In the 2019 General Election, I printed (via Fast Print, St Leonards) 60,000 leaflets (A3 folded down to A5) so that one could be delivered to every one of the 56,400 addresses known to the Royal Mail.
This cost (over £6k) was borne by Mediation Support Ltd; donations to future printing costs welcome here.
In the 2024 General Election only 108 of the Campaign Leaflet were printed (on 7th June 2024); 108 being a Buddhist lucky number:
Thank you to all who sent an email clarifying the policy that you most want advanced by your MP in relation to the July 4th 2024 General Election.
I am in the process of compiling these emails into an online spreadsheet, currently showing the first 103 lobbying requests from 40 different causes, the most popular (19 of the first 103 emails) being from constituents writing in solidarity with the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1J-XGGT7aFydOtp3MgUMTsFa5UwZmTpetKZEiOpMRIcM/edit?usp=sharing
When I have completed the inputting into the offline spreadsheet (estimated 22nd July 2024) then the summary results will be presented in a few paragraphs by my updating this blog post.
To clarify further my non-attendance as the returning Independent Candidate, my email autoreply stated:
“ As regards the constituency hustings I hereby ask the organisers to set out a chair for me and to read out this statement:
"“I’ve gone away from the 5thDec2019 #HowlingHustings#HowlingHustings into a series of Quaker Meetings where an hour communicates a deepening understanding and drawing together of each person’s (often adversity-forged) testimony. I would like there to be space in the hustings just to
silently reflect on the universal needs/values being communicated or frustrated in our different ideas about how to deepen democracy in a much damaged/pilfered state. Pilfered because even interrupting is
“taking the not given”.
I ask the hosts of all this election’s hustings to allocate the time they would have allocated to me in relation to each question instead to silence.
Whilst I will not be there to clutter that sacred space whilst you sort between the representatives of political parties, I will post a sign to be held up during the silences. Thank you”
As I made a contribution to the 5th December 2019 hustings which has been much valued, I invite you to listen to the first 10 minutes (or more!):
I'm known for having a sometimes lengthy auto-reply to my email address, encouraging people to follow-up various links in order to make more informed choices about how we might relate.
NB The "Paul Crosland Hashtag" used to describe the importance of not mistaking one aspect of another for the whole is #CircumnambulateTheElephant
(My email address is advertised in election times here)
& here's the 2024 Election auto-reply in all it's ....:
“Trust those (in politics) who do most to get their opponents’ voices heard”
(#TTIPWDMTGTOVH)
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Most correspondence received by this email address relates to my candidacy as prospective parliamentary candidate for Hastings & Rye:
https://whocanivotefor.co.uk/person/117120/paul-crosland
If you voted in the constituency at the last general election -12th December 2019- regardless of whether you "Put A Cross For Crosland", thank you for subscribing to democracy. I presume we all agree that "We could do better?"
To everyone emailing if I stand for x or y, after the election in order to move forward on your agenda -or at least make it more visible- I intend to summarise the requests received in a Google Spreadsheet then embedded into the 2066.uk website (AKA additionalinfo.blogspot.com).
What helps greatly is if you indicate which government department you understand to be in charge of your issue of great concern.
Asking a mediator -approaching three decades of service- to take sides may only produce the reply from me:
“I’m on the side of everyone getting their needs met and how to achieve that nonviolently.”
1) Why would you want an opinionated MP - when you could elect a facilitator #BeyondPolarisationInPolitics & #MoveForwardMoreTogether?
2) What do you make of this article that I wrote with a Centre For Peaceful Solutions colleague in the aftermath of the #HowlingHustings (5th December 2019); an article from me having been requested by the Hastings Independent Press, this one was rejected; reasons not given:
https://additionalinfo.blogspot.com/2019/12/i-ve-got-your-back-sally-ann-and-peter.html
(I found that in September 2020 I wrote a follow-on piece that, to me, still has merit: https://additionalinfo.blogspot.com/2020/09/struggling-to-embody-kinder-politics.html)
3) Whether this YouTube film from Hastings Pier, accompanied by my electoral agent, Patrick Glass, might prompt you to joina #PaulCroslandZoom to contribute your #GrassrootsManifesto (4-10 points) towards the #ConvergentConstituencyManifesto?
(https://youtu.be/9IMshL-Vxjk?si=SsEfkrFZ2R51Wxvz)
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#CroslandChallengeToStarmerAndFarage
(https://youtu.be/k0F_o6yEznI)
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Since you may well have mailed me to advance a particular policy agenda & since I am not standing as part of a political party, bear with me please whilst I share my thinking to date on how we form policy together.
Running until 24th July 2024 (& resuming before 2025) there are a series of 5.45pm Zoom conference video-calls; I'll be letting into the Zoom conference calls anyone who has sent a policy proposal, their name and their address (which I keep confidential). The page with the link is the calendar page of my blog; the teleconference archaically called "Alobhin Special Please attend to discuss not only the policy matter on which you initially emailed, but your own 4-10point "Grassroots Manifestoes"; what’s most important to you? Here I encourage people to dream big. The nuts and bolts of the Dream Cycle -a "Find Your Power" methodology by Chris Johnstone- are as simple as "Dream, Plan, Do, Review". It will be helpful if you identify which government department(S) would most likely be responsible for enacting the change(s) that you seek.
My work henceforth is to advocate for what you want & bring my (& my associates’) mediation skills to bear. If I had another windfall I would spend it on bringing people together towards establishing a ConvergentConstituencyManifesto and I wonder why social media isn’t used more in this way?
NB Links to my 5 channels of social media (occasional) output are as listed on https://whocanivotefor.co.uk/person/117120/paul-crosland & please note that the bottom link is your oppoprtunity to contribute to the costs of Mediation Support Ltd's work in (y)our constituency
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As I made a contribution to the 5th December 2019 hustings which has been much valued, I invite you to listen to the first 10 minutes -or more?- of the on-stage-recording I made & which is part of https://YouTube.com/PaulCroslandRefugeTreeWoods
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-44M69wrC8)
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What does your #GeneralElection2024Soundtrack sound like?
I have put together a series of tracks that remind me of themes of the campaigns or as a form of decompression from this, at times, trying time.
From the following soundtrack (which includes political commentators, including myself and the man who was my oldest (ie going back to school days) friend, #ChrisGidlowAuthorAndHistorian; I say "was" because he has broken off all communication as a result of my standing again as an Independent Candidate. Recorded in Covid-19 days, the discussions in this playlist of note centre around a New Statesman article about Progressive Politics by Tony Blair & centre around Chris working through his 9 or 10 point Grassroots manifesto -the film listing his 10 points is just a minute and a half long; the film explaining his workings -22 minutes.
“One of the #WouldBeWizardsOfHastings produced the #ElectionLeafletfor the #TTIPWDMTGTOVH#TTIPWDMTGTOVH campaign that is pinned to the masthead on
https://twitter.com/paulcrosland
Since Channel4 news covered the #ChangingHastings agenda on Sunday23rdJune,
part of my answer to the housing question- as I stated in the 5thDecember2019 #HowlingHustings is #CommunityService of 5-7hrs a week for all home owners over 50.
This should also amuse:
https://www.hastingsindependentpress.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/HIP-254.pdf
Whether or not you’ve seen the election leaflet for
https://facebook.com/paulbasicincomecrosland, as background here's a flavour of how I experienced the 2019 General Election with the constituents of beloved Hastings & Rye:
https://additionalinfo.blogspot.com/p/paulcroslandindependentcandidate-ge2019.html
Expect me to produce on the blog a detailed account of the policy proposals received during the #PaulCreoslandIndependentCandidate 2024 General Election campaign.
My company, Mediation Support Ltd, (Tel 07807-066-202) provides this mediation theory playlist to boost your capacity to bring goodwill and co-operation to difference/conflict:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLM4IagQQExozL8ltzcK3F_WHxTiWHvv68
(or via https://www.facebook.com/mediationsupportltd/ )
2066.uk <http://additionalinfo.blogspot.com>
* with the help of https://convergentfacilitation.org
…the general direction of travel in the 50percentToElectAnMP campaign is towards Convergent Facilitation
Just to give everyone a heads up on part of the #PaulCroslandIndependentCandidate election strategy besides the ask for silence in my place at the non-attended hustings and someone holding up the hashtag …. !!!
RE Russell Brand Cancellation
I have re-written the opening of the Trilogy: “Relearning Political Community; Relearning Economic Community; Relearning Spiritual Community” thus:
When you walked up
to me and you said
“Hey, heads, we
dance”
Well I didn’t know
who you were
Until I saw the
morning paper
There was a picture of
you,
a picture of you ‘cross
the front page
It looked just like you,
Just like you in every
way
But it couldn’t be true,
it couldn’t be true
You stepped out of a
stranger
They say that the devil
is a charming man
And just like you, I bet he
can dance
(Kate Bush quote
from
Heads We're Dancing
My therapist pointed out to me how well-furnished I was -even before I became 19 stone(!)- with mentors. Some of them, -most I suppose- have written books. I visualise them in a circle around me, giving advice. There’s a massive shortage, in my opinion, of people asking for advice. When I put it on a T-shirt -I WANT YOUR ADVICE- and cycled from Lands End to John O Groats (2009?), stickers in hand with my “I don’t know best, we know better” message, it was a life changing experience as well as my first blog: http://iwantyouradvice.blogspot.com/
Though Russell Brand wasn’t a mentor, he was a conduit to many quality mentors, the most recent example that I followed up further being good old EckhartTolle* (of the “Power Of Now” mindfulness fame). Above that, Russell was, to me, a would be interviewer just as Dominic Cummings was a would-be enabler; but that’s a story for later. My plotted route to that elusive Russell Brand interview was via a series of interviews I began in the lockdown that followed hard on my standing for the first time in a general election; the interview series (incomplete) is called “Politics On A Platform” and only one of the three interviews that, in my mind, would lead to the interview by Russell Brand, is recorded & uploaded**.
I write this on the Tuesday following the Channel 4 airing of the Russell Brand Dispatches expose (alongside the Times); how thoroughly Brand, as the media are now increasingly calling him on the slippery slope of de-humanisation, has been strung like a chicken and dispatched.
One of the books I hope to introduce you to in this book is called “Inside the No”*** and uses the terminology “The Terrorist Line” to indicate a continuum that starts with mocking. The more the other isn’t heard as they would like to be heard the greater the likely escalation of violence by the unheard. If the Russell Brand demonisation is an attempt to discredit his lines of enquiry since key influencers of the old-fashioned political left variety fell out of love with his work****, then the post-Brexit learning about hearing each other across political divides to prevent catastrophe is once again lacking, and the consequences….
The cloak of anonymous “Alice” (whose virginity was taken by Russell Brand when she was 16 and he was 30) being mouthed yesterday in Woman’s Hour by an actor is a perfect ruse(?) for a well-scripted rubbishing of the avenues of enquiry that Russell Brand was following. Thus “Alice” said, in response to the question “What is your response to his response?” “First of all I think it’s insulting and I think it’s laughable that he would even imply that this is some kind of mainstream media conspiracy. He’s not outside the mainstream: he did a Universal Movies picture last year; he did Minions -a children’s movie; he’s very much part of the mainstream media. He just happens to have a YouTube channel where he talks about conspiracy theories to an audience that laps it up, and, it may sound cynical but, I do think that he was building himself an audience for years of people that would then have great distrust of any publication that came forward with allegations. He knew it was coming for a long time. Then as for him denying that anything non-consensual happened that’s not a surprise to me; these men always deny that any of these allegations brought to them. I knew he would. He didn’t deny that he had a relationship with a 16 year old.“.
I ask you these three questions RE Russell Brand:
To finish this writing for now with the words of Alice again that echo my intent as well: “I hope that we can have conversations that will lead to protecting people in the future”.
*Eckhart Tolle teaching (& special offer):
**#PoliticsOnAPlatform playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLM4IagQQExowrKGeEV3V2IGl06_a-ZT7v&si=G3sINdVKuQFRdZaL
***Myra Lewis (mentored by Arnie Mindel) is the author; her TED talk is in this “Walk Towards The Conflict” playlist compiled by my company, #MediationSupportLtd:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLM4IagQQExozL8ltzcK3F_WHxTiWHvv68&si=iiiCOfjNEJDF7i8K
****George Monbiot:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/10/russell-brand-politics-public-figures-responsibility
#GoodAndEvilSolzhenitzinQuote on X (formerly known as Twitter): https://x.com/paulcrosland/status/1596518635841155073?s=46&t=f7uCiqzATKFg8umuEchRgQ
Feedback please on this latest attempt at two scene-setting opening paragraphs of “The #MythOfTheHeartlessTory”:
“As we enter #PandemicEraPolitics I contact Sally-Ann Hart, MP, to check what she’s willing to publicly say about re-using PPE* and to check that we are still on good terms. My 1st #CoronavirusPoem, “The Cruel C” it is now clear will neither be published in the Spectator or The New Statesman. I read “The People’s War” & brush-up my awareness of how Attlee served Churchill and how that in turn founded the largest religion in the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, namely the National Health Service. It is Easter Day and I’m a few weeks into #DadAndSonIsolation. Chocolate eggs are as absent as hens teeth, but the resurrection spirit has arrived in “Open Democracy” having published what amounts to a manifesto for a great turning of #PandemicEraEthics; which I proceed to put into bullet points on the “St Leonards Sharing Consortium” wiki site & discuss on the phone with a friend who has sent me a postcard saying “Whoever you vote for the government always gets in”. Some weeks later he issues the first serious political death threat of my life; his mental health strained by the Pandemic in ways that were to go on to break the man who had been my wingman in #HastingsAndRyeConstituency’s 12th December 2019 general election.
Please pray for #StLeonardsLocalTreasureTonyMay leaving residential mental health care. We would both like to believe that, out of all my #politicalmessaging it was my 3rd bullet point on the leaflet delivered to all 56,400 addresses -#MoveForwardMoreTogether- that struck a chord leading to more votes than for any Independent Candidate in the history of the constituency. #TonyAndPaul went on to record a series of 6episodes of #KinderPoliticsQuestionTime & I will draw from these and the (soon to be infamous?) #3hourVaccinationConversation to hopefully open us more up to the humanity/divinity that lies across so many current divides. I don’t recommend learning lessons from the most influential, yet UK Parliamentary unsuccessful politician of recent decades, Nigel Farage. Instead I urge us all to learn the lessons that prevent numerous #FaragesOfTheThicket turning fear into political capital. My fear is that just like Primo Levi’s detailed account of the Nazi concentration camps, if this book is read with ill intent, it will serve in part as a manual for how to scupper the plans of the major parties in marginal parliamentary seats.
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* http://additionalinfo.blogspot.com/2020/04/sallyann1066easterdayandeastermondayppe.html
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Pre-Order my book advocating a balance of #KinderPolitics & #DeeperAccountability -The #MythOfTheHeartlessTory- the link is https://twitter.com/paulcrosland/status/1472504218762334212?s=21
“The Myth Of The Heartless Tory
- Kinder Politics, Deeper Accountability and Politics as Spiritual Practice”
The #pinnedposts to which I would appreciate responses are:
1) the #CovidQuestionTimeNow #pinnedpost on #PaulCroslandIndependentCandidate’s page: https://Facebook.com/paulbasicincomecrosland;
2) the opportunity to preorder “The #MythOfTheHeartlessTory” via https://twitter.com/paulcrosland/status/1472504218762334212?s=21
Reflecting on Obama’s Speech to COP26 I got a strong sense of how little change is going to be created by #TopDownApproaches to the #ClimateCrisis and how crucial it might be to recruit eg from @XRBuddhists and the #ExtinctionRebellion group with which I have a standing order (@XRHSL), mobile (#Nomadic) teams of #CommunityDevelopmentWorkers, acting as #CommunityBees delivering what #BorisJohnson promised in his most #ChurchillianMoment (#10thMay2020); the #MoreGenerousMoreSharing version of #GlobalBritain. It involves house to house #BuddhistDoorKnocking skills (trained by #TriratnaJayaraja?) to cross-fertilise the “Sharing and Caring” experience and create the paradigm shift encapsulated by #MikiKashtan as that from #SeparationControlScarcity to #ConnectionFlowAbundance.
Sign up with whatever “down payment” fits your commitment at https://PayPal.me/RefugeTreeWoods - suggested donation £1.08 for the money poor and £108 for the money rich. #2066Timebanking donations of 10mins+ welcome from those #MoneyPoorTimeRich.
What’s the opposite of an #AnnusHorriblis?; such was the (academic) year 2010-2011; the last time I’ve lived in a #RightLivelihoodTeam. I’ve spent 10 years since trying to recreate such a team, albeit applied to #ProgressiveEconomics embodying the #MoreGenerousMoreSharing ideal of a #TownSharingConsortium such as #StLeonardsSharingConsortium, which I founded in 2011 with three companies (of which I am a director!), with a #StLeonardsOnSea local cafe/nightspot and with the (#Mediation/#MarshallRosenberg inspired) charity “The Centre for Peaceful Solutions”.
#AspiringDrAmbedkarsOfStLeonardsOnSea (#ADAOSLOS for short) has subsequently become the title for the team of workers from the #TriratnaBuddhistCommunity that I’d hoped to attract*. Attempts between 2011-2014 failed in recruiting a team of “Community Bees” going house to house to cross-fertilise the “Sharing and Caring” experience and create the paradigm shift encapsulated by #MikiKashtan as that from #SeparationControlScarcity to #ConnectionFlowAbundance. From 2015 in moving back to Canterbury, my life refocused on providing Dad with an increasing level of care culminating in over 5 months of #DadAndSonIsolation that began on #19thMarch2020. Dad passed away on 30th August 2020 at home with me.
Thanks to a “Timely Inheritance”, in the years 2014-2020 I was fortunate to be able to become custodian too of what I named #RefugeTreeWoods, the main branch of which is in the #WildWestOfWales; the other by the #PeakDistrict, near #Sheffield. Here there are working retreat opportunities as “we” do the groundwork for the #FestivalOfTheNewSociety2066; a focus for my life’s work of hopefully assisting the #EvolutionOrExtinction & #SpiritualCommunity teachings of #UrgyenSangharakshita so that they flourish beyond the centenary of the 1967 foundation of this #NewBuddhistMovement by seeding further #RightLivelihoodProjects including bands of nomadic** #CommunityDevelopmentWorkers, living much of the year on land projects inspired by #Buddhafield.
Reasserting the importance of #StandingForGenerosity in a place I love, I once again tried to kickstart the possibilities of a #HastingsAndRyeConstituency #TeamBasedRightLivelihood (#TBRL) by standing in the 2019 General Election as #PaulCroslandIndependentCandidate, which was, in the phrase beloved of the comic history book #1066AndAllThat “A Good Thing” #IMHO, but has not produced the “golden egg” of a team to carry the #AdoptANeighbour (etc) work deeper into the community, as I would have hoped.
I’m waking up to my experience of 10years as a #FreeRangeBuddhist who has been unsuccessful in asking for ordination in the #TriratnaBuddhistOrder. My failure in closening friendships and forming teams living the #RightLivelihood dream has taken it’s toll on my resilience & health and so in November 2021 I have felt it necessary to reassess and step back from my ambitions in relation to forming such a team which I’d also hoped an unfolding of various #PaulCroslandDraftAuthor publications would strongly #InfluenceAndSupport. The timetable even for bringing out Book2: “The #MythOfTheHeartlessTory; #108Quests towards #KinderPolitics & #DeeperAccountability” before the (presumed) #GeneralElection2023 I’ve now “officially” announced as “dropped”. Letting go of that which with which I identify myself so closely I am however finding to be “a difficult thing”***: http://additionalinfo.blogspot.com/2021/11/former-footer.html
*http://additionalinfo.blogspot.com/p/triratna.html
**Mediation Support Ltd, which owns #RefugeTreeWoods,#WildWestOfWales & for which I work full time, offers such nomads(& their descendants) 28days accommodation a year for a cost of just 108hrs work (or £758 as the cash way to own 108th of the company). It is envisaged that #OrganisedHippies with Buddhafield connections can, on a similar basis offer year round bases for Nomads for much less than the cost of a Van conversion- eg £10,000 -saving you a lifetime’s rent.
*^*#PaulCroslandPlaylist: Paul Crosland Funeral Service Playlist
