Tag Archives: England’s future.

THE BEADY EYE LOOKS AT THE PENDING COLLAPSE OF ENGLAND

16 Saturday Jul 2022

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(Fifteen-minute read )

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This time, there might be no way out.

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

An awakening is needed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There is no free market here.

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

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

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

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

And I can’t see them, as yet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So I ask where are the voices of young England.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASKS. WHAT NEXT FOR ENGLAND?

11 Monday Jul 2022

Posted by in 2022: The year we need to change., England's future.

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( Ten-minute read )

Johnson has resigned as party leader, but he is still prime minister until his successor is elected.

In reality, there is no set minimum or maximum term for a Prime Minister The PM is not directly appointed by the population, only his political party is elected. 

The Conservative Party has the majority in the house of Commons and therefore without a general election, the next Prime Minister to take over will be appointed with a secret vote.

The PM is not directly appointed by the population, only his political party is elected. It is up to the party members to select their leader.

Under Britain’s political rules, the next election must be called by December 2024.

Officially, it’s ‘at Her Majesty’s pleasure’.

So what is next? 

A spectre is haunting Britain and Brexit – the spectre of English nationalism.

England is the only part of the union whose people have not been consulted or offered a referendum on how they wish to be governed in the past 20 years.

At its heart, leveling up is about tackling the long-standing inequalities across the UK but has, so far, failed to provide the answers to England’s democratic deficit.

The question of England, its national political and policy identity, and its future governance, simply has not been on the Conservative radar.

If I could see tomorrow today in the context of the changing nature of UK governance, . . . I would slow down and notice . . . what was taken for granted is now breaking apart with England remaining an anomaly.

While the centers of power in the rest of the UK have shifted away from Westminster over the last two decades, for England these changes have been limited. The battle for the first phase of Brexit may soon be over, the political battle for England has barely begun.

England is the ‘gaping hole in the devolution settlement’, and now constitutes ‘the only nation subject to permanent direct rule from Westminster.

English values and interests are the only ones to have had effective reality in UK politics.

This failure of political imagination about England is one characteristic of the wider British power elite, whether aligned ideologically to the political left, right or center.

On the Right, none of the eleven Conservative Party leadership candidates has made a single speech setting out a vision for the future of England, let alone an English nationalist perspective on England’s governance and political economy.

The current candidates for PM are all so far exhibited short-term thinking – Tax cuts, etc while the potential constitutional consequences of Brexit are becoming more evident day by day. Brexit marks not the end but the beginning of a new politics in which the right is transmuting into the party of English nationalists.

Why? 

Because English Conservatives would support Scottish independence and 75 percent of the collapse of the Northern Ireland peace process as the price of Brexit.

Far from stoking the alleged strident English nationalism of their party membership, the proposals of the myriad contenders for the Conservative Party’s leadership have simply served to illustrate the degree to which the Conservative Party has remained stranded on the common ground of strident Thatcherite British nationalism and its ambition to bring about a transformational.

Thatcher’s policies ripped apart any possibility for economic stability for the poor and made or caused the divide between rich and poor to grow ever wider. These days, the “s” word, “socialism,” is thrown around like it is a deadly germ.

On the political Left, not one member of the opposition parties has ever attempted to make the case for self-government for England.

The Labour Party, in particular, has gone to great lengths to linguistically cleanse its manifestos and policy documents of anything which might give England a political, institutional, policy, or democratic identity separate or separable from that of Britain, Britishness, or the British state.

Back to the question.

Something must be done to address the lack of democracy across England.

Too often any transfer of decision making-powers has come as an afterthought – and where reforms have taken place these have been driven from the center and done little to genuinely empower local government or the communities in which people live.

It is not for the center at Westminster to decide how local communities should see themselves and how they should be governed but to set out how those communities can choose their own governance, and how citizens can themselves reinvigorate local democracy.

With so many local councilors feeling powerless to serve their constituents’ needs, we must find a better balance between those two levels of government that truly serves the interests of communities across England.

The very nature and existence of local government should not be based on Westminster’s changing whims but should have some form of constitutional protection. 

This requires a written constitution removing the Royal family into the realms of a tourist attraction. 

                          _______________________ 

One of the most basic ways to shift the devolution paradigm is by creating a genuinely empowered local government.

You need to root your local government organization in a place that your community identifies with, rather than some arbitrary travel to the work area.

Far from being merely the ‘delivery arm of central government’, local government plays a significant role in people’s daily lives and is one of the first places in which people can become involved in making decisions about their communities.

Communities need to accept the building block of local government fundamentally to be reconnected to the people.

Citizen involvement should be an essential value underpinning devolution in England – solutions cannot be imposed top-down, but rather should be built up from the local level, and enjoy people’s support and legitimacy.

It is quite obvious that you can not level up from top-down.  

It is too soon to say exactly where England will end up. 

Here are a few suggestions.

Education should be free.

Long-term plan to turn the economy green.

Tax reform is one of the main levers the government can pull to increase the UK’s economic growth prospects however overhauling the tax system is not a straightforward task.

The real challenge is to make the tax system as it actually exists and come up with practical ways to improve it.

That is not to say that a lower overall tax burden would not have economic benefits of its own.

  • The UK has a very narrow base for its VAT which leads to distortions and complexity. It is a critical source of revenue, in a consumer society that is converting its purchasing power more and more online. Perhaps the introduction of an online sale tax would be more appropriate than vat.  VAT requires strict documentation for every transaction while a sale tax does not. It a calculated as a percentage of the purchasing price of the product as a direct Tax. 

Last get rid of Carehomes and build on national trust lands retirement villages. 

Get rid of benefits and replace them with Universal basic income.

  • The current benefits system is partly means-tested and complicated Universal basic income could replace some or all benefits. This would cut down on bureaucracy.

The benefit type of income is not a handout, but an entitlement. which have been appropriated by privileged elites and corporations to generate private wealth.

Unconditional payments are an acknowledgment that everyone has the right to share in a wealthy economy.

An orgy of backstabbing and squeezing those things that lead to Boris’s demise is now on the cards. 

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

 

THE BEADY EYE ASKS: IS ENGLAND APPROACHING ITS OLAUDAH EQUIANO MOMENT?

11 Wednesday May 2022

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2022: The year we need to change., England in five years., England's future.

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(Ten-minute read)

Why? 

Because it is still trying to get over the Empire days that have left it with an ingrained class system of haves and have-nots.

This Ingraining is in its education system to slavery in materialistic capitalism, which is now run by Social media platforms with unregulated untransparent algorithms. (A problem facing most of the developed world)   

The United States was built on a system of racial classification.

England was built on the back of slavery and sugar.

They both bought manual laborers to enrich a few.  

(As many as 10.7 million slaves are thought to have been shipped to the Americas between 1800 and 1867. All but a few people were chattel slaves, which meant that their children and grandchildren were also slaves. Through the 19th century, slaves were overworked, tortured, and not given the same rights as other people.) 

England now has all the INGREDIENTS to brake up, Sleepwalking into oblivion, it’s people need to wake up before it is too late.

Ordinary citizens seem to understand that we are experiencing a revolutionary moment in the world with Technology, Climate Change, and Mass migration, not to mention sustainability, and future pandemics. 

The range of possibilities is very broad, and the eventual outcome is thus highly uncertain.

 If you look beneath the surface of England what do you see?

One in 40 people in London had Covid last week as cases continue to fall

This is a country that voted on the back of lies to leave the largest trading block the EU, that now has an economy rapidly descending into a recession, a pandemic that cost billions, surging energy costs, rampaging inflation, spending 205 billion on Trident and 45 billion on a high-speed rail, with over 3 million people using food banks, 12,000 charity shops with approximately 170 thousand registered charities raising around £300m a year. 

With a Prime Mister that cannot be trusted. It’s no wonder that Scotland and Northern Ireland will soon be holding referendums for independence.

With over 53 million inhabitants, in a moral panic about immigrants and refugees, it needs to build 340,000 homes per year until 2031. The British royals own almost 247,000 acres of land in England, living in 26 different buildings throughout the United Kingdom home over the years possesses an estimated $28 billion in assets, and according to independent reports that the U.K.’s offshore wind farms belong to the crown as well.

A murder a day, with one in seven businesses teetering on the brink of collapse, ruled by a  parliament now only a ‘dignified’ part of the Royal constitution – an obedient (and expensive) rubber-stamp to the all-powerful executive with an antiquated party structure that prevents the popular will from finding proper expression.

These National parties once had some roots in the past, but these alliances are entirely dictated by party leaders’ self-interest, continuing to issue edicts as if they were still relevant.

US Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) (L) talks with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) during a rally with fellow Democrats before voting on H.R. 1, or the People Act, on the East Steps of the US Capitol on March 08, 2019 in Washington, DC. (AFP photo)

No one seems quite sure how much all the diamond jubilee celebrations 

cost – nor who will eventually have to foot the bill. The extra bank holiday

could cost Britain’s ailing economy £1.2bn.

There are 29.7m taxpayers in the UK paying £11.24 per taxpayer for a Queen.

 Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee next year is expected to cost between

£10 Million and £15 Million. 

Remember Quantitive easing: 

The Bank of England….. printing free money out of nothing and lending it to the government with huge interest, while they, in turn, tax too high heaven to pay back the interest in government bonds…..which then, in turn, need to borrow more.

The trickle-down economics has failed along with a parliament that constantly fails to reform itself.  

 It has a national debt amounting to £2.59 trillion increasing to over £5,000 per second, equating to 108% of national output (GDP).

This led to a drop in tax revenue and an increase in cyclical spending (for example on unemployment benefits).

At the same time, the government introduced a range of coronavirus support measures. Amongst others, these included its high profile furlough or job retention scheme whereby it covered 80% of the salaries of eligible employees; a prolonged period of business rates relief; a reduction in VAT for the hospitality sector; a stamp duty holiday; a weekly uplift in the rate of Universal credit; a £500 per person working tax credit payment; and its ‘Eat out to help out scheme’.

In 2019, private debt in the United Kingdom was recorded as being 190% of GDP, twice that of public sector debt.

According to the Treasury’s 2019/20 Debt Management Report, as of September 2018, 32% of government gilts were owned by UK Pension and Insurance companies, 28% were owned by foreign investors, and 24% of the national debt was owned by the government itself through the Bank of England’s Asset Purchase Facility referenced above.

In 2011/12, the sums being spent on debt repayment (£48.2 billion) were very similar to what the government was spending on schools (£51.1 billion), four times greater than what was being spent on transport, and 30% more than what was being spent on defense.

At its most extreme, it is suggested that this might lead to some kind of sovereign debt crisis.

A Sovereign debt crisis has the potential to have devastating effects on both social inclusion and people’s wider standards of living. After Greece suffered a sovereign debt crisis in 2009, figures from the World Bank show that GDP per head, for people in Greece, fell dramatically from $29,711 in 2009 to $18,168 in 2015.

This begs the question – is England’s debt just too big to handle?

£5,803 every second. That’s 74,720 £ per taxpayer Or £35,793 per citizen.
 
  1. UK Government and The Bank of England continue to ‘print money to pay for the debt – this makes everything continually more expensive (inflation), or
  2. UK Government refuses to pay their interest payments or repay the debt they owe – resulting in a catastrophic economic recession.

Cristiano Ronaldo (Centre-Forward) with an Annual Gross Salary of £26,800,000, or £515,385 per week equating to 54 million for his two years contract.  On average Premier League clubs spend around £55,000 a week per player not to mention Football managers who also reap financial rewards. Add it all up and you see the cost of a goal.

Cristiano Ronaldo (Centre-Forward) with an Annual Gross Salary of £26,800,000, or £515,385 per week equating to 54 million for his two years contract.  On average Premier League clubs spend around £55,000 a week per player not to mention Football managers who also reap financial rewards. Add it all up and you see the cost of a goal.

Britain finished Tokyo 2020 with 65 medals, a funding amount: of £12,084,436.

                                        ——————

To reform its parliament.

On the death of Queen Elizabeth II (which is highly likely in the near future) I would reform the parliament by removing the monarchy from the realms of power to a cultural tourist attraction by replacing it with a written constitution, which would elevate its citizens from subject surfs to people with a genuine voice – from my government to our government.   

I would introduce citizens’ assemblies with proportional representation, while reducing the House of Commons, from 650 seats to 300. The entire Westminster operates on them and us basis, costing billions in taxpayers’ money.   

I would get rid of its gutter press. Ban Porn. Restrict trial by Television. Remove all TV advertising that promotes unhealthy consumption and make University education free.   

I would encourage Scotland independent with a deal on cheap oil and Wales and give back Northern Ireland over a twenty-five-year period.

If I were to do anything to change the direction in England today.

I would reintroduce a year of NATIONAL SERVICE (WITHOUT THE SMARTPHONE) TO TEACH VALUES, RESPECT, AND DISCIPLINE WORTHWHILE HAVING. 

By the way, Equiano was born in Nigeria and was brought to England as an enslaved child. He was bought by Lieutenant Michael Pascal. Equiano learned how to be a seaman so that he could fight in the Seven Years’ War. When there was no more hostility, he bought his freedom for $40 from a Pennsylvanian. 

 This disgusting time still has an effect on our lives today.

Unfortunately, England cannot buy its freedom by leveling up or down. 

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

 

THE BEADY EYE ASKS DOES LIVING IN ENGLAND NOW SUCK.

02 Saturday Oct 2021

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

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(Twelve-minute read) 


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

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

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

” There is no such thing as Society”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                                           ————————-

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

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

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

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

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

                                         ———————-

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

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

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

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

Not everyone lives/wants to live in London.

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

Why?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All transportation is insanely, painfully expensive ludicrously expensive. 

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

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

08 Sunday Dec 2019

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

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(Seven-minute read)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The one thing we can be sure of is this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHY?

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

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

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

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

Why?

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE 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.

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