face a heavy price for its blinkered, stubborn occupants, who for so long turned a blind eye on deeper truths and refused to look upon the blood encrusted pages of your colonial history.

Oh England, my England, so where is your soul today?

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At this point you may well be asking what if anything can be done?

The master Conservative plan is levelling up. The big idea for post – Brexit Britain.

It identifies six capitals: physical capital (i.e. infrastructure and housing), human capital (skills and health), intangible capital (ideas and innovations), financial capital (business finance), social capital (community and public trust), and institutional capital  (local leadership).

The plan comes at a defining moment but it will fail to devolve enough power and money.

Why?

Because the places that have an abundance are now in a virtuous circle, where the different capitals reinforce one another.

Because is not matched by the scale of investment or the proposed solutions. Missing are a clear set of mechanisms that break the vicious cycles in places that are lacking in the six capitals.

Because this work has to be done at the local level because places face different challenges and have different growth potential.

Because if there is going to any levelling up is going to happen centrally from Whitehall.

Because the existing system for distributing money is highly complex  inequality will be aggravated and come to the forefront in the next general election.

Levelling up is a scatter gun approach for votes and it is on this feeling that the Government’s future electoral hopes hang.

IN THE END HERE IS THE BEADY EYE’S ADVICE TO WHO EVER GETS INTO POWER.

APART FROM A WRITTEN CONSTITUTION,  MAKE EDUCATION FREE AND BRING BACK A YEAR OF NATIONAL SERVICE TO TEACH THE VALUES THAT ARE NECESSARY AND FUNDEMENTAL TO THE FONDATIONS OF ANY NATION.  PUT THE PEOPLE FIRST NOT THE GDP.

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THE BEADY EYE LOOKS AT THE PENDING COLLAPSE OF ENGLAND

16 Saturday Jul 2022

Posted by in #whatif.com, BORIS JOHNSON., England departure from the EU., England's future., England.

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(Fifteen-minute read )

I have just watched the debate for the leadership of the Conservative party and sadly next prime minister of England.

None of the candidates were asked to address the following essential overriding question England’s future.  

Now that England has left the EU –  England? – What is it?

Today this is the hard question because Great Britain has lost an Empire and has not yet found a role outside the EU. 

One of the many driving forces behind Brexit, it seems to me, was English/British exceptionalism, encapsulated in the winning slogan “Take back control”.

We are different, we are unique, and we are exceptional.

Unfortunately, it’s now too late to realize that it is a medium-sized relatively unimportant country that has destroyed its manufacturing base in a Faustian pact with financial interests to become the money laundering “world beater” and the conduit of choice for tax evasion.

It’s young, are now on the slippery slope to a new medieval world recreation of taxation to support its crumbling economy and public services. 

This time, there might be no way out.

Instead of catapulting it into a better age, modernity in the form of Tech will now be used to keep it in this state – imprison it in a world made by the mega-rich – by manipulating it to keep things exactly as they are.

An awakening is needed.

But I profess to be blind and deaf as to how the masses can be awakened, other than that the message is conveyed to it by the means of a very short, sharp, and deeply profound shock, which will be devastating for many and, no doubt, capitalized on by those who seek to divide it. 

In the documentary ‘Social Dilemma’, it is pointed out that most of the recent investment in the world has gone into improving the processing power of algorithms and computing – it has outstripped investment and development in the fight against cancer, and science and technology elsewhere – all designed to predict even better how we will respond and then have us hanging in front of our devices, slobbering like Pavlov’s dogs for the next ‘impulse’.

That is what has been happening in the world  – more people are being manipulated – not informed.

On leaving the EU England lost all sense of the common good and now the definition of the ‘common good’  sits outside the reference framework on how one might view the structures for the provision of the ‘common good.

The problem has always been having a democracy, or wealth concentrated in the hands of a few.

You can’t have both so we hear the slogan leveling up. 

This cannot be achieved while witnessing politicians like Boris and the X Health Minister Matt Hancock who defend brazen neoliberal exploitation of publicly funded, public health provision for private profit as if it was simply illustrative of a fair free market.

At the top of English society, it is an amoral world where money is the only common factor –  up to recently it does not matter if you are Russian or a criminal – it is the size of your wad that matters – money rules.

There is no free market here.

The simple fact of the matter is that politicians have failed to reign these forces in and weakened resistance for example by undermining unions and worker rights.

What we are seeing now is that last grab of what is left.

The collapse of the UK will come because without having a role as an exploiter – whether by old-fashioned land grab or by financial capture of other country’s economies by the City of London and its tax havens – those ruling from London have no idea what role England has.

The politicians who can imagine an England that has its own role in the world, as a separate nation-state, not dependent on the support of the other countries that have sustained it for centuries, are what are required to guide it now.

And I can’t see them, as yet.

The worrying bit for me is that there seems no longer to be any concern that these things happen so bare-facedly these days.

This seems to have happened in plain sight, but too many of our eyes are looking down at our devices being distracted by Apps and god knows what else (gambling, porn, Facebook, etc.,).

And the internet is there to be used as those with money see fit to maintain the status quo.

                           —————————————-

I have to live in hope, but now it is much more complex than England which has adapted to less.

A post-colonial, post-financialised, non-exploitative vision of England as a separate country that can survive on its own rather than by extracting value from others is what is required if it is to make it through the long existential crisis that it is now facing. 

That hope includes a belief that England can find a future in which exploitation plays no part. That hope has limited foundations. But when the alternative is offered by the far right it is something I have to believe possible.

Survival always requires a will to do so. I don’t think the UK, as a union of four nations, has that will anymore.

It’s why I see independence for Scotland soon, Irish reunification thereafter, and then Wales also thinking there might be a better alternative to rule from London.

Labour sat out Brexit, but can’t sit out this crisis.

It’s going to be too painful to do that. They must have plans they can promote to deal with the immediate issues.

Whatever was normal will have gone by the time this crisis is over. Whatever replaces it is not yet known. It could be fascism. And it could be something so much better. But the better route requires a willingness to imagine it. I only see that willingness in Scotland right now.

No doubt with the pending departure of Boris sanity is starting to prevail in the government in regard to the future of the UK economy not to mention the Union in relation to the effects of Brexit and Covid-19!

This is now a country that agreed to make a series of payments to the EU, as part of the deal when it left in January 2020, often called the divorce bill.

It’s now a country that cannot feed its people, provide medical care, freely educate its future generation, build affordable homes, and create a green generate economy. A country whose history shaped much of the world for both the good and the bad now needs a written constitution to guide it into the future.   

From January 2021, there was about £25bn left to pay by 2057.  

Trust in politicians has now sunk so low in Britain that it could very well have to adapt to even less than that.

To me, isolation it’s just such a bizarre hill to die on.

When successful, politics goes largely unnoticed, when it messes up, a furor ensues.

So I ask where are the voices of young England.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASKS DOES LIVING IN ENGLAND NOW SUCK.

02 Saturday Oct 2021

Posted by in England departure from the EU., England.

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(Twelve-minute read) 


It is fair to say that Britain now no longer rules the waves and it is a country on the point of breaking up because it spent most of its past industrial wealth on an image rather than on its people.

Indeed it has been going downhill long before Brexit with Margaret Thatcher’s legacy, which created a society blighted by poverty, wages, and despairs.

For the sake of short-term profit, she crushed the trade unions’ movement marginalizing workers’ voices, sunk an obsolete Argentine Cruiser the General Belgrano, and her growing hostility to Brussels inspired the Euroskeptics, the Brexit delivery machine.

” There is no such thing as Society”

You could say that’s all in the past, but is it really.  According to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, all is well in the sunny uplands of ‘Global Britain’, as he recently told us from a New York rooftop that he “does not believe” that anyone in Britain will struggle to put food on the table this winter.

Instead, he believes that the labor shortages he has engineered, by slamming up the shutters on 40 years of freedom of movement between Britain and the EU, will cause wages to rise, and that people will consequently be fine.

He might be right but at a cost, England cannot afford it in a world that is beginning to resist the catastrophic cult of cash, the export potential of thousands of British companies is now looking more than bleak.

Given the huge Brexit hit there future is now not an opportunity to make a quick buck, but rather an opportunity for the fundamental civil right of organized workers to be heard.

This is now becoming the vital foundation to build back towards a sustainable future

It is increasingly evident, combined with the avalanches of huge and intractable global problems as the story of Brexit unfolds, that he is living in the clouds.

Rather than actively seeking it out, he needs to correct the national addiction to poverty wages, not by clapping the NHS or raising the national insurance stamp or dumping the £20 covid assistance but by shaking off the shackles of an outdated system of surfs versus the monarchy.

Yes, culture-wise the Monacry should be preserved for the sake of history and tourism.

In this day and age to have to ask permission of a person that is only entitled by the accident of birth to be designated royal when a leader who is elected by the people to power has to ask permission to form a government is a joke.

Not to mention that this person owns all of the seabeds up to 12 kilometers of the countries coastline, which was recently discovered by a new seaweed farm when they had to get royal assent to establish a new carbon zero producing farm on the coast of Scotland.        

All of which raises a vital question about what exactly the UK has become, over the last few decades.

England which was once notorious across the planet for its destructive short-termism is trying to live an ideology reverting to its past glory.

Though, its disregard of climate change during the Industrial Age, and its recent departure from the EU it now faces outcomes regardless of its fine words, that are highlighting its inability to value either humanity or nature as highly as money.

In a world that is driven by unregulated technological advancement, nobody will ever persuade me that Brexit was a good choice.  

                                           ————————-

If one takes a look at England from back in the sixties to the present day, the barometer on what is socially unfavorable could not be starker. 

A country that is ranked as the fifth richest in the world now has approximately 2.5 million people using food banks (run by groups of volunteers, churches, and charities) with 14 million ( 4.5 million children) living below the breadline. That is 12% of the total population of the UK and they have been living like this for the last four years with over 4,000 people sleeping rough on the streets and almost a murder a day it’s no wonder that is women folk feel unsafe on the streets.   

While spending nearly $8 billion building two new large, conventionally-fueled aircraft carriers not to mention HS2 which is already billions over budget costing 307 million per mile.

The cost of replacing Trident is estimated at £31 billion. The cost of operating, maintaining, and renewing the nuclear deterrent is substantial. 

The national lottery raises around £8,373.9 million out of which since 2008 a total of £100 million a year has been spent on winning medals in the Olympics/ Para Olympics worth around £540 (Gold). 

                                         ———————-

The ‘Swinging Sixties’ remains the defining decade for Britain.

It was the period that finally allowed people the liberty and individuality people had fought for and what we take for granted nowadays. Indeed it would be fair to say England was only just forgetting the troubles of the Second World War. In just ten short years, London was transformed from the bleak city into the capital of the world, full of freedom, hope, and promise.

By the end of the decade, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin achieved the impossible by becoming the first men on the moon in 1969.

England, on the other hand, had not grasped that people outside London were struggling.

Not everyone lives/wants to live in London.

It has taken all of this time to the present day for recognition of this fact.

Why?

Because Brits are notoriously passive-aggressive and avoid conflict, and this can sometimes come off as very fake and superficial. It can also be very counterproductive and time-consuming to jump around a subject instead of being direct with it.

And people just don’t understand until it’s directly affecting them.

The worst part is that too many British people still don’t realize how their economy is tanking and still refuse to acknowledge it and never talk about it. Which is frustrating in and of itself.

One of the worst legacies in its class system is Council Tax. 

I am not talking about the weather which for the most part is consistently grey and mentally draining and depressing in Britain.

I fundamentally disagree with tax that is not income-based. I think how much tax you pay should always depend on how much money you’re making—otherwise, it’s not fair.

Council tax is a local tax, usually done by the city or county you live in.

The Council is responsible for all of the local things—streetlights, garbage collection, libraries, police and emergency services, etc.

It’s not a normal tax—you have to pay it separately, it’s not automatically deducted from a paycheck. This is because it is not technically income-based—how much council tax you pay depends on where you live and the size of your residence. So even if you aren’t employed and aren’t receiving paychecks, you still have to pay council tax. (Students are exempt from paying council tax, and in theory, if you are on welfare/benefits you won’t have to pay either.

The average person in England needs to earn 20 days’ worth of wages to cover the cost of their council tax bill, while in some areas the average employee would need to work for a full month to pay the bill.

People working or not in England on visas have no access to public funds or the NHS National Health Service through their visas. 

Racists have been emboldened since Brexit, and the attitude to foreigners is appalling. Murdering an Indian” is not a racist act of violence but voraciously eating curry, and cheers is a catch-all phrase that can mean thank you or fuck off depending on the tone of voice.

Most jobs pay monthly, so you just get one lump sum and need to budget it out throughout the month. This is opposed to in the US, where paychecks are generally bi-weekly. Oh, and if you work two jobs, your second job can be taxed nearly 50%. Good luck trying to pay rent with a tax return in April. 

All transportation is insanely, painfully expensive ludicrously expensive. 

The end result has been a mixed-race with diverse skin and hair colors, statues and builds, gastronomy, and cultural habits. Numerous museums, galleries, and parishes testify to Britain’s admirable past.Portrait of Queen Victoria

Queen Victoria ruled Britain for over 60 years. British soldiers in fact fought wars in almost every year of Victoria’s reign.

The country’s often archaic political system and ways of organizing itself are once again coming under immense strain, now in the throes of limited reform thanks to a revolutionary expansion in communications.

England is now once more a society in the grip of more convulsive, complex, and disturbing change than had been experienced by any previous culture in human history. From a blood-soaked glorious empire to a pawn shop. 

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

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: Thinking ahead to 5 years from now, do you think Britain’s decision to leave the EU will have had a positive or negative impact on the UK?

08 Sunday Dec 2019

Posted by in 2019: The Year of Disconnection., Brexit v EU - Negotiations., Brexit., Digital age., England EU Referendum IN or Out., England., English General Election., European Union., Fourth Industrial Revolution., Modern day life., Reality., Sustaniability, Technology, The common good., The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH

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(Seven-minute read)

Of course, as with all hypothetical questions, there is no correct answer.

Whether it will be a liberal One Nation Tory party, ongoing coalition governments or the Labour party that will be the political beneficiary is not yet sure.

However, looking at the present state of England against the problems facing the world one would have to say the horizon is far from looking bright.

The longer-term questions about the UK’s relationship with the EU will still need to be addressed no matter what the result of the current general election.

This very question itself will pale in comparison to the coming nexus environmental and energy problems facing us all.

Even if one was to ignore climate change it is truly impossible to overstate the havoc—financial, social, cultural—that could be brought about by peak oil if sufficient renewable energy is not in place to make up for declines in fossil fuels.

By the middle of the next decade or so, we will either all be starving, and fighting wars over resources, or our global food supply will have changed radically.

The bitter reality is that it will probably be a mixture of both.

The one thing we can be sure of is this:

No matter how wacky the predictions we make today, they will look tame in the strange light of the future. From the web to wildlife, the economy to nanotechnology, politics to sport, will see technological change on an astonishing scale.

All this assumes that environmental catastrophe doesn’t drive us into caves.

With over 60% of global GDP will be digitized by 2022 it is a total waste of time for countries such as the UK to attempted to pull up the drawbridge, to increase national production and reducing reliance on imports. These world-changing technologies are already creating more interconnected, interdependent and rapid business networks.

How far beggar-my-neighbour competitive devaluations and protection will develop due to a hard Brexit is hard to predict, but protectionist trends are there for all to see.

The question is, will Britain outside the EU be a more global, more deregulated, more free-trading country five years from now.

Presently nearly half of the UK’s total trade is with EU countries.

Leaving the biggest free trade area with over 500 million consumers won’t be cheap no matter what the divorce bill is. The EU has 53 trade deals worldwide the UK has zero. Political Map of Europe

The consequent rebalancing of the British economy will therefore take years and more than likely create a food underclass.

WHY?

Because it is as yet unclear when the UK will have the legal authority to begin negotiations; when the UK will leave the EU customs union; and what the trade arrangements between the UK and the EU will be after that point.

It is therefore difficult to see how third countries could engage seriously with the UK until these decisions have been taken. In addition, there are significant obstacles to meaningful trade deals with most of the countries.

The world will be more complicated even if these projections assume an orderly exit from the EU.

Only when we stand together can we secure our prosperity in a competitive world as the distinction between the country, town, will blur, with Artifical intelligence not to mention sea levels rising.

Why?

Because if I’d been writing this five years ago, it would have been all about technology: the internet, the fragmentation of media, mobile phones, social tools allowing consumers to regain power at the expense of corporations, all that sort of stuff but artificial intelligence is proving itself an unexpectedly difficult problem.

To describe EXACTLY what they will be doing in 1,820 days never mind that a second financial crisis in the 2010s – probably sooner than later – that will prove not just to be the remaking of Britain but the whole of the EU.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S; JUST WHAT IS A GENERAL ELECTION IN ENGLAND. THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE OR OTHERWISE.

30 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by in 2019: The Year of Disconnection., Democracy, ENGLAND'S SNAP ELECTION, England., English General Election., English parliamentary proceedings.

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(Three-minute read)

British elections are decided using what is known as the First Past the Post (abbreviated FPTP, 1stP, 1PTP or FPP) voting system.

Along with no written constitution, it is the primary cause of all Britain’s dysfunction. 

You would think that a General Election is how the British public decide who they want to represent them in Parliament and ultimately run the country.

Wrong.

First past the post is a voting system designed to keep the electorate/country under the control of a two-party dictatorship while giving the delusion of democracy.

The candidate with the most votes in each constituency wins and becomes the MP for that seat. All other votes are disregarded.

As there is only one candidate from each party, voters who support that party but don’t like their candidate have to either vote for a party they don’t support or a candidate they don’t like. This means the number of MPs a party has in parliament rarely matches their popularity with the public.

Westminster’s voting system creates two sorts of areas. ‘Safe seats’, with such a low chance of changing hands that there is no point in campaigning, and ‘swing seats’, that could change hands.

Parties design their manifestos to appeal to voters in swing seats, and spend the majority of their funds campaigning in them. But, policies designed to appeal to voters in these seats may not help voters in the rest of the country.

Voters who live in safe seats can feel ignored by politicians. The more candidates with a chance of getting elected the fewer votes the winner needs.

Under Westminster’s First Past the Post system it is common for constituencies to elect MPs that more than half the voters didn’t want.

As the number of MPs a party gets doesn’t match their level of support with the public, it can be hard for the public to hold the government to account.

To combat this, voters try to second-guess the results.

If a voter thinks their favourite candidate can’t win, they may vote for one with the best chance of stopping a candidate they dislike from winning.

Democracy is the political system where the government represents the will of the people. There never has been a perfect democracy, there are only degrees of approximation, and democracy goes far beyond discussion of the voting system. Nevertheless, the voting system is an important element in shaping a democracy, and First Past the Post (FPTP) is woefully inadequate in expressing the will of the people because the vote never gets beyond the constituency boundary.

Worse still, a Government can be elected on the basis of 33% of votes cast, but considering turnout, this falls to 22% of those entitled to vote.

22%! One in five!! Yet idiot conservatives of right and left still defend FPTP.

Words fail to describe such a form of democracy.

What’s immediately needed to resolve the impasse on Brexit is a second referendum, since Brexit is a single issue and referendums are a ballot on a single issue.

First past the post (FPTP) is the first step to full radical reform in the UK.

It is time to change the system.

Most countries around the world use proportional voting systems – a party winning half the vote would win half the seats in parliament.

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

 

 

THE BEADY EYE LOOKS AT MODERN DAY POLITICS.

02 Monday Sep 2019

Posted by in 2019: The Year of Disconnection., Algorithms., Brexit v EU - Negotiations., Brexit., Dehumanization., Democracy, DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Elections/ Voting, England., English parliamentary proceedings., European Elections., European Union., First past the post., Modern Day Communication., Modern Day Democracy., Our Common Values., Political voting systems., Politics., Populism., Post - truth politics., Social Media, The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What needs to change in European Union., What Needs to change in the World, World Leaders, World Organisations., World Politics

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(Five-minute read) 

My vote makes no difference is plausibly a part of the modern-day phenomenon of algorithm analyse voting that has lead to both the election of Donal Trump and Boris Jonhson.

It is resulting in the loss or deliberate yielding up of decision-making power by national governments to other organisations with Social media platforms both domestic and international— Like Facebook, Twitter,  etc. 

Combine this with Ngo’s, quangos, the law courts, business corporations, central banks, the E.U., the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization and its no wonder that many are no longer content as voters to be the foot soldiers of a social or religious bloc.

They want to make a difference individually and although in a mass democracy this may lead to inevitable frustration, few would want to return to a time of extreme political polarisation or digital dictatorship. 

The symptoms of short term popularism driven by social media platforms and the smartphone are leading to a no-deal Brexit are the same worldwide. 

Denunciations of the system, citizen disengagement from mainstream parties, electoral volatility and/or apathy, the rise of dissenting movements that appeal to large numbers who are, or feel themselves to be, disfranchised or ignored by an establishment dominated by uncontrollable and often faceless forces are replacing old political systems. 

Hence the perception that parties and politicians are no longer willing or able to represent their voters, that they are “all the same” and that politics has become an irrelevant smokescreen for the machinations of special interests and lobby groups.

When relatively few people are losing out—these changes may not seem to matter much. They may even seem desirable: “pooling of sovereignty,” removal of political interference from civil society, increasing checks on the executive by domestic and international courts, subsidiarity in decision-making, encouragement of inward investment, and so on.

This creates a political and administrative burden that can neither manage nor surrender—a great cause of popular discontent.

Not so, of course, when things suddenly go wrong.

One has only to look at England:

A combination of capitalism and socialism in a highly centralized system without a nationally elected government makes England today a very unusual place.

This oddity has opened up a constitutional free-for-all.

However, national identity, not administrative or economic efficiency, is the core of both devolution and independence— and the rest is window-dressing with the past affecting us all in more complex and deep-seated ways than in countries that have experienced violent historic ruptures.

Community loyalties, however deep-rooted, are not permanent.

Whatever happens in England, there will remain the question of how to govern a big, growing, diverse, crowded, and increasingly self-conscious England.

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

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME I HAVE GOT THIS WRONG.

24 Wednesday Jul 2019

Posted by in Brexit v EU - Negotiations., Democracy, Elections/ Voting, England., Heredity Monarchy., Modern Day Democracy., Political voting systems., Politics., Populism., Post - truth politics., Reality., The common good., The Obvious., The Queen., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH

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(Three-minute read)

They say that mad dogs and English men come out in the noonday sun. Boris Johnson Shuts Down Donald Trump After Trump Talks ...

With 99 days until October 31, we have just witnessed a most undemocratic act.

THE ELECTION OF A NEW PRIMINISTER BY 0.2 PERCENT OF THE VOTING ELECTORSHIP WITHOUT AN GENERAL ELECTION (who has to ask the Queen for permission to form a Government.)

Never mind Brexit Daddy Trump likes him, so could be prime minister and then US president?

He was born in New York. In theory, he could leave Downing Street and move to the US and 14 years later enter the race for the White House.

However, there are the real Questions Great Brits should be asking themselves.

Is it time for a written constitution?

Is it time to scrap first past the post?

Is it time to revoke articular 50.  Stay in the European union till you have sorted yourselves out?

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