Pandemic Era Politics; favouring Charles Eisenstein’s #LivingPlanetPolitics lead
Let’s return to something better than “normal”; Only the monetary economy has crashed; The Generosity/Gift Economy is worthy of a third of your economic week as is the Timebank Economy for your Care Pension (@caredotmov).Please don’t see Coronavirus as a 1 in 100 year event; make it “The Great Turning” for “The Industrial Growth Economy” & support #CommunityDevelopment eg freelender.org
“This week Hastings Borough Council made available their report on the progress of their Climate Emergency Action Plan 2020/21 to 2021/22. At best these are well intentioned aspirations at worst they are just more ‘blah’, ‘blah’, ‘blah’.
They claim to be “putting climate change at the heart of decision making” but are they really?
Time is running very short. We know that the systems of local government makes the task of an appropriate response very hard, and that it might even feel impossible. But when there is a will there’s a way- so we demand to see that will in action. We demand our leaders and representatives rise to this emergency with the level of bravery it calls for. There is no choice. There is no Planet B ...
So we will be taking action on Wednesday 13th October …
Please join us between 12 noon – 5.00pm for our Crisis Talks table outside Muriel Matters House, Hastings (next to roundabout at Pelham Place) to raise public awareness, and put our concerns to council representatives going in and out of the building.
HBC want to “develop an engagement and communication plan, which supports and encourages local organisations, businesses and communities to act to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.”
Please come and answer their call: tell the council what you want them to do!
At 5.30pm we will be performing a die-in on the pavement outside Muriel Matters House. Councillors will be invited to join us or to witness the powerful moment of contemplation created by mass action reflecting the fears and frustration of their local constituents. If you can join for no other part then please join for this.
We will finish at 5.45pm with the full council meeting starting at 6pm. None of these events will be unlawful in any way.
Further actions designed to hold our representatives to account will follow, and everyone is welcome to join us. As always, ExtinctionRebellion(XR) acts in peace.” #KinderPoliticsQTpodcast now available too
July 2021 version of the opening of the book, now subtitled “Breaking The Mould Off UK Politics & Caring (as if) On A Living Planet”:
“Everyone has a heart, everyone cares for someone; perhaps starting with them self. Imagine caring for all life on this planet; how might we begin?
Having put the above question on Twitter, soon I attempted my three-bullet-point answer, such as that answer was then.
1) #LivingPlanetPolitics @ceisenstein?;
2) #GrassrootsManifestoes @GManifestoes?;
3) #ConvergentFacilitation @mikikashtan?
In the writing of this book I hope that my three points will be further developed, and, with the help you provide simply by my imagining you and “your precious”, hopefully out-grown.
Can you think of a politician behaving in such a way that you are alienated from them and whatever it is they were caring about when they said/did x? The primary UK example I can think of is the Prime Minister saying “Let the bodies pile high”. This wasn’t Winston Churchill, facing the consequences of his World War Two decision to sink the French navy to the extent that he could, in order to prevent it falling into Nazi hands, and at the reported cost of y lives. It was Boris Johnson. Have you spoken to anyone yet in such a way that what Boris cares about - a healthy economy, thereby saving even more lives, and, in parallel, his premiership- is even recognised or perhaps (dare I suggest it as a contemporary of his at the Oxford Union in the mid-80s and always sceptical of his being #BestPrimeMinister) honoured?
And at a more local area too, what politician said/did z, such that you are alienated from them and whatever it is they were expressing their caring about when they said/did z?
Perhaps your MP has received death threats arising not just from doing/saying z, but the dehumanising effect of the collective reaction to z may well have built the tension towards the death threat, as I suggest it did in #HastingsAndRyeConstituency with Sally-Ann Hart, after an “unkind representation” of what said about Disability and the Minimum Wage (whilst sitting next to me at #HastingsHustings) broke through to the national media & currently still dominates the online profile of the MP elected 12th December 2019…..”
Even today I find myself in despair on (compelling?) Twitter. I saw a tweet that was a response to “demonising” and, to me, that tweet appears equally “demonising”. I can only see such things askance, for, as in the Bible, I do, of course, seek to remove others’ motes whilst having a “plank in my eye”.
Seeing on Twitter much of behaviour that reminds me how much I care about a world that gets beyond demonisation, I draw strength from this #YouTubeFilmlet:
& progress, hopefully more creatively than reactively, by replying:
“I’m keen @PaulCanOnlyGet1 to #RolePlay “people who think it's acceptable to drown entire families just because they want to join friends & relatives and make a positive contribution to a country that desperately needs them” I suggest a #WeZoomedAcrossDifference zoom call. Tues?”
April version of the opening of the “Myth Of The Heartless Tory” book:
Standing for election can be a traumatic experience, accompanied by denial of the trauma. It has taken 18 months before I have seen my actions as others perhaps saw them earlier. Though my critics expressed their opinion less classically, perhaps I was akin to Icarus, flying too near the sun?
Almost 18 months ago now, Hastings Independent Press published what I call "A Tale of Two Independent Candidates":
“Amber Rudd’s majority over Labour candidate Peter Chowney at the 2017 general election was just 346. The three other candidates, Nick Perry of the Liberal Democrats, Michael Sheridan of UKIP and independent Nicholas Wilson all lost their deposits.
The Lib Dems as unrepentant Remainers and UKIP as belligerent No Dealers had clearly differentiated programmes from both main parties in that election. Mr Wilson, however, was a paid-up member of the Labour party. He said he had joined it “to vote for Jeremy Corbyn” but was standing separately on an “anti-corruption” ticket. As he polled 412 votes, and Cllr Chowney lost by a lesser margin, it is hardly surprising that Labour held him substantially responsible for their shortfall.
Could history repeat itself two years on? For here comes another independent candidate, Paul Crosland, on the 2019 ballot – not, as far as is known, a recalcitrant Labour member, but one who is espousing radical causes that seem likely to attract more fringe Labour voters than Conservatives.”
So, in what kind of politics can an independent candidate polling just 412 votes be held "substantially responsible" for a) the shortfall of 346 votes & b) for their party not getting the victor's 25,668 votes? IMHO an unfair, blaming (rather than responsibility-taking) kind of politics.
I chose to stand in 2019 in a “marginal seat” where I knew the back-story that includes this assumption by the "Independent"(left-wing!) local press that the 412 votes of my predecessor as the independent candidate were in some sense rightfully Labour's! Thus Nicholas Wilson (known as “Mr Ethical”) was scapegoated for the "Labour Party trauma" of Amber Rudd winning by 346 votes and I found myself threatened, in a surprisingly upsetting way, for the decision I took to be #StandingForGenerosity.
Amongst other things, I contest both the assumptions about where Nicholas Wilson’s votes came from and where my 565 votes cast in 2019 came from. I suggest that neither are minor, parochial issues, but signifiers of a number of overdue changes needed in UK Politics for democracy to survive/flourish.
In standing as I did in 2019 I can simultaneously show the influence I had as an Independent Candidate in shifting the policy and publications of Hastings Labour Party. In other marginal constituencies other local branches of major political parties can be significantly shifted by the actions of Independent Candidates. My findings, dialogues and reflections amount to an informed proposal of a new kind of politics in a democratically deficient UK. Within this vision I have realised through standing and reflecting long and hard on the shortfalls of the vision I formerly presented that regime change is not necessary to make most of the difference.
Though I moved out of #HastingsAndRyeConstituency on the day of the General Election result -under a number of pressures, personal and political, I was not, like the independent candidate in this constituency before me, castigated for losing Labour an election.
Nonetheless I was assumed by some to have capitulated with the Tories. That accusation is worthy IMHO of unpacking if we are to hold dear in this country anything other than polarising/reactive (rather than creative) politics which, IMHO, doesn't get the best out of anyone. Does standing up for something other than a #HowlingHustings make one an ally of one party and an enemy of another?
Though I value my two decades engaged in mediation work in settings as varied as prison and 10 Downing St, I’m no saint. I’m certainly not (yet) free of the antithesis of the #KinderPolitics for which I stand. I evidence my own #UnkinderPolitics in writing epitaphs for Teresa May and Nigel Farage; the former PM who upset some wheat and didn’t have a viable way of enacting Brexit, the latter an unelectable individual (under first past the post politics) from whom the lessons of his massive impact on UK politics have not yet been learned.
How #KinderPolitics might produce #DeeperAccountability & more #InfluenceNotControl
How Independent Candidates, without needing to be elected, may become the mediators and influencers of seismic "Welfare Initiatives" way beyond the extension of free school meals during the Covid19 crisis. (I picture the creation of a new political consensus (like after WW2) to the extent that any political party seeking substantial numbers of MPs being elected could only achieve their electoral goal if they supported at least an experimental trial in the area of "UniversalBasicIncome" or lowering the pension age (#PensionsAt30?) as a step towards the “BasicIncome culture-shift”.)
NB For Inspiration before you share your 4-10 point manifesto here (or on twitter, reminders of the labelling used below on Twitter.com/gmanifestoes) see #ChrisGidlowAuthorAndHistorian’s #HastingsCitizenManifesto at https://youtu.be/Bb-N70EgiX4
10)#350millionpounds/wk to #NHS -including a rebalancing of #BigPharma’s influence with that of #ComplementaryMedicine & #CloserToNature lifestyle #EcoTherapy *:
I offer 4 quotes below, which don’t amount to a summary of the (difficult to complete) "Myth of The Heartless Tory" (forthcoming book; perhaps 2022):
A) "If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
B) The popular myth is that #WinstonChurchill said:
"If you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain."
C)
"An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”
He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”
The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”"
D)
"There's something wrong with democracy when we aren't in healthy communication between:
My advice is to find friends who embody the three key energies that we might progress with integrating these energies more deeply in the heart of each of us:
A) The “Creative Hippy” -distinct from the “Reactive (& pleasure-seeking, bohemian) Hippy”
The creative tension between these energies has been developed in talks over a number of decades on “Free Buddhist Audio”*; based on the 1990s observations of Reginald Ray, of the history of Buddhism in South East Asia & the respective roles of:
*I particularly recommend the way that Vajragupta has carried forward the themes, eg around integrating our idealism with our experience without falling into (the trap of) doubt, especially from 40 minutes into the 2010 talk: Being Radical - 40 Years of The New Society & his 2021 talks on #BuddhismAndPolitics
“The proposals, which were announced during the last session of Parliament in March, would make it easier for unpopular and highly divisive candidates to get into city and town halls on low levels of voter support, the reform movement says.”
Dear Co-ordinator of 20th May 2021 Hastings Meeting
Please recognise (& read to the meeting, to which I send my apologies) that Proportional Representation is the only way that a divisive candidate called Nigel Farage became a parliamentarian; #FPTP stopped this happening in UK Parliament, Farage was an MEP. 2ndly PR excludes independent candidates who can advance policies (eg #UBI) that the two main parties shun. I stand for #50percentToElectAnMP and look forward to constructive engagement with how this builds a #DeeperLegitimacyParliament etc
My proposal within a Buddhist Movement with lots of real estate is that: 1) People sell as much equity in their homes as they can afford without risking losing their ability to live ..[insert adjective depending on where you are on the householder-hermit spectrum]; 2) These people, whether or not they've raised extra money from their real estate, buy shares in the Retreat Centres and Buddhist Centres owned across the Western World (worth hundreds of millions) 3) The Buddhist Centres retain 51% control and use 25% of the 49% of their capital value raised to address the concerns of our larger Buddhist brotherhood & sisterhood in India; which might be a Vaccination programme for the entire nation, blind to religion and caste.
"Have Working Class Labour Voters gone Tory forever?", asks The Telegraph and a rich reply is due in "The Myth Of The Heartless Tory" book by #PaulCroslandIndependentCandidate, informed by dialogue with #StLeonardsLocalTreasureTonyMay and others....
Most Mondays what do you do?
I find that I have a fresh start to the book I'm writing about modern politics, culture...
As a #GreenPartymember who stood as #PaulCroslandIndependentCandidate in #HastingsAndRyeConstituency, somehow gaining the highest #IndependentVote in the history of the constituency, I found the experience an eye opener as regards the distance to be travelled to get from #UnkindPolitics to #RespectfulPolitics, by which we gain #DeeperAccountability rather than end up with #HowlingHustings. The experience has led me to write the forthcoming #MythOfTheHeartlessTory; I’m confident that I’m not the only Green who sees as much threat to humanity from Labour as the Tories; here’s the only blog I found of the #5thDecember2019 #HastingsHustings that brought the town into such direspute: https://going-postal.com/2019/12/the-howling-at-the-hustings-in-hastings/
Have I misread a conspiracy ie #ToryCoup to #OustBoris? Was the appearance of a #MaxHastings master-move actually just Radio4’s World At One digging up an old enemy of Boris or did Max Hastings make the move to get his message of a clear & profitable route out of 10 Downing St & on to the uplands of #BorisJohnsonPublicEntertainer? In the #MythOfTheHeartlessTory I’ll be comparing the fortnight before the local elections as a period of blood-letting akin to the two months between #Pussygate in early autumn 2016 & the 20point recovery in opinion polls that Trump support needed to regroup after that setback. The main bloodletting “victim” is #CarrieAntoinette, whom TheSpectator has been IMHO effective in HoldingToAccount. Should she be seen to continue to seek to set Boris’s agenda and he act disproportionately according to her will/taste, the #OustBoris #ToryCoup will still rally & rally stronger. No one placed a bet at the #10 to 1 odds I offered. I repeat my offer at 5to1 that Boris will not be leading the Tories come the next election; up to £100 of bets (ie 20 x £1 bets) being taken.
