Category Archives: European Elections 2019

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: THESE DAY’S IS THERE ANYTHING SUCH AS POLITICAL SCIENCE.

30 Friday Aug 2019

Posted by in Artificial Intelligence., Democracy, DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Elections/ Voting, England EU Referendum IN or Out., European Elections 2019, Fake News., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Politics., Populism., Post - truth politics., Reality., Robot citizenship., Social Media, 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 European Union.

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( Twenty-minute read)

 

Call it what you want:

Political Science,  Political theory, Comparative Politics, International Relations, Political Methodology. It all leaves you scratching your head and wondering what is Political Science exactly?

Political Science is a social science that focuses on government institutions and political behaviour, but how exactly did it come about?

When one watches gatherings such as the G7/8 of world leader one would have to ask where are we going.

Every major media outlet has a political scientist on call to commentate about likely voter reactions to the candidates’ stances on hot-button issues.

The behavioural models that political scientists create can practically forecast the outcome of an election before a single vote has been cast.

However in the 21st, it means “democracy”, is the crowd-sourcing of politics run by algorithms.

So political science is governed by five myths:

That it is possible to study politicsn> That it is scientific > That it is possible to study politics separated off from economics, sociology, psychology and history > That the state in our democratic capitalist society is politically neutral, that is available as a set of institutions and mechanisms to whatever group wins the election > That political science, as a discipline, advances the cause of democracy.

For me it is “superficial and trivial”, and that concept formation and development is “little more than hair-splitting and jargon”

These days we are told if something can’t be measured, then that’s not it, and if an event didn’t happen twice, then it didn’t happen.

One way or the other all the more interesting questions falling outside the bounds of scientific investigation, the internet age is gradually forcing itself upon our leaders but it is unlikely to make them reconnect with voters “less because they see the light, and more because they are beginning to feel the heat”.

For all the talk about politics, political science has never decided what exactly it should study.

The result is that many trivial matters receive an inordinate amount of attention and many important ones go untreated like climate change.

In short, political science seems to have turned around the order in which any person not trained in the discipline would try to answer the questions.

We will soon learn that political science is not about the real world but only about those features of the world that can be studied by methods deemed to be scientific.

“What should I study?” and “How should I study it?”.

What has political science found out about the political sphere that we didn’t know before, or that isn’t abysmally trivial?

It makes even the worst real-world inequalities acceptable (not worth bothering about) by rendering them irrelevant to the task at hand. Guess to whose benefit?

Few things are more important to the legitimation of capitalist rule than the assurance given by political science that the dictatorship of the capitalist class in which we live is really a democratic state of the whole people.

If political science really wishes to advance the cause of democracy (as one of the myths of our discipline already has it doing), we should help people understand that the main barrier to democracy today is capitalism.

Given the importance of the capitalist context for everything that goes on inside it, this is also a first step toward making our research truly scientific, that is capable of uncovering how the state and politics really work, and how—with the democratization of undemocratic capitalist relations of production, distribution and exchange—they might yet come to work for everyone.

Now here is a non-trivial agenda worthy of political science that aspires to advance the cause of democracy through the use of scientific

The rational choice carries the miniaturization of political science one step further by dismissing what people actually do politically and concentrating on their decisions to do it,

We see news reports, headlines in the papers and if one checks the details you find that the headlines are misleading or half-truths.

I accept that all news, in whatever medium, is subject to some editorial bias but the days of reporting the facts dispassionately are gone due to social media.

Take Brexit for example:

Parties that had strong collective identities are now falling asunder all being lead by popularism into political cul-de-sacs. The loyalty and cohesion of political parties now depend much more on short term smartphone mass memberships.

The results are tragi-comedy modernisation and public mistrusted.

This is what motivated the In or Out referendum not an understanding of the long term consequences.

Annexing subjects like the European Union affects all lives in countless ways –

I don’t think that any political science predicted a Party without power or fame the Brexit Party. It now represents a piece of evidence about how the ground is shifting.

Thus to ask today, in the middle of Mitteleuropa, where political science has been heading is also to ask whether the new beginnings of the discipline in Eastern Europe should or should not follow the path entered by our “big brother,”

The digital revolution will do to grand planners in the West what the collapse of Communism did to socialist planners in the old Soviet bloc”.

THE PROBLEM IS:

Are we somehow going to see sense and see through the lies?

How have rampant inequalities shaped electoral campaigns and promises?

We don’t need political science to say that global climate change is real.

If you don’t believe it you’re anti-facts.

THE ONLY SOLUTION IS, to open up politics with the right of “recall” against MPs with whom constituents were dissatisfied.

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S; IS IT TIME TO STOP TREATING ALL VOTES AS EQUAL

27 Monday May 2019

Posted by in 2019: The Year of Disconnection., Brexit Party., Brexit v EU - Negotiations., Brexit., Democracy, DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Elections/ Voting, English parliamentary proceedings., European Elections 2019, First past the post., Modern Day Democracy., Nigel Farage., Political voting systems., Populism., Post - truth politics., The far-right., The Obvious., Unanswered Questions., What needs to change in European Union.

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(Five-minute read)

One person, one vote is often a rallying cry for democracy activists.

Everyone should have representation.

Equality should be sacrosanct in a democracy should it not or is it?

But should everyone have equal representation?

THE 2019 EUROPEAN ELECTIONS RESULTS ARE IN AND BECAUSE OF THE RESULTS LITTLE WILL CHANGE EXCEPT THE SQUABBLING WILL BE OFTEN AND MORE INTENSE.

Unequal votes are a result of history.

Inequality between votes may also not be built into the system but a result of the balance of parties within the system.

Under the English system of first past the post a very few voters have a disproportionate influence due to being swing voters in swing constituencies.

The conduct of election and referendum campaigns in the UK is letting voters down. Trust in what politicians say—and in how journalists report it—is at rock bottom.

If British residents aren’t equal, then nor are their representatives.

So should democracies stick the principle that everyone should have equal weight or compromise if for politics?

In a simple majority system of one vote = one person, the outcome is easy to conclude and scrutinise for fairness and election rigging.

Therefore one vote = one voice is also a very practical way to run a democracy.

Or is it?

There are certain reasons to reasonably exclude someone from the voting process – breaking laws is arguably one of these reasons.

Should a vote have weight based on someone’s contributions to their community, and society as a whole? If one has done good things, their vote should be more important than that of a selfish person who does not contribute in a positive way.

Should a Party with no members, no Manifesto, lead by a self-elected leader from a previous Party that spread Falsehoods be allowed to take up its seats in The European Parlement to effectively try to destroy all it stands for at the cost of the taxpayer?

Yes.

Should a party that is in power be allowed to select the leader of a country without a general election?

Yes.

However, we should be striving to deepen our democracy, not just to protect the democracy that we already have. Voters deserve much better. We should be tackling misinformation, promoting quality information, and encouraging open, respectful discussion among citizens.

Almost any misleading claim can be expressed in a way that isn’t strictly false, so a ban on falsehoods would change little. There are also dangers: for example, populist campaigners could “weaponise” adverse rulings to claim victimisation by the “establishment.”

The solution is, for example, Ireland has recently blazed a new path in how to prepare for referendums, convening a group of randomly selected citizens—a “citizens’ assembly”—to meet over several weekends to learn, deliberate, and reach recommendations.

Why is this a solution because of the challenge arising from the digital revolution that has transformed political communications in the last decade.

This allows the citizens of a country to have a unified clear voice on what is to be voted on.

Now is the time to ensure that how we conduct election and referendum campaigns is designed with voters at its heart.

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

THE BEADY EYE ASKS: WHERE NOW FOR ENGLAND.

22 Wednesday May 2019

Posted by in Brexit v EU - Negotiations., Brexit., England EU Referendum IN or Out., England., English parliamentary proceedings., European Elections 2019

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(Six-minute read)

Great Britain is just a geographical term, not a country, state, or political entity.

England, which means “land of the Angles”.  COULD DO WITH A FEW.

The Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages.

I AM NOT TALKING HERE ABOUT ITS FOOTBALL TEAM, ITS CRICKET TEAM, NOR RUBGY.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of england departing from europe"

So answer me this:

Why would you allow a handful of billionaires to poison your national conversation with disinformation—either directly through the tabloids they own, or indirectly, by using those newspapers to intimidate the public broadcaster?

Why would you allow them to use their papers to build up and co-opt politicians peddling those lies? Why would you let them get away with this stuff about “foreign judges” and the need to “take back control” when Britain’s own public opinion is routinely manipulated by five or six unaccountable rich white men, themselves either foreigners or foreign-domiciled?

But what can England learn from Brexit?

Not all is well with the collective psyche—the in-your-face binge drinking, the bookies stoking gambling addiction on every high street, the abject but routine neglect of public housing which went undiscussed until the Grenfell Tower fire.

The class divide and the class fixation, as well as an unhinged press, combine to produce national psychology that makes Britain a country you simply don’t want in your club.

Here are a few suggestions for the future that don’t just apply to England but to the whole of Europe.

One person waiting to see a doctor, one person lying in a hospital corridor, one person sleeping rough, one person relying on food banks, one person receiving hate mail, one person dying without dignity, one person

In the event, the UK leaves the EU in a no deal scenario, here are 7  things England needs to do now.

They all Call for ‘Fundamental action’ not GDP.

One: Get rip of First past the post and let the voice of the people be heard with a written constitution that is not written on parchment back in June 1215. The certainty that everything has already been written annuls us or renders us phantasmal.

Two: Get ride of postcode lottery social care provisions.

Three: Get rid of the tabloids gutter press.

Four: Social housing should be unconditional and social care free at the point of delivery.

Five: Stop spending billions on worthless nuclear arms and power stations.

Six: Stop school lotteries and abolish students debts. It really doesn’t matter for your identity or your prospects exactly which school or university you went to as long as it free. It is quite ironic that a nation that gave the world the term “fair play” sees the fact that rich children receive a better education than poor ones as a perfectly natural thing.

Seven: Grow up the modern world that is entering the 4th Industrial revolution, while climate change that will destroy it requires long-term planning, not eco-driven politics by career politicians.

Nor do I blame working-class people for seething at a system whereby the time you are 11 the die is cast and were—to add insult to injury—you are constantly told that this is a meritocracy where all that counts is hard work and being “aspirational”- bull shit.

There is another, final, side to this class system à l’Anglaise. It seems to breed a perspective on the world that is zero-sum. Your class system is a form of ranking. For one to go up, another must go down. Perhaps this is why sports are such an obsession. This attitude then justifies the enduring ignorance about the EU, its member states and European culture generally. The superiority complex feeds a sense of entitlement.

For example, the EU “needs us more than vice versa.” It’s abject nonsense, as was the presumption that after the Brits voted to leave, other EU countries would follow.

“It might also be worth acknowledging, that, on balance, the EU27 also has more power to protect its interests in these negotiations than Britain does.”

Ever since the referendum, friends from across the world have been enquiring whether it is true that the British have gone mad.

It is extremely difficult to see a scenario in which this whole Brexit saga could end well. Legally, politically and logically the EU cannot give the UK the kind of deal that would draw this chapter to a happy close.

You don’t have to a genius to know that a sweet soft deal, will encourage every EU member state to demand their own special arrangement, and that would be the end of the EU.

While the imagination of many “Leave” voters remain in the grip of the tabloids, any concession to the reality of national interests risks inflaming rage and cries of betrayal.

As for the EU, it is first and foremost a rule-based organisation. If the rules around Article 50 were bent to allow Britain back in on special terms, then the whole edifice is undermined. Scotland should be let in if it wants, and Northern Ireland too. But England is out and must be kept out—at least until it has resolved its deep internal problems. Call it nation building.

While not everything about the British disease harked back to Empire and while most of the above needs a growing economy god forbid the future of England is written or run by a dupe of Donal Trump.

Rember: Before you vote that any deal in or out has to be ratified by all Member States required at least two years. This meant that any deal is not feasible in practice. Vote to stay and fight your quarter. It makes no sense to disengage from our major market where we would still face all the costs of compliance and enjoy none of the influence. We can achieve reform by being an active and leading member from within.

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: THE WHOLE BREXIT MESS NOW BOILS DOWN TO THE FOLLOWING: TO OPPOSE BREXIT IS LINKED TO BEING AGAINST DEMOCRACY ITSELF.

20 Monday May 2019

Posted by in Brexit Party., Brexit v EU - Negotiations., Brexit., England EU Referendum IN or Out., European Elections 2019, European Elections., Nigel Farage.

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(Twenty-minute read)

However Democratic legitimacy goes hand in hand with the rules of law.

When rules are broken in an election, or referendum defending the result of what went wrong isn’t defending democracy it is subverting it.

If one looks at the in and out campaigns the result doesn’t have democratic legitimacy because the leave vote won on lies and promises.

There is nothing wrong or illegitimate about voters choosing an option even if it is now widely seen as against their self-interests and generally accepted now (on reflection) is detrimental on many fronts.

It is pathetic to watch a nation ruin what is left of its world influence by insisting that its people spoke or for that matter to think it is the best for England is not the point.

Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May: ‘Talking in vague metaphors.’

The European elections are not offering the English public a second chance to fix the first result but an opportunity for the winning campaign to win by the rules rather than by breaking them.

The leader of the New Brexit party doesn’t want Brexit.

He like is tutor MR DUMP is using Brexit as a vehicle to benefit his own pockets.

To counter Farage, more needs to be done.

Picking him apart on political shows don’t work because it’s just the establishment – aimless with everything subject to Populism interpretation through the lens of the media.

So what is hidden behind the smile?

Nigel Farage dominated the UK Independence Party for 20 years and served as its leader twice while campaigning for Britain to leave the EU. Since then Ukip has been in almost perpetual chaos, with four leaders in two years.

He is MEP, 54, born in Kent on April 3, 1964. Dad-of-four married a German-born Kirsten Mehr in 1999 after his divorce from his first wife Gráinne Hayes.

He was educated at Dulwich College, a public school in South London.

His father Guy, a stockbroker, was reportedly an alcoholic who left the family home when Nigel was five.

Nigel did not go to university, instead, going to work in the City trading commodities at the London Metal Exchange.

His City career lasted more than 20 years, even after he was elected to the European Parliament.

His salary as an MEP is €8,484 a month or €101,808 a year – around £89,934 at current exchange rates.

He also gets office allowances of around £46,000 a year.

Mr Farage used to employ his wife Kirsten as a secretary on £27,000 a year until MEPs were banned from paying family members.

He is lavishly funded by Arron Banks. Banks is under investigation by the National Crime Agency over allegations of criminal offences by him and his unofficial leave campaign in the EU referendum.

The insurance tycoon providing him with a furnished Chelsea home, a car and driver, security guards and money to promote him in America.

Besides Brexit, what does Farage defend?

Nothing else.

Like all populists, he is dangerous because he wants to create demands that cannot be met and you can be sure that he will disappear as quickly as he appeared once Britain is out of the Union.

Farage has made it clear that power in Westminster does not interest him.

Nigel Farage himself has made millions.

He did this by saying that the Remainders had won, conceding defeat on the evening of June 23rd, whilst being fully aware that it was far more likely that the Leave campaign had won.

He could have known this through a raft of private exit polls procured by hedge funds that showed the true state of affairs. As a result, the pound sterling was shorted at $1.50, knowing that it would likely drop to just $1.32 overnight.

So how did a stockbroker’s son become a mouthpiece for the disaffected working class?

Wake up Britain. Have a look at the state of the world around you. The Nigel Farage’s  – Jeremy Hosking – Jacob Rees- Moggs of this world all have hedge funds. They are pulling the wool over your eyes.

Indeed you should all be protesting that your parliament is no longer functioning or currently able to deliver any form of representative democracy and it will remain so after the leaving unless it drags itself or it is dragged into the modern age to represent its citizens, not GDP.

Maybe if England had sent constructive reformist’s instead of men like Farage it would have all been solved by now.

If the European Union is looking at future its difficulties are indeed in need reform but god only knows what the results will be for an unattached England.

A no deal could be the beginning of something better. Imagine that.

Hopefully, my English friends you will see sense and NOT put your mark at the Brexit Party.Nigel Farage standing in front of poster during EU referendum

The fact that the above picture became a defining issue in the leave campaign was in no small measure down to him.

The Fact that Farage has said that the Brexit party is predominantly financed by the £25 fees of its 100,000-plus paying supporters – it has no members. The Brexit party has reportedly raised more than £2m in donations, but its leader, Nigel Farage, had refused to reveal the identities of the major donors.

All our societies in the world are at a crossroads and faces two different and distinct futures: one which is open and one which is closed.

A closed future is one where knowledge is exclusively owned and controlled, leading to greater inequality.

Already, large unaccountable technology companies have monopolised the digital age, and an unsustainable concentration of wealth and power has led to stunted growth and lost opportunities.

We have already started on the path towards a closed society, and without urgent action, we will find ourselves in a world of extraordinary and growing concentrations in power and wealth, with innovation held back and distorted by monopolies, essential medicines affordable only to the rich, and freedoms threatened by manipulation, exclusion and exploitation. Nobody under 50 will remember the convolutions surrounding British entry to the European Union.  But everybody today will remember how it left. Leg before wicket.
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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: WILL POPULISM BE THE ULTIMATE STRESS TEST OF REPRESENTATIVE POLITICS.

19 Sunday May 2019

Posted by in 2019., Democracy, European Elections 2019, European Union., Humanity., Inequality, Modern Day Democracy., Politics., Populism., Post - truth politics., Reality., Social Media, The common good., The far-right., The new year 2109, The Obvious., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What needs to change in European Union., World Leaders, World Organisations., World Politics

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(Twenty-minute read)

Is democracy unravelled in the face of nationalism, racism, violence and populism? It seems even with the publicly supported compromise between countries and political parties are unable to cooperate to deliver anything.

If one takes a look at the world today 9/11 and the “war on terror” helped bring the idea of a “clash of civilisations” between Islam and the west to the forefront of political debate leaving all the rest in the dustbin of democracy.

As a result in the last few years, a new kind of far-right activism has emerged.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of far right"

This new activism, comprised largely of online anger and offline protest, crosses borders, yet is heavily nationalist and growing.

In Britain, its icons tend to be entrepreneurial social media personalities, celebrities of a sort, who use their following to exert pressure on mainstream politics.

Nobody in England embodies the dynamics of this new movement more than Mr Fraieg with his tutor in the USA Mr Dump who both gave support to Yaxley-Lennon better known as Tommy Robinson. ( The founder of the founder and former leader of the English Defence League (EDL) now the voice of UKIP which was founded by Nigel Farage, has today more than 950,000 followers.)

We all know that Data-driven algorithms exert great influence on the political world by analyzing our voting potential.  By logging what we do, where we do it, how we do it, with whom we do it, – Facebook- Twitter – Social Media, TV, U Tube, Google.

The marketplace of ideas, with the best arguments, no longer win out.

Even more worrying is the extent to which it is “normalising” extreme right-wing ideas and ideologies helping to form governments rooted in racism and fear of others – with anti-establishment crusader, online propagandists attracting large amounts of the wrong type of money and attention.

Throwing its opponents into a fierce disagreement about how to respond with the potential to have quite dangerous and dire consequences.

Indeed, one of the goals of right-wing extremists has always been to appear “normal”.

But all of this is not inevitable, and it can be stopped if we recognise that keeping the far right out of power is only one part of the problem.

We need a better understanding of what “free speech” is and is not.

There is still no public control or oversight of what we should regard as our platforms.

The logical consequence of free speech at any cost is that someone will soon be successful in rallying together enough impressionable voters to form an electable far-right party.

It has happened before and it will happen again.

The accusation of betrayal by the elites is central to the way that far-right movements operate with single-issue campaigns mostly conducted via social media without any commitment to wider political action.

For many years, far-right views were outside the acceptable bounds of debate and should be denied a platform.

But the breaking down of these boundaries presents a dilemma: what does the anti-fascist principle of “no platform” mean when a far-right activist has their own independent platform anyway?

The majority of their supporters, have no formal political affiliation and answered to no party hierarchy.

The ideas of extreme right-wing movements are dangerous, as they are not institutional actors.

While only a few years ago such groups would have been widely reviled, in today’s more populist atmosphere, such views are now more mainstream, sideling voters from the political movements that were originally created for their benefit.

For me Far Right is a slippery term and one that people should rarely if ever, apply to their own politics. In everyday use, it describes a range of extreme nationalist activity.

For instance: Stephen Bannon, a white nationalist who has said the west is at the start of a civilisational war with Islam.

Luckily different currents within the far right do not always get on and may also see one another as enemies.

So far it is not a cohesive movement. Their various aims are profoundly undemocratic: A majoritarianism defined by race, ethnicity or religion, and the violent exclusion of internal and external enemies.

The best defence is a political movement that has anti-racism at its core and seeks to give people greater democratic control over the way their society is organised and run.

However in recent years, pushed by the election of Donald Trump in the US, and political changes in Europe, we have seen the breaking down of the taboo that kept far-right political ideas largely outside mainstream culture.

This can be rectified. It is mostly the result of technological change, which can be fixed by regulating social media companies.

In order to win political power, for any group, it should first be necessary to push for wider cultural acceptance of the ideas that underpinned their movements.

This is not to say that the claims being made by activists and the views of people who might support the far right should be ignored – either in political debate or in everyday life.

But the question is how these issues are presented, and how they are challenged: who is speaking, and why, matters as much as whether or not an issue is in the news.

Big media organisations must be aware that legitimisation of the far right is not acceptable. They cannot normalise nor be seen to give permission to what are, in truth, hateful ideas and ideologies.

They are most effective when unaffiliated and unaccountable, disavowed by politicians and commentators who echo his views but wish to look respectable.

But the greater danger is in the cumulative effect of the various types of far-right activism – political parties, websites, social media personalities, funding and coordination from wealthy US thinktanks and entrepreneurs – on the political mainstream.

The problem is that ordinary joe soap is becoming more and more detached from the political area paying more and more taxes in order to live a decent life while feeling shut out of the system.

With the views of the far right how taking advantage of wider political failures all fueled by food banks, benefits cuts, homeless, job insecurity, pension erosion shifting the mainstream debate in its favour. Its public messages are focusing on popular fears about identity and economic security.

IE: Europe is overrun by Muslim immigrants; liberal elites have allowed all this to happen.

So far no alternative vision has won out.

Simply pointing out their factual mistakes is insufficient they must be challenged, locally and internationally, before it starts to do serious damage.

Why?

Because we are mechanistically sleepwalking towards an inability to effectively confront problems such as Brexit, Inequality and Climate Change.

There is only one way to get the voters to engage with the modern world and that is not by voting every five years as an expression of free will. 

It is offering the citizens of a country to own some of its prosperity by:

ISSUING CITIZENS GUARANTEED (NON-TRANSFERABLE BONDS.)

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "picture of bonds certificate"

These bonds could be bought for as little as a Dollar to as much as?

They could mature in as little as a year or?

They could be inherited but not sold.

They could be for every environmental, health, or whatever project that is not for profit for profit sake.

They will engage people in the direction of a country countermanding

negativity, allowing all citizens no matter what their political views,

creed, or colour to take pride in their nation.

They will countermand inequality and stop the rise of the far right.

THEY WOULD IF ADOPTED BY DIEM 25 FORFILL MOST IF NOT ALL OF ITS POLITICAL ASPERATION FOR EUROPE.

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

 

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. Is it what remains underexplored is what convinces audiences of their leaders’ competence, caring, and trustworthiness.

17 Friday May 2019

Posted by in Elections/ Voting, European Elections 2019, European Elections., European Union.

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( An fifteen European Election read|) Image associée

Politics these days is an ugly game of lies and responsibilities.

It is said that if you want the best and brightest people to represent you in politics you can only attract them by offering lucrative remuneration.

Almost a third of MEPs have second jobs or outside income, according to Transparency International, which is calling on MEPs to be obliged to provide more detail about their earnings and employers.

Why?

Because these days, politics attracts career professional politicians who are more likely to lien their own pockets. Take two prime examples-  The Nigel Farage’s and Donal Trumps of this world.

It is us that cast the votes and it is us that determine that leaders have certain traits or skills.

However, in this world of data algorithms and Social Media Platforms perhaps this no longer holds true rather what really matters is the competencies that are projected on to leaders by their authorizing environment. In other words, the key to leading is to mobilize others toward the prescribed course of action to address the identified problems.

But only identifying a problem and formulating a solution is not enough if people do not act upon it. We witness this every day with Brexit and Climate change.

So let’s look at CREDIBILITY AS A SOURCE OF POLITICAL CAPITAL:

Political capital refers to citizen feelings about the political regime as a whole, not just about the party or coalition which is currently incumbent.

Or is political capital not linked to structural, system characteristics but to a quality associated with individual citizens.

Or is the political capital of global leaders their ‘ability to use
power or authority to gain the support of constituents in a socially effective way.

Or is political capital just a commodity that professional
politicians need. An asset that leaders own.

However, it should not be forgotten that without an audience, without citizens or constituents, there would be no (political) leadership.

In other words: leadership is relational.

Political capital can thus relate first of all to the confidence and legitimacy one bestows upon political institutions.

To get things done a politician must have political capital.

To be able to take the necessary but perhaps unpopular decisions, and to survive taking them as well, leaders need political capital.

This can be summed up in three main forms: skills, relations and reputation.

How political leaders perform that some of them are attributed to credibility whereas others are not.

Is it up to audiences to attribute credibility to political leaders?

After all, political capital is a form of credit founded on credence.

If people don’t believe in the messenger, they won’t believe the message. Political leaders need to be credible not like Trump or Farage.

It is hard to believe that only appearing to have – for example – knowledge of the economy or Brexit without actually having a clue can be considered a political resource.

Unfortunately, Communication between politics and society is to a large extent mediated:

Where in British politics is the counter to the resentment and the populism—along with the real, earned dismay at the incompetence of Parliament when it comes to Brexit?

Where is the logic of a USA president that denies climate change, that’s starting a trade war with China and looking for a war against Iran, that thinks rape is an ok weapon of war?

Its time we their employers evaluate their performance to see if we are getting our money worth.

In the European Union, it is time to vet MEP spending, replacing the current MEP-led system.

There are several ways of looking at government performance.

Broadly speaking, the objective of governments is to maximise

their citizens’ welfare.

The ideal way to assess government performance would be to measure all the outputs that government produces or outcomes that it achieves, and compare these with the money it spends and resources it uses to assess its efficiency and productivity.

This isn’t possible, given how difficult it is to define and measure many of the outputs of government. A proxy for performance is whether departments are using technologies and working practices which are believed to be productivity-enhancing.

If information is power, then performance measurement is surely tightly linked to the creation and use of power.

If the whole chain is considered, it is possible to better analyse why performance is being measured, how and by whom, what is seen to be of value, what is being gained and what is being lost, and who is benefitting and losing from this.

However quantified measures lead to measurement becoming more technical, costly and politically controlled.

What is needed is a blend of political purpose and rationality.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of POLITICAL CAPITAL"

This form of measurement cannot be demanded by force but needs to be gained through persuasion and involvement.

How can we achieve this?

There is also potential for directed collaboration to engender a more realistic-political approach to performance measurement, and allow it to become more critical, iterative and reflective.

Citizens bonds could and would counteract the plunder of Democracy by Data algorithms that make a profit though Hedge funds  (The Brexit-supporting hedge fund manager Crispin Odey made £220 million and was filmed by a BBC documentary crew saying: “The morning has gold in its mouth.” ).

Their performance would measure governments programmes by their return on investment.

BUILDING TRUST BETWEEN THE POLITICIANS AND THE TAXPAYER THUS CREATING REAL POLITICAL CAPITAL:

Ultimately, these Bonds can be distilled into power in its purest form.

You must remember that without the man on the streets, politics is a zero-sum game. Without people, the pursuit of power is meaningless.

Around the world with climate change governments are dancing with disasters.

Despite the fiscal constraints of the day, the rationale and the resources can be found – if the political will is there.

To bolster political capital it is not tax, tax and more taxes which leads to popularism.

Let us all invest in the future. THERE IS NO POLITICAL CAPITAL IN Brexit.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of POLITICAL CAPITAL"

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE LOOKS AT THE FAR RIGHT AS A VOTING PROPOSITION.

07 Thursday Mar 2019

Posted by in 2019., Democracy, European Elections 2019, European Union., Freedom, Modern day life., Our Common Values., Politics., Post - truth politics., Reality., The common good., The far-right., 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, Where's the Global Outrage., World Leaders, World Politics, World Racism

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(Fourteen-minute read)

BEFORE YOU VOTE IN THE FORTHCOMING EUROPEAN ELECTION YOU SHOULD BE WELL ADVISED TO KNOW WHAT EXACTLY DO THE FAR RIGHT PARTIES STAND FOR.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "PICTURES OF THE FAR RIGHT"

The European far right represents a confluence of many ideologies: nationalism, socialism, anti-Semitism, authoritarianism.

Given the significant variations that exist between these parties and groups, any term that groups them together and compares them will have limitations.

But the term “far right” is the least problematic precisely because it can be used, on the one hand, to identify the overarching similarities that make them comparable, and on the other to distinguish between different variants.

Though Europe’s far-right parties differ in important respects, they are motivated by a common sense of mission: to save their homelands from what they view as the corrosive effects of multiculturalism and globalization by creating a closed-off, ethnically homogeneous society.

Under the “far right” umbrella, we must distinguish between two sub-categories: extreme and radical right.

The extreme right includes both vigilante groups and political parties that are often openly racist, have clear ties to fascism and also employ violence and aggressive tactics. These groups may operate either outside or within the realm of electoral politics or both.

The term “right-wing populism”, however, is less appropriate.

Populism is an even broader umbrella that often includes disparate parties and groups.

To narrow down this category, we often tend to conflate populism and nationalism, identifying a party as populist, not on the basis of its populist attributes – what party doesn’t claim to speak on behalf of the people in a democracy? – but on the basis of its nationalist attributes.

But despite the similarities between “populism” and “nationalism” – both emphasise conflict lines, focus on the collective, and put forward a vision of an ideal society – the two are conceptually different. While the former pits the people against the elites, the latter pits the in-group against the out-group.

In part, both can be seen as a backlash against the political establishment in the wake of the financial and migrant crises, but the wave of discontent also taps into long-standing fears about globalisation and a dilution of national identity.

This civic nationalist rhetoric presents culture as a value issue, justifying exclusion on purported threats posed by those who do not share “our” liberal democratic values.

The justification is that certain cultures and religions are intolerant and inherently antithetical to democracy.

They tend to oppose procedural democracy with some common themes, such as hostility to immigration, anti-Islamic rhetoric and Euroscepticism.

The forthcoming elections are going to expose just who are they, where they are, what are their political programmes and why they have risen from the political fringes.

So where does this leave Europe’s political landscape?

Will the far right triumph in Europe in 2019?

Will the far right redraw the political map of Europe?

Is the European Union being pulled inexorably towards the agenda of the far

right? 

There is little point here in listing party after party, it is sufficient to say that they all to some degrees or other blame and want to get rid of migrants. While conveniently ignoring that their countries are for the most part made up of refugees in one form or another.

If the far right wins 100 seats in the new European parliament this year, and the EPP group’s drift to nationalism and xenophobia continues, it is safe to say the projects of integration and social liberalism will be on hold.

They believed in what Trump promised in the USA.

The reality is that the EU in the forthcoming elections needs to look at the next distribution of structural funds. It needs to redefine the allocation criteria to reflect the preparedness of regions and authorities to receive and integrate migrants.

What is the solution?

It is surely this:

For the centre-left and the radical left to seek tactical unity with as many green and liberal parties as possible to defend democracy, suppress fascism and end austerity.

At the moment it’s hard to get the leaders of the European radical left to occupy the same room, let alone persuade social democratic politicians to collaborate with them.

However, the migration issue is the starting point of a continental power struggle pitching two very different versions of the principles that should bind Europe together.

One is liberal democratic, and attuned to the notion of an open society; the other is fortress-minded, illiberal and intolerant.

These far-right leaders are now uniting to attempt a national-populist takeover of the EU as we’ve known it.

There is, however, one wild-card option with a non-negligible chance of happening:

Theresa May falls, a second referendum cancels Brexit, Article 50 is revoked, Britain elects new MEPs and a new, left-led British government appoints a commissioner to match its politics. A unilateral cancellation of Brexit would merely leave Britain with all its rights under the status quo: but it would alter the dynamics of Europe.

Because even at 40 per cent of the vote, a new raft of left-affiliated MEPs would shift the balance in the parliament, while a feisty, communicative left commissioner from the fifth-largest economy in the world would tilt the balance in the EU.

For the democratic-minded across Europe, Europe needs to get its priorities right before it’s too late.

We all need to ask ourselves why should we relive the pain and terror today of far-right policies?

Surely if we Europeans have learnt anything it is that we all must distance ourselves from fascism in order to appeal to broader electorates.

And so herein lies the problem.

If nationalism is always a feature of the far right, as most researchers agree, what is the added value of the term “populism”? To put it another way, what is the difference between a radical right-wing party and a populist radical right-wing party? While populism may or may not be an attribute of some far-right parties, it is not their defining feature. Rather, nationalism is.

But while these parties differ in many ways, their progressive entrenchment in their national political systems raises similar questions about out-group exclusion, anti-immigration narratives and mainstream responses.

Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, a leading advocate of the alt-right in the United States, is hoping the movement can lead Europe’s nationalist and populist parties to a strong showing next May.

For me “Bannon is American and has no place in a European political party.

It is disrespectful and unnecessary!

Many of the themes of Bannonism/Trumpism do not translate well in Europe.

For far-right groups, the migrant issue is something of a zero-sum game:

One country’s “gain” (by refusing refugees) is necessarily another’s nation’s “loss”.

Ultimately, as national right-wing groups chart their paths forward, few will find their domestic legitimacy bolstered by linking up with other groups on the far right.

Allusions to transnational links complicate matters for most of them.

The history of far-right activism is replete with examples of efforts to develop international links, and their failure.

The reason why far-right populists in Europe do not coordinate more systematically is that most of them are profoundly different, both in policy and style.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "PICTURES OF THE FAR RIGHT"

The sad truth is that it does not take Steve Bannon to build a strong far right in Europe. The voters are doing his job perfectly well – by not voting, and by supporting nationalist, anti-EU forces in their home countries.

History repeats itself, sadly, so don’t vote with false news spread by social media.

There are more than 40 million Muslims and 1.6 million Jews in Europe.

Do they need our votes?

I don’t think they need our votes. They need our kosher stamp.

No country can be forced to take in refugees. Every country has the right to say, ‘We don’t want others coming here.’ But the moment we’re talking about [engaging with parties that talk of] restriction on freedom of religion and racism.

The old world order is going through a lot of turbulence and is in danger of collapsing.

Those who believe in social democratic, green or liberal agendas have become accustomed to viewing far-right populists as automatically anti-EU.

Faced with this ideological flexibility, pro-EU politicians will need to think long and hard about how to protect the EU from those who would misuse it to promote a darker vision of Europe. These right-wing parties should be ostracized.

Make an informed choice rather than a mere expression of frustration with the EU in May.

There’s no steady political weathervane pointing in only one direction.

FOR ME:

OVER THE NEXT TWELVE YEARS WITH ALL OF US TREATED BY CLIMATE CHANGE  THAT IS GOING TO MAKE EVERYTHING IRREVELENT WHY WASTE A VOTE ON A FAR RIGHT OR INDEED FOR THAT MATTER ON A FAR LEFT PARTY WHEN WHAT IS NEEDED IS A VOTE THAT BRINGS US ALL TOGETHER TO ACT.

The far right has never had the slightest interest in the unknown.

It wants to be told the news it wants to hear, and the atmosphere of mystery it cultivates—like the pseudo-science to which it often gives rise—only exists to provide obvious lies with a vague cover of authority, a comfortably blurred prestige.

The tinder is dry, waiting for a lighted match.

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