Mad World

Mad World

Mad World By Paul Hildreth

Copyright P. Hildreth, 2006, 2008

I have made every effort to give appropriate credit for all sources of information used in this book. If I have unwittingly omitted anything, I apologise, and will make the appropriate corrections for future editions. Paul Hildreth, July 25th 2008.

Any Biblical quotations used are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

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Contents Chapter

Page

Some observations Introduction The Car is King Why Bother? Are we Civilised? A Secure Old Age? Teach your Children Well A Roof over Your Head The National Health Service Water, Water Everywhere Public Services? Pain in the Neck Free to Choose? Business is Business Conspiracy theories : World Domination? Please sir. I would like some more. ‘Rip-off Britain’ When did you last see your Father? The Unborn Love thy Neighbour, and ‘The Christmas Spirit’ The Demon Drink? When PC is not a Computer Stop to Think Lies Freedom and the Survival of the Fittest Would you Adam and Eve it? Conclusion and Action Appendix: Does Religion cause wars? Select Bibliography

3 8 15 33 39 45 50 72 77 86 89 92 101 108

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127 133 142 151 156 162 170 174 185 189 220 232 247 250 257

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The following are some observations from the UK news for just over one year, during the time that most of this book was written. July 2004 50,000 are dead by famine in Sudan. The number could reach 200,000. There are floods in Bangladesh. A food crisis is looming. Terrorism goes on in Iraq, and in Chechnya, and in a lot of other places. So does torture. And slavery. The American presidential election circus is in full swing. What is the most popular news story of the month? It’s the England football manager’s sex life. The lady involved is alleged to be receiving £500,000 for her story. Another item considered newsworthy: It’s the announcement that there is a new cocktail drink for sale, with a diamond ring in the glass, priced at £15,250. Sept 2004 Hurricanes batter the Caribbean and the USA. Many suspect that the world’s weather is changing. Tony Blair says that something has to be done about global warming before it’s too late. It is June 2005 as I write these words. What has been done in the last nine months? Scientists and environmentalists have been warning us about the effects of global warming for over thirty years. Oct 2004 There is famine in Ethiopia again. Richard Branson announces future flights into space at £15,000 per trip. The people behind Spaceship One’, a proposed service offering the prospect of ‘Space Holidays’ are awarding a £5.6 million prize for designing a spaceship. Philip Green, the chairman of BHS is to receive £46 million in dividend payments, on company profits of £177 million. By making his wife head of Arcadia (the firm that controls Top Shop, Dorothy Perkins and Miss Selfridge), the Greens will save £150 million in tax. His wife is a Monaco resident, so is exempt. 3

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Nov 2004 George W Bush is elected to a second term as President of the USA. Apparently the Fundamentalist Christian vote was crucial. Despite issues like global warming, inequality, the war in Iraq and the US economy, the fundamentalists seem to have considered that that gay marriages were the most important election issue. A TV advert for the movie ‘Alien vs. Predator’ says ‘Whoever wins, we lose’. This reminds me of the US presidential election. ** Jan 2005 The Asian Tsunami death toll is nearly 300,000. There are reports of aid money being stolen. A child survivor has been abducted from a hospital by a child sex ring. A hoaxer in the UK sent emails to anxious people, saying their relatives had been found dead. Official US aid is $35 million, later raised to $350million. That is less than one million per day for the next year. The USA spends $900 million per day on its defence budget, soon to be increased to over $1000 million per day. The USA is said to be spending $100 million on George Bush’s Inauguration party. ** It’s the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. People ask how we could have let it happen. In today’s world, in one year, more people die of starvation across the world than were murdered by the Nazis. 30,000 every day. We let it happen. ** February 2005 BP announce record profits of £8.72 billion for their last financial year. Their Chairman, Lord Browne, was paid £4.8 million in 2003. He had also built up a pension fund of $13.9 million. ** March 2005 It’s raining outside, but it’s been announced that there might be a water shortage and possible hosepipe bans. 4

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I wonder how many people will start to conserve water? ** April 2005 It has been estimated that Britons throw away £20 billion worth of food every year. This is five times our official overseas aid. It would be enough to bring 150 million people out of poverty. ** Tesco announce profits of over £2 billion. One out of every three pounds spent in the UK at supermarkets is spent at Tesco. Small shops continue their decline. Farmers continue to be exploited by the supermarkets’ buying power. ** May 2005: Youths dressed in ‘hoodies’ are banned from a shopping centre. The presence of gangs dressed in this way was ‘threatening’. There is a trend for ‘happy slapping’, where gangs beat someone and take photos of the victim on their mobile phones. Some victims die. Fire services are threatened by gangs that make hoax calls, and then ambush the fire engines, throwing bricks at them. ** June 2005 George W Bush announces that future fuel for cars will come from vegetable oil. Who controls most of the production of vegetable oil crops in the world? The USA. And of course, more rain forests could be felled to plant more crops. Half the world is starving, so what do we do? Use food to make fuel. ** Sir Bob Geldof is currently trying to encourage awareness of the real reasons for world poverty, and to encourage the action that the ‘G8’ meeting of the leaders of the richest countries in the world could take to change things. Some press reports and some of the public seem to be suggesting that Sir Bob Geldof is not of sound mind. As always, the affluent ‘fight dirty’ when something threatens their established order. **

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For the ‘Live 8’ popular music concert to raise awareness of world poverty, tickets won in a competition are selling for £1000 on the internet. When asked, people said they didn’t realise they were profiting from the suffering of others. Sir Bob Geldof called it ‘filthy money’. ** A cricket ball from the ‘body-line’ test series in the 1930s sold for £20,000 at an auction. ** It’s the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar. What was being taught in history lessons at school? One ten year old’s subject was John Lennon. In a mock battle to mark the event, it was not allowed to mention the nationalities of the combatants. It might offend the French. A week later, French president Jacques Chirac criticised our food, saying that the only thing British farmers had given the French was mad cow disease. ** July 2005 George W Bush, speaking in an interview with Trevor McDonald, said that we could still aim at growth of our living standards whilst solving the problem of world poverty. Why? Haven’t we got enough already? Can the world sustain this growth? Why don’t we share out some of what we already have? Mr Bush says that some proposed agreements are no good to the American people. What about everybody else? ** After the announcement that London would stage the 2012 Olympic Games, Estate Agents were inundated with enquiries about property in the area around the Olympic village, most from property speculators. So, there is much money to be made by private individuals, yet the cost of the Games is to be found from sources like the National Lottery. When did a house stop being a home, and become an investment? Something is wrong, somewhere. ** A beach hut in Northumberland, with a water supply for only six months of the year, is on the market for £200,000. ** Five terrorist bombs kill more than 50 people in London Some hotels increased their prices when people who could not get home had to stay overnight. Why do the bombers do it? One answer is that it is the fault of ‘religion’ again. 6

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Extremist Moslem clerics can speak openly of the justification for the bombings, and not be arrested. They have ‘human rights’. ** Abortions are at a record high. Does anybody ask why? Particularly concerning is the number for girls under the age of 14. ** As if the Times going tabloid was not enough. Radio 4 has announced a ‘modernisation’. There is to be ‘sex and strong language’. It’s not cricket, chaps! No, that’s on Channel Four (interrupted by adverts). ** Aug 2005 A survey says that one in five Britons never contribute to a charity. We are good at responding to crisis appeals, but don’t recognise that charities need a regular income. ** The average pay of big company Chief Executives is said to be £2.5 million per year. ** It certainly is a mad world! These could have been from any year, any day. Keep in touch with the news. You will find examples like these nearly every day.

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Introduction

Question: What’s the difference between ignorance and apathy? Answer: I don’t know, and I don’t care.

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Why are there so many people wanting to leave the UK? In recent years, there has been a massive increase in people moving out of this country to live abroad. What is so wrong with our country? • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

High Taxes Inconsistent Weather High cost of living Traffic congestion Poor public transport Long NHS waiting lists Unhygienic Hospitals Failing schools High property prices High crime levels Unruly teenagers Violence Vandalism Paedophiles Terrorism Binge drinking Road Rage Bureaucracy (‘red tape’) Lack of respect for authority Poor service and high prices. Speed cameras Traffic Wardens Bad neighbours Bad mannered shop assistants. ‘Reality’ TV Ant and Dec1

Aargh! I think I want to leave too! Some people say they are thoroughly sick to the back teeth of living here. They believe that all they can do is ‘vote with their feet’, and leave the country. You might describe them as asylum seekers, I suppose. One reason some of them leave is because there are so many people coming into our country from other countries. The people coming in believe that ours is a better country than theirs. It’s a strange world, isn’t it? Having said that there are quite a few things to be unhappy about, the English (if we can generalise) do seem to have a natural tendency to moan and complain about this country, or anything in general, come to think of it. 1

For the uninitiated, Ant and Dec are a popular TV ‘double act’, the kind that seems to pop up irritatingly on TV every time you switch it on.

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We tend to complain about lots of things. We find it easy to complain about subjects as diverse as the weather and the price of a pint of beer. Someone said that, because there is so much to criticise, we could easily become a nation of ‘Victor Meldrews’. As many people will know, Victor was a character in the TV sit-com ‘One foot in the grave’. He was a retired, ‘grumpy old man’. The best comedy has an element of truth. We all know people like Victor, even if we will not admit that we are like him ourselves. My wife has often said that I am in serious danger of becoming a ‘Victor’, constantly complaining about bureaucracy and any other thing that I find annoying. And I’m not retired yet! Yes, I suppose that I must be very irritating at times, but after all, I am English. But my wife is English too, so how does she manage to stay unaffected by it all? I sometimes wish I could be like her. I also hope that she does not become like me, because she has such an optimistic outlook on life, and I want her to keep it. She keeps me from getting too serious for at least some of the time. Anyway, what right would I have to expect her to be like me? ** ‘I felt then that excruciating pain which knowledge confers on those who can discern the gulf that divides what is and what could be’ Ken Saro-Wiwa (1941-1995)2 It is said that there are some people who think too much for their own good. An inquiring mind seems to be a curse. The deeper they think, the further into the mire they get. Once they have started, they can’t stop. They sometimes wish they had never started. It is said that ‘ignorance is bliss’. Is this really true? Is it best for us not to know some things? That is a deep question in itself. If you think it is an important question to answer, then you begin to climb the mountain that is the search for truth, and then you discover that you cannot find a way down. If you don’t think it is important, then you clearly couldn’t care less anyway. You might not have even asked yourself the question. 2

On November 10th 1995, Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight of his colleagues were executed by the Nigerian State for campaigning against the devastation of the Niger Delta by oil companies.

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I am one of those unfortunates who have asked the question and wanted an answer. I have climbed onto the thinking and reasoning treadmill, so if you don’t want to be involved in my thought processes, put this book down now. I sometimes wish I could get off the treadmill. If I could stop thinking about things I seem to be able to do nothing about. I could just enjoy life without thinking about why I am here, why I am like I am, and why the world is like it is. But another way of putting this is that I could be simply drifting through life, totally oblivious of the truth, then die. But what happens then? Wouldn’t I like to be sure? The questions keep on coming, and the inquiring mind wants answers, even if the answer is that there are no answers. As long as that is the final answer. Probably, we all sometimes ask ourselves questions like the following. At least we might give them a passing attention. Why don’t we all look for answers? •

Why do there seem to be so many greedy, selfish or arrogant people?

•

What happened to common courtesy?3

•

Why does our society sometimes seem to be disintegrating before our eyes?

•

Does the state of our public services make you wonder whether it is worth voting for politicians who never seem to improve things?

•

Divorce, broken relationships, shattered families, drunkenness, drugs, child abuse and violent crime. There seems no end to it all. Why?

•

Why do we think we are bled dry by taxation?

•

Why is much of the world struggling to survive?

•

What are we doing to our environment?

•

Who is responsible for it all?

•

Is there a God?

•

Does it all matter anyway? **

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If anyone doubts that courteous behaviour is deteriorating, I invite them to stand on a crowded railway station platform waiting for a train that is known to have a limited number of seats, or sit on a bus or a train and be subjected to loud mobile telephone ring tones and shouted phone conversations, not to mention over-loud music in headphones.

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I have sometimes been given the following advice: ‘What is the worst that could happen? When you’ve thought of it, if you can’t do anything about it, forget it. What’s the point of ruining your life by worrying about something you can’t do anything about? If it is going to happen, it will.’ When this is said, it can sound very sensible. So, why should you care anyway? You say you are not interested. Why? Is it because your life is comfortable, or do you really just feel that you can’t do anything about it all, so why worry? Just get on with life. Live for the day. You are a long time dead. You want to have fun, not get serious. You only get serious if something directly affects you. You say you are an optimist, and that I am a pessimist. You say that your cup is half full, and tell me that I say it is half empty. But I could also be said to be a realist I could say that there is not enough left to carry on filling it up, and your half cup is more than your fair share anyway. You could be said to be ‘burying your head in the sand’ and hoping for the best, ignoring the bad things and assuming that they will go away because somebody, somewhere, will do something about them. I suppose I could have called this book ‘The Global Ostrich’, Or, perhaps it could have been called ‘Re-arranging the deckchairs’. This is one of my favourite sayings. It really sums us up. We are like someone re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, pretending that nothing is happening. ** As I said earlier, the English have a tendency to complain. Have you noticed that we complain a lot to each other (if someone is patient and longsuffering enough to listen), but we don’t complain to the people who are responsible? We rarely seem to take any action. We complain about the weather. Doing something about the weather might be a bit difficult, unless you have a direct line to God. Then again, you might want to blame the ‘greenhouse effect’ and global warming, and someone, somewhere must be responsible for that. In the USA, if there is poor service, the recipient makes a direct complaint to those responsible, and there is an expectation of immediate satisfaction.

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Other countries, too, stand no nonsense. If France had our public transport system, there would be mass demonstrations on the streets. They would blockade the railway lines with sit down demonstrations and parked vehicles. We just complain to each other, then grin and bear it. When we do complain to the authorities, there seems to be no action taken. We can be ignored or put off. Sometimes the only satisfaction comes from the act of complaining. It’s as if we’ve got it off our chests, and that is enough. Maybe the real reason for this is, that ‘when push comes to shove’, we are not so poorly done by after all. So, why use any nervous energy actually doing anything about something that does not need changing, or something that we cannot change? We live in a ‘democratic’ country, and enjoy hard earned freedom. Our land has not been conquered by an enemy since 1066. We are relatively affluent, and satisfied with our lot. Let’s face it; we are better off than most, after all. Well, most of us, anyway. The phrase attributed in 1957 to Prime Minister Harold McMillan, ‘You’ve never had it so good’, is a mis-quote. He actually said ‘Most of our people have never had it so good’. He was recognising the existence of inequality. Affluence breeds apathy. Apathy encourages ignorance. Ignorance and apathy bring complacency. We don’t seem to care anymore. ** If we wanted to act, we could try to enter politics, with the aim of voicing our complaints at Westminster. We would soon be buried by parliamentary procedure or a party machine, or castigated as a radical independent or a ‘loony leftie’. We would be forced to toe the line or be out of a job. We would be subject to the whims of powerful vested interests. If we do complain, we can’t even be bothered to find out the real reasons for the situation we are complaining about. Forget it. There is nothing we can do about it. It’s the Government’s responsibility. Our sole responsibility is to get on with our life and make the best of it that we can. That’s what we say. ** The problems we have are just symptoms of an underlying disease. But what is the disease? Throughout this book I will look at subjects that affect all of us in our everyday lives. For many of them, I will try to answer these questions:

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•

1 Who benefits from the current situation?

•

2 Who suffers as a result of it?

You should, hopefully, soon catch on to the reason why I take this approach. I wish to bring together many issues that will be familiar to all of us. They are issues that we hear about regularly, but we always look at them individually, not making a connection, and not understanding that they are all the symptoms of a common problem. They are easier to ignore when we look at them individually. Look at them all together, and it’s much harder to push them to the back of your mind. You begin to see the sheer enormity of the problems. It becomes ‘mind boggling’. You begin to ask yourself the eternal question, ‘Why?’ Is there a common thread, a common cause, that binds them all together? You might also like to ask yourself what ‘human nature’ is. How many people shrug it all off with the statement ‘It’s just human nature, isn’t it?’ How many of them have asked themselves what they really mean by this? So, do you want to start to think for yourself? If you say you have your point of view and don’t want to consider anything else, I feel like screaming to you, ‘For goodness sake, think!’ Some might say that to discuss these questions at all is being too ‘intense’ No, it is being realistic, and not trying to imagine that things are better than they are. Your head might be warm when it’s buried in the sand, but your rear end is vulnerable! ********************************************************************

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The Car is King.

Psalm M23 1 The internal combustion engine is my shepherd, I shall not walk 2 It makes me sit down without exercise; it leads me to the shopping centre. 3 It restores my bank overdraft; it guides me in the paths of the motorways, for the oil companies’ sake. 4 Yea, though I drive along the M62 at rush hour, I shall fear no evil, for my car is with me, it’s CD player and air conditioning they comfort me 5 It creates for me lots of envy in the presence of my neighbours, it has filled my head with pride, and my ego runneth over. 6 Surely its pollution and expense will follow me all the days of my life, and I will remain a member of the AA (or RAC) for ever.

Environmentalists have a very conflicted relationship with their cars. Tom Arnold

What our children have to fear is not the cars on the highways of tomorrow but our own pleasure in calculating the most elegant parameters of their deaths. J. G. Ballard

About 60 percent of the oil consumed daily by Americans is used for transportation, and about 45 percent is used for passenger cars and light trucks. Sherwood Boehlert

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What do we see today? • • • • • • • • •

More cars. More roads. More congestion Gridlock Crowded trains and buses Cancelled trains Late trains Industrial action Stress, stress, stress ** In 1953 the UK had 3 million cars and vans In 2003 there were 26 million **

A question to ponder ; Why do petrol prices at the pumps seem to rise quickly when crude oil prices rise, but fall slowly when they fall? When prices go down, the pump price remains high for a while, because, according to the oil companies, ‘There are still stocks held of crude oil bought at the old prices’ That’s as may be, but it’s strange, isn’t it, that when the price of crude rises, the oil is converted to petrol and makes its way to the pumps almost instantaneously. Prices seem to rise virtually immediately. A more suitable question to ask might be whether these people think we were born yesterday. But what can we do about it? Not a lot, apart from not using petrol. ** The government is always asked to take action when petrol prices rise. And they usually do take action, even if it is only the postponement of an increase in petrol duty. No wonder. How could a government do anything that would make any real difference to the number of cars on our roads, at the risk of being voted out of office at the next election? Look at the uproar about a proposed cost per mile for usage of roads. Note that this was announced after an election had taken place.

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Why not increase petrol duty? This would be equitable, charged according to use, and would encourage economy. ‘Gas guzzlers’ would certainly suffer. But so would the oil companies and the car companies, if we used less petrol and more public transport. And, of course, our fuel costs are already higher than lots of other countries. If a petrol duty increase is suggested, there is a nationwide outcry against it. The government are ‘having a go at the motorist’ again. Transport companies would suffer. This is easily solved, by having a rebate system for them, or preferential rates. No, this would be too sensible. It would also mean the poor private motorist would have to take even more of the increase. When there were mass meetings to protest against a possible war in Iraq, much of the protest was based on the assumption that it was really a war for control of oil supplies. I considered attending one of these meetings, and when they asked for questions, I was going to ask for a show of hands as to how many people came in cars. Why was it said to be a war over oil supplies? The answer is simple. Underneath Iraq are eleven percent of the world’s known oil reserves. Two of the biggest US industries (oil and armaments) are kept busy for years, and the economic dominance of the rich developed countries over poor, underdeveloped countries is maintained. Imagine a meeting of the heads of the US armed forces at the Pentagon. ‘OK. What are we gonna call the Iraqi operation?’ ‘Hey, we’re gonna liberate the Iraqis, so what about ‘Operation Iraqi Liberation?’ ‘Yeah, sounds good’ ‘Hey, just a minute. Hell, no! We can’t use it’ ‘Why, man?’ ‘Hey man, just look at those initial letters! There is a pause, then ‘OK, what about ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom?’ **

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‘Freedom’ in Russia, and a friendly relationship with them, is important too. The biggest Russian oil companies hold twice the oil reserves of the biggest US companies. At present world consumption rates and given known reserves, the oil will be gone in thirty years. And rates of consumption are rising. Inevitably, oil is linked closely to politics. ** The motorist is persecuted. We often hear this complaint. A news bulletin in February 2005 announced that an estimated two thirds of drivers in this country break the speed limit regularly. It was then said that it should be possible to put a device into cars that would alert the Police when a driver is speeding. This prompted the usual claims of ‘infringement of liberty’ and ‘persecuted motorists’. The loss of liberty inflicted on the innocent and unwilling victims of accidents caused by speed did not seem to be considered. One man said that he had to speed around to get his job done. Doesn’t he consider setting off earlier? No. That would require a brain. ‘Parking fines and clamps, speed camera fines, toll roads. And look at the road tax! How much of it goes on roads?’ My heart bleeds. Property owners pay a property tax. Does all of this go on household services? Employees and employers pay NI. Does all of this go directly to the NHS and the welfare state? Smokers pay tax on cigarettes. Does it go directly into designated smoking areas, cancer relief or cancer research? Drinkers pay tax on alcohol. Is this used to improve pubs? Gamblers pay tax. Do the proceeds all go to building racecourses and casinos? Apart from some drinkers, and smokers trying to quit the habit, the above people very rarely show aggressive behaviour. Not so with drivers. For some reason, normally placid people will become arrogant, irrational beasts behind the wheel. Many people insist on driving today as they did under the conditions ten and twenty years ago, when there were fewer cars on the roads. You’ve seen them, ‘tail-gating’, or impatiently coming up behind cars trying to park, or not giving way on a road lined with parked cars (especially for buses, that seem to be considered as second class road users, a nuisance to drivers of cars). Then, on a dual carriageway, they speed along the fast lane past a queue of traffic before the road

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narrows, then push their way in further up the queue. They have not got the brains to realise that this causes the bottleneck and the queue of cars in the first place. Aggressive driving also causes accidents and more delays. They seem too stupid to realise that if the traffic was all moving steadily, at or around the speed limit, with enough space between cars, then traffic would move along much more smoothly. It’s a good example of people not using their brains. Maybe they left them at home. They all want to be the first there. When you see a car nipping in and out of lanes on a motorway, overtaking on the inside then moving back out again, you can just imagine the thoughts going through the driver’s head. ‘Look at me. I can really handle this machine, can’t I?’ It might be the last thought they have. The problem is, thinking what idiots they are might be the last thoughts going through the minds of an innocent motorist and his wife and children, on their way to a day out. These mindless speeding drivers should try Formula One racing instead. They would soon find out what poor drivers they really are. Alright, I will admit that it is men that seem to be the worst culprits. It must be due to the theory that a powerful car is a sort of extension of the penis. It can be a macho way of making up for inadequacies. It’s also related to the theory that men do not like to ask for directions when lost. Question: Why did Moses have to lead his people through the wilderness for 40 years? Answer: Because he wouldn’t ask for directions. Hey, I’ve just thought of a way of really confounding the authorities! Keep within the speed limit, or better still, leave the car at home. No parking fees or fines either. That’ll mess their budgets up and really get them angry. If you don’t want fines, don’t exceed the speed limit and park sensibly. It’s as simple as that. If parking sensibly means that you have to walk a little, then why not? You need the exercise. Speed cameras should not be thought of as being there to raise funds. They should be there to discourage the mindless idiots that speed about in a potential deadly weapon, regardless of the possibility that a child may step out into the road, or that they might lose control. In 2003, 3508 people died on our roads, 2% more than in 2002, that’s almost ten every day. In total, 37,215 people were killed or seriously injured. 4,100 of these were children. Source: Department for Transport Autumn performance report, 2005

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These same idiots, if they kill somebody, are then given a pathetically few years or even months behind bars, or even in some cases just a ban and a fine! The law says that the driver had ‘no intention of killing anyone’, so it is difficult to deal with other than as manslaughter. Legislation is now proposed (February 2005) to punish ‘careless driving’ in addition to ‘dangerous or reckless driving’. What is the difference? Perhaps if I bought a gun, went out and fired it indiscriminately into the air, and in the process killed someone, would I only be given three years for reckless, careless or dangerous use of a weapon? Somehow I don’t think so. But I didn’t mean to kill anyone, after all, did I? What do these ‘persecuted drivers’ want? More traffic police? Do we want on the spot fines, as in the USA? No. they would infringe ‘civil liberties’, wouldn’t they? And anyway, the police should have better things to do. They ‘should be out catching real criminals’. So someone deliberately breaking a law (the speed limit) and threatening lives is not a real criminal? I know that speed cameras are necessary. I made a mistake once, travelling 37 mph in a 30mph limit. The road was wide and clear, but I missed the 30mph sign. Flash! I was caught out. If it is this easy to do, it only emphasises for me the need for care and attention in the future. Surely this is what the cameras are there for. ** Do cars not pollute the atmosphere? What if it was revealed that air pollution from cars caused diseases like cancer? It can’t be said that this is impossible. It’s not only carbon dioxide that we should be concerned about. Burning fossil fuels releases carbon monoxide, ozone, arsenic, formaldehyde and benzene, amongst a lot of other chemicals, and some of these are carcinogenic. What if it was proved that diseases were being inflicted on non-drivers, would there be an outcry like the one over passive smoking? A non-driver could stay away from a smoke filled public house, but could not avoid traffic fumes unless he stayed away from ‘civilisation’. Each year 60,000 people in the US and 10,000 people in England and Wales die due to vehicle emissions. (New Internationalist) If pollution from cars was linked to cancer, would we restrict their use? Not much hope of that. Manufacturers would work on cutting the emissions, and no doubt charge premium prices for safer cars. Any attempt to impose legislation would be fiercely resisted. It’s an imposition on freedom of choice, isn’t it? That’s the same argument that smokers use, isn’t it? Oh, and of course, legislation on car use also hits the interests of the car and oil industries.

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Look at the attempts to ease congestion. Most are aimed at smoother traffic flow, rather than direct limitation of use. What a furore the congestion charge in London caused when it was proposed. It was forcing people to limit use of a car or have a lot of money to pay. And what about the proposed mileage charge to replace the car tax.? Even though it answers critics of the present road tax, and charges according to use, it does not restrict use unless the charges are high enough. Are they likely to be high enough? It would be political suicide.4 ** Recently (November 2004) I listened to a Radio debate that considered whether large 4-wheel drive vehicles (known derisively by some as ‘Chelsea Tractors’) should have a notice attached saying ‘Warning! These vehicles can destroy the earth’. This was referring to the evidence that excessive burning of carbon based fuels could lead to rising global temperatures and changes in the weather. Large 4-wheel drive vehicles can be notoriously inefficient users of fuel. The chap proposing this measure was being ridiculed for his views. Perhaps he was only half serious, and intending simply to draw attention to what he saw as the unnecessary use of large ‘gas guzzling’ vehicles for short runs, such as taking children to school. Then again, perhaps he was serious. They do consume a lot of petrol, and are they really necessary at all, apart from as status symbols? What was incredible was the number of excuses the owners of these vehicles were making. ‘What about all of the heavy lorries? They use a lot of petrol too’ ‘You are just jealous’. ‘What about jet aircraft? They dump surplus fuel into the atmosphere’. Quite true, but as is often said, ‘Two wrongs do not make a right’. You see, there is always someone else who is responsible for a problem. It is never you, is it? ** There has been a suggestion that the UK’s canal network should be used to ship heavy freight, to take lorries off the roads. This would ease congestion and use less petrol. Why not build more canals rather than widen motorways? 4

At the time of putting together this edition (mid 2008), oil and petrol prices have risen sharply. What an opportunity to get people out of cars and onto public transport! What do the Government do? They allow train and bus companies to sharply increase prices, a discouragement to their use. Couldn’t public money have subsidised the transport companies to cover their extra costs? No, that would have been interfering with free markets, and that is ‘taboo’. It would also have needed more taxation.

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Yet another uproar! The road haulage business is being persecuted again. Maybe if they drove with a bit more consideration for other road users, people may be more sympathetic. What about the holiday business? There would be terrible delays and congestion on the canals, and after all, more and more people are buying boats nowadays. What a shame. Many people can’t afford to buy a home to live in, let alone a boat for pleasure purposes. I didn’t hear anyone mention the rail network that we used to have, and then decimated in the 1960’s because it was ‘inefficient’. This could have been used for freight. ** It seems that any suggestions that might lead to the burning of fewer fossil fuels or improve our environment are met with the usual objections from vested interests. It’s a free country, after all. ** How do the drivers who complain of ‘persecution’ really convince themselves that they are right to say these things? Clearly, a little bit of self examination would show them that they are defying reason. It’s amazing how self interest can give conviction to the most nonsensical, unreasonable concepts. And that is the basic reason for much of what is wrong with human nature. It’s self interest. ‘I’m alright Jack’, and ‘Look after number one’. It sounds obvious when you think about it, doesn’t it? Do you ever ask why we are like this? But yes, something should be done. Everyone agrees on that. But the cry is ‘As long as it does not affect me! ’ But then, we are really in a bit of an impossible position, aren’t we? Car drivers are self interested. The Government wants votes, it too is self interested. The oil, transport and car companies are self interested in their profits. What can we do in the face of all of this self interest?

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Anyway, if cars were more expensive to run, who really suffers? Not the more wealthy people, but the poorer car owners, if public transport is not improved enough to compensate for their loss. ‘The super rich won’t care about petrol being 10 or 20 dollars a gallon. The extreme poor … have never had access to energy. But everyone else?’ Ali Bakhtiari (head of corporate planning at the Iranian State Oil Company) ** Public Transport Is privatised public transport really the answer? We used to have British Rail and local Corporation transport. We complained about inefficiency and cuts. Public transport was the butt of many cruel, and perhaps justified, jokes. But is what we have now an improvement? For over forty years since the fateful decisions to close many ‘inefficient’ railway lines, we have had the chance to realise the mistake, redress the balance and make public transport reliable, cheap and comfortable. Perhaps then there might not have been so many cars on the roads today. Or would there? We have also been given personal freedom to choose. When that happens, you can usually guarantee that we don’t choose sensible options, just ones that seem to suit us best. This usually involves our short term gain at the expense of long term considerations. ‘Live for today. The future will take care of itself’. Since the early nineteen-eighties, we have had privatised public transport. The profit motive drives efficiency, so they say. Yes, the interests of shareholders are very efficiently served. Without state intervention, any concept of a ‘public service’ will always come second to this, because the public does not really have an alternative, apart from using a car. Given a choice between the following two actions, which would be chosen? 1 More frequent services. An action that reduces profits and improves customer service 2 Less frequent services. An action that increases profits at the expense of customer service. Daft question, wasn’t it? After all, they do have a business to run.

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During a period of four working days (in July 2004), whilst commuting from Huddersfield to Leeds, I was subjected to the following: • • • •

A forty minute wait for a bus service that is advertised as running every ten minutes A forty minute delay on a train due to a technical fault. A fifteen minute delay on a train for which no reason was given. The cancellation of a train, again with no reason given.

Then, on the fifth day, I decided to leave work half an hour early to get ready for an evening out. A bus didn’t arrive, and then a train was late. I got home later than I usually did. There have been ‘points failures’, staff shortages, derailments, engine trouble, not enough carriages, the ‘wrong kind of snow’, and ‘leaves on the line’. Rail transport has been used in this country for 150 years at least. Has snow suddenly started to fall that has a completely new structure or chemical composition? I can just see the sheer surprise on the faces of the rail company managers. It must be a really strange experience to suddenly realise that leaves fall from the trees in the Autumn. ** On the train I used every day, all aisles were crammed with standing passengers, involuntarily contemplating each other’s standards of personal hygiene. In summer I have seen streams of condensation running down the carriage walls. ‘Please move down to allow passengers to board the train’ ‘OK, everybody, anybody mind if someone sits on their knee?’ (OK, I’ve made this one up, but it might be a good idea). I have seen people almost come to blows over a piece of railway carriage eighteen inches square. If there was a serious accident, there would be carnage. Well, maybe then something might be done about the overcrowding. The companies say the trains are not overcrowded. They have been known to define overcrowding as ‘people having to stand on other people’s feet’. Then again, we have to understand that these are the same companies that explained that services had been delayed over the Christmas period because too many people

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were carrying too much shopping, and were therefore slower to get on and off the trains. Oh, what a shame. If they didn’t have to stop to pick up and set down these nuisances known as passengers, everything would be fine, wouldn’t it? For someone to have foreseen the situation, and suggest that an increase in services or numbers of carriages over the Christmas shopping period might be sensible, was too much to expect, I suppose. It would have involved the use of a brain. And money. It’s like saying that all hospitals would be very efficient if it wasn’t for all of those sick people taking up beds. And they would. Come to think of it, hospitals cancel theatre sessions, and waiting lists mount. Not a lot of difference, really, except the usual excuse is lack of funding. What would be the excuse if they were privatised? The wrong kind of patient, maybe? ** I have sometimes woken up during the night, a voice in my head saying ‘We are sorry to announce…….’ It’s like a popular song, you hear it so many times that you can’t get it off your mind, whether you like it or not. ‘We are sorry to announce that the 8-15 train to Leeds has been cancelled due to a staff shortage. Northern Trains apologises for any inconvenience this may cause”. No, you are not really sorry. You could not care less about the inconvenience. You just expect that we will carry on putting up with it. And what good is an apology from a pre-recorded voice that sounds like a badly synchronised computer game? What if the rail company’s payroll department made a similar announcement? ‘We are sorry to announce that, due to a staff shortage, this month’s salary will not be paid until next month’. Not a chance. They would have cover for absence, even if it was from an outside agency. It would be really refreshing if, for once, there was some honesty. Something like this, maybe: ‘We are sorry to announce that the 8-15 train to Leeds has been cancelled due to…… No. It’s really because we have not got a back-up staff anymore. Cost cuts, you know. Come to think of it, there are other reasons. We haven’t got enough rolling stock or engines, and anyway, what we have got is well past its sell-by date. While I’m at it, the management couldn’t manage a booze-up in a brewery. They sit there in their offices while we take the flak. What do you expect with privatisation, anyway? Long term investment? Short term profits, more like………….. Oops. Sorry. Anyway, if you

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don’t like it, you know what you can do. Three quarters of an hour sitting in your car on the M62 for you! Ha Ha!........... I’m going home now. Bye.’ Some transport services give laughable excuses. They plead an unavoidable staff shortage as a reason for service cuts, when it was cost-cutting to give short term results that reduced numbers, back-up staff and overtime in the first place. One day I was going with my wife to an important appointment she had in Wakefield. I phoned the National Rail ‘information’ line at 11.30am to confirm that the 1-30 Wakefield train was running. ‘Yes’, they told me. Arriving at the station, we were told that it was cancelled. There had been a derailment on the line that morning at 6 o’clock. The news of the derailment could almost have had time to make the morning papers, never mind filtering through to the ‘information’ service. Having managed just to make our journey on time by an alternative route, on returning home we were waiting half an hour for a bus that had been due five minutes after we arrived. I went over to two members of staff, who were sitting in an office thirty yards away. They were busy drinking coffee and eating cakes. ‘What happened to the 18:10 number 357?’ I asked ‘Cancelled’, was the reply. ‘Is that a microphone in front of you?’ I asked, with just a hint of sarcasm. No reply. ‘It’s the station intercom, isn’t it?’ I asked, not really expecting a sensible reply. ‘Yes’ ‘Is it working?’ ‘Yes’ ‘Well, even if it wasn’t, I’m 30 yards over there, and there is a door here, and opening it gives you instant access to the public. You know, those people who pay the money from which your wages are taken. Thanks very much for the information. Enjoy your party.’ I left. If these two examples can be described as being part of a ‘public service’, then I am an elephant. ** It’s very strange what happens when a public transport service is coming up for the franchise award. That’s the periodic award of the right for a company to provide the

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service. The performance of the current franchise holders seems, surprisingly, to improve. More trains run on time and are less crowded. Amazing, isn’t it? ** So, why don’t we invest enough to create a mass public transportation system that is reliable, convenient, comfortable and cheap? It just might encourage people to leave their cars at home, if it’s combined with congestion charges, higher fuel costs and road tolls. No, this would be far too logical and sensible. Sense and logic are not concepts our leaders seem to be familiar with. And it’s probably too late to change people’s habits anyway. ** Serious rail accidents are not surprising when corners are cut. And they have happened on too many occasions since privatisation. Then, adequate compensation awards are difficult to obtain. Responsibility for the disasters is not easily accepted. We are shown what the real value of human life is, when compared with business survival and profits. Greed does not only lead to inconvenience. It kills. There is not much hope, then, when we consider that our Economy is built on greed and selfishness. ** We continue to burn fossil fuels such as petrol and coal. These pour carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We live in times of warnings of ‘global warming’ due to carbon dioxide emissions. This century, the earth has warmed at a faster rate than anything since the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago. Within the next fifty or sixty years the average world temperature is forecast to rise by an estimated 3-5°C. It was a temperature drop of 4°C that triggered the onset of the ice age. We do not know for sure what effect an increase in temperatures will have. We already have disappearing rain forests, and dangers of air pollution and melting polar ice-caps. Sea levels will rise. Cities like Shanghai, Tokyo, New York and London could be under water. Millions of people would be affected.

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The temperatures could cause irreversible, disastrous changes to the world’s climate. It is said that these have already started to happen. And yet, some people still deny that it is happening at all. There have been cycles of changing weather ever since the world began, they say. This is just another one of these. Despite all the evidence to say that we are changing the composition of our atmosphere at an alarming rate, these people are still willing to take part in what is essentially an experiment on a global basis. It’s a bit like, ‘I wonder what might happen if I did this’. That can be harmless if you are mixing a couple of chemicals in a test tube. Hold on a minute, this is the ecological balance of the world that we are talking about. Our random tinkering with the world has produced the ecological equivalent of a test tube full of nitro-glycerine, to which we are stupid enough to attach a detonator that could go off at any time. But hey, what the heck, nitro glycerine has been around for a long time, and it hasn’t blown me up yet. Anyway, I’m making a lot of money out of selling it. It’s like saying that climate change has happened before, so why not allow it to happen anyway, even if it is our actions that have brought it on. No one can hope to forecast the results of the experiment. Some serious thought has been given to global warming over the last thirty years, but there has been a distinct lack of real action. And it’s not as if we didn’t know about it until recently. In 1827, Frenchman Jean Baptiste Fourier was the first to use a ‘greenhouse’ analogy when predicting the atmospheric effect that could keep the earth warmer than it should be. In the 1890s Swedish and American scientists considered the problems that might be caused by carbon dioxide building up in the atmosphere, concluding that it could lead to global warming. In 1957 the first continuous monitoring of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere was set up, by David Keeling, a US oceanographer. He soon found that they are rising every year. This ignorance of the possible effects of global warming has to be foolishness at its worst, especially in more recent years. There must be a very strong reason to claim that it is not foolish.

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As usual, it seems that there is no stronger reason than the smell of money, or the threat that your lifestyle might have to suffer to reverse the trends. ** If we think about it, if we use just a tiny little bit of the intelligence we have been given, isn’t it absolutely brainless to continue blindly on as we are? ‘Brainless’ is not a strong enough word. I can’t really think of a strong enough word. ** Whichever way we look at it, burning petrol is a major cause of carbon dioxide emissions. I did not drive a car until I was 36 years old, and then it as with reluctance. I was looking for a job, and when I said I didn’t drive, they looked at me as if I was mad. When I did get a car, I too fell into the trap. I really needed a car! I became used to it, driving half a mile to shops when it would have been better for me and the environment to have walked. I couldn’t do without it. Absolute rubbish! Recently, I did without a car again for two and a half years. I could manage without a car. Let’s call it my small contribution to the environment. If all drivers took two and a half years out at some time in their lives, think of the beneficial effects. Maybe it should be a legal requirement, a sort of enforced sabbatical. I am planning to give up driving again soon.5 I still feel slightly guilty if I drive a car again now. People seem to think cars are an indispensable essential. This is not surprising, when more and more local shops are closed due to competition from the big retail companies. By the way, have you ever tried to shop as a pedestrian at some large stores? Public transport may sometimes be a pain in the neck, but it can still be used for most needs. But it will never be maintained and improved as it should be, if so much attention is paid to the needs of car drivers. The government should be making driving much more expensive, to discourage it, and to use the money this raises to improve public transport. What are they doing instead? They are talking of widening more and more motorways, and building more roads. It seems that it’s too late to reverse the trend. We have gone too far. There would now be too much interference with ‘personal freedom’. 5

At the time of preparing this book (July 2008), I have been without a car again for nine months. I intend it to stay that way.

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And, of course, the profits of car and oil companies would be hit. Oh dear, what a pity, never mind. In the USA, where the car really IS king, it seems as if there is a direct link between political decision making and the needs of large businesses, particularly the oil companies. Are we naïve enough to believe that it doesn’t happen here? In the USA, people are known to get in the car to travel two hundred yards to a neighbour’s house. If you walk along the side of some roads (where this is not illegal), you are honked at or gestured at like you are some kind of vagrant. If you are dressed in sports gear and jogging, that’s different. But to walk? That’s unheard of. This happened to me whilst on Holiday in Virginia a couple of years ago. I had decided to walk to the nearest shop, about a mile and a half away. I had to give in to it all and hired a car. ‘Can’t happen here’? Have you not noticed the ‘lazy parkers’, parked on a pavement or in a bus stop? Heaven forbid that they have to walk further than twenty yards to reach their car. I appreciate that many small businesses (garages etc) would be threatened by less car usage too. But why couldn’t smaller businesses be supported through their difficulties, using public funds? Is this too simple? No, but it’s against the accepted principle that governments should not intervene to control ‘free market forces’. It would be sensible, but it’s awkward politically, because the money to support hardship would have to be found in taxation. We can’t do that, can we? We would be interfering with the free market. ** I have not even mentioned air travel. A ‘green’ tax has been suggested on air fares, because air travel causes very high levels of ‘greenhouse gas’ emissions. Of course, we don’t want to lose our cheap air fares, do we? Travel by air is expanding at an incredibly fast rate. It goes without saying that taxes would hit the poorer people, and that more wealthy people would be more able to continue to fly. They would still complain, of course. ** To find more money for public services like transport, will the government upset car drivers, or introduce a more progressive personal taxation (the greater effects falling on the more wealthy people)? No way.

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So, instead, they continue to tax drinkers, smokers and gamblers. As health campaigns start to take effect, revenue from smoking falls, so they allow the increase in the availability of gambling and drinking outlets and licensing hours. This is probably no coincidence. The legislation that allowed licensed premises to open for 24 hours a day seemed, in most polls taken, to only be popular with heavy drinkers, the Government and the drinks industry. What a surprise! The long overdue discouragement of one damaging addiction is replaced by the encouragement of others, simply to raise revenue and to maximise profits. This short sighted attitude results in greater social costs in the long run, not least for the NHS. The government will then no doubt make further announcements about needing to solve the ‘binge drinking’ problem. In the future, no doubt, the serious gambling problem that is yet to come will be ‘targeted’. They will not then close down or restrict the number of the suppliers of drink and gambling, but will spend millions controlling the effects on consumers, the real victims of this lunacy. Is this the work of sensible, intelligent people? No, it’s a blind obsession with ‘free enterprise’, and ‘personal freedom of choice.’ Can’t interfere with that, can we? Mustn’t hold back the ‘invisible hand’ of the market! Selfish interests are given free rein. The real culprits, the manipulative and exploitative suppliers, are therefore not affected. They just rake in the profits. Will the changes result in a change of our drinking habits as the Government seems to be suggesting, making us more like ‘continental’ drinkers and reducing ‘binge drinking’? This remains to be seen. ** ♦ Who benefits?     

Big oil companies Car manufacturers/retailers Car owners Public Transport companies’ shareholders The drinks industry. 31

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  

The gambling industry The Government. Wealthy people

♦ Who suffers?      

The environment Poorer people Poorer countries The elderly Isolated communities. Gullible people.

It does not take a genius to notice the relationship between the level of economic and political power and the level of wealth and privilege. Unfortunately, this relationship seems to be the other way round when it relates to common sense and intelligence. *********************************************************************

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Why Bother?

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it. Martin Luther King, Jr.

To stand in silence when they should be protesting makes cowards out of men. Abraham Lincoln

‘I wish to register a complaint’ Monty Python, ‘the Parrot Sketch’

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Is there any wonder we can’t be bothered to complain? What can we do? We can complain verbally. Not much chance of getting things changed, but we feel better for it. We can write to complain. We sometimes receive a very apologetic letter in return, but nothing is done about our complaint. We fill in a ‘Customer Satisfaction Questionnaire’. Results are published. Nothing is done. It’s part of the psychology of appearing to make an effort to change. ‘They must be trying to improve things if they are asking us what we think, mustn’t they?’ We go to our MP. He or she is more than likely going to be a member of one of the mainstream parties. The MP might stand up for us in Parliament, but if the complaint does not accord with party policy, it is very rare that it will be pursued. If it is, it is not exactly given a priority, and can easily be ignored or delayed almost indefinitely by parliamentary procedure. We don’t have a true democracy in this country. We effectively have a dictatorship by minority rule. Generally, because of the electoral system in the UK, more people vote against the elected government than vote for them. In the 2005 UK General Election, only 22% of the total electorate voted for the winning party, but it resulted in a working majority of over sixty seats at Westminster. So, more than three out of four voters did not support the winners. This is because of our ‘first past the post’ method of selecting MPs, rather than a system of ‘proportional representation’. Is this democracy? Is this a ‘mandate from the people’? There is also not much chance of electing a Government with policies radically different from the present Government. Even if democracy works as it should, and a genuine majority vote elected a government, the interests of minorities can be ignored with impunity. Even if the majority is morally wrong, they are officially right. It’s the ‘democratic’ principle that if most people think something is right, it must be right. This can never be so, God forbid. What a dilemma. The possibility is ignored that a minority can impose their beliefs on the majority, using propaganda and media pressure (for example, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union). The Soviet Union referred to their one party system as a democracy. They said that their ideas were right for the people, and defined democracy as what is right for the majority of the people. This justified the suppression of alternative views. ‘Democracy’ can be like three wolves and a lamb, voting on what they are to eat for lunch. Or it can be like one wolf persuading three lambs to vote for the Wolf Party.

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What else can we do if our vote is not effective? We might take part in a mass demonstration. Take the fox-hunting debate as an example. Whatever you may think of the case for or against hunting, the pro-hunting crowd could demonstrate all they wished, and even try to prove that a majority of the public supported them. This would not change the vote in the House of Commons if the Government has a comfortable majority. These demonstrations can easily turn to violence, not the least of it coming from the police. What about Global Issues? We can also call complaining ‘protesting’. Can we be any more successful if we are protesting about issues that affect the whole world? We could be anti-capitalist environmentalist activists. We could go to stand outside a summit of world business leaders. We might get publicity, but are portrayed as ‘loony lefties’. The New York Times described anti-capitalist protestors as ‘a Noah’s Ark of flat-earth advocates, protectionist trade unions, and yuppies looking for their 1960s fix.’, and the Wall Street Journal called them ‘Global village idiots’. More than likely, we would not be allowed anywhere near the summit, whether our demonstration was peaceful or not. The business leaders hold the real power, and don’t want the world to see that there is real dissent. We have recently (July 2005) had protests at the ‘G8’ summit meeting, consisting of political leaders of the eight most industrialised and richest countries. These are the USA, Japan, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Russia. These countries control nearly half of all global trade. The G8 countries have only one sixth of world population, but three fifths of the world’s gross national product. China and India are not included at the moment (July 2005) For G8 meetings, the immediate area is closed to protestors, and many journalists are kept away. There can even be an air exclusion zone. The main focus of the 2005 meeting was originally to be how best to increase economic growth around the world. Whose growth would that have concentrated on, I wonder? It was said that a report on global warming was ‘watered down’ in an effort to get George W Bush to accept it.

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Tony Blair managed to get the issue of African poverty to be high on the agenda, with discussions on how to improve the African economy. How effective will these discussions be? Prior to the 2005 G8 meeting, Africa received less than 1% of the world’s foreign investment, and between 1990 and 2000, development aid to Africa fell by 43% It’s not as if we have not been aware for a long time that poverty and the danger to our environment are problems that we need to solve, it just seems like all of a sudden we have said we need to do something about it. This is certainly not the case. From the 1970s to the present day we have seen numerous famine crises, probably the best known being Bangladesh, Biafra and Ethiopia., and now the Sudan. What happened to ‘North-South. A programme for survival’ (1980). (The Brandt Report.)? This proposed, amongst other things: • • • • • • •

Large scale transfer of resources to developing countries International energy strategy Global food programme Reforms in the international economic system. Priority to be given to poorest countries Abolition of hunger Power sharing with the developing world.

Have any of these happened on a widespread scale in the last 25 years? I don’t think so. Then there was the ‘Global Report to the President’ in. 1982.This was originally commissioned by President Carter in the 1970’s, but was ignored by President Reagan and his successors. It was an immense report, detailing declining resources, population growth, etc, and what we needed to do. We have had various proposals for debt relief, including the use of ‘Jubilee’ years when more sharing with the poor world would take place, one of which was proposed for the Millennium. We had the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) which was dubbed the ‘Earth Summit’, in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The UN proposed some Millennium development goals (for the years 1990 to 2015. Amongst these were: • Develop a Global Partnership for development • Eradicate Extreme poverty and hunger • Ensure environmental stability. There seems to have been little progress in any of these up to the time of writing these words (July 2005). 36

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We had ‘World Poverty Day’ on October 17 1999, to raise awareness of the situation. Now, we have the G8 and ‘Live8’. Once again, this was to ‘raise awareness’, and to prompt the world leaders to action. There are promises to increase aid and cancel debt, but nothing firm on the adjustment of unfair trade practices. Without the last one, the first two are just temporary patches. And the rich still get richer as the poor get poorer. George W Bush echoed the feeling of many people when he asked why we should give money to corrupt regimes in Africa (and there have certainly been many of these). They would keep it for themselves. If you look at the truth about the exploitation of Africa over the last hundred and twenty years or so, this is a bit like stealing your younger brother’s money and leaving him destitute, then complaining that you should not help him because he spends what little money you do allow him on cigarettes and alcohol. He says he had become a drinker and smoker due to the state you had left him in. Shouldn’t you have a moral obligation to help him? ** Shouldn’t we all get angry about all of this? If we do, what can we do about it? How do we protest if we have a complaint? We try, but become frustrated by ‘red tape’ and bureaucracy. We might take more direct action, sometimes violent action. We might have a good case for action, but if we get violent, we become radical extremists or even terrorists. Why do people take violent action? It’s because they are desperate, and nothing else has done any good. No one has taken any notice before, but they might now. ** Of course, you never complain about anything, do you? You are fed up of these whingeing, whining, boring people. Why don’t they just shut up, ‘live and let live’, and get on with life? What can we do about it all? You’re OK, anyway, and that’s your main concern. If this is how you look at life, you will certainly not want to have to think too deeply when you read a book. You will just want to be entertained. You should want to put this book down now and read no further, if you have even managed to get this far. You want to be entertained, not depressed. Fine, you want to be left alone. You don’t want to be dragged down.

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You are quite satisfied with your lot in life, thanks very much. Have you ever thought that the people holding positions of power and wealth might want you to look at things that way? It prevents you from being a threat to them. Could it be that they make conscious efforts to keep you in your state of self satisfied, blissful unawareness? Are you, like sheep, being manipulated? If you are happy to be like a sheep, then that’s fine with me. Like you, sheep are quite happy with their lot. Sheep graze happily. You live comfortably. But sheep are being exploited, and they don’t realise it until it is too late. ** OK, so you are quite happy as you are. Do you just want to ignore how other people feel about things? Is it that you could not care less how they feel, or how they are being affected? Isn’t this a bit self-centred? One day something might affect you. It possibly has already, you just don’t realise it. You would only sit up and take notice when it started to affect you personally. Then you would probably look around for someone to blame, and someone to help you. Blaming the Government is usually the first thing to come to mind. That’s easy. You don’t have to think about the real cause. It’s usually the Government that is called on to help you. ** I have sometimes been accused of thinking I ’know it all’. I don’t. I never can. Nobody can. I just want you to start to think, and to start to use the reasoning faculties that you were endowed with at birth. ** I cannot hope to offer a solution or remedy to the world’s problems. I only wish to give an understanding of the situation as it is. From that, you will see that any change is up to you. You can’t go on blaming others all the time without considering that you might just have a share in the responsibility for the situation. It is too easy to blame others. It’s never our fault, is it? *********************************************************************

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Are we Civilised?

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Progress is man's ability to complicate simplicity. Thor Heyerdahl

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I’m sure most people would agree that a major characteristic of a ‘civilised’ society should be that it gives protection and security to its weakest members, and in particular, takes care of its elderly population. It is perhaps surprising, then, that we came round to thinking that the State should provide these services only relatively recently, within living memory of many people. Up to the 1930’s we had people relying on ‘the parish’, and workhouses or charity, if they hit hard times or illness. With the coming of the ‘Welfare State’ after the Second World War, we were promised State involvement ‘from the cradle to the grave’, and, for a time, we were the envy of much of the rest of the world. What has happened? ** Public Service involves, amongst others, Health, Education, Housing and Pensions. It once included public transport and the provision of essential services like power, water and telecommunications, and the rights and wrongs of the privatisation of these industries is another subject altogether. You already know my thoughts on public transport. Thinking carefully about how public services are provided in our country and worldwide, can we truly say that our society is civilised? Yet, if asked, lots of people would say that the world is more ‘civilised’ now than in the past, and is improving all the time. Are we willing to pay the price it takes to be civilised? In essence, this will always mean someone is helping others that are less fortunate than themselves. To do this, they have to pay. Are they really willing to do this? In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there was a policy of non-interference with free economic forces. It was called ‘Laissez Faire’. Adam Smith’s book ‘The Wealth of Nations’ was its ‘bible’. Although it led to economic growth and more wealth overall, it also led to unrestrained exploitation of the poor, and gross inequality in the distribution of wealth. The rich got richer, and the poor got poorer. Why on earth are we repeating this mistake today? Child labour and overcrowded, unsanitary living conditions were just two of the evils that resulted from the Industrial Revolution. In the country that had led the world by abolishing slavery, this was intolerable. The UN International Labour Organisation estimates that, worldwide, there are 246 million child labourers aged between 5 and 17, 44 million of these in India. 41

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Slavery still exists. It is estimated that there are 27 million slaves in the world today. Source: www.antislavery.org and iabolish.org It had been finally outlawed in the world as a whole as recently as 1926. If it was not for the work of philanthropists such as William Wilberforce and Lord Shaftsbury, and of early socialist organisations representing the labour force, I dread to think what could have happened. The sad thing is that the Government had to be persuaded to intervene. Note that this meant that people had to be forced to help, and forced to be fair. So, maybe we have never been really civilised in the sense that I use it above. As religion becomes less relevant to many people and socialism is in decline, there seems to be nothing left to inspire truly philanthropic actions. God help us. Where are today’s philanthropists? I don’t mean the billionaires who occasionally donate millions that they can easily afford (and have tax breaks and some good publicity in the meantime) to a particular cause, however worthy and useful this might be. I mean those that are in powerful enough positions to really exert some influence for change, and work for it and pay for it on a long term basis. If someone in a high position does start to ruffle a few feathers and highlight an issue, they can easily be destroyed by the media. A favourite method is ‘character assassination’. Diana, Princess of Wales was a good example of this. It has been said that landmines were killing or maiming at least one person every hour. When Diana highlighted the problem in 1997, she was referred to as a ‘loose cannon’ by a Government minister. The phrase ‘loose cannon’ implies a careless misuse of power. This also shows us that the powerful are in control, and that we are not always told what they do not want us to know. ** It has been said that if it was not for the religious revivals of eighteenth century (the period that gave us the Methodist movement), we might have had a violent, bloody revolution in this country like those in France and Russia. This could well be true. In our day of secular values and declining religion, how long will it take for the exploited majority to realise, and raise their heads in violent protest? There is plenty of latent violence in our poorer areas. All it would take is an organiser, someone to co-ordinate the feelings of deep resentment into organised violent opposition. No one can say that it would not happen in today’s age. What is the level of inequality that we have to decline into? Who knows? Why are we surprised that crime is increasing? It increases in line with the increase in inequality. The ‘have-nots’ want what the ‘haves’ have got. 42

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One thing is sure. We will only wake up to the reality if we are confronted with it. It is kept from us. We don’t always see the hidden ‘billionaires’. The detail of their wealth is kept from our front pages. We are very rarely given the truth about the effects of inequality in the distribution of wealth across the world, how it is caused, and who causes it. The poor are exploited. The rich get richer. We just have a vague idea that, yes, there are some very rich people, and there are a lot more poor people. ‘That’s life’, we say. Then we forget it and spend our time scratching out a living or trying to get richer ourselves. The world’s 225 richest people have combined wealth that is more than the combined income per year of the 2,500 million poorest people. Britain’s 10 richest people have as much wealth as 23 poor countries with over 174 million people. Whatever you think of the place of religion in the upholding of morals, at the very least the presence of warnings about the exploitation of the poor in ancient scriptures shows us that it is nothing new. It has always been with us. There are many warnings about exploitation of the poor. These are a few of them, from the Bible: Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. Ezekiel Chapter 16, verse 49 Sodom was destroyed. The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern. Proverbs Chapter 29, verse 7 If you see the poor oppressed in a district, and justice and rights denied, do not be surprised at such things; for one official is eyed by a higher one, and over them both are others higher still. Ecclesiastes, chapter 5, verse 8 Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered innocent men, who were not opposing you. James, Chapter 5

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At the very least, I hope to wake you up to the reality that since ‘civilisation’ began, the rich have always exploited the poor. Where taxation is concerned, this exploitation is shown by the reluctance of people to pay money into services that might benefit people poorer than themselves. We complain about the taxation it takes to support the state services that we have. If you think about it, would it really be wrong if the proportion of income paid on taxation by wealthy people was higher than that paid by poorer people and those on average incomes? They would still be left with more money than everyone else. We once had this concept of ‘progressive taxation’, which meant that the wealthy paid a higher proportion of their income than poorer people. This was a fundamental socialist concept intended to control the distribution of income throughout society, otherwise the gap between rich and poor has a tendency to grow, as it has done in recent years. Another socialist concept was the public provision of essential services, free or relatively inexpensive to the public at the point of use. These cannot be provided without taxation. We are sometimes still said to have ‘progressive taxation’, but in reality we have much more ‘direct’ or ‘regressive’ taxation. We have VAT, and excise tax on things like alcoholic drinks and petrol. Taxation on goods bought has to be paid for by both the rich and poor, and because of this it is sometimes said to be ‘fair’, but we know who can best afford to pay it. How often do you hear wealthy people say ‘I’ve worked hard for my money’ and ‘Why should I have it taken from me, when some people pay nothing?’ Do they really work as hard as a nurse, or a coal miner? Some people say that intelligence, ideas and inventions deserve a return. People can make millions out of a successful invention. Without these people we would not progress. To them, I say this. Think of a pre-historic society. Someone invents the wheel, and it makes physical labour much easier. Would that society let the inventor live off the labour of everyone else for the rest of his or her life as a reward? I suppose this is getting into the eternal dispute over what is more valuable, ‘brains or brawn’? As soon as it became possible to produce a surplus of food in early civilisations, very soon there were clever people ready to exploit the situation. They became the priests or the rulers, and lived lives of leisure at the expense of the common people. We were on the road to inequality. One thing is certain. The user of the brains could not exploit their cleverness on a large scale without the users of brawn. They might eventually exploit the brawn until it is no longer needed, because work becomes automated. But should they then discard the workers and leave them to starve? A bit unfair, don’t you think?

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In an equitable society, the relationship should be a partnership, not a master/servant one. Capital and labour should be complimentary factors of production. When capital receives disproportionate returns there will always be inequality. But we don’t have an equitable society, do we? Why do we value ideas above physical capabilities, or capital over labour? How do you define this in the context of the ‘survival of the fittest’? Sometimes, when the physical workers realise there is inequality, they fight. This is why, in a socialist revolution, the intelligentsia are suppressed, exiled or murdered. This seems to be justice, but is self defeating. The ‘physical’ workers do not appreciate the need for the complimentary use of the ‘brain’ workers, and the brain workers have a tendency to exploit the physical workers. Who then, is the ‘fittest’ in this situation? Under the present ‘free market’ theory that dominates the world economy, socialist action is considered to be the ultimate evil. Why is this, when, in theory, it is simply a struggle against the unfair domination of the poor by the rich? Who, in all truth, could say that this is wrong? What about the intelligent people that are less assertive, don’t use their intelligence to exploit people, or just don’t get a chance to use it? Are they less deserving of the rewards of their intelligence than the person who happens to be more assertive, or just in the ‘right place at the right time’? Here is how the current theory goes: It is said that progressive taxation ‘stifles enterprise and initiative’. The rich are supposed to be saying to themselves ‘what’s the point of getting rich if we are taxed so much?’, so they no longer make the efforts they used to. They don’t take into account that they can still be vastly richer than most people, even after the taxation. They also don’t take into account the possibility that they may have got where they are by an element of good fortune or favourable circumstances. They just want more, and they say that they deserve it. The top people leave our country for one where they are not taxed so heavily, such as the USA. The USA is the richest country in the world, but has one of the most unequal distributions of income. If we tax the rich, we are then all supposed to be poorer, because the rich are the creators of growth and wealth for everybody, so our economy suffers. It’s a very convenient thing to say if you are rich, isn’t it? It’s also a sad comment on the greed of human nature. *********************************************************************

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A Secure old age?

People don't place their trust in government or company pension plans; they have to be self-reliant. Scott Cook

The financial capital is being concentrated by corporations, institutional investors, and even our pension funds, and being reinvested in companies that repeat this process because it provides the highest return on that financial capital. Paul Hawken

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It was estimated in October 2004 that 12 million people in the UK over the age of 25 are not saving enough for their retirement. The government cannot afford the extra £575 billion a year that would be needed. The tax burden would be unacceptable. A solution would be to increase the retirement age to 70. Our governments have had well over forty years to do something about this possibility. Medical advances, and ‘baby boomers’ born in the 1950’s and 1960’s, were always going to swell the ageing population one day, and that day has come. Simple arithmetic would have told this to anyone with a brain, let alone the demographic ‘experts’ that the government would have access to. Like transport, it’s a prime example of ‘sweeping a problem under the carpet’ and hoping it goes away. To act earlier would have meant higher taxes, so would have meant less votes. Postpone it, and it becomes someone else’s problem. A steady increase in provision through taxation over the last thirty years would not have been as drastic as the measures needed now. It’s all so short-sighted and, frankly, brainless. Par for the course for government, I suppose, and not unexpected, from people whose only real interest is hanging on to their power at the next election. More and more, we are told that we have to provide for ourselves. State provision for pensions is now accepted as being woefully inadequate. Company pension schemes are being cut back. That is, unless you are a top manager, it seems. A TUC study in Sep 03 found that 47% of the top 121 UK firms were closing final salary pension schemes, but 70.5% of their directors were still being given them. (This was at an average pension of £168000 a year). Private schemes are on the increase, and we are heavily encouraged to take them up. One thing is sure. The financial institutions that provide them will be happy with this, and will make sure that there is a substantial profit to be made. Since ‘de-regulation’ of financial markets (a move justified by the current worldwide belief in the efficacy of ‘free’ markets), there has been what can only be described as a revolution in the provision of financial services. Of course, we mustn’t mention that de-regulation insisted on by the International Monetary Fund is said to have caused the collapse of the far eastern financial markets in 1998. (Note that Wall Street, the American financial centre, survived and was stronger as a result). Pensions, savings schemes, credit availability and many other areas of personal finance have grown ‘like topsy’. The credit explosion, of course, fuels the consumer spending boom. Big companies benefit, as do the financial institutions. Most of it is not ‘real’ money, just credit creation, but it keeps us booming, doesn’t it? The financial institutions don’t worry about how difficult it is for you to repay your mortgage, loan or credit card balance, or even all three. It’s someone else’s problem to sort that out.

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Have you noticed how financial institutions always tell you that they are there to help you? They are actually there to help themselves. There are massive profits to be made. What about the endowment mortgage scandal, or the excessive profits made by banks? They have very often shown themselves to be the shady dealers and profiteers that they really are, even the supposedly most ‘reputable’ of them. Previously mutually beneficial organisations like building societies have gained ‘bank’ status, and ‘sold out’ to de-regulation. Their members were too tempted by short term windfalls to see the longer term consequences. Short term greed is a powerful thing. It’s strange, isn’t it, how, if you are owed some money by one of these organisations, it can take months to recover. If you owe them something, the threats of legal action are in the next post. If you overdraw beyond an allowed limit, even by a small amount, you are charged immediately with something ridiculous like £30. If the bank rate rises, your mortgage interest goes up virtually immediately. If it falls, you wait. They are ‘considering the implications’ and ‘watching the movements’ first. There is a thing called an ‘Administration Charge’ when setting up an agreement, which can be as much as £75. What do they do for it, and are they employing extra staff to do whatever it is? If you wish to pay off a loan early, there can be heavy penalties. It’s as if they have a right to expect the payment of interest they thought they were going to get, even though you are no longer borrowing their money. They are legalised ‘loan sharks’. I could go on. The financial institutions are like bookmakers, and we are like gamblers. They are always the winners, we lose. And they are ‘there to help you’. They are also there to keep in being the economic power base of big business, and to provide the money that fuels the consumer economy. Deregulation of the financial services industry, where it relates to the taking away of restrictions on lending, has certainly boosted our economy by creating money through credit. It has given us the ability to buy things that our parents could only dream of.

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It has also led to the ridiculous ease that people can find themselves in levels of debt that they cannot pay back. It is all a part of the ‘free to choose’ mentality fostered by the Thatcher and Reagan economics of the 1980s. This is the policy that has led to greater inequality and a bigger gap between rich and poor. The availability of easy credit has gone a long way to making this happen. More consumption, more profits. The banks encourage debt. The reminder that you have to pay it back with interest, and could lose your property if you don’t, becomes almost an afterthought. The banks make a fortune. The rich get richer.6 The unfortunate thing is that we are at the mercy of such institutions for our provision for old age. Because of the continuing demise of the Welfare State, and the prevailing ‘conventional wisdom’ that the State should not interfere, we are all at risk from poor stock market performance. We have pension funds and insurance policies whose returns depend on the stock market and shareholder satisfaction. Is there any wonder, then, that companies concentrate on short term profit? The irony is that a concentration on short term profits and share growth is short sighted from the point of view of the companies themselves. They become risk averse, and long term change and investment suffers. Long term investment does not produce a ‘quick buck’. Meantime, companies overseas are taking advantage of long term funding decisions backed by their governments, and are moving ahead. Still, the individuals and institutions making millions from short term gains don’t really care about that either, do they? They can pull out when they choose, with their fortunes safe in offshore tax havens, and the mess that remains becomes someone else’s problem. But they are the entrepreneurs, aren’t they? They are supposed to be the ‘lifeblood’ of a thriving economy. ** But is ‘self help’ always possible? To help ourselves seems logical, I suppose, because if we ’look after number one’ all our lives, as we seem to be encouraged to do, we should not expect to be helped when we are old or have problems. It is our own responsibility. But is it really ‘civilised’, or is it really the ‘law of the jungle’ with a modern disguise? What if you are not in a position to help yourself? What about the unwilling and innocent poor? Are they to be given sub standard services, whilst those who can pay 6

At the time of preparation of this edition (May 2009) we are falling into a recession that was triggered by a global financial crisis of the Banks’ own making. Years of deregulation and reckless greed resulted in a collapse that was as inevitable as night following day.

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have the best? Is this really civilised? People can die as a direct result of poorer services. Is this civilised? We are told that we should take responsibility for our own support. We should help ourselves. Look after Number One. The trouble is that, in the process, there are plenty of financial organisations ready and willing to exploit our needs, and plenty of people suffering because, through no fault of their own, they cannot help themselves. *********************************************************************

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Teach Your Children well

It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry. Albert Einstein

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. Alvin Toffler

The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think - rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with thoughts of other men. Bill Beattie

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We produce university graduates by the thousand, and well done to all of them. I am not one of those people who say that degrees are being devalued due to a fall in pass standards. A degree is still a great achievement. The one thing I sometimes wonder is how there are any at all. I am sometimes forced to listen to teenage conversations on public transport, and find myself longing to hear a word of more than two syllables. The following is a heavily censored version of a conversation I heard on a bus. It’s heavily censored because, in the space of a few minutes, I counted the ‘f’ word used twenty five times. ** ‘‘Y’ goin’ tonight?’’ ‘Y’wot?’ ‘Tonight. Are y’ goin? Are y’ bovvered, or wot?’ ‘‘Club, like?’ ‘‘yeh. Went last night. A right laugh. Weg and Stengun pewked their guts up all over the floor. ‘‘That’s well wicked!’’ ‘‘Y’ know, I laughed at Weg last night, y’know, and she goes ‘**** off’, so I went ‘you **** off’, and she went, like……… (A strange expression was made at this point) So I went like……… (Another strange expression). Know wot I mean?’’ ‘’You mean like ………..’’ (Yet another strange expression) ‘’Yeh’’ “Y’ goin’. Tonight?” “Club, like? “Yeh”. ** What’s with all of this ‘went’, ‘and, ‘goes’ and ‘like’?

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There was a time when one of us on the bus might have admonished people like this when they were swearing, but nowadays swearing seems so commonplace, yet still sounds so ignorant sometimes. It was once confined largely to men-only public bars and barrack rooms, or at least, that’s how it seemed. It’s now as if a more suitable way of expressing a feeling is just not known. In most cases the swearing is not even used as an expletive, just as a superfluous extra, a sort of, ‘I swear, therefore I’m cool’ attitude. The media might reflect this, to be ‘more realistic’, but the effects are cumulative. The more swearing becomes acceptable in films and on TV, the more it is used in public, and so on. It’s very sad. People seem strangely reluctant to admonish unruly youths, because they are afraid of what may happen. We are being terrorised by yobs. Let’s face it; it would be no surprise if they were carrying knives, or even guns. Either we are afraid, or it’s one more thing that we can’t do anything about, so we ignore it. Think of the conversation again. I am not one of the traditionalists who mourn the supposed demise of the English language, and complain whenever new words are coined. All languages develop, but if this sort of conversation was the direction of development, by 2020 we would all be speaking to each other using a primeval grunt. The moronic mutterings of the poorly educated sometimes seem to be the living proof that evolution can go into reverse. We should not have poorly educated people in a supposedly ‘civilised’ society. ** In a 2004 survey, six percent of 16 to 24 year olds answered that Gandalf from the Lord of the Rings led the fight against the Spanish Armada. They may have been ‘taking the Mickey’, but, also, one in five said Christopher Columbus. This ignorance is not confined to youth. A fifth of pensioners questioned did not know that the Romans had occupied Britain. Similar embarrassing results have been found from basic maths and spelling surveys. Ignorance of geography is widespread. How can we get people to be concerned about poverty in Africa when many people don’t even know where it is? The following are some answers given on quiz shows and radio phone-in quizzes: Which Italian city is overlooked by Vesuvius? Answer: Bombay (From ‘The Weakest Link’) * In which European country is Mount Etna? 53

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Answer: Japan The presenter then said ‘I did say which European country, so in case you didn't hear that, I can let you try again’. Answer Er…Mexico? (The Chris Searle Show, Radio Bristol) * What is the capital of France? Answer ‘F’. (Family Fortunes) * Which is the largest Spanish speaking country in the world? Answer: Barcelona The presenter then said ‘I was really after the name of a country’. The contestant replied with ‘I'm sorry, I don't know the names of any countries in Spain’. (Lincs FM) * On which continent would you find the River Danube? Answer: India (Steve Wright Show, Radio 2) *

There is the well publicised case of the ‘Big Brother’ TV reality show contestant who thought that East Anglia was ‘abroad’. Apparently, she later asked if Jerusalem really existed. She had thought it was just a Bible story. We are told that the situation is worse in the USA. According to Michael Moore in his excellent book ‘Stupid White Men’, 44 million Americans are functionally illiterate. The average American spends 99 hours per year reading, compared to 1460 hours watching television. He says that a sample of senior university students could not say when the American Civil War took place, but nearly 100 percent of them knew who ‘Snoop Doggy Dog’ and ‘Beavis and Butthead’ were. George W Bush himself is not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer. He was once pictured supposedly reading to a child, but was holding the book upside down. He

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once said ‘You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test’. This is the man leading the most powerful country on earth. ** As we have already seen, some of the answers given on TV game shows would be hilarious if they were not sad. The amazing thing is that on some game shows someone can show complete ignorance and still come away with thousands of pounds. Well, I suppose that at least they have had the courage to embarrass themselves for fifteen minutes of fame. On one quiz show, a lady was asked three questions: 1 Who was recently voted the most beautiful woman in the world? She answered correctly, ‘Angelina Jolie’ 2 Into which sea does the River Nile flow? ‘Er… the Dead Sea?’. Incorrect. The Mediterranean. 3 How many people were present at the ‘Last Supper’? ‘Er….Forty?’ Incorrect. Jesus and twelve disciples. Thirteen. And she had managed to get to the semi-final! I don’t need to guess what her reading material is, if she reads at all. It’s any one or two of the multitude of ‘celebrity gossip’ magazines, no doubt. ** What has all of this to do with the education system? Surely, everything. ** Our schools are now ranked according to performance, and parents now have a ‘choice’ of the school to which they send their children. How many poorer families can really make this choice, and even want to, despite the help given? Some families move house to be in a catchment area for a school. How many poor families can do this?

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What happens to the children left at the poorly performing schools? Does it follow that they are always the less able? Discipline in schools is virtually impossible. Corporal punishment is banned. Children are growing up with contempt for authority of any kind. No authority is established, so can you blame them? Many children nowadays are products of the age of ‘sexual equality’ and the need for two working parents. An important way of establishing a respect for authority is to do it at an early age, through the family. Nowadays, from an early age, children have more than one authority figure. Shunted between grandparents and nurseries, then back for a few hours’ ‘quality time’ with the parents (in many cases only one parent), is there any wonder that lines of authority become blurred and the child can be confused? How do they know who is the real boss? A child learns more in the first few years than in much of the rest of their lives. If their concept of authority is blurred, it is blurred for good. No wonder then, that when the teens are reached, it is easy to rebel. Rebellion of teenagers is almost a time honoured ritual, but without a sense of authority imprinted in early years, it can, and does, of course, become much more of a problem. Why do people then ask why young children and teenagers of today are so unruly? The parents are likely to be products of the ‘comprehensive’ education system of the late 1960s through to the 1980s, a system that did not properly recognise high performers, so was guaranteed to ‘dumb down’ the overall level of education. There was no longer a concept of ‘failure’, so, consequently, a reduction in sense of achievement. Education failed the parents, who now have no real belief in the system for their children. Contempt for authority extends to all authority, not least to the Police. Schools blame parents and parents blame schools. All smacking of naughty children may soon be banned, even in the home. We have to discuss it with them, and appeal to their sense of right and wrong. ‘Now look here, Wayne, you are a naughty boy’ ‘Waaahh!’ ‘Please try to see that your behaviour is unacceptable. Wayne. Put that hammer down, there’s a good boy.’ ‘Waaaahhhh!’

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‘Now Wayne, Mummy has to go to work soon. You will be a good little boy for Miss Jenkins, won’t you? Good little boys get rewards. Miss Jenkins has only just recovered from the last time you……’ ‘Waaaaaaahhhhhh!’ ‘WAYNE! Come on. We’re going. You little monster! You’ll be put in the quiet room again! Will you PLEASE put down that hammer? Oh, never mind. I never did like that vase.’ ** Then, if we threaten deprivation of favours like sweets and toys, we are being psychologically violent. ** I heard someone say ‘Why not just let children do what they want, like the Native Americans used to do? Let them learn by their mistakes. There would be no need to physically restrain them’. Oh yes. That’s very sensible in our society. ‘I’ve told you three times, Darren. Don’t run off into the road. Stay with me. Oh, never mind. Just go ahead and run off into the road, Darren. You’ll soon learn not to do it again!’ ** The Conservatives in the 1980s considered a ‘voucher’ system for universal education, an allowance that everyone would have, giving a basic education, which could then be ‘topped up’ if you wanted a better school. This was an invitation to ‘elitism’, the privilege of the wealthy. And, there are also the private schools. Yes, some parents make admirable sacrifices for their children, in order to send them to a private school. Some can easily afford it anyway. But in all honesty, how could a single parent on State benefit do the same without the child being offered a scholarship? Why should only exceptionally gifted poor children have this opportunity, educated alongside less intelligent children who are only there because their parents had the means? The voucher system has effectively been introduced under a Labour Government, with the concept of University ‘top-up’ fees. If a parent can afford it, they help their child with fees and living costs. All others have to obtain loans. However favourable the terms of the loans might be, to have the prospect of having to pay back up to £15,000, in addition to the difficulty of buying a first home because of rising house prices, is not exactly the best of incentives to succeed. Add to this that a job after

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graduation is not guaranteed, and you could wonder why anyone bothers. Unless mum and dad can help, of course. More than likely, the trend will be towards an even higher proportion of privileged children getting a university education than is the case now. Is this civilised or is it elitism? As they did in ancient Rome, let’s educate the ‘patricians’ and keep the ‘plebs’ down by maintaining their ignorance. Labour used to be a socialist party. ** Basic literacy in the UK is still fairly high. Still, as long as the reading diet of much of the population consists of celebrity gossip magazines, or the Sun, the Star, the Mirror and the Sport, or even the instructions for the latest video game, then I suppose it could be said that this is not a significant achievement. Here are some headlines I saw on the front page of some of the wide circulation gossip magazines: ‘Horror in my Knicker Drawer’ ‘They cut away my vagina and nobody told me’ ‘Who will cut off my breasts?’ You know, they really make you want to open the magazines to find out about the stories behind the headlines, don’t they? The temptation is really too much, isn’t it? I don’t think so. Even if I was a woman. My favourite headline on the front page of one of the magazines referred to an episode of the TV ‘soap opera’ Coronation Street, and said something like ‘Aimee in car crash drama as Ray Langton speeds into the street!’ Aimee was a child in a pushchair. I saw the episode concerned (I must confess, I do watch Coronation Street, for my sins!). Ray Langton drove at less than 5 mph and his car touched the pushchair. I can only presume that the ridiculous headline was there to tempt people to buy the magazine. It was not exactly a lie, but stretched the truth more than a little. In case anyone thinks I am picking on women’s magazines. No. There are also many men’s magazines on the shelves that manage to dredge up similar depths of intellectual sludge. An example like the one above is a small example of how the media can stretch the truth without actually lying. When it is considered that public opinion can be moulded by the power of news media, it can be very easy to convince relatively uneducated

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people of a particular political point of view, or to keep them in a permanent state of satisfied apathy. Does this happen? Of course it does. The American public does not get to know what their Government and the moneyed interests do not want them to know. ‘The business of a journalist is to destroy the truth: to lie outright: to pervert: to vilify: to fawn at the feet of mammon’ and ‘Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men’ John Swinton of the New York Times, at the New York Press Club in 1953. Major U.S. television and radio networks complied with the government’s requests to edit or suppress statements that opposed U.S. military action in Iraq. In the UK, the Sun can be ‘right wing’, the Mirror ‘left wing’, etc. Even the more ‘highbrow’ offerings can be biased. If you want left wing views, see the Guardian. But it’s much more interesting to read about the stars’ sex lives than to keep up to date with world affairs. You might say that one set of affairs is more exciting than the other. A little education can be a dangerous thing. Too much education and you start to think for yourself. You begin to ask questions. But isn’t this what education should really be? So, then, how much of our education system is aimed at creating this atmosphere of questioning? Is it supposed to be provided in subjects such as ‘Humanities’ or ‘Social Studies’? How much of this presents information on real social inequality, world inequality, and, much more important, the real reasons for them? How much teaches alternative political theories and their relative merits and demerits? How much presents real comparisons of alternative philosophies of life and religions? How much teaches us the real lessons to learn from History? In short, how much makes us think about the really important questions to ask? Not a lot, unless we choose to specialise in one of these subjects at university. You think that these subjects are boring and unimportant. Does this opinion come from a considered look at reality, or is it possible that you are being manipulated and encouraged to ignore them?

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A good book on the subject of the manipulation of the masses by the media was written in the nineteen fifties, ‘The Uses of Literacy’, by Richard Hoggart. It is still available from Penguin books. Read it. It might open your eyes. Ancient Rome knew this well. The ‘mob’, or the plebeians, as the common people in ancient Rome were referred to, had to be kept amused to distract their attention away from revolt. If they were kept happy, the rulers were kept safe in their affluence. The distractions consisted of mindless entertainments like the ‘Circus’, the violent shows presented in the amphitheatres. ’Bread and Circus’, a regular food supply and mindless entertainment. That’s all they needed, and they were happy. Think of today’s ‘entertainment’. Much of it too can be described as ‘mindless’. We also have a regular supply of food. Just go through the channels available on a satellite or cable system, and you will probably see what I mean. Even the ‘educational’ channels can seek to sensationalise history or nature. Endless game shows, sales channels, quiz channels, ‘reality TV’ shows, and second rate movies have to be sifted through to find any offerings that are worthwhile, or to avoid programmes that might justly be described, not too unkindly, as ‘moron fodder’. We can make celebrities out of loud, foul-mouthed non-entities, or allow someone to earn a fortune for the simple reason that they are endowed with large breasts. For most of this ‘entertainment’ no thought is needed, you are just expected to put your mind into neutral and enjoy. You might say that this is the purpose of entertainment, to lift you out of your mundane existence, or to simply pass the time. Surely, this is exactly what I am saying. I am only adding that this intellectual ‘dumbing-down’ of the mass of the people is clearly in the interests of the ‘powers that be’ and the wealthy elite. Is it too extreme to suggest that it is encouraged by them, or is it simply that it is what people really want? Could it also be that there is a lot of money to be made by the media in the process? The truth about the cause of world poverty and global warming is not given adequate airtime, or is treated superficially or piecemeal. The truth might be dangerous. In a truly free society, movies such as Michael Moore’s ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ would be shown regularly on mainstream TV at peak times. This movie heavily criticised George W Bush, and many would say that it was justified. The problem is, people might start thinking for themselves, and come to the wrong conclusions. Wrong, that is, as far as the powers that be are concerned. The USA, ‘The land of the Free’, wanted to totally ban it.

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How strange, isn’t it? It has been established beyond many people’s reasonable doubt that George W. Bush should not have been elected as President of the USA in November 2000. The key Florida vote was said to have been legally manipulated, to put it as mildly as possible. Jeb Bush, George’s cousin, was the governor of Florida. This was not a very moralistic thing to do, you might think. And yet George W Bush was re-elected in November 2004 on the strength of his backing of ‘moral issues’ such as the banning of gay marriage. What a crazy country. And you can say that you are not being manipulated? Consider the following: ‘In order that any society may function well, its members must acquire the kind of character which makes them want to act in the way they have to act as members of the society or of a special class within it. They had to desire what objectively is necessary for them to do. Outer force is to be replaced by inner compulsion and by the particular kind of human energy which is channelled into character traits. Erich Fromm; ‘Individual and Social Origins of Neurosis’, 1949. Putting it more simply, for society to function, people need to voluntarily and willingly conform rather than be forced to. What I am saying is that the need for this requirement to conform can easily be encouraged and exploited by people in power, in order to keep them in power. If not, the threat of force is needed. This is why Communism needed force to maintain its power structure. The masses were not kept happy. They were not given what they wanted. If you can convince the people that what you can give them is what they need, then give them it, they are satisfied with what they have got and you have unassailable power. If you can make them believe it, you are in control. ‘It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words and words can be moulded until they clothe ideas in disguise.’ Joseph Goebbels, Nazi propaganda minister For us today, this manipulation is cloaked in the disguise of ‘freedom’. But try going against the grain and you find out how ‘free’ you are. Try demonstrating against the system by non-violent but disruptive means. You will be treated like an outcast. You will be told that you are an enemy of society because you are going against what people are supposed to want. You will be called an extremist, or a ‘loony leftie’. You are portrayed as an eccentric with ‘pie in the sky’ ideas. You are thought of as a throwback to the hippy days of the 1960s, wearing long hair, a beard, beads and tattered flares. If you don’t believe me, what is the image in your mind of a protestor? Come on, don’t deny it. The protestors might be right. The established order might be wrong. But they hold the power, and they have the manipulated masses on their side.

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**

Inequality If the truth of social and world inequality was taught in schools, along with the truth about the system that is maintaining this inequality, just some of the students might be encouraged to think, and the vast majority of these would choose state control and state interference as the preferred political option. This would be seen by children as both fair and sensible for the future of the world. Children can be more sensible than adults. No, we can’t do that. There’s too much chance of political or religious bias from teachers. Can’t have socialism taught in our schools, can we? So it is not an option to give children a choice between a fair, sharing world that conserves world resources, and one where it is everybody for their self, and resources are squandered. Then, outside school, the thing to do is bombard the children with advertised images of affluence and plenty, encouraging profligate consumerism, and you have achieved the maintenance of the status quo. The moulding of the modern consumer mindset is complete. The position of the big corporations and the wealthy people is secure. ** Philosophy and Religion What is taught about philosophy? Is it ever emphasised to anyone that people have tried since time began to present a philosophy that gives us all the answers to how to live life, but none have succeeded? No mere mortals, that is. We are not taught that much of the way we live now is due to the filtering down of philosophical ideas popular in the 19th and 20th centuries, such as those of Sartre, Camus, Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Jaspers. These are existentialism, logical positivism and situational ethics. They are subjective and experiential, using relativism and synthesis, not thesis and antithesis. In other words, there are no opposites, no black and white, no absolute right and wrong. What is right depends on the circumstances, the relative situation. We make judgements based on an idea that there is a concept that there can be a 'good’ outcome from an action, so the concept of 'good’ has to exist in that situation. To have this concept must imply an acceptance of a situation that would be its opposite, whatever the situation, and this opposite would be ‘bad’ or 'evil'. If there is not an absolute idea of good to bear in mind as a guide, all becomes relative and it may become good to not only allow people to willingly die, but to help them along the way because it causes difficulties for us if we keep them alive. For example, we could allow a decrease in population from disease and hunger, rather than share what we have in a better way. We could convince ourselves that it is 'right' for the survival of the human race, rather than consider more uncomfortable alternatives.

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The case of abortion of a damaged foetus is a case in point. Variously handicapped people can be seen to have a fulfilling and useful life that they would not have had if they had been aborted, but it takes much effort to support them. The argument given is that they will be better off not to live, and this is looked on as a 'good' decision on their behalf. Judgement is made as to what is good and bad but is tinged with the selfishness of human nature. It is more likely an avoidance of the difficulties and the costs. Support of a handicapped person can bring much love, along with the difficulties, as many people discover. Without this there would be even less love in a loveless world. We live by the prevailing system of ethics, governing what is right and wrong. Our ethical base in this country used to be Christianity. Once the basis of the ethics is taken away, the ethics we live by collapse. This is what we see happening in our world today. And we are replacing them by uncertainty. I heard some philosophers talking on Radio 4. One stated the proposition that ‘Humans are born equal, so all inequality is wrong’. They then discussed whether this was a fact, or just a value, whether it was an absolute truth or depended on the circumstances of the person making the judgement. This is an example of the confusion this kind of thinking has generated for us. Wouldn’t people be interested in the fact that the way they live their lives is affected by past philosophical theories? Wouldn’t they want to think for themselves and not have their minds manipulated in this way? You don’t think you are affected? Do you ever say that it is fine, whatever you do, as long as you are not hurting anybody? Do you ever hear people saying that they are free to do what they want? Do you ever say that there is no black and white, no absolute right or wrong? Do you say that it is all relative to the situation? If so, you are living existentially. You are subject to existentialist theory, whether you know it or not. It now seems to us so natural to think this way. But it is not exactly a new way of thinking. In the Bible, moral chaos had resulted when everyone was doing ‘whatever he sees fit’ (Deuteronomy, chapter 12, verse 8). The current view of right and wrong is based on existentialist thinking, and it only seems the right way to be because it is conventional. It’s the current, ‘modern’ way to be. It is just one way of looking at the world that has been imposed on us, like a succession of other attempts over the centuries. It all seems a very reasonable way to be. In some circumstances something could be right to do, and in others it could be wrong.

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If there is no absolute truth, no certainty of what is right and what is wrong, how can we even be sure that we are right to say that there is no absolute truth? What about a teacher who said to his class that ‘There is nothing you can know for certain that is absolutely true’, A pupil asked him, ‘Sir, are you sure?’ The teacher replied, ‘Yes, of course I’m sure.’ So, given the right (or wrong, depending on how you look at it) circumstances, some things once considered bad can become acceptable. Abortion is a classic example. The circumstances under which it becomes acceptable can change, because there is no strict definition of right and wrong. Adultery is another example. If not strictly acceptable, it is certainly not the taboo it once was. It is sometimes seen as a release from an unhappy relationship, and can now be seen as justifiable for this reason. It can never be justifiable to do that to someone you love or once loved just to satisfy your own needs, no matter how unhappy you are. It can be used as an easy way out. Sadly, for some people it seems to be the only way out. Do you think in the ‘modern’ way? Have you really worked this out for yourself, or is it something that seems natural? Now ask yourself again, have you had this way of thinking imposed on you by society, the media and your upbringing, or have you thought it through for yourself? Try to be really honest with yourself. Are you just ‘going with the flow’ and not thinking for yourself? Philosophical ideas start in the minds of thinkers. They then filter their way down into the lives of common people, becoming accepted ways to live. The media has a lot to do with this process, from newspapers to movies and television. Why shouldn’t education prepare us to be ready for these ideas? Why does it always teach us the current conventional way of thinking? Why doesn’t it give us alternatives? We could then decide for ourselves whether we really wanted to live that way. ** Meaningful teaching of comparative religion is also taboo. There are now too many interests to ‘offend’. With this attitude, how could religions ever be presented as a choice between alternatives? This is not allowed, because it might imply that one is ‘better’ than the other, even if this opinion was simply based on individual preference.

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This opinion can lead to the ‘it works for me’ attitude. So, if you choose a different religion to me, and ‘it works for you’, then fine, we are both happy. But surely we can’t both be right, and when we realise this, we could easily come to the conclusion that we might both be wrong. This is what has happened today. The result is an opinion that all religion is false. It is not surprising that we have schools based on particular religions. How can we encourage parents who are devout believers in a particular religion to allow their children to be exposed to teaching that might suggest that their parents are narrow minded bigots, or might lead them to concluding that they believe in a lie? Yet, surely, children should be allowed to make up their own minds when they are old enough to. To do this, they have to be given enough information. So, how can we criticise cultures and families for ‘indoctrinating’ their children, when we do not offer them an alternative framework of thinking that allows honest and open debate over the merits and de-merits of all religious beliefs? Of course, this also applies to atheists with children, yet they are sometimes some of the worst for not allowing their children an alternative to their own beliefs. ** Some people are born as ‘Moslems’, or ‘Roman Catholics’, or ‘Hindus’, in many cases according to the country they are born in. This does not necessarily make them any less devout and sincere believers, of course. It is so difficult. ‘Moslems’ criticise ‘Christians’, quoting historical atrocities in the name of ‘Christianity’, and ignore the atrocities that have been committed in the name of ‘Islam’ over the centuries7. Christians say theirs is a religion of peace, and so do Moslems. Each excuses their religion’s atrocities as the actions of extremists, not true believers. Anyone can be sincerely wrong, and I don’t exempt myself from this possibility. I might criticise particular religious beliefs, but I must of course bear in mind that this might offend if it is tactless or misplaced. Followers of religions do sincerely believe their doctrines, whether they have come to this belief by indoctrination, their own thought processes, or family or cultural tradition. We should not classify people as mindless drones for accepting their religion without question, if we do not, or are not able to, offer them alternatives. ** The prevailing philosophy, that there is no absolute truth, no black or white but just ‘shades of grey’, lends itself to the attitude that everyone should be left alone to believe what they want. Live and let live. It does not matter if we do this, because we can’t be sure what is true. Should we let extreme religious fundamentalists teach that it is right to murder innocent people? They are allowed to believe what they want to, aren’t they? But then we add, ‘As long as they don’t hurt anyone’. But they do hurt people. If we don’t offer them an alternative belief and explain to them why they are wrong, they will continue to believe, and continue to kill. 7

Examples from history: The ‘Christian’ massacre of Moslems and Jews when taking Jerusalem in 1099, and the ‘Moslem’ massacre of Christians when taking Constantinople in 1453. Then of course, we have such things as the mediaeval Inquisition and modern day terrorism.

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But how on earth can we offer them an alternative if we have no firm belief of our own that we can use to try to prove them wrong? The popular attitude seems to imply that all religions are true for those that believe them. This is correct, for the believers themselves, but should not be confused with an attitude that they are therefore all right, or all wrong. From the outside, this implies that none of them can really be true, so there you have it. Religion is meaningless. One of the main reasons for a decline in religious belief is this prevailing secular worldview .Basically, nothing can be said to be true. How can you say to yourself that something is true, and then say that someone who believes something else is also right? Just because it’s right for them. That’s crazy. If what we really mean is that each religion holds some of the truth, that’s a more reasonable statement, and is quite true, but it should not stop us looking for these truths. Sadly, it does. Any meaningful comparison of religions is therefore neglected. The reason given is that too much bias creeps in when religion is taught. This is also said about politics. To use this as a reason for a lack of real education, and enabling people to make a well informed choice, simply makes it easier to convince people of a biased view. If you are poorly educated in the alternatives available, you will more easily accept the doctrine offered, because you are led to believe that there are no alternatives. And anyway, with the ‘modern’ scientific and philosophical worldviews, religion is ‘out of date’. For goodness sake, surely the merits and de-merits of each religion could be presented impartially and discussed? Why should any religion or political viewpoint have to worry if another one is given as an alternative? If your religion is true, or your political views are the best, they will stand up to criticism. You should be capable of demonstrating that the alternatives are wrong. Instead, it is said that all religions are a different route to God, and therefore all valid. One says God is personal, and relates directly to us. Another says God is in us all, in everything, or we are all part of God. One says we live again after death as ourselves, with God. Another says our ultimate aim is obliteration of self, and absorption into ‘the whole’. And this is just a few of the differences. Different futures. Different Gods. Saying they are all routes to God is like saying that you can take the A1 north or the M1 south from Leeds, and still arrive at Liverpool in time for an important interview. You might then realise that you should simply have gone west along the M62, but by

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then you are too late. But you knew best, didn’t you? You would not listen to alternatives. Would scientists accept many different versions of the origins of the universe, because they have similarities, the differences don’t matter, and it doesn’t really matter which one you believe? Yet this is how people approach religious questions. Wouldn’t a scientist rather try to establish the truth? Of course, because they believe that the truth can be found. What if further scientific study pointed to a creator? Charles Darwin, the father of modern evolutionary theory, said’ I cannot believe that this was produced by chance’. Astronomer Fred Hoyle, though not a believer, had to admit that ‘A Common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has monkeyed with physics, Chemistry and Biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.’ (Annual review of astronomy and astrophysics, 1982) So, why should science and religion be mutually exclusive, and why should an absolute truth not be looked for in one religion? Why should it be assumed that absolute truth can be found scientifically but not spiritually? Why should we have a different mindset regarding the truths of science and the truths of revelation or experience? But we shy away from meaningful discussion. Where religion is concerned, do we just leave it at that, and say, OK, fine, if it works for you, that’s good? How often do real debates on this subject take place in the name of education of our children? We are just not encouraged to think. Thinking is dangerous. ** History History is taught, but selectively, without getting over the lessons we should learn. Historical trends that might be affecting today’s world never seem to be emphasised. Even the politicians seem to ignore them. 67

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If we ignore history, we re-live the past’s mistakes. The decline of past civilisations and empires, no matter how old, can teach us lessons for today. Edward Gibbon, in the eighteenth century, gave the following reasons, amongst others, for the decline of the Roman Empire, •

Increasing indebtedness

•

Increasing bureaucracy

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High taxation

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Increasing cost of armed forces

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Increasing gap between rich and poor

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Materialism. Enjoying comforts and not facing up to the dangers threatening civilization.

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Declining moral standards.

Sounds familiar? You might say that he was simply trying to highlight the state of affairs in the England of that time, and that, in any case, our civilisation has not collapsed yet and Gibbon wrote his history more than two hundred years ago. But bear in mind that the Roman Empire took at least two hundred years to start its terminal decline. History shows us that there has always, from time immemorial, been oppression and exploitation of the poor, the weak, and the less fortunate by the strong, powerful and wealthy, usually to maintain their positions. Why should it all be any different today? Have people suddenly changed their basic nature? Are we suddenly more ‘civilised’? Certainly not, I would say, because you only have to take a superficial look at the world today to show that nothing has changed. Despite what is sometimes said about the egalitarian nature of some primitive societies, human nature has been the same since the first homo-sapiens walked the earth, when they were, probably even then, arguing and fighting over the food supply and for territorial domination. Still, we ignore history like it is something old and gone, and treat it as totally irrelevant. I think it was Churchill who once said ‘The country that ignores its past has no future’. So, what if you tried to wipe out your own past, everything that has occurred, from which you have learned valuable lessons. You would be at the mercy of 68

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circumstances, with no experience to guide you. Why, then, do we do this with the history of the human race? I suppose that, if we all were well aware of human nature in history, we might try to overturn those with a vested interest in power (nations and individuals). A little knowledge might make us think and want to act. This has happened with the great revolutions in history. The Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution were well aware of the pattern followed during a revolution, the changing power structures and objectives. They learned this from the history of the French Revolution, and used the knowledge to their advantage. The big revolutions were started by thinkers, not oppressed workers. The poor did not always look for a way out themselves. They were educated into believing that what they had was all there was, and it was natural. They ‘knew their place’. For this, religion had sometimes been used. If Karl Marx said that religion was the ‘opiate of the masses’, today its place is taken by the mass media. Opium dulls the senses and creates a feeling of satisfied euphoria. Do you begin to see my point? We are kept in a sort of satisfied stupor, not questioning why. So, if we can happily say that the rulers kept people suppressed using religion, can we then say it is rubbish or a ‘ridiculous conspiracy theory’ that today, when religion is less important to most people, they use TV and the popular press? We are now in the process of de-bunking the concept of ‘British Empire’ (although, how many people really know the history?). Our nation, rightly so, no longer rules other countries and races of the world for economic gain. But now the multinational business organisations have taken over this control. Looking at history overall, nothing has changed, just the names of those doing the exploiting. Our nation still benefits from it, and if we think about it, even at the height of the British Empire, it was still business and commercial organisations and wealthy private individuals that called the tune. In the nineteenth century there was a concept of ‘informal empire’. Traders from European countries had control over the commerce of certain areas of Africa, and their interests were protected ‘unofficially’ by our army and navy. The next stage was a ‘protectorate’, where it was recognised that we had to go into the country and take over ‘in the interests of the country’s safety’ (at the same time, protecting our commercial and strategic interests, of course).The last stage was direct rule of the country as part of an empire. It is only the final stage of these three that does not still apply today. There seems to be an impression that Britain was trying to take over as much of the world as possible, with some sort of nationalistic megalomania. Actually, most governments in the late nineteenth century shied away from expansion of empire. It was expensive and needed taxation. Ventures had to be justified commercially, strategically, or on humanitarian grounds. More often than not, commercial interests got their way. What do we see today? We are back to the equivalent of the old ‘informal empire’. But there is a smug self satisfaction and self congratulation that ‘empire’ is over, so it

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is assumed that the exploitation ended too. It seems very convenient to maintain this impression, doesn’t it? When the debates rage about aid for Africa, we have to ask ourselves how much we know about why Africa is in the state it is in now. When is the truth about the exploitation of Africa taught in our schools? We are often told about the corruption of African governments since independence, the ‘Big Men’ who have enriched themselves and their families at the expense of their people. This is usually to give the impression that the Africans are a hopeless case, and beyond our help. We are often reminded of the terrible centuries of the slave trade, usually to paint the British in a good light by its abolition. We were told much about the evils of the apartheid regime in South Africa. When are we told about how much our own country was enriched by colonial rule? When are we told about the forced labour and massacres of Africans in the Belgian and French Congo in the 1890s and 1900s? Who tells us about the Germans killing hundreds of thousands of Africans by forced famine in the early 1900s, or the treatment of the Africans by the Boers in South Africa? When are we told that the British used concentration camps during the Boer War in 1901 and1902? When are we told that the Boer War was basically the conquest of an independent country by the British, for the sake of control of mineral resources? ** So, you see, basic education for the masses is not intended to create free thought, or to tell us the things that our leaders don’t want us to know. We do not have true education. Education should bring freedom of thought, not create a population of indoctrinated automatons. ** When I was at school in the 1960s, I was not given any education at all that would equip me for an understanding of the world’s problems. The implications of the breakup of Empire that was going on at the time passed me by completely. My family very rarely watched the news on the TV, or read any newspapers that might have instructed me. From the Daily Mirror and the News of the World, I knew plenty about the Beatles, and about the latest vicar to be involved in a sex scandal. Oh, and England’s World Cup win, the ‘Swinging Sixties’, free love, and all that. I remember thinking at the time that I didn’t really want to pay for love anyway. The Beatles told me that ‘money can’t buy me love’, so maybe free love was a good thing. Really useful information, wasn’t it?

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** What is Education for? There are many debates about how practical education should be, to prepare our children for their adult working life. To learn about Information Technology might well provide a supply of skilled workers, but this is all it is. It gives the guarantee of a constant supply of fodder for the mincing machine that is big business. The supply continues to come as long as the rewards are great enough. But to produce a nation of thinkers? Unthinkable! So, if you are lucky, you will have parents with the wherewithal to support you through your ‘education’. If you are exceptionally intelligent but poor, you may work hard and fight your way through to a good qualification and high earning capacity, and relative affluence (once you have paid off your debt). You may even go on to do research, and become a sponsored thinker. You will still be part of the machine. Why not become a thinker for yourself? Go against the grain. The truth about why the world is in the state it is will continue to be kept from you, unless you look for it yourself. ** There is, of course, a lot to be said for learning from the ‘book of life’, or becoming wiser from the experiences we go through. I know that I could have done with a little more of this, and I might not have made so many mistakes. My wife can teach me much about this. She has learned from life’s ups and downs, and is a better person for it. This does still not mean that you should blinker yourself to hide the wider realities. ** Why bother thinking? What’s the point of teaching us to think if we don’t want to? You say to me ‘Why not just concentrate on surviving and enjoying life?’ The problem with this is that the conventional definition of enjoying yourself usually involves the accumulation of and the use of money. This usually means that, the more you accumulate, someone else is losing out, unless the economy is growing at a fast enough rate. It also means that you are spending more and more of your effort all the time in striving to acquire more money.

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This is why the growth of the economy is such a big political issue. More growth overall, and our personal growth is more justified. Growth almost becomes a god. No one stops to think whether the growth can be physically sustained by the world. If it can’t, then by using simple arithmetic, more growth for us means less growth or recession for other countries. This could almost be a definition of thoughtless selfishness, both on a personal and a national basis. It could also be described as ultimate short-sightedness, a sort of self inflicted ecological and humanitarian myopia. ** Why doesn’t our education give us information that makes us think about what life is about, and where it is leading? On what real basis have you formed your opinions on this subject? Surely it has to be important. If you believe that there is no life after death, and no divine judgement of your behaviour on this world, then none of it matters to you. You just get on with life as it is and make the best of it. For yourself, and your nearest and dearest. If someone believes in a life after death, and there isn’t one, they have lost nothing. At best, their belief might have governed their actions for the better, and they can also be able to live a contented life if they believe they are to take part in the hereafter. For them to ever doubt this belief does not really matter, it will not change their destiny. If they are wrong, they will still be just dead. On the other hand, if someone believes that this life is all there is for them, and they are wrong, their destiny is very different. If they ever have the slightest doubt, how will they cope with it? Even if you have a belief in reincarnation, usually this carries with it the drawback that your actions in this world affect your destiny in the next life. So, if you are not sure, you certainly need to think about these things. Make a stand. Don’t just have a woolly belief that you will automatically be happy in the after-life, if there is one. Don’t have a closed mind and completely write off the supernatural. Think. No one can prove it either way, in the normal sense of the word proof. But you can form a logical argument. Your brain is made to do this. Don’t waste it. We reason. That is one of the things that set us apart from other animals. Back up your point of view with logical arguments. Really prove it to yourself. You can be sure. Learn to think for yourself! You will then truly be educated. There is one major difficulty. Your thinking might lead you to conclusions that affect you directly. Public Health Warning!

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THINKING CAN DAMAGE YOUR AFFLUENCE ‘Do I really want to do this? Nah. I’m happy enough as I am’. That’s exactly what they want. It keeps you where you are, and keeps the ‘powers that be’ where they are. *********************************************************************

A Roof over Your Head

You can spend the money on new housing for poor people and the homeless, or you can spend it on a football stadium or a golf course. Jello Biafra

We believe the 36, nearly 40, billion pound discount given for a right to buy houses took a million houses out of the public housing sector which is desperately needed for rent. John Prescott

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Why is it that, in a wealthy country such as the UK, there are homeless people? Is this ‘civilised’? The number of homeless families in England has topped 100,000 for the first time. Many of these are living in ‘temporary accommodation’. Crisis, the national charity for single homeless people, said the figures were just the "tip of the iceberg". "When you add in the 380,000 'hidden homeless' - those living in hostels, squats and other places - there are nearly half a million homeless people in the UK today," From BBC News, December 2004 Recent efforts have been made by the Government to provide temporary accommodation such as Bed & Breakfast, but it is not enough. It is a severe indictment of the bankruptcy of our values that we still have ‘cardboard cities’ in the middle of our towns and cities. Yes, some cases might be fairly described as self inflicted. Some people are beyond help. This does not mean that there are no deserving cases. Some people say that there is no need for anyone to be homeless. They can draw a daily allowance and use this instead of spending it on alcohol and cigarettes. Why can’t they save enough to get established in some accommodation? Hot food and a roof over their heads in a charitable hostel, maybe? How many places are available in hostels? Are there enough? Have you ever stayed in a hostel? How does someone then establish a permanent address? Someone in that position can’t buy a house, the prices are too high. Many people in steady employment cannot afford it nowadays, let alone the unemployed. A homeless person would need to save a bond required for a tenancy, perhaps at least £100 from a very small income. They might in some cases be given or loaned the bond. Then they need someone willing enough to give them a room or a flat. There are landlords who welcome tenants on Social Security, because their rent is virtually guaranteed. There are many more that do not. How much does a room cost nowadays? There are many unscrupulous landlords, exploiting the increase in property values and increasing rents in line with them. Some of the poorer accommodation is not much of a step up from sleeping on the streets. 74

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There are all sorts of problems to overcome. If they stand in our city centres selling the ‘Big Issue’, how many people just pass them by, ignoring them, without even an apology? Then, with all of the pressures they have, we expect them not to turn to alcohol and cigarettes to ease the stress. We accuse them of wasting their money, or begging from us to fuel an addiction. Yes, there are some total wasters or ‘dossers’, but this does not mean they are all undeserving cases. It is the wasters that give us the opportunity to turn away the genuine cases with a free conscience. We grab that opportunity with both hands. ** Where is the affordable accommodation? Since the Thatcher years of the nineteen-eighties, more and more people have been encouraged to buy property. Council houses are sold to tenants. More and more people are living alone. House prices have rocketed. An emphasis on private ownership is yet another result of the ‘freedom to choose’ that is so much encouraged in our life today. What if your freedom to choose is severely limited, through no fault of your own? What do you do? Who helps you? Our society is quickly becoming polarised into the property owners and the rest. Property owners get richer, the rest get poorer. You might have just been lucky and bought and sold your properties just at the right time. You may have worked hard for your property and wish to receive the fruits of your labour. Maybe so, but don’t then stigmatise and ignore those who have simply been unfortunate, just because there are also those who are simply lazy and don’t care. Count your blessings and be thankful. In a society that took care of its unfortunates, that is, a civilised society, there would be no involuntarily homeless people. ** My wife and I once visited the Vatican City in Rome. Inside there are untold riches and truly priceless works of art. As our coach pulled away after the visit, we could swear we saw a ‘cardboard city’ by the side of the River Tiber, virtually outside the high, imposing walls of the Vatican. Slightly incongruous, you might say. Some people might call it disgusting, sickening or even nauseating. Despite all of the good that Christians undoubtedly do throughout the world, how could people convince others that Christianity was a credible religion if they saw something like this? **

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Most people would like to be a home owner. ‘An Englishman’s home is his castle’. Perhaps this should now read, ‘An Englishman’s home is his investment’. Forty years ago you could have probably bought a castle for the price of a suburban semi-detached house today. Here lies the problem we have. Property is a good example of an imperfect market, one that can be influenced by powerful vested interests and speculation. If we leave it alone and have no state intervention, these interests come to the fore. We have the situation where property speculators can buy houses, rent them out on short term leases for a high rental income, and then sell them at a huge profit when prices have risen. I saw a TV programme that looked at ‘bargain’ houses, those that could be bought relatively cheaply and renovated. At the auction, buyers spoke openly of acquiring them as ‘investment properties’. Calculations were done of how much money could be made. To me, to take a fairly cheap property, renovate it as cheaply as possible and then sell it at a huge profit is to deny many people the possibility of owing their own home. Speculation helps to drive prices up, and beyond the reach of first time buyers. ‘Ah, yes, but speculators lose if prices fall’, you might be saying. But, strangely enough, intervention suddenly becomes important if house prices start to fall. Banks reduce interest charges to encourage buyers, and to maintain prices. Estate agents work a bit harder for their money. They all continue to make lots of it. Sellers are reluctant to come down in price. The government assists the process if possible, because they don’t want unhappy voters with negative equity. Short of a massive recession, the prices remain stable or grow. How can this be described as a free market? Prices should be free to rise and fall in a free market. When prices are rising, who helps the young first time buyer, and who helps the homeless? We are creating a society of ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. There will be such a gap soon that those without property will not even be able to get onto the first rung of the ladder unless they somehow pool resources with other people. Current house owners will continue to see their property rise and rise in value. To own a house is no longer to own a home. It is an ‘investment’. A continual growth in value becomes an obsession. The housing market booms. We see playing fields being turned over to the building of houses and at the same time complain of unfit children. A space appears somewhere, and up goes a house. Landlords see the chance to increase their rents. There is more greed, and more money making.

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But they are just businessmen, aren’t they? It’s only business. To call someone a businessman nowadays is supposed to give them some kind of respectability. How often do you hear that something is just ‘good business practice’, when it might be more appropriate to call it sharp or shady dealing? Another example of what could be said to be profiteering is the prices charged for holiday accommodation during school holidays. Call it supply and demand if you wish. I call it exploitation. More and more wealthy people are buying second, even third properties for holiday homes, some of which are empty for a large part of the year. Lots of people are homeless, and house prices are soaring. Is this a civilised way to be? More and more people are living alone, in houses that could be occupied by families. Many people are buying homes abroad. Don’t these countries have local housing problems too? Do we care if they do? They seem happy to take our money, and we have a home in the sun. ** Houses have almost become part of our ‘throw away’ society. Everything has to be replaced when fashions change. Clothes, cars, and technological gadgets are all subject to this. They are replaced well before the end of their useful life. House furnishings used to last for years. Now, with the popularity of DIY and furniture superstores, furniture is cheaper and also less durable. So, how could we expect that houses would be treated differently? ** ♦ Who benefits?  Speculators (Buy for rent)  Estate Agents  Banks/Building societies  House owners  Wealthy people ♦ Who suffers?  First time buyers  Poor people.  Homeless people. *********************************************************************

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The National Health Service.

We didn’t actually overspend our budget. The Health Commission allocation simply fell short of our expenditure. Frank A. Clark

You can have the best technology, the most advanced functionality possible, but if people don't want it - perhaps because they aren't equipped to use it - then it's in danger of falling flat." Dr Phil Candy

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Much of what follows in this section is based on my personal experience, and is, therefore, close to my heart. I joined the NHS because I believed that I would be contributing to a worthwhile service to society. I have since become very disillusioned. Just let me say that, if you are a person who is concerned about where the money you pay in taxes is going, it might not surprise you, but I hope it angers you. If you wish to allow me this indulgence, read on. If not, and you wish to skip this section, please accept that the reason for it is to show that even something as mundane as the workplace can be used to illustrate the selfishness of human nature. Then again, most people probably have stories to tell about how badly people behave in their place of work. ** The NHS can never be described as the most efficient organisation in the world. We have had crowded, dirty hospitals and intolerable waiting times. What is wrong? If we think about it, how can we hope to expect the best use of public money when an organisation is strangled by electoral timescales and kicked about like a political football? Any reforms or improvements that are made are overturned before they have a chance to succeed. This is because the electoral cycle requires changes to be made. The reason for this is to convince the public that any change is better than the one the previous government made. The NHS is just a pawn in the political game. It should be a service that is essential for the functioning of a civilised society. Perhaps it is little wonder that its managers become disillusioned and de-motivated. They spend most of their time managing change that never ends, rather than concentrating on managing the best use of the scarce resources they are given. Any reforms are usually just old methods, re-packaged and re-named, to create the impression of progress. The managers are for ever being presented with plans for the future that are never fully implemented before another plan comes along.

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From the managers’ point of view, it is easy to fall into a sort of ‘Look busy, here comes the boss!’ mentality. If they are seen to be working hard on changes, it is assumed that progress is being made. Consider the following quote (emphasis mine):

‘We trained hard but it seemed every time we were beginning to form up in teams we would be re-organised. I was later to learn in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation.’ Petronius Arbiter (Roman General), circa 200BC) You see, things never change. In the NHS, there is usually a ‘Framework for the Future’ in place, and it looks impressive but never seems to be fully carried out before another one comes in to replace it. ** I have worked in the NHS for fourteen years. My background is management accounting and computer information systems, so I do know a little about NHS finances. In the NHS, as in much governmental bureaucracy, there is a sort of managerial paralysis. Managers feel roped and tied by ‘red tape’ and political decision making. They cannot control the organisational changes made by the Government and Dept of Health. These changes come thick and fast, and there is always a major change every time an election is approaching. Even managers who are by nature conscientious can easily become discouraged and frustrated, and join the rest in a concentration on their own career paths and empires. The excuse that is usually given for poor NHS performance is ‘lack of funding’. It is easy to blame this instead of poor management of the funds that are already available. Managers even convince themselves that lack of funds is the real reason, and that this will always be a problem. This leads to a defeatist attitude that things will always be the same. To some extent, this is true. It will always be necessary to ration the resources available for healthcare in some way, because it can easily be assumed that there is a ‘bottomless pit’. Money can be wasted as managers opt for an easy life, knowing that they will be ‘bailed out’. Healthcare needs are always growing. There will always be a better, newer, more expensive way of providing healthcare. Resources will always be scarce, so should be tightly managed in order to use them in the best possible way. ** 80

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The next time a ‘spokesperson’ for an NHS Trust has to answer a criticism, look for these three stages in their answer: 1. It is always the priority to concentrate funds on direct patient care. 2. The excuse: You have to appreciate that the NHS works on a very tight budget. Funds are not always available. We sometimes have to make some difficult choices. 3. We already have plans in place for the future that will put things right. ** No funding? I have seen the amounts of money that can be sloshing around Health Authority coffers at a year end, available to rescue a failing Trust, so that the results are not politically embarrassing, or embarrassing for the managers. Millions of pounds. If this was a stock market quoted plc making last minute adjustments to try to bolster its share price, it would be scandalous. But when a hospital ward wants an extra £1000 for an essential piece of equipment? No chance. Perhaps things might change with the ‘Foundation Status’ of Trusts. This means that they are financially independent, and therefore more visibly vulnerable to financial problems. A public announcement in October 2004 which announced that a Foundation Trust at Bradford was failing financially may be a step in the right direction. It is highlighting the true state of hospital finance. The question then arises, if the position was so bad, how did the Trust manage to become a foundation hospital in the first place? Whether this leads eventually to better management of finances remains to be seen. At worst, it might lead to even more concentration on financial measures of success rather than medical ones. At the very least, the authorities may be waking up to how inadequate the financial management of the NHS has become. ** A particular criticism of NHS management is that they use far too many management consultants. Many plans for financial recovery of a failing NHS Trust involve the use of an outside service of ‘advisers’, most probably at a very high cost. Doesn’t the hospital employ qualified financial managers, also at a very high cost? Are they not capable? There is a story about management consultants that comes to mind here:

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A shepherd is working in the fields one day, when a large Mercedes pulls up nearby. A man in an expensive suit gets out of the car and says to the shepherd, ‘If I can say exactly how many sheep you have within thirty seconds, will you give me a sheep?’ The shepherd answers, ‘If you can do that, yes, certainly. He laughed.’ The man gets his laptop from the car, opens his satellite navigation system, presses a few keys and says ‘You have three thousand, four hundred and seventy one sheep’ ‘That’s amazing!’, says the shepherd, so the man takes the shepherd’s dog instead of a sheep, saying that he had meant to ask for a sheep-dog when he made the bet. The shepherd then says, ‘OK. Fine, but if I can tell you what your job is, the bet’s off, okay? The man agrees. The shepherd says, ‘You’re a management consultant’ ‘How did you know that? the man asks, incredulously’. The shepherd answers, ‘Well, you turn up when you’re not wanted, knowing nothing at all about me or my job, you try to impress me with technology, then you tell me something I should already know, and then the amount I have to pay you suddenly gets bigger. Now, will you please get off my land?!’ ** In the NHS, doctors and nurses have sometimes been encouraged to treat their jobs as a vocation, a purpose in life, and are expected to be totally dedicated to them. They are saving lives and proud of it. Not so the managers. Why? A director of an NHS Trust can receive more salary than a highly skilled surgeon. Even middle Managers can receive much more than skilled nurses and junior doctors. Do they justify these salaries? If they did their jobs as they should, then maybe. They would be making the best use of the public’s scarce resources, and their contribution would more than pay for itself. The benefits would outweigh the costs. Does this happen? Of course, I do not want to appear to be unduly critical of all NHS managers. I am still one of them. Yes, no doubt, there are some good ones! I’ve just had a bit of a job finding many of them. My experience tells me that good, highly skilled and dedicated NHS managers are the exception to the rule. In the NHS I have seen too many ‘time serving’ managers. Many of them could never, in any sense of the word, be described as putting in a dedicated contribution to the

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objectives of the NHS. The only things they seem to be dedicated to are their personal career progression, the size of their pay packets and their pension funds. The ‘suits’, as managers are sometimes called by the hospital workers, always succeed in looking and feeling important, because they always achieve the illusion that they are trying hard to make changes for the better. Many NHS managers are managers simply because they have progressed over time into that position, not by qualification, or even by relevant experience. It’s ‘The right place at the right time’, and ‘If your face fits’. Some are given positions totally unsuited to their skills and experience, simply because they are ‘out on a limb’ with no job, but it is too expensive to make them redundant or to retire them early. Younger managers, who might just have a little bit more enthusiasm, are the ones who usually suffer from redundancies. They are cheaper to get rid of. Yes, it has happened. The trouble is, this means that there are lots of managers who have progressed to positions they cannot cope with, for which they are totally unsuitable, or even downright incompetent. The NHS is a living proof of the ‘Peter Principle’, which says that managers tend to be promoted until their level of incompetence is reached. This is a level at which they are ineffective, but from which it is difficult to remove them. They spend much of their time bluffing their way through until a major NHS policy change allows them to write off past failures. The sigh of relief in Finance Departments is almost audible when the government promises an injection of funds. It’s an easier life. Usually, the extra funds are swallowed up by hiding past deficits. No real progress is made towards the strategic planning and implementation of a better Health Service. I believe that in much of NHS management there is a sad lack of professionalism, and an abysmal ignorance of the application of technological advances that would not be tolerated for long in the private sector. Public sector organisations are notorious for poor implementations of new technology. I have worked for eight NHS organisations. Believe me; some of the wastes of money caused by inadequate information systems implementations and poor decision making are almost criminal. They could almost be said to cost lives by wasting valuable resources. A recent IT project to centralise the financial services for a number of NHS hospitals, and intended to save the NHS money, had cost millions to implement, over a period of three years. The original objective of cost-saving, and then a part of the centre’s planned functions, were changed mid-project, as Trusts resisted job losses and a loss of these functions. The new objective for the project became ‘better information’. The centre would now create a net cost to the NHS, not a saving, but ‘better information’ would be the pay-off. The goalposts were moved.

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Because of ‘Foundation Hospitals’ and their proposed freedom of decision making, use of the Shared Services Centre was, by then, no longer compulsory. Compulsion, or ordering trusts to use Shared Services, was seen as incompatible with the principle of autonomy for foundation hospitals (letting them run their own finances). Perhaps it might have been useful if someone could have foreseen this four years earlier. No, not in the NHS. When future investment needs of the Shared Services Centre became apparent, the NHS allowed a ‘joint venture’ with a private sector company. The centre would no longer be part of the NHS. Effectively, it was to be ‘privatised’. This company could provide expansion capital that was not available in the NHS. So, future client choices will be based on the profit motive. Millions of pounds of public money have been poured into setting up an organisation that will ultimately benefit the shareholders. ** Just before writing these lines (October 2004), it has been announced that NHS is due to overspend on another major nationwide computer system by a factor of five times the original estimate. Who is responsible for this? Who knows? You can be sure that the contractors and consultants employed to plan and execute the project will not really care. They will be getting their money. ** It is not only the NHS that makes a mess of IT projects. The Child Support Agency recently (2004) introduced a computer system that greatly overshot its budget and is having serious problems. A couple of years earlier, the issue and renewal of passports were thrown into chaos by a poor systems implementation. ** A large NHS Trust had over thirty ‘Management Accountants’, on an average salary of over £35,000 p.a. (a total of over £1 million a year. These finance staff are supposed to control costs by planning and budgetary control.). The Director of Finance said that a ‘major consultancy exercise’ (not cheap!) was to be commissioned, to develop a long term recovery plan to improve the Trust’s financial position. It was admitted that the Trust ‘does not have the skills’ for such an exercise. Now, excuse me if I am being pedantic here, but isn’t that what Management Accountants are supposed to do? What skills are included in the £1 million plus a year? The same Trust also spent millions over a few years on a consultancy exercise to develop a more efficient way of delivering services from the sites available. The Trust

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already had a large staff of ‘Business Managers’, or whatever their job titles were, and their salaries were not inconsiderable. Haven’t they got the necessary skills either? The same trust had directors with a combined salary of just over one million pounds, that’s an average of over £100,000 each. Where are their planning skills? ** At another Trust, the public worked hard to raise money for a CT scanner. The Health Authority wouldn’t provide money for the running of the machine, saying that they wanted to centralise these services in another town 40 miles away. I heard the finance staff complaining about these ‘fund raising do-gooders, interfering again. They cause us more problems than they are worth’. ** For foundation hospitals like Bradford, mentioned above, it is said that they ‘no longer have access to financial support from the wider system’. How many more will fail, and how much more will be spent on outside advice before there is an improvement? ** In 2003 I went to a presentation of what was described as ‘Flexible Service Agreements’ Without getting too technical, this means that the more a hospital does, the more money it gets. This was to replace the more inflexible ‘block agreement’ of a fixed amount of money, no matter how much work is done by the hospital. Sounds sensible, doesn’t it? The thing is, it also sounded sensible more than twelve years ago, when they were called ‘Cost and Volume’ contracts, as part of the much reviled Conservative reforms of the 1990s. So, no real progress for more than ten years. Good, eh? ** Private sector organisations would not survive without good costing (working out how much each unit of an organisation’s output costs), but the basic need for it as a tool for management of resources seems to escape many NHS Financial Directors. Costing of hospital procedures is often low priority, completed under sufferance, as if it was a bureaucratic exercise, just another return to be made to the NHS. How on earth can they understand how their costs are affected when the work done by the hospital changes, without good costing? When the ‘mix’ of hospital cases changes and more of the expensive ones are being done, how do they say exactly how much this is costing them? How do they adjust their budgets? No, they just say it is an ‘overspend’, and make swingeing cuts across the board, affecting efficient departments as well as inefficient ones. At one Trust, very heavy cuts were being made because of a large deficit. The National Audit Commission had decided that the hospital was ‘less efficient’ than others in the area. Someone working in the hospital (on the ‘shop floor’, you might

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say), pointed out that they received more complex cases that the other, ‘more efficient’ hospitals could not deal with, yet were paid the same amount per case. This is ludicrous, and all down to lack of understanding of costs. So, people were to lose jobs and services were to be cut because managers did not understand the hospital’s costs. ** Then, of course, we have the ‘Private Financial Initiative’, or PFI. The idea is for private concerns to build and run the infrastructure of hospitals. A good idea, you might think. The NHS does not have to find the capital, and private enterprise is usually more efficient. Costs have escalated, yet the private builder is very often, by contract, assured of a return on their investment. The result is higher costs to the NHS and guaranteed returns for the private investors. ** We suddenly find that we have dirty hospitals, after years of ‘outsourcing’ (privatisation) and cost cutting of cleaning services. They were considered not to be directly related to patient care, so a suitable target for cuts. The NHS is now confronted with massive costs to put it right. ** Another subject altogether is the increase in private healthcare schemes. For those who can afford it, they give a short cut to a quicker service. The ‘two tier’ Health Service is a reality. Services for poorer people continue to suffer. ** There are top directors who retire with a large payout (sometimes hundreds of thousands of pounds), receive their pensions, then return on a ‘consultancy’ basis. Here’s a question. How often do top public sector directors lose their jobs for poor performance? Not very often. If, in a really exceptional case, they do, they are then protected by huge payouts, guaranteed pensions or alternative positions. Come to think of it, this is one similarity with the private sector! Where is the real accountability here? Abject failure is rewarded by a sideways move to a similar job, retirement to their house in the sun, or coming back as consultants, earning more per day than they did before. ‘Jobs for the boys’ comes to mind here. I wonder how many of these top directors and managers have to suffer long waiting times for NHS treatment, or tolerate their children attending poorly performing schools? *********************************************************************

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Water, water everywhere……

The crisis of our diminishing water resources is just as severe (if less obviously immediate) as any wartime crisis we have ever faced. Our survival is just as much at stake as it was at the time of Pearl Harbor, or the Argonne, or Gettysburg, or Saratoga Jim Wright, The Coming Water Famine, 1966

It is wretched business to be digging a well just as thirst is mastering you. Titus Maccius Plautus

When the well is dry, we know the worth of water. Benjamin Franklin

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Water is yet another essential public service that is in private hands in the UK. It will soon be in private hands in most of the world, if the companies have their way. In this country, we don’t seem to be able to believe that we can have a shortage of fresh water. It rains regularly, so where does it all go? We take it for granted that we can turn on the tap and out will come our water. If something is described as ‘on tap’, it suggests an endless supply. We only start to believe that there could be a shortage if there has been an exceptionally long spell of dry weather. Even if hosepipe bans are in place they are flouted. Who can enforce them? Anyway, we must water our gardens, mustn’t we? We have to wash our cars, don’t we? Water meters are not universal. If they were, perhaps we would be more careful. They are expensive to install, and we seem to resist the need to have our water usage monitored. We think that our fresh water is a God given right, and that we can use as much as we want, whenever we want. I have seen a neighbour leave a hosepipe running on her lawn for six hours. The same neighbour also uses a power washer spray to clean her patio and path. Have they not listened to announcements that our water could be subject to possible serious shortages on a regular basis? But of course, it’s never their fault, is it? ** There are 1.1 billion people in the world with no access to clean drinking water (World Health Organisation) 26 million of these are in Europe. This contributes to 4 billion cases of diarrhoea, with 2.2 million deaths annually, and over 1 million deaths per year due to malaria.

97.5% of the world’s water is salt water. Most of the fresh water is unusable, being part of the ice caps. Less than 1% of fresh water is usable. This is barely 0.01% of the earth’s total water. Even this would be enough to give fresh water for everyone on the planet if it could be managed properly.

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Water for domestic use takes up only 8% of fresh water. The rest is used by agriculture and industry, which are both wasteful in their large scale methods. For example, it can take 400,000 litres of water to make a car. (Earthscan, 2002). It is strange how we can readily build thousands of miles of trans-national pipelines for oil, causing untold environmental damage, but not for water, a basic necessity of life. We are wasting the world’s water. Underground water that has taken thousands of years to accumulate is being used up at a profligate rate. For example, California has half a million swimming pools, yet a shortage of underground water is predicted for California by 2030. It has been estimated that in the world today, over 6000 children die each day from diseases caused by poor sanitation. There is an international agreement to halve the number of people not connected to adequate water supplies to 550 million, and to halve the number that do not have proper sanitation to 1.2 billion, both by 2015. I still do not know of any firm international plans or strategies in place that are intended to achieve this target. It seems to be yet another area that is being left to free market forces. Trans-national corporations in search of profits are more than willing to step in to develop large building projects like dams and piping systems, but too little attention is paid to local water conservation methods and small projects that can make real differences to people’s lives. These do not make the big corporations any money. The corporations portray themselves as the ‘good guys’, providing a service. Water has become just another commodity. With privatisation, will there be provision of free water for the very poor? Will prices and performance be regulated? Will care be taken with the environment? Or will profits be the prime motivation? I think you already know the answer. Even in our country, with its well developed social infrastructure and a relatively high sense of social justice, people complain about increasing water prices, and resist the installation of water meters. ** Why can’t we have a worldwide plan to provide clean water for everybody? It has been estimated that it would cost $170 billion to provide clean water and healthy sewage for all. Conflicts like the Iraq War can cost that amount and much more. The annual turnover of just one Trans-national corporation can be between $200 and $300 billion per year.

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Public Services?

As soon as public service ceases to be the chief business of the citizens, and they would rather serve with their money than with their persons, the State is not far from its fall." - Jean Jacques Rousseau

He who wishes to secure the good of others, has already secured his own. Confucius

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. People have the right to expect that these wants will be provided for by this wisdom. Jimmy Carter

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Public services include health, education, housing, pensions, power and water, and public transport. In the UK, some are privatised and some are State owned. What is wrong with our public services? If the sorts of examples I have shown you in previous chapters are reflected throughout most of public sector administration (and they probably are), then it is really no surprise that we have such a high level of taxation, and that the services are well below par. I have not even mentioned the Civil Service. In the build up to the 2005 General Election this became the political football, with both the major parties quoting the millions they would cut from Civil Service costs (Government administration departments, as opposed to public service organisations) without affecting levels of service. I worked in the Civil Service, in a Department of Health agency, for about six months, and can certainly agree that these savings might well be possible! To give one small example of unnecessary spending, all rail travel on Civil Service business was First Class. Why? Is it really necessary? Also, at many NHS Trusts I worked at, hospital consultants always had first class travel and the top hotels when they were away on business. The way budgets are sometimes controlled in the Civil Service and public sector service organisations encourages spending. It’s ludicrous. If a budget is not spent in any one year, it can be taken away. This encourages the ‘spending up’ of budgets, and more unnecessary wastage. I think we are all familiar with an increase in road-works in February and March, as highways budgets are spent up before the financial year end, in order to avoid losing them. Ridiculous! It is no wonder why the question is often asked, ‘Where does all the money go?’ The simple answer is the following: •

Avoidable wastage.

•

Unnecessary bureaucracy.

•

Unnecessary management consultants.

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•

Ineffective, career minded managers.

And, crucially: •

Self interest rather than a caring attitude towards others. **

A summary •

Management of public sector services is inadequate.

•

Management of public sector services is not properly accountable to the public. The public just does not get to know what goes on.

If I am lying or mistaken, and they are efficient, then why consider the subject of privatisation at all? The failure of the management of public sector organisations has prompted the call for privatisation. So, we ‘privatise’, or make the organisations more ‘commercially motivated’. •

Management of private companies concentrate on profit.

•

The organisation is commercially efficient and satisfies the shareholders, but service to the public can suffer.

So, we either have self serving, inefficient management with no real accountability to the public, or cost cutting, profit motivated management who put the public interest behind the making of profits. It seems hopeless either way. And it is. Why is it like this? The cause is selfish interest, leading to a lack of a sense of responsibility for serving the public. Managers concentrate on career progression, salary and pension scheme, rather than dedication to a worthwhile service, and private organisations concentrate on profits at the expense of service. ***** It is clear that public services in the UK leave something to be desired. My contention is that this is a problem that has no easy solution, not because there is not enough money to go around, but because of human nature. We just don’t seem to care enough about other people. ♦ Who benefits?  Wealthy taxpayers, not subject to progressive taxation.  Big consultancy firms. 92

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  

Financial organisations Opposition politicians. Utility companies (power and water)

♦ Who suffers?  Poor people  The elderly  Sick people  The homeless  Young people ********************************************************************

Pain in the Neck

The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems. Mohandas Ghandi

Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all -- the apathy of human beings. Helen Keller

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Nobody likes a preacher. Nobody likes to be lectured to. Everybody likes to think they are right. Pride is a powerful thing. There are always people, aren’t there, that would dearly like to tell you all about what is going on. They might want to just show off and try to impress you with their knowledge. They might, however, have a genuine concern to release you from what they see as ignorance that is damaging you. They will still seem like they think they are ‘know-it-alls’. Usually, you don’t want to be bothered with it. You are not ignorant. You have your opinion, they have theirs. You just don’t want to know. It’s too depressing. It’s boring. You’ve got better things to do. You have a life to live. You want to enjoy it. You say they are pathetic. They say you are apathetic. Why don’t they keep their opinions to themselves? Why can’t they agree to disagree and leave you alone? Even if the subjects involved can truly be said to be a matter of life and death, you don’t want to know. The trouble is that unless they threaten your life directly, you are not interested. You concentrate only on the ‘life’ side of ‘life and death’. ‘Enjoy yourself. Treat each day as if it’s your last’. Well, if that’s what you say, you can be sure that one day you will be right. 94

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There is only one absolute certainty in life, and it is that you will die some day. In one sense, you are dying from the day you are born. Someone once said that ‘Life is a terminal illness’. To think about death has got to be important, but should not, of course, become an unhealthy obsession. Usually, to talk about death is taboo. If you had a cure for cancer, would you keep it from others? If you could give people strong evidence that if they gave all of their money to charity and lived a poorer lifestyle, it would guarantee that they would never get cancer, they would most probably still resist you. It would be easier for them not to believe you. If you don’t agree, look at cigarette smoking. How many excuses have you heard for continuing to smoke, when it is well established that smokers are slowly killing themselves? They just don’t want to believe it. The urge to smoke is stronger The urge to hang on to a comfortable lifestyle, and to continue to improve your standard of living can be just as strong, even if you are faced with arguments that say that it just cannot be sustained. ** Yes, it does seem sometimes that some people are hell-bent on interfering in other people’s lives, trying to tell them what is right and wrong. Would you like the chance to really tell them where they can stick their lecturing and preaching? Have you found yourself saying any of the following? •

‘Why are there always people who seem to want to interfere with my life?’

•

‘They should shut up and keep their opinions to themselves’.

•

‘Always trying to shove their opinions down my throat!’

•

‘Why don’t they leave me alone to get on with it?’

•

‘Why don’t they mind their own business?’

•

‘They are people who take life far too seriously, aren’t they?’

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‘Real ‘know-it-all’ nuisances, aren’t they?’

•

‘They always think they know better, don’t they?’

•

‘Well, I just don’t want to know.’

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•

‘Sad people. Why don’t they get a life!?’

•

‘I don’t need a doctor until I feel ill. Why can’t they wait until I am ready to talk about these things’?

•

‘Get down from your soapbox!’

My book gives you a chance to try to really understand why some people interfere One thing is for sure. Unless you convince them otherwise, they will not go away. They will always be there. The only way to get them off your back is to prove them wrong. You think it is pointless, because, you say, they have ‘closed minds’ You say you are ‘open-minded’, so you must tell them that they have to be openminded too. That usually means that if they agree with you, they are open-minded, and if they disagree, their minds are closed. A convincing enough argument can break into even the strongest of closed minds. But it has to be listened to and thought about. I will agree that sometimes those who try to interfere do have minds that are closed. However, their point of view, if correct, should be capable of defence. Their minds, too, should be open. Thinking about this, is your mind really open to it all? You might just come around to their way of thinking, you never know until you try. ‘Suck it and see’. The taste might be very pleasant. ** This book is not intended to make you depressed or despairing. This is why people stay away from those who interfere in this way. The words they speak seem to suggest that they are too intense, too depressing. As in one of the quotes above, they should ‘get a life’. It is sometimes said that depressives are more realistic. They don’t try to pretend that everything is alright when it isn’t. The mistake they make is despairing of a solution, but to at least be aware of the problem is more realistic than to ignore it. A realistic attitude should guide you to true enlightenment and satisfaction, not despair. An unrealistic attitude that something is not really happening, and will go away, can lead to utter despair if you are suddenly hit by its effects. You would not know what had hit you, and of course, you would blame someone else for it. 96

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Is it so difficult for you to have to think about these things? You’ve got better things to do, haven’t you, than be dragged down by someone who has to be so intense about things all the time. ‘They should lighten up. Nothing is getting so bad that it will affect us in our lifetime and after that, well, we just can’t know, can we, so why bother spending time worrying about it all?’ Well that’s great, isn’t it? Have you not got children or grandchildren, and can you really say that you will, by choice, not be having any? A bit selfish, don’t you think? No, it’s the here and now that counts, you say. This, I’m afraid, does sound a bit too much like hedonism, the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake. There will be more about that later. It plays into the hands of the people that exploit us. There will be more about this later, too. ‘To hell with the future. That will take care of itself. Live for now! That’s my motto.’ This can be dangerous, selfish and irresponsible. You can say that, whatever happens, we adapt to it, and so will our children. Isn’t it better to try to stop it happening? It’s all very well saying we adapt, until you are one of those that suffer more than others might. Then you say it is unfair. ** To confront the ‘interferers’ would make a change from ignoring them, or wishing they would just go away. You can be sure that they will not. You could maybe convince them to agree with your point of view on life. That would save them from a lifetime of anxiety and worry, wouldn’t it? They would ‘lighten up’. If you are right, you would help them. Are you even too selfish to try to do that? Why don’t you want to take up the challenge of putting them right? Why do you just say you don’t want to know?

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Are you afraid they might be right? You can’t both be right. If you are both wrong, shouldn’t you sort it out between you and find someone who is right? Do you want to remain in a blissful ignorance until something affects you? Then you will complain, no doubt. It will not be your fault, of course. ** Strange, isn’t it, that many of the attitudes spoken about in this chapter could just as easily be said to be coming from a teenager defying a parent. The difference is that we know, usually, that the parent does know better. The parent usually is right. We also know that the parent is not interfering just to be able to spoil the teenager’s fun, which is what the teenager always seems to assume is the reason for their parent doing it. As we know, they have their child’s best interests at heart. Are you a parent of a teenager? Can’t you see that the teenager’s attitude is just like yours when people say things that interfere with your life? Why do we go through most of our life like rebellious teenagers, just wanting to get the most out of our enjoyment of life, and not considering the consequences or the future? We know best. We are right. We have our opinion and we are sticking to it. This could be the definition of an unruly teenager, couldn’t it? Who or what are we actually rebelling against? If there is a God, is it a coincidence that He (or she, or even ‘it’, as some might say) is portrayed as a parent? Some would say that we are really rebelling against ‘our father in heaven’? ** Why do we always assume that someone is just interfering, just wanting to spoil our fun, or just wanting to appear superior to us? Are they just trying to show that they are right and we are wrong, in a kind of points scoring exercise? Is it not at all possible that they might have our best interests at heart? Do they really do it for fun, or to annoy us?

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What is certain is that, unless they have something better to offer, and can convince you of this, they have no chance. It is futile to try to say to people, for example, that they should not look at pornography, and even more futile to try to keep them from watching by using censorship, unless you can give them something to replace it. With today’s technology, they will find another way. Even without today’s technology, they will find a way. The Victorians, who were often considered prudish and hypocritical, found plenty of ways to enjoy secret pornography (those who could afford it, that is). It is futile because they enjoy it, and you are simply a ‘killjoy’ if you take it away without replacing it with something more attractive. The problem is that to convince people that there is something better requires getting them to stop to think. Is life really too short to spend some of it thinking and reasoning? We never reason why, and never listen to alternative views of what the world is all about. We have a narrow-minded worldview and stick to it. It suits us. It does not challenge our comfortable lives. We might say we believe in God, or that we are an atheist, but many of us have never really thought through what either of these beliefs really means. They are just labels to enable us to fend off attempts to make us think. ‘Don’t give me that God thing. I’m an atheist.’ ‘Oh, yes, but does that mean you believe that God does not exist, or that you don’t believe in the God that I believe in?’ ‘Pardon?’ There is a difference if you think about it. **. Are we always right? Can everybody be right all of the time? ‘It doesn’t matter what your outlook on life is, as long as you are sincere and you don’t hurt anybody else’. ‘If it works for you, it’s OK’. I really do think that these are two of the most ridiculous statements ever made. How can you always know your actions are not hurting someone else? Do you ever really try to work out whether you are or not? For example, how do you know how children really feel about a marriage break up?

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Things might seem to be amicable and the children seem well adjusted, but you have no way of really knowing the effect on them, do you? It suits you to say that they are not going to be affected. You are reassuring yourself. You are excusing yourself. If it was proved to you that your relationship break-up was tearing your child’s mind apart, and that the child would prefer arguing parents to absent ones, would you really make the effort to reconcile? Would you make a real sacrifice for them? Or would you concoct reasons to justify staying as you are? You could be doing something as innocuous as buying a mobile phone, not realising that the purchase of a key component, the raw material Coltan, was helping to finance forces from Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda fighting in the Congo, with terrible suffering for the local population. Many of Africa’s wars in recent years have been fought for the control of natural resources, and it is our rich countries that provide the demand for the materials. OK, you might not be deliberately harming someone, but, now that you have been told, are you going to scrap your mobile phone? Or your Playstation? Coltan is used in these too. This same principle could apply to an endless list of everyday things we buy. We can be adversely affecting others without knowing it. When someone tells us about it, we don’t listen or we ignore it. We need our mobile phones. We need our cheap food and cheap clothes. ** I know that, if you are really like the person with the attitudes spoken of in this chapter, you will probably have put this book down by now and read no further, so why am I writing these lines anyway? You won’t be reading them. It will already be clear to you that I am one of those people who seem to want to interfere. You will think by now that I am going to do my best to change your point of view. Please try to prove me wrong. Surely that’s the only effective way of making me go away (unless you like to resort to strong language or violence. No, even then, I would probably still not go away!) You might be able to enlighten me, make me change my own point of view. It might make you use your brain a bit more for much of what it was designed to do, to think and reason. Is that really so hard to do? Your brain has probably already been occupied a lot already on reasoning, and justifying for yourself why you are like you are, and you don’t realise it.

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You don’t think you’ve done this? Everyone has a conscience. Some are more developed than others. Your conscience has to be satisfied, so you must do some reasoning to satisfy it. Why do you have a conscience? If you consider yourself to be a good person, then you must have worked out why you think you are a good person. Or have you? Can’t you be bothered? If it’s too hard for you, or you can’t be bothered, then please, if you think about nothing else, think about why you can’t be bothered to think. Do this at least, and I might have achieved something. If you are, for whatever reason, curious enough to read on, then I sincerely believe that it will not be time that is wasted. If you can be bothered, that is. And the idea that people can’t be bothered is not new. In the Seventeenth Century, Blaise Pascal said that we think we might be insignificant specks in a vast universe, yet we are still capable of asking ourselves where we come from and where we are going. We are full of weakness and uncertainty, but somehow we conclude from this that we ought to spend every day of our lives without seeking to know our fate. We refuse to seek an answer, and lose ourselves by occupying our time and our thoughts with trivial distractions, in an attempt to avoid the despair and anxiety that results if those distractions are removed. We might be able to find a solution to our doubts; but cannot be bothered to do so. Pascal says that mankind’s condition should make them ask whether there is a God, and if there is a solution to the predicament they find themselves in.

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Free to Choose?

What kind of society isn't structured on greed? The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm; capitalism is that kind of a system. -- Milton Friedman I feel that I must comment here: We fail miserably!

All people, however fanatical they may be in their zeal to disparage and to fight capitalism, implicitly pay homage to it by passionately clamouring for the products it turns out Ludwig von Mises

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In today’s society, there is a great emphasis placed on being ‘free to choose’. This concept has come to fruition in the prevailing attitude to the world economy. ‘Free Trade’8 is trumpeted from the rooftops. Markets for goods and services should be left alone to find their own levels. Supply should react to demand, and prices and growth will somehow work themselves out for the benefit of everybody. The problem is that when human nature comes in to it, free trade does not necessarily mean fair trade. In free markets, supply should react to demand. There should be a large number of potential buyers AND sellers. This is the classical definition in economic theory. One side should not be able to have more power than the other. This might occur in a street market or a bazaar, or maybe on the Internet. It does not occur in the world of big business. In world markets, demand and prices can be controlled for their advantage by large, powerful corporations. They use more than liberal doses of manipulative persuasion and media power, and, above all, money. It was estimated that in 1997, an estimated $1.4 trillion is spent every year marketing goods and services worldwide. Source: Kim Cassino, American Demographics, November 1997 In 1995, an estimated $10 billion was being spent every year on Public Relations (a sort of corporate propaganda, improving the image of companies) in the USA alone. Source: Stauber, John and Rampton, Sheldon, Toxic Sludge is Good for You, Maine 1995. Knowing all of this, and the influence that advertising has on our buying habits, the governments of the developed world still insist on selling us the myth that the unfettered free market governs all economic activity. In truth, the big corporations have the power to manipulate consumption to suit their needs. Yes, in theory we are free to choose, but consumer choices are heavily influenced by the persuasive power of marketing, advertising and public relations. If the corporations can also control the prices and quantities of the basic materials they need to make their products, they ‘have got it made’, you might say. It comes as no surprise to realise that they do this rather successfully too. It’s called ‘vertical integration’. They take over companies that supply and sell their goods, and have control over what they produce and sell, from start to finish. The larger they become, the more purchasing power they have. They can effectively hold suppliers of basic foodstuffs and raw materials to ransom. There are very few wealthy small farmers in the developing world. Many are in desperate poverty and have to sell out cheaply. Who do they sell to? The corporations. They become their employees. And the trans-national corporations just get bigger and bigger. 8

I will refer to this prevailing economic policy as ‘free trade’ or ‘free enterprise’. It is also called ‘neoliberalism’ or ‘monetarism’ (as opposed to a ‘fiscal’ policy)

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** In the nineteenth century, the deaths of a million Irish could have been prevented but for a strict adherence to ‘free trade’. The potato crop failed, and they could not afford the ‘market price’ for the food available in England, so they were left to starve. The government could not dream of intervening to bring the price down for the Irish. Free trade was their ‘god’. What a bitter legacy this has left us. This does not happen anymore in our ‘civilised’ society, does it? We might not do this so close to home today, but we do still do it with much of the rest of the world. They starve, and the reason they starve is that we either don’t pay fair prices for their goods, or we don’t buy their goods at all. Prices for the things they want to buy from us are kept high, and things like the drugs they need to survive are beyond their means. Prices for the basic materials we buy from them are kept low, either by market forces or manipulation by economic power. We are discouraged from buying from them anything they make that we also make, by the use of high import tariffs. This is to protect our own industries. We subsidise our own farmers and prevent cheaper food coming from the poorer countries. We cripple them with debts, and to pay us back we force them to produce only the crops we need, and make them allow our big companies take over their essential services. How on earth can this be referred to as ‘free’ or ‘fair’ trade? Millions die. According to the New Internationalist (May 1999), most of the increase in debts the developing countries owed the rich ones in the 1990s was taken out to pay interest on existing loans, and not used to tackle poverty or for productive investment. In six of the eight years from 1990 to 1997, developing countries paid out more in debt service (interest plus repayments) than they received in new loans. This resulted in a total transfer from the poor South to the rich North of $77 billion. The ‘free market’ myth is encouraged by the powerful trans-national corporations, to discourage intervention and maintain their powerful position. The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. The rich have the power, and hold on to it. ** Much of our consumer economy is based on the creation of ‘needs’ that are really artificial ‘wants’. It’s the exploitation of greed. Our economy is based on greed. If people were not greedy, it would collapse. If one side of the demand/supply structure of an economy is more powerful, it is NOT a free market, and should therefore be justifiably subject to control. If not, exploitation is the inevitable result. Left alone, the more powerful will enrich themselves and exploit the poor. I think that the only thing surer than this is that we all die one day. J.M Keynes, the famous economist from the last century, said something like ‘In the long term, we are all dead’. Keynes was an advocate of government

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intervention in economic activity. He saw that the advantages claimed by free market economists, that long term growth benefited everybody, were illusory. In a few hundred years’ time, I am sure that historians will look back with amazement and disgust at the decisions made by our leaders. They won’t believe how such supposedly intelligent people could disregard the lives of millions of people, and squander the world’s resources so quickly, and in such an irresponsible way. That is, assuming that our leaders really do have an appropriate level of intelligence, of course. If common sense and reason prevail, included in the list of the ‘bad guys’ of the twentieth century will be Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan with their obsession with ‘free enterprise’, and their economic ‘gurus’, especially Milton ‘Free to Choose’ Friedman. Economists who managed to maintain a grasp on reality and common sense, like J.K. Galbraith and J.M. Keynes, will be hailed, like Churchill once was, as ‘voices crying in the wilderness’. It is often said that Thatcher and Reagan and their ‘entrepreneurs’ pulled our western economies from the brink of serious recession. OK, but what is a serious recession? What would this recession have done to us? Would we have starved like much of the rest of the world is doing now? What is wrong with the concept that there is enough to go around without a need for the world economy to grow any more, if only we share it out better? Why do we always have to grow? In a recession, the unemployed in our country and the poorer parts of the world would certainly have suffered, but only because the more wealthy people and developed nations were willing to sit back and let them suffer without sharing with them. You could be sure that, in a recession, the poorer countries would get little or no help from the developed world, and there would not be enough help for the unemployed in our country. If enough help was available, recessions would not be a problem. According to classical economic theory, they would be a natural part of the economic cycle. No one would suffer, and the recession would do its job of re-adjusting supply and demand.9 Imagine a civilisation where there are two sorts of people, those who work to provide goods for all, and those who support the goods producers. 9

As this edition is being prepared (May 2009), the world is sliding into the inevitable economic recession that follows the boom years. When will they learn? Will the rich who have made their money in the good years help the unfortunate poor? No, of course not.

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Those producing the goods would pay those supporting them, who, in turn, would pay the producers for the goods. The price of the goods or the services provided would depend on the demand and the supply. If there was less supply of goods than was demanded, the price would rise. Producers would produce more goods. The economy would grow. If there were more goods than needed, prices would fall, producers would produce less. If there was a large surplus of goods and prices collapsed, the producers would be very quickly forced to produce less. They would have to lay off some of their support workers, and these people would have less money to spend on food. The economy would contract. It would continually be moving in this way and finding a balance. This is the classical economic theory. Today, we want the growth phase but are not willing to put up with the contraction. The contraction of the economy is the ‘recession’ that is so much feared. According to classical economic theory, it should be a normal adjustment process, and a civilised society would step in and help those temporarily affected by it. If it persisted, a civilised society would act to stop the decline by putting money into the economy by public works schemes. Not too much, of course. We can’t have too much inflation. Persistent inflation is caused by too much money and not enough goods, and this too would have to be corrected. The post war economy of Europe grew so quickly because there was so much money put into public works of reconstruction, and economic theory that allowed government intervention. We might still be growing under ‘free trade’ principles, but this is leading to greater and greater inequality. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer. An imbalance has occurred because producers became powerful enough to manipulate prices and supply to their advantage, and the poorest service workers could not afford the prices. The producers kept on producing and wasting goods, just because they were getting high prices and profits. You may say that, surely, if the survival of the society as a whole was at stake, they would not do this. They would not be allowed to. Just watch them! They are making their money and don’t care. And this process is looked on today as ‘economic growth’ that benefits all. If producers became too powerful, the leaders of a civilised society would help the poor by interfering in the process by taking from those who would otherwise accumulate surplus money or food. If they didn’t, there would be a growing gap

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between rich and poor, possible starvation, and possible premature exhaustion of the resources available for goods production. Today, the prevailing ‘wisdom’ says that the state should not interfere with the process. Free markets should be left to work themselves out. It completely ignores the possibility that producers can become so big and powerful that they can control prices and supply to their advantage, and also ignores the effects on people’s lives of downturns in the economy. The theory is turned into an excuse for not intervening to alleviate the suffering caused. It’s a natural effect of economic forces. So is the accumulation of obscene amounts of wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people, I suppose. Having exploited the less developed world for basic raw materials and foodstuffs for as long as can be remembered, when the bottom falls out of the market in a recession, we leave well alone, and the poor countries are left to the mercy of ‘market forces’. And yet, as the explanation goes, having prevented a world recession, Thatcher and Reagan should be heroes for avoiding much distress for all. It is conveniently forgotten that it was the developed countries that put the poorer ones in such a vulnerable position in the first place, and that even without a recession, they are still desperately poor. We exploit them and make them poor, and then, because we try to stop any further hardship for them, they should be grateful. Rather convenient logic, isn’t it? Thatcher economics says that the world as a whole is now better off than thirty years ago. It is claimed that in the long run, everyone benefits from free enterprise, de-regulation of capital markets, privatisation and globalisation by trans-national corporations. This view is being challenged, by saying that globalisation benefits the rich and hurts the poor. Jonathan Steele wrote in the Guardian, August 3 2001, that ‘New research shows that economic growth worldwide has actually slowed during the era of globalisation’. The research he used looked at the years 1960 to 1980, compared with 1980 to 2000. Before 1980, governments intervened more to protect their citizens, and after 1980 the ‘free market’ was allowed to operate virtually unfettered. Between 1960 and 1980 the poorest countries had grown by 1.9 percent a year. Between 1980 and 2000 they declined by 0.5 percent a year. In the middle group of countries, growth between 1960 and 1980 was 3.6 percent, which fell to under 1 percent in 1980 to 2000. If globalisation benefits everybody, Why do nearly one out of five people in the world live on less than $1 per day, and go hungry? That’s over 1 billion people. UN Human Development Report, 2003

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Why is 50% of the world’s employed workforce, that’s 1.4 billion people, earning less than $2 per day? 550 million of them earn less than $1 per day. Source: International Labour Organisation’s World Employment Report, quoted by Charlotte Moore in the Guardian, Dec 8 2004. Why can people in the wealthy countries expect to live into their seventies at least, whilst, in Botswana, for example, the average age expectation is 39? The heavy cost of the supposed salvation from recession has been an acceleration of the ‘greed economy’ towards massive inequality. We have an ‘everybody for themselves’ philosophy, the growing exploitation of the world’s poor, and the probability of environmental disaster on a large scale. We might not even be here in a couple of hundred years’ time to make the judgements as to who was responsible. If we survive the next two hundred years, the powerful vested interests will be even more powerful. Any version of history that says they are the guilty ones will be ignored. If they can hide the reality of the present, they could certainly re-write the past. ** Are we ‘Free to Choose’? We are free to enrich ourselves at the expense of others. The poorest countries are supposedly free to sell their goods and labour, but we are free to buy them as cheaply as possible. We are free to destroy the planet. But the multi-billionaires don’t really seem to care. If you think I am ‘scare-mongering’, the next chapter might enlighten you. *********************************************************************

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Business is business

Who gets the risks? The risks are given to the consumer, the unsuspecting consumer and the poor work force. And who gets the benefits? The benefits are only for the corporations, for the money makers. Cesar Chavez

The corporations don't have to lobby the government anymore. They are the government. Jim Hightower

The only difference between the Republican and Democratic parties is the velocities with which their knees hit the floor when corporations knock on their door. Ralph Nader

Give tax breaks to large corporations, so that money can trickle down to the general public, in the form of extra jobs. Andrew Mellon I feel a comment is necessary here: Do I see flying pigs?

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Based on figures from the London Stock Exchange, over four thousand quoted worldwide companies in 1966 had a combined market valuation of £56 billion. In 2000 there were nearly two and a half thousand companies, with a combined valuation of £5,322 billion. This makes companies on average over one hundred and fifty times bigger in 2000 than in 1966. There are less of them. They are growing by taking over their competition. For comparison purposes, the world economy as a whole doubled in size in that period, and average UK earnings were perhaps twenty times bigger than in 1966. Over 50 of the world’s biggest economies are not countries, but business corporations. These were the 10 largest companies by turnover in 2001 (figures from New Internationalist, July 2002)) Wal Mart $220 billion (larger than Sweden) Exxon Mobil $192 billion. (larger than Turkey) General Motors $177 billion (larger than Denmark) Ford $162 billion (larger than Poland) DaimlerChrysler $150 billion (larger than Norway) Royal Dutch/Shell $149 billion BP $148 billion Enron $139 billion Mitsubishi $127 billion General Electric 126 billion (larger than Greece)

The turnover of the world's 10 largest corporations is bigger than the combined Gross National Product (GNP) of the world's 100 poorest countries, including all of Africa. It is estimated that the top 500 corporations control three quarters of all of world trade. Trans-national corporations controlled 17 percent of global GNP in the 1960s, 24 percent by 1984 and 33 percent by 1995. (UNCTAD)

The top twenty banks in the world have combined assets of over £6,000 billion Source www.eagletraders.com

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The top 200 corporations’ sales amount to 18 times the income of the world’s 1.2 billion poorest people. They claim they provide employment, yet the top 200 companies in the world account for more than 25% of economic activity, and employ only 1% of the available workforce. ‘Globalisation’ is seen by some as inevitable and useful, and by others as the greatest threat we have ever faced. If the corporations act with the best interests of the world in mind, globalisation can be a force for peace and unification of ‘the Global Village’. If they act with their own interests and profits in mind, it can lead to exploitation, inequality and environmental disaster. What do you think they are more likely to do? Gordon Brown: ‘Globalisation will be seen by millions as either a route to social justices on a global scale, or a rich man’s camp’. Guardian 28th Aug 2003 The track record of Trans National Corporations (TNCs) does not give us a lot of confidence that social justice would be a major consideration. (See the examples later in this chapter). It should be clear to anybody that TNCs’ primary objectives have always been (and will more than likely remain) the search for more and more profit, maximising shareholder satisfaction, and growth of stock market valuation. All other considerations are secondary – the welfare of their workforce, the communities affected by their presence, and the health of the environment and the long term future of the planet. But could globalisation lead to TNCs getting so big that they are in a position to control the world, as some people fear? They certainly have little to be afraid of from world governments. The governments include many ex representatives of big business, and the vested interests of corporations take precedence over the rights and needs of ordinary citizens. The political power of TNCs is apparent when there is a US presidential election, and when looking at the members of an elected US government. Industry backing George W Bush and other Republicans Tobacco Mining

Timber

Concessions asked for or gained after the election in 2001 Lawsuits against tobacco companies to be abandoned, with possible savings of billions of dollars. Rules ordering companies to clean up contamination of water and waste were scrapped. Safety limits on arsenic in drinking water were cancelled. Regulations preventing logging in 60

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Oil Biotechnology (agriculture) supported Attorney General John Ashcroft.

million acres of forest were scrapped. Air pollution rules loosened. US pulls out of the Kyoto protocols (limiting greenhouse gas emissions) Mr Ashcroft advocated the use of GM crops in poorer countries.

. Esso gave $1,086,080 million to the Republicans (91% of its political donations) in the 2000 election cycle Current or former member of Bush Links to industry administration (2004) Dick Cheney, vice-president Worked most of his life for the oil industry. Was Chief Executive of Haliburton, a company that had dealings with Burma and Iraq, countries with oppressive governments. Haliburton is now a major beneficiary from reconstruction deals in post Sadam Hussein Iraq. Condoleezza Rice, National Security Served on Chevron Oil’s Board, and had Advisor an oil tanker named after her. Chevron operates in Nigeria and Angola, amongst other countries. The mass of the people in those countries have really benefited from their oil, haven’t they? I don’t think. Colin Powell, Secretary of State

Was on the Boards of Gulfstream Aerospace Corp and America Online (AOL). His shares rose by $4 million when AOL merged with Time Warner. Gulfstream makes jets for the Kuwaiti and Saudi Arabian governments.

Donald Rumsfeld, Defence Secretary

Chairman of Searle Pharmaceuticals when it was bought by Monsanto (biotechnology). Former director of Galgene, a company taken over by Monsanto. Was known to strongly promote Genetically Engineered crops in world trade talks. Was vice chairman of Enron when it had allegedly hid $500 million loses and manipulated the California energy crisis.

Ann Veneman, Secretary of Agriculture

Thomas White, Secretary of the Army.

The list could go on.

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This is the USA. What about Europe? In Europe, we see what is happening in the European Union, but don’t realise that there is a group called the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT) that pushed the idea of a ‘Single Europe’ well before the Single European Act in 1992. This treaty complied with demands from the ERT that national parliaments be sidelined when negotiating trade agreements. In recent years across the world, power has been concentrated in a handful of industries. Out of the top 25 world companies by market value in 2001, 9 were Information Technology and Telecoms, 4 Pharmaceuticals, 3 Oil, and 3 Financial Services. The top 20 UK companies included 7 from Financial Services, 3 Telecoms, 3 Pharmaceuticals, and 3 Oil and Gas. So immense are they growing, and such is their skill in levering markets, so grand their resources and great their political influence that they are now effectively units of governance. Yet they have avoided, so far, the business of having to be socially and environmentally accountable, and are to all intents undemocratic and unaccountable. John Vidal of the The Guardian (April 30, 1997), referring to the power of large corporations What do we see happening? We are supposed to have ‘free trade’, yet we have the following: •

Trading blocs like the European Community and the North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA). These protect the interests of their own countries at the expense of the poorer world.

•

The World Trade Organisation (WTO), which is essentially a mutual interest club for big corporations. It lays down its ‘free trade’ rules, ensuring that their interests are protected. Up to 1994 it was called the ‘General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). It has various ‘agreements’ in operation: The Agriculture Agreement This supposedly aims at the reduction of subsidies to agriculture. At the WTO talks at Cancun in 2003, the World Bank said that a successful outcome could lift 144 million people out of poverty. In practice, poor countries are not allowed to support their agriculture, but must be open to subsidised imports. Rich countries continue to subsidize their farmers and restrict imports from the poorer countries. GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services).

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Countries should give equal opportunities to WTO members in addition to their own national organisations. Large multi-national corporations will want to get their hands on the essential services in poorer countries, and this allows them to do it. TRIPs (Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights) These are essentially patents for creations of the mind, giving the creator an exclusive right over the use of the creation for a period of time. This might appear fair, seeming to give the inventor the rewards of his labours, but in practice it is protecting the interests of big biotechnology, pharmaceutical and computer software companies, and slowing down the more widespread use of useful inventions, new drugs etc. The talks at Cancun ended in frustration and deadlock. There was some progress in the areas of textile production and generic drugs. Even then, northern textile producers are complaining. In the days of the British Empire, we imported cotton from India, produced the clothes here, and then sold them to India. We denied them the production of their own. Some things never change. Some of the members of the ‘G21’, a group of poor countries trying to work together at the meeting, said that the USA tried to bribe them to leave the group, with trade incentives. Outside the Cancun meeting, one protesting farmer stabbed himself to death. After the meeting, the phrase that the proceedings had ‘initiated a dialogue that will enable…etc, etc.’ was announced as though it was a successful outcome. It reminds me of the NHS. It’s the illusion of progress. •

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was set up after the war to act as a worldwide adjuster of economic activity. It was to assist countries who were slipping into recession by injecting spending power into the economy. It has since become a representative of the ‘free market’ mentality. If a country requires its ‘help’, it lays down conditions called ‘structural adjustments’. Approval requires the country to agree to IMF demands. These are usually the slashing of government spending, privatization of healthcare, education and energy services, the removal of food subsidies, and the opening up of the country to trans-national corporations. Joseph Stiglitz was chief economist of the World Bank between 1997 and 2000. He says that the IMF are ‘free market fundamentalists working in the interests of Wall Street’ (From New Internationalist March 2004) •

The World Bank (WB), which used to be called the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. (IBRD). This was set up to provide loans for what its name suggests. Development. The WB requires IMF approval 114

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before injecting funds. Most of the WBs money goes into big projects, dams, power plants and roads. Very profitable projects, of course.

The total debt of the poor countries is only 5% of the resources of the IMF, WB and regional development banks. (US Govt, ‘International Financial Institution Advisory Commission, March 2000. 30 countries (the rich ones) control almost two thirds of the vote in the WB and IMF The US controls 17% of the IMF and 16% of the WB. 15% of the vote gives a veto over key decisions. The environment Who will control the pollution and environmental destruction that can be wrought by Trans National Corporations (TNCs) in their pursuit of profit? There are more controls nowadays, you say. They can’t get away with it any more. We still have deforestation, polluted waterways and air pollution on a large scale across the world; you just don’t get to hear about it all. The communities affected are usually in countries where the leaders turn a blind eye for their own profit, or are compelled by the IMF and WTO to accept their terms, or are just not powerful enough to have a say in the matter. TNCs have resisted many attempts to make them accountable for the environmental effects of their activity. There have been efforts to make them more socially and ecologically accountable for many years, going back to the 1960s. At UNCTAD (The UN Conference on Trade and Development) in Santiago in 1972 a UN Commission on Trans-National Corporations was set up, the setting up of a code of conduct being a priority. Then, along came Thatcher and Reagan, with ‘neo-liberal’ economic policies that preached non-interference and the ‘free market’, so there was little progress. In 1991 George Bush (Senior)’s government instructed all its embassies around the world to lobby against any further work on the UN codes of conduct. It was successful. This made the 1992 ‘Earth Summit’ at Rio de Janeiro virtually helpless and ineffective. The new approach is ‘self regulation’. Do you think this has been effective? The 1999 Human Development Report from the United Nations Development Programme(UNDP) stated that, "Multinational corporations are already a dominant part of the global economy…yet many of their actions go unrecorded and unaccounted…They need to be brought within a frame of global governance, not just a patchwork of national laws, rules and regulations"

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Oil It is said that wars are fought for the control of oil resources. This is only part of the story. Oil pipelines destroy countless lives by explosions and pollution. In Nigeria, oil spillages (from 1976 to 1996 were 2.5 million barrels, which is 10 times more than the much publicised Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska. (World Watch Magazine, Citing a CIA study.) Spillages in Nigeria in 1993/4 led to 1400 deaths. Oil pollution destroys the livelihoods of agricultural and fishing communities. The Chad-Cameroon pipeline in Africa was estimated to bring profits of profits $80 billion. Cameroon will receive 7%, Chad 22%, and the oil companies 71%.

Christian Aid estimates that it would take just over 1 % of oil revenues to halve the number of people without a safe water supply. The companies sometimes claim to be environmentally friendly. BP claims to be the largest producer of solar energy in the world. This is no great achievement. It spent just £45 million to buy the Solarex Corporation, which, at the time, was the largest producer of solar energy. BP spent $36.5 billion to buy ARCO, and still spends billions of dollars on oil exploration.

In 1998, $89 billion was spent on oil exploration. An investment of $660 million (0.5% of this) would make solar energy competitive in price. . (Greenpeace International, Solar Fact sheet 1999.) Investment by the World Bank in energy and oil projects is supposed to give poor countries access to energy. The Institute for Policy Studies estimates that 82% of oil projects the bank has supported are designed for export of oil to the rich countries. Fossil fuels, including oil, get $150-$300 billion a year in government subsidies worldwide. (Janet L Sawin. ‘Charting a new energy future’ in Worldwatch Institute, State of the World, 2003.)

Development In United Nations conferences on the development needs of poorer countries, rich countries push the idea that TNCs should ‘help’ in the achievement of development goals. How convenient. Many TNCs now claim to be ‘environmentally friendly’, and ask us to forget their past mistakes. Can we trust them?

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They are trying to move into the services market in poorer countries, providing health, education, transport, water and power. Should we really leave the development of these services to organisations whose primary motivation is profit? They look for the really big projects, ignoring the development needs of small communities. At the moment, many of these services in lots of countries are controlled or heavily regulated by governments, if they are provided at all. Opening these to privatisation would create an immense new market, and you can see the big companies rubbing their hands in anticipation. And the TNCs would, of course, portray themselves as the heroes of ‘development’. They are ‘bringing the country into the 21st century’. But most jobs created are for educated technicians and professionals, many of which are filled initially by nationals of the country providing the service. The educational infrastructures that would provide the workers are not always in place or well enough developed. The poor suffer again. If they cannot afford the prices, they will not get the services. The social welfare systems that would alleviate the problem are either not in place or not fully established in the poor countries. Education, healthcare, social security and old age security just do not exist. How are the rich countries trying to achieve the privatisation? The European Union had said that it would not remove subsidies to its agricultural production until poorer countries opened up their service industries to TNCs. The food subsidies restrict the exports poorer countries can make to European countries, so effectively keep them poor. Agriculture The European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), supposedly giving us cheap food (and ‘fair’ wages for our farmers) costs over £60 billion a year. It also prevents African farmers from selling their produce for fair prices in Europe. Prime Minister Tony Blair has made a stand against the CAP (June 2005), but received strong opposition from the French (French farmers are a major beneficiary) The USA will spend £180 billion this decade on farm subsidies. Agriculture still provides the main livelihood of 2.5 billion people in the world today, 96% of these in developing countries. The ‘Green Revolution’ of the 1960s and 1970’s was a widely praised attempt to solve shortages of food in parts of the world. It gave us high yielding seeds, pesticides and chemical fertilisers. Indian agriculture was transformed. The unfortunate legacy was degradation of soil, deforestation and the concentration of power given to a few large companies. They sold the seeds, and then had a captive market for the pesticides and fertilisers. Hunger still exists because of the country’s social structure, and the concentration of power into a few hands.

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We now have the spread of Genetically Modified (GM) crops. It’s the new ‘Green Revolution’, I suppose. Over 90% of these are controlled by one company, Monsanto. An added threat from this is a possible loss of genetic diversity in the long term. This is a particularly worrying development, given the influence TNCs have over politicians. The control of much of the world’s food production and marketing is dominated by a small number of ‘agribusiness’ and biotechnology corporations. In India, farmers that use Monsanto's genetically engineered seeds have to pay an extra $50-$65 per acre, as a 'technical fee' over and above the price of the seed. 'They have a contract which allows Monsanto to come in and investigate their farms three years after they have planted the seed. In addition, the farmer and heirs are liable to Monsanto - they can only use Monsanto chemicals and if they are found using anyone else's chemicals they can be fined by Monsanto’. (Vandana Shiva, quoted in the New Internationalist in 1999). Farmers are sometimes not even allowed to use seeds saved from a previous crop. They have to buy new ones. Field tests for GM crops involve potential risks to local crop diversity and populations. They are sometimes carried out secretly, not knowing the possible effects. Some have been in the UK. And the USA, but most are in countries with fewer controls. (Usually the poorer ones). In the near future, the food supply of the world could be controlled by a handful of giant TNCs. One method of control they use is the patenting of ‘Intellectual Properties’. There is the frightening prospect that the complete genome of lots of species (including humans) could be ‘owned’ by a few large corporations. They would effectively control the blueprints for life10. Six companies control 80% of the world grain trade. Four companies control over 80% of the seed market Six companies manage 75% of the global pesticide market Two companies dominate sales of half of the world’s bananas. Three control 85% of the tea trade. 30 companies now account for a third of the world’s processed food. (Sources: the Food and Agriculture Organisation, and an ActionAid report to mark the opening of the 2005 World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The report says that it is a ‘very dangerous situation when so few companies control so many lives’ On a worldwide basis, ‘shortage’ of food is a fallacy. There is enough food in the world to feed everybody, and to support an even bigger population. It’s just not shared, and the poor cannot afford it. We don’t need large farms, pesticides, artificial fertilisers or GM crops. They are just tools for the making of money by a few people, cloaked by the respectability given by the claim that they are ‘solving world hunger’. 10

See page 225 for a discussion of Eugenics (selective breeding to improve the quality of a species), as it could be applied to humanity.

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Small farms and land redistribution have been shown to increase production and also to preserve agricultural land for future generations. The problem is that land itself is also being concentrated into fewer and fewer hands. Every year 1 million hectares of land is transferred to ‘cash crops’ for export, usually produced on large farms or plantations owned by corporations or big landowners. Cash crops are needed to earn foreign currency from exports, to be able to service the debt burdens that the rich countries have inflicted on the poor. In Brazil, for example, much land was turned over to soy bean production for export to feed rich countries’ livestock, and this resulted in hunger spreading from one third to two thirds of the population. It also increased deforestation, the loss of more rain forests. We then protect our own agriculture with subsidies and trade agreements, making it difficult for the poor to export to us. Because of pressures from us, they have to produce crops that deny their own populations the food production they need, then we will not even give them a fair price for them. They cannot make a living, they starve, and we are getting fatter. Terrible, isn’t it? People die as a result of our greed. Millions. Poorer countries lose $24 billion per year due to agricultural subsidies. (International Food Policy Research Institute). Farm subsidies under the EU Common Agricultural Policy are £63 billion per year Subsidies across the world are $320billion, more than six times international aid. Dairy farmers in the EU get average subsidy of £2000 per cow, 100 times more than foreign aid per person to Africa. (BBC News, Sept 03) Pharmaceuticals Worldwide pharmaceutical sales in 2002 were £400 billion. (www.ims-global.com) In 2002, over $500 million was spent on marketing each of the top six selling drugs Pharmaceuticals are the most profitable industry in terms of profit margins (the difference between price and cost). The profit margin of Viagra (which enhances sexual activity) is 98 per cent. Pharmaceutical companies concentrate research on products that are similar to their competitors. It is easier and more profitable. Drugs for malaria, TB and sleeping sickness are not so profitable. TB kills 2 million a year; Malaria kills 1 million a year. (World Health Organisation) 3,000 children were dying every day of malaria in the late 1990s, 90 per cent of them in Africa. No major pharmaceutical company in 1999 had its own malaria research programme. (New Internationalist)

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200 million people alive in 1998 will eventually develop tuberculosis. This exceeds the total number of cases in the entire nineteenth century. In 1998 there was no TB drug being researched by any major pharmaceutical company. (New Internationalist) 30 million people in Africa are HIV positive. In the rich countries we have drugs for bedwetting, compulsive shopping, and toenail fungus (they are profitable), when a third of the world’s people cannot afford essential drugs. Of 1393 drugs approved for sale worldwide between 1975 and 1999, only 16 (just over 1%) targeted tropical diseases and TB (11.4% of the disease burden of the world) (Rachel Cohen: ‘An epidemic of neglect’, Multinational Monitor, June 2002). Drug companies only recently (2004), after much pressure, started to allow more widespread production of generic AIDS drugs that they had held under patent. Finally, poor countries can now afford them in sufficient quantities. In the meantime, especially in Africa, many thousands had died. Even now, red tape has slowed down their availability. Companies insisted on stringent checks to ensure that generic drugs were only used in the country allowed. The companies are now pushing for wider patent protection for other drugs patents under TRIPS (the World Trade Organisation’s Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement). It is estimated that this could push some drugs prices up by 200%. In September 2001 thirteen of the world's leading medical journals, including The Lancet and the Journal of the American Medical Association, accused pharmaceutical companies of "distorting the results of scientific research for the sake of profits" They said that drug companies, "tie up academic researchers with legal contracts so that they are unable to report freely and fairly on the results of the drug trials" (Sarah Boseley, "Drug firms accused of distorting research", The Guardian, September 10, 2001) In other words, drugs trials are not independent. The company may have spent millions on research into a project that promises good returns. They will be very reluctant to publish adverse test results. As a result, we are subject to the use of drugs that could be dangerous. They are only withdrawn when the evidence comes out in practice. Meanwhile, deaths have occurred. A pharmaceutical company biotechnology analyst (quoted in the New Internationalist), ‘We sometimes joke that when you’re doing a clinical trial, there are two possible disasters. The first disaster is if you kill people. The second is if you cure them. The truly good drugs are the ones you can use chronically for a long time’.

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Medication reactions are the fourth leading cause of death in the USA. More than car accidents, HIV/AIDS, drug abuse, infectious diseases and murder. (Over Dose: The case against the drug companies (Tarcher/Puttnam 2001) A July 2004 report suggested that adverse drug reactions could cause up to 20,000 deaths a year in the UK. (Reported in the Sunday Times) The companies use poorer countries as testing grounds. It’s cheaper, and there is less regulation. Testing of a meningitis drug is alleged to have killed 11 children in Nigeria in 1996, with others suffering from side effects. If no legislation is in place, they don’t ask themselves what is moral or ethical, they just look to maximise profit at all costs. They have to be forced to be moral. Only a few governments have legislation controlling clinical trials, or even the offering of incentives by drug companies to doctors to prescribe their drugs. In those countries with regulations, like ours, the methods are more covert. At ‘Continuing Medical Education’ events sponsored by the Pharmaceutical companies, we have to ask the question whether the companies’ primary motives are really educational. Baby food. The African baby food scandal of the early 1970’s should be well known. Nestle were one of the companies criticised. Western corporations trying to market powdered baby milk had encouraged the abandoning of breast feeding by African mothers. The mothers did not have the water, money or sterilization capabilities to use it properly, and many babies died as a result. Cola In some African countries, drinking cola was thought of as a status symbol. Men were spending what little money they had on cola, denying their wives and children money for food. When I think of the advertisements that showed the world’s people uniting around the drinking of Cola, I am disgusted by the image. After all, what is it, anyway? Flavoured fizzy water. But it’s very profitable flavoured fizzy water. Asbestos We have banned the use of asbestos in this country to prevent asbestos dust getting into the air. I saw a report once that in one poor country, children could be seen playing on piles of asbestos in the streets. The country did not have regulations against asbestos use, so the western construction company that had been using it did not care. It costs money to clear it up, or to avoid its use. Tobacco British and American Tobacco (BAT) is alleged to have been involved in cigarette smuggling on a large scale, in order to open up poorer countries to their products. The 121

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governments of the countries had tried to ban BAT imports or had threatened heavy health taxes. BAT hid the figures in company reports, referring to them as ‘General Trade’. The first link between smoking and cancer was made in 1950 by British epidemiologist Richard Doll. Ever since then, tobacco companies have been publishing their own research, denying it. I don’t think that anyone could now seriously deny the link, even those still hooked on ‘the weed’. Referring to the claim that pregnant women who smoke could produce smaller babies, a Chief Executive of Philip Morris once said that ‘Some women would prefer having smaller babies’. From New Internationalist, July 2004) Over the years, the USA has threatened trade sanctions to countries that would not let in the US tobacco companies. The Far East is the latest expanding market. Over sixty percent of Chinese men smoke. ‘Thinking about Chinese smoking statistics is like trying to think about the limits of space’ From a Rothman’s document in 1992, quoted in the New Internationalist (July 2004) from ‘The Tobacco Atlas’ by Judith Mackay and Michael Eriksen: You can just see them rubbing their hands. Ugandans claim that tobacco has impoverished them, turning them from farmers producing food for their families into underprivileged growers of tobacco. Strangely enough, BAT puts it differently: In justification, they say that they provide jobs. ‘Over 60000 farmers depend on tobacco as their only source of income, and the industry is supporting about two million jobs’. Not much of a future for them as tobacco smoking declines, is it? The same applies to farmers in Kenya. In the Philippines even religious wall calendars advertise cigarettes I thought that advertising on cigarettes was being controlled? The cigarette industry spent $30 billion dollars per day in 2001 in the USA alone on advertising and promotion. A lot of it is by ‘brand stretching’, putting the brand name on clothing and other items. In 1999 British American Tobacco (BAT) included the World Trade Organisation in a list of its ‘allies’. Coffee

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World prices for coffee have been falling as producing countries grow more, to help to pay their debts to the rich countries. Generally, less than ten percent of the cost of your cup of coffee goes to the producers. Have you noticed a fall in the price of your coffee in the shops? No. But, not surprisingly, when world prices rose in the 1970s, prices in the shops followed very quickly. Sugar Sugar sells here at more than three times the world market price, due to subsidies and quotas imposed by the EU. Because of this, Europe produces much more sugar than it can consume, then dumping the rest on the international market. Prices for poor world farmers fall. Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia suffer particularly from this. Who benefits from it? The large sugar corporations, of course, like British Sugar, Tate and Lyle, and Danisco. All for a product with no food value at all. Bhopal On Dec 2nd and 3rd 1984 at Bhopal in India, 8000 people died in a gas leak. 150,000 were injured. Thousands have died since due to pollution of water supplies, a fact that Union Carbide tried to suppress. Union Carbide lawyers threatened to cross examine every person injured by the leak, as a delaying tactic. 20 years after the event, the victims had still not received adequate compensation. In the meantime, Dow Chemicals, who have since bought Union Carbide, brought a $10,000 lawsuit against women activists from Bhopal who wanted the company to help to clean up the toxic pollution they still have. When they bought the company, Dow said that Union Carbide retained ‘no responsibility whatsoever in relation to the tragedy’. They say that the company responsible was an Indian subsidiary. Mining On the island of Bougainville, near Papua, New Guinea, the largest copper mine in the world was opened by Rio Tinto in 1972. It took the top off a mountain and then bored a deep hole into it. The company made a large profit, of which only one percent went to the local people, who believed themselves to be poorer than when mining began. Land and water supplies were taken away from them. In West Papua, a mining company are said to have paid more than $11 million a year to the Indonesian army for security at their gold mining site. They kept down protests, and killed and tortured people. More than 2000 are said to have died. The mine is destroying rivers and rainforest and threatening indigenous populations. Wages We have all heard about so-called poor world ‘sweat-shops’. One example should suffice.

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A recent contract for the Chairman of Disney gave him a yearly salary of $750,000, plus bonus up to a maximum of $15 million a year according to financial performance, plus shares worth approximately $550-$600 million. At the same time, contractors producing Disney-branded clothing in Haiti got an average hourly wage of 28 cents, that’s probably no more than 3 dollars a day. Anyone who has visited Disneyland will know how expensive the branded clothing can be. Where does the difference go? Daft question, really.

Keeping us in the dark We are not always told about the dangers of some products until deaths caused by them are publicised. Since the 1920’s the lead additive industry has hidden information about the toxic effects of lead. Only within the last twenty years or so have we taken lead out of our petrol. Companies that did it first then claimed to be ‘green’, or environmentally friendly. Even the pumps are green. Leaded petrol is still exported to Eastern Europe and poor countries of the south. British agricultural officials had been concerned about ‘mad cow disease’ since 1987. Only when the effects came through in cases of human CJD was anything done about it. Food poisoning caused by unsanitary conditions and unsuitable animal food was inevitable, and suspected well before action was taken. .

‘Fast food’ companies presumably employ nutritionists, experts in the food value of their products. The bad effects of too much salt and fat in the diet have long been known: high blood pressure, obesity and possible heart attacks being some of them. Why, then, did they have to be told that their products included too much salt or fat? Salt is a cheap preservative. To exclude it would have cost them money. I could go into great detail about the rubbish that goes into the food we eat, not least the chemicals that enhance flavour. If you see a food package that tells you that it only includes ‘natural’ flavourings, it suggests that the ingredients are found ‘naturally’, as if they are picked from a hillside or from someone’s herb garden, so we are satisfied. That’s the impression they want to give. The flavourings are still manufactured from chemicals. It’s a massive industry. They say they use ‘natural’ chemicals. An excellent book to read if you want to know about what goes into your food is ‘Fast Food Nation’, by Eric Schlosser. Why does agriculture and industry have to be threatened by the law before they change things that are obviously damaging to health and environment? They get away with it while they can, making as much money as possible in the meantime. Meanwhile, people die. Who is called to account for all of this? No-one, it seems. 124

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Cooking the books ‘Creative Accounting’ is the name sometimes given to the (mostly) legal manipulation of company accounts to make them appear to be more favourable than they actually are. Occasionally, companies over-stretch the credibility and legality of this manipulation, in a desperate search for shareholder approval and growth in stock market valuation. In 2001 the Enron scandal became public knowledge. It involved people who were friends and backers of George W. Bush The growth of Enron into a major energy company had been achieved by fraudulent accounting procedures that disguised heavy debts and losses and also limited the corporation’s tax bill. Enron’s auditors, Arthur Andersen, were also implicated and convicted of obstruction of justice. Many of Enron’s board members and executives made a lot of money before the company collapsed, and they kept it, but thousands of company workers lost their life savings. This had followed decades of pressure from Congressmen from oil producing states of the USA to stop the introduction of tighter accounting standards for the energy industry. In 2002 Worldcom, one of the largest telecoms corporations in the world, was found to have artificially inflated profits by $3.8 billion. These are just two of the well publicised examples, two high profile companies that were found out. Most accountants know that ‘window dressing’ and ‘creative accounting’ is rife throughout the business world. If tax bills can be reduced legally, and share prices, profits and dividends to shareholders are buoyant, it has achieved its objective. However, you have to wonder how much of our recent boom times are actually based on paper transactions and not reality. A lot of accounting methods might not be illegal, but they could certainly be said to be immoral. Limited Liability Companies can get into trouble for many reasons, including bad management or declining markets. They call in the Official Receiver. Creditors, the people who have lent the company money by selling them goods or services on credit, are the last to get their money back when the company is wound up or sold. Priority is given to shareholders, the ‘owners’ of the company. They are not held personally responsible for the company’s debts, and no one can call on the private resources of shareholders to pay anyone else back if there are insufficient funds. This is ‘Limited Liability’. It allowed the growth of bigger and more efficient organisations when world trade expanded, by using ‘joint stock companies’, from the late eighteenth century onwards. This might be considered fair when the shareholders

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are anonymous investors, relying on the management to control their funds on a day to day basis. Are the management liable for the debts their management has created? No. When the major shareholders are also wealthy private individuals who have a say in management via the boardroom, are they liable? No. So, who is liable? It is the ‘corporation’. It has a legal entity of its own, distinct from its owners and managers. If the corporation has insufficient funds, the creditors are not paid. It’s all quite legal and above board. The managers might lose their jobs but have usually been given good pay offs in addition to their years of fat salaries. The owners have in many cases made their millions, and these are untouched. The losers are the creditors, people and organisations that have simply dealt with the company in good faith. And the other losers are the employees. They lose their livelihood, and in some cases their pensions. Managers and owners might not be untouched, but they are protected. Employee rights In this country, we have fought hard for legislation that attempts to control the worst excesses of employers. Our workplaces are relatively safe, we are, in general, paid for overtime, we have a national minimum wage, and it is not easy for most companies to dismiss us without good justification. Despite this, there are still many cases of perceived injustice, and we all need to be able to preserve the rights we have left, not letting them be eroded by the ‘free market’ mentality and the pursuit of profit. In the UK, if it had not been for the trade unions, and periods when there was a truly socialist government, we may not have been in this position. Having said this, it is a great shame that the bad side of human nature led to the exploitation of these rights by extremists, who discredited and undid the valuable work that had been done by more moderate and reasonable people. I don’t think that anyone would want to repeat some of the times we had in the 1970s. The extremists gave those with conservative and right wing views the opportunity to win over public opinion to their views and triumph. Enter Margaret Thatcher. For this purpose we can exclude the well known developing country ‘sweat-shops’ that I have already spoken about. Poor workers stitching trainers for a meagre living have almost become a standing joke when referring to the ‘employment’ provided by trans-national corporations in developing countries. The corporations will always look for the cheapest labour, and if the country has no legislation to defend employee rights, all the better. We should be able to assume that, in a highly developed country like the USA, employee rights are well advanced. They are not. Companies in the USA have been notorious for flouting the rights of their employees. The workers often have poor rates of pay, few paid holidays, limited payment for overtime, and very poor job security.

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WalMart, one of the biggest companies in the world, is a case in point. (In the UK, they own Asda) WalMart employees in the USA had to sit through a video presentation saying how evil unions are. The New York Times revealed that Walmart did not pay overtime. Workers already on subsistence level wages were paid nothing for working extra hours, and some had been locked in until they finished a job. All this from a company owned by one of the richest families in the world. It is small wonder that conditions are as they are in the USA, when the government has, for the past 100 years, discouraged trades unions and anything remotely socialist, painting them all bright red and portraying them as the communist threat to the American way of life. *** I think I have said enough. (For now). If you still doubt, and you need more examples of big corporations’ disregard for human life in their pursuit of profit, then consult the following: ‘The Best Democracy Money Can Buy’, by Greg Palast , published by Constable & Robinson Ltd, particularly the chapter entitled ‘Inside Corporate America’. Also look at any New Internationalist publications over the last thirty years. ********************************************************************

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Conspiracy theories : World domination?

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them Galileo

The popularity of conspiracy theories is explained by people’s desire to believe that there is some group of folks who know what they are doing Damon Knight

The ruling class has the schools and press under its thumb. This enables it to sway the emotions of the masses. Albert Einstein

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Someone once had an extreme theory that multi-national capitalist big business is the ‘Beast’ or the ‘Antichrist’ mentioned in the Book of Revelation, in the Bible. Most people would probably want to lock this person away with one who thinks they are a fish. Then again, thinking about it, I suppose that it is no more outlandish than a story about the antichrist being a child born with ‘666’ as a birthmark (as in the movie, ‘Damien’), and many people seemed to take this seriously at the time. Sometimes it seems that the devil is more easily believed in than God is. There are many ‘conspiracy theories’ related to secret discussion groups and organisations aimed at world dominance. One, the ‘Bilderberg’, is said to consist of ‘the highest echelon of the global financial and political elite’. Its membership is made up of Kings, Queens, Princes, Chancellors, Prime Ministers, Presidents, Ambassadors, Secretaries of State, Wall Street investors, international bankers, news media executives, and wealthy industrialists. They try to meet regularly, in secret, and try to have no press coverage. Why? At one meeting that was reported on, in Toronto, Canada, it is said that the Bilderberg discussed global control of the air, water and public health, but particularly the possible multi-billion dollar sale of the Canadian government-owned electric utility Ontario Hydro. There is currently a word-wide trend towards the privatisation of essential services such as power and water. Is it a conscious plan by powerful people? In many countries where privatisation has occurred, poor people are suffering because they cannot afford the services, and there is no adequate provision by the state to help them. I am referring mainly to developing countries, but I suppose the same could be said in the UK. Pensioners die of cold in the winter because they cannot pay their power bills. There is also a theory that suggests there is an ‘Illuminati’, alleged to be a covert force that has created or taken over groups and organisations in order to be able to manipulate the world according to their objectives. It is said to be part of a global elite sometimes described as the ‘New World Order’. The name "Illuminati" means "the enlightened ones".

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It originated in the eighteenth century ‘enlightenment’ as an organisation dedicated to the overthrow of what was considered to be the established church’s archaic and superstitious worldview. They wished to replace it by an ‘enlightened’ scientific approach to the origin and meaning of life and the universe. Incidentally, Lucifer, the fallen angel, is also known as the bringer of light. Business leaders say that they are bringing improvement through progress and growth. “For even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. Therefore it is not surprising if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteous-ness; whose end shall be according to their deeds.” 2 Corinthians 11: 14 -15 Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? Are our illustrious leaders really part of a satanic conspiracy for world domination? If you want to believe the theories, you could be reasonable and say that the leaders, or most of them, are being used without knowing it. Many may truly have convinced themselves that they are improving the world. The Illuminati are said to be closely linked with the secret society of Freemasons. Lower level Freemasons have no idea of the motives of their superiors. It is, of course, wrong to refer to all freemasons as occultists or followers of Satan, but this does not mean that, if the devil exists, then he (or she or it) could be in control of an organisation without its members being aware of it at all. The freemasons include many of the most powerful and influential people in the world. George W Bush is a Freemason. However we look at it, there are a relatively small number of obscenely wealthy, very powerful, very selfish people. Whether it is a conscious plan for world domination or not, it is definitely succeeding for these people, and we are allowing it. In 2004 the ten richest people in the world owned a combined wealth of £201 billion (Times ‘Rich List’) The gross national product per year of the poorest twenty countries in Africa combined is not much more than £200 billion. (World Bank). The gross national product per year of Indonesia in 2000 was $174 billion, and Poland’s was £188 billion. Exxon Mobil and Wal-Mart’s turnover is now over $250 billion per year each. Robson Walton of Wal-Mart, and Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, each have more wealth than the bottom 45 percent of American households combined.

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The ten richest people in the UK had a combined wealth of £36.5 billion (Times Rich list.) ** These theories are nothing new. In the nineteenth century, Benjamin Disraeli said that "The world is governed by far different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes" Why do the Latin words beneath the pyramid on each one dollar bill ~ Novus Ordo Seclorum ~ translate as “new secular order.”, and why does the ‘All seeing eye’ pyramid symbol of the Illuminati appear on the dollar bill? The decision to put the symbol on the American one dollar note was made by Franklin D Roosevelt, in 1935, with the support of his vice president Henry Wallace. They were both high ranking Freemasons. Many American leaders have been Freemasons. Some very famous wealthy families are said to have formed a cartel of international bankers and industrialists based in Western Europe and North America. These families have controlling interests in some of the biggest international organisations, and have been in control for a long time, some of them going back centuries. Their aim is said to be complete control over all financial systems, all borrowing and lending. At the highest level today, the World Bank decides the fate of countries. The Illuminati are also said to try to control the media and education. This gives them control over people's minds. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the only significant parts of the world which are seen to be holding out against their new world order are a number of Islamic nations, and China. The Islamic nations are portrayed as being unstable and dangerous, and China is being infiltrated by the capitalist worldview. Think about what is happening in the world. Whether you consider the theories to be the product of over-heated imagination or the ranting of religious fanatics, they must make you think. So, you cannot accept the idea that there could be an organised attempt at world domination? What would you think if you saw a science fiction movie, with an ‘evil empire’ trying to dominate the universe? What methods do they use? They strip worlds of natural resources and enslave the populations, or use them as cheap labour .They resort to military force whenever there is a rebellion against their domination, and they think nothing of occupying small planets, regardless of the inhabitants. They also sometimes convince conquered populations that their rule is better for the people Do you consider them to be the villains, and the rebels the heroes? Does any of this sound familiar? 131

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The evil empire in sci-fi movies usually uses outright force to conquer, so it is clear for anyone to see that they are evil. Wouldn’t it be more subtle and less damaging to conquer using deception, political ideologies and economic power? Our own ‘evil empires’ seem to have learned this lesson. If you were trying to achieve control over the world without violence on a worldwide scale, what would you do? How would you go about doing it? Here is my suggested plan for world domination. Please do not try this one at home! 1. Encourage weak morals and low educational standards in order to make the masses easy to manipulate. Use control of the media to achieve this. Supply them with meaningless entertainment. 2. Control or suppress the mass media’s reporting of how big our organisations are getting. 3. Keep people so busily occupied with everyday life that they have no time to understand or take part in the decisions and events that are crucial for their future. 4. Keep the masses ignorant, confused and disorganised. They must not realize that they are being manipulated. 5. Select exceptionally intelligent people and make sure they are working for the cause, but that they don’t realise it. Pay them well. The level of their salary stops them asking questions or ‘whistle blowing’. 6. Encourage the mockery of any organisations that show resistance. Environmentalists are to be portrayed as eccentric do-gooders. The Christian religion in particular is to be belittled at every possible opportunity. 7. Make continuous moves towards control of more and more of the world’s economic resources 8. Replace publicly controlled services with private enterprise. This weakens the power of the governments of countries and increases the privileges of the wealthy. 9. Form economic power blocs and undermine national sovereignty. If we control resources and the world economy, we can control a world government. Which of these are happening today? Is it not all of them?

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If there was a conspiracy for world domination, would it be a move towards a world government, with the noble intention of controlling the world for the purpose of peace and prosperity, or simply to enrich the wealthy few? A world domination conspiracy might be the product of over-active imaginations. On the other hand, if there was one, then all of the objectives outlined above are being achieved in today’s world. It makes you think. Doesn’t it? When you also consider that today’s ‘global village’, with the internet and satellite communications and surveillance, has reached a point where such domination on a worldwide scale is physically and logistically possible for the first time in history, then you really could start to believe it. You may say, ‘Well, if they leave me alone to get on with my life, then what the heck’. The problem with this is that they would not be leaving you alone. You would be involved, whether you liked it or not, even if you were benefiting from it. And one day, it might affect you more directly. What then? You are one of the masses. They don’t really care about you. ** The Sunday Times, 16th April 1995, reported: “In future, scientists want to insert electronic chips into our heads so we can plug directly into the information highway. British researchers are among international teams working on an implant to translate human thought into computer language. In a generation, one group says, people with a peppercorn-sized chip in the back of the neck will be able to talk to machines.” The chip could contain a name and a picture of the person’s face, an international Social Security number, fingerprint identification, physical description, family history, address, occupation, income tax information, and criminal record. Two of the other most effective places they have found for such a chip are the forehead and the back of the wrist. If things go to plan it is believed that a joint identity/money card with all personal details will be on the implanted chip. All transactions will then be recorded by a global computer. It would effectively be a human bar-coding system. “And he [the beast or Antichrist] causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand, or on their forehead, and he provides that no one should be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for the number is that of a man; and his number is 666.” (Revelation 13: 16-18) The three ‘guard bars’ on a bar code (one at the beginning, one in the middle and one at the end) resemble the codes for three sixes.

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Whatever you think of these theories, you have to wonder, don’t you? Well, don’t you? Whatever you think, you must be forced to admit that, given the evidence, large corporations are certainly gaining more and more control and influence in the world. Conspiracy or not, it is succeeding. And nothing succeeds like success. *********************************************************************

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Please sir. I would like some more.

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. Edward Abbey

Economic growth may one day turn out to be a curse rather than a good, and under no conditions can it either lead into freedom or constitute a proof for its existence. Hannah Arendt

Unlimited economic growth has the marvellous quality of stilling discontent while maintaining privilege, a fact that has not gone unnoticed among liberal economists. Noam Chomsky

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Economic growth is the goal of governments the world over. We must be seen to grow. Our standard of living must rise. Why? If you are standing at the edge of a precipice, the most sensible step to take is backwards, or at least to stand still. But we don’t step backwards or stand still. We just choose to look up and not down, and take one more step into the unknown. Because we believe that we have to. So much of what we consume is unnecessary. We don’t need it to live, and sometimes get only fleeting satisfaction, if any at all, from consuming it. Some familiar examples:      

Junk food and drink More and more cars Expensive ‘Designer’ clothes The latest technological gadgets Expensive cosmetics Cosmetic surgery

It is estimated that in the USA over 13 million people a year have cosmetic surgery of some kind. Source: American Society of Plastic Surgeons, procedural statistics 2000-2002 Rich countries spend £33 billion a year on cosmetics Much of production in our highly developed consumer societies is surplus to needs. The consumption is based on WANT rather than need. And most of this want is created artificially. Consumption is maintained under the pressure of an endless barrage of advertising. Billions are spent in persuading us to consume. We use up precious resources to persuade people to use more resources. A bit silly, isn’t it. No one stops to think. What a waste! We have an obesity problem. The poor world starves. If we stop producing, our economies take a cumulative nosedive. We are placed at the mercy of volatile financial markets. Instant world recession! What’s the problem? Most people would eventually become accustomed to less consumption. They would have to, and would probably be healthier and less stressed into the bargain. After all, we would not be starving, would we? We would not spend so much of our time

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striving to earn money to buy things, and would have more leisure time. We would conserve our resources and environment. We could secure a better future for all, in a world where resources were shared fairly. But if there was a recession, we would not take care of the people who were involuntarily unemployed by the changes. Does anyone seriously believe that wealthy people would easily give up their riches, or the big companies their profits, to support the unfortunate ones? The poorest would still be very poor, the unemployed (now many more of them) would be even more stigmatised and impoverished. The richest would still be vastly better off. The gap between rich and poor would probably increase further. ** Sometimes it is said that ‘Bigger is Better’ No, that’s not about what you think. It’s about economic growth. Every time there is a General Election, we hear the major parties promising growth in the economy. With growth, they say, everyone benefits. How many of us would vote for a party that said we had to go into reverse? We expect our standard of living to keep on rising, year after year. The world’s resources are finite, and we know that some will run out soon, yet we continue to use them up at an ever increasing rate. If you had savings, then spent them very quickly, you would, in the short term, appear to be wealthy and comfortable. When the savings ran short, you would hit hard times, with nothing to fall back on if your regular income failed. This is what we are doing with the world. Resources that have taken millions of years to build up are being squandered in the space of a couple of centuries. The effects on our environment are either not understood or are ignored for short term gain Across the world, agricultural land is exhausted and turning to desert. Seas are being polluted, forests are cut down, and water supplies are dwindling. Thousands of species are becoming extinct every year. We just do not know how all of this is affecting the balance of the world’s ecosystem, or we choose to ignore it. The natural systems of our world are interlocked and interdependent in ways we know little of, yet we continue to disrupt them.

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The loss of tropical rainforests has, in recent years, rightly been a popular subject for campaigners, not the least because much of it has been for the purpose of grazing land for profitable beef cattle. Grain produced on land used for beef cattle could feed many more people than the beef it produces. Grain is also fed to the cattle, and this could also feed more people than the beef it yields. But, of course, beef production makes more money than grain. Many people now know about the effect of cutting down forests on the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This is only half the story. Loss of forest also affects local rainfall patterns and the retention of nutrients in the soil. We do not learn from history. Civilisations have died because they did not preserve their environment. As civilisations grew and converted more forest to land for growing food, more food allowed their populations to grow. Then the rains failed, and harvests with them. If it did rain, nutrients were washed from the soil because there were no root systems to retain them. The result was a high population, not enough food, famine, and the decline of the civilisation. This happened with the ancient Sumerians, the Greeks and the Romans, so it is nothing new. But we do not learn, and today’s ‘civilisation’ is doing it all on an unimaginable scale, with every resource you can think of. Look at the population growth that our unrestrained use of the world’s resources has allowed us: •

8000 BC: 5 million humans.

•

Time of Christ 250 million

•

1000 AD: 500 million

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1800 AD: 1 billion

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1930 AD: 2 billion

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1960 AD: 3 billion

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1974 AD: 4 billion

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1987 AD: 5 billion

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1999 AD: 6 billion

•

2030 AD? 8 billion?

Why is population so high? Some people say that the poor countries should simply be educated in the use of contraception. It’s their own fault, they say. Our countries have stabilised their populations. How? Because we have basic security from want of basic necessities of life, and have got the infant death rate under control. 138

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The poor countries have no such security. Children die, so they have to have more children to cover that possibility. They have no basic security for their old age, as we do, so children are their only guarantee of being taken care of when they are older. It is a vicious circle for them, a poverty trap. Also, when you are in such a desperate situation, sex can be the only pleasure that you have to distract you from your troubles. In this country, not much more than a hundred years ago, we had a much higher average number of children per family for the same reasons. So, what right have we got to criticise them when it is our actions that have contributed to their sorry state? Yet people still harp on about their ‘stupidity’. Give them the basic securities, and population would be controlled, naturally.

If two out of three people in the world died suddenly in some kind of disaster or war, there would still be as many living on the earth as there was in 1930. If you were born before 1950, there has been more population growth in your lifetime than in the whole of human history before you were born.

We have tripled the world’s population in three quarters of a century. It took nearly ten thousand years to reach the first billion, and then we added five billion more in just two hundred years. The last billion was added in just twelve years. We have not learned the lessons from history, that we are capable of ‘killing the goose that laid the golden egg’, and exhausting or spoiling the resources that have allowed us to grow. But we still have to keep on growing, don’t we? . Absolute madness, if you stop to think about it. But who does think about it, even on the very rare occasions when they might be told the truth about it? I can just hear you. ‘It’s too depressing’. ‘You’re getting too intense about things.’ ‘Life’s too short to worry about things like this.’ ‘You can’t take the cares of the world on your shoulders’. ‘Anyway, somebody will come up with something that will solve the problems, some kind of technological advance, maybe another source of energy, or something. They always have, and always will, won’t they?’ 139

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‘Whatever happens, life will go on. We adapt and survive.’ So we shove it under the carpet and go blindly on, because it’s easier to do so. So do the governments of the world. They avoid the difficult decisions, those that might lose votes. Every decision is based on short term considerations, when they should be considering the longer term future. What people want is growth, so they promise it. They then leave it to the ‘free market’, and blame it when it goes wrong. Convenient, isn’t it, to say you are subject to forces you cannot and should not control. Somebody else will solve it all. It’s someone else’s responsibility. The problem is, if we were to allow the rest of the world to catch up towards our level of prosperity without reducing our consumption to ‘meet them halfway’, the situation would get immeasurably worse. It has been said that if we wished to allow rest of the world to catch up with the USA’s rate of consumption of resources, one planet would not be enough. We would need three worlds! The USA has 5% of the world’s population, but 33% of the world’s gross national product Do people really believe that growth will benefit everybody? As the world economy has grown, the bigger share of the growth has gone to the countries that already consume the lion’s share. So, the gap between rich and poor has got wider. Much, much wider. Does anybody seriously believe that the rich countries will voluntarily halt this trend? In 1960 the Gross Domestic Product of the richest 20 countries was 18 times as much as that of the poorest 20 countries. Today it is 37 times as much. The gap has doubled in just over forty years. Source: World Bank Development Report 2000/2001 ** There are some movements in the balance of power. China is now catching up quickly. The Chinese economy is growing at the fantastic rate of over nine percent a year. With over a quarter of the world’s population, for China to catch up should really be a frightening prospect unless we go backwards to meet them half way. There are just not enough of the world’s resources to go round in the longer term. The only prospect might be mass starvation and population reduction, but sadly sometimes the attitude is that this is fine as long as it does not affect us. There would not be mass starvation if we shared resources fairly across the world. There would be enough to go round. But will we do it? Not a hope. We would have to accept less. 140

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There is not much chance of us going into ‘reverse growth’, is there? But in all fairness, we should not be able to deny others the right to catch up, should we? We merrily continue to build more roads and airports without charging users a fair cost in terms of the environment, shying away from higher aviation fuel and petrol taxes. How could we deny China’s planned building of over 600 new coal fired power stations? Why have they waited so long? For years the Communist regime deliberately resisted involvement with the outside world. China has vast natural resources of coal and oil that have not been exploited. Was the delay in their industrialisation deliberate? Have they waited until our resources have started to run out and kept theirs in reserve, so that they could exploit our weaknesses when they start to happen? If so, we seem to be waiting for the ‘sucker punch’, totally oblivious of their future intentions. Or, have they really simply finally succumbed to the needs of their people and ‘sold out’ to capitalism? We are even helping them to industrialise. Are we just playing into their hands? You can see the dollar signs flashing in the eyes of the big corporation executives. It’s a massive new market to exploit. The big companies, looking as always for short term gains, exploit the ‘business opportunities’ in China. Nearly 400 of the world’s top 500 companies have built plants there. China is already estimated to produce the following percentages of world production. Motorcycles Colour TVs Computer Keyboards Mobile Phones Air Conditioners Washing Machines Refrigerators

43% 40% 39% 35% 32% 26% 19%

Source: New Internationalist Sep 2004 Their people have paid a high price. In 1960 and 1961, three million Chinese died of starvation. China was not willing to involve the outside world, or to mechanise its food production to produce more, possibly because this would further increase the population. This is an example of an atheistic state placing no value on human life. The deaths were a necessary part of the process of the rise of the state. Since then they have ruled that couples are only allowed one child. Because people wanted male children, this has led to infanticide on a large scale. The population has forcibly been kept under control by murder.

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Has their carefully planned moment come, or have the leaders just accepted the inevitable and jumped on the capitalist bandwagon? Smoking has declined in the west, but in China (and much of the far-east) it is increasing enormously. Tobacco companies are moving in with productive capacity and massive promotional campaigns to exploit it. The effect on them of declining smoking in the West is being offset by ‘opportunities’ in the East. I doubt if they are, at the same time, trying to emphasise the adverse effects on health to the far eastern population. Still, I suppose it will keep the population down. The motor industry is also getting in on the act. There are large profits to be had in the short term, and unknown effects in the long term. Business as usual, you might say. What happens as the Chinese become more and more able to produce consumer goods for themselves on a large scale? With so much very cheap labour available (they have a potential industrial workforce in China of over 500 million) they can produce them much more cheaply than the west. That’s when ‘free trade’, ‘free enterprise’ and the opening up of markets would go out of the window, of course. On would go the import tariffs on cheap Chinese goods, exactly as happened when Japan’s economy expanded in the second half of the twentieth century. The threat from Japan forced the Western economies firstly to block Japanese goods, then to become more efficient to be able to compete, or finally to close down the industries that could not compete. This happened with the UK motor cycle industry, and the clothing industry, when competing with Asian imports. As a result, the UK’s textile industry, a driving force for the industrial revolution, has all but disappeared. We are giving the Chinese an industrial infrastructure that would support a war economy if necessary, whilst at the same time weakening our own. All in the name of free market economics, the big corporations are simply going where the greatest short term profit can be made. They are not accountable to national governments because of the ‘free market’ mentality that rules the world economy. In the not too distant future, China’s economy will be bigger than the USA’s. This is forecast, at present rates of growth, to be the year 2030 (Source: Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) Although there is a little more freedom of expression in China than there used to be, the Communist government still rules by decree. Voices raised in protest against development projects that threaten the environment are not always heard. We could have pollution problems similar to those that occurred in Communist Eastern Europe, but this time on an unimaginable scale. What happens if China got a similar level of ownership of private cars as the USA? What will be the effect on the environment? **

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Think of all the disruption that could be caused by the ‘death throes’ of western industries, as the USA and Europe adapt over a period of time to the introduction of service economies to replace the lost industries. Still, we’ve been doing that for the last forty years anyway. Where are our coal, iron, steel, shipbuilding, fishing and textile industries now? They are still there, but a fraction of the size they used to be. Our country is still relatively prosperous, but we cannot forget the hardships many have had to endure because it was broadly left to free market forces to make the adjustments. The gap between rich and poor has widened. These changes result in unemployment and industrial unrest. Why on earth is it all left to a ‘free’ market to sort out the mess? If it is inevitable, why not plan for its effects? No, I don’t mean by sticking tariffs on imported goods. I am talking about alleviating the suffering inflicted on innocent people by involuntary unemployment. But careful planning would be too sensible, wouldn’t it? Taxes would have to be much higher to help the less fortunate ones, and the organisations and people who still manage to make personal gain amidst it all would have to lower their profits and loosen their control. Throughout all of what has happened to change the structure of UK industry over the past thirty years, the Government have not intervened on any large scale, but have turned even more industries over to the mercy of the ‘free market’. One of the ways by which they have managed to mask the political effects of the statistics for unemployment is by re-classifying many unemployed people onto ‘incapacity benefit’ (which the present Government is now regretting). They hide the problem. ** ♦ Who benefits?  Big companies  Wealthy people  Everybody, or so we are told. Who suffers? • The poor • Less educated people • Health • The developing world • The planet • Everybody *********************************************************************

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‘Rip-off Britain’

or the ‘Get Rich Quick’ Society or the ‘Compensation Culture’ or ‘Sick Note Britain’. or ‘Money for Nothing’

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Just think. Is it really surprising that we have a ‘rip-off’ culture when we also see some truth in all of these other sayings? It is said that ‘there is no such thing as a free lunch’, and ‘you don’t get anything for nothing’ Why, then, do people behave as if they can make money easily, with minimal effort and to hell with the consequences? What happened to honesty, truth, fairness and ‘honourable’ business dealings? The ‘take care of number one’ attitude seems, since the Thatcher years, to have become quite an acceptable, if not an admirable way to be. Why, then, do we find it surprising and annoying if we are being constantly ‘ripped off’? A ‘dog-eat-dog’ attitude is the inevitable consequence of a political regime that praises the entrepreneurs without really questioning their methods. Success at all costs. If you are successful, you are almost a national hero. The word ‘Yuppie’ was coined in the 1980s to characterise ‘Young urban professional’ people, trying to be ‘upwardly mobile’. Their attitude is still with us. Ambition, greed, avarice, self interested social climbing, and selfish human nature are all given free rein. Just like Mrs Thatcher wanted. That way, everyone benefits in the long term. Or so the ‘conventional wisdom’ would have had us believe. So, why are we surprised? Why do we complain when car prices are higher than other countries? Why are we surprised that phone companies exploit us with extortionate mobile phone charges? Why do we complain about the level of taxation? Why do so many people want to leave the country for countries with a lower cost of living? They should try visiting Norway if they want to see a high cost of living. What do we complain about? ‘Respectable’ professional people and tradesmen seem to be exploiting us constantly. Solicitors seem to unnecessarily complicate proceedings. Car mechanics find faults that are not there. Tradesmen charge for jobs that are not needed, and do sub-standard jobs for inflated prices. More and more dentists are ‘going private’.

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Telecommunication companies exploit differences in mobile phone call rates, with little justification. Well established and respected financial institutions take advantage of us. Endowment mortgages and private pensions were sold without explaining the full implications of a slow down in the stock market. Insurance companies exploit the ‘small print’ to delay or deny payouts to deserving cases. The credit explosion has created a nation of debtors, many hopelessly in too deep. No matter, as long as the interest keeps flowing into the coffers of the finance companies. The usual reason given by trade organisations in this country for high prices is our ‘high cost-base’. Fuel costs and property costs in the ‘High Street’ are higher in the UK. Our market is smaller than the USA, and we have not got the same ‘economies of scale’. Large retail chains say they do not make excessive profits, these have been found to be ‘reasonable’. What is ‘reasonable’? How long is a piece of string? Whatever the reason for high prices, there is no doubt that companies will charge excessively high prices if they are allowed to get away with it. The high cost argument will never convince the common person that prices are fair, when they see the millions of pounds that are regularly paid out to company executives. It will also never convince anyone who knows about the principles of ‘marginal pricing’ and ‘marginal costing’. Though these are technical terms, you don’t have to be an accountant to understand them. It should make sense to anyone that, in a commercial business, the higher your turnover is, the higher your profit. This is a basic principle in retailing. If your price is lower than competitors, you can have a higher turnover and bigger profits because the low price attracts customers. Basically, once your sales have covered the costs of buying the goods, then any sales you make go towards covering your running costs. When these are covered, any more is pure profit If you don’t like figures, skip the next bit, and just believe me. Very simply, if a shop sells items that cost them £5, at £10 each and knows that it needs to sell 10 to break even, this means the cost of running their shop is £50. Buy 10 at £5 £50 Shop running costs £50 Total costs £100

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Sales 10 at £10 Profit

£100 £0 (break even)

If they then sell 11, they make £5 profit. Buy 11 at £5 £55 Shop running costs £50 Total costs £105 Sales 11 at £10 Profit

£110 £5

If they sell 15 items at £9 each (because customers are attracted by the lower price) they make £10 profit, or 100% more profit for less than 50% more sales. If you don’t believe this, work it out. Buy 15 at £5 £75 Shop running costs £50 Total costs £125 Sales 15 at £9 Profit

£135 £10

So why are prices in our shops not lower? What the shops are really trying to do is avoid is a ‘price war’. Between them, they want to control supply and demand to their mutual advantage. There is heavy competition on the ‘High Street’, or, to put it another way, a big ‘supply side’. So a ‘price war’, as it is dramatically described, should really be just part and parcel of the free market economy that they all crow so much about when government intervention to control them is threatened. Basically, they know that there are too many suppliers of too much merchandise, and a price war would put some out of business. So even if they don’t consciously get together to hold prices high (and this is possible), their actions would seem to suggest it. Each is frightened that they would be the one to suffer. But this is what should happen in a free market. If there is a good supply of goods of a particular kind, prices should fall or rise to match demand. The problem is that it is the large retailers with massive purchasing power that can survive and manipulate the prices. It’s the small supplier who suffers. It’s supply and demand, you see. We demand, and they supply. They omit to mention that they are not dealing in a free market. They control the markets. They control the

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prices. They control the demand. They control the supply. We pay them. They make their profits. Their management get their million pounds bonuses. The stock market booms. We get our returns on our insurance policies and pension funds that are invested in the stock market. What a ‘vicious circle’, if ever there was one. So, why complain? ** A couple of examples from a pharmaceutical company I worked for should be enough to get the flavour of what companies will get away with if they can. The government threatened to take two drugs off the list that was used for NHS purchases, saying that they were too expensive. These drugs were a considerable part of the company’s business. The company made a margin of over 90 percent on the drugs, so the actual cost of producing them was less than 10 percent of the price they charged the NHS! The company lobbied heavily at Westminster, doubtless involving many expensive lunches, and explained that the price had to be so high to justify the expenditure on past and future drugs research. Believe me, this was rubbish. They were in the process of closing a lot of their research facilities. Still, the company won, and the NHS and the public continued to be cheated. The same company manufactured a specialist canvas cleaner aimed at the camping market. They also sold a canvas shoe cleaner. They were exactly the same formula. I know, because I did the costings. It sold for three times the price in the specialist shop as the shoe cleaner sold for through other outlets. ** So, we live in a ‘get rich quick’ society. Fraud is almost a multi billion pound industry. We often hear of credit and debit card fraud, internet fraud, and big cases of embezzlement of company funds are well publicised. We regularly hear of ‘scams’ involving the taking of money from gullible people with the promise that they will make more money themselves. Benefit fraud is well publicised. There have been cases where people have continued to receive tens of thousands of pounds in benefits and compensation for injury or illness, and then found to have been perfectly fit for years. But there is more to fraud than these high profile cases. What about insurance fraud? How many people bend the truth to make claims? How many people, when clearly at fault in a car accident, try their hardest to pass the blame onto the other driver?

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‘The insurance companies get their profits. I pay my premiums . I’m going to lose my no-claims bonus. They are ready enough to refuse my claim using the small print. Why shouldn’t I get my own back?’ People seem to think that they are being some kind of latter day Robin Hood, taking from the rich insurance companies and giving to the poor (usually defined as themselves) You hear things said such as ‘They make a fortune anyway. They won’t miss this, and anyway, I’m fed up of being ripped off by them’ In your workplace, fraud does not have to be embezzlement of funds. It can be falsely claiming to be sick, claiming for hours not worked, or falsifying expense claims. ‘I work damned hard for a pittance with no perks. Why shouldn’t I make my own perks?’ I know. I have thought like this too. In the NHS, fraud is taken very seriously, and could serve as an example of how bad the situation has become. At the end of August 2002, 414 cases of potential fraud were being investigated, involving 470 people and nearly £19 million. The people included 82 GPs, 18 hospital doctors, 44 dentists, 43 opticians, 101 pharmacists and 106 other NHS employees, amongst others. Many of these cannot be said to be earning a pittance, with no perks. They are trusted ‘professional’ people. One optician claimed more than £750,000 for sight tests on non existent or dead people. How many people fraudulently claim exemption from prescription charges? Then, of course, we have tax avoidance (quite legal, as opposed to illegal tax evasion). Obscenely wealthy people, with more money than they will ever really need, use some of it to pay accountants, and manage to pay little or no tax by exploiting loopholes in the system. It’s quite legal, but in my opinion it’s immoral. Money, Money, Money! It becomes an obsession. How many times do we hear of a scramble for money amongst the relatives of a deceased person for a share of their estate? The funeral has barely finished before the arguments begin. You must have heard the saying, ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a lawsuit’! Families can be broken apart. Just over money. We live in a ‘quick buck’ culture. Look at the increase in litigation cases. Everybody wants compensation. Everyone wants to sue.

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If you go on a coaching holiday now, the more careful companies will not allow hot coffee to be carried whilst the coach is in motion. What one day would have been considered a pure accident is now pounced on as a way of making money. OK, so I would not like a hot cup of coffee spilling over me. But I would never have dreamed of saying it was negligence on behalf of the coach company. If the possibility of litigation did not exist, would the person on whom the coffee was spilled have ever thought about telling the person carrying the coffee not to do it? They had probably drunk cups of coffee themselves. When you are alighting from the coach now, some drivers are reluctant to offer a helping hand. Someone had sued for assault and won the case. Some schools have banned break time football games because they might result in an injury, for which there would be a claim for compensation. A council in the London area has banned the use of window boxes. They may fall off and hurt somebody. Hanging baskets in one area were removed from lampposts in case they fell on someone. Another council has banned Christmas lights from their streets. They are a possible fire risk or may fall on someone. Hospital consultants take the least risk route when performing operations, when a different approach might produce better results. They are afraid of a negligence lawsuit. Sadly, like many things, this trend has, like so many more before it, crossed the Atlantic Ocean from the USA. I don’t think that anyone could deny that the USA has a culture which encourages the ‘Get rich quick’ attitude. The nation was built on that principle. There are many stories about ridiculous American litigation cases. My favourite is the man who put his camper van onto automatic drive, then went to the back of the van to make a drink. He crashed, of course. Then he sued the manufacturers. He won his case, receiving a fortune in compensation. Apparently the makers of the camper van had not given instructions that if you put the van onto automatic, you should not leave the driving seat. The philosophy in the USA is built on the ‘American Dream’ and ‘Manifest Destiny’. They actually believe it all. They believe that everyone has the opportunity to get rich. It’s the ‘land of the free’. (That is, unless you are a Native American or an African American, or, for that matter, if you are not a WASP, a white Anglo-Saxon protestant). We are, sadly, becoming more like the USA .all the time. So why do we complain? We seem to have got what we wanted.

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The Bible says quite a lot about the misuse of wealth. One of these is that ‘"No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money’ (some versions say God and Mammon)’ Mammon was an ancient god of wealth. I think it can be said that, today, many people do worship wealth. Money is their god. The Bible also says that ‘The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil’ This is often misquoted as just ‘money is the root of all evil’. You see, money is not bad in itself. It is a necessary medium of exchange and unit of accounting. It is the love of money that is evil. How many people today can honestly say that they do not love the thought of a lot of money? Look at the popularity of the National Lottery and TV quiz shows like ‘Who wants to be a millionaire’. There would not be such an outcry about the liberalisation of gambling laws (November 2004) if people didn’t think that there would be a good supply of gamblers willing to give themselves problems. It’s ‘Get rich quick’ again. It’s ‘money for nothing’. ** Money becomes an obsession. We all know people who are, to put it kindly, careful with money. They see a bank balance getting bigger and bigger and want it to stay that way. The smallest expenditures are carefully scrutinised, using up a disproportionate amount of time and effort. These people are the ones who are never forthcoming when there is a round to buy at the bar, or they bring a cheap bottle of wine to a party, and then proceed to drink themselves silly with the spirits that are on offer. Of course, there is always the old maxim that says if you look after the pennies, the pounds look after themselves. Many a wealthy person started in this way, so the argument goes. This overlooks how they are thought of by the people they have taken advantage of, and not given back. Do they care? Maybe not, but how can they ever be sure they have true friends? Doubtless there will be many a lonely millionaire, surrounded by people, but still lonely. They miss out on the joy that there can be in giving, the pleasure gained from seeing a grateful, smiling face. They emphasise people’s ungratefulness, saying that it is foolish to be a ‘soft touch’. Life belongs to the strong. Only fools are kind. They don’t think that one day they may need the help of a good friend.

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They may not find one. Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’ is, of course, a classic story about such a person, Ebenezer Scrooge. The surname has passed into the language to describe people who are ‘careful’ with money. The story reminds us of our ultimate fate, that we can be gone and easily forgotten, and that we can’t take our money with us. ** ♦ Who benefits?  Unscrupulous people  Anyone who has the attitude, ‘I’m all right Jack’  Big companies  Wealthy people ♦ Who suffers?  Honest people  Honourable people  Generous people.  Poorer people  Gullible people *********************************************************************

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When did you last see your Father?

The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother. --Henry Ward Beecher

It is easier for a father to have children than for children to have a real father. -- Pope John XXIII

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Why are there so many absentee fathers who do not see their children? They are certainly not all the victims of vindictive ex-wives or partners. There may well be a good reason for the courts awarding sole custody to a mother. There are also some men who just don’t want to know. However, some absentee fathers may be genuine cases of hardship and distress, and there is certainly a case for reviewing access arrangements in some cases. The recent antics (in 2004) of ‘Fathers for Justice’ have brought this to the public’s attention, by disrupting public places, dressed as comic book ‘super heroes’. There should be a good case for heavy punishments for fathers who neglect their duties to their children. There are untold numbers of adults who have reached maturity without seeing their father for many years, some since early childhood, and some do not even know who their father is. How can these men do such a thing to their child? Only they know. They don’t realise how it affects the child, even into adulthood. Sometimes the only time a child will discuss how they feel about it is when they have grown up. We then sometimes find some very deep seated resentments and psychological problems. Men who ignore their responsibilities to their children, preferring their own interests, have no idea what they can be doing to someone’s life. It’s surely the ultimate selfish act. Let’s not forget that this applies to mothers too. Perhaps, when they are older, these absentee parents have deep regrets. Perhaps not. If they do, maybe that could be thought of as a suitable punishment. ** One of the best ways of speaking about a subject is from personal experience. I have been divorced and re-married. I consider myself a Christian. Christian teaching on divorce comes from the following: ‘But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman’ commits adultery’ Matthew chapter 5, verse 32 ‘I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery’. Matthew Chapter 19, verse 9 ‘Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery’. Mark chapter 10, verses 11, 12

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What is ‘marital unfaithfulness’? I think it can safely be said that it includes adultery. But, are you not also unfaithful to marriage vows if you desert a spouse, or if you are violently or psychologically abusive? This is a matter of interpretation. The third of Jesus’ sayings seems to have been used by parts of the church to totally deny a re-marriage after divorce. But it has to be borne in mind that at that time, Jewish law allowed a man to divorce his wife and re-marry. It was taken advantage of, and could sometimes have been for reasons of convenience, such as the need for a male heir. You can also imagine a situation when it was used as an excuse to change wives. Jesus is unquestionably saying that this is wrong, but, when used with the other sayings, is not denying the possibility of re-marriage for a wronged party. This, in all good sense, seems a fair situation. I believe that the thing to do, as I did, is to search yourself for any reasons why you may have been at fault, and could in any way be said to have contributed to your unfaithful spouse’s actions. Even then, adultery should not have been an option for either of you. What this teaching has done for me is to impress on me the seriousness of marriage. I believe in marriage, despite my experiences. I know that I have not always done everything as I should. When my first marriage broke up due to my wife’s adultery, we decided fairly amicably that the best arrangement for our four children was for them to stay at home with their mother whilst I moved out. We also divorced, again relatively amicably. We agreed a sum for maintenance, and I continued to pay half of the mortgage on the family home. I was quite distraught at the time. Possibly I did not think clearly enough, I don’t know, but anyway, it was done. My ex-wife’s man friend moved in with her and my children, amidst promises that, though he could never be the children’s father, he would do his best. The children are now responsible adults with children of their own, and I am now happily settled with another wife. This does not stop me thinking about how I could have done things differently. My present wife would be the first to tell me this, even though it would have meant that we would not now be together. It would have become intolerable to try to stay, so my leaving would still have happened. Perhaps what I should then have done, to be true to my beliefs and the concept of forgiveness, was to stay on my own and wait for the time when I might be able to go back. What did I do? I got together with another woman (for this purpose I will call her Jane). We had my children to stay every weekend, which was hard on Jane. I believed that we could maintain a family atmosphere for the children, and that this would keep them happy. I really did try to do this. It meant, on many occasions, swallowing my pride and putting up with more and more of my ex-wife’s unreasonable behaviour. She ‘held the aces’, you might say, by having custody of the children.

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Really, looking back and being honest with myself, it could be said that it was my needs I was fulfilling, not my children’s. They may have wished to see their Mum and Dad back together. I neglected my faith, partly as a reaction to the attitude of my church to my actions. I must have known deep down that I was being selfish. Oh, the power of self delusion when it is justifying our needs! On one occasion I did move back in with my ex wife, when it seemed that her relationship had ended. I broke up with Jane to do it. This seems harsh on Jane, maybe, but at the time it was a mutual decision, because she was finding my children difficult to cope with, and we also agreed that it was the ‘right’ thing to do. I soon found out that my ex-wife’s relationship had not finished, and I moved out again, into a one roomed flat. Then I met Jane by chance one morning in a dentist’s waiting room. It suddenly seemed to us like we were meant to be together, and so it began again. With the benefit of many years’ hindsight, it was once again a foolish thing to do, despite some very good times we had later, when Jane had grown closer to my children. I am no longer with Jane. Why am I telling you this? Partly because it shows that I am by no means perfect, and that I know it, but it’s also because of one little note from one of my children. It was written when I was trying to reconcile with her mother. My daughter was eleven years old at the time. It said ‘Dad, I am really glad that you and Mum are getting back together again.’ Then it concluded ‘I hope that you are really getting back together, because I will look silly now if you don’t.’ It was heartbreaking. But it didn’t stop me going off with Jane again. Years of difficulties followed for me. I sometimes thought the difficulties were a sort of punishment, I don’t know. Maybe it has all just been me being stupid. I have stayed as close to the children as I can, or so I believe. You see, I never really have asked them what they really, deep down, think about it all. We don’t seem to talk much about it. Am I afraid to be told I was wrong? Now, I would like to tell them that I am sorry for the way I handled mine and their lives. I can’t even find a way to do this. I am always being told that my children love me greatly, and I believe that they do, but there are still many regrets. Now they have children and relationship problems of their own.

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Why am I telling you this? Because it shows that however much we say to ourselves that we know what is best for children, in reality, we don’t know the first thing. We are selfishly disregarding the possible effect on their lives. Why? Because it is easy to do so. There is nothing to stop us, nothing to hold back the effects of our selfish human nature. We are not castigated for doing it, but are convinced by ‘modern’ ideas that it can’t be helped. It is not our fault. It happens. I do not wish to be too prescriptive, or too dogmatic. Of course, it does not follow that all children from ‘broken homes’ become mentally disturbed or delinquent, or that in every single case it is better to stay together. But we should always stop to think, in whose best interests are we really taking this action? Anguish and heartbreak can always leave a scar. According to many people, my daughter would have been happier and more ‘well adjusted’ (a popular phrase in these cases) if she saw the end of endless arguments between her parents, even if this meant that they had to split up. I had been told this at the time by an ‘expert’, a guidance counsellor, and I had believed it. It made it easier for me, because it was telling me that I was really doing the right thing. My daughter’s little note told me otherwise. *********************************************************************

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The Unborn

I've noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born. ~Ronald Reagan

I'm not sure that the abortion problem can be solved by legislation. I think it can only be solved through moral persuasion. Tony Campolo

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We are told that a human being in the womb up to a defined period of development is simply a piece of useless, disposable tissue. Material prosperity and the prevention of an ‘inconvenience’ is the priority. If you think this is exaggerated nonsense, look at the following figures: Reasons for abortion: Wants to postpone childbearing: 25.5% Cannot afford a baby: 21.3% Has relationship problem or partner does not want pregnancy: 14.1% Too young; parent(s) or other(s) object to pregnancy: 12.2% Having a child will disrupt education or job: 10.8% Wants no (more) children: 7.9% Risk to foetal health: 3.3% Risk to mother’s health: 2.8% Other: 2.1% [Bankole, Akinrinola; Singh, Susheela; Haas, Taylor. "Reasons Why Women Have Induced Abortions: Evidence from 27 Countries." International Family Planning Perspectives, 1998 So, if we exclude risks to health, and even if we classify ‘cannot afford a baby’ as an acceptable reason, what can be described as reasons of convenience account for 7 out of 10 abortions. Cases of rape or incest accounted for just 1.0% of abortions in the USA in 2000 [Alan Guttmacher Institute] In 2001, 1.31 million abortions took place in the USA [Alan Guttmacher Institute], that’s three and a half thousand per day. In 2004 there were 185,000 abortions in England and Wales, that’s nearly 500 per day. Put another way, if you know fifty women of child bearing age, then one of them is statistically likely to have an abortion. In England and Wales, 1,950 abortions (just over1%) were due to the risk that the child would be born handicapped, and less than a half a percent (about 700) were performed on girls of under 16 years old. So, in the USA and the UK, assuming that the reasons are in line with the percentages quoted above, it is possible that over a million abortions a year are for reasons of convenience, with over 120,000 of these in England and Wales. Again, I emphasise that, as a concession, I have included not being able to afford a child as a ‘valid’ reason for an abortion. If this is not included, 9 out of 10 abortions are for reasons of convenience, that’s over 160,000 in England and Wales alone, or over 400 a day!

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Supporters of abortion use rape, incest, possible handicap, age and health reasons as one of the justifications of their point of view. It doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny, does it? ** In England and Wales in 2003, 42% of abortions (over 76,000) were carried out after 10 weeks gestation, and 13% (nearly 24,000) were carried out at after 13 weeks. The beginning of the foetal period is said by many embryologists to occur eight weeks after fertilization. Before this point, the baby is an embryo. The embryo is by then nearly one and one-half inches long. Development during the foetal period consists of the maturation of structures formed during the embryonic period. The basic structure of the baby has already formed. The baby has a brain, can feel pain, and can feel vibrations. The baby has vague vision and hearing, and reactions that indicate intelligence. Is a baby a conscious being at this point? Yes, in my opinion. The baby at eight weeks is already a thinking, feeling human being. The legal limit for abortion in England and Wales is 24 weeks, but there are strong suggestions that it should be cut to 20 weeks. Still, it seems that a thinking, feeling human being can be killed, legally. ** Consider if the law was changed to take effect at midnight on a certain date, reducing the time limit for an abortion. Does this mean that before that time, a foetus that has been in the womb beyond the new limit was not a human being, but after that date it becomes one? What about those babies aborted on the day before the change? They were officially ‘non-human beings’ with no human rights, so it was supposedly fine to abort them. What if they had stayed in the womb for one more day, would they suddenly have become a human being? If the definition of the last possible date for termination is the point up to which the baby cannot survive outside the mother’s body, then as technology changes, this point is pushed further and further back. How can we use it as a way of deciding whether a foetus has human status for the purpose of legal rights to life? There could soon be reliable artificial wombs, and then would abortion be banned? Probably not. The criteria would no doubt be changed. From the point of conception, when the egg is fertilised by a sperm and becomes a zygote, inside it are a full set of genes that make up a totally individual human being. Should we not make all the effort we can to protect the rights of this creature? I know what you are saying. What about pregnancies brought about by rape or incest? What about pregnancies where the baby is known to be seriously handicapped? What about potential single mothers who are in a situation where they clearly could not cope?

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As we saw above, this cannot be used as an excuse for allowing all abortions, when we look at the small proportion of abortions that are for these reasons. However, throughout life we have to make decisions that are a choice between two evils, and we take the one that is in our opinion the lesser evil, even though it may be impossible to be one hundred percent sure that we are right. This is unavoidable. For example, we speak of a ‘justified war’. Sometimes, in desperate situations, decisions might have to be made to sacrifice the weaker to save the stronger, otherwise all might die. Given a choice in a life and death situation, who do you save, mother or child? So, the question must arise, when does a baby in a womb become such a desperate, extreme situation that it becomes justified to abort? This is a matter of judgement, and is not always as clear cut as it is allowed to be. The decision should not be taken lightly, but, considering the statistics, it would seem that sometimes it is being taken very lightly indeed. Imagine two people walking through a desert, and the water is running out. It is clear that, for one to have a chance to survive, one will have to be sacrificed. How do they choose? Look at these four possible scenarios: One kills the other and ensures their survival (or at least, prolongs it) They continue to share the water and both die. One volunteers to die, to save the other. They continue to share the water, and are saved by the rescue services Where abortion is concerned, we are carrying out scenario 1 on the list because we are afraid that number 2 will apply. We are afraid that if we let a child be born into poor circumstances, it will cause both mother and child to suffer. However, if we knew that there were rescue services available, would we do it? Where scenario 3 is concerned, we like to think that, like Warren Oates in the Antarctic, a noble sacrifice can be made. If we hear of such a sacrifice, we feel a sense of pride in the better side of human nature. So, why don’t we expect noble sacrifices on behalf of unborn children? With abortion, there is a lack of consideration of a noble sacrifice by the parents, and there is also insufficient provision for rescue, so it is no surprise at all that we are left with scenarios 1 and 2. It is like the stronger person in the desert situation saying ‘I want to survive. I don’t care if there is a chance that we can both survive, I don’t want to take the chance. You are weaker than me, and could drag us both down, so I’m making the decision on your behalf. Goodbye’.

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If it was recognised that a baby in the womb has human rights, there may be more consideration of sacrifice, more provision of services in society that would give adequate support to mothers in difficult situations, and better support to parents of handicapped children. The problem is that this would cost money. There is some support available, but never enough, so it is easier to abort. The baby cannot make the decision to sacrifice itself, so it has to be a situation of one human being taking a decision to end the life of another. This is usually called murder. But, of course, abortion is not murder, because the baby does not have human rights. That’s really convenient, isn’t it? But do we really believe it? ** The argument that a woman owns her own body and her own life, and should therefore be able to decide whether she wants to be affected by having a baby, seems to be put forward as a reason for allowing abortion. So, before a certain point at which human life is considered to begin, is the foetus or embryo to be considered some sort of parasite that the woman can simply eject in recognition of her rights to do what she wants to do with her body or her life? Most women will be aware that the sexual act can result in pregnancy. Contraception is available, as is the ‘morning after’ pill (complete with the controversy over whether it constitutes abortion). The responsibility for the consequences of sexual intercourse must start when it is taking place. I am a man, so, yes, you can say it is easy for me to say this. That does not affect the morality of the issues. About the morning after pill. If you consider a human life to start at conception, it is bad. If you don't, and if it decreases the possibility of unwanted pregnancies and reduces the necessity for any of the reasons given for a later abortion, then it is of some use. **

The following are some of the ways that a baby is terminated: In the early months, the D & C method is used. The wall of the uterus is scraped, and the baby is cut to pieces. Later in pregnancy, the saline method is used. Salt is injected into the amniotic fluid. It takes about an hour to kill, burning off the skin. A dead, shrivelled baby is delivered. If later still, a hysterotomy may be done. This is like a caesarean section, but the baby is allowed to die. ** A good question to ask yourself is, if your parents had been able to get abortions as easily as they are available today, would you be here to read these words? And finally, 162

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Imagine a woman who was pregnant, and had eight children already. Three of them were deaf, two were blind, one was mentally retarded, and the woman had syphilis. Would you recommend that she has an abortion? Yes? Then you would have just killed Beethoven.

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Love thy Neighbour, and ‘The Christmas Spirit’

I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbour. Do you know your next door neighbour? Mother Teresa

Christmas, children, is not a date. It is a state of mind. Mary Ellen Chase

I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. Charles Dickens

From a commercial point of view, if Christmas did not exist it would be necessary to invent it. Katharine Whitehorn

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Whatever happened to good neighbours? Whatever happened to ‘community spirit’? ‘When I was young we used to be able to leave our doors open. Neighbours just used to knock and come in.’ How often have you heard this? But it’s true! Neighbours helped each other. Nowadays locked doors are obligatory, and burglar alarms are nearly a necessity. Old, well established communities were broken up in the 1960s and 1970s, in the name of modernisation. People were shipped out to satellite estates and high rise blocks with no real concern for keeping neighbours together. Facilities for younger people lagged behind the housing developments. Communities became fragmented. The result was alienation and a high crime level. Too late, we now try to ’regenerate’ inner city areas, but what do we build? Luxury flats. Most of these are well out of the reach of the people who used to live in the area. It’s a property developer’s heaven. Generally speaking, in the last thirty or forty years, people have become more isolated from one another. They retreat into their own worlds, safe behind their doors. This is partly due to the individualism preached in the Thatcher years. It’s all a part of the concentration on self. Today, for all a lot of people know or care, their next door neighbour could have been lying dead on the floor for days. In a lot of cases, they would be pleased. The incidence of disputes between neighbours has multiplied rapidly. This could be due to more cases coming to the public’s knowledge, or to the explosion in litigation opportunities, lack of trust, or simply it’s the way people are nowadays. Whatever the reason for it, it is a sad trend. It’s probably due to the selfishness that now seems to be encouraged as almost a virtue. ‘Stand up for your rights! Yes, don’t be a ‘doormat’. To then turn this around and become an arrogant, selfish protector of your own interests, is taking it a bit far. Some of the disputes between neighbours seem avoidable, if only a little bit of reasonable behaviour could prevail.

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Some lead to anger, violence, and even, in extreme cases, to death. And they might just be over a boundary line where the actual land in dispute is virtually worthless, or even if it’s only a few inches. We had a boundary dispute once. We were, legally, perfectly entitled to leave our boundary fence where it was, but moved it over a foot, in the favour of our neighbour, in answer to a request that he needed a slightly wider path. The deeds were not clear, but the boundary had stood for more than twenty years, and we could have left it where it was. The law says that if a boundary stands for twelve years it is legally acceptable. We thought we were being reasonable. He didn’t. It wasn’t straight enough for him. He did not accept the legal position, had a solicitor send us a letter, and was then made to look slightly foolish when we replied to his solicitor with the facts. We heard no more about it. Why did he do this? What kind of satisfaction was he trying to get from hassling over a few inches of land? Still, from someone who seems to think that the piece of road outside his house is his exclusive property, it’s probably not surprising. If someone parks anywhere near his little parking space, he puts his car virtually bumper to bumper with the offending vehicle. He is mistaken if he thinks that this would deter anyone in the future. It’s probably quite the reverse. He then has no qualms about his visitors parking outside other houses, forcing the owners to park across the road. Why not be reasonable? A road is for the use of all road users. If there are no designated parking spaces, no one has a claim on a particular piece of road for parking. What is needed is to be reasonable, and then everyone can be satisfied. If my space is occupied, I try not to put my car in a space where I know someone parks, especially if they are disabled, or have young children who might have a road to cross. I park at the opposite side of the road. I don’t mind crossing a road or walking a few yards. It’s all very silly and unnecessary. People don’t seem to be reasonable any more, just selfish. ** .Whatever happened to the ‘Christmas Spirit’? Christmas is the time when we listen to lots of naff songs that we would not dream of listening to any other time. ‘Merry Christmas everybody’, Christmas Rapping’, ‘Santa got stuck down the chimney’, ‘Frosty the Snowman’, ‘Santa Baby’.

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These are just a few. But we do listen to them, so maybe we’ve not lost the ‘Christmas spirit’ altogether. What about the carols? We listen to them, we may even sing them, but we rarely think about the words we are singing. Try it one Christmas. Think about ‘O Come all Ye Faithful’, for example. ‘Very God, begotten not created’ We are singing that Jesus is the creator God Himself, yet when asked, many people do not fully understand that this is what Christianity says. Even if we disregard the religious significance of Christmas, most people would still be aware that Christmas is known as a time of ‘Goodwill’. When I was growing up, complete strangers regularly greeted each other at Christmastime with the ‘complements of the season’. Granted, some of it may have been just ‘going through the motions’, but if I can generalise, I could sense a real longing in people that the rest of the year could be lived in the same spirit of ‘Goodwill to all’. Yes, much of it may have been hypocritical, but at least we had a few days in the year that were respected by most people as a time when good feelings for your fellow man could prevail. The Christmas story was almost universally known and understood, and given a reasonably prominent place in the celebrations. What do we have now? It’s basically a festival of commercialism and excess, with very little religious significance. The minister at a church I once attended seriously suggested that the church should shun the traditional Christmas because of what it had become. He wanted to choose a different date. The very early Church did not establish Christ’s birthday as 25th December, let alone celebrate it. In December in the Holy Land, shepherds would probably not have been out in the fields, it was too cold. While we are on the subject, the Church was wrong with the year, too. Jesus was probably born in about 5 BC, a year or so before the death of King Herod. It seems that a better date for Christ’s birth would be somewhere in springtime 5BC. That would mean that we should have celebrated the Millennium in 1994/5. How silly, then, were those people who forecast Armageddon for January 1st 2000, on the basis that it was the Millennium! The true Millennium came, and went unnoticed, five years earlier. What does it really matter when we celebrate Jesus’ birth? It seems to me to have been very sensible of a Church that was wishing to convert people, to replace a pagan festival with a Christian one, or at least to give them an

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opportunity to choose. You get no prizes for saying which alternative is chosen by most people today. Christmas in the shops starts earlier every year. Many people wish it would all just go away It has been estimated that at least three billion pounds is wasted in this country every year on unwanted Christmas presents. This money could bring over twenty million people out of poverty. There are schemes that some people are actively considering, or taking part in already, whereby the money normally spent on Christmas presents is used to buy farm animals or useful items for the poor world. This is very praiseworthy, but will it catch on? ** ‘Christmas is for children. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?’ In a way, this is true. Why can’t we all be like children, wide eyed and amazed, our hearts filled with joy? On the other hand, maybe even this is a state of mind that has been created for commercial reasons, or simply to promote Walt Disney movies! We all know how expensive Christmas can be, and how difficult it is to avoid the spending where children are involved. We have lost the religious significance of Christmas, and with that we have lost the one time of the year that was put aside for a little thought about people other than ourselves. A hundred ‘Band Aid’ projects could not get that back on a long term basis. Things like Band Aid and their Christmas songs and fund raising are extremely worthy efforts but, as the name suggests, they are only temporary patches. If everyone selflessly served everyone else in the true ‘Christmas Spirit’, all year round, what a lovely place the world would be. No one seems to realise that if everyone behaved this way, all would be receiving as much as they gave. We would have a foretaste of Heaven. Many people don’t seem to understand the joy that can be found in giving and making someone happy. Instead, we have some people that can sometimes be selfless, and many more that are selfish. The selfish ones sit back and take but do not give back. We all know them, and the situation is always highlighted at a time like Christmas. ** If someone said that we only think of ourselves, what could be said in our defence?

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‘Just hang on a minute’, I hear you saying. ‘We are not all bad in this country. What about all of the charity events. We do think about other people. What about Band Aid, Children in Need and Comic Relief?’ Fine. Yes, we do have fund raising for which there is usually a good response, and of course, as I have said already, these events are, in themselves, very worthy attempts. There was a tremendous response to the Asian Tsunami disaster appeal (January 2005). However, does anyone ever ask why we need to hold special events, or wait until there is a disaster? Why can’t giving be on a regular, continuous basis? Without continuity, we can never expect the situations that give rise to the need for charity to be corrected on a long term basis. Indeed, we seem to sit back and accept that we just have to ‘bail them out’ when needed. Development of poor countries and the welfare of children need continuous attention, with the reasons for the problems being properly addressed. Straightaway, when a disaster strikes, people ask where God was at the time. Why didn’t God prevent it? There were 300,000 dead due to the Asian Tsunami disaster. Why didn’t God stop the Tsunami? This 300,000 is nothing compared to the millions that die every year from disease and starvation, and apart from occasional high profile media coverage, most of them are forgotten. Mass charity appeals come only with highly visible disasters. Much of the death in the world is preventable by us. We just know that we die, and we also know that if we were more caring and sharing on a regular basis, the despair and anguish of much death in the world would be easier to accept. The tsunami highlighted our fragility and vulnerability, and at the same time emphasised how poor these countries really are. It also showed that we can be compassionate. But it is contemptible to congratulate ourselves for our amazing response to a massive relief effort for a disaster, then to forget the starving millions in the rest of the world and just carry on in our relatively wealthy lifestyles. We can all pray that the response to this disaster will be the start of much more sharing and lead to ultimate equality for all of the people of the world. The problem is that this was the prayer of many people in 1984 and 1985, the years of ‘Band Aid’. It just did not happen. Giving should also be unconditional. When charity events are held, how many times do we see organisations and individuals being more than happy to be recognised for their contribution? It’s sometimes almost as if they want to show people how well they have done, and what good people they are. And the organisation gets some cheap publicity. Giving should be anonymous.

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In the Bible Jesus is recorded as saying the following, and whether you are religious or not, it makes sense. “Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honoured by men. I tell you the truth; they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. How many times have you heard people complain about regular nationwide fund raising events? In the workplace I’ve heard people saying it is a nuisance, and that you are put into the position that you have to contribute because it would be embarrassing not to. Is this genuine charitable giving? When tax breaks are given, we see companies giving to charities, then shouting it from the rooftops that they support a certain cause. Would they give if tax breaks did not exist? Is this genuine charitable giving? ** Some say that ‘Charity begins at home’, and that thinking about others is all very well, but they have enough to concern themselves with by taking care of their own family, let alone worrying about anyone else. To them, I have this to say: How many parents find themselves helping their children as much as they can, either financially or otherwise, and then realise that their children are ‘taking them for granted’? The children, whatever their age, sometimes seem to just take and not give back. Despite all of this, you will always help your children if they seem to need it. That is quite a natural thing for a parent to do. But why should this be an excuse to ignore the needs of others less fortunate than your children or yourself? You have probably heard it said that even the Devil takes care of his own. But that is easy. It’s much harder to take care of people you don’t know. ** I conclude this chapter with a note on the term ‘Love thy Neighbour’.

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This is more often than not taken to refer just to people living near us. This is not what it was intended for. When Jesus Christ spoke of this, he was referring to every other human being as being our neighbour. That means everyone on the planet. The problem is that if we can’t start with the people next door, and we are losing the meaning of Christmas, then what hope have we got? ** ♦ Who benefits?  Nobody ♦ Who suffers?  Everybody.

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The Demon drink?

The first thing in the human personality that dissolves in alcohol is dignity. Author Unknown

What's drinking? A mere pause from thinking! George Gordon, Lord Byron

Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal. Drugs, alcohol, or lies. Unable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort. Jean Cocteau

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We complain about ‘binge’ drinking problems, yet continue to open more and more city centre bars. Why? It’s in the name of free enterprise, and freedom of choice, of course. Oh, and there is a lot of money to be made. In October 2004 the government proposed a ‘clampdown’ on ‘binge-drinkers’. Have they forgotten the old offence of ‘Drunk and Disorderly’? Drink has always caused problems of violence with some people. They used to be arrested, put in the cells overnight, appeared at the magistrates’ court the following day, and then given a fine. Today, we probably just would not have enough cells, or Police to do the arresting. The government can’t seem to make the link between the increase in the supply and availability of alcohol and the increasing problems of violence and bad behaviour that we have in our city centres late at night. But they can’t interfere with free enterprise and directly restrict this availability, can they? They can only punish its customers. This seems to be a bit unfair, when most of those customers are not aware enough that ultimately, they are being manipulated for business profit. If you think this is not true, then ask yourself why the companies spend so much on advertising targeted at young people with high disposable income, and why the town centre prices are often considerably higher than elsewhere. Of course, many drinkers don’t get violent when drunk. Most are just trying to ‘have a good time’. Publicans at one time had a responsible attitude, and refused to sell to someone who, in their opinion, had had too much to drink. Not so in today’s City Centre bars. They wait until a problem arises, then the ‘bouncers’ eject the offender. By then it is too late, but it is no longer the Bar’s problem. The attractiveness of ‘alco-pops’, ‘happy hours’ and the mass advertising campaigns also contribute to the problems. As usually happens with most things, too much of a good thing leads to excesses. ** Throughout my working career, regular nights out have been organised from the offices I have worked in. At one job, we used to have an office night out for the slightest excuse. Once we even had a ‘moving do’, to celebrate moving from one office to another. I wonder how many people told their partners that it was a ‘leaving do’, because saying goodbye to a colleague sounded more like a good reason to celebrate? I know that, regretfully, I sometimes did.

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These nights out were, for most people, just an excuse to get out for an evening, and, for many, an opportunity to impress the opposite sex. Quite often, the drinking led to moral laxity. There were numerous ‘affairs’ that started with ‘innocent’ office nights out. If something that gives us pleasure is made freely available, you can guarantee that the temptation is too much for most of us. Let’s face it; we can have very little resistance to temptation when pleasure is involved. The people making money out of it all know this very well. Advertisements are based on this weakness. We are very familiar with the use of sex to sell products. Sex sells. If you combine an appeal to sexual instincts with the pleasures to be derived from drinking, you have a very potent cocktail (please excuse the pun). The effect on sexual behaviour of excessive drinking is clearly apparent. Suffice it to say that, if you have ever been into a town or city centre on a Friday night, the dress style of young females is clearly not intended to discourage sexual advances. Likewise, no sensible person can believe that a group of ‘lads’ are simply out to have a drink, a dance and a laugh. If anyone wanted a modern day vision of the Biblical ‘Babylon’, then it could well be these immodestly clad ‘ladettes’, staggering about the road with shirt-sleeved ‘lads’, with bad language and crude, blatant sexuality flowing freely. Sexually transmitted diseases are on the increase. We have the second largest rate of teen pregnancies in the world. Is this all surprising? Some say there is not enough education about safe sex. ‘Speak more freely about sex’, they say, ’and we can soon reduce the problems’. This is usually on the basis that sex is fine for young teenagers, as long as they are careful. This is at best naïve, and at worst, highly dangerous. No amount of sex education would ensure a pill is taken when it should be, or a condom used when teenagers are over eager, or their inhibitions and senses are clouded by too much alcohol. Sex becomes just another way of having fun, and the consequences follow. I like a ‘good time’. I like a drink. I have occasionally made a fool of myself. There is nothing wrong with that. I just don’t make a habit of it, do not like to lose control of myself completely, and am sure I am not controlled by the need to do it. Can the regular ‘Friday night townies’ say the same? Do they ever wonder what they look like?

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Do they ever stop to ask why they do it, apart from just giving the answer that they enjoy it, or they ‘have a laugh’, or ‘have a good time’? Do they ever consider that they might, like sheep, be being manipulated? ♦ Who benefits?  The large brewing organisations, franchising the growing chains of bars and marketing the alcoholic drinks.  Councillors and magistrates giving out licences. ♦ Who suffers? • No one, we are told. Everyone just has a ‘good time’. • But what about the social costs?      

Violence Sexual problems. Vandalism Alcoholism Healthcare Young lives ruined.

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When PC is not a Computer

‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me’

Political Correctness does not legislate tolerance, it only organises hatred Jaques Barzun

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Let’s face it; the book so far has been a bit on the serious side. We all need a distraction from the heavy subjects sometimes, even me. Unfortunately, some people will disagree with me when I say that what follows is not a serious subject. Don’t worry. I think it’s a hilarious subject, but that’s because I can laugh at the idiocy of much of it. I couldn’t write a book like this without getting something in about it. In Cardiff, at Christmas 2004, a choir was made to sing different words to a Christmas Carol. Instead of the traditional lyrics ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen', they were told to change the words to ‘God Rest Ye Merry People'. This was said to be ‘politically correct’. What causes this lunacy? What is ‘Political Correctness’? How far will it go? Here is a definition: A concept, originating in the USA, based on the observation that language contains words and phrases that express such prejudices as racism, sexism, and hostility to homosexuals; to avoid the slightest risk of giving offence, it is argued, extreme care must be taken to avoid all such phrases. Most reasonable people would accept that such words as "nigger," "yid," and "pansy" are offensive and should not be used. However, the extremes of political correctness can easily lend themselves to ridicule (e.g. by insisting on such terms as humankind and differently abled, to replace the traditional mankind and disabled). The term is now widely used in a pejorative sense to indicate overzealous liberal attitudes in general. Source: The Macmillan Encyclopaedia, 2001 Too right, it lends itself to ridicule! Will we be able to refer to ‘men’ and ‘women’, or just ‘persons’? Will we have to call a woman a ‘person with breasts’? Sorry. That’s sexist, and anyway, that would probably make me a woman too. It seems that the media now refers to actresses as actors, presumably to be seen not to discriminate between male and female. How, then, do we know when an actor is male or female? Do we say ‘female actor’? What a waste of breath or ink. Will we soon have to say ‘young female person’ instead of ‘girl’? A Welsh organisation recently (October 2004) issued instructions to its workers in the correct use of words in official correspondence. Amongst others, they were not allowed to use the words ‘manilla’ (envelopes), bulldozer and ‘nit-picking’, because they were terms originating from the days of slavery. ‘Bedlam’ was not allowed

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either, to describe a hectic situation, because it might offend people with mental health problems. How many people with mental health problems would know that Bedlam was a mental hospital anyway? I think this is taking ‘political correctness’ a teensy-weensy bit far, but that’s my opinion. The sad thing is that someone somewhere is paying people to come up with rules like this. Here are some more examples, many of which are, for some reason that escapes me, usually encouraged by local councils. Some are so ridiculous, that it is sometimes hard to distinguish the jocular from the genuine. 

Dustbin-men and road sweepers become Environmental Hygiene Technicians (Household), and Environmental Hygiene Technicians: (Roads and Highways).

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Blackboards are not allowed in classrooms. They have to be ‘chalkboards’, and might be green or even white (but can we call them white?). Come to think of it, can we call them green, because, perhaps, Kermit the Frog or a visiting Martian might be offended?

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A manhole becomes a ‘personnel access hole’

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Unemployed is ‘economically inactive’, or ‘between employment’.

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Overweight is ‘having an alternative body image’ or ‘gravitationally challenged’

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Black coffee is ‘coffee without milk’.

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Bald is ‘folically challenged’

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Short is ‘Vertically challenged’ or ‘of diminished stature’ (as in ‘Snow White and the Seven Persons of Diminished Stature’, I suppose!).

If I was ‘of diminished stature’, I can’t see why I would complain at being referred to as ‘short’. I am tall and thin. I sometimes used to wish I had a more muscular frame, but wouldn’t have objected to being called ‘lanky’ or ‘skinny’. It would not have upset me. Why does society have to insist on the desirability of a particular body shape, and at the same time stigmatise those that do not conform? That’s another story, but it is one that is related to the subjects this book is about. If it wasn’t for the media and the fashion industry exploiting human weaknesses, we would not be worrying as much about whether short, lanky or overweight people were offended by the terms used. See, I’m doing it too, I could have said ‘fat’. I’m sorry. ‘Overweight’ can offend too. Oh, all right then. ‘Gravitationally challenged’ it is then. How on earth are we going to stop children calling each other names? They have done this since time began. A child sees that adults are saying that certain terms are

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undesirable, and instantly they are supplied with more verbal missiles. Verbal bullying can be more damaging than physical bullying. The names become even more ‘naughty’, and kids welcome a chance to break the rules to see how far they can go. Now, they will really know which words to use. The victim will also be much more sensitive to the name calling. So, they grow up with a complex about the terms used, and the reason for PC has become self fulfilling. The PC people don’t consider this. They are being ‘modern’ and ‘enlightened’. Consider the use of slogans, with which persecuted people could fight back. ‘Glad to be gay’ is already a popular one. OK, so what about ‘Glad to be fat’? Oh, yes, but ‘gay’ is now acceptable, ‘fat’ is not. Still, it’s much more effective than ‘Glad to be gravitationally challenged’, ‘Glad to be overweight’, or ‘glad to be morbidly obese’ don’t you think? Where weight is concerned, the social stigma that people feel may well cause them to fight back in this way. The health problems that excess weight cause for us could be secondary to this, or ignored completely. We could have a nation of proud people with heart problems. Please don’t get me wrong. I would not dream of calling someone ‘fat’ if I thought it would offend them. Of course I wouldn’t. But the PC people want to take this discretion away from us. In so doing, they also create subjects of the name calling who are not encouraged to stand up for themselves. Britain is not called the ‘Nanny State’ for nothing. There are, of course, some terms that are historically well accepted as derogatory, and should therefore rightly be avoided. Please excuse me for quoting them, but ‘Nigger’, ‘Coon’, ‘Wog’, ‘Paki’ and ‘Kraut’ are clearly some of them. They have become derogatory because of the violence and enmity associated with them. What if African Americans had been fully integrated into US society, enjoying all the rights of ‘White Anglo Saxon Protestants’? Surely, to call someone a ‘negro’ (Spanish for black), and someone else a ‘WASP’, would just have been descriptive terms and not at all politically sensitive. Behind the façade of careful terminology there are serious problems that are not being solved. The PC people seem to think that if we are careful about what we say, the problems will go away. Ban a term, and it immediately becomes more powerful for abuse. It’s like a child being told not to swear, rather than being encouraged by example. They will swear, and have more fun doing it the more they are told it is wrong. The problem is that PC people do not seem to distinguish between terms that are relatively innocuous, and really offensive name calling. Their principle seems to be, ‘If in doubt, ban it’

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Would we in this country seriously object to being called ‘whingeing poms’ by the Australians and ‘limeys’ by the Americans? These might only be offensive if we were enemies of these countries. To be consistent, the PC people would presumably have us believe that we should object. So, if they think that even one person would be offended, they try to impose their opinion onto the rest of us. It’s almost totalitarian. Let’s go the whole hog and create George Orwell’s ‘Newspeak’ (words and phrases created by the authorities in his book ‘1984’, to indoctrinate the public into believing their lies). Maybe it’s started already. ** As a Christian, I am not offended if I am called a ‘Bible-basher’. At least it recognises that the Bible is important to me, and this is what I would tell the name-caller. I might also say that I don’t bash it, it cost me good money. Why on earth would I need someone to tell people that I should rather be called, perhaps, an ‘expounder of Biblical principles with a tendency to persistently irritate people’? I fully appreciate that if I was living in some Moslem countries, the very term ‘Christian’ would be a derogatory one. I would also be an ‘infidel’. Why should this annoy me? I should expect discrimination. My method of fighting this discrimination would not be to ask if I could be described in another way, or to demand that I should be allowed to live in defiance of local law and tradition. I should fight it by being a Christian in a Moslem society. What I was being called should not matter. I would not expect to live as though I was in England, but should abide by the Moslem country’s cultural traditions and way of life. I would certainly not expect to be able convert the country to my western cultural values, but would try to be integrated with theirs. I would still be a Christian. If Christianity and the Bible were banned as they sometimes are in Moslem countries, I should either stay to protest and take the consequences, or leave, making protests. Note that this would only be if it was banned, not just because I was being called names. Some Moslems come to this country and criticise the moral values of our society. Have they ever asked if their country, or themselves personally, are perfect? They can also make the mistake, and are sometimes encouraged by their leaders to do so, to believe that because our countries in the west are classified by them as ‘Christian’, then if the countries are morally corrupt, it follows that all Christians must be morally corrupt. I would not need to try to impose my cultural values if I lived in a Moslem country, because my Christianity is not tied closely to them. This is unlike Islam, where religion and ways of living and governing are very closely linked. Moslems hope for the country they live in to be culturally and governmentally Moslem as well as religiously Moslem. **

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Are there highly paid specialists in political correctness somewhere, thinking carefully about who may possibly be offended by a particular term? Nice work if you can get it. Why do we have to say ‘person’, anyway? Chairperson is the best example. Before someone objected, who ever assumed that a ‘chairman’ always had to be a man? It’s a title. So is ‘Matron’. If I was a nurse and got a job as a matron, I would not object to being called Matron. The very term brings to mind a certain standard of care, and if an alternative was used, it would just not be the same. It is the name that counts here. There may be a male term for Matron, I don’t know. Should it be ‘Patron’, or something? Would a neutral title be ‘Nursing Manager’? Matron is a female term. (Like ‘matriarch, it implies ‘mother’) Personally, I would not be so pedantic as to wish for an alternative. If you need a neutral alternative, this implies that you have a need to emphasise that you are a woman or a man, to be able to say that you disagree with the term because it is specifically masculine or feminine. Isn’t this itself a form of sexism? ** PC sometimes seems to me to be a cause to grab hold of by people wanting to be noticed. They say it’s their cause they want to publicise, but I have my doubts. What good does ridicule do them? I long to say to these people that, if they are to think and reason deeply about anything, there are more serious matters to consider in our world. Either that, or go out and do something more positive about the discrimination you are trying to prevent. Why don’t you campaign for truly equal opportunities in the workplace for ethnic minorities, and do something for better facilities for the disabled, or something? If you already do this, why don’t you put all of your energy into it, rather than devising terms that simply amuse or just annoy us? I suppose it is easier to sit in ivory towers, laying down rules about words, than to get ‘out on the streets’ and work towards ending discrimination. PC enthusiasts seem to think that if we are careful what we call people or say about them, it will change our attitudes to them and end discrimination. PC can be so selective, applied only where the loudest voice is heard, sometimes coming from people with nothing better to complain about, or no better argument to put forward. It is used as a weapon by people who may well have a just cause, such as women’s rights, but it sometimes holds that cause open to ridicule. It does not always further the cause. Sometimes it’s quite the opposite. PC is an example of a cause that is taken hold of as if it was critical to the future of the human race, and involvement in it gives people a feeling of importance. They are

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fighting for something ‘worthwhile’. It diverts their attention from the really important issues in life, the ones that might really challenge their lifestyles. ** It is certainly very important to have equal opportunities where sex, race, disability, age and sexuality are concerned, but after experiencing the following, I lost a little bit of faith in the sincerity of how the principle of equal opportunities is applied in practice. I went for a job interview at a city council. It was one of those interviews where you meet all of your rivals for the position. There were six candidates. One was a woman, another a gay man, another man only had one leg, the fourth was an Asian man, I was over forty five years old, and the final candidate was a woman already employed by the council. So, the possible areas of discrimination encompassed in that little interview room were sex, sexuality, disablement, race and age. It was like a situation comedy. The council employee got the job. Later, I spoke to someone I knew who worked at the council. They told me that the intention from the start had been to give the job to the internal candidate. The rest of the interviewees had been selected in order to help fulfil the council’s ‘commitment’ to equal opportunities. I was the statutory ‘oldie’. They had completely wasted the time of five people, just to top up their quotas for equal opportunities. ** There is a more serious side to the PC treatment of discrimination, of course. Two aspects of this are race and religious discrimination. As usual, however, in seeming to select particular areas for protection, the ‘positive discrimination’ effect comes in. One case that particularly niggled me was some years ago when I took part in a ‘March for Jesus’. Half a million Christians in towns and cities across the country took part in processions to celebrate Jesus. On the news that evening there was a piece about a handful of Moslems protesting in Leeds. There was nothing about the March for Jesus. Sikhs protesting about a stage play managed to have it cancelled (December 2004). Christians would probably have simply been told ‘you don’t have to watch it if you don’t want to’. TV programmes that Christians may find offensive are given the go-ahead, whilst similar ones criticising Islam or other religions would not have a chance of getting air time. In December 2004 Parliament was debating proposed legislation against ‘incitement to religious hatred’ that, it was said, could include the telling of jokes about religion.

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This interpretation was perhaps a little exaggerated, but illustrates the power of PC. It was considered by some that the legislation was primarily intended to protect Moslems and other Asian religions. Personally, I do not find jokes about Christianity offensive: I just accept them as inevitable. I even think that ridicule can sometimes be a disguised form of respect, albeit born out of ignorance. At least it recognises that Christianity exists. Perhaps, as a Christian, I should find jokes about Christianity offensive, and start standing up and complaining. But some jokes can be quite justified. There are quite a few things in Christianity that could justifiably be subject to satirical humour. One that comes to mind is one of the American approaches to ‘Televangelism’, a sort of ‘Praise the Lord and pass the credit card.’ The best humour is based on an element of truth, and if we can’t laugh at ourselves it is a sorry situation. But imagine if someone wanted to make a comedy programme about British Asians, including stereotypical characters and situations such as a family business with everyone living in the same house, with the girls as second class citizens and subject to arranged marriages. The PC people would be having palpitations. We have had such a series, but it was made by Asians. It was called 'Goodness Gracious Me'. Why was there no PC outcry? So, it seems to be fine to listen to jokes about other races when they make the jokes themselves .What a crazy situation! ‘Goodness Gracious Me’ was a good example of how ridiculous any criticism of all jokes about race or religion can be. Yes, there is a line to draw between good and bad taste, but where is the harm in a sketch such as the one about some Asians going out for an ‘English’. It was classic humour, parodying the sometimes disgusting behaviour and attitude of English people eating in Asian restaurants. Should the English be offended by this? Surely not, unless maybe you are a member of the British Nationalist Party. It was a very popular show. If I complain about jokes and offensive comments about Christianity, I am told I am taking it too seriously. If I don’t complain, I am condoning it and being weak and submissive. I am on a loser either way. If I did complain about jokes referring to Christians, what would complaining do? I would just be a ‘killjoy’. So why aren’t Moslems, Hindus, Sikhs or Buddhists considered as killjoys? It seems that they are allowed to take their religions seriously, and Christians are not. After all, Christianity is just a collection of fairy tales, isn’t it? Nobody really takes it seriously anymore, do they? Not many people seem to know that Islam respects the Old Testament as a sacred text, believes that Jesus existed and gives Him great respect as a prophet, as a forerunner to Mohammed. Jesus is known in the Quran (or Koran) as Isa. So, in some respects, if you ridicule Jesus, you are offending Moslems too. Jesus’ importance is based on Moslems saying that He forecast the coming of Mohammed. This is partly based on Jesus saying that: 183

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I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counsellor to be with you forever —the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. The Moslems say that the word used by the Christians for the counsellor (or ‘comforter’), ‘paraclete’, was a later addition by the Christians, and that originally it said ‘periclutos’, or ‘worthy of praise, a close translation of the Arabic ‘ahmad’, so it referred to Mohammed, the name which is translated as ‘the one who is praiseworthy’. However, the Greek Codex Vaticanus, in Rome, which was written before the time of Mohammed, uses ‘paraclete’. Christians say that it refers to the Holy Spirit. Recently (December 2004), a man vandalised an exhibit at Madame Tussauds. It was a nativity scene that used wax models of celebrities David and Victoria Beckham as Joseph and Mary, and Kylie Minogue as the Angel Gabriel. The man was annoyed at what he saw as the frivolous use of these celebrities in a religious tableau. The predictable response from many people was that they did not understand the fuss the man was making. Whatever you think about this, it must be said that if it had been a Moslem tableau, Madame Tussauds would not have created it in the first place ** Under the proposed legislation about incitement to religious hatred, how on earth could anyone try to persuade a member of another religion that their religion was better? What will happen to debates over religion? Will we have to be extremely careful about what we say? Would some of my comments in this book be considered offensive? Free discussion and comment about religion should be a basic human right, unless it can clearly be seen to threaten the lives of others by inciting extreme behaviour. We should be able to discuss religion without having to worry that what we believe to be a harmless statement suddenly becomes ‘offensive’. If we are told it is offensive, we should be able to behave like adults and apologise as part of the discussion process. We must then apologise for the unintended offence caused, not the belief. Many statements made by atheists about religion could be interpreted by religious people as offensive. Am I to say that I am deeply offended by atheist comments? Are we to stop people expressing their opinions? Without this, how could a believer make a sensible argument to try to convince a non-believer? Does the law imply that if you are a Moslem or a Christian, you will have to remain a Moslem or a Christian and never have the opportunity to hear about another religion? Proselytising (trying to convert a member of one belief to another) could become more difficult, if not impossible. Previously, people trying to convert others may have been just a nuisance. In future they may be committing a crime. 184

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** We are even encouraged nowadays to take Christ out of Christmas. In Scotland, in the name of religious political correctness, the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh banned a charity Christmas CD from distribution. It had mentioned the baby Jesus. A spokesman for the hospital said the ban was enforced because the CD might cause offence to non-Christians. The Scottish Parliament had also banned traditional Christmas cards. What happened to religious tolerance? Who is taking offence anyway? Why can’t we encourage a healthy public awareness and discussion of all religions? We are always saying there should be more public holidays. Why can’t we have public holidays for other religions' holy days? No, we place restrictions on our country's previously accepted 'national religion', to avoid offending minorities. Are these minorities afraid that Christ's message is more effective than theirs? If Allah is mentioned during Ramadan, should Christians complain? Why is it that Christianity should be singled out for persecution of this kind? In some Moslem countries the persecution of Christianity is much, much worse than anything Moslems experience in this country. If Moslems believe that Islam holds the truth, they should not worry; it would stand up to scrutiny when compared against all rivals. But no, comparative discussion of the merits of alternatives is not encouraged, for fear of people taking offence. So, if someone is brought up in an atheistic, secular background, are we to come to the point where they will never be presented with the opportunity to look at alternatives? Of course, atheists would be the first to say that it is wrong to bring children up ‘indoctrinated’ with the parents religion. Why then, should children be allowed to be brought up in a secular family and not be given religious alternatives? Are they trying to say that atheists would not ‘indoctrinate’ their children? It’s sometimes ‘one rule for you, another for me’. What happened to freedom of speech and expression? ** A popular idea nowadays is that all religions are just different ways to the same God. Some religions are closer to each other than others, and all religions hold some universal truths. However, a little bit of study would show that they are ultimately incompatible. This worldwide ‘umbrella’ or ‘ecumenical’ way of looking at religion is a nice idea, but can sometimes result in a mixture which waters down all contentious areas. This can leave us with a meaningless mish-mash that is basically no more than a humanist ‘lets all get together and everything will be better’ approach. It sounds good, but just does not work. Humans still have human nature.

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So, if one religion did hold the whole truth, it would be a sad day if people were discouraged from discovering it, or came to the conclusion that the truth can’t be found. How would we know which parts are true? Would they be the ones that don’t cause controversy or conflict? Would they be the parts that agree? Who will decide if they are true? So we are either asked to ignore the awkward differences and combine the bits that agree, or to ignore the differences and leave them all to it. Religions that teach different things could possibly all be wrong, but they definitely can’t all be right. It’s an atheist’s dream. The atheist just says ‘There you are, it just proves what I say, that God and religion are human creations. They can’t even agree amongst themselves, and it doesn’t seem to matter if they don’t. If there was a God, he wouldn’t confuse us.’ What a sad day it would be if people become even more reluctant to discuss religion than they are now. *********************************************************************

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Stop to Think

No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking. Voltaire

Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start again? Winnie the Pooh

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We might want to slow down to consider some of what we have covered so far. Is there really a rich/poor divide in our world today? Is the Pope a Catholic? In case you hadn’t noticed, I have, time and time again, touched on the theme of a rich/poor divide. Which side of this divide holds the reins of power? Another daft question, really. The wealthy people say everyone benefits from free enterprise and growth. They even seem to believe their own lies, which seems to me to be a sort of way of excusing themselves. But not everyone benefits from growth. To believe this is to fly in the face of all of the evidence around us in the world today. Has the economic growth over the last 20 years resulted in less poverty? No. There is more, much more, especially in the under-developed world. All the time the rich get richer, and the gap between rich and poor countries gets bigger. Average income of the richest 1% (50 million people) is more than the average income of the poorest 75% put together. (4 billion people) and the gap is growing. Today, the top 400 income earners in the U.S. make as much in a year as the entire population of the 20 poorest countries in Africa, with a population of millions. In 1970 the United Nations promised that the richer countries would increase their overseas development aid to 0.7% of their Gross National Product. The UK and the USA signed up to it. After 35 years, they still have not achieved this. Some of the smaller countries have, but the UK and the USA, amongst many others, have not. In 2005 the UK headed the ‘G8’ summit meetings (a meeting of the heads of the richest countries in the world). What a chance it was to use our influence for the better! In Dec 2004 the Chancellor of the Exchequer promised the UK public billions in tax savings. An election was coming up. Was it realistic to believe that we would take our chance to grab the reins at G8 and lead by example? It would need tax increases, or the diversion of resources from election winning issues that they are constantly talking about putting more money into. How can all of this be considered as consistent policy? But then, it is politicians we are talking about here. 0.7% of an average UK income of, say, £23000 p.a. is £161 per year, that’s £3.10 per week, or little more than a pint of beer, and assuming that the UK already gives half

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of its aid quota, the extra would be only an extra £1.60 per week, or about £80 per year. Increasing the share to 0.7% for the rich countries would add £130 billion a year to overseas aid. But the government has other, vote winning priorities. We have problems at home to sort out first, people say. At least we have enough food and a clean water supply (for the foreseeable future, that is). Millions across the world do not. We do not die from starvation and water borne diseases. They do. Usually it’s the children who die first. ** The problem is that the gap within the richer countries gets bigger too. So, even though the poorest in our country are many times better off than the poor in other countries, and our general standard of living is rising all the time, we have people saying: ‘Why should I give up my money for the poor? I am poor if you compare me with the ‘fat cats’ in this country. Why don’t they give more money? They can afford it. I can’t.’ They also say ‘There are rich people in those other countries. Why don’t they take care of their own? Why should we be expected to give?’ In the UK, every year the ‘Rich lists’ get bigger, in numbers and in wealth. Industrialists, entrepreneurs, pop music stars, sports stars, they are all there. Are their riches enough for them? Apparently they are not, because they continue to grow. Why? Do they really need it all? Here is the prevailing theory. Tax them, and we are ‘taking away incentives’. There would be no one to lead our growth, no ‘entrepreneurs’, those people who are so valuable to a growing economy. They would all move to the USA, where they can get richer without interference, and the USA and other countries would move further ahead. They are creating growth that benefits everybody, and to take that away would mean we are all poorer. This is the theory. Why, then, are inequalities getting greater by the day? It’s a very convenient theory if you are rich. It ensures that you stay rich. Then, if the poor people of your country are seeing steady improvements, it keeps them happy. They can ignore the fact that the gap between them and the rich people is growing, or just not be aware of it at all. They can try to ignore the gap between them and the poor of much of the world,

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which is also growing. It’s very convenient all round, but also incredibly selfish and short sighted. It ignores the poor. It forgets that the resources of the world are finite. They do not last for ever. It forgets that the poor countries might not sit back and accept the situation indefinitely. They are not strong enough to fight back as nations, so individuals take it on themselves to act. Terrorism is their only possible weapon. The basic cause is founded on desperation. "Terrorism is the war of the poor. War is the terrorism of the rich." Leon Uris, Trinity, a Novel of Ireland, 1976 Religious extremists take their opportunity. Their cause becomes a religious one. Why on earth should we be surprised at what is happening? This almost self-evident truth is kept from us, obscured behind ‘War on Terror’ propaganda. They are simply the ‘evil terrorists’, plying their particular brand of fanatic religious fundamentalism. There are organisations and individuals with a vested interest in the countries involved. They have interests in the exploitation of natural resources like oil, and also the levels of military spending that have to be maintained to exploit them. They keep the truth from us. We believe the lies, because it is convenient for us to do so. We have our comfortable standard of living, but it is based on lies. It might be said that we are so gullible it is untrue. *********************************************************************

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Lies.

Liars when they speak the truth are not believed Aristotle

Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it. Adolf Hitler

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You are told that you are free. What is freedom? Are you really free, or are you a puppet? Are you just a number? You are expected to conform, aren’t you? To ensure that you conform, you are persuaded to believe a lot of lies. You should know that your standard of living, the comfortable way of life in a developed country like ours, is supported by lies. There are certain things that we are never told. To know them might make us change our behaviour. We might start to complain. We might start to take part in demonstrations to show our opposition. Too much education is dangerous. We might start to think for ourselves for a change. ‘Don’t believe all you read in the newspapers’ is a well known comment. But somehow we do manage to believe it all. Why? Maybe it’s because it suits us to believe it. Maybe it’s because we are bombarded with it so much and so often. If we believed otherwise, we might have to change our lifestyles. Our standard of living might be affected. And it’s too much bother to take action. If we need to share the world’s resources with the poorer countries, somebody else can do it. Somebody else’s living standards can fall, not ours. ** The ‘Free enterprise’ lies. You may remember that I have already discussed ‘free enterprise’ and ‘free trade’ in an earlier chapter. We are told that freedom to compete and grow in a free market environment means continuing benefits for all. Entrepreneurial effort creates growth and wealth for all, doesn’t it? No. Not without intervention, it doesn’t, and we are moving further and further away from adequate state intervention all the time. Unfettered markets free from legislation and intervention simply allow the rampant exercise of greedy, selfish human nature. In line with the theories of Adam Smith in ‘The Wealth of Nations’, free trade in the eighteenth and nineteenth century brought growth and development. This is true, yes, but it was at the cost of heavy exploitation of the poorer countries and the poor within our country, with both economic and political imperialism. Then, we saw rampant greedy human nature at its worst. Many of today’s wealthy families that remain from

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those times were founded on the sweat and blood of colonial peoples and the poor that huddled into the slums of industrial towns. Many fortunes today are being created by the same methods, but this time the slums are in the big cities of the poorer countries. Today we have a commercial and economic version of the old empires, but they are no less exploitative. So, we should have free world markets. That is the current economic philosophy, a ‘Free to Choose’ world economic environment. However, powerful states and big companies do not practice what they preach. There is no such thing as free global markets. If a poor country threatens one of the USA’s industries, on go the import tariffs. Is this a free market? Big companies and powerful countries manipulate supply and demand to their own interest. Poor countries are exploited. And make no mistake about it, this exploitation kills. It kills on a very big scale. Look back at the chapter called ‘Business is Business’, if you still have doubts that this is the case. Ignoring this is as bad as condoning it. So, should our governments interfere and force us to be more equitable and less exploitative? They are constantly saying that this is their intention. State intervention would mean more taxation, no matter how it is looked at. We then say that there are rich people in these poor countries, so why not tax them instead? Good question. But how come a lot of them are rich when the majority of people are poor? How do you think the big companies maintain their influence in these countries? You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. It’s true. Believe me. But you can prove that ‘Free enterprise and free trade work well’, you say. ‘General living standards in most of the world now are much higher than they were 100 years ago’. But: Think about it. If Victorian wealth creation had continued without the intervention of religious conscience, philanthropic humanitarianism and the development of socialism and trade unions, inequalities would have been even worse now. Today we see very little evidence of any of these moderating influences. We are no longer a ‘Christian’ society, whose collective conscience can be touched by a stinging sermon. Philanthropy is weak, and socialism is no longer the force it was.

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There should, therefore, be much reason to be concerned for the future. It is little wonder that the gap between rich and poor is widening by the day. Try telling the starving millions of the world that living standards are higher for everybody. Try telling those with no clean water supplies that you are considering spending £5000 on cosmetic surgery, or you are wondering whether your next car will have air conditioning and a CD player, or you are wondering what your next ‘lifestyle accessory’ will be. What on earth is a ‘lifestyle accessory’, anyway? We are told that capitalism and free enterprise, and the opening of world markets, will benefit all, including the developing world. The far eastern financial collapse, the situation in post Communist Russia and the absolute poverty in most of Africa say otherwise. In Russia between 1993 and 1995, 20,000 out of 27,000 state enterprises were privatised, sold for about 10% of their true value. (New Internationalist, quoting from ‘Russia under Yeltsin and Putin, Boris Kagarlitskiy. In Russia, the number of people in ‘poverty’ rose from 14 million in 1989 to 147 million in 1998. Stephen Cohen, ‘Failed Crusade’. In Russia, some people are now wondering whether they were actually better off under Communism. Publicly owned industries were cheaply and quickly sold off in the name of private enterprise, creating a few very, very rich people. Most of the money that was made has left the country, along with its owners. The result is lots of very, very poor Russian people without the means to pay for the newly privatised essential services. The trouble is, some of the people exploiting the situation in this way are still looked on by western people as role models, something to aspire to, just because they have lots of money. Our values have, sadly, been corrupted somewhere along the way. ♦ Who benefits?  Unscrupulous individuals in the countries concerned  Western financial institutions.  Big companies and powerful states.  Wealthy people. ♦ Who suffers? • The poor. They die. • The environment. • The underdeveloped world.

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The World Bank/IMF Lie We are told that the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are helping the development of the poorer countries. Who benefits? The only long term development that has been assisted so far (over fifty years and more) is the wealth of the richer minority, the large corporations and the financial institutions. Who suffers? Poor people. The gap between rich and poor countries gets bigger. The Global Warming lie. For many years we have been told the lie that global warming is not a serious problem. Who commissioned much of the research that told us this? Largely the big oil companies. Who persuaded the USA to pull out of the Kyoto agreement on the burning of fossil fuels? Exxon Mobil, a big oil company that is also one of the biggest corporations in the world. I believe it is a fact that widespread deforestation and burning too many fossil fuels causes global warming. One thing is sure. Carbon Dioxide’s natural level in the atmosphere is 280 parts per million. In 1958 there were 315 parts per million Today there are 360 parts per million, nearly 29 percent higher than it should be! It is forecast that by 2099 there will be 560 parts per million, that is, twice the natural level! Can anyone seriously say that this is not going to have an effect on atmospheric conditions? Can anyone accurately forecast when and what these effects will be? Climatic conditions have changed in the past, but this has been naturally, over long periods of time. Rich vegetation all over the world caused a fall in temperature and we had an ice age. Much of the world being covered in ice, the vegetation reduced and temperatures rose, melting the ice. The vegetation returned, and so the process continued. We are now condensing processes that took thousands of years into a

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couple of centuries. The possible effect of dramatically changing carbon dioxide levels is not understood or is ignored. ** We all know that nuclear power is too dangerous. Everyone knows that there are alternatives: Hydrogen fuel cells to replace petrol, wind power, water power, and solar power are but four of them. We are told the lie that they are ‘uneconomic’. This really means that they will only be ‘uneconomic’ until the big energy companies, oil companies and car companies are in a position to control them, exploit them on a sufficient scale, and make a good profit. By then we will have had goodness knows how many more years of excessive carbon dioxide emissions. The Institute of Civil Engineers says that the UK could face power cuts in 20 years, and be dependent on foreign energy sources (Gas fields in Asia and Africa), unless alternatives are developed. To suggest that immediate state control and development of alternative energy production would be a sensible thing to do is totally wrong, of course. It’s against the principles of the free market, and of course taxation would have to rise. On the contrary, there is a current trend on a world wide scale towards privatisation of energy and water utilities. Madness! So we wait until ‘the market’ is ready, wasting more time and resources, making more pollution. Anyway, just think of the business opportunities in the future for disaster recovery services. A fortune to be made! The ‘Money brings happiness’ lie We are told the lie that material prosperity brings happiness. As we have already seen, a common misquote is: ‘Money is the root of all evil’ The actual biblical quotation is ‘The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil’ Paul’s 1st letter to Timothy, Chapter 6 verse 10 There is a big difference.

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Despite the common assertion that money does not guarantee happiness, we still behave as if it does. Wealth is still pursued blindly by the vast majority of people. The problem is that this attitude directly affects how we behave towards each other. ** The ‘Self-Fulfilment’ lie. We are told that ‘self-fulfilment’ is more important than a sense of responsibility for others. No, you say? Well why are there so many failed relationships? ‘You must fulfil yourself. If a relationship is not working, get out’ How many times do we hear this? Does anyone stop to think that the relationship might not be working in the first place because one or both of the partners have been conditioned to think in this way, and are simply being selfish? Is it really your ‘needs’ that you have at heart, and if someone does not meet up to the standards you expect of them, if they are not the ‘perfect’ person for you that you thought them to be, you reject them? You forget that they too have their own ‘needs’ and that they might be looking at you in the same way. You do not ‘meet them half way’. If both sides of a relationship are doing this, there is no chance. Whatever happened to self sacrificing love, patience and perseverance? One result of this is that the true happiness of parent/children relationships can be neglected. Money and self fulfilment become the priorities. Single parents are on the increase. Many are forced into this position, but some are voluntary, parents who choose to live this way. They then complain if they are not helped to ‘juggle work and childcare’. The sacrifice of self interest that used to be accepted as part of bringing up a child is replaced by the assumption of a right to continue to enjoy increasing living standards. In 2001, 6.4% of households in England were a lone parent with dependent children (2001 Census). That’s over one and a quarter million households, about one in every 16. This means that at least one and a half million children are living with only one parent. In the USA in 1998, 26% of families with children were headed by single parents. (U.S. Census Bureau)

We have gone too far. If all mothers (or fathers, if this is the choice of stay at home parent) with paid jobs were taken out of the labour market tomorrow, they could not be easily or quickly replaced. The lack of the income they earn, and the fall in spending, would create a massive downturn in the economy.

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Although it is rightly argued that there is still a long way to go, we have come so far along the road of sexual equality in the workplace that we could not turn back if we wanted to. So, I question whether the help given to working mothers is really primarily out of concern for their interests. The economy needs them, or rather, the producers of goods for surplus consumption need them. Big business needs them. And they need their income to maintain their lifestyle. Their income is a large chunk of the money going into keeping the economy rolling. More and more women are choosing to put off child bearing to concentrate on a career. One in five women has not had a baby by the time she is 40 years of age, and those with families are having fewer and fewer children. The number of 40-year-old women without children is now twice as high as it was 20 years ago while the number of women with larger families has halved over the same period. According to this latest report, two out of three women born in the 1970s have yet to have children. Two out of every five births are now outside marriage - up one third in 10 years. In 1977, just one in 10 babies was born outside marriage. The figures suggest that the UK will have to look towards immigration if the overall population is to grow. From BBC News, based on National Office of Statistics

In Jan 2004 it was announced that half of the women receiving fertility treatment are over forty. ** Is it surprising that there are so many single parents? We refuse to be tied down in faltering relationships, finding it much easier to pack our bags and go. Adultery is almost acceptable, or justifiable in our sex crazed society. I realise that there must be some justifiable grounds for breaking up, such as physical or mental abuse, but adultery should surely not be used as a way of making the break, a sort of way out. Sometimes when the physical side of a relationship gets a bit boring, people look elsewhere, behaving as if sex was the most important thing in their life. A couple of years into a relationship, they expect their sex lives to be as exciting as when they first met.

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Generally speaking, if men have an affair they seem to expect that they can get away with it and then return to their relationship. Women would seem to be more likely to want to end the current relationship if they have an affair. As relationships develop, we should not expect continuous ‘first-night’ euphoria. We quite naturally move continually in and out of different phases of a relationship. We can regain the initial excitement, but more often than not we are not willing to put in enough effort. You will have heard the statement ‘We just drifted apart’. If this happens, why couldn’t people ‘just drift together’ again, if they gave it enough time? No, they want instant gratification, even if it might be at the expense of their children’s mental well being. We no longer work hard at regaining the love that was once there, not realising that human love will always be imperfect. We ask too much. We want perfection, and forget human nature. When a relationship does not give us what we want, we give it all up, and throw it away like a toy we have become bored with. Many times this is for pure lust, not love. Then we quickly find that ‘the grass is never greener on the other side’, and so it begins again. Are the anguish, hatred, stress and despair caused by it all really worth it? Still, this kind of thing must be fashionable, because look how it helps to sell magazines, newspapers, and popular literature, and provides excellent subjects for dramatisation on film and TV. We are always easily convinced that it is the right thing to do. ‘Get out now, before it’s too late’ ‘Why stay in a relationship that is dying?’ ‘Life is too short’ ‘You deserve better’ Doesn’t your partner deserve better, too? Are you so perfect? There are two people involved, remember, not just you and your interests. You once committed yourself to your partner’s interests. Or did you? Marriage vows are no longer respected, and in many cases not entered into in the first place. Is this really a surprise? No commitment, and it is easier to get out, so the break-up of a relationship almost becomes a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’, and inevitable. England and Wales : 1989 Persons marrying per 1000 unmarried, age 16 and over Men 45 Women 38

1999

28 26

Source: Marriage divorce and adoption statistics - Series FM2 number 27.

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26.3% of adults over 16 in England in 2001 were divorced, widowed, separated or re-married. One in four adults. (2001 Census). In 1953 one in 20 children were born out of wedlock In 2003 it is two out of five. In 1953 1 in 20 people cohabited as couples prior to or without marriage. In 2003 7 out of 10 people did it. Even when children are involved, we give up far too easily. ‘It won’t affect them. They will be OK’, we say. How on earth do we know that? To ask a child whether it is better for them not to see their parents quarrelling, so therefore better for them that their parents split up, is the wrong time to ask. Try asking the question years later. There is usually a different answer, and in the meantime the result can be the creation of some very confused, disturbed and disillusioned people. These resentments and insecurities may stay under the surface, but they are always there, ready to affect our behaviour to others. I know that there will be many genuine cases where the break-up of a relationship is justified, but surely to goodness, the reasons for some are very much less so. I believe that there are advantages to be gained from the traditional two parent family that contribute to a child’s welfare and mental stability. At the very least, one full time parent can be said to be necessary. Are we really saying that nursery care is an adequate substitute? There is really no substitute for full time parental attention for the creation of a sense of security and the feeling of being loved and needed. It is no coincidence that more and more young people are choosing to live alone, and more and more relationships are breaking up. We are creating a society of totally self reliant loners, and this sense of ‘going it alone’ can come from a very early age. So can irresponsibility and lack of respect for authority. When we then realise that the ways of exercising discipline and authority in nurseries and schools are limited, and sometimes ineffective, can we really be surprised at our level of juvenile delinquency and disrespect for elders and authority? Of course, we are, as ever, good at excusing ourselves. ‘A child at a nursery learns ‘social skills’, and has a head start in education’, we say, and that must be a good thing. When there is plenty of clear evidence that these skills have given us a friendlier, loving society, I will eat my words. Social skills should start with the family, as they have for countless thousands of years. What children can never learn from a nursery is the love of a one to one relationship. What sort of society are we going to have in fifty years’ time? That’s the only time we will really find out the effects of what we are doing now. No manner of surveys trying 200

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to prove otherwise by asking the children now would ever find the truth. What a foolish experiment to make. It’s like playing Russian roulette with people’s minds and lives. How selfish it all is! Personally, I sometimes wonder whether it would have been easier, if I had been allowed, to have had years of boredom and mutual antagonism with the woman who mothered my children, than to have the years I had of stresses and heartache since the break up of the marriage. This is not, of course, to say that I do not love my present wife, or wish I had never met her. I am not saying that second or subsequent marriages are doomed where children are involved, but that they bring with them difficulties that would not be there if both partners were the parents of the same children. There can be grave problems that seem to be unavoidable when one member of a relationship is not the biological parent of the children involved, whether they live with the couple or not. They can only be overcome with a lot of hard work and understanding, by the power of love. None of us can love perfectly, so there will, more often than not, be problems. ‘You think more of your children than you do about me’ ‘You think more of your girlfriend/boyfriend than you do about us’ A parent can be subject to both of these accusations at the same time. How do you solve this? It’s impossible, unless the children are cut off completely. It does not matter how old they are. The cases of a child treating a step-parent as their real mother or father are wonderful examples with which to tell me I am wrong, but, in my experience at least, they are much rarer than the situations that cause problems. I had a conversation recently with a childhood friend who had been married for twenty six years. She was complaining about her son, in his twenties, who had a drug problem. I told her to count her blessings. How much harder it would be if her husband was not the father of her children, I told her. She could not disagree. The problem is that we do not think about this when we break up a relationship, or when we make our vows to love and support our new partner. We just do not realise how difficult it is going to be, no matter how much we say we are ready for it. It would be very sad if a new relationship was to fail because of these pressures, but it can be understandable. Having been through it all, advice about monogamy for life seems to be sound, even though it cannot always be achieved. When we see couples in their eighties and nineties, and they have sometimes been married for sixty years or more, how on earth do they do it? There is no way that they have not had their problems, just as we have, but they have overcome them. Today, we do not try, and we are, sadly, many times being advised not to.

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** More and more people are choosing to live on their own. More than 6.5 million people in Britain - about 28% of households - now live on their own, three times as many as 40 years ago. The independent Family Policy Studies Centre (FPSC) It is forecast that by 2010 there will be 16 million ‘singletons’ (Office of National Statistics) They do this to be able to do what they want, when they want, and spend what they want, when they want (usually on themselves). The down-side of this is an increase in loneliness and isolation, and a further nail in the coffin of the traditional family group. What happens when a crisis comes? Who do they turn to? When they do decide to settle down with a partner it is sometimes too late. They have lost (or never even acquired) the necessary one to one social skills needed to be able to ‘give and take’ as and when needed. In other words, they have become incurably selfish. Their relationship is doomed to failure. As soon as there is a problem they bale out. This trend has also contributed to the pressure on the housing market. More single house owners mean there are fewer houses available. The Hedonism lie We are told that the pursuit of pleasure is the way of finding happiness. Hedonism is a way of life. It’s the pursuit of pleasure for pleasure’s sake. This is nothing new. The writer of Ecclesiastes, in the Bible, said ‘There is nothing new under the sun’ Ancient Greek philosophers defined ‘the good’ as the maximum happiness, and anything that increased happiness was considered ‘good’. Sounds OK? Sounds like a good way to be? And, of course, there is nothing wrong with pleasure. I am not wanting, by any means, to be a killjoy, believe me. I enjoy pleasurable things as much as anyone. It’s natural that it sounds good, because it’s how we are conditioned to think nowadays.

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How often do you hear the following? •

‘Enjoy yourselves, that’s the main thing’

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‘Life’s too short to be miserable. Have a good time!’

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‘It doesn’t matter what you do as long as you don’t hurt anyone else.’

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‘Live for today. Let tomorrow take care of itself. That’s my philosophy!’

•

‘Live for the moment’

Of course, it goes without saying that there is always a plentiful supply of willing providers of pleasure, in its many, many forms. Our society does not have to concern itself with the basic needs of life. We don’t have to wonder where our water is going to come from. Food, shelter, warmth, and physical security are all taken for granted We can concentrate on what we believe to be the ‘finer’ things in life. The problem is that we seem to have lost our way when we try to say what these finer things are. ‘Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs’ attempts to show that human beings are motivated by unsatisfied needs, and as each level is satisfied, we move on to the next.. • • • • •

First come the physiological needs: air, water, food and sleep. Next are the safety needs: shelter, safe environment, job and finance. Then comes the Social needs: friendship, love, and group membership Next is Esteem: self respect, achievement, attention, reputation and recognition. Finally is ‘Self-Actualisation’. This is the search for truth, justice, wisdom and meaning in life.

We are a supposedly advanced society, but we have not even moved completely beyond the second on the list. We have homeless people, job insecurity, and financial insecurity for many people. We are also beginning to feel physically insecure, our lives at threat from terrorism. All of these cause the breakdown or lack of development of essential social needs, and lack of esteem. The reason we don’t progress is that our ‘consumer society’ leaves us never satisfied with the basic needs. We create more and more ‘needs’ for goods that are not essential. They are intended to make up for our failure to fulfil needs that are higher up the scale. ‘Comfort shopping’ is a good example of this.

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We spend all our time and resources trying to get hold of these things. But they never satisfy us. Little wonder that we have no time to progress properly up the scale. Little wonder, too, that depressive illnesses are on the increase. How on earth, under the circumstances, could we expect people to even think about the final needs on the list, and look for some sort of meaning in life? ** Why are we surprised that drug taking is on the increase? Drugs (including alcohol) can make us temporarily forget our troubles, and fool us into thinking that our higher needs are being fulfilled. ** If you were dying of thirst in a desert, the first drink of water would give you great pleasure and satisfaction. Along comes an ‘entrepreneur’, sensing a good business opportunity. ‘Want to buy some water?’ ‘Aaargh. Gurgle. Y..Y..Yes’ ‘How much are you willing to pay?’ You would, of course, be willing to pay a fortune for it if necessary. Once assured of life, any further drinks would be less satisfying, and less valuable. There is a ‘law of diminishing returns’ that applies here. Each subsequent drink returns less pleasure. Drinking beyond the needs for life would be for pleasure only. Alcoholic drinking is definitely for pleasure. We don’t need alcohol to live, but we consume it in very large amounts. We then need more and more each time to reach the same level of intoxication. Addiction can enslave us to the need for satisfaction. More and more. We want more and more. We are never satisfied. Our natural appetites are soon distorted and corrupted. When any level of any pleasure is reached and does not increase or be replaced by something better, then boredom sets in. We want more. The supply is never ending, and our demand is never satisfied. If this is freedom, then I am a giraffe. It is enslavement. We are slaves to our selves. It’s a cycle we cannot seem to break. And there are plenty of people willing to help us maintain it.

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Drinking Food Shopping Computer games Gambling Pornography Sex All can be addictive, habit forming or simply capable of doing to excess. We have to climb the housing ladder. Our new car has to be better than the last one. We must have the latest home entertainment equipment. Things always have to be bigger (or smaller), better, newer. And we do it because we can. We have the money to spend (or we are duped into believing we can afford a loan or a credit card balance), and there is always a never ending supply of providers of these pleasures, ready to take our money from us. We dream of surround-sound and conservatories. In Africa they dream of clean water and their next meal. Something wrong, somewhere, surely? The pursuit of pleasure for its own sake never ultimately satisfies. Much of humanity has not got the opportunity to pursue this pleasure. They are too busily occupied looking for the basic needs of life. Many die because they can’t find them. So, when we waste scarce resources meeting wants that will never really satisfy us, and wants that are not really needs, is this not truly a crime against humanity? You could say that we have their blood on our hands. This is not by deliberate commission of murder, but by our omission. We have omitted to discover and consider the effects of what we are doing. If you were a parent, and gave your two children twenty pounds to share, if the older one took nineteen pounds and gave the younger just one pound, would you accept the explanation that the older child ‘needed’ more money because he wanted to buy a new DVD player? He might say that the younger child can watch it too, but he would then expect to control its use. Can’t you see that this is what we do with the resources the world has been given? We say we ‘need’ the things we consume. Is it really fair?

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And more and more of what we want never fully satisfies us. We behave in the same way where sex is concerned. CS Lewis had a good way of explaining how a natural desire can become perverted. He asked us to imagine a room, in the centre of which is a table laden with appetising food. The food is covered over. The room is crowded with the audience, about to witness the spectacle of the food being slowly revealed, bit by bit, but deliberately saving the view of the best food until last. The audience sees the food just before the lights go out. (From ‘Mere Christianity’) Would this not seem a perverted form of a natural desire? Do I need to say more? Think of a striptease club. Sex can be considered by some to be the main thing in life, the very best experience one can have. CS Lewis used the following to illustrate his point. A man asked whether we have sex in Heaven. He could think of no greater pleasure. He was like the little boy who, when told that sex was life’s greatest pleasure, replied by asking whether you ate chocolate whilst having sex. Chocolate was the little boy’s idea of the greatest pleasure. As the old song says: ‘In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking, now Heaven knows! Anything goes!’ Quite true. I can remember getting very excited at my first look at a picture of a topless woman, when I was about ten years old. Pictures like that seemed very rare, and were therefore very pleasurable when experienced. Not so now. ‘Look at her. Boobs hanging out. Funny, eh?’ But sexually exciting? Perhaps not. Boring, even. You’ve seen it all before. It’s the law of diminishing returns again. More supply, less satisfaction. So, we need more, and different. It has to be stronger, harder, more readily available, or more perverted. Where does it end? Sex is a multi-billion dollar industry. Americans spend nearly 10 billion dollars a year on pornography of all kinds. Source: www.worldwideboxoffice.com

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It is estimated that 3 Billion dollars per year is spent on internet porn sites. There are said to be more than 100,000 web sites offering child pornography It has been estimated that 60% of all websites are sexual in nature There are lots of people willing to take advantage of the demand. But where does the demand come from? Advertisers know well that ‘sex sells’ when used in the promotion of a product. Sex itself is therefore guaranteed a market: it just needs an effective form of mass delivery. Enter satellite TV, Cable TV, videos, DVDs and the Internet. Sex should be the greatest physical expression of love that there is between two people, and the pleasure should be one that is shared to mutual satisfaction. Real, satisfying pleasure should come as a side effect of other actions, and not be sought for its own sake. For example, when we truly make love and we are each considering the needs of the other, we are both receiving as well as giving. What has the sex act become? Combined with binge drinking and the rise of the ‘lads and ladettes’ culture, and given almost a respectability by TV programmes such as ‘Sex and the City’, sex for pleasure’s sake has become a pursuit to be treated as a prize, a personal achievement, a notch on a bedpost. Yes, sex has always been sought in this way. But unquestionably, it’s never been like this on such an open, widespread scale. Sex is, in the process, relegated from its high, almost spiritual position, to just a very good way of having fun. The openness that is hailed as freedom from restriction results in de-valuation and ultimate dissatisfaction. It’s the law of diminishing returns again. The ‘Sex in the City’ woman yearns for a long term relationship. The trouble is, a long term relationship never seems to guarantee great sex for long enough, hence the vulnerability of relationships to infidelity. Freely available sex has ‘spoilt’ us. Good sex is considered to be a basic human right. Couples in long term relationships struggle to regain the old ‘spark’, and are constantly confronted by the media, bombarding them with how great sex should be. Is there really any wonder that people become frustrated? Sex in a long term monogamous relationship can be wonderful and fulfilling, with a lot of thought and work, but it’s becoming easier and easier and more and more acceptable to try it elsewhere. If you love someone, why shouldn’t you put effort in, or why shouldn’t you bear with them if they go cold for a time? Recently I heard a discussion on the radio about ‘open marriages’, where both partners accept the other’s infidelity. They say it strengthens their marriage to have the trust and honesty. One woman in an open marriage said that she loved her husband and no one else, and would spend 100% of the time with him if she could. I could not help wondering why she had then to spend nights away from her husband with other men. Crazy, mixed up people! Don’t they also think they might be a bit selfish, denying the other people the stable relationship that they might want? They 207

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look no further than their own gratification. They don’t think it through. And what if they fell in love with one of their casual partners? Yes, infidelity has always been with us, but has never been as acceptable in society as it is now. There are many consequences of the modern ‘sexual revolution’ that must be considered. • • • • • • • • • •

The spread of sexually transmitted diseases, not least AIDS. Teenage and unwanted pregnancies and abortions. Lack of respect. Lack of trust. Lack of self respect Broken relationships Broken hearts Anguish Distressed children Stress

How many people would really trust someone as a future long term partner if they have had sex with them on their first meeting? But what is left at the end of it all? What about when the sex has lost its spark? We are not youthful and attractive for ever. An empty hollow can be all that is left. There has to be something better. ‘Why can’t I find the right woman/man and settle down? Still, in the meantime, I’m having a good time!’ I am not a prude, by any means, but the beautiful human body has become a sex object, something to be exhibited and ogled at voyeuristically for personal pleasure. Pornography and the exploitation of the body is also nothing new, of course, but it is the widespread availability and acceptability of extreme versions that is new. Cable and satellite television, DVDs, videos, and the Internet make pornography accessible to a mass audience as never before. Naturally, greater exposure leads to diminishing returns in terms of pleasure, so different and more extreme versions are sought. Where do you think this will lead us? Do you think there is any connection between this ‘freedom’ and the numbers of people living alone? Is there a direct link between this and the ease of marriage and relationship break-ups?

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Sex that is considered for pleasure alone must lead to an increase in isolation and infidelity. ** ‘Lead us not into temptation’. When those words from the Bible were written (part of the ‘Lord’s Prayer’) there was no Internet, no DVDs. There were, however, religions that provided temple prostitution. Temptation was still there, just like the temptations we have. Our weakness in the face of temptation has always been with us. We have just found different ways to express and exploit it. We still equate the maximum pleasure with the ultimate good. We misunderstand what real pleasure is. We do not realise that it is to be found in true inner peace, and so it is no surprise that we seem to have no idea how to find it. Pleasure should be the means of travel, not the destination. Pleasure is found in the oases along the way. All you need is love? We believe the atheistic, over optimistic humanist lie that the human race is continually improving, and becoming more ‘civilised’. We are learning to get together and love each other. The Age of Aquarius is near. Yes, of course. Why didn’t I think of that? Excuse me. A third of the world’s population today is affected by war. That’s nearly 2 billion people. During the1990s alone, over 5 million people were killed in wars. Did anyone miss the twentieth Century? Estimated deaths by war and oppression during the 20th century: Genocide and tyranny (including intentional starvation: 83 million Military deaths in war: 42 million Civilian deaths in war: 19 million Human made famine and disaster (excludes intentional starvation,) 44 million Total 188 Million. Source: M White, Historical Atlas of the Twentieth Century, quoted in New Internationalist

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An example of man made disaster is the flooding in Bangladesh, which was caused by deforestation further inland A few names and places spring to mind here. Hitler Stalin Pol Pot, Cambodia Rwanda Idi Amin, Uganda Pinochet, Chile Bosnia Saddam Hussein, Iraq And this is just a few. There was so much devastation, untold millions of deaths, and so much evil. Now, in the twenty first century, we have the deliberate murder of children by terrorism. And what about the most advanced ‘civilised’ nation in the world? What about the ‘Land of the Free’? The total disinheritance of the indigenous American ‘Indians’ was only completed less than a hundred years ago. It had involved corruption, lies, massacres and atrocities. Their land was stolen from them. There is no other way of putting it. The African-American population in the USA are still largely second class, poor and persecuted. There were atrocities committed by American troops in Vietnam, and, even more recently, in Iraq. Even when confronted with the statistics for deaths in World War Two, we are not as shocked as we should be. We soon put them to the back of our mind again and get on with life. It was war, wasn’t it? Something had to be done about Hitler and the Japanese, didn’t it? Yes, certainly. More than fifty million dead. We forget that, behind the statistics of World War Two, there are countless horror stories of evil sadism, torture, rape, mass murder and horrible deaths. Babies were picked up by the feet and smashed against a wall in full view of their mothers. Whole populations of villages, women and children included, were herded into buildings and the building set on fire. Horrific medical experiments were carried out on human ‘guinea-pigs’, including children. Then there were machine-gun executions by the thousands, deliberate starving, forced slave labour, and, of course, the gas chambers. There are millions of stories to be told, if the victims could speak. 210

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One eye witness account from the war stays in my mind. In Lyon, on August 20th 1944, 100 French men and women were shot, and their bodies set on fire (inside a disused fort). An eye-witness, Max Payot, described what happened. ‘We saw a victim who had somehow survived. She came to a window on the south side and begged her executioners for pity. They answered her prayers by a rapid burst of gunfire. Riddled with bullets and affected by the intense heat. her face contorted into a fixed mask, like a vision of horror. The temperature was increasing and her face melted like wax until one could see her bones. At that moment she gave a nervous shudder and began to turn her decomposing head – what was left of it – from left to right, as if to condemn her executioners. In a final shudder, she pulled herself completely straight, and fell backwards.’ But the world is getting better, isn’t it? This was only sixty years ago. It was not just the Jews who suffered in World War Two. Prisoners of war and innocent civilians died in their millions. In the Soviet Union, millions of Soviet citizens died in mass migrations as part of Stalin’s ‘economic reconstruction’. Our children are sometimes not even told these facts about the twentieth century. They can be excluded from the curriculum. We are left with a vague belief that barbarism was only a mediaeval problem, and now we are more enlightened and civilised. Rubbish. ** In a recent survey, one in five sixteen year olds thought Britain had been conquered by the Germans, Spanish or Americans, and 12 percent said the Battle of Britain was fought in the Hundred Years War. Lack of real knowledge of history and its horrors allows them to swallow the humanist teachings that are presented as part of ‘Humanities’, or whatever it is called. Is it really hoped that this will make them better people, or make them pacifists and environmentalists when they grow to be our politicians of the future? They can watch movies and play video games depicting all sorts of violence, but we don’t show them the realities of past wars? Ludicrous! ** As recently happened in Iraq, our side was not entirely ‘squeaky-clean’ in World War Two. Even if you exclude the mass bombing of civilians and the destruction of whole

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German cities in firestorms, and the atomic bombs dropped on Japan, as being ‘necessary’, which is sometimes argued, there were still some individual cases of atrocities carried out by allied troops. And the ones we know about were only the ones that were discovered and punished. The same applies to the war in Vietnam. Then, today, in the ‘enlightened’ 21st Century, simply to secure oil supplies, ‘civilised’ countries can invade weaker ones, and many innocent lives are lost. Atrocities committed against helpless human beings are still a regular occurrence somewhere in the world, from slavery, torture, humiliation and death to rape and child abuse. Some are still being perpetrated on a large, organised scale against whole sections of populations. The human race is not getting better, and, left to its own devices, will never get better. Quite the reverse, I believe. The realisation will start to dawn that the ‘powers that be’ are more and more willing to commit their nations to war for control of ever diminishing resources. They have proved it. Wouldn’t it be more civilised to share the resources out amongst the whole human race on an equitable basis? No chance. Are we just going to ignore all of this until it happens? Of course, we can’t do anything about it, can we? It’s beyond our control. It’s in the hands of our governments and the ‘free markets’. So we just go on as normal, consuming as many of the world’s resources as we can get our hands on. ‘Live for today. Tomorrow will take care of itself.’ No, it will not. Not any more. ** None of the philosophies and beliefs that are becoming more popular nowadays, espousing something like ‘Let’s all get together with a collective consciousness, and we can have heaven on earth’, will ever convince me that things can get better. This is not a depressive, defeatist or a ‘Miserere’, self punishing attitude. It is pure realism, unlike the idealistic impossibilities that we are often presented with. Then again, perhaps it is best that we don’t get too concerned, and that we can be optimistic. It certainly is best for those that wish to keep us in ignorance of what is really going on.

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Some of the modern ‘togetherness’ approaches simply put a different ‘spin’ on ancient metaphysical, spiritual and philosophical systems and worldviews like Buddhism, repackaging them, and selling them as a new panacea for the world’s ills. Eastern religions and philosophies became very popular in the west in the nineteensixties. To some, they seemed to fit well with the ‘tune in, turn on, drop out’ culture of ‘the Summer of Love’ in 1967. They became trendy, and a fashionable way of fulfilling a spiritual need that we all have. Buddhism is an ancient religion that tries to describe the human condition, and, to be fair, it succeeds more than most. It says that all suffering and pain is caused by desires, and if we cease the desires we will cease the suffering. This at least admits that we are responsible for suffering, but does not hold us responsible for it to a higher being, a God. Pure Buddhism can be described as an atheist religion (some later versions of Buddhism involve a god or gods, and this is where it gets confusing). It’s a classic atheist stance, so this is why it is suited to ‘modern’ minds. It says that God cannot exist, because for God to exist, He must be good, so could not allow suffering. Suffering exists, so God cannot exist. It gives a correct diagnosis of the human condition and then finds a way of trying to explain it without God. I believe that the truths within Buddhism about human nature are inspired by God, as are the truths that are present in most religions. It is the treatment and cure it recommends that are derived from human attempts at a solution. Christianity says that it is our human nature that is the problem, but that we are responsible to one God for it. Suffering exists because God allows us free will to be human. Buddhism basically says that we are responsible to ourselves, and our punishment for not succeeding in ridding ourselves of desires is the cycle of death and re-birth, or reincarnation. Our next life is affected by the deeds of the previous life (this is Karma). Our aim is to achieve the release from ‘Self’ through enlightenment, and we are then free from this cycle. We are then part of an ultimate consciousness known as Nirvana. This seems to imply that we are no longer an individual, but a part of a whole. It seems as if the ultimate aim is to destroy your self, because the self creates suffering. But will my effort ever achieve full enlightenment, and would it be permanent? What is a clear definition of the standard I would have to attain to reach my goal? Would the slightest thought for me and my own selfish wants be a failure from which I would have to be doomed to another life on this world? Buddhism has very noble aims and tenets. It seeks perfection, but this does require a struggle with self, a constant striving. This striving implies that there is something to be overcome, and that to overcome desire does not come naturally. What we must ask ourselves by looking down deeply into ourselves, is whether we are truly capable of this enlightenment. Are we really capable of perfection? How would we know if we

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had reached it? Would we just be being fooled by misleading feelings of peace and calm? This is what we must ask ourselves if Buddhism is to be the true way to take. At its best, practitioners can be given a feeling of inner calm amidst a fast moving world, which, of course, is not entirely a bad thing. It could bring an element of peace to a troubled world. ** ‘It works for me’ This is the key phrase that tends to be used these days. Exactly. ‘For me.’ If you are in the habit of ‘re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic’, then you will welcome such a philosophy. It will work for you. You can remain blissfully unaware of the impending disaster, whilst you find the position that gives you the most temporary enjoyment, your ‘place in the sun’. ‘You can try it if you want, and I’m sure it will be good for you, but I’m OK with it anyway. I can’t force it on you, can I?’ Are we to wait and hope that everyone tries it? Then the world will be a better place? These philosophies have been around for thousands of years, as have the evils and ills of human nature that they have not cured, and will never cure. Human beings are not getting better. Love is all you need. Yes. But we cannot love enough. The ‘ignore it and it will go away’ lie that we tell ourselves. We sit back and ignore the inevitable. As the poorer majority world develops, there will be serious disputes over resources. What happens if China gets the same number of cars per head of the population as the USA? The big car manufacturers are doing their best at this very moment to move towards this situation. No one is stopping them, in fact it is quite the reverse, and they are being encouraged by western governments. But where will the fuel come from? A good strategic business opportunity here for hydrogen cell producers, eh? Unless they are Chinese, or don’t belong to one of the big oil companies, that is. Despite occasional well publicised attempts at creating awareness, we largely ignore the world’s poverty. We give our consciences a kick and act for a while, then get back to business. Our own business. We ignore any possible backlash in the future, when

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the poor countries might fight back in any way they can, and this could be terrorism. We then wonder why they do it. We expect them to sit back and take it indefinitely. We are told that terrorism is the enemy of mankind. Twenty years ago, the enemy was Communism. Strange, isn’t it, how they both happen to be threats to Capitalism. No one seems to stop to think why this opposition exists at all. Today’s terrorist can be tomorrow’s ‘freedom fighter’. It depends on your point of view. To the American Government, the Taliban in Afghanistan were at one time freedom fighters (note, the enemy at the time was Communism). When Soviet Communism collapsed, the Taliban became the enemy, and castigated as supporters of terrorism. An enemy is only an enemy when it threatens the oil supplies, so it seems. We are told of a religious fundamentalist plot to control the world. This disguises the real struggle for world domination that is taking place under our noses. Are we seriously to expect desperately poor people to sit back and accept the western capitalist control and exploitation of the world? What do we really expect these people to do, after more than a century of bleeding them dry for our benefit? We even seem to be so arrogant that we expect that we can continue to exploit them indefinitely, in the name of ‘free-market economics’ Without the natural resources of the rest of the world, the western economies could not have developed to today’s level. We have a high standard of living by having had control of those resources. The original owners of the resources are still poor. We have raped the world, and continue to do so. The very real death and hardship caused by economic exploitation is now being avenged by desperate people, using desperate measures. Are we then supposed to be amazed at the results? Yet we are expected to take part in a worldwide war on this evil of terrorism. I cannot by any means condone the terrorist methods, but I am not surprised at all. It’s a bit like this: Let’s say you kill a man’s family and steal his money. You then show total surprise that the man should hate you for it and want to kill you. You then enlist your family in a vendetta against the man, expecting your family to hate him for wanting to kill you. You don’t tell them you had stolen the money and killed his family. Your family supports you. Unfortunately, this means that your family are now also at risk. Your original crime is conveniently forgotten. The man simply becomes ‘Public Enemy Number One’.

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If religion comes in to it at all, it is used to give terrible actions a respectable veneer. If God says it’s OK, then why not? This can, of course, also provide a steady stream of martyrs ready to die for the cause. In most cases, religion itself does not cause a war. It is enlisted as a justification. Desperation can give rise to desperate measures. If ‘Democracy’ means exploitation of the minority by the majority, and voting for minority parties remains ineffective, then desperation can bring drastic action. At the moment, this is manifested as international terrorism. One day the terrorists could be your poor neighbours. The violence and crime we already see in poor areas would only need leaders and a clear objective to direct them into action. Of course, they too would then be branded as the evil ones. So, do our leaders lie to us? Surely we cannot deny that we can be lied to by our leaders. Many people still insist that we were fed a lot of lies to justify the war in Iraq When I speak of lies, I don’t mean, for example, whether or not the 2003 war in Iraq was justified by the ousting of an evil regime or not. That is open to debate in a country with ‘free speech’. I refer to the lack of real information about what might be the reason behind these sorts of decisions, and why. In the case of war in Iraq, it is believed by many people that the reason for war was the stability of oil supplies, and the profits to be made from their continuing use. Iraq is also an Islamic country. There have been, and still are, many more oppressive regimes in the world. They are not ousted by our armed forces. Why? That’s easy. They don’t have oil reserves beneath them, or they are not Islamic. We can all say that the motive for war in Iraq was the control of oil supplies, and be fairly sure that we are right, but do our governments admit it? We are kept in the dark as to any real facts linking the big oil companies to a major role in making the decision for war. We see the pieces, but are not allowed to piece together the whole. We are not told the full truth. If Exxon Mobil can influence the USA’s decision to pull out of the Kyoto agreement on world carbon dioxide emissions, then anything is possible. ExxonMobil, the biggest (oil company), is also the world's most powerful climate change sceptic. If the world's biggest purveyor of fossil fuels ever accepts openly that global warming is real, that may turn out to be more important to the planet than any Kyoto deal. The Economist, December 2001

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Kyoto was an international agreement made in December 1997, to limit the burning of fossil fuels like oil, giving nations targets to achieve. It is the uncontrolled use of fossil fuels that is alleged to be causing a warming of the earth’s temperature due to carbon dioxide emissions. These cause the ‘Greenhouse Effect’ and global warming. This warming can cause irreversible and destructive changes to the world’s climate. The USA accounts for 25% of the world’s carbon Dioxide emissions . Australia had also refused to sign, saying that there was no point until major polluter countries like the USA and China signed up. It reminds me of schoolboys arguing over who is in their team for a playground kick-about. Australia took their ball home. China and India were not included, considered to be developing economies that could not be expected to curb their emissions. In 2004 Russia signed the agreement, and in early 2005 the provisions came into effect. So, it’s taken over seven years to get it working in a limited way. Now I might be cynical, but that does not give me much confidence in the world’s leaders’ ability to protect our future. How many people are aware of what the USA’s refusal to ratify the agreement means, and, more importantly, why have they refused? They say that they did not want any Americans to lose their jobs. Basically, this means that the USA does not want a fall in its living standards. They also said that it is flawed by the absence of India and China. With the world’s future at stake, this is both short sighted and also very self-centred, coming from the country that consumes one third of the world’s resources but has only one twentieth of the world’s population. ‘I’m alright Jack’ is their attitude. One answer to their reluctance is easily found by looking at the USA’s roads. They are filled with. ‘gas-guzzling’ vehicles, using very cheap petrol. If you think about it, it might not be too extreme to call pulling out of the Kyoto agreement it a crime against the future of humanity. Yet, it’s not exactly shouted from the rooftops, is it? We can’t officially offend our friends across the Atlantic, can we? If it was made clear to us, then who would really listen, and then become angry enough to take action? If we were not careful, the action we take might affect our personal use of petrol, God forbid! Would we really want higher prices or petrol rationing? And oil is used in the production of countless products from cosmetics to plastics. Oil is needed to produce the plastics that are used in hydrogen, wind and solar power production, so we need oil to kick start the alternative technologies needed to replace it.

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If oil prices rise too much there is a world economic crisis, as happened in the 1970s. We might also develop a dislike for the USA, which, at the moment, is almost treason! Of course, Mr Bush would lose votes if something meant the American standard of living was to suffer in any way (unless he could find a way of ‘manipulating’ the vote, as it is alleged that he did the first time he was elected.). . It could also be that his ‘cronies’ in big business may suffer if there was a Democrat in the White House. Can’t have that, can we? But anyway, that nice Mr Bush told us that global warming is not really happening didn’t he? There was a news report on recently (December 2004) that spoke of the threat of global warming. A chap came on saying that global warming could actually improve the climate of some areas (this statement seems to overlook those unfortunate souls whose land might be underwater). Underneath was a caption. He was a representative of Exxon Mobil. It’s incredible. They must think we are idiots. Hmmm. Still, I suppose it’s a step forward from denying that it is happening. And so America’s love affair with the ‘gas guzzling’ SUVs and the two, three and even four car family, goes on, uninterrupted. They have a popular vehicle there, the ‘Hummer’, I believe it is called. It’s used for the usual things, commuting, school runs and shopping trips. Built like a tank, it achieves the heady heights of ten miles per gallon! Madness! Even if we are told these things, we don’t react. Instead we believe the lie that our excessive use of oil is unavoidable and quite natural, so maybe the war in Iraq couldn’t be avoided either, and we shrug it all off. Anyway, we got rid of Saddam Hussein, didn’t we? ** But think. What if there are powerful organisations and individuals whose interests are best served by keeping us thinking like this, in order to maintain their power and riches? Don’t you think they would do it if they could? Don’t you think that they would lie to us? If they had the power, wouldn’t they do it? What if they use the newspapers, TV and films (which they just happen to control or influence) and the educational process to support this suppression of free thinking?

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One thing is certain, if so much of our attention and newsprint can be devoted to the goings on at the TV ‘Big Brother’ house, and this can become a major subject of conversation for the British public, then it would not be too difficult for them to achieve such an objective. It’s the use of sensationalism to divert attention away from more mundane, but more important issues. If we call this entertainment and are happy with it, then if we are being exploited, we deserve it! Why do we find ‘Reality TV’ and watching the behaviour of others so fascinating? Maybe it’s because we ask ourselves how we would behave. We like to watch others, because we are interested in human nature. So why don’t we then get interested in our own human nature? A question we might ask ourselves is how we would react in the same situation, but why do we never ask ourselves what drives us to react in that way? If we are being manipulated by the power of the media, couldn’t we be said to be incredibly naïve, or even stupid to let them get away with it? At the very least we would be fools. Blind fools. ** Do we really believe, like the ‘American Dream’, that we are all free to make our fortune, like the Rockefellers of this world? Are we free to become multi-billionaires? Like the National Lottery, ‘It could be you!’ Come to think of it, you probably have more chance of winning the National Lottery than becoming a business billionaire. Less and less people are accumulating more and more of a proportion of the world’s wealth, and the process is accelerating. It could be said that we will believe anything if it promises us more wealth. I can be naïve sometimes, but I don’t want to be considered stupid. I don’t want to be oppressed by lies, even if I do have a relatively comfortable life. I might as well be oppressed by a tyrant like Saddam Hussein, because there is still someone or something dictating to me what to do and how to live, even though I might not be able to see it happening. I want to be free to think for myself. I don’t want to be brainwashed into believing what they want me to believe. I do have a mind of my own. If the powerful organisations and individuals I talk about also have the government of the day in their pockets, what can we do?

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Big business and government know that if we are reasonably satisfied, we will not interfere. This is how democracy works. Keep the majority happy, and you have control. But if we had democracy on a world wide scale, with a world government ‘democratically’ elected, then the majority would certainly NOT be happy. The majority world, or the developing countries (what used to be called the Third World), are definitely not happy, but the minority holds the power. So, whether they could actually do anything about it is another matter. The world as a whole is therefore NOT a democracy. It is a dictatorship of the wealthy and powerful minority, for the benefit of the wealthy and powerful minority, at the expense of the poor and weak majority. Our hypocritical leaders continue to pontificate on the virtues of democracy (more often than not, this is when it suits them to intervene in a ‘non-democratic’ country). When I refer to the dictatorship of the wealthy, it does not just mean the multibillionaires. It means all of us in the developed world. We are all relatively much wealthier than the countless millions who have to survive on les than one dollar per day. We let this happen by accepting the dictatorship over us by the wealthy in our own countries. When we look at the distribution of income in our countries, how 5 percent of the population can own 80 percent of the wealth, the same inequalities are there. Even though we are relatively comfortable, we still complain of ‘fat cat bosses’, but do nothing about it. And the gap between rich and poor is growing every day. The UK has the second highest child poverty rates in the European Union, at 16.2%. Only Italy is higher, at 19.2%. Even though the figures in Britain are shocking they are nowhere near the rates in the USA, where the relative child poverty rate measures 20.3% and rises to a massive 26.3% in New York. From BBC News In USA since 1979, the top 1% has had an increase of 157 percent in their income. The bottom 20 percent have effectively lost $100 a year. (Michael Moore, in his book, ‘Stupid White Men’) 40 million Americans have no health insurance. 35.5 million people in the USA live below the official poverty line.

The poor in our country and the USA could be said to be relatively well off compared to some parts of the world, but following accepted definitions of poverty the situation is clearly unacceptable in two of the richest countries in the world.

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The most commonly used way to measure poverty is based on incomes. A person is considered poor if his or her income level falls below some minimum level necessary to meet basic needs. This minimum level is usually called the "poverty line". What is necessary to satisfy basic needs varies across time and societies. Therefore, poverty lines vary in time and place, and each country uses lines which are appropriate to its level of development, societal norms and values. The World Bank Organisation Do we ever think that it might be our deliberate ignorance and avoidance of the realities of the world that keeps the wealthy in their riches, and getting richer every year? But then, if someone tries to tell us that something is wrong, and that we should do something about it, what do we do? We most often ignore them, because to react to what they are telling us would interfere with our comfortable lives. Basically, it’s because we would have to get up off our backsides and do something about it. And we continue to believe the lies. *********************************************************************

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Freedom and the Survival of the Fittest.

In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment. Charles Darwin

None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free. Goethe

That's free enterprise, friends: freedom to gamble, freedom to lose. And the great thing -- the truly democratic thing about it -- is that you don't even have to be a player to lose. Barbara Ehrenreich

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You may by now have begun to see that lots of what I am saying throughout these pages is closely related to a common cause. What is it? It is the selfish human nature that comes naturally to us when we are given freedom of choice. If we are free to choose ourselves before others, and we are actively or subconsciously encouraged to do it, we will very probably do so. When we consider that it is exactly this weakness that is exploited by commercial interests, then is it really ‘freedom’? Freedom is a strange thing. We have ‘Free Will’. We fight wars in the name of freedom. We are ‘Free to choose’. This is the prevailing philosophy, the ‘conventional wisdom’. BUT: Is it really freedom? How easy is it for us to choose an alternative lifestyle and maintain it? Have you tried ‘dropping out’ recently? Try to be a ‘traveller’ in our country. You would soon feel the pressure to conform. How ‘free to choose’ are the homeless and the poor? We have slavery and captivity, not freedom. We are slaves to ‘the system’, and captives of our own human nature. We put on our own chains, and throw away the key. We are manipulated by a system that ensures that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. We are ‘slaves to the grind’. We believe the lies. Even science, through evolutionary theory, reinforces this lie. It also implies that we are not really free to make a conscious choice. We are just reacting to our animal survival instincts. What a depressing thought. **

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The Survival of the Fittest The freedom we are supposed to have is consistent with the evolutionary view of the world. Everything should be left alone to develop by natural selection. It seems to be assumed that, if left alone, life will develop in a positive way, making improvements by weeding out the weaker elements. This is often referred to as ‘the survival of the fittest’, and is also at the root of all free market theories. Leave it alone and it will get better, naturally. The actual phrase ‘survival of the fittest’ came from comments made by Herbert Spencer in the nineteenth century. It is a common misconception that the phrase originates from Darwin’s theories of evolution, but it does fit nicely with it, and Darwin did acknowledge it. It was in relation to economic issues, not biological, and it came as a 'scientific' justification of wealthy people in the presence of mass poverty. He said 'I am simply carrying out the views of Mr Darwin in their application to the human race.........those who do advance..........must be the select of their generation'. Herbert Spencer So, if you are successful, you must be better than others who fail. The Theory of Evolution has taken such a hold in the popular mind that it is now sometimes assumed that everything in life and the universe is subject to its working. There is a reason for this ease of acceptance. ‘Look after Number One’ is the cry. ‘No one else will do it for you’ Natural selection and the ‘Survival of the Fittest’ is a convenient justification for this attitude. It is ‘only natural’ to behave this way. Is it really a good thing to apply ‘the survival of the fittest’ principle to our world today? But this is what we are encouraged to do. But a better part of our nature fights against it. Why? So, when a handicapped child is born, do we practice infanticide? No. We know instinctively that it would be wrong, and yet, if we apply the theory, to allow imperfections to persist in the gene pool is not in the long term interests of the human race. Following evolutionary theory, all the Nazis were doing when they experimented with genetic engineering was discovering how it works, and helping the process along a little. The frightening prospect is that the knowledge and technology now exists to be able to develop and apply such theories.

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Presumably, if the ultimate goal for the human species is the production of a superior race, free from imperfections, then to help it along would not be a bad thing. I don’t think so, somehow. Do you? Do we consciously say to ourselves that we should allow mass starvation in order to keep the population down, leaving more resources for the survivors? No. We know it is wrong, yet according to the ‘survival of the fittest’, it would be both sensible and natural. Most supporters of evolutionary theory would certainly not advocate such extreme views, yet to deny them is to deny the theory. Some evolutionists then try to say that compassion is also a natural evolutionary development, that is for the good of the human race, and that it will lead to more sharing out of resources in the long term, etc, etc. They will never admit that human beings are different from other animals in any way. That would suggest the possibility of Divine intervention. It would bring God into it, and intangible things like love. In evolutionary theory, nothing is allowed to be intangible. All requires a scientific explanation. Even love. Do we only mourn the death of a partner or a blood relative because it means there is less chance of the continuation of our personal gene pool? This is what evolutionary theory would say if you accept its explanation of what love is. Love is a sort of aid to successful procreation and nurturing of the young, it says. How does this explain homosexual love (and I am not referring to the sex act)? Surely the theories should define it as a perversion of the process of evolution, and we can’t say that, can we? I don’t mean that a gay couple are not capable of bringing up a child. However, homosexual love, left to itself, cannot contribute to procreation. So, in terms of evolutionary theory, if it is encouraged to flourish it is detrimental to the survival of the species.11 Some evolutionary theory limits all of the range of human emotional experience to the workings of a self perpetuating machine. Are you really just a machine? If you are, it would not really matter in the great scheme of things if I put a bullet in your head tomorrow. It would be quite a sensible act on my part if you were not a part of my immediate gene pool. It’s one less person to use the world’s resources, one less to compete with my superior gene pool. ** 11

As for my opinion on the Christian stance on homosexuality, I have come to realise that the case against homosexuality that is put forward by some fundamentalist Christians is not as clear cut as it seems. There is too much condemnation and not enough understanding, compassion, or detailed examination of what the Bible says. I simply find it sad that many gays feel they have to blatantly promote, express and flaunt their sexuality and lifestyle in order to be recognised. For me, this is just as offensive and unnecessary as the blatant expression in public of heterosexuality. To discuss this in detail would fill another chapter.

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There is an evolutionist theory that tries to define human nature in evolutionary terms, saying that inequality is unjust, but that its basis is social instincts of primitive human beings. These instincts then evolved into co-operation between humans in small hunter-gatherer societies that shared resources. Their economic structure was based on immediate consumption, with no surplus. But did these hunter-gatherer societies always share? Were there no jealousies, envy or stealing? The theory says that because of this, modern humans have been ‘designed’ by evolution to share, through long ages of hunter-gatherer societies. The instincts developed over this long period did not allow dominance, and were satisfied by sharing of resources. The problem is, it says, that the older instincts (those that promoted domination, status seeking and protection of our closest family at the expense of others) came back to the fore as soon as soon as societies began to produce an economic surplus. Apparently, we have not had time to evolve a new approach in the relatively short time (several thousand years) that we have been able to produce a surplus. There therefore remains a sense of injustice when we see inequality. So, instincts from the days before we were truly human create inequality. Early humans shared everything, because they hunted and gathered on a basis of immediate need. When we began to create a surplus, dominant individuals took more than their share and became the powerful elite, driven by pre-human instincts. We have not had enough time to lose the need for sharing that we acquired in the early human ‘huntergatherer’ days, so we are left with a feeling that inequality is wrong. The theory says it is not sure whether evolution will make us get better and start to share again. It says that it is more likely that we could eventually become accustomed to inequality, which implies that we will not care about its effects. I would say that we are nearly like that now. This is because it is assumed that evolution, by natural selection, brings the victory of the strongest over the weakest, and sharing can weaken your personal prospects. What a bleak, sad future in prospect for the human race if this is true.. The primitive instincts win through. So, humans will be naturally selfish. We are like this already, and always have been. However we look at this, the theory says that to share goes against the natural inclinations of human nature. It says that natural selection has a tendency to prefer behaviour that ensures survival. This behaviour would include anti social activities such as killing, stealing and cheating, but they could, given suitable circumstances, be defined as ‘good’, because they ensure survival. The idea is that the humans that are not trying to achieve a higher status would, by the process of natural selection, leave fewer descendants. This is by the elimination from the gene pool of those genes held by the people who are contented with a lower social status. In effect, less ambitious humans are weaker.

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So, poor people would eventually be ‘eliminated from the gene pool’, would they? We are simply ‘weeding out’ the weaker ones, and that has to be good for the human race, doesn’t it? It’s their fault, after all, isn’t it, for not being strong enough to achieve our status What a selfish, depressing and hopeless theory. It’s also very convenient. Rich people are ‘stronger’, which implies that they are somehow better. Self congratulations all round, eh? Somewhere in the distant future, are we going to have a race of dominant superhumans, the weaker ones having died out? Of course, they would be happy with that situation, wouldn’t they? Some would still be relatively weak in relation to the others. The process would never end. It would probably never be allowed to end, because we would more likely have wiped ourselves from the face of the earth first. So, why complain if we just let the poor die of starvation? Better still, why don’t we put them out of their misery with mass extermination? We are just animals, after all, and that’s what we do with suffering animals isn’t it? We could speed up the process of evolution a little. Oh dear. I’d better not put these ideas into their heads, had I? They might do it. In some countries it actually takes place. It’s known as ‘ethnic cleansing’. Eugenics It can also be related to the science of ‘Eugenics’, or ‘Genetic Engineering’. Eugenics was a popular area of study in the early 20th Century, before we had our current knowledge of the human genome. It was said that the problems of society could be corrected by selective breeding, by weeding out the inherited traits that contributed to lawlessness and limited intelligence, on the basis that ‘nature’ played a greater part than ‘nurture’. Heredity was stronger than environment. This totally disregarded factors such as educational opportunity, inequality of income and involuntary unemployment. It was thought that we could develop a superior race. Laws were passed under which thousands of ‘sub-standard’ citizens were involuntarily sterilised. It would have been a short step from this to racial prejudice and ethnic cleansing. This was not Nazi Germany. It happened first in the USA. Negative public reaction to it came only with the reaction against the rise of Nazism in Europe. In the late 20th Century the emphasis was placed on changing the environment to improve society. Many are saying that this has failed, and are again looking to Eugenics. The technology now exists to be able to identify and delete ‘regressive’ genes from the human genome. There are massive profits to be made. It is said that the knowledge will bring many benefits in the way of better health, but what is there to stop its use for cosmetic purposes, when commercial interests and vanity are given free play? Who is to say that the Eugenicists who speak of the need for a ‘better’ human race will not be given their opportunity again? Who is to define which genes are ‘regressive’? It would be in the hands of the rich and the powerful to do as they wish.

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That the powerful might act to eliminate the weak might sound ridiculous, but surely it is logical if we accept evolutionary theory as it is presented. The strong have the power to do it. But it is still wrong. The evolutionists would say that this is because ‘counter-dominance’ still exists. There are enough people ready to resist such actions. Is it really all this simple? Evolutionary theory says that for a society to share resources equally it would require something stronger to fight the prevalence of the instinct to dominate. In other words, for equality, we need a very strong compassion, or socialism, or something like it. We need someone to challenge the established order. The theory suggests that envy can play a part in the struggle against dominance, and can lead to hostile action as an exercise of strength. So, it seems to be saying that any action towards equality can be based on envy. Envy leads to action. So Socialists are just jealous and envious. Very convenient, isn’t it? It gives an excuse for suppressing them, and this is what has happened. ** Some of the reasoning used in this theory could have come straight from the pages of Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’. It is the ‘survival of the fittest’ taken to its logical extreme, and could also be used, just as Hitler used it, to justify euthanasia, genocide and genetic engineering. The most frightening aspect of this is that Hitler’s theories won a lot of support in a country that had been one of the most cultured in Europe. This is because they had been given what they wanted, economic recovery and a return of self respect after the humiliations following World War One. Can’t the evolutionists see that this is the logical outcome of their theories? They made it ‘acceptable’ to apply the use of force by the strong over the weak, and this gave us a war that devastated much of the world. So, to bring this a little more up to date, it’s fine to fight over food supplies or oil supplies then, is it? As a bonus, a war over natural resources keeps the population down too. Of course it’s not alright, and I believe that most atheistic evolutionists would agree. ** Primitive ‘hunter-gatherer’ societies that still exist today are seen to share their resources and practice hospitality. They only spend a couple of hours a day collecting their food and materials, and have the rest of the time for leisure. They talk, sing and practice their rituals. They live in harmony with their environment and nature. Their lives are virtually stress-free. It is a popular myth that primitive societies live in squalid conditions and have harder lives than ours. Maybe this arises from our need to justify our own ways of living. We perpetuated a myth that indigenous people that we had to ‘civilise’ were all somehow less human than we were. This happened in America, Africa and Australia, and eased consciences when populations were wiped out. This attitude continued well into the twentieth century. They were not really humans. We conveniently forgot that some Native American people lived in towns, or that there had been highly developed civilisations in Africa.

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Because primitive societies tend to share, it is assumed by some people that this is the natural state of affairs for humans. The evolutionary theory says otherwise. They learned to do it, because it was essential for their survival as a species. The ‘huntergatherer’ culture was a traditional way of life, developed for a reason. Anyone taking more than their fair share would have threatened the survival of them all, because they could have easily over exploited the available resources (does this situation ring any bells?). They would have been suitably admonished and punished. People were forced to share by tradition, and it became an accepted way of life. It does not follow from this that it is natural for humans to share with one another. A lack of stress related diseases kept the death rate down A lack of surplus kept the population down, ensuring that there was always enough to go round. Humans survived happily like this for thousands of years. Some still do, but if you gave them a surplus of food and resources, things would change. For the human race, this surplus came with the knowledge of agriculture. As soon as agriculture created food that was surplus to immediate needs, a minority of dominant humans took control of the surplus and exploited the situation, giving them control over the majority. . More food allowed a bigger population, but the inequalities had been established, so despite the surplus of food and resources, they were not shared equally. The minority maintained their rich lifestyles on the back of the majority’s labours. They kept the surplus for themselves. Things don’t change, do they? So, we began the process of ever lengthening working days, most of the extra labour expended to enrich those higher up the social scale. This is why today’s life is so stressful. We work harder and harder to try to catch up to the minority, and all the time the larger share of the fruits of our labour is going to them. ** The theories do not tell us anything new about our human nature. Two thousand years ago, the Bible had already told us we were like this. If you want to believe it, this is consistent with the concept of a God that wishes us to know the truth about ourselves. The writers of the Bible did not need evolutionary theory. They knew about human nature. In Genesis, we have a story that reflects the move from hunter-gatherers to agriculturalists, and to ‘civilisation’. It says that increased knowledge brought us increased hard labour. We lost our innocence, looking for more and more all the time. We thought we knew it all. We left the Garden of Eden. We built ‘Babel’, the tower of ‘civilisation’, and it led to confusion and destruction. What a lesson for us today.

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The Bible is full of reminders that, to survive on a long term basis, a society needs to be egalitarian and resource conscious. Jesus taught this way of living. People must share. In the Old Testament, every fifty years, the Israelites were instructed to cancel debts and share out resources. It was called the year of the ‘Jubilee’. They survive as a nation to this day. The Israelite nation was constructed on a tribal basis. The disasters that they had when they chose to have Kings ruling over them should teach us valuable lessons about the dangers of a hierarchical society, where the rich lord it over their subjects. We don’t seem to learn. Thom Hartmann, in his book ‘The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight’, says that the tribal way of living is the most successful for long term survival. Resources are conserved and shared equally. Humans are closer to nature. There is much leisure time, so none of the stresses that blight ‘modern’ living. We think ‘primitive’ societies are ‘poor’ because they do not have our consumer goods. They say they are rich in the things that really matter. They have the time to be in touch with nature and with God. How many times do we find people saying that they wish that they could have a more ‘laid back’ lifestyle? There are still many places where the pace of life is not as hectic as ours. Alas, they are becoming fewer and fewer as the all pervasive consumer lifestyle takes over. Sitting Bull, probably one of the most famous Native Americans, when in captivity towards the end of his life, said, ‘The white man knows how to make everything, but he does not know how to distribute it’. When taking part in Buffalo Bill’s ‘Wild West Show’, Sitting Bull had given a lot of his earnings to the poor children that regularly crowded around him. In his book, Mr Hartmann says that tribal living and sharing is the natural way for humans to be. If so, why do we succumb so easily to the temptation to have more than we need to survive? The Bible tells us that when we moved away from the simple way of living, we were lost. The prospect of knowledge that would increase our standard of living, and would buy us the ‘things’ that we ‘need’, was too much of a temptation. The primitive societies that exist today, and are said to have a ‘natural’ human lifestyle, can also succumb very quickly. Most of them, sadly, already have. The younger generations fall first, because they have fewer ties to the traditions and religions that are controlling the natural human inclinations of their elders. Humans are not natural sharers. They have to be forced to share, either by tradition or by legislation. ** That is to say, Conservatism is founded on the basic acceptance of the ineradicable imperfection of human nature. It runs with, rather than against, the grain of human nature 230

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Nigel Lawson The View from Number 11 (London, 1992), talking about the ‘New Conservatism’ of the Thatcher years. And it is for Government to work with that grain in human nature to strengthen the strand of responsibility and independence. Margaret Thatcher, answering criticism that Conservative values were materialistic.12 This attitude advocated a free rein for human greed and selfishness. We grabbed hold of this opportunity with both hands. ‘I look after myself. For the first time, someone in power has told me it’s OK to do it. No. They have actually said that if I do, I’m a hero! Entrepreneurs are the ‘lifeblood’ of our country!’ And at the same time there is supposed to be some kind of ‘invisible hand’ that governs economic life. So, if we succeed, we are being rewarded for hard work. If we fail, we are lacking something, or have been lazy. This is even encouraged and advocated by some religious organisations. The ‘Prosperity Gospel’, which originated in the USA, I believe, says that if you are successful, God has blessed you. What about the genuine unfortunates? Well, apparently, they have not had enough faith or worked hard enough, and God seems to have deserted them. This is a very convenient philosophy for the ‘American Dream’, isn’t it? The abject poverty inside the world’s richest country and in the outside world can be allowed, or at least excused. They have not worked hard enough, and are not being blessed due to lack of faith. Really useful for salving the conscience, isn’t it? Might it not be suggested to any reasonable, sensible person with more than three brain cells, that many poor people might be unwilling victims of the ‘invisible’ market forces, no matter how hard they work, or how strong or dominant their gene pool is? What about Socialism? The idea that all men (and women) are brothers (and sisters), and that we should share on the basis of ‘from each according to capability, to each according to need’, is certainly a noble concept. The problem is, it comes into conflict with the ‘freedom’ that is all important in today’s world. People have to be forced to share. ** 12

To try to be fair, Mrs Thatcher also said ‘It’s our duty to look after ourselves and then to look after our neighbour’ The problem is that she did not realise that this approach always makes the neighbour second-best..

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For a lot of what I have been saying, I might anticipate a comment such as the following: ‘We’ve heard it all before. You are anti-capitalist. Most of what you say sounds just like extreme socialism or communism. Look what a mess communism has made’. This statement is usually made with the assumption that extreme socialism is intrinsically bad. This is another lie that has been pummelled into us by the mass media. The truth is that human greed and selfishness stop a noble theoretical ideal being put into practice. Any sensible person would not say that equality is a bad thing. That is unless, of course, the equalisation process means a loss of their wealth or status. ‘Capitalism is the exploitation of Man by Man’ but with Communism, the reverse is the case’ Do you ever stop to think that the condemnation of extreme socialism might be another lie, imprinted on your consciousness by those with a vested interest in capitalism? It has certainly been so at certain points in the history of the USA. With a bit of thought, I believe that most people would agree that communism had the diagnosis and prognosis spot on, but the cure was rejected by the patient. Communism was an attempt at creating a world free of human greed and selfishness. What is wrong with that ideal? It is a very noble ideal, but communism was a secular, atheistic attempt at the achievement of a metaphysical concept, a heaven on earth. It assumed that human greed and selfishness could be conquered, and that everyone could live together in peace and harmony, sharing everything, ‘from each according to ability, and to each according to need’ As it turned out in practice, it was rightly said by George Orwell of communism that ‘all are equal, but some are more equal than others’. Human nature came through, to spoil the ideal. The human factor had been underestimated. Extreme force was needed to impose the ideals. This force brought with it absolute power for a few. Then, as it tends to do, absolute power corrupted, absolutely. The leaders became drunk with power, making decisions that bankrupted their economies and impoverished or murdered their people. It was bound to collapse. The fall of the Berlin Wall hailed ‘Freedom’ for all. We long for freedom, when we don’t really know what freedom means. We don’t have freedom. We have slavery. It is slavery to wants and greed, slavery to our human nature, and slavery to the economic system. **

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Our ‘Freedom’ is a Lie We are lied to by people who benefit from our belief in their lies. They understand our weaknesses and exploit them. They might actually believe that what they are doing will benefit everybody. They too can believe the lies. It eases their consciences. So maybe they are not really lying, just being deceived, or deceiving themselves. But someone is lying to us.

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Would you Adam and Eve it?

Would all those who believe in telekinesis, please raise my hands?

Superstition is the religion of feeble minds. Edmund Burke

Man's mind is like a store of idolatry and superstition; so much so that if a man believes his own mind it is certain that he will forsake God and forge some idol in his own brain. John Calvin

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It has been said that if someone does not believe in God, it does not mean that they believe in nothing, but that they will believe in anything! If you don’t know where you are going, any direction you take could seem to be the right one. You have no objective, so no guidance. You are taking life’s mystery tour. Do you know where you are going? Why are there so many different beliefs about ‘life, the universe and everything’? We sometimes feel a need inside us for something outside ourselves, something to guide us, something more powerful than us. It’s a sort of spiritual hole inside us that needs to be filled.13 This need expresses itself in a variety of weird and wonderful ways. It has done so since time began. If we don’t believe in God, there are many other things on offer to tickle our fancy. This is what they do. They do not fill the hole, but they help stop us falling into it. What you need to ask yourself is whether this need is something you have created yourself, as a way of finding security and reassurance. If so, as atheists so often point out, religion could be said to be created by humans to fulfil a need. What atheists do not realise is that their belief is itself their own answer to the question that this inner need has asked them. If the question was not there, it would not need an answer. The question would not arise. It is there inside them, no matter how much they would say that they are simply criticising other people’s answers. They are really answering their own inner question. If a child could be brought up without any human influence at all, I believe that they would ask themselves the same question. If we can fill the hole inside us with something that does not challenge us, then it’s all the better. It’s just another weight off our minds. We can put spiritual needs into the background and get on with the business of life. Sometimes it is filled with a simple self denial of the need. Either way, we can forget it or use it, as long as we are not challenged to change our lives. If you really look at many of these ways of filling the hole, you will see that they are usually a way out of a dilemma. You know that there is more to existence that we can see before us. You don’t want to feel you are controlled by anything outside you, so to be told that there is a God who you should fear as your creator goes distinctly against the grain. It is much easier to believe that you are subject to impersonal forces. As they say in Star Wars, ‘The Force be with you’. 13

Sometimes people try to fill the hole by use of drugs. This might give temporary satisfaction, but never ultimately succeeds, and of course brings with it a host of associated problems for the individual and society.

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A ‘force’ can’t speak to you and tell you what a worm you really are. You are simply subject to its effects. Nice and easy to believe. Easy, that is, unless you really think about what you are asking yourself to believe. Consider the following beliefs: ** Astrology This is dressed up as a science, but at its heart, you are still asked to believe that the position of the planets and stars has an effect on your life and destiny. This is not easy to swallow, if you really think about it, is it? There is supposed to be some kind of impersonal force that seems to be really determined to affect our lives. It’s impersonal, so it does not even know what it is doing to us, so it can’t even be described as being interested in us. Ridiculous, if you think about it, unless it was a scientific law. If it was a scientific law it would be predictable and precise, a rule to apply on every occasion, each cause giving a predictable effect. If this was the case, life’s unpredictability would become certainty, and easy to control. Do you observe that life is like this? Do you think that astrology would ever give you this certainty? It seems to be an unseen natural force that insists on interfering with us. But it is not personal, so it can’t ‘insist’ on anything. Why and how is an impersonal force affecting us? Taking it logically, could we ask it and tell from it what decision we should make at every choice we have in our lives? Would you be more willing to rely on an unseen, unknown force rather than a personal, knowing God to guide you with these decisions? This is what you are doing with astrology. You are treating something as personal when clearly it is not. But ask you to believe in a personal God? No chance. Can it be called a science? Have scientific experiments been set up in a controlled environment? Where is the record of the experiments that can scientifically prove the accuracy of astrology? Yet untold numbers of people over the centuries have used astrology as a guide to their lives. Many people today religiously consult their horoscopes on a daily basis, looking for guidance.14 It seems to be argued by astrology that there is a sort of cosmic biological clock, and if you are born at a particular time and place somewhere along its space/time continuum, then you are endowed with particular personality traits. How this is then used as a way of giving a guide to life’s decision making is beyond most people’s comprehension, and, in my opinion, also very much beyond the realms of credibility. 14

Think about it. General daily horoscopes for each star sign, such as those in newspapers, would mean that one twelfth of the world’s population, that’s 500 million people each day, should all have similar experiences if they followed the horoscope. Somewhat unlikely, you might say.

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Isn’t it easier to believe in a God? Still, I suppose that astrology has its compensations. Without astrology we might not have had the three Magi visiting Jesus (that’s the ‘three wise men, or the ‘three kings’). They are widely thought to have been astrologers, if not astronomers, from areas east of Palestine. Many Babylonians had great belief in astrology. This does not lend credence to the practice: It merely shows that a study of the planetary and stellar movements could be used by God to establish a truth. This truth is that Jesus was not just expected as the Messiah for the Jews alone. We still study the stellar and planetary movements in the science of astronomy to establish truth, the truth about the structure and origins of the universe. If you think the visit of the Magi was a myth, study the movements of the stars and planets at that time, and middle-eastern stories told independently of the Bible. You might get a surprise. ** Spiritualists and mediums I recently saw an advertisement in a magazine. ‘Mediums4U’, it announced. It was a chatline, on which you could get spiritual advice. Put ‘mediums’ into the Google internet search engine, and you get 2,700,000 entries. We all seem to know about crystal balls, palm reading, tarot cards, ouija boards and the like. Many people seem to think that they are a harmless pastime, just ‘for a laugh’, but lots of people take them very seriously. At my first job when I was a teenager, there was a woman who offered readings of personal objects, fortune telling based around her contact with your private possessions. She laughed a lot. One of my friends asked me that if he hit her, would he be ‘striking a happy medium’? Sorry. This should be a serious subject. Are these things genuine? Don’t they tell us some things they would never know unless they were really in contact with our deceased friends and relatives? Many people have stories about how they were amazed at the things a medium told them about themselves. First of all, I would say that if it was that easy, there would be no worries for any of us. Surely the spirits would take every chance to get through to us if they could reassure us or tell us that everything is going to be alright. It would be a natural way of living. We would consult the spirits of our dead ancestors every time we had a difficult choice to make, and they would guide us, directly by speaking to us. Why should there only be a select, elite few who can communicate with them? Is something stopping them, or holding them back, if it is so difficult to find someone with the necessary contact? Who or what is holding them back, making them pass on

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a few choice morsels of information rather than a continuous guidance? Is there an evil force making it difficult for them? Would this be someone or something like the Devil? If you can believe that, why can’t you believe in God? If you believe in God too, why doesn’t God allow more access to this knowledge? Is God playing games with us, and not giving us the whole truth? Do you see my reasoning? It does not make sense to me. However, if an evil force does exist, put yourself in his/her or its shoes. If you could divert attention from the truth by filling people’s heads with the reassurance that everything will be fine ‘on the other side’, so we can just carry on our lives as we are, no problem, wouldn’t you have won a great victory? If there is a God who has given you reasoning powers, is trying to tell you the truth, and is longing for you to ‘wake up and smell the bacon’, then it can start to make sense. You would be seduced by a lie, to prevent you finding out the truth. So, there could really be something true about contacts with spirits, but it’s not a good thing. I know that some mediums can be pure charlatans, or be genuinely misled into believing they have powers. Some can use the interpretation of body language, word association or just pure guesswork based on probability, and be either total frauds, or not realise that they are doing it this way. However, if there is an evil power, why can’t some of it be real? If it is real, it certainly is not good. We are not intended to know our destiny by these means, surely not. If so, it would all be too easy, too comfortable, and life is just not like that. We would also not want to know many things. We could become ‘basket cases’ if we knew our future and it was not good. Spiritualism can be a comfort zone. It can tell us that everything is going to be fine. We can contact deceased loved ones and know they are happy, and that we will be with them when we die. All will be ‘hunky-dory’ on ‘the other side’. The irony is that this is what Christians are accused of. The supposedly high proportion of elderly people attending churches is emphasised. They are just there to reassure themselves, you say. ‘They are nearer to death, so they want an insurance policy’. This may well be true for some people, but the statement is yet another excuse for discarding Christianity without thinking and finding out what it is really about. ** Ghosts Do you believe in ghosts? If so, are they the rusty chains version, the poltergeist type, or those that simply ‘go bump in the night’?

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Do the spirits of the dead come back to haunt us? Do they walk the night until they are freed, to move on to pastures new? Do they wear white sheets with holes for eyes? Have you seen a ghost? Many people claim they have, and there are probably as many plausible explanations offered for the visions as there are to explain and ridicule the sightings of the fabled ‘Loch Ness Monster’. Is it all wishful thinking? Do we really wish that ghosts exist? Does it give us some sort of guarantee that life goes on after death? We have ‘ghost walks’ offered in most old towns. There are numerous TV programmes seeking to thrill us with ‘proof’ that ghosts exist, and there have been a multitude of big screen movies made about ghosts ever since the medium was invented (no pun intended). Ghosts are a special effects technician’s dream. My favourite story of a ghost sighting comes from York. A company of Roman soldiers are seen marching through the cellar of a York public house, complete with legionary standards and colours flying. The strange thing is, they are only seen from the waist upwards, their bottom half below the ground level. This is one story that suggests to me that one of the explanations offered for ghosts might be possible. We don’t fully understand how time and space interact. Without getting too technical (because I can’t), there could be a sort of slip in the time/space continuum (of course, I could have been watching too much Doctor Who). We are seeing actual Roman soldiers from almost two thousand years ago. Street level at that time was much lower than ours (due to the accumulation of centuries of building work and rubbish), so it would make perfect sense that we only saw them from the waist upwards. Of course, the pub gets lots of publicity in the process, and this is a widely exploited and well known use for a belief in ghosts. I do believe we have a spirit that survives after death, but I’m not convinced that this spirit can haunt us as ghosts are supposed to do. Many people can believe it, but without trying to have a firm understanding of why and how they should. The ‘paranormal’ or the ‘supernatural’ can be accepted by people, if not understood. Why don’t people try to explain these things for themselves? That would involve thinking and reasoning, and this would lead them to question rather than accept. It is easier to just accept that there are things we cannot explain, so they just go on their merry way, tasting the titillation that the supernatural can give them, but never really digesting. Ghosts are just another example of what people are capable of believing without question, and another thing that, if there is an ‘evil’ power like the Devil, could be used by he, she or it as a distraction from the truth.

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** Reincarnation. I like reincarnation. It means you can leave everything to yourself when you die. There is today a widespread belief that we have been here before. Therapists and hypnotists offer ‘regression therapy’, taking us back to a previous life. Do you believe in reincarnation? It can seem very plausible when someone is taken back to a ‘previous life’ by a skilled therapist. They say things that it seems they would never know unless it was true. One explanation offered for this is that our minds can hold information that we do not realise that we are retaining, picked up along the way in our life without noticing it. It could be a forgotten book, or TV programme, conversation or newspaper article. All could give us information that we do not realise we are remembering. You would not be alone in believing in reincarnation. Major religions can have this belief. Buddhists believe that your behaviour in this life affects your next life, through the process of ‘Karma’. You continue from one life to the next, the intention being to make a continual improvement, so that, if you have not achieved ‘enlightenment’ in this life, you can keep trying. To effectively reward a previous life with better conditions in the next life would lead to a complicated discussion as to what one had to do that resulted in a 'promotion'. It is not enough to say that ‘you will simply know’. It might also lead to complacency in some cases, if someone believed that they had done enough. Anyway, who sets the standards? Buddhism is essentially atheistic. ‘Christians’ sometimes say they believe in reincarnation too, but I cannot fully understand why. I suppose, if they thought about it, they might resolve the difficult issue of 'one life, one judgement' (as it appears to be presented in the Bible), as follows: If there is such a thing as reincarnation of the soul, each life is unknown to the previous one and the next one, so is effectively a separate individual in this world. There would then be one life, one judgement as far as that individual is concerned. It could make sense that we had to act on the basis that we have but one life, one judgement. But if there was another chance in a next life, and if I knew for sure that reincarnation was a fact, I might easily look at myself as being better than some, and might expect rewards for that. But, who would I be to judge whether I should be rewarded? The danger would be complacency, so a warning of 'one life, one judgement' and the fact that I have to act as if this is so, means I am obliged to behave as if it is.

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So, if there is a God who is going to judge me, it makes sense to me that there will only be one chance. Where are all of the extra souls coming from as population increases? Something must provide them. How can some births be reincarnations, and some ‘new entries’? Where did all the souls come from in the first place? If someone or something is providing the fresh souls, can this not be an outside intelligence, a God? I cannot make sense of reincarnation, yet it is a belief that is widely held. Have people really thought it through? Do people really think through any of their beliefs, or are they simply easier to accept than the truth? **

UFOs According to some UFOlogists (I hate this term), ‘Cosmic intelligences have come via UFOs to guide us into the New Age, teaching us to rise to higher levels of consciousness’ (from ‘Understanding the New Age’, by Russell Chandler, a book written from a Christian viewpoint). Believers in UFOs accuse the government of the USA of covering up the ‘evidence’, suppressing a number of military and space agency investigations that were made in the 1940s through to the 1960s. There are untold numbers of people claiming that they have been abducted by aliens. On their return, they bring warnings that mankind must change their ways or face extinction (why do we need aliens to tell us this?) There are just as many supposed sightings of alien spacecraft. So, are we being visited by beings from another planet? Are we some sort of experiment by a higher intelligence? Was the ‘missing link’ between apes and humans created by alien intervention? If there is a God, why do we have to be His only creations? Are the aliens sent to us to warn us? We seem to have a need for a higher being, more intelligent, wiser and more sensible than us, to tell us where we are going wrong. He already has. Isn’t it just as easy to believe in God? What if there were beings on other planets? Aside from the incredible odds against the conditions needed for life (as we know it, at least) occurring more than once, if there were other beings, would this make us any less special in God’s eyes? Why should the possibility of extra terrestrial life forms be used as an argument for there being no God?

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But it is. It is yet another excuse, yet another belief that fills the hole, yet another ‘let’s all get together and be better before it’s too late’ approach. How many times do we see science fiction stories telling us that humans are ‘different’, with our emotions of love and hate, and sometimes how vulnerable, sometimes how noble, that makes us? Why do the stories usually assume that we will listen to the warnings, and change for the better? Do you see the world doing this? These are just different ways of presenting us with a lesson in self examination as a species, and are crammed with ‘New Age’, humanist thinking. Why on earth (or on Venus, or Alpha Centauri for that matter), do we need aliens to tell us that we are not what we should be, when God has been telling us for thousands of years? ** The New Age What is the ‘New Age’? It seems to be a mixture of ancient eastern religious mysticism and meditation, sociology, physical science, holistic medicine, anthropology and science fiction. It’s not an organisation or a creed. It’s a ‘movement’. It’s the ‘Age of Aquarius’. Everybody get together. All you need is love. There are no absolute truths. All is relative, etc, etc. It bundles together existentialist philosophy, monism (everything in existence is of one essential essence, substance or energy) and a ‘do your own thing’ culture. Freedom is confused with the license to do anything. ‘New Agers’ believe that to be like this will make the world a better place. Once alienated from Christian faith and practice by these and other deceptions (growing secularism, relativism, materialistic consumerism, hedonism), people often commit themselves to passing fads, or to bizarre beliefs that are either shallow or fanatical Pope John Paul II at San Francisco, 1987. The New Age movement has no God to sin against….. It is utopian, thinking we can create a utopia by our own efforts. Douglas Groothius, author of ‘Unmasking the New Age. Reincarnation is the engine that drives much New Age opinion…..-The machine of moral relativism. For example, psychiatrist Helen Wambach uses reincarnationist logic to conclude that there’s nothing morally wrong about abortion: it’s only the

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body, not the soul, that is killed…if a foetus is aborted the soul can choose to enter another foetus. Russell Chandler, in ‘Understanding the New Age’ What about suicide then? OK, so it seems, using the same logic. What about murder? Same logic? The ‘New Age’ is a mish-mash of beliefs, rituals and pure fads. Just two of these will be enough to serve as examples; channelling and the power of crystals. Channelling Channelers are today’s spiritualist mediums. A Californian lawyer once said that she used channelling to create a parking space at the courthouse. In ‘Understanding the New Age’, Russell Chandler suggests that the basic messages of channelling are as follows: • • • • •

Death is unreal All is one in the synergy of deity. Despite being divine beings, we have chosen to live as physical human beings. There are no victims in this life, only opportunities. Reality can be controlled by the power of universal mind.

It’s not simply the contact between us and the spirits of the dead; it’s a contact between all parts of reality. If we can ‘tune in’, we can be in contact with the universal being, of which we are a part. So, we are part of the universal and can harmonise with it. It is not something that controls us. We can harness and control it. We are in charge if we want to be. Nice and easy, isn’t it. The Power of Crystals Put a crystal round your neck. Put a crystal on your fireplace. Put a crystal in your car. Squeeze a crystal. Why? Apparently the molecules of crystals can develop shapes that are in harmony with the internal structure of the human body, helping us amplify and balance our energies.

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Place quartz or clear crystal balls or a round crystal sphere, with the globe etched on the crystal, on a brass stand on the left hand side (for female) and on the right hand side (for male) of the work table (when seated). Twirl it from time to time to energise the intrinsic earth energy of the crystal. This will help to focus tasks in hand, concentration and memory. www.fengshuitips.co.uk Quartz crystals are the most popular. Quartz, when tapped or squeezed, produces a very small electrical charge (hence its use in the old crystal radios, and watches and computers today). So, maybe the quartz could respond to a human being’s electrical energy, with possible beneficial effects. But to then relate this to some of the claims made that it enables wearers to tap into past lives or ‘attune to the vibration field’, saying that it is radiating a ‘psychic vibration’, is another matter. A note about alternative medicine and healing. Of course, I am not decrying all forms of alternative medicine, just because some of them might be related to the ‘New Age’ movement. Natural healing and treatments like homeopathy and acupuncture are becoming more widely accepted, and some may well be genuinely promoting healing. And we can never discount the power of the mind over the body. So why, when Christians claim that God can, and does, still heal the sick, is it said to be unbelievable? Is this not the same in principle as spiritualising an ancient healing process? God’s healing does not have to be some sort of magic, but a perfectly natural process, helped along by the mind of the subject and the power of God. Because it is a natural process, this does not mean God is not involved, supporting and helping it along. It also does not mean that, because certain ancient techniques might now be associated with the ‘New Age’, they are all either evil or false. But to spiritualise them or make them into almost a religion for today’s world is foolish and possibly dangerous. They will not ultimately fill the hole. They will tickle our spiritual fancy for a while, but never completely fulfil our need. ** I could fill another book with the variety of beliefs that exist in our world today. This chapter has simply given a few examples. No doubt you can think of many others that I have not included These are not what would be considered as the mainstream religious beliefs, of which there are also many. ** The next two are examples of organisations that claim to be ‘Christian’, to illustrate that believers in one all powerful God (Monotheists) can also be subject to beliefs that are, let us say, slightly dubious. ** Jehovah’s Witnesses

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We consider it an established truth that the final end of the kingdoms of this world, and the full establishment of the Kingdom of God, will be accomplished by the end of AD1914. Charles Taze Russell, a founder of the Jehovah’s Witnesses from ‘The Time is at Hand’

The deliverance of the saints must take place some time before 1914 Charles Taze Russell, from ‘Studies in the Scriptures’, 1910 issue. (Italics mine)

The deliverance of the saints must take place some time after 1914 Charles Taze Russell, from ‘Studies in the Scriptures, 1923 issue. (Italics mine).

Reports are heard of brothers selling their homes and property and planning to finish out the rest of their days in this old system in the pioneer service. Certainly this is a fine way to spend the short time remaining before the wicked world’s end. From ‘Our Kingdom Ministry’, May 1974. The JWs had forecast Armageddon for late 1975. I don’t think I need say any more, really. But I will. They have their own translation of the Bible, the ‘New World’ translation. In our standard versions, as the vast majority of scholars of ancient Greek would verify, the first verse of John’s Gospel says ‘In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was God….’ The Jehovah’s Witness (JW) version says ‘And the Word was a god.’ Where they get the ‘a’ from is anybody’s guess, but if it was not there, they would have to admit that it said that Jesus was God, because John 1:14 says ‘the Word became flesh and resided among us’, clearly referring to Jesus. Of course, they don’t believe that Jesus is God, so they change the Bible. In standard versions of the Bible, Titus chapter 2, verse 13 says ‘while we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ’ How do the Jehovah’s Witnesses translate it? They say ‘while we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of the great God and of the Saviour of us’ The Greek used in the earliest manuscripts did not have the ‘of’. I assume they will say that it was the early church that changed the text, and that they have the true translation, but where did they get it from? Where are the early manuscripts to justify it? They disregard or change the many references to Jesus as God that appear in the Bible, and then say that Jesus was the Archangel Michael, justifying this with one verse and a few tenuous links.

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‘While there is no statement in the Bible that categorically identifies Michael the archangel as Jesus, there is one scripture that links Jesus with the office of archangel’ From the JW’s ‘Awake’ magazine, February 2002 The verse is ‘The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a commanding call, with an archangel’s voice…..’ If this alone justifies belief in Jesus as an archangel, I suppose that makes Charlotte Church a real angel too. (Charlotte was described as having the ‘voice of an angel’). ** Mormons. (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) The Mormons seem to be clean living, family orientated people. They refuse to drink alcohol, tea or coffee. On the face of it, very worthy, you might say. What about some of their beliefs? In the Book of Mormon, it is said that Jesus Christ visited the inhabitants of ancient America soon after His Resurrection. These inhabitants, the Native Americans, are said by the Mormons to be Ancient Israelites. About 600 BC God is said to have commanded a prophet, Lehi, to lead them to America, where they prospered and became a great civilisation. As you might expect, geneticists say otherwise. So, it seems that, according to the Mormons, America really is God’s country. How convenient for the ‘American Dream’. The early Mormon leaders practiced polygamy, saying that Abraham and Isaac, and others had been commanded by God to do so. Note that the polygamy was only oneway. One man, many wives. What about racism? Cain slew his brother…and the Lord put a mark upon him, which is the flat nose and black skin th Brigham Young, the 19 century Mormon prophet, in his Journal of Discourses. And more recently: Negroes in this life are denied the priesthood; under no circumstances can they hold this delegation of authority from the Almighty. The gospel message of salvation is not carried affirmatively to them. Negroes are not equal with other races where the receipt of certain spiritual blessings are concerned. Church leader Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon doctrine, 1958.

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In 1978, the Mormons finally changed their policy that prevented people of African descent from being ordained to their priesthood. Apparently, God had changed his mind on the subject. In 1827 Joseph Smith had been given the location of a set of golden plates by an angel called Moroni. He translated the plates and produced the ‘Book of Mormon’. He had been told by Jesus that all known churches were wrong, and their doctrines ‘an abomination’. Mormon doctrine says that God the Father was once a man, and still has a body of flesh and bones, albeit an exalted one. It speculates that because Jesus has a father in God, then God could also have had a father. Apparently, God lives on a planet called Kolob. The Garden of Eden was in Missouri.

** Harry Potter Why are the Harry Potter stories so popular, if we don’t have something inside us, a need for something outside our selves, something other worldly, something we can’t explain? Why do we have a fascination for horror stories? Why do we have a sense of good and evil at all, and a sense of, ultimately, what is right and what is wrong? We always want good to triumph over evil, and the stories that we lap up as entertainment more often than not fulfil this need. Even if our secular society has managed to fool us into believing that we are just a collection of atoms, we had, from an early age, something inside us that had told us that there is more to the world than meets the eye, making us open to the supernatural and the paranormal. We are surrounded by a multitude of attempts at explaining what is ‘out there’, so it is no surprise that we can embrace one, some, or all of them, particularly if they do not challenge us to change our lives. But you have to admit that some are more believable than others. You might well believe some of them, no matter how outlandish, but then you say to me that you can’t believe in a man who walks on water, or feeds five thousand people with a few loaves of bread and a few fishes. You can’t believe that people return from the dead.

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I say that if you believed in God, a power so great, so unfathomable, that He could be behind the creation of the universe, then you simply cannot then say that He can no longer interfere with the physical ‘laws’ that govern His universe. You could believe that the stars and planets have an effect on your life, but not believe that God could perform ‘miracles’? You have to ask yourself if you think the way you do because it is easier for you. It fulfils your inner need for the supernatural without the weight of any responsibility for your own reaction to it. It exists, and it might affect you, but you are just passively subject to its effects. You don’t have to do anything at all. Easy, isn’t it? ** So, are you one of the people that can accept at least one of the beliefs that I outlined above? Do you still think that they are credible? But you still can’t believe in a personal power, a mind that is behind the universe, who wishes to communicate and guide us using media that we are all familiar with. We can speak and be heard, and we can read and be guided. This is God, prayer and the Bible. This is the concept that you find so unbelievable. Why? Is it more unbelievable than astrology or ghosts? I think not. But it is more challenging, isn’t it? Astrology does not ask you to change your life. Ghosts don’t tell you that you are not what you should be (unless your name is Ebenezer Scrooge). You can’t think of worshipping and communicating with such a God, yet you will look up to and ‘hero-worship’ celebrities and sports personalities. Look at the reaction to Princess Diana’s death. She was almost deified as a goddess, and the imperfections of her life were swept away by an almost hysterical idealisation of the good works she performed. Inside us all is a need for a personification of an object of worship. God is overlooked and others take His place. But God is there, waiting to be the focus of this need, and you ignore Him and give your worship and praise to mere mortals. Or you worship wealth and status, or ‘nature’ (perhaps as pantheism or paganism), or you might even worship your own ego. You can’t believe in the God portrayed in the Bible. You might have to change your life. You may think all of these beliefs are rubbish. You could be an out and out atheist. It’s all or nothing. There are so many inconsistencies that none of it can be true, you say. Why? What basis do you have for that statement? Are you an atheist simply because you say religion is rubbish and therefore atheism must be correct? Do you have a logical argument in favour of atheism? Atheism as a belief should be able to stand alone, without the need to refer to the existence of religion as a proof. This is why we must look for answers to our inner question. Something must be true. To find that truth must surely be the most important thing you could do in your life. *******************************************************************

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Conclusion and Action

If you could kick the people responsible for your troubles, and the troubles of the world, you would not be able to sit down for a month.

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What has this book tried to achieve? Do I simply want to depress you? I have sought to draw your attention to the very apparent ills of this world of ours, and to consider their causes. I am not suggesting that you are unaware, just that maybe you prefer not to think about it all. Maybe you just hope it will all go away. It is very clearly a human problem. We are all humans, you, I and everybody. We are all subject to human nature. Some of us are worse than others, but we are all humans, and we are all far from perfect. Have you ever looked at yourself, at your role in the ‘grand scheme of things? Do you simply shrug it all off and blame others? I have wished to try to drive home the realisation and the belief that we are all, as humans, to some extent responsible for it all, and also to wake up people to the scale of it, which is not always perceived. The size of the problem is, to a large extent, kept from us. The hardest part to accept for anyone is that they are in any way responsible. The inclusion of some personal details was to try to emphasise my own experience of self-realisation and very real sense of imperfection. This book does not attempt to justify my personal faith in God, or to persuade you to have the same beliefs. Once you have realised that we are all collectively responsible for our world and for each other, you will find your own way of coping with that responsibility, and your own explanation for why we are like we are, and the reason for our existence. If you are an atheist, or you simply have objections to and criticisms of religious beliefs and faith, I can direct you to my book ‘No Delusion: A Challenge to an Atheist’. If you wish to examine the Christian faith and its answers to why we are like we are, then could I suggest that you look at my book ‘Pure Christianity.’ It is an attempt to explain the faith and the hope and joy that it gives, and is free from the trappings and caricatures of organised religion. At the very least, I hope that this book has made you think. If it has done this it has achieved a major objective.

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It may also make you want to take action in some way. Below are some suggested websites of organisations that you may wish to contact. I have not attempted to list more than a selected few. Such a list can never be exhaustive, so I have chosen some of the better known ones. To some extent my choice, and my own contact with any of these organisations, will inevitably reflect my personal preferences. **

Action Global Equality and fairness New Internationalist: www.newint.org Shelter: www.shelter.org.uk Amnesty International: www.amnesty.org Liberty: www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk Christian Charity The Evangelical Alliance Relief Fund (TEAR Fund): www.tearfund.org Environmental organisations: Greenpeace: www.greenpeace.org.uk Friends of the Earth: www.foe.co.uk The Green Party: www.greenparty.org.uk WWF: www.wwf.co.uk *******************************************************************

Appendix: Does Religion cause wars?

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The following is an extract from my book ‘No Delusion: A Challenge to an atheist’. I have included it because it is often said that if it was not for religion, the world would be a much better place. It commences with a statement of the logic that is sometimes used for this type of argument. ** Death and lasting hatred are the legacy of wars Unnecessary death and hatred are bad. Religion causes war, so religion is bad or false. An atheist makes this statement to justify the belief that religion is a human creation. How many atheists who say this have actually studied the real reasons for all wars in history, or even enough to be able to justify the statement? I have studied enough to come to the conclusion that most wars are, when you look at them more closely, rather to do with very worldly objectives like acquisition of land, power or resources, or to settle dynastic disputes. If religion is invoked at all it is for purposes of conscience, justification and the encouragement of support. Religion is often misused in this way, and consequently gets the blame. Look closely at most wars and you will find this. I believe that the death and lasting hatred that you say is caused by wars is really an inevitable result of fundamental human nature. Wars are a symptom, not a cause of the hatred. You would have to have a basic change in human nature to avoid wars, just as you would have to make the body immune from all disease to avoid cancer. Like communism, pacifism does not succeed, and the reason is that human nature has basic, inbuilt flaws. Call it the animal survival instinct or ‘looking after number one’ if you like, but whatever the flaws are, they make us the self centred creatures we are. It is this selfcentredness that causes us to fight for what we believe to be our rights, our property or our very lives. Given enough encouragement, political or religious propaganda and self delusion, the same self-centredness causes us to disregard the rights, the property and the lives of others. Unfortunately, the encouragement sometimes comes from the misuse of religion, hence the statement that religion causes wars. I strongly contend that it is our selfish instincts that use religion as an excuse for our actions, and that even if there was no such concept as religion, we would look for another excuse. No, we would not need one. We would simply be animals trying to survive. But then, that’s what atheists say, isn’t it? But animals do not feel the need to justify their actions. We do. Why? A need to justify our actions comes from a deep sense we have that there is something more powerful than the self. Religion is created by humans, but only in the sense that it is the physical and spiritual manifestation of a universal truth,

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The Crusades are a specific example cited by atheists. ‘Christians’ were guilty of barbarism and atrocity, with the avowed aim of liberating the Holy Land from the Moslems. Moslems still talk of the Crusades when they wish to criticise Christianity. But they have also committed atrocities (not just the recent worldwide terrorism). The ‘Christian’ massacre of Moslems and Jews when taking Jerusalem in 1099 was matched by the ‘Moslem’ massacre of Christians when taking Constantinople in 1453. The Crusades may have had religious motivation to start with, but soon became a very unreligious scramble for wealth, power and land, all justified by the original blessing of the Pope. ‘Christians’ slaughtered ‘Christians’ too. The Crusades are still used by Islam today to justify an enmity to Christianity. It is as bad as if people today were to write off the whole of Islam because some extremists use Jihad (holy war or struggle) to justify their barbarous actions. Yes, I know. They already do. Even a war which apparently included a religious motive, such as the English Civil War, had an undercurrent of economic and social issues. The rising middle classes did not want to pay taxes without being allowed to vote for them in parliament. Many of these parliamentarians also happened to be fundamentalist Christian ‘puritans’ who disagreed with the King’s use of the Anglican and Roman Catholic religion. The King had used his religion to justify a ‘divine right’ to rule as he pleased. The point is that powerful and wealthy people would have developed autocratic rule whether religion had existed to justify it or not, and rebellion against it would have eventually occurred whether the King’s power was based on a religious lie or not. In wars, if you can say that you have a special case for taking someone else’s property or country because God has said it is right to do so, you will do it with a clear conscience. It is also very comforting and reassuring to be told if you have killed someone that it is sanctioned by God. Religion exists, so it is used. If it did not exist, do you think that there would be no wars? If religion was not considered at all, the situation could be much worse. Whether the outcome of a war is genuinely consistent with ultimate justice or even the ‘purposes of God’ is a matter for historical judgement and hindsight. Sometimes, whether we like it or not, war can be the only way to overcome a terrible evil, and may therefore sadly become a necessary lesser of two evils. Given that human nature is as it is, there will always be these evils to overcome. In amongst this, Christians should always practice peaceful opposition to things they disagree with, as an example to the world. This does not imply that Christians should be ‘doormats’. They should express their opposition, but by peaceful means. It is also very difficult to do. I would classify myself as a pacifist, but what if someone was threatening my children with violence, would I stand by and let it happen if I could stop it with a violent act? I would like to believe that I would surrender my life for pacifist principles (turn the other cheek, etc), but in certain extreme circumstances it would be hard. Even Jesus reacted violently to abuse of privilege and position for monetary gain, when He overturned the tables of the moneylenders in the Temple. For Jesus to speak of turning the other cheek and then to overturn the tables of the moneylenders is not a contradiction. If you see an injustice being practised on other people, should you stand back and let it happen? Christians are supposed to stand up against injustice, but at the same time they are required to demonstrate their forgiving nature by being submissive in the face of their own enemies, but assertive and compassionate to both the

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victims of injustice and those guilty of it. Jesus was exactly like this. Indignant when required, then forgiving when needed. ‘Modern’ or more enlightened justice systems practice some of these principles today, but in the name of ‘human rights’. Why, then, is the Bible accused of inconsistency, when ultimately, taken as a whole, it presents the same principles? Would you criticise a secular historical learning process that taught us that sometimes violent action might be a necessary evil, and at the same time showed us that this was as a result of basic human nature, and we were simply practising an instinct for survival? What if it told us that’s what we are like, and we should not be surprised, but we should work to minimise the effects and gradually become better people, would you criticise? No, you would not, because God is not mentioned. Human intelligence is being used to work it out for ourselves. This is the typical humanist approach. But you then give no answer as to why the world does not seem to get better. When God is implicated in the events of history, you criticise. You simply say, as you tend to do, that it was religion that ‘caused’ these atrocities. What about human greed and self interest? Is there not a chance that in most cases ‘religion’ is used as a justification for this greed? Is this not what the Bible is trying to tell us? Show me a secular human philosophy that is actually making the world better without God, and I might think again. The Old Testament on its own would not give us the knowledge we need, but we have the New Testament. We have the example of the actions of God Himself, sweeping away the old and bringing in the new, showing us that, left to ourselves, we have basic faults that we cannot put right by our own efforts. Yes, that includes you. Christians are asked to stand up for justice, but demonstrate self giving love and forgiveness. To do as God does. The Old Testament used the nation of Israel to demonstrate the faults inherent in human nature, to show the forgiving and saving nature of God, and to point to His own sacrifice so that we could be released from ourselves if we so wished. The New Testament gives us this explanation. The two are completely complementary, and not at all inconsistent. Behaviour and rules are now based on love and self sacrifice Why is this message any less ‘true’ because the words and phrases can be picked apart and criticised? Why is it in error? This is what the true ‘inerrancy’ of the Bible is, the truth of an underlying message. A Christian is still a human being, subject to all of the flaws of human nature, but they are no longer a slave to the self. They are also no longer a slave to the futility of trying to overcome human nature by obeying a multitude of detailed religious rules and regulations. To be made aware of our faults, and how far we fall short of perfection, leads inexorably to efforts to improve, simply because we are so grateful to our God for showing us the way. Show me a secular philosophy that holds out the possibility of giving such an impetus to improvement. **

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If there is a God of the kind that the Christian religion speaks, He would be extremely unfair to demand the kind of self sacrifice that pacifism in the face of violence would need, without offering the same for us. (He already has, of course, but many people do not realise it or want to believe it). Peaceful civil disobedience and passive resistance should always be considered first, but if it is clearly not making a difference, a war or a rebellion may, sadly, be considered necessary. The example of Mahatma Ghandi is usually put forward by those who believe in the power of civil disobedience. The British rulers in India, however, were not bent on ethnic cleansing by mass genocide, and the government in London was becoming more open to changes. Can anyone seriously suggest that civil disobedience would have been successful under the Nazis? It is still wrong to assume that ‘God is on your side’. You should be praying that you are taking the right decision. Both sides can do this, and both cannot be right. It is more appropriate that the protagonists should be asking for the mercy of God, whatever the outcome, and not invoking God as a soldier for their cause. We can be wrong. We are human. It is human beings that cause wars, not God. Christians should be pacifists, but if they are ever totally convinced of a 'just cause', for example the clear threat to humanity posed by Adolf Hitler, then support of some kind should be given. It would have been wonderful if non-violent opposition could have won the day in that war, and in all wars. Maybe within occupied countries in World War II, peaceful non-cooperation was a useful option, but was extremely dangerous and, it could be said, futile where the Nazis were concerned. Is there a 'just war'? The other side may also believe in the justice of their case. People may feel forced into supporting it. They may sometimes be fooled into supporting it. God says ‘You shall not commit murder’. God also says ‘You shall not steal’. If our government has to make decisions on these matters, and to kill or steal in order to save more people than would be killed or dispossessed if they did not make the decisions, does it mean they are hypocritical if they then make laws against their people murdering or stealing? But this is what you are criticising God for, saying that He is allowing the things He is supposed to be forbidding. You then say that if there is a God, He should not allow bad things to happen, but don’t want Him to take action against those who cause them. God is criticised if He acts, and criticised if He doesn’t. The Old Testament is often criticised for its violence on behalf of Israel, and critics say that a lot of it was written from a religious motive as simply a justification of barbaric acts. But all acts of warfare can only be properly understood with the benefit of historical hindsight. Even then, it is sometimes difficult to disentangle justifiable actions from historical wishful thinking. What about the instruction in the Bible not to let a witch live? Certainly, the purity of Israel’s religion had to be maintained, but the solution does, to us, seem a little drastic. To criticise the actions used by humans within the context of human nature is fruitless, however cruel they appear to be, or whether they are claimed to be in the name of God or not. The Old Testament is crammed with the whole range of problems and faults that humans are subject to. It ‘tells it like it is’ where human nature is concerned. If the events in the Old Testament are so obviously evil and counter to the professed morality of Christianity, why are they there? Why did the Church include them in the Bible? Atheists sometimes say that the Bible was somehow concocted or re-written by the Church, yet at the same time point out evil deeds in the Bible that are perpetrated in the name of God, saying

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that this is inconsistent with Christian belief. So, apparently the people who supposedly edited and amended the scriptures to suit themselves were complete idiots. This is to ignore the fact that they were probably better educated (in the sense that education should teach us to think) than many of us today. Surely we should ask ourselves why the evil deeds are there. We should ask what they are telling us about human beings, and interpret this in the light of New Testament teaching. The religion of Islam survives today using harsh laws, and says it is God’s will. If this principle is accepted by much of today’s world, (and whether it is true or not that it is God’s will), there is little wonder that it could have been accepted in ancient Israel. With historical hindsight, ancient Israel was given the task of nurturing and preserving the belief in one God, within a very hostile political and religious environment, and it succeeded. For Israel to then believe that all of the methods used to bring this success had God’s blessing, was an understandable step to take. (Whether Israel should expect to be able to apply the same principles today is, of course, more questionable). Imagine a desperate world. This is not too difficult, given our present knowledge of the possible threats to our environment. Imagine that most land is desert. Water is scarce. Food is scarce. Drastic regulations are issued: • • • • • •

Do not have more than one baby. All surviving babies beyond the first are to be killed. All pregnancies beyond the first are to be terminated. Let millions die so that the few survive. Anyone who wastes water will be killed. Any corporation disobeying environmental rules is to be destroyed. Its leaders are to be killed.

Hundreds of years later, after humankind has survived, what would the verdict be? Would the regulations be seen as harsh but necessary? All of these measures sound ridiculously harsh, but under certain circumstances they could be absolutely necessary. We could watch a science fiction film that shows these actions, and believe that things could come to such desperation. But when we are told that to survive in a hostile, violent, barbaric and male dominated world, a nation and its monotheistic religion needed to impose harsh rules and regulations, we recoil in disgust and disbelief. How can we judge Israel as too harsh or barbaric, if, in certain circumstances, we would be forced to apply drastic remedies ourselves? Can you truly state that, in all circumstances, and in the context of flawed human nature, the ends can never ever justify the means? It is extremely hard to judge when action is required to fight evil or injustice, especially in the light of ‘turning the other cheek’. We should always question our motives for doing so, and the methods we use. But surely there must be situations where an action can be the lesser of two evils, resulting in more good or less evil than would have been the case without the action. If your children’s lives were being threatened, and the only way to save them was to take the life of their assailant, could you really say that you would not even contemplate doing it? If your family or your nation was threatened by an invader, would you just sit back and let them do it? From a Christian point of view, the Old Testament survival of Israel and the maintenance of the purity of its religion could be looked at as a just cause, in the light of subsequent events and the survival of belief in one God. However harsh some of their actions seemed to be, they

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could be judged as being desperate measures taken to ensure survival, and as consistent with the direction of history. Remember, the Israelites of the Bible also suffered slavery, defeat, banishment and exile, so the impression that God was always ‘on their side’, whatever they did, is ridiculous, and just another excuse for ridiculing God, the Bible and Christianity. Without the survival of the Israelites, the world would not have had Christianity, or even Islam. If the history is not looked at in this way, some actions can appear to be atrocities, like any other. I know what you are thinking. If you feel like saying that the world would have been a better place without Islam or Christianity, this is the usual convenient ‘throw away’ way of writing off God and religion without really thinking through the implications of a world without them. Think of Soviet Russia in the last century, an atheist regime willing to sacrifice untold millions of its own people for the future of ‘the state’, then think what world history could have looked like without a belief in God. Much, much worse, I am sure. ** What if, for instance (and very much hypothetically, of course), the majority of the world decided that the USA’s economic and military dominance of the world was dangerous to our future survival? What if they then tried to control it? How would they do this? By trade sanctions? Would the USA sit back and accept these? Would they not consider the application of violence or the threat of violence to redress the situation? Any violence against the USA would then become 'official' violence, as opposed to terrorist violence, and future generations would see it as trying to save them from disaster. The benefit of historical hindsight is always helpful, even if it does not always give us a satisfactory answer. We have been encouraged to accept the necessity of the destruction by atomic bomb of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, and the fire bombing and destruction of Dresden in Germany as necessary evils. This mass destruction took countless thousands of innocent lives, and many, many times more than 9/11. It is still claimed that they saved many more lives, by helping to end the war. As another example, Israel's current treatment of the Palestinians is considered as unjust by many, including myself, but Zionists will not agree. Only historical hindsight will reveal the truth and whether it is justified. You don’t believe that there is a God. One of the reasons you don’t is the war and suffering I speak of. There can’t be a God because He would not allow it, let alone condone it. This is denying God the capability of being, you might say, ‘cruel to be kind’. We sometimes say that it is wrong to wrap our children in a cocoon of safety. We have to allow them a little leeway and freedom to learn, and in the meantime they might make mistakes and suffer the consequences. How can we then deny an all powerful God the use of this method? Using suffering and violence as a way of denying the existence of God is not a proof. God does not condone or encourage, He reluctantly allows. Can I please just ask you for a moment to put aside your atheism and imagine that you believe in God and an after-life, at least as a possibility? Believe me; I have tried this exercise the other way round. I have been an atheist before I was a believer, then I have later tried to think like an atheist. All I have found is despair and inconsistency. Human beings fight to satisfy greed, to survive, or to defend themselves and what they see as their rights. This has gone on throughout history. Should God interfere? Ask yourself, if you were God and wanted to show us how much we depend on you, and how much you love us,

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would you ‘spoil’ us by ensuring peace and prosperity at all times? If you have children, do you do this for them, or do you sometimes allow them to make mistakes? And, as God, if you knew that there is something so much better for them after they have learned the lessons of this life, what would you do? How are wars and suffering an argument against the existence of a good, just God, if this life is not all that there is, and there is something so much better to come? Atheists see nothing but this life. Therefore, to them, all suffering is unnecessary and pointless, particularly when it involves innocent victims. What reason do they give for man-made suffering, then? How do they explain it? Amongst other things, they blame religions. If religion disappeared, would suffering and hatred disappear? Can they really be serious if they believe this? What if the suffering of innocents in this short life is compensated for in some way that we do not know? We have to believe this if we believe in a just God. The alternative we have is total despair at the human condition, and we might as well all give up. Show me the evidence that human beings are getting better. If you are an atheist, you have a good excuse. You have religion to blame. ***************************************************************************

Select Bibliography

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I wish this not to be a completely exhaustive list of sources and possible reading, but a list of what I consider invaluable and essential reading if you wish to study further. If you do not read anything else, read these if you want more details and a confirmation of many of the views I put forward in this book. Some of the books were written decades ago, which only serves to emphasise how little has been done to address the issues they covered.

Title

Author

Publisher

Injustice and ‘Globalisation’ ‘How the Other Half Dies’

Susan George

Penguin

‘Globalisation and its Discontents’

Joseph Stiglitz

Penguin

‘Stupid White Men’

Michael Moore

Penguin

‘Fast Food Nation’

Eric Schlosser

Penguin

‘The Best Democracy Money Can Buy’

Greg Palast

Constable & Robinson

‘The Rich get Richer’

John Rentoul

Unwin

‘North/South: A programme for Survival’

from the Brandt Report, 1980 Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies Noam Chomsky

Pan

Environment ‘Silent spring’

Rachel Carson

Penguin

‘The Global Report to the President’

2000

‘50 facts that should change the world’

Jessica Williams

Icon Books

‘The Coming of the Greens ‘

Jonathan Porritt

Fontana

‘The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight’

Thom Hartmann

Rivers Press

‘The Biotech Century’

Jeremy Rifkin

Phoenix

Economics ‘Money: Whence it came, Where it went’

J.K. Galbraith

Penguin

‘The Great Crash, 1929’

J.K. Galbraith

Penguin

‘Economics and the Public Purpose’

J. K Galbraith

Penguin

‘The New Industrial State’

J.K Galbraith

Penguin

‘Free to Choose’

Milton Friedman.

Penguin

‘Why do People Hate America?

Icon Books

‘Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Penguin Global Dominance’ The ‘No Nonsense’ guides available from the New Internationalist are very useful, particularly ‘Globalisation’, ‘AWater’, ‘Global Media’, ‘Democracy’, ‘World Poverty’ and ‘World History’

It is clear that I do not agree with Mr Friedman’s ideas. This book is included as a major source of the ‘Free Market’ mentality. ‘Keynes and After’ Michael Stewart Penguin ‘Small is Beautiful’

E.F. Schumacher

Abacus

Consumerism and Education ‘The Hidden Persuaders’

Vance Packard

Penguin

‘The Affluent Society’

J.K. Galbraith

Penguin

‘The Uses of Literacy’

Richard Hoggart

Penguin

History ‘The Free and the Unfree’ This is a history of the USA written from the perspective of the common people. ‘The Scramble for Africa’

Peter N. Carroll David W Noble

and

Thomas Pakenham

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Penguin Abacus