-The greater potential for our well-being of political, economic & spiritual community drives Paul Crosland to stand in general elections & to write the “Relearning PCECSC trilogy“(or #PeskyTrilogy for short):Volume 1 - The Myth Of The Heartless Tory; Vol 2 - The Pioneering 108 Vagabond Custodians preparing for The Festival Of The New Society 2066; Vol 3 - Politics As A Spiritual Practice. These books will form the shares in “Refuge Tree Woods” where we gather to refine our organic plot…
“Is Paul Crosland an ego-maniac, a narcissist, an eccentric or what? Is he mad, bad or just sad? Are these the lenses you look through? How do any of us know what is in the heart of another; which of the universal needs that drive us all has come to the fore uniquely in the person in question? Recognising that we are all wounded*, what is the wound that is playing out in the political sphere and how do I react to that?” (Imaginary Interlocutor)
I believe I can help you navigate these possibilities, as someone contacted me via Twitter after the Thursday 5th December Hustings putting it to me that I am “a compassionate man making an (unnecessary) political gesture”; that communication and my reply are here.
If you have a view to which you'd like an answer please email me - -and I'll probably put a link to our getting closer to mutual understanding here.
One other issue may be to whom I am accountable as I'm not (yet) part of a political party. That's a question I'll gladly engage with. (#IamAccountable) The way I received apparently harsh criticism at a Nonviolent Communication workshop actually so impressed a woman there who had just come into an inheritance that she became my benefactor, putting £15,000 into my Community Development work in Hastings and St Leonards 2011-2015, with a monthly report back from me.
I'll close this piece for now with two approximate quotes (from memory) from two of my mentors:
“Once you've sorted out your mental health, the next most important question seems to be 'How much of the burden of humanity am I willing to shoulder?”
&
“Don't wait until your motives are pure to get on and do things for the benefit of (self and) others.”
And from me:
Love yourself enough to stand up for what you believe in, at (almost) any cost, especially if that is the philosophy “I don't know best, we know better”.
*This YouTube film refers to the wound and -once opened in YouTube has this link beneath it.
Out of the boisterous air of the Hastings Independent hosted hustings of 5th December, the soundbite that became viral and led both local news stories and the BBC’s “Victoria Derbyshire” discussion programme by 10am the following morning was “Some people with learning difficulties don’t understand about money”. This sentence could be parodied in so many ways, but “I stood for Generosity” and to me that stand involves making the effort to mediate mutual comprehension rather than conjure up an “enemy image” of a Conservative and treat her words as confirmation that the Tories stand for demeaning, patronising and "othering" the disadvantaged.
For me, “Community Development”, the cause that led me to stand as an Independent with an intention of going on to found a new “Sharing & Care4Caring” political party/politics, only takes place when we hear each other to their satisfaction and having clarified what needs we are each trying to serve, see what alliances we can make to #MoveForwardMoreTogether.
In this spirit, in 2011, I formed the St Leonards Sharing Consortium with the Centre for Peaceful Solutions as a key partner. It’s founder, Maria Arpa, now the Executive Director of the International Centre For NonViolent Communication (CNVC.org), came to St Leonards to lead a weekend’s training, about which the chair of the Hastings Pier and White Rock Trust (as was) said the following:
“I’m breath-taken and inspired about the last two days; it’s been quite changing for me. I’d recommend this training across the voluntary and corporate sectors; across every walk of life this could add value”.
As creator of the Dialogue Road Map (DRM), Maria explained to me: "Magnified by [some of] the media, as a society we've reached a point where it's all too easy to judge what someone's saying to suit our own story. A healthier society would be one in which we take the time to unpack and understand the meaning and intention behind what's being said. When we choose dialogue over debate, with goodwill and co-operation, the apparently difficult choices we face will become less conflicted. My friend, Paul Crosland, has come out of this situation more determined than ever to stand for the values/practices of Mutual Understanding, Self Responsibility and Action Planning/(Non-blaming) Review which, in my experience, lie at the heart of effective action in the wake of hearing what we don’t like to hear."
600 words as the length allotted for this piece doesn’t allow space to unpack the issues of what “public good” is being blocked by “minimum wage” policies, as opposed, for example, to the “Basic Income” scheme I was trying to convey during the cut and thrust of those hustings. Ironically I was also trying to get out the message I put out at the Rye Hustings of job-share opportunities that cover us having an off-day in terms of our mental health. This policy I call “I’ve got your back”. Just as, in running a Restorative Justice project in HMP Bristol I was 100% on the offender’s side, 100% on the victim’s side and 100% on the community’s side without breaking the rules of maths, so too am I equally on the side of Peter Chowney and Sally-Ann Hart getting a fair hearing when challenging a value held dear by a majority. Here the “golden cow” was the minimum wage. Just to give a flavour of another unorthodox view on this matter, my (election-time) wingman, Tony May, never wants to work for the minimum wage because, amongst other things, that amounts to his being labeled “a minimum person”; he’d rather work for free as the “Clean-Up Man” and retain his dignity.
I close with a refrain from one of Maria Arpa and my highest mentors, now departed, Marshall Rosenberg:
“Words are windows or they’re walls; They sentence us or set us free, When I speak or when I hear, Let the love-light shine through me.”
“Hi , I was at the hustings this thursday and it was clear that you are a man of compassion trying to help people , but it seems to me positively counter productive of you to then stand as a progressive independent here in Hastings thus splitting the progressive vote and therefore in effect helping the distinctly uncompassionate Sally Ann Hart become Hasting's next MP. Please , therefore stand aside and recommend your supporters transfer their support to the equally compassionate Peter Chowney who can if elected actually then bring practical help to the poor and vulnerable in Hastings , which is so desperately needed rather than political gestures , however well intentioned.”
Hello “Fred”, or do you prefer that I address you differently? Thank you for taking the trouble to contact me with your request that kind of assumes my votes are coming from those who would otherwise vote Labour, rather than that my candidacy will, for example, equally reduce the Conservative vote. Is this a “received wisdom” that you are passing on, or based on something more substantial?
Furthermore you write of compassion, a topic that I value reflecting on. What kind of compassion do you think Peter Chowney stands for and what kind do you take it that I stand for. Do you see clear water between our approaches to compassion etc?
Thirdly, and finally until your reply, what “gesture” were you born to make and how’s that going? Seriously, I want everyone to stand for what they believe in and do it with the support of us all. I look forward to taking note of your #HastingsCitizensManifesto and doing my best to uphold it; which would be aided if you’d join this playlist with a 3.5minute introduction to you hashtagged #HastingsTube. Thanks: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLM4IagQQExoxpfHXSyVguPyjuiysRr5r-
My position on leaving the EU I make clear at the top of my Twitter Account and on a number of T-shirts:
The possibility of a Green Brexit was upheld by George Monbiot in the wake of the 23rd June 2016 referendum:
I have attempted to encourage the Green Party - of which I am a member - to account for how they became a pro-EU party; asking this question at the 2016 Green Party Conference in Birmingham:
At the beginning of my campaign, it came to my attention that many citizens were concerned about the adverse health effects of smart meters. If you haven’t had one installed already, you may soon be contacted by your utility provider for an appointment to replace your analogue meters (for water, electricity, and gas) with the new generation smart meter. In the UK, there is a plan for every household to have one before the end of 2020. Smart meters are devices that monitor, measure and communicate water, electricity, and gas usage to the provider – it does this using microwave radiation, in pulses– 24 hours/day – which some people believe to be harmful to health. There’s more too – many consumer goods on the market container an RFID microchip which is able to communicate with the smart meter so it can record on which brand of appliance you are using, how often and at what times. What is happening with this data? Do we have a right to know? OFGEM confirmed that the British Gas advert which promoted Smart Meters as a progressive and transformative device where customers would enjoy the benefits, was misleading customers about smart meters – there were no mentions of ‘higher bills’, ‘chronic radiation’, ‘home insecurity’ and ‘hackers’. The ad has since been removed from the public domain.
Please visit www.powerwatch.org.uk for more information form research into adverse health effects. The illness Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity is little understood and can have a variety of symptoms from dizziness to pains in joints. The website had links to research such as that from Hansen (2001), Draper (2005), Cao (2006) into the links of electro-magnetic radiation and breast cancer, childhood leukaemia and miscarriage, respectively.
DESPITE WHAT THE UTILITY PROVIDER MAY STATE, SMART METERS ARE NOT MANDATORY AND YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO REFUSE THEM.
"...can expose the body to 160 and 800 times as much microwave radiation as a mobile phone."
Please look at www.stopsmartmeters.org.uk for some technical info on how they work – it states here that Smart Meters represent the first time that frequencies which can penetrate concrete has “been rolled out en masse directly into homes – placing individuals in extremely close proximity to the radiation source.” Depending on where the Smart Meter is placed in the home and its distance from a mast, in some cases it “can expose the body to 160 and 800 times as much microwave radiation as a mobile phone. This can be 600 times the US Environmental Protection Agency safety standard. In the UK Public Health England has stated that there has been no testing and will only by so during the rollout of Smart Meters. Even in a European Parliamentary motion 5 years ago, the radiation standards were deemed “out of date”. Many scientists are hypothesising that the 50% increase in brain glioma (brain cancer) in the last 10 years is connected with radiation levels. Electricity usage data can be sent every few minutes or seconds from a Smart meter. Therefore, these intense pulses of radiation (900 MHz) can be emitted hundreds of thousands of times a day. There is no respite from recovery – an analogy used is the human brain being exposed to a strobe light compared to a candle. There is more research coming which will show the effect of this microwave radiation on the body – DNA damage, sperm damage, melatonin disruption, blood-brain barrier leakage...
"Citizens in our constituency have expressed symptoms such as headaches, palpitations and vision problems which they believe started with the installation of a Smart Meter."
· The closer you get to a Smart Meter, the stronger the exposure –there is no consideration for babies, children, the sick or frail.
· If a bank of Smart Meters are fitted in close proximity to each other e.g. on the ground floor of an apartment block, then the interior of the adjacent room will have very high levels of radiation
DESPITE WHAT THE UTILITY PROVIDER MAY STATE, SMART METERS ARE NOT MANDATORY AND YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO REFUSE THEM.
Contact your energy supplier if you wish to have it removed. If you are not happy with their response, speak to your Independent Candidate – he can share advice from others who have successfully had their Smart Meters removed.
"The intensity and ubiquity of the conversation around [fossil fuels causing global warming] sucks the air out of the room for issues like wildlife conservation, habitat preservation, toxic and nuclear waste, soil erosion, aquifer depletion, and so on. Tragically, as I will argue, it is precisely these other issues that are the hidden drivers of climate instability. Climate change is a symptom of ecosystem degredation, a process that goes back at least five thousand years and has reached peak intensity today. It arises from the basic relationship that has prevailed between civilisation and nature" (p56)
This film might come to define the #VoteIndependent campaign in Hastings & Rye much more than http://Twitter.com/Pause5Gm (#Pause5G) does: The film includes my Brexit answer from the Rye Hustings:,
BreakingTheMouldofUKPolitics -#VoteIndependent by & uphold #Decentralised #Democracy #Accountability & #Brexit in #Hollington, #StLeonardsOnSea #GE19 -#PutACrossForCrosland - https://Twitter.com/paulcrosland
Sections of the interview in the above film: 1) Discussing the 1st Hustings for all 4 candidates- Rye (held 22/11/19 and Livestream- with the film subsequently available on the Hastings and St Leonards Extinction Rebellion Facebook group page). 2) Discussing the Conservative Candidate’s decision to avoid the Hastings Extinction Rebellion hustings 3) John Minter refers to the 2066.uk website 4) Who are you/ What is your background/ Where Are You From? 5) How do you define your success?
Sections of the interview in the above film:
1) Why are you standing? What are you going to achieve?
2) The fixed(?) views of the elderly make it harder to acknowledge another view?
3) Is A General Election the best way to recruit (your wishes for community Development workers?
As Eddie said in the Oak Bakery, London Rd, St Leonards:
“What I'd like to do is [end the seesawing of politics from Labour getting in and ...., then the Conservatives and...;
that's how it's gone all my life. What alternative is there? Elect the Independent. Support the Independent candidate in some other way or stand yourself. I stand for Generosity. For what do you stand?
I wonder if the 12thDecember election will amounts to a #HiccupOrSeaChange?
Regardless, as your Independent Candidate seeking to build the "Sharing and Care4Caring Team" who will field candidates in the subsequent 2 elections at least, well that's the plan for the timebeing, I will be working assiduously to draw out people's aspirations, help them connect with people of a sort to whom they may not previously have given the time of day.
Whilst in my favourite Hastings & St Leonards bakery, I overheard a request for a shorter working week. I then joined in that conversation and teased out three other policy changes that Eddie wants – enough care support for his elderly friends living at home, youth clubs and a reduced working week. If you seearch YouTube for #HastingsCitizenManifesto you'll see that I went on to explain the process by which I move forward with Eddie's manifesto. The process is that when you've got between 4 and 10 points emailed to me (paul.crosland@gmail.com) I announce your HastingsCitizenManifesto to the constituency and then by posting an edited version on my Twitter account (@paulcrosland) begin the process of seeing if we can draw out someone with views that are very different as to what they think needs to be done. This isn't just done on line; by traveling myself to the fullest range of environments I can find within the incredibly diverse Hastings Borough Council and Rother District Council areas, I meet a whole host of opinions, and draw voters from across the whole political, economic and social spectrum.
I look in particular at the divides in society in terms of the have's and have not's but this is as much about money as time. There are the most stressed -who are money-short and time short -and then, of course, the other three situations, Whether time rich or time poor, if you are money-rich enough to make a donation to the ongoing community cohesion and voice-giving #HastingsCitizenManifesto process then please do so via [ ]. Once there is a pot of funding to bring in a mediator with full International credentials from the Centre for NonViolent Communication I arrange a follow on event to the event I organised in September 2011 (paid for entirely with timebank credits) with Maria Arpa, now the executive director at cnvc.org
"5G has already started being rolled out across the country, and together with smart technology is being promoted as one way to save energy and reduce carbon emissions. However, given that
1) as environment correspondent, John Vidal, has written “The communications industry could use 20% of all the world’s electricity by 2025, hampering global attempts to meet climate change targets and straining grids as demand … from billions of smartphones, tablets and internet-connected devices grows exponentially’
2) numerous scientific studies indicate harmful effects from microwave radiation to plants animals, birds, and insects, including our pollinators
3) The 2018 European Commission Scientific Committee on Health Environmental and Emerging Risks (SCHEER) classes 5G as 'an urgent, severe, emerging issue for its potential effects on wildlife'.
4) there are already huge environmental and human rights issues associated with the mining of minerals for use in wireless devices, and that it is more than likely that 5G, smart technology and The Internet of Things will result in exponential increase in this use
Do the above points give the candidates any cause for concern, and should we be putting the rollout of 5G and smart technology on hold, not to mention anything likely to increase exposure to microwave radiation, until the effects on the environment (as well as public health) have been thoroughly assessed?
Turning a bakery conversation into a HastingsCitizenManifesto
-and working with difference to make an “I don't know best; we know better" plan:
HastingsCitizenManifesto at The Oak Bakery, London Road, #StLeonardsOnSea
As your Independent Candidate for MP, I'm often writing to the papers to get more #DialogueNotDebate going.
I wish to celebrate the fairness I perceive in how the letters sent in get on the page. Let me share my experience over 8 years, since the one that I was honoured in 2011 to find published in pride of place with the title conjured by your staff of “We Need To Act If We Want Justice”. If you want to know the background to your Independent Candidate in the Hastings & Rye General election, 2019, you could do no better than start by searching on-line for that title or for “Paul Crosland” in the Hastings Observer site. The photo you might there find for which I am again grateful to the Observer is for “Group is aiming to get Hastings smiling again”. My last mention in your paper was for “hasting's campaign group's concerns, letter by my proposer in this General Election. All 10 nominators for my candidacy took a bold step in an ultra marginal seat -where misunderstanding of the most likely effects of my candidacy abounds. I thank anyone who follows Voltaire's sentiment that “Even (if/)though I detest what you are saying, I uphold to the death your right to say it!”. The irony is that apart from #Pause5G I'm not saying anything; just offering you the #HastingsCitizenManifesto #MoveForwardMoreTogether process to draw out what you care about, bring you into respectful dialogue with those of the opposite opinion and work creatively to create a joint plan of action out of such different #DreamCycling. It was, for me, in India that I had my strongest experience of the potency of the “Find Your Power” Dream-Plan-Do-Review formula; and so I am soon due back in India to hear how the 2010 dreams for ten years time have been lived, betrayed or, if like me, somewhere in-between.
Meanwhile, I was in my “3rd St Leonards Office”(adopted) office this morning -The oak Bakery, and a retired gent called Eddie came across to me saying: “
The whole conversation is, of course, on the “Pause5G PutACrossForCrosland” YouTube channel, and donations for my Parliamentary Campaign are to be sent via paypal to my email address paul.crosland@gmail.com
When anyone emails that address, for the duration of the elecetion campaign they receive back, amongst other attempts to offer something very useful to transforming (y)our life/lives for the better:
not just email me anyhow and you'll get an auto-reply with these links
To look at a blog post of "relatable" people considering their vote in the general election 2019 on camera, click here.
Not only is “William the 2066Country Conqueror no longer a floating voter, all at sea”. William is clear now in his intention to PutACrossForCrosland and he knows why he intends to do that.
I'd appreciate emails to me and my political secretary, Kerrie, in which you convey your voting intention, what lies behind (or beneath?) your intention, and any other thoughts you'd like to share about the election. I'm seeking to encourage #DialogueNotDebate and can be counted on to reply from a place in which I have considered your words/being with as much balance and openness as I can muster.
Maybe you have never had and still don't have any wish to vote on 12th December.
The Hastings Independent of 15th November 2019 finished their leading story with a recognition of me as the alternative to mainstream politics:
I'm sincerely sad if abstention is still your choice on 12th December 2019; please open to where Wisdom and Compassion are trying to guide you to vote.
