Relearning Political Community; Relearning Economic Community; Relearning Spiritual Community
-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…
“2066 Country Publications” is a front for Mediation Support Ltd, part of St Leonards Sharing Consortium, founded in 2011 & with so far to go to reach it’s potential for “co-creating a more caring & sharing community around you”.
’The Guided Life’ -which is also the title of a book provided to those involved in the “2066 Country Book Club”- led to the Parliamentary Candidacy of the founder of St Leonards Sharing Consortium.
The overhaul to politics* that these times call for is the subject drawn from this experience of politicians not striving to get their opponents’ voices heard. Hence, after a book years ago of Restorative Justice stories (free pdf & ‘word’ versions here), Paul Crosland’s 2nd book is “The Myth Of The ‘Heartless Tory’ & ‘Breaking The Mould Off UK Politics’ in the Post-Boris Era". Please Pre-order with a £14 payment to Mediation Support Ltd
*The subsequent books are on the overhaul of economics & (spiritual) community called for by these times; the first a tale of 108 #VagabondCustodians who live on a one-off rent payment of £10,000 (#10kRentForLife) & plan for the Festival of the New Society 2066 in #RefugeTreeWoods.
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.
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.
Had you emailed me (at first name dot surname @gmail.com) recently, the following (long-winded?) plea for a 1st follower(see TED talk above)in developing “the Festival of The New Society 2066” is what you would have got by way of autoreply:
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In politics trust the voice that does most to get their opponents heard.
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As Head of Restorative Justice for the UK-wide charity for community mediation I produced (back in 2003) a revolutionary book of cases of people getting beyond “Righteous Anger” etc; now a free pdf-or word document- here:
My main occupation is “Paul Crosland Draft Author”; the current plan has me finishing writing a book a year such that in 8 out of the 12 years leading to my 67th birthday, (when not “Living The Dream” that for me would be to lead a “Buddhist Right Livelihood Team” instituting a “Town Sharing Consortium” & “MutualCare Agency”) the gestating books listed below will be born. If any of them interest you, a request FROM YOU for a Zoom call discussing the points of mutual interest is likely to be well received:
1. ”The Myth of the Heartless Tory; 108 Quests towards Kinder Politics & Deeper Accountability”
-arising from being the most successful Independent Parliamentary Candidate (GE2019) in the history of the Hastings & Rye Constituency*.
2. Invest in 2066 Country; 108 Quests towards the “Festival of ‘The New Society’ 2066”
(-outlining Small PositiveGroup Economic Power in which perhaps 1 in 10 people sets up a currency like “2066 Timebanking Hours”)
3. Level Up Our Life; 108 Quests (with Merlin’s mates) towards the Mind-Creative Integration of Classicalist-Hippy-Punk energies in each(?) of us.
4. 108 attempts towards cross-fertilising & future-proofing Spiritual Community (Voices sought from within Quakerism, Triratna Buddhism & the “Nonviolent Communication Movement”)
5. ”Dad post Dad” -ideally written with my sister and Maria Arpa MBE, founder of “The Centre for Peaceful Solutions”.
6. ”Judas Was Paid; the spiritual roots of 6 Whip-Free Accountable Mavericks in Parliament”
7. ”The third 22 years instalment of the ‘22-44-66-88 Not Out (!)’ #PaulCroslandAutobiography”
8. “(FreeRange) Buddhist Politics; how Spiritual Communities (can) contribute to a kinder, more accountable politics” (perhaps drawing the books 1,2,3 & 6 into a PhD thesis).
To get “Beyond Polarisation In Politics” I suggest we need:
“#KinderPoliticsQuestionTime** with #TonyAndPaul”; all episodes are added to this playlist of dialogues with “Hastings & Rye Constituency” constituents:
“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
