We learn of the Prime Minister's state of mental health in good time for the prolonged run up to the party conference season. And it's not an edifying national conversation.
The political class is merely a reflection of the environment in the same way our financiers and footballers are. A cursory glance at what the press deigns to publish into their behaviour as human being is a fearful record. In this we would see a world of deep, dark psychopathological symptoms running the whole gamut from city high flyers driven to infanticide to the captain of the South Africa bound England football team publicly urinating in lap-dancing joints.
But money, celebrity and power are involved and wielded. So in this case our common perception is that such people are successfully operating on a plane far beyond any ordinary level. And because of this fact we don't consider the immense anger, greed and stupidity exhibited when things don't go wrong.. We follow the money and the power because this is the true measure of success and failure in the reality that society has agreed.
That a politician of Gordon Brown's standing and experience should be suffering from profound depression is understandable. His own demeanour would have pre-disposed him to such suffering in any profession. But given a lifetime's heavy politicking, the incessant demands of the job, how could a post-holder not but exist in a state of perpetual jet lag and chronic circadian dysrhythmia?
Maybe in such cases it's best to be a dreamer. Last week on the Today programme there was a debate between Max Hastings and Dr Nigel Knight argued as to the effectiveness of Churchill as war leader.
Of course, but don't say it out loud, in time of war paranoid schizophrenia is nationalised. Having lived an inner fantasy life in which he saw himself as coming to the rescue of the nation, Churchill was well rehearsed for his final hour in 1940. And good thing too. What the time demanded was that England took action and fought, no matter what. The rational course then would have been a version of surrender and therefore lunacy.
In a famous essay psychologist Anthony Storr described the inner life of Churchill. In Storr’s view, “it is probable that England owed her survival in 1940 to this inner world of make-believe. The kind of inspiration with which Churchill sustained the nation is not based on judgment, but on an irrational conviction independent of factual reality. Only a man convinced that he had an heroic mission, who believed that, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, he could yet triumph, and who could identify himself with a nation's destiny could have conveyed his inspiration to others."
Orwell had it when he said: “In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.”
Maybe, for the time being, the nation has the Prime Minister it deserves?
Friday, September 11, 2009
Monday, September 7, 2009
What that war picture from Afghanistan means to me
I have a son, a seven year old called Josh who lives very happily in a town called Surprise, Arizona.
Like all parents or those who care deeply for someone in their life, the thought of seeing your children suffer or face harm is indescribable and unimaginable. The parents of Josh Bernard have witnessed the AP image of their son's death broadcast around the US press and the world.
Lance Corporal Bernard, aged 21 was hit in the leg by a Rocket Propelled Grenade. Lying on his side in great agony and unable to breathe, his assault rifle stands useless within his grasp; one leg has been blown clean off and the mangled remains of another emerging from a patch of red gore. We see two fellow soldiers in blurred action attending to him.
Understandably, Lance Corporal Bernard's family did not wish this harrowing picture to feature on the AP Wire.
Like all parents or those who care deeply for someone in their life, the thought of seeing your children suffer or face harm is indescribable and unimaginable. The parents of Josh Bernard have witnessed the AP image of their son's death broadcast around the US press and the world.
Lance Corporal Bernard, aged 21 was hit in the leg by a Rocket Propelled Grenade. Lying on his side in great agony and unable to breathe, his assault rifle stands useless within his grasp; one leg has been blown clean off and the mangled remains of another emerging from a patch of red gore. We see two fellow soldiers in blurred action attending to him.
Understandably, Lance Corporal Bernard's family did not wish this harrowing picture to feature on the AP Wire.
However, I am glad that the image has been used. Not in the sense that it bolsters argument for or against the continued involvement of NATO troops in Afghanistan.
Like all great pictorial documenation the judgment of the camera is simple. The truth is self-evident and before our eyes. Human beings in the twenty first century should not be committed to inflicting such suffering upon each other.
Josh Bernard was in the words of his father a shy, humble, unassuming young man with strong values of service and personal honour. Although the use of this picture has caused additional grief to their family, I hope that in time they will see or derive some personal benefit from sharing their loss with the wider world and the Josh they knew and loved.
Where does this leave me on the other side of the Atlantic? In heartfelt honesty, I would like my son to grow up in a world where young American men don't have to travel vast distances to kill and be killed by other young men.
Auden wrote : "To ask the hard question is easy"; never more so than in the globalised, intrinsically interconnected world of instant communications, information and response of today.
The responsibility lies on all of us to consider and take action as individuals, communities, and societies. Wherever we are, whatever our circumstances and background, what am I doing, and what are we doing for the sake of contributing to a peaceful world?
The 20th century and the first disastrous early years of this century have sign-posted where the answers won't come from. If we don't know the answers, we certainly know the dead ends.
The solution won't be more politics and more money, no matter how they are painted, where they claim to derive from or what hopes they are sold on.
The answer lies in our hearts if we did but know it.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Retreads - Why The Public Sector Buys Dud Stuff
Have just read the Joseph Rowntree report Database State
It's a brilliant piece of research into how we fell into the a public sector surveillance quagmire and holds out a rope to haul the state clear out of the mire.
Database State gives a short yet full analysis into central government's obsession in recent years with investing in IT programmes that rely on holding, storing and in many cases mismanaging our sensitive personal information.
It also recommends, using a simple traffic light system (red, green amber) based on compliance with international standards on privacy, anonymity and respect for human rights which among our existing national systems should be scrapped, changed or left alone.
So we could say it was the Blairs that funked it - being dined down the river by the IT lobby in that crepuscular interval after the dotcom crash and before Iraq. This was about the time they got to grips with the fact they were meant to be in control of events as well as the reporting of them. I remember seeing David Blunkett and his Home Office officials being dined by ID card lobbyits in Gran Paradiso that unlikely outpost of Italian charm south of Victoria Station on Wilton Road. And lo it came to pass...
But enlightenment has come. And the true nature of all government phenomena comes down to this. If you want to know how to sell to the public sector, just look to what has proved a recent palpable failure in the private sector and pizazz - flog it for all it's worth! Because THEY WILL BUY IT. THEY WILL IMPLEMENT IT. ON A NATIONAL SCALE. AND THE TAXPAYER WILL FUND IT. Yes, you see my dears. We all win in the end!
"Britain is greatly afflicted by government naivety in purchasing. Many departments outsourced too much of their IT in the 1980s, and now do not have people with the skills to manage complex procurements. One noticeable effect is that the UK public sector always appears to get sold whatever technology or methodology is just going out of fashion in the private sector: business process re-engineering, which was popular in business in the 1980s, arrived in government in the 1990s (contributing among other things to the London Ambulance Service disaster); PKI was the big fashion in the late 1990s but vanished with the collapse of Baltimore in 2000, only to resurrect itself phoenix-like as the identity management programme; and customer relationship management, which private firms are now starting to see through, is selling well in Whitehall and local government. Again and again, the state gets palmed off with private-sector retreads." (page 46, Database State)
So if this is the ultimate reality of public sector purchasing, what duds from the commercial world can we expect to see making the headlines in three or four years time? Answers on a postcard please!
It's a brilliant piece of research into how we fell into the a public sector surveillance quagmire and holds out a rope to haul the state clear out of the mire.
Database State gives a short yet full analysis into central government's obsession in recent years with investing in IT programmes that rely on holding, storing and in many cases mismanaging our sensitive personal information.
It also recommends, using a simple traffic light system (red, green amber) based on compliance with international standards on privacy, anonymity and respect for human rights which among our existing national systems should be scrapped, changed or left alone.
So we could say it was the Blairs that funked it - being dined down the river by the IT lobby in that crepuscular interval after the dotcom crash and before Iraq. This was about the time they got to grips with the fact they were meant to be in control of events as well as the reporting of them. I remember seeing David Blunkett and his Home Office officials being dined by ID card lobbyits in Gran Paradiso that unlikely outpost of Italian charm south of Victoria Station on Wilton Road. And lo it came to pass...
But enlightenment has come. And the true nature of all government phenomena comes down to this. If you want to know how to sell to the public sector, just look to what has proved a recent palpable failure in the private sector and pizazz - flog it for all it's worth! Because THEY WILL BUY IT. THEY WILL IMPLEMENT IT. ON A NATIONAL SCALE. AND THE TAXPAYER WILL FUND IT. Yes, you see my dears. We all win in the end!
"Britain is greatly afflicted by government naivety in purchasing. Many departments outsourced too much of their IT in the 1980s, and now do not have people with the skills to manage complex procurements. One noticeable effect is that the UK public sector always appears to get sold whatever technology or methodology is just going out of fashion in the private sector: business process re-engineering, which was popular in business in the 1980s, arrived in government in the 1990s (contributing among other things to the London Ambulance Service disaster); PKI was the big fashion in the late 1990s but vanished with the collapse of Baltimore in 2000, only to resurrect itself phoenix-like as the identity management programme; and customer relationship management, which private firms are now starting to see through, is selling well in Whitehall and local government. Again and again, the state gets palmed off with private-sector retreads." (page 46, Database State)
So if this is the ultimate reality of public sector purchasing, what duds from the commercial world can we expect to see making the headlines in three or four years time? Answers on a postcard please!
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Quangomania
So it's time for David Cameron and the Conservatives to spell out just how they'll deal with the steaming quagmire of public finances they expect to inherit it a year or two's time.
In the medieval world, the concept of a 'damnosa hereditas' or accursed legacy was well established. Why aspire to wear the heavy crown king when you could enjoy your wealth and leisure with some other chump serving as the political vegetable.
King Dave's approach to tackling public debt was heralded in the Independent's piece on Quangos. Essentially there's nothing much new to report to Quangophiles.
Cabinet Office aren't printing the full list of bodies in a single easy to digest publication but claim there are only 790 on the block compared to 857 in 1997 . We now think they are spending/wasting £35 billion of hard earned tax payers cash. We're not entirely sure what they all do to justify their existence. But the good news is that the British Potato Council is still levying benigthed farmers to pay for national chip week - the highlight of the national culinary calendar.
Dan Lewis from the Economic Research Council is right in saying these should be a 'tremendous reform opportunity' for an incoming administration. In business speak they are low-hanging fruit but in the past they have demonstrated the persistent and resistant powers of a leyandii bush.
The trick will be to arrive with a comprehensive and plan to determine which functions can be outsourced, privatised or abolished and what if anything needs to be created in their place. Sharing this with the transition teams would be helpful.
On the vexed issues of public sector salaries which Cameron touched upon maybe a ceiling to be set, especially with so many public officials earning more than the Prime Minister. Either that or double the P.M.'s basic. Try that if you like
Hat-tip to Raheem for the cheeky pay slip of Ofcom's Ed Richards- worth every penny of £417,581.
Monday, March 9, 2009
A slandrous headline. But we salute it's indefatigability!
George Galloway stoned in Egypt
Apparently some noisome Egyptian youthful ruffians threw shards and rubble at his mini-bus. Respect and nuff said!http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5872129.ece
Friday, January 4, 2008
Horrible and Hidden History of Hammersmith
A mis-guided, off beat, off kilter 2 hour tour of my manor in aid of Elizabeth Finn Care
| Date: | Sunday, January 6 & 13th , 2008 |
| Time: | 2:00pm - 4:00pm |
| Location: | Hammersmith Broadway Tube |
by statue of 3 naked men | |
I've lived in Hammersmith for five years and daily I'd walk past a blue plaque in Brook Green. The plaque commemorates the founding of the Distressed Gentlefolk's Aid Association. I would notice it and barely give it a second thought.
Then I did. Having learned the history of Elizabeth Finn and her wonderful example of what a human being is capable of achieving by taking courageous, compassionate action based on deep wisdom, I've been inspired to give something back to my community in the form of a guided historical walk.
The two hour walk will take in a dozen sites of infamy and inspiration and a cast of heroes and villains ranging from Elizabeth Finn to Margaret Thatcher, Charles Dickens to Oliver Cromwell, The Clash and the Beatles to Gustav Holst and Joanna Lumley.
The walk will acknowledge the good with the bad, the beautiful with the ugly with the focus on the good guys winning.
Our walk will retrace a history of compassion, courage and wisdom that has pervaded Hammersmith and shaped the present.
Walkers will be encouraged (by fair means or foul) to donate £2.50 in aid of Elizabeth Finn Care which began in Brook Green in 1897 and whose legacy that it is never too late to care endures today.
The walk is repeated the following Sunday 13th from 2-4pm
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Victorious Hearts
It's been an interesting few months of late in which I haven't related my activities, opinions or thoughts. Over the summer I decided to stay in London and focus on my determination to get the career I wanted by 1st September.
Having foregone the pleasures of flying to Arizona to see Josh and from there to Melbourne to catch up with Kerri and see her folks I kept committed to my goal of being an open, passionate and enriching person in my daily work. Supporting various Soka Gakkai activities including the boys Future Group and booking to attend and support the Young Men's Summer Course on deadline day helped keep the vision alive, as did my dogged attendance of Landmark Seminar in Action courses every Monday evening without fail.
With all this in mind I begin work for Monday as a public sector sales manager for an employee benefits company and am really looking forward to being totally open, passionate and enriching in what will be a brilliant and stretching work environment.
Meanwhile, spurred on by an excellent Young Men's meeting at Masaru's, greatly enlivened by the presence of Joe Dempsey I took myself to the Burmese Embassy at noon today in support of peace and democracy in Burma.
The quiet corner behind Curzon street's yawning arc was filled with Burmese people, Amnesty International banners and odds and sods like me out to show solidarity for the cause of peace against the face of selfishness and hatred. Having avoided most forms of political protest in my life, I soon got the gist of standing and listening and clapping when permitted. By the time we all knelt in unison for a minute's prayer for all those in Burma I was still feeling a bit of a spectator, glowering into the TV cameras scanning our faces. But during those moments of reflection, as I accustomed myself to kneel and hold the palms of my hands together as if before the gohonzon the feeling of presence and peaceful commitment to change won over my own doubts and fears.
When I chanted yesterday I felt great compassion for the military leadership for the poverty and life denying hopelessness within their own hearts and sought in my prayer to reach out and transform their own poison into medicine. Today, at 1 o'clock in the afternoon in Charles Street, Mayfair my prayer truly did reach out to all in Burma, that all may be free from their prisons to live lives of joy.
Having foregone the pleasures of flying to Arizona to see Josh and from there to Melbourne to catch up with Kerri and see her folks I kept committed to my goal of being an open, passionate and enriching person in my daily work. Supporting various Soka Gakkai activities including the boys Future Group and booking to attend and support the Young Men's Summer Course on deadline day helped keep the vision alive, as did my dogged attendance of Landmark Seminar in Action courses every Monday evening without fail.
With all this in mind I begin work for Monday as a public sector sales manager for an employee benefits company and am really looking forward to being totally open, passionate and enriching in what will be a brilliant and stretching work environment.
Meanwhile, spurred on by an excellent Young Men's meeting at Masaru's, greatly enlivened by the presence of Joe Dempsey I took myself to the Burmese Embassy at noon today in support of peace and democracy in Burma.
The quiet corner behind Curzon street's yawning arc was filled with Burmese people, Amnesty International banners and odds and sods like me out to show solidarity for the cause of peace against the face of selfishness and hatred. Having avoided most forms of political protest in my life, I soon got the gist of standing and listening and clapping when permitted. By the time we all knelt in unison for a minute's prayer for all those in Burma I was still feeling a bit of a spectator, glowering into the TV cameras scanning our faces. But during those moments of reflection, as I accustomed myself to kneel and hold the palms of my hands together as if before the gohonzon the feeling of presence and peaceful commitment to change won over my own doubts and fears.
When I chanted yesterday I felt great compassion for the military leadership for the poverty and life denying hopelessness within their own hearts and sought in my prayer to reach out and transform their own poison into medicine. Today, at 1 o'clock in the afternoon in Charles Street, Mayfair my prayer truly did reach out to all in Burma, that all may be free from their prisons to live lives of joy.
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