(Fourteen-minute read)

If something is described as shame, it is disappointing or not satisfactory:

I am sure most of us would agree that we all live in a world bombarded by Media which is desensitising our feelings of shame, guilt, and compassion.

Feelings are wholly and solely experienced only by you. They only exist at the moment they arise.

Shame is a nonmoral emotion, meaning that it involves the nonmoral or “aesthetic” facet of one’s self-esteem, which is concerned with the self’s adequacy with respect to its own wishes or aspirations.

However, a flaw of character can elicit guilt rather than shame.

However, in guilt, it is the moral facet of one’s self-esteem – the facet concerned with the responsible harmfulness or beneficialness of the self’s behaviour, attitudes, and dispositions – that suffers a blow, not national guilt.

Shame and guilt have much in common:

They are self-conscious emotions, implying self-reflection and self-evaluation they involve negative self-evaluations and feelings of distress elicited by one’s perceived failures or transgressions. However shame and guilt are distinguishable from each other, and their differences matter in a world that is driven by algorithms.

Why because guilt often plays the role of the “ugly” and anti-social emotion endowed with the power to violate norms and thwart others’ goals, and willing (or inclined) to do so.

But perhaps the worst meta-feeling is increasingly the most common: feeling good about feeling bad.

How morally disoriented can one get?

Think of all we’ve witnessed in the past few weeks alone, examples ranging from the outrageous to the ridiculous – Brexit, (The political and moral choices that England continues to make in response to the identity positioning by their historical legacy is becoming one of the great unfolding stories of our time.) to the suffering of thousands in Africa.

These days there’s no collective meaning attached to our feelings other than things like Red Nose Day and world charities begging to our pockets. Much of the social strife that we’re experiencing today is the result of meta-feelings that are moralizing mobs on both the political right and left who see themselves as victimized.

They think they’re important because they say something about us, about the world, and about our relationship with it.

But they say none of these things.

Sometimes you hurt for a good reason. Sometimes for a bad reason. And sometimes no reason at all. The hurt itself is neutral. The reason is separate.

We are now the powerful absurd who are supposed to be connected than ever before, yet we somehow feel more isolated.

How has society changed to cause this to be a more prevalent problem?

Is it because we can order our groceries online.

One of the main reasons is that we are removed from nature.

We have little or no understanding of the effects of climate other than seeing forest fires, massive flooding on our TV sets (which are only the beginning of the natural disaster to come) along with pictures of the starving, devastation by wars, and terrorism not to mention inequality reflected in shanty squaller.

The internet is not a lifeforce, devouring our lives to feed itself. It is merely a technological innovation, albeit one on which much of our economic, political, and cultural lives depend.

As we have seen in New Zeland there are some of us inhabit, for instance, queer radical insane spaces promoted by racism prejudices and propaganda across Social Media that collectivity can take on toxic and damaging roles and lead to the damnation and ruination of people.

If we were to dissect and see social media more clearly, to see where all the tentacles really come from, to ask simple questions like, “Who is telling us to look in this direction?”, we might see it for what it is: an apparatus made up of many moving parts, all of whose effects can be traced in very material renditions of power and commerce for profit.

We ignore social media at our peril, but can we use it as tools and not let it define us?

Is it time to stop thinking through the forced collectivities of social media and start thinking about the possibility of unbelonging instead?

Can we think outside of the endless sense of timelessness forced upon us by hours of internet life and instead think ourselves into a time of actual history and movements forward?

Can we think about society not in terms of collectivities forged in endless solidarity in public but as the work we put in to create a better world?

We must push back against the screaming online hordes and simply stated, “We understand the anger, but we will first discuss the matter as properly outraged citizens, as people who belong, as people with feelings.

Unfortunately, Social interaction without collective feeling is meaningless.

To achieve change shame has to be scaled up from the individual to an audience that shames governments, corporations and banks.

Social media has brought us all closer together in communication.

Sometimes that’s a good thing. But when it comes to online shaming, it’s a bad thing. People get humiliated on Twitter, savaged in public forums and women get rape and death threats.

There’s something about the anonymity of social media has people who probably seem perfectly nice in person, posting vicious, scathing, humiliating comments online.

I am not talking here about Guilt which is an internally generated sense of moral obligation not to repeat past transgressions, like the extermination of a helpless minority within one’s own society.

Nor am I talking about shame, which is externally generated, driven by the “shaming look” of others.

Therein lies a key difference: For guilt, it’s the awareness of the deed and its meaning; For shame, it’s whether others know.

For example, a major identity issue for young Germans is how to deal with the notion of collective guilt or collective shame for the crimes of the Third Reich. While honour-shame cultures have moral codes, their vulnerability to the fear of shame can readily lead to a jettisoning of any moral concerns.

Yet here we are, ironically living in a perpetual outrage cycle that moves so fast, we forget yesterday’s controversy today because a new one has supplanted it.

As a culture, we seem to have divested ourselves of shame — real shame.

Online “communities” tend to resemble ever-shape-shifting amoebae, breaking and dividing into multiple pieces that in turn drift towards new clusters of organisms.

Social media is a disparate set of effects brought about by collusion between corporations, but its mythology occludes those mechanisms of power and currency by installing instead origin stories and tall tales, legends about how “the whole world” was watching.

It’s impossible to overstate what we’re losing.

Shame is crucial in well-functioning societies. It’s an evolutionary adaptation that keeps us cooperating, considerate, and safe.

Feelings are important. But they’re important not for the reasons we think they are.

The internet should be considered simply as a tool, not a substitute for justice or organising?

Long may we continue to expose the various structures through which it and its denizens exert power, sometimes for good but often not.

The internet is a technology, and yet most of our interactions on it are mediated by unfeeling algorithms stripped away or sense of humanity in the most seemingly innocuous ways when we participate in frenzied modes of expulsion.

You might say that we were once sophisticated enough to fake it if we didn’t feel it.

How we use social media is marginalised populations.

The way individuals deal with their nations’ history is closely linked with emotional experiences. 

If both collective guilt and shame can initiate reparative attitudes, the question then arises as to what may mediate the link between each and reparation.

The feelings of personal distress arising from perceptions of illegitimate ingroup superiority rather than empathic concern for the other are the critical antecedents of collective guilt.

Finally, the type of empathy may also be an important factor.

As is well known, empathy can have both cognitive and affective components.

Guilt may be associated with an increased tendency to put oneself in the shoes of the victim group.

It might still be too early to expect much emotional empathy from
the perpetrator group.

It is perhaps indicative of the extreme political sensitivity

And all of this unfolding in a somewhat surreality landscape with our brains doing mental acrobatics to avoid any discomfort.

It is my view that if we are to tackle the effects of the fourth Industrial technological revolution and climate change and address the mistakes of the last industrial revolution we must find a new way to facilitate non-confrontational politics.

There is no shame in the realisation that coming together to make a world worthy of all.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Six-minute read)

Extension or not the time is running out for the UK to get a deal on arrangements for its departure from the EU.

It is both blindingly and depressingly obvious that the social fabric of the country is being stretched to breaking point.

An Act of self-harm with no point, no upside.

There is no such thing as sun lite uplands outside the EU.

Why?

It’s because under WTO rules, anything you offer one country you must offer all. (except if you have a free trade agreement).

Its time to get a grip.

If not we will be witnessing civil unrest as an ignorant citizenry lashes out at the EU, Ireland, anything with European in the title.

The will of the people.

Almost half voted one way the rest the other way while those most affected had no vote with Victory won by illegal means.

For decades, gaps in income and respect for the London fraternity have been widening, compounded by the need for free education for all, which has now manifested itself into less fortunate fellow citizens becoming economically and socially detached which is bitterly and understandably resented.

Hence the small majority vote to leave.

Article 50 was enacted without consultation or thought out plan.

A short extension will not help.

What is needed is to contest the forthcoming EU Elections with a long extension and gain some power to change and reform the European Union.

With the current climate in Europen, the new commission would find it hard to refuse a move to reverse the economic divergence of the rich region to poor ones.

Such a strategy would sidestep the inevitability of the impending catastrophe of leave or remain and offers a credible strategy for all to unite.

It would allow time for the truth.

It would allow time for the orange/green factor, the Irish Question to be resolved.

Fortunately, up to now the Good Friday Treaty that the UK voluntarily signed created constraints that made a clear-cut Brexit impossible actually because it is predicated on the common membership of both Ireland and the United Kingdom to the same political body called the European Union.

“Ar scáth a chéile a mhairimid” (we live in the shadow of each other.)

Seventeen months ago the germ called the DUP crossed the borderless Irish Sea, found its way to Westminster and contaminated the Conservative Party and British politics.

It has produced a situation where ten DUP members hold the balance of power in Westminster, keeping her minority government in office.

The unavoidable truth about the island of Ireland question did not feature it was bought off with a bribe to the DUP.

The tragedy, so far, is that unionists are not prepared to look beyond their own traditional suspicions. The Republic of Ireland they fear no longer exists.

Membership of the European Union helped to remove centuries old poison and distrust and change the dynamic. Gone are the days of a DUP who built its philosophy on principles of confrontation – No Surrender, Sell-Out, Not an Inch.

The thesis to set DUP pulses racing, however, is the notion that Northern Ireland is about to be cut adrift from the United Kingdom, as part of a cunning plan to facilitate a united Ireland and confine Ulster unionists to a life of subservience.

Nowadays, like much of US President Donald Trump’s antics, often the fear and rhetoric have little basis in reality.

The tragedy of the DUP’s current position is they are not prepared to explore the nature of the Brexit deal on offer to them.

Northern Ireland has been offered unique status within the European Union and the United Kingdom. The DUP and Northern Ireland have indeed been offered a sweetheart deal. Not due to the European Union’s special affection for Northern Ireland but because it is the practical way to structure the withdrawal agreement, the border question included.

Politics in England has indeed become a spectator sport with the House of Commons the Coliseum.

The current turmoil in British politics totally eclipses Suez, totally eclipses everything, we have never been here before.

The lengths of fixation of government on this one issue, the complexity of the problem…20 resignations utterly eclipsing Suez, Falklands, Iraq War, the country more evenly divided, more deeply divided, families, communities, churches, than on any issue.

If you asked me the DUP is attempting to sell loyal Ulster down the river and England up the swanny.

Having sailed into the 20th century as an empire, the U.K. spent the second half of the century shedding nearly all of its colonies — and as a result much of its economic and military might. For the first time in modern history, Britain is small.

The UK better get used to being a middling power.

The U.K. simply doesn’t seem to know how to play the game of giving and take needed to negotiate with a far larger partner.

With the Conservative party more deeply divided in its 200-year history…”Scotland and Northern Ireland’s future in the union are both up for grabs.

I take it all day by day. Don’t jump too far ahead. Let’s see where we are on March 29th and I’ll come back to you!

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The kind of Irish language provisions some campaigners were attempting to introduce in Northern Ireland do not exist south of the border yet the more creative approach it has taken to the language is allowing for more organic growth and popularity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Sixteen-minute read)

We all know that the current changes in our planet’s climate are redrawing the world and magnifying the risks for instability in all forms.

Water is one of the most valuable resources on Earth.

Probably every manufactured product uses water during some part of the production process.

It is the source of life on Earth and quite possibly beyond.

It covers over two-thirds of the planet’s surface, makes up around 70% of the human body and is essential for life.

Water is indispensable to human life.

In theory, the amount of water on earth will always remain the same.

How likely are the water wars to arise?

Water has ranked in the top five risks for seven consecutive years in the World Economic Forum’s Global Risk Report.

There is already plenty of evidence to suggests that climate change drives conflict and social unrest, directly linking both in a cause-and-effect relationship.

Water-related challenges such as shortages and sanitation are already increasing smaller-scale conflict and instability within and across national borders.

Its scarcity is playing a role in fuelling the political and security crisis in Yemen.

Afghanistan’s efforts to harness the waters of the Helmand River and the Harirud to support post-conflict reconstruction and development have alarmed Iran.

The long-standing conflict over water from the Cauvery River between the Indian states Karnataka and Tamil Nadu has recently resurfaced.

However, it is rarely the lack of water as such that fuels conflict, but rather its governance and management.

And if you look at the headline threats to humanity and the planet over the next decade, as pinpointed by 1,000 experts, all but one are linked to water. These include extreme weather, natural and man-made disasters, climate change, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse.

This is a grim fact of modern life and despite having contributed the least to anthropogenic climate change of anyone, low-income, resource-poor nations will be affected the most.

You can’t escape climate change if your feet are on the ground.

It is widely agreed that a business-as-usual approach cannot address global water challenges in the future, nor will our current strategies sustain the world’s thirst much longer, particularly when the population hits eight, nine or ten billion in the coming decades.

Yet cold, hard data on how our water systems function is still lacking.

The World Health Organization estimates 844 million people lack basic drinking water; some two billion use a source contaminated with faeces.

With a warming of 2 to 4C, most regions in Africa will experience a 60 to 80 per cent reduction of surface run-off by 2100.

Last year, Cape Town came within a few drops of Day Zero when the taps are turned off. A serious drought was only just averted.

There is no need here to draw a picture of what would happen if  New York or any other city with a few million inhabitants suffered fresh water shortages.

With 55% of us already living in urban areas which are forecasted to hit 68% by 2050 many cities and towns that are in low-lying coastal locations are under threat to flooding.

Let’s face it, water is chronically undervalued and, in some cases, not valued at all.

Only by embedding its true financial, social and environmental value into policymaking, governance, and financial and risk reporting can we instil a better mentality.

The resilience of our society, both in terms of economic growth and human security, must be addressed through a water lens.

As the Paris climate change conference showed making pledges, is one thing, delivering on them often another.

The emerging fourth industrial revolution technologies – machine-learning, artificial intelligence, advanced sensors, satellite imagery, robotics and others – have the potential to unlock a wealth of previously unobtainable data about water systems at the global, regional, watershed and local level.

Unfortunately, all this data will achieve little or nothing unless its value is realized and appreciated today.

In 2021, the Surface Water Ocean Topography mission, a joint satellite mission between Nasa and France, will use radar technology to provide the first global survey of Earth’s water, measuring how bodies of water change over time. The satellite will survey at least 90 per cent of the planet, studying lakes, rivers, reservoirs and oceans roughly twice every 21 days.

WHAT THEY WILL DISCOVER IS BY 2021 WE WON’T NEED A SATELLITE TO SURVEY THE EARTH’S WATER. OUR PLANET IS ALREADY SENDING DISTRESS SIGNALS.

Consumers may already be aware of the environmental impact of producing goods in terms of energy or pollution, but they might be surprised to learn how much water is needed to create some daily goods.

Growing coffee beans is a thirsty business, as is growing cotton – 10,000 litres of water in a pair of jeans – and 2,500 litres in the average T-shirt. Avocados, almonds – even bottles of water themselves, are all highly water-intensive enterprises.

Common sense says it’s TIME TO STOP EATING – HAMBURGERS.

A hamburger takes 2,400 litres, or 630 gallons, of water to produce.

Thousands of litres are needed to make shoes and microchips.

Somewhere around 30 litres of water is required for tea itself, 10 litres for a small dash of milk and a further 6 litres for each teaspoon of sugar. This means that a simple cup of tea with milk and two sugars could actually require 52 litres of water – enough to fill my kettle more than 30 times.

Agriculture uses about 70% of freshwater across the globe.

When countries and regions with water shortages pour their water into exports, on the surface it can look as if they are making a profit, but in the long term their reliance on diminishing water resources will be damaging.

WHAT IF ANYTHING ARE WE DOING ABOUT WATER?

There is the same amount of freshwater on earth as there always has been.

Water scarcity is an abstract concept to many and a stark reality for others. It is the result of myriad environmental, political, economic, and social forces.

In essence, only 0.007 per cent of the planet’s water is available to fuel and feed its 6.8 billion people.

At the moment 844 million people do not even have access to a basic water source.

 

(Four-minute read)

As Brexit grinds its way to Mar 29 it is obvious to all in Europe that there is no fear of the Englishman turning into the “new Europeans”.

Brexit now has UK politics by the short and haires showing that it is in need of proportional  representation politics and not first pass the post.

Why?

Because the UK is made up of groups from 22 foreign countries that are estimated to consist of at least 100,000 individuals residing in the UK.

(people born in Poland, India, Pakistan, the Republic of Ireland, Romania, Germany, Bangladesh, South Africa, China, Italy, Nigeria, Lithuania, the United States, France, Spain, the Philippines, Jamaica, Sri Lanka, Australia, Portugal, Kenya and Zimbabwe)

677,177 classified themselves as of mixed race, making up 1.2 per cent of the UK population.

It is estimated that as many as six million people living in the UK have an Irish-born grandparent (around 10% of the UK population).

Indeed it would be fair to say that there has been so much immigration and intermarriage that it’s difficult to find a true “Englishman” whose bloodline, on both sides of the family, is so pure that he can trace his (her) dynasty to the point before England even existed.

On the other hand no group anywhere in the world outside Olduvai, in eastern Africa, can lay claim to being truly “native”.

In the imperial imagination of British politics, there are only two states: dominant and submissive, coloniser and colonised. This dualism lingers. If England is not an imperial power, it must be the only other thing it can be: a colony.

This is the mental cartography that English conservatism cannot transcend – the map of a Europe that may no longer exist in reality, but within which its imagination remains imprisoned. “Europe.”

The tragedy of all this is the position that Ireland finds its self in.

The Anglo-Irish relationship has been the dominant theme of most Irish historical writing.

However, it is difficult to understand modern Ireland without understanding modern Britain, too. Current discussions around Brexit bear out the adage that the Irish never forget their history and the English never remember it.

Brexit certainly illustrates how the ‘Irish Question’ never dies; it just gets reformulated.

The notion that Irishness might be defined in opposition to England hardly comes as a surprise.

One only has to look at what Boris Johnson told theTelegraph on 14 May 2016, a month before the referendum and I quote.

“Hitler tried to unite Europe, so does the EU, therefore the EU is a Hitlerian project. But the lack of subtlety did not stop the trope from being used in the Brexit campaign: “Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this [unifying Europe], and it ends tragically. The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods.”

I can’t help but wonder if the more gung-ho proponents of Brexit are even aware of the potential minefield that they are marching Ireland into?

Brexit now provides the backdrop to some particularly contested anniversaries: the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement (1998); the 50th of the outbreak of the Troubles (1969); and the 100th of the political partition of the island (1920) and the outbreak of civil war (1922).

The full consequences of Brexit remain to be seen.

Ironically, the cause of Irish nationalism was better served by Britain looking the other way.

As George Bernard Shaw observed, Ireland – which before independence had been regarded as a central part of the British polity – was relegated to the significance of a ‘cabbage garden’. It drifted to the edge of Westminster consciousness, allowing a fatal indifference to the flawed performances of the devolved regime in Northern Ireland.

Any attempts to undermine the Good Friday Agreement or to reintroduce a ‘hard’ border with Northern Ireland could negate many of the gains achieved as a result of the Peace Process.

Sharing a common European agenda has provided Ireland, north and south, with great scope to work together, to find common cause and to play down our differences.

The British Government’s (re)negotiation of the border between the UK and Ireland, necessitated by Brexit, is evidence of a blindness to the legacies of Ireland’s colonisation.

Similarly, much remains unknown about the Troubles (1969-98) that claimed over 3,500 lives. The Good Friday Agreement did not set up formal mechanisms for confronting the past akin to the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions established in South Africa and Latin America. Reparation has been conducted ad hoc by independent bodies, not via the criminal justice system.

Ireland cannot and will never recognise a border.

This remains the challenge of balancing opinions rooted in polarised politics and sharply differing visions for future Irish states, including the constitutional status of Northern Ireland.

A steady convergence of interests on the EU or the Peace Process in recent decades meant that there was no need to look to the past. That the British did not pay attention to Irish concerns at the time of the Brexit referendum is less surprising when seen in context.

A sense of British national identity developed during the 18th century in opposition to the French or, more generally, to Catholic Europe. Later, Britons imagined themselves as pragmatic and liberal, unlike militaristic, idealistic or excitable Europeans.

Unfortunately, whether there is a deal or no deal the damage is now done.

So we left with the British paradox:

If you were English, Brexit is bad enough, but what followed will be worse.

Outside the native ruling, class will be eliminated.

Think things are bad? Think again.

 None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.

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

 

 

 

(Four-minute read)

Dear Reader,

As if you didn’t know in a few days we in this part of the world will be celebrating the greatest consumer holiday of the year Christmas. A fourth Industrial Revolution Christmas that will take more than a generation to move our collective consciousness away from growth at all costs.

Social change if it happens is at snail pace

Unfortunately, when we look at our world, our best chance for change is Climate Change that might remind us that our very existence is tied up with the existence of all living things.

On this point, we have a lot to learn from people on the periphery of the world system, the ones our governments have ignored and have referred to underdeveloped.

Instead of the western model of development which is driven more and more by technology (that remains unregulated) creating a deep conceptual distinction between subject and object, self and other, humanity and the natural world we need to reject linear thinking that lies at the heart of development and think more relationally.

The ecosystem must have inalienable rights to survive and flourish.

To do this we need to develop a new Socio-ecological revolution marked by direct democracy with gender equality.

Of course, there are trillions of written words, conferences, and signs on Social Media that this is already happing, but in reality, it is not likely, that degrowth will happen as quickly as is needed.

For all initiatives purposes, the battle against Capitalism which itself appears to be in conflict with the pressing need to stave off a planetary meltdown will continue until we realise too late that world conflicts are over fresh water, air, and food supplies.

WHEN ONE LOOKS AT THE RESULT OF THE RECENT CLIMATE CONFERENCE IN POLAND YOU COULD NOT BE BLAMED FOR FEELING A SENSE OF DISPAIR.

The US, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait joined forces to prevent the conference fully embracing the IPCC’s findings, watering down a statement to a weak commendation of the timing of the scientists’ report. Australia joined with the US in a celebration of coal, and Brazil signalled its climate scepticism by withdrawing its offer to host next year’s talks.

The truth is that the world has little more than a decade to bring emissions under control and halve them, but like everything Climate is a commodity.

How are countries to abide by rules to curb carbon emissions when the very idea of green taxes and regulations are stigmatised as socialist or totalitarian?

As a result, countries cannot invest in building a zero-carbon infrastructure, when they are subject to Growth at all cost to pay the National debts.

When almost everything is privatised, operating in a free market run by algorithms for profit while poor countries cannot collect enough taxes due to trade liberalisation to meet spending on social services and reduce poverty never mind the climate.

Basically, we are all including most countries a sub-prime market for loan pushers like the World Bank, IMF. If we truly want to achieve change we must let Capitalism pick up the bill not create it.

Scrap all outstanding national debts, remove inequitable trade rules, move away from commodifying human life, democratise our major institutions of global governance, acknowledge that colonialism was a humanitarian disaster, get rid of begging on our airway and streets, curtail advertising, and replace GDP with gross national happiness as a measure of social progress.

GDP is that we’re measuring things at market prices. What people actually pay for things.

Yet we know very well that this is not the price at which people actually value something.

Just ask your self what is the value of two homeless people dying per night on the streets of London against Manchester United Manager on £18 million a year who is to be paid £23 billion to say goodbye. (Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham, clubs all owned by investors based overseas.)

We must, therefore, remember not only that GDP is a proxy for what we really want to know but also that it’s becoming an ever less reliable one.

We must understand that the Fourth Industrial Revolutions with the Internet often has an ‘everywhere but nowhere’ feel and this is why and where GDP is disappearing.

You only have to look at the Brexit mess that is rendering the Uk incapable of meeting the most serious challenge of the 21st century to understand that the economic systems that we have put in place for the last decades are in need of radical reform.

So we are beginning to be asked the question of how we’re going to live together in societies of tolerance and inclusion.

Too often, in our current world organisation that’s seen as a separate issue — not part of what development is about.

Of course, nothing can be achieved without trillions. (See the previous post on a world aid commission)

Happy Christmas to one and all.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Two-minute read)

Can there ever be a single solution that can apply to all people on the globe that everyone can be convinced of, and that is so simple that everyone can understand?

WE WATCH OUR WORLD LEADERS AT G8, G7, G whatever, representing capitalism, unable to agree on anything other than I am all right jack.

We see our world organisation and countries battling for power or funds, while all the time our Air and Fresh Water continues to be polluted.

Apart from a child or the yet to be born, we all understand that our lives rely on clean air and fresh water.

What we need is for the whole world ( no matter what religion what culture, whether rich or poor) to Enshrine sustainability.

We are unable to do so because of greed and now profit-seeking algorithms so it seems that nature is going to teach us a lesson- take and don’t give back is our pending ruination.

THIS LESSON IS ARRIVING AS SPEND MILLIONS ON EVERYTHING THAT AVOIDS US HAVING TO OPEN OUR EYES AND REALIZING THAT IT IS ONLY US NOT TECHNOLOGY THAT CAN DETERMINE WHAT THE OUTCOME IS TO BE.

The paradox is this is not a result of the failure globalization but its failure to protect and provide, creating unequal societies that live for the most part in big cities.

We must end the politics of the elite and reestablish the politics of the weak. No system can remain if it does not integrate the majority of its poorest citizens.

The recent Gilets Jaunes protest in Paris must spread worldwide if the inequalities inflicted for the sake of growth at all cost is to be stopped.

#What if we all were to wear this symbol worldwide.

Yellow with a sting.

To be seen and not heard is at you pearl. 

 

 

 

Perhaps there is someone with money and a conscious that might create a badge that could be made available online for free.

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

 

 

 

 

 

(Six-minute read)

One can place the blame and no doubt the blame will be played on many a doorstep for Brexit.  For me, it can be placed squarely on the shoulders of inequality.

All sides in the Brexit debate seem to see a Free Trade Agreement with the EU as being essential to England’s prosperity… but the question will be whose prosperity is that?

Is it Free Trade that will benefit the big corporations and banks?

Will leaving economically revitalise depressed areas?

Thames Water is still fighting a losing battle fixing our hundreds of years old sewage system. The National Grid relies on dwindling supplies of natural gas and an excess of clean electricity from Scotland. The NHS is creaking at its foundations. Trains are stuffed full of sweaty people, with people paying more for a rail ticket than a flight to Madrid. Millions of people rely on food banks to not starve. Charity shops are an essential part of the High Street for clothing the working classes, with thousands homeless, with a murder a day, while taxpayers money is ploughed into new aircraft carriers and worthless nuclear subs.

So stark is the evidence that Britain is going south-rapidly one would assume that by now  Britain would face up to its plight, there is no easy model for the redevelopment of the national economy.

The U.K. will not be part of the single market after it officially exits the EU and will have to access clients in the bloc like any other “third country.”

The U.K trades from a past no longer hold the respect of the World.

No matter what side of the arguments your on the UK’S RECENT ECONOMIC success originates from ITS MEMBERSHIP OF THE EU.

Theresa May has frequently been jaw-dropping in the incompetence and infighting of its political elites, but it is difficult to imagine things getting this bad.

As the English Government use deficit hysteria to collude in protecting private profit above all else, neither nationality nor geography will ultimately provide safeguards.

Britain will sink into “poverty as fast as the far east rises”.

SURELY IF MR CORBETT HAD THE BOTTLE TO STAND UP IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS AND CLEARLY SAY THAT THE LABOUR PARTY WILL NOT SUPPORT THE DRAFT AGREEMENT.  THEY WOULD BE IN POWER IN THE MORNING. 

The question of whether there is now a chance that Brexit may not ultimately go ahead is irrelevant as all the major players in the City of London are already making decisions.

London as a financial centre is not dead, nor will it be, but it’s dying.  I don’t think even by reversing Brexit it will be able to revive it, as worldwide technology is eroding its importance. 

However, not everyone is in the same boat yet.

There is a colossal opportunity for reform in the EU which it will have to do whether England leaves or not. 

What is needed both in the Uk and Europe is a rejection of the continuation of imperialism by “big and powerful trade interests.”  

Whoever wins the next general election or the forthcoming European elections will face international challenges reaching to the heart of a question that has bedevilled every government since 1945:

What is, or should be, the role of economics in the world?

THIS QUESTION CAN ONLY BE ANSWERED BY THE PEOPLE WHO WORK AND LIVE IN THE ECONOMY.

PROFIT BEFORE PEOPLE NO LONGER WORKS.

Old certainties are being uprooted and new or revived threats are multiplying.

Faced with the prospect of Scottish independence and the inevitable break-up of the United Kingdom.  The country can no longer afford a nuclear deterrent, morally or financially.

Disturbed by this evidence of decline, Britain’s political class comforts itself by arguing the country still leads by example.

It is small consolation for a country that, 100 years ago, was a superpower with a truly global reach that the forthcoming election will be all about isolation or not.

You can rest assured that the campaigns to come will not address foreign policy nor the key 21st-century international issues, such as climate change, they will barely get a mention.

This is not an accident.

Britain’s horizons are narrowing.

Its strength and global ambitions are fading.

Its post-imperial destiny is that of a second-tier power.

When the war of words politicians are using now has died down, reconciliation and pragmatism will win the day. The EU needs the UK and vice versa.

Nobody in their right mind wants to undermine that relationship.

The trick now is not to appear second rate to the DUP that are holding the whole of Britian to ransom.

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

Two minutes read:

Millions of soldiers worldwide were killed; it shockingly works out that during the war, which lasted 4 and a quarter years, 230 soldiers died every single hour!

By the end of WW1, over 10 million soldiers had been killed, and another 21 million wounded.

We should remember it because:

The Ottoman empire split up.
England became heavily indebted to the USA.
Our government and democracy improved.
The treaty of Versailles which led to the League of Nations.
German hyperinflation- having to pay the cost of the war
Revolution on warfare tactics.
Improvements and advances in medicine.
End of Colonialism, the rise of nations
The rise of dictatorships e.g Hitler and the Nazi Party

In some ways, WW1 should be remembered as a great success.

But this came at a huge cost of lives so it definitely should be remembered with respect.

MAY THEY REST IN PEACE.

ALL HUMAN COMMENTS APPRECIATED. aLL LIKE CLICKS CHUCKED IN THE BIN.

Here we are and here we will stay till death do us part on a path to self-imposed environmental and social collapse.

# What if.com

If we were to adopt an ecological civilisation instead of I am all right jack civilisation. One to serve not just the interest of the rich but the well being of everyone we would have a peaceful civil world.

We have the technology and the knowledge to move beyond the violence, fear, and daily struggle for survival if we make it a common goal.

To achieve such a world it requires leadership from every level of society.

We must remove nonessential consumption, remove the non-equitable distribution of wealth and power.

We must remove harmful technologies.

We must move to local self-reliance and reduce our belief that money is happiness.

We must use social media to lobby change.

Here is my first #what if.com

POSTING.

If we placed a 0.05% world aid commission on all high-frequency trading, on all foreign exchange transaction over $50,000, on all sovereign wealth fund acquisitions, on all gambling, on all algorithms profits. We would create a perpetual funded fund of billions to address not just inequality but climate change.