(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.

This is why there can be no hard borer between Northern Ireland and the South.

Watch and learn.

It’s a long way to the next election, it’s a long way to go.

It’s a long a long way to the WTC to the sweets Trump I know.

Goodbye Brussels, Farwell the EU, its a long way to a tax haven but my heart,s right here.

Up to mighty London came the DUP as Mrs May conservatives are paved with gold.

Sure, everyone was gay, singing the song of we not stay, till  Paddy gets excited. Then he shouted to them there join us and stay.

It’s a long way to Tipperary it’s a long way to go.

21/SEPTEMBER/ 2018.

Dear Mrs. Prime Minster May,

The other day I was hammering a nail in the wall to hang a picture.

I hit my finger. Immediately, my right hand put down the hammer and took care of my left hand.

My right hand never said, ” Left hand you know I’m taking good care of you. You should remember that” And my left hand did not say, Right hand, you have made me suffer. I want justice, give me that hammer.

The point is to demand respect you seem to be putting the cart before the horse.

Since joining as a common market member, the UK has secured numerous significant opt-outs from what is now the EU –  principle among them being from the common currency (Britain and Denmark are the only countries not obliged to join), Schengen (open borders and common visa area) and the common agricultural policy.

Given the ‘semi-detached’ status you already enjoyed one might even detect a return of the Anglophobia of the imperial era with its stress on English or British hypocrisy: the domineering bully of a country congratulating itself on its gentlemanly liberalism.

It’s time for you to stop acting like a spoiled child and accept that you can’t have everything both ways — departure from the EU but membership in programs like Galileo and Erasmus; an Irish border that’s both closed but somehow open; access to the single market without its most important conditions; the freedom of movement and no oversight by the European Court of Justice; your pick of the European cherry tree, without bothering to water the soil or tend to its branches.

Get real the European Union has and is showing respect to its core values and the millions how died that led to its foundations.  

YOURS FAITHFULLY,

The Beady Eye.