#This is a problem which is magnified in Britain I think as we also have to deal with the Hangover from Protestantism

[the-busy-ghost]

Alright uninformed rant time. It kind of bugs me that, when studying the Middle Ages, specifically in western Europe, it doesn’t seem to be a pre-requisite that you have to take some kind of “Basics of Mediaeval Catholic Doctrine in Everyday Practise” class. 

Obviously you can’t cover everything- we don’t necessarily need to understand the ins and outs of obscure theological arguments (just as your average mediaeval churchgoer probably didn’t need to), or the inner workings of the Great Schism(s), nor how apparently simple theological disputes could be influenced by political and social factors, and of course the Official Line From The Vatican has changed over the centuries (which is why I’ve seen even modern Catholics getting mixed up about something that happened eight centuries ago). And naturally there are going to be misconceptions no matter how much you try to clarify things for people, and regional/class/temporal variations on how people’s actual everyday beliefs were influenced by the church’s rules. 

But it would help if historians studying the Middle Ages, especially western Christendom, were all given a broadly similar training in a) what the official doctrine was at various points on certain important issues and b) how this might translate to what the average layman believed. Because it feels like you’re supposed to pick that up as you go along and even where there are books on the subject they’re not always entirely reliable either (for example, people citing books about how things worked specifically in England to apply to the whole of Europe) and you can’t ask a book a question if you’re confused about any particular point. 

I mean I don’t expect to be spoonfed but somehow I don’t think that I’m supposed to accumulate a half-assed religious education from, say, a 15th century nobleman who was probably more interested in translating chivalric romances and rebelling against the Crown than religion; an angry 16th century Protestant; a 12th century nun from some forgotten valley in the Alps; some footnotes spread out over half a dozen modern political histories of Scotland; and an episode of ‘In Our Time’ from 2009. 

But equally if you’re not a specialist in church history or theology, I’m not sure that it’s necessary to probe the murky depths of every minor theological point ever, and once you’ve started where does it end? 

Anyway this entirely uninformed rant brought to you by my encounter with a sixteenth century bishop who was supposedly writing a completely orthodox book to re-evangelise his flock and tempt them away from Protestantism, but who described the baptismal rite in a way that sounds decidedly sketchy, if not heretical. And rather than being able to engage with the text properly and get what I needed from it, I was instead left sitting there like:

And frankly I didn’t have the time to go down the rabbit hole that would inevitably open up if I tried to find out

[weirdestbooks]

Secrecy and Deception Chapter 5

Sinews of Peace

Missouri POV Event: Iron Curtain Speech Location: Westminster College, Fulton, State of Missouri, United States of America Date: March 5, 1946

The former British Prime Minister giving a speech at an American college while standing by the President of the United States was an odd thing. But there was Winston Churchill, up on a stage with President Truman, Dad, and, unbeknownst to him, DC.

DC was keeping herself disguised, just like I was. While we had been less of a secret back when Dad was still new at the whole "being a country" thing, we now didn't talk about our existence that much. Mainly because none of us wanted to deal with other countries, although everyone did have their own reasons.

I brought my focus to the stage, where Winston Churchill was preparing to speak. I hope he didn't go on for too long, as I don't think I could keep my focus for that long.

What was he supposed to be speaking about again? Oh well, I guess I'll find out.

"I am glad to come to Westminster College this afternoon, and am complimented that you should give me a degree. The name 'Westminster' is somehow familiar to me. I seem to have heard of it before. Indeed, it was at Westminster that I received a very large part of my education in politics, dialectic, rhetoric, and one or two other things. In fact we have both been educated at the same, or similar, or, at any rate, kindred establishments. It is also an honor, perhaps almost unique, for a private visitor to be introduced to an academic audience by the President of the United States." Winston Churchill began.

I smiled at the last sentence, as it had echoed my thoughts on this experience as well. It was certainly not a common occurrence.

"Amid his heavy burdens, duties, and responsibilities -unsought but not recoiled from-the President has traveled a thousand miles to dignify and magnify our meeting here to-day and to give me an opportunity of addressing this kindred nation, as well as my own countrymen across the ocean, and perhaps some other countries too." He continued.

I wouldn't call us and Britain kindred nations. Although maybe that was because we were still learning to get along. Dad also turned his head slightly to face Winston Churchill as he said that, possibly just as confused as I was. At least our nations were better friends now, and not trying to go to war anymore.

"The President has told you that it is his wish, as I am sure it is yours, that I should have full liberty to give my true and faithful counsel in these anxious and baffling times. I shall certainly avail myself of this freedom, and feel the more right to do so because any private ambitions I may have cherished in my younger days have been satisfied beyond my wildest dreams. Let me, however, make it clear that I have no official mission or status of any kind, and that I speak only for myself. There is nothing here but what you see."

Well normally when someone says that there is a chance that they are lying. I pushed that though aside. Even if Mr. Churchill had ulterior motives, I was still going to listen to what he said. Especially because of how tense things seemed to be getting.

"I can therefore allow my mind, with the experience of a lifetime, to play over the problems which beset us on the morrow of our absolute victory in arms, and to try to make sure with what strength I have that what has been gained with so much sacrifice and suffering shall be preserved for the future glory and safety of mankind."

The experience of a lifetime? That was funny. Maybe it was just because I'm way older than him, but that line was very amusing to me. He had the experience of a lifetime, but I have the experience of several, and Dad has even more than me.

"The United States stands at this time at the pinnacle of world power."

We did. We were. Dad had been getting increasingly stressed because of it, and some of the Thirteen had been making remarks about how if they had told Britain about it during the Revolution, he would have never believed them.

Still, despite the jokes at Britain's expense, everyone was starting to feel the stress of the fact that we were a world power-the world power. All eyes were on us, for better and for worse. My siblings and I might not be able to keep secret for much longer, which was incredibly stressful for some of us.

We were at the pinnacle of world power. And I hated it.

"It is a solemn moment for the American Democracy. For with primacy in power is also joined an awe-inspiring accountability to the future. If you look around you, you must feel not only the sense of duty done but also you must feel anxiety lest you fall below the level of achievement."

He was right about that. We had more duties and responsibilities now, and a very high bar to reach. If we failed at what was required of us...well I didn't want to think about it, think about the possibility of another world war. I'm glad I didn't have to deal with international affairs like Dad, but that didn't mean the affairs I had to deal with were any easier.

"Opportunity is here now, clear and shining for both our countries. To reject it or ignore it or fritter it away will bring upon us all the long reproaches of the after-time. It is necessary that constancy of mind, persistency of purpose, and the grand simplicity of decision shall guide and rule the conduct of the English-speaking peoples in peace as they did in war. We must, and I believe we shall, prove ourselves equal to this severe requirement."

I knew we needed to prove ourselves equal to the requirements we had, but why only English speaking people? Louisiana preferred her French, just as Pennsylvania did her German, despite the fact that we were just in a war with them. Hawaii preferred her language, New York preferred Dutch, and Delaware preferred Swedish sometimes. Hell even I would speak French from time to time.

The US isn't just English speaking people, and I didn't like that that is all Mr. Churchill saw when looking at us. Dad looked annoyed, which probably meant he was never going to speak English to Mr. Churchill again. Sure English was this nation's most preferred and widely spoken language, but it wasn't the only one.

"When American military men approach some serious situation they are wont to write at the head of their directive the words 'Overall Strategic Concept.' There is wisdom in this, as it leads to clarity of thought. What then is the overall strategic concept which we should inscribe today? It is nothing less than the safety and welfare, the freedom and progress, of all the homes and families of all the men and women in all the lands."

That would be a great world to live in. A seemingly impossible goal though, which meant it was the perfect one for Dad to try and achieve. He took the word impossible as a challenge. If anyone would try everything they could to achieve that world, it was Dad.

"And here I speak particularly of the myriad cottage or apartment homes where the wage-earner strives amid the accidents and difficulties of life to guard his wife and children from privation and bring the family up in the fear of the Lord, or upon ethical conceptions which often play their potent part. To give security to these countless homes, they must be shielded from the two gaunt marauders, war and tyranny."

War and tyranny. Problems created by humanity's want for power and resolved by humanity's want for peace. Two things that will most likely always exist, no matter how many efforts are taken to stop them. We can defend people from it, but the only way to destroy tyranny is through war. I sighed.

Power and Peace. Humanity's greatest desires.

"We all know the frightful disturbances in which the ordinary family is plunged when the curse of war swoops down upon the bread-winner and those for whom he works and contrives. The awful ruin of Europe, with all its vanished glories, and of large parts of Asia glares us in the eyes. When the designs of wicked men or the aggressive urge of mighty States dissolve over large areas the frame of civilized society, humble folk are confronted with difficulties with which they cannot cope. For them all is distorted, all is broken, even ground to pulp."

Europe suffers so much from destruction. Wars don't normally happen on Dad's land, we are too far away from most conflicts. But when it does occur here, it occurs in his territories, and I never see it. The Civil War was the last time this country was destroyed by war the way Europe was.

Maybe we could help. Rebuilding a nation from almost nothing was a very hard thing to do. And that's what most of Europe, and some of Asia, probably, had to do.

"When I stand here this quiet afternoon I shudder to visualize what is actually happening to millions now and what is going to happen in this period when famine stalks the earth. None can compute what has been called 'the unestimated sum of human pain.' Our supreme task and duty is to guard the homes of the common people from the horrors and miseries of another war. We are all agreed on that."

Definitely agreed on that. I don't want another world war, not after the first two. They have changed everything, and not always in a good way. Even with the war over, the suffering was not. Suffering would probably never be over for some.

"Our American military colleagues, after having proclaimed their 'overall strategic concept' and computed available resources, always proceed to the next step-namely, 'the method' Here again there is widespread agreement. A world organization has already been erected for the prime purpose of preventing war. U.N.O., the successor of the League of Nations, with the decisive addition of the United States and all that means, is already at work."

UNO, United Nation Organization. Or UN, as the rest of us call him. Dad described him as hopeful, stubborn, and demanding, but also naïve, because he thinks he can get the other countries to agree on peace. North Dakota said that it reminded him of Dad in a way, causing Dad to be very embarrassed and offended. North Dakota wasn't entirely wrong. What UN is trying to do with the countries, Dad does with us states, although with much more success that UN? Still, having someone who is trying to get the countries to get along is better than having no one.

"We must make sure that its work is fruitful, that it is a reality and not a sham, that it is a force for action and not merely a frothing of words, that it is a true temple of peace in which the shields of many nations can someday be hung up, and not merely a cockpit in a Tower of Babel. Before we cast away the solid assurances of national armaments for self-preservation, we must be certain that our temple is built not upon shifting sands or quagmires, but upon the rock."

Yes, we definitely have to ensure that the peace sticks this time, and doesn't end up falling apart. Although, if I were to continue with the analogy, Dad was good at building things on sand and then going back and making the sand rock.

However, I would prefer to build on rock first.

"Anyone can see with his eyes open that our path will be difficult and also long, but if we persevere together as we did in the two world wars-though not, alas, in the interval between them-I cannot doubt that we shall achieve our common purpose in the end."

Yes, I hope things now don't turn out like they did between the world wars. The Great Depression, the organized crime, the eventual war on the horizon. Let's hope this post war world was one that actually led to more peace, and not another world war. I don't think Europe could survive that.

Or Dad's patience with Europe. If another world war broke out there, Dad would probably just decide to drop nukes on the whole continent to get them to calm down.

"I have, however, a definite and practical proposal to make for action. Courts and magistrates may be set up but they cannot function without sheriffs and constables. The United Nations Organization must immediately begin to be equipped with an international armed force. In such a matter we can only go step by step, but we must begin now. I propose that each of the powers and states should be invited to dedicate a certain number of air squadrons to the service of the World Organization. These squadrons would be trained and prepared in their own countries but would move around in rotation from one country to another. They would wear the uniform of their own countries but with different badges. They would not be required to act against their own nation, but in other respects they would be directed by the World Organization. This might be started on a modest scale and would grow as confidence grew. I wished to see this done after the First World War, and I devoutly trust it may be done forthwith."

I have seen several times what happens when you make a law that no one will enforce. Giving UN his own police force would allow him to be able to enforce peace better. The League of Nations couldn't ensure peace. Maybe if UN had enforcement methods at this disposal he could.

Provided they don't get used for the opposite means.

"It would nevertheless be wrong and imprudent to entrust the secret knowledge or experience of the atomic bomb, which the United States, Great Britain, and Canada now share, to the World Organization while it is still in its infancy. It would be criminal madness to cast it adrift in this still agitated and un-united world. No one in any country has slept less well in their beds because this knowledge and the method and the raw materials to apply it are at present largely retained in American hands."

Dad would never give up the secrets of the atomic bomb willingly, unless he had been convinced it was for a good reason. It was a very powerful weapon, and giving it to his enemies would be terrifying. Besides, I don't think UN should be given that knowledge. World peace shouldn't require the destruction of anything but tyranny, which can be destroyed without the power of the atomic bomb. Besides, if UN has that information, it would be easier for a tyrant to get their hands on it.

It's best to keep that secrecy under lock and key.

"I do not believe we should all have slept so soundly had the positions been reversed and if some Communist or neo-Fascist State monopolized, for the time being, these dread agencies. The fear of them alone might easily have been used to enforce totalitarian systems upon the free democratic world, with consequences appalling to human imagination."

I shuddered as I thought of what could have happened if Ger, not Germany, he was known as Third Reich now, had gotten his hands on the bomb. That would have spelled disaster for every ally we had. If he had used that weapon to take out the rest of Europe...so many more would have died. And Poland, and Uncle Free State, and all those nations who had recently got independence would have had it stripped from them once more.

I don't think Uncle Free State would have been able to handle that.

"God has willed that this shall not be, and we have at least a breathing space to set our house in order before this peril has to be encountered, and even then, if no effort is spared, we should still possess so formidable a superiority as to impose effective deterrents upon its employment, or threat of employment, by others. Ultimately, when the essential brotherhood of man is truly embodied and expressed in a world organization with all the necessary practical safeguards to make it effective, these powers would naturally be confided to that world organization."

I hope we can prevent more use of the bomb. It's a powerful weapon, but an awful one. New Mexico has told us how painful experiencing the bomb was, which just proves it's power. Not many weapons will make us feel pain if used on our land, but that one did. It's better to make sure that it isn't a weapon commonly used, but a weapon of last resort.

"Now I come to the second danger of these two marauders which threatens the cottage home and the ordinary people-namely, tyranny. We cannot be blind to the fact that the liberties enjoyed by individual citizens throughout the British Empire are not valid in a considerable number of countries, some of which are very powerful."

"And aren't given to everyone in your empire" I muttered. Dad, Uncle Free State, and many others weren't given the same liberties as the English. Though, I suppose I am being hypocritical, as many people in my state and throughout the Union aren't given the same rights as others.

Though they had more than some, and that was better than nothing.

"In these States, control is enforced upon the common people by various kinds of all-embracing police governments, to a degree which is overwhelming and contrary to every principle of democracy. The power of the State is exercised without restraint, either by dictators or by compact oligarchies operating through a privileged party and a political police."

At least the people who had less liberties here could protest and try and do something about it. In those governments a want for change was a death wish. That's how they can do a lot of damage in a short period of time. I thought back to what had happened during the war. That was awful, what dictators could do. We could get better, but for some it could only get worse.

"It is not our duty at this time, when difficulties are so numerous, to interfere forcibly in the internal affairs of countries which we have not conquered in war. But we must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man, which are the joint inheritance of the English-speaking world and which, through Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus, trial by jury, the English Common Law, find their most famous expression in the American Declaration of Independence."

A British man talking about how the Declaration of Independence was important and great. I almost laughed, but was not able to hold back giggles. Dad also looked incredibly amused by that. Britain would probably be getting a call from Dad laughing about this.

I hope Dad lets us listen to that call.

"All this means that the people of any country have the right and should have the power by constitutional action, by free unfettered elections with secret ballot, to choose or change the character or form of government under which they dwell; that freedom of speech and thought should reign; that courts of justice, independent of the executive, unbiased by any party, should administer laws which have received the broad assent of large majorities or are consecrated by time and custom. Here are the title deeds of freedom, which should lie in every cottage home. Here is the message of the British and American peoples to mankind. Let us preach what we practice, let us practice what we preach."

I don't think Dad and Britain are the only countries doing that, but regardless it would definitely be beneficial for many people if all countries did that. Obviously not all of them will, but if the majority does it will still be better than the minority being the only ones to do that.

"I have now stated the two great dangers which menace the homes of the people: War and Tyranny. I have not yet spoken of poverty and privation which are in many cases the prevailing anxiety. But if the dangers of war and tyranny are removed, there is no doubt that science and cooperation can bring in the next few years to the world, certainly in the next few decades newly taught in the sharpening school of war, an expansion of material well-being beyond anything that has yet occurred in human experience."

That's hopeful, but war can never be defeated, nor can tyranny. They can be prevented, they can be small, but they are there. Science and cooperation might become more widespread, but they will not replace war and tyranny. Because they cannot be removed from the world.

"Now, at this sad and breathless moment, we are plunged in the hunger and distress which are the aftermath of our stupendous struggle; but this will pass and may pass quickly, and there is no reason except human folly or sub-human crime which should deny to all the nations the inauguration and enjoyment of an age of plenty. I have often used words which I learned fifty years ago from a great Irish-American orator, a friend of mine, Mr. Bourke Cockran. 'There is enough for all. The earth is a generous mother; she will provide in plentiful abundance food for all her children if they will but cultivate her soil in justice and in peace.' So far I feel that we are in full agreement."

Sure, the world has enough, but that's not enough for some people. And that's why some are left with nothing. The world provides, but the people don't sometimes. People like to hoard things they don't need. Or they just don't care enough to help.

"Now, while still pursuing the method of realizing our overall strategic concept, I come to the crux of what I have traveled here to say. Neither the sure prevention of war, nor the continuous rise of world organization will be gained without what I have called the fraternal association of the English-speaking peoples. This means a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States."

So Mr. Churchill wants Dad to fix his relationship not only with Britain, which he's started doing, but with his siblings as well? That's easier said than done. Dad has a lot of them, siblings that is, but he hadn't even met half of them.

Although Free State is his Uncle, and Dad is close with him. That's why Uncle Free State knows about me and my siblings.

"This is no time for generalities, and I will venture to be precise. Fraternal association requires not only the growing friendship and mutual understanding between our two vast but kindred systems of society, but the continuance of the intimate relationship between our military advisers, leading to common study of potential dangers, the similarity of weapons and manuals of instructions, and to the interchange of officers and cadets at technical colleges. It should carry with it the continuance of the present facilities for mutual security by the joint use of all Naval and Air Force bases in the possession of either country all over the world. This would perhaps double the mobility of the American Navy and Air Force. It would greatly expand that of the British Empire Forces and it might well lead, if and as the world calms down, to important financial savings. Already we use together a large number of islands; more may well be entrusted to our joint care in the near future."

It's weird that we are working so well with the British and administering land alongside them. Last time we did that, with the Oregon territory, we almost went to war. But still, they were a very important military ally, so cooperation with them would be beneficial.

God this was so weird. Dad's younger self would be shocked by this.

"The United States has already a Permanent Defense Agreement with the Dominion of Canada, which is so devotedly attached to the British Commonwealth and Empire. This Agreement is more effective than many of those which have often been made under formal alliances. This principle should be extended to all British Commonwealths with full reciprocity. Thus, whatever happens, and thus only, shall we be secure ourselves and able to work together for the high and simple causes that are dear to us and bode no ill to any. Eventually there may come-I feel eventually there will come-the principle of common citizenship, but that we may be content to leave to destiny, whose outstretched arm many of us can already clearly see."

Yeah Mr. Churchill is definitely trying to get Dad to fix his relationship with the rest of his family. I looked at Dad, who looked both amused, and...I couldn't really identify the other emotion on his face, but it was the funniest face I had ever seen Dad make.

"There is however an important question we must ask ourselves. Would a special relationship between the United States and the British Commonwealth be inconsistent with our overriding loyalties to the World Organization? I reply that, on the contrary, it is probably the only means by which that organization will achieve its full stature and strength."

He's right about that. UN will only survive if most of the countries that are a part of the UN can get along. Since Britain is a whore, if Dad can get along with his siblings it would be better for UN.

But also they are his siblings and siblings do not get along.

"There are already the special United States relations with Canada which I have just mentioned, and there are the relations between the United States and the South American Republics. We British have our Twenty-Years Treaty of Collaboration and Mutual Assistance with Soviet Russia. I agree with Mr. Bevin, the Foreign Secretary of Great Britain, that it might well be a Fifty-Years Treaty so far as we are concerned. We aim at nothing but mutual assistance and collaboration."

Well Britain may get along with Soviet, but after Mr. Kennan's telegram, I don't think Dad and Soviet will get along for much longer. And if Britain wants to remain our ally, if we really have this so-called "special relationship", then they might be abandoning that Twenty-Years Treaty that they think will last for fifty.

"The British have an alliance with Portugal unbroken since 1384, and which produced fruitful results at critical moments in the late war. None of these clash with the general interest of a world agreement, or a world organization; on the contrary they help it. 'In my father's house are many mansions.' Special associations between members of the United Nations which have no aggressive point against any other country, which harbor no design incompatible with the Charter of the United Nations, far from being harmful, are beneficial and, as I believe, indispensable."

International cooperation outside of the UN is going to be important in making sure UN stays alive. Hopefully that means some countries will be willing to let go of useless grudges for the sake of peace.

Oh what am I saying who the hell is going to do that?

"I spoke earlier of the Temple of Peace. Workmen from all countries must build that temple. If two of the workmen know each other particularly well and are old friends, if their families are intermingled, and if they have 'faith in each other's purpose, hope in each other's future and charity towards each other's shortcomings'-to quote some good words I read here the other day-why cannot they work together at the common task as friends and partners? Why cannot they share their tools and thus increase each other's working powers? Indeed they must do so or else the temple may not be built, or, being built, it may collapse, and we shall all be proved again unteachable and have to go and try to learn again for a third time in a school of war, incomparably more rigorous than that from which we have just been released."

He has a point. If allied countries work together to ensure peace, through UN and other means, we will have a much easier time doing so. And hopefully in the process prevent World War 3, something I'm sure nobody wants.

Anyone who wants World War 3 is an insane fool. And definitely didn't live through the first two.

"The dark ages may return, the Stone Age may return on the gleaming wings of science, and what might now shower immeasurable material blessings upon mankind, may even bring about its total destruction. Beware, I say; time may be short. Do not let us take the course of allowing events to drift along until it is too late. If there is to be a fraternal association of the kind I have described, with all the extra strength and security which both our countries can derive from it, let us make sure that that great fact is known to the world, and that it plays its part in steadying and stabilizing the foundations of peace. There is the path of wisdom. Prevention is better than cure."

True, but if there's a cure, we should choose that. But I don't think there is a cure to humanity's want for power and the other factors that contribute to wars. Although, ensuring that people are more tolerant of others would probably be just as helpful as military support and international cooperation.

"A shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory. Nobody knows what Soviet Russia and its Communist international organization intends to do in the immediate future, or what are the limits, if any, to their expansive and proselytizing tendencies. I have a strong admiration and regard for the valiant Russian people and for my wartime comrade, Marshal Stalin. There is deep sympathy and goodwill in Britain-and I doubt not here also-towards the peoples of all the Russias and a resolve to persevere through many differences and rebuffs in establishing lasting friendships. We understand the Russian need to be secure on his western frontiers by the removal of all possibility of German aggression. We welcome Russia to his rightful place among the leading nations of the world. We welcome his flag upon the seas. Above all, we welcome constant, frequent and growing contacts between the Russian people and our own people on both sides of the Atlantic."

Dad did want to preserve his relationship with Soviet, and so did I. I understand what Churchill was saying, but still, after Mr. Kennan's telegram, I fear that things may not go the way Mr. Churchill hopes. After all, with what is happening in Iran, I just don't know if a lasting friendship with Soviet is possible.

"It is my duty however, for I am sure you would wish me to state the facts as I see them to you, to place before you certain facts about the present position in Europe. From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow."

Dad and Britain allowed for Soviet to have influence over those states, not because they liked it, but because it was the best opinion for peace. Mr. Churchill knows this. Still, I understand what he's saying. Soviet has already illegally annexed the Baltic states, and it was possible that he would annex the states he was allowed influence over.

Hopefully that wouldn't happen, but if there was anything countries and states like me knew well, it's that you can't fully trust anyone.

It was too risky.

"Athens alone-Greece with its immortal glories-is free to decide its future at an election under British, American and French observation. The Russian-dominated Polish Government has been encouraged to make enormous and wrongful inroads upon Germany, and mass expulsions of millions of Germans on a scale grievous and undreamed-of are now taking place."

Dad and Britain were also hesitant to grant their permission to do that, and made Soviet promise they would be humane. But they have always been humane. It's awful, sometimes, what people and countries will force on others under the threat that they will not allow for peace. You get stuck where if you refuse, there will be no peace, and if you accept, the actions then taken could end up destabilizing the peace.

Although anyone who holds peace hostage is not interested in peace. And according to Mr. Kennan, Soviet is not.

"The Communist parties, which were very small in all these Eastern States of Europe, have been raised to pre-eminence and power far beyond their numbers and are seeking everywhere to obtain totalitarian control. Police governments are prevailing in nearly every case, and so far, except in Czechoslovakia, there is no true democracy."

I hope Czechoslovakia is okay. The other countries under Soviet's influence are forced to do a lot because of him. I hope Czechoslovakia escapes that fate, although I can't be sure she will.

I hate how we had to give Soviet influence over other countries. Especially Poland. We had just given his people independence and then they were taken over by Third Reich and Soviet, before being left to Soviet's influence, not truly independent.

It felt like we were abandoning him in a way. I had seen the birthday card he had given Dad for his 150th anniversary as a country, and it was touching. Dad has also been considering telling Poland about us states, since most of us are on board. But now with Soviet's influence, that idea has lost some support due to concerns about Soviet, even though Soviet already knows.

"Turkey and Persia are both profoundly alarmed and disturbed at the claims which are being made upon them and at the pressure being exerted by the Moscow Government. An attempt is being made by the Russians in Berlin to build up a quasi-Communist party in their zone of Occupied Germany by showing special favors to groups of left-wing German leaders. At the end of the fighting last June, the American and British Armies withdrew westwards, in accordance with an earlier agreement, to a depth at some points of 150 miles upon a front of nearly four hundred miles, in order to allow our Russian allies to occupy this vast expanse of territory which the Western Democracies had conquered."

Persia-Iran-whatever you called him, he was in the midst of a fight that was being caused, to an extent, by Soviet. Soviet refused to withdraw like Dad and Britain and was now supporting rebel groups in Iran's land. And we had withdrawn troops to give Soviet the influence he wanted, which now seemed to be backfiring on us.

Everything was getting incredibly complicated, and I didn't like it.

"If now the Soviet Government tries, by separate action, to build up a pro-Communist Germany in their areas, this will cause new serious difficulties in the British and American zones, and will give the defeated Germans the power of putting themselves up to auction between the Soviets and the Western Democracies. Whatever conclusions may be drawn from these facts-and facts they are-this is certainly not the Liberated Europe we fought to build up. Nor is it one which contains the essentials of permanent peace."

I sighed. He's right about that. The Baltics are still occupied by Soviet, and all the countries he was allowed influence over aren't actually liberated because they aren't actually completely free. I understand Dad and Britain did what they did, but still, I wish a better route could have been an option. But everyone had their own interests and compromise was important in making sure everyone got at least some of what they wanted.

"The safety of the world requires a new unity in Europe, from which no nation should be permanently outcast. It is from the quarrels of the strong parent races in Europe that the world wars we have witnessed, or which occurred in former times, have sprung. Twice in our own lifetime we have seen the United States, against their wishes and their traditions, against arguments, the force of which it is impossible not to comprehend, drawn by irresistible forces, into these wars in time to secure the victory of the good cause, but only after frightful slaughter and devastation had occurred. Twice the United States has had to send several millions of its young men across the Atlantic to find the war; but now war can find any nation, wherever it may dwell between dusk and dawn."

Yeah we had to send our people to help save your European asses because apparently neutrality doesn't mean anything to anyone. Neutrality violations is how we've gotten involved in three different wars, and if it pulls us into another I'm revealing myself so I can beat the definition of neutrality into the head of whoever attacked us.

"Surely we should work with conscious purpose for a grand pacification of Europe, within the structure of the United Nations and in accordance with our Charter. That I feel is an open cause of policy of very great importance. In front of the iron curtain which lies across Europe are other causes for anxiety. In Italy the Communist Party is seriously hampered by having to support the Communist-trained Marshal Tito's claims to former Italian territory at the head of the Adriatic. Nevertheless the future of Italy hangs in the balance."

Poor Italy. The kid hasn't had it very easy, especially since he got this duty of cleaning up his Father's mistakes. And the country that replaced Japan would have to do similar things, clean up their mother's mess. Although, with Third Reich dead, the new Germany would have it the easiest, since they would be the kid of either Soviet, France, Britain, or Dad. Maybe more than one.

Whatever the case, a least they won't be related to Third Reich

"Again one cannot imagine a regenerated Europe without a strong France. All my public life I have worked for a strong France and I never lost faith in her destiny, even in the darkest hours. I will not lose faith now."

World War 2 seemed to have been very effective in making countries that were formally enemies or rivals very close. But I guess that's what happens when you are in a global conflict for power. I knew that Britain and France had almost united into the same country in 1940, which was a surprise. Dad has had fun reminding them of that fact.

"However, in a great number of countries, far from the Russian frontiers and throughout the world, Communist fifth columns are established and work in complete unity and absolute obedience to the directions they receive from the Communist center. Except in the British Commonwealth and in the United States where Communism is in its infancy, the Communist parties or fifth columns constitute a growing challenge and peril to Christian civilization. These are somber facts for anyone to have to recite on the morrow of a victory gained by so much splendid comradeship in arms and in the cause of freedom and democracy; but we should be most unwise not to face them squarely while time remains."

Political party problems. That would be fun to deal with. Although, it's not like we, and by we and mean Dad and my siblings, can ban communism. With the first amendment, all that will do is make people very mad.

"The outlook is also anxious in the Far East and especially in Manchuria. The Agreement which was made at Yalta, to which I was a party, was extremely favorable to Soviet Russia, but it was made at a time when no one could say that the German war might not extend all through the summer and autumn of 1945 and when the Japanese war was expected to last for a further 18 months from the end of the German war. In this country you are all so well-informed about the Far East, and such devoted friends of China, that I do not need to expatiate on the situation there."

Yeah, we were aware of the influence Soviet had been granted, and China's anxiety over Soviet supporting the communist party she was fighting against. Dad was also worried about that, but couldn't do much, having promised Soviet the influence, and being busy dealing with Japan.

"I have felt bound to portray the shadow which, alike in the west and in the east, falls upon the world. I was a minister at the time of the Versailles Treaty and a close friend of Mr. Lloyd-George, who was the head of the British delegation at Versailles. I did not myself agree with many things that were done, but I have a very strong impression in my mind of that situation, and I find it painful to contrast it with that which prevails now. In those days there were high hopes and unbounded confidence that the wars were over, and that the League of Nations would become all-powerful. I do not see or feel that same confidence or even the same hopes in the haggard world at the present time."

Of course we don't have the same hopes. We thought things would get better and then this happened. The war, the concerns with Soviet, everything. It didn't seem like peace would be achievable soon if the concerns about Soviet proved to be legitimate.

"On the other hand I repulse the idea that a new war is inevitable; still more that it is imminent. It is because I am sure that our fortunes are still in our own hands and that we hold the power to save the future, that I feel the duty to speak out now that I have the occasion and the opportunity to do so. I do not believe that Soviet Russia desires war. What they desire is the fruits of war and the indefinite expansion of their power and doctrines."

I hope Soviet doesn't want war. It's not what the world needs. But Soviet wanting the fruits of war? That was believable, and probably true, from what I have heard from Virginia, DC, and Dad about the conferences. Soviet had a lot of demands.

"But what we have to consider here to-day while time remains, is the permanent prevention of war and the establishment of conditions of freedom and democracy as rapidly as possible in all countries. Our difficulties and dangers will not be removed by closing our eyes to them. They will not be removed by mere waiting to see what happens; nor will they be removed by a policy of appeasement. What is needed is a settlement, and the longer this is delayed, the more difficult it will be and the greater our dangers will become."

Yeah, appeasement really hasn't worked out at all, and continuing to do it seems like a very stupid thing to do. We couldn't give Soviet whatever he wanted, we has to stand our ground and tell him to fuck off when he tried to enroach where he doesn't belong. Otherwise he would get too comfortable with walking over us.

"From what I have seen of our Russian friends and Allies during the war, I am convinced that there is nothing they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for weakness, especially military weakness."

Soviet did admire strength. Alaska could tell, he said Soviet seemed too much like their father, and so did Dad. I heard Dad talking to the Thirteen once, I don't think he expected me to overhear, but I did. He said Mr. Kennan's telegram concerned him, and that Soviet seemed almost amused by his injury.

"For that reason the old doctrine of a balance of power is unsound. We cannot afford, if we can help it, to work on narrow margins, offering temptations to a trial of strength. If the Western Democracies stand together in strict adherence to the principles of the United Nations Charter, their influence for furthering those principles will be immense and no one is likely to molest them. If however they become divided or falter in their duty and if these all-important years are allowed to slip away then indeed catastrophe may overwhelm us all."

So Mr. Churchill thinks we must have unity or disaster. That's the way I heard it at least. That would be hard to achieve. Countries liked to fight and be at odds with one another, that's just what they did. Peace and unity with each other was going to be impossible. We all cared too much about our own interests.

"Last time I saw it all coming and cried aloud to my own fellow-countrymen and to the world, but no one paid any attention. Up till the year 1933 or even 1935, Germany might have been saved from the awful fate which has overtaken her and we might all have been spared the miseries Hitler let loose upon mankind. There never was a war in history easier to prevent by timely action than the one which has just desolated such great areas of the globe. It could have been prevented in my belief without the firing of a single shot, and Germany might be powerful, prosperous and honored to-day; but no one would listen and one by one we were all sucked into the awful whirlpool. We surely must not let that happen again."

Back to the whole preventing war thing then. There are wars that can be prevented, although sometimes preventing them only makes the injuries causing the war worse. You can only delay the inevitable for so long.

"This can only be achieved by reaching now, in 1946, a good understanding on all points with Russia under the general authority of the United Nations Organization and by the maintenance of that good understanding through many peaceful years, by the world instrument, supported by the whole strength of the English-speaking world and all its connections. There is the solution which I respectfully offer to you in this Address to which I have given the title 'The Sinews of Peace.'"

The solution is to make sure Dad and Soviet understand each other? Well that's certainly a solution we can try, although I don't know how effective it'll be. Dad was already pissed about Soviet fucking around in Iran and was prepared to get involved. Still, UN was trying to resolve that situation, so maybe, maybe things would get better.

"Let no man underrate the abiding power of the British Empire and Commonwealth. Because you see the 46 millions in our island harassed about their food supply, of which they only grow one half, even in war-time, or because we have difficulty in restarting our industries and export trade after six years of passionate war effort, do not suppose that we shall not come through these dark years of privation as we have come through the glorious years of agony, or that half a century from now, you will not see 70 or 80 millions of Britons spread about the world, united in defense of our traditions, our way of life, and of the world causes which you and we espouse."

Yeah, the war did hit Britain hard. Still, I think some people would appreciate Britain taking a step back for a while. Lord knows he's fucked and fucked up people's lives more than enough times.

"If the population of the English-speaking Commonwealths be added to that of the United States with all that such co-operation implies in the air, on the sea, all over the globe and in science and in industry, and in moral force, there will be no quivering, precarious balance of power to offer its temptation to ambition or adventure. On the contrary, there will be an overwhelming assurance of security. If we adhere faithfully to the Charter of the United Nations and walk forward in sedate and sober strength seeking no one's land or treasure, seeking to lay no arbitrary control upon the thoughts of men; if all British moral and material forces and convictions are joined with your own in fraternal association, the high-roads of the future will be clear, not only for us but for all, not only for our time, but for a century to come."

That was a bit ironic for him to say, considering what both of our nations have done in the past. But still, this was about the future. Britain can change, and so can we. Hopefully for the better. It seemed like the speech was over now, and I turned to leave. I didn't feel like staying for much longer, even though Dad and DC had to.

The speech contributed to the anxiety Dad and my siblings were feeling. I just hoped that it didn't mean anything too bad. I sighed.

Things were really about to get very complicated, weren't they?

America's POV

Event: Iranian Crisis of 1946-Resolution 3

Location: Westminster Central Hall, London, England, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Date: April 4, 1946

I was pissed. It had been months since the deadline and Soviet had yet to pull out of Iran. I had already gotten UN and the rest of the current Security Council, China, France, Dad, Australia, Brazil, Egypt, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, and, slightly to my surprise, Soviet, to pass a resolution that told them to pursue negotiations.

A resolution that seemed to have done nothing, as we had once again need to pass a resolution addressing this problem. Thankfully, Soviet wasn't here at this meeting, as I'm pretty sure he would be doing his best to slow down the passing of the resolution if he was. I wasn't sure what he was doing to cause him to be absent, but it most likely had something to do with his actions in Iran.

"Resolution of 4 April 1946, obviously, we know the date." UN said as he began reading out what was written in the resolution before we voted on it. UN was interesting. He was nice, but always seemed very nervous. Then again his father, League of Nation, had failed to stop a world war, so he might just be nervous that he would fail at that as well. Still, UN was a very hard worker, even if he did have an annoying habit of calling everyone by their full names.

"The Security Council, taking note of the statements by the Iranian representative that the Iranian appeal to the Council arises from the presence of USSR troops in Iran and their continued presence there beyond the date stipulated for their withdrawal in the Tripartite Treaty of 29 January 1942." UN began.

I had been the first country to withdraw from Iran, followed by Dad. We had started to get worried when Soviet hadn't withdrawal by the date he was supposed to, but I had been alarmed when he expanded his military presence there, and when he had helped set up those two puppet states.

Soviet was after influence, that much has been made clear.

And now I was getting worried over what that influence would mean. I now regret what I had let Soviet get away with at Yalta and Potsdam, but I wasn't looking to provoke a conflict, and for the sake of peace I was willing to let him have what he wanted.

But if Soviet was going to start conflicts because what he had been given wasn't enough for him, I should've just started a fight right there and then we wouldn't be in this mess.

Still, hopefully this pressure from UN would help convince him to back down, although I was willing to help Iran if he didn't.

If only Kennan's telegram had been created earlier. Perhaps things would be different. But now wasn't the time to focus on the past. I had other concerns to deal with.

"Taking note of the replies dated 3 April of the Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Iranian Government pursuant to the request of the Secretary-General for information as to the state of the negotiations between the two Governments and as to whether the withdrawal of USSR troops from Iran is conditional upon agreement on other subjects, and in particular taking note of and relying upon the assurances of the USSR Government that the withdrawal of USSR troops from Iran has already commenced; that it is the intention of the USSR Government to proceed with the withdrawal of its troops as rapidly as possible; that the USSR Government expects the withdrawal of all USSR troops from the whole of Iran to be completed within five or six weeks; and that the proposals under negotiation between the Iranian Government and the USSR Government's are not connected with the withdrawal of USSR troops', being solicitous to avoid any possibility of the presence of USSR troops in Iran being used to influence the course of the negotiations between the Governments of Iran and the USSR." UN said.

I sincerely hoped that Soviet would pull out his troops in the time limit, and not try to use them to make any negotiations favorable to him. That would make things much more complicated. Soviet had already created two puppet states in Iran, although neither were personified yet.

Now that I think about it, I hope that everything gets resolved before they are personified. If they do, it would make everything much more complicated.

"Recognizing that the withdrawal of all USSR troops from the whole of Iran cannot be completed in a substantially shorter period of time than that within which the USSR Government has declared it to be its intention to complete such withdrawal." UN said, causing Netherlands to snort.

"Waarom koos hij dan die datum?" (Then why did he set that date?) he muttered, getting a curious look from Brazil.

That was true...still, Soviet needed to withdraw quickly, regardless of the time limit he gave himself. This crisis needed to end quickly. We had just wrapped up the world war last year, and there were still occupied countries, and trials for war criminals, and all that other stuff I had to do.

I hate being a major power so far. All it gave you was too much work. I didn't want to have to deal with Soviet's bullshit.

"Resolves that the Council defer further proceedings on the Iranian appeal until 6 May, at which time the USSR Government and the Iranian Government are requested to report to the Council whether the withdrawal of all USSR troops from the whole of Iran has been completed and at which time the Council shall consider what, if any, further proceedings on the Iranian appeal are required."

I groaned. I didn't want to have to do more things to clear up Soviet's mess. God and I was going to have to do this even more, do stuff like this all the time, since I'm a permanent member of the Security Council.

I was not that prepared to deal with this. Knowing the other countries, this was going to be like dealing with my states, but possibly worse, something I didn't even think was possible.

"Provided, however, that if in the meantime either the USSR Government or the Iranian Government or any member of the Security Council reports to the Secretary-General any developments which may retard or threaten to retard the prompt withdrawal of USSR troops from Iran, in accordance with the assurances of

the USSR to the Council, the Secretary-General shall immediately call to the attention of the Council such reports, which shall be considered as the first item on the agenda." UN finished.

"Let's hope this resolution actually does something this time." France said. UN sighed.

"I hope so. I assume that means you are voting yes?" UN asked. France nodded.

"I will be voting yes as well." Netherlands chimed it. UN nodded.

"I will not be voting." Australia said.

"Why not?" I asked.

"Reasons. You are voting yes I suppose? You were the one who kept pushing for these resolutions." Australia asked. I nodded.

"I am voting yes." I said.

"And so am I." Dad added on. UN nodded.

"Republic of China?" He asked.

"I'm voting yes." She said.

"Federative Republic of Brazil?" UN said, moving onto that next country.

"Yes."

"Republic of Poland?" UN asked. I was curious about what Poland's vote would be. We had agreed to let Soviet have some influence over him, and for Soviet's provisional government to remain. Poland hadn't been happy with us, and since then he had seemed to remain very stressed. He was also very jumpy, although Poland had always kinda been that way.

"I'm voting yes." Poland replied, his hands fidgeting with a pen.

"Kingdom of Egypt?" UN asked my brother, who nodded.

"I am voting yes." He said.

"United Mexican States?" UN asked the last country, who nodded.

"My vote is yes." Mexico said. I sighed, leaning back in my chair. That was good news. Hopefully this would prompt Soviet into more action.

"Alright then. This resolution is adopted with nine votes, Commonwealth of Australia, not voting and Union of Soviet Socialist Republics being absent." UN finished.

"Great. Hopefully that'll convince Soviet to actually do something instead of making us endlessly tell him to resolve the issue." Brazil said.'

"Agreed. I want this issue to be wrapped up, as I have a bunch of other things to do." I said.

"We all have a lot to be doing. Rebuilding after the war is very hard, not that you would understand that much, being so removed from it." Dad commented.

"I know how hard it is to rebuild after a war Dad." I said. I had to do it after my war of independence, and after...that other war. It wasn't fun or easy. Maybe I could do something to help Europe.

That was a plan to focus on later. I had more pressing matters to attend to, and I still needed to keep an eye on this situation and hope it'll get resolved.

Something tells me Soviet and I aren't going to be friends for much longer. Especially with what George Kennan told us.

[uk-news-talking-politics]

Peak uncertainty: This is what covid might do to our politics

By Chaminda Jayanetti

Just because something should happen, doesn't mean it will.

Many articles speculating on how Britain will look different after coronavirus mistake what the writer thinks should happen with what probably will, trusting in the logic of the moment when politics often obeys anything but.

Others focus on the party political fallout, which is the most unpredictable aspect of all. Coronavirus may determine the next election - or it may play no role in it at all.

But to really get an idea of how Britain could look on the other side, we need to get away from the big picture discussion and dig deep into policy areas.

Who cares?

The centrality of the NHS is now guaranteed no matter who is in charge. The Tories had already pledged increased funding, and the need for spare capacity in the event of pandemics may force a rethink of service redesigns and efficiency measures that aimed to minimise 'waste'.

Bigger questions surround the adult care system. No-one can now ignore the funding cuts and staff shortages that have left the care sector so depleted. If elderly and disabled people find themselves dying untreated in care homes in large numbers, this might - and should - become a point of national shame over the coming weeks.

The Tories' direction of travel is towards a social insurance system, whereby people pay in to a fund during their working lives that gives them access to care provision when they need it. But those who are retired or have lifelong care needs won't be able to pay into an insurance scheme before receiving care. These immediate care needs will need direct public funding, not long-term insurance.

Labour under Jeremy Corbyn took a different tack: universal free personal care for the over-65s, with an ambition to extend this to all working age adults. This is simpler and more inclusive than our current means tested mess, but it doesn't come cheap: Labour's manifesto estimated the cost as £11bn a year by 2023/24.

Keir Starmer will be under pressure from some to stick with their existing policy, and from others to engage with social insurance proposals. Keeping Labour MPs united behind whatever strategy he adopts won't be easy.

But it's plausible the Tories will also be pulled in another direction - towards voluntarism. The party's social and fiscal conservatives - uneasy bedfellows in recent years - could use the increased community cooperation seen amid the pandemic as evidence that volunteers and family members can take on more of the care burden, while still improving pay and conditions for care staff.

Expect to see rhetoric that the pandemic has 'unleashed' Britain's 'community spirit', which should be 'channelled' after the crisis by relying on family and neighbours to 'look in' on people in need - the soft-soap version of women doing unpaid care work in lieu of public services. The current trend in care provision is towards making use of what 'assets' people already have, including friends and family - an approach that can be used for good or ill. The temptation for the government to lean on unpaid volunteers instead of the taxpayer is not hard to imagine.

The care system was the biggest public service challenge facing the government before coronavirus. Now that's been magnified tenfold. It could become one of the big battlegrounds of post-pandemic politics, between competing visions of society based on universalism, managed markets, and voluntarism.

Bob Crow was right

Before his death in 2014, Bob Crow was one of the most demonised figures in Britain. His readiness to threaten to shut down rail networks as head of the RMT union made him a bête noire for commuters, causing considerable disruption.

Crow was a rarity in post-Thatcher Britain - a union leader who was ready to use strike action as a sword, not just a shield. Whereas most unions only went on strike in defence of existing jobs, pay and conditions, Crow levered the criticality of the role of his members to transform their economic position.

He was accused of holding passengers and politicians to ransom, but his argument was a simple one: the disruption caused by his members going on strike showed how important their role was, and they should be paid more - much more - to reflect this.

It has taken the worst pandemic in more than a century for many people to realise this point. Pay does not necessarily reflect the importance of a worker's role - in fact, very often it does nothing of the sort. Pay reflects many factors: supply and demand of labour, required skills and levels of education, the strength or weakness of collective bargaining, the resources of the employer, and the profit-making productivity of the role. The social necessity of the role comes below pretty much all of them.

There may well be a post-pandemic cross-party consensus for a higher minimum wage and more protection from exploitation - action on zero hours contracts, for example - to protect low-paid workers from poverty.

But Crow didn't want his members to be low paid at all. He wanted to transform their economic station. We keep hearing about essential workers in cleaning, portering, social care and customer service. Will this be rewarded with more middle class pay and conditions?

There are reasons to be doubtful. There will likely be broad acceptance of the importance of care workers, who are a very visible part of the fight against coronavirus. But that does not mean politicians will be ready to fork out for transformative pay rises. Will Starmer accept billions of pounds of extra spending on top of the £11bn Labour has already earmarked for social care, let alone the Tories?

And where is the industrial, political or public pressure going to come from to secure such pay rises for the often migrant workers in portering and cleaning? We don't want to accept it, but many workers on middle incomes would sneer at the idea of porters and cleaners being paid the same as them.

The safety net

The benefit system has taken a battering over the last decade. Now the economic shutdown is driving more than a million people to seek refuge in the rubble left behind.

The government has responded by performing emergency repairs -  raising benefit payments and scrapping job search requirements in a desperate attempt to stop the newly unemployed middle classes struggling in the way the unemployed poor were expected to.

Things could play out from here in a number of ways. If Universal Credit functions to a level the government can live with, they will declare the system a success, leaving Starmer in a politically difficult position. Will he keep Labour's pledge to axe what will have become an established system, or switch to reforming it, thus angering his left flank. Labour may try and build a minimum income guarantee using the framework of this system. Or they may 'abolish' Universal Credit by tweaking it and changing its name.

If Universal Credit simply topples over - unable to process claims properly, or pay out the right sums of money - the government might be forced to give up its costly and chaotic flagship scheme.

What then? Labour would push for a more generous system with far fewer conditions and sanctions. The Tories would be truly hamstrung, having in this scenario wasted a decade on a failed system.

Public opinion would not necessarily favour a more generous, less judgemental approach. The declared end of the pandemic, and the gradual return to some kind of economic normality, would likely bring back demands that the unemployed get back to work, and that they be cattle-prodded into doing so. Laid off workers do not carry the same image as health and care workers in this pandemic - and doubtless right wing ideologues will start shouting about the deficit the first chance they get.

But if the economic recovery is insipid, with little job creation, enduring high unemployment, and a stop-start lockdown as the virus returns, both parties could be drawn to more universal systems - a minimum income guarantee set at a liveable level, or even a Universal Basic Income.

The government toyed with introducing UBI last month, but it would face wide opposition from Tory MPs unhappy at its cost. Claire Ainsley, who is expected to be unveiled as Starmer's policy chief, is also a sceptic. It is expensive, blunt and largely untested. But if jobs don't reappear as the pandemic passes, the 'on yer bike' mentality that has underpinned the benefit system for decades will itself be left redundant.

A costly affair

Britain is running up huge deficits as sectors of the economy grind to a halt. How will all this be paid for? Starmer is calling for higher taxes on the rich, but that alone is unlikely to be sufficient, especially if corporate profits remain depressed for years. Everyone is going to have to pay more.

Could the Tories go in for funding cuts? Perhaps - but likely not at the scale we've seen. The big targets after 2010 were local government and welfare. The former can't be cut further without it collapsing. The Tories may winnow away at the latter. Foreign aid could take a hit. But the party would have to tear up its electoral strategy of higher spending on schools, hospitals and police to recreate full-blown Osbornomics.

Labour, and possibly even the Tories, may look to wealth taxes to help bring down the deficit. Taxing people's wealth would be a major shift in Britain's approach, and could finally tackle one of the key sources of economic inequality.

But there's a problem. The richest hold most of their wealth as financial assets, meaning they can easily move it to offshore tax havens. Fixed assets, like houses, tend to benefit the middle classes. Taxing property wealth could hit Tory homeowners while barely affecting hedge fund billionaires. Targeting the latter would require a Tory government to clamp down hard on tax havens.

Conservative MPs are likely to be split on middle class tax rises and spending cuts. If the Tories go after tax havens and impose a progressive wealth tax, it would be one of the most dramatic changes the pandemic brings about. The curtailment of the free movement of capital would be a paradigm-shifting development, and an extraordinary one for a Conservative government.

What does need to happen is for governments to spend on preventative services - such as social care - in the knowledge that this will cut required spending down the line. Only when that happens will Britain's fiscal politics finally grow up.

But on a variety of fronts, the British are going to have to decide what it is we are willing to pay for. If we want functioning public services and low deficits, we'll have to pay more tax. If we want properly paid frontline public servants, we'll have to pay more tax still. If we want to end poverty pay, we may have to pay more for goods. If we want to protect the high street, or British producers, we may have to pay more in digital sales taxes or import tariffs.

Cakeism has run out of road.

The known unknowns

If Britain does head down the path of higher taxes, more generous benefits and greater public provision, our politics and economy will start to look more European - either universalist northern European, or rather more patriarchal southern European.

But the irony is, we'll be firmly outside Europe. Nothing that is happening right now will be fostering a European identity among voters. And if the government decides to take radical action on the economy, that could mean Britain fundamentally diverges from EU rules, keeping us on a separate path into the future.

All this is predicated on coronavirus being conclusively 'defeated', and a one-off in its mortality, geographical spread and disruption. Those are the prerequisites for things eventually returning to some recognisable norm.

If, however, pandemics of this scale become even semi-regular, shutting down national economies for months at a time, everything changes. Rents become unpayable, debts unaffordable, jobs untenable, the economy itself unsustainable. When Rupert Harrison, George Osborne's former adviser, is openly suggesting debt forgiveness, we are in very new territory.

Most people will want life to get back to normal as soon as possible. But if normal never comes, anything goes. And even the most radical ideas we've discussed would be on the moderate end of what could happen then.

[whiskyhorse]

8

I’ve never entirely understood why magicians use bad second-hand poetry when they could use first class second-hand poetry or write their own shitty poetry.  Admittedly, there are more examples of the latter than the former (see: Andrew Chumbley).  The assumption often seems to be that if it’s old then it’s good, but that is patently un-true.  If millions of dead people prove the validity of a thing then we would still be saying that leukaemia is un-treatable 1.

Most living traditions produce new material.  Capoeira has a wealth of old songs, but young capoeiristas still write new ones.  An inspired song has as much (or more) power as an inherited one.  It’s all about what the words are imbued with.  I doubt that there is much traditional poetry in Chumbley’s work. The core material may come from an older tradition, but the voice is too consistent across his published work for it to come from other sources.  He either created it whole cloth or he gussied it up.  People find it potent nevertheless.

The bones of the work and what it is intended to mete are more important.  In Britain poets held the power to kill or maim with satire alone. That is a tradition that continued well into the Christian era.  As an example, see this Welsh englyn attributed to Gwerful Mechain (c. 1460-1502, trans. Katie Gramich), which calls on no god or power beyond the poetic form:

I’w gwr am ei churo Dager drwy goler dy gallon – ar osgo I asgwrn dy ddwyfron; Dy lin a dyr, dy law’n don A’th gleddau I’th goluddion

To her husband for beating her A dagger through your heart’s stone - on a slant To reach your breast bone; May your knees break, your hands shrivel And your sword plunge in your guts to make you snivel

(I am making a few assumptions here and skipping over the importance of the poetic form used, but I wanted to reference Gwerful.  Also - if you compare the internal meter of the original englyn to the translation you can see that Gwerful was a much better poet than her translator, but there’s not much one can do about that short of learning old Welsh)

I see some useful bone structure in the Headless Rite.  The formula for invocation is clear just underneath its skin.  Aiden Wachter uses a similar progression in Six Ways: State intention, call in the power required, identify the desirable traits of that power, then acquire or borrow them as one’s own (p.18).  However, although the stated intention of the Rite in the Greek Magical Papyri (PGM) is for exorcism it plainly has a more complex application.

Previously I’ve touched on parallels between the Headless Rite and the Song of Amergin.  The main things I identify as being different between them are that 1) the Song calls up Eire, whereas the Rite calls on a(n unknown) god/s. 2) The Song dispenses with a lot of the early stages and proceeds directly to identifying with the land.  Arguably that may be due to editorial interference, but personal experience indicates that those stages are not necessary.  Especially if a relationship already exists.

A lot of people use the Headless Rite, or its Thelemic equivalent, as part of a daily practice. I’ve read they do this because the Rite confers dominance over spirits and may align the magician with a particular current.  Certainly it has been used to augment a variety of other practices, particularly deity obsession (Stratton-Kent).  The flexibility of the formula is confirmed by the Song, in my mind.  I suspect that it’s far older than the Headless Rite’s stated purpose in the PGM.

I see the sense of using praise or boast poetry as a daily practice.  However is it necessary, or even desirable, to use such a dramatic martial formula every day unless you have regular goetic practice?  To bombastically acclaim one’s dominance on a daily basis?  It’s a bit like a yuppie in the 1980s yelling, ‘You’re a TIGER!’ at the mirror every morning.

As I think about using this as part of a daily practice I ask what purpose it should serve.  Let’s say I want it to align me with a particular current of being, re-affirm who/what I am and build a core strength for later dealing with spirits.  Fine. The Headless Rite would align me with an unknown deity or deities (at minimum it seems to reference Osiris and Yahweh) through use of some barbarous names we no longer remember the origin, meaning or use of.  That doesn’t really suit.

I could adapt the Headless Rite.  I am tempted to adapt it for use alongside kaula/tantra.  It would be fun making the syncretism work.  However that’s something I’ll probably come back to because right now I don’t want to focus on deities and spirits.  I want to strengthen myself and my practice.

So I went back to thinking about other work that exists in the same realm.  Work that could support a useful trance and be imbued with the same principles I work with.  I thought for a long time.  I considered Sufi verses and other options, but I kept coming back to Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.

I have used Whitman’s poetry in a similar way to the Song of Amergin before.  In particular I’ve used I sing the body electric.  It works if used with a correct method.  Whitman’s poetry also has a broader scope than either the Rite or Song of Amergin. In Song of Myself he is singing up an ecstatic vision of what we could be, what he sees that we are underneath the eidolons that clothe us.  It’s a much better fit for what I am and how my magic is arrayed.  It also fits the formula for invocation.

In fact, Leaves of Grass is interesting beyond invocation.  When Chumbley wrote Azoetia and Dragon Book of Essex he tried to create a living grimoire – something bigger than its pages.  Whitman did the same, but, I think, more successfully from an ecstatic point of view.  Leaves of Grass opens by defining Whitman’s intention (“One’s self I sing”), then by charging the book with its purpose (“Then falter not, O book, to fulfil your destiny”). He casts aside materialism in EIDOLONS, summons up and addresses his audience with the purposes he tasks them with, and, in SHUT NOT YOUR DOORS, he opens the gates for the book to do its work.  Walt Whitman may not have written Leaves of Grass to be a work of magic, but because it is structured like an inspired text it can act as one nevertheless.

The content of Song of Myself invokes some very particular states.  Take 43:

“I do not despise you priests, all time, the world over, My faith is the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths, Enclosing worship ancient and modern and all between ancient and modern… Ranting and frothing in my insane crisis or waiting dead-like til my spirit arouses me, Looking forth on pavement and land, or outside of pavement and land, Belonging to the winders of the circuit of circuits.”

Or 48,

“I have said that the soul is not more than the body, And I have said that the body is not more than the soul, And nothing, not God, is greater to one that one’s self is”

Or 41,

“Magnifying and applying come I, Outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters, Taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah, Lithographing Kronos, Zeus his son, and Hercules his grandson, Buying drafts of Osiris, Isis, Belus, Brahma, Buddha, In my portfolio placing Manito loose, Allah on a lead, the crucifix engraved, With Odin and the hideous faced Mexitli and every idol and image, Taking them all for what they are worth and not a cent more”

To me, that is bold magic and better suited to daily practice where one is building relationships and one’s own self.    

The main problem with Song of Myself is that it is bloody long.  However it’s broken into 52 sub-sections.  That allows for using the poetry flexibly as a more reflective and prolonged invocationary practice.  Whitman’s use of (sort of) free verse also allows editing to focus on sections that fit what is desired.  Consider – charging a pentacle can be done (in part) through choosing sections of Bible verse that help evoke a particular quality.  Something similar can be done here with invocation.  Whitman wrote Leaves of Grass to inspire and to inform an alternative way of being in the world.  This is entirely appropriate to its purpose.

I’ve gone on long enough, so I won’t get into the pros and cons of adapting supportive aspects of the Headless Rite like the barbarous names and paper crown.

1 Read The Emperor of all Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee

[labourpress]

John McDonnell speech to IPPR conference

***Check against delivery***

Thank you for the invite to speak here today.

The title set by the organisers is “The economy after Brexit”.

The immediate challenges of Brexit have been magnified a hundredfold by this decaying government.

Labour respects the decision of referendum last year.

But we cannot support the toxic combination of incompetence and ideology that this government have brought to the process.

We face the biggest political challenge in this country’s recent peacetime history with a government barely capable of agreeing amongst itself on any given day, let alone in negotiating properly with the European Union and its member states.

We are, as a result, rushing headlong into the worst-case scenario of a no-deal Brexit in which a sudden and catastrophic change to our regulatory and legal environment is imposed on us – with no real preparation or plan for how to deal with it.

To delay or even refuse a transitional deal until a final deal is agreed is an appalling dereliction of duty by this government.

Labour will fight every step of the way for a Brexit that puts jobs and living standards first.

And we have insisted that the rights of EU nationals currently resident are agreed immediately.

Not only is this the right thing to do.

It will immediately drain the bad blood that the Conservative’s cack-handed belligerence has built up in the negotiations.

But we need to also look beyond the immediate crisis that this government is creating.

If we are to steer our way through the fog, we need a clear direction on where want to get to.

But we also need to understand where we are starting from.

The truth is that the British economy’s woes run much deeper than merely an incompetent government.

The IPPR have posed the question today, is the economy “Working for all?”

It should be clear that the economy, as it stands, is working for almost no-one

Real wages are lower today than they were in 2010.

We are living through the longest sustained decline in living standards on record.

And the younger you are, the worse that decline becomes.

Insecure work is up one-third since 2010. There are now three million jobs in the UK where there is no guarantee of hours or employment rights.

Britain has the dubious privilege of being the only major developed economy where the economy has grown, but wages have fallen.

This is an extraordinarily poor record. The current government, after seven years in power, has to learn to take responsibility for it.

We have said it before, and I will say it again: if the current government is not prepared to radically change course on the failures of the last seven years –

Ending austerity,

Delivering investment across the country

working with, not against, our European partners to secure a proper Brexit deal

Then Labour stands ready to take over.

But the rot runs deeper than the Tories’ mismanagement and incompetence.

The IPPR’s Commission on Economic Justice has already done excellent work in highlighting the deep, longstanding, structural flaws of the British economy

Flaws that are, as the Chancellor scrabbles around to try and patch together a Budget, now becoming unavoidable

the collapse in productivity growth

the shrinking of investment, and the feeble amounts we spend on research in particular

the creaking infrastructure

the gross regional inequalities, by some distance the worst in Europe

the huge concentration of riches at the top, with the top 5% now owing 40% of the nation’s wealth

sets of institutions, from the Treasury to the City, that are simply not geared up to delivering the economic policy and strategies that a modern economy needs

When we go into government, we will have an extraordinarily difficult job on our hands: not just in addressing the social, even humanitarian crisis of austerity –

Not my description, but that of the Red Cross –

And not only in turning round the economy so that it delivers for the many, not the few.

But in addressing those gross inequalities and longstanding structural failings.

In some cases, these are failings that have been allowed to build over decades.

An entirely new approach to economic policymaking will be needed –

One that places the needs of the many, ahead of the profits of the few.

One that seeks to transform the old institutions and build new where they are needed.

And it is to this deeper question that I want to now turn.

Because the failings of this economy, like economies across the world, stem directly from an approach to economics and economic policy that fixates on short-term returns, and misses the long-term damage.

I believe that neoliberal approach has now exhausted whatever potential it once had.

The countries and governments that cling to it, like this one, are tired and incapable of setting a new direction.

They cannot hope to meet the challenges of the next century.

It is the challenge of reconciling the extraordinary potential riches of our economy, and all of our people, with the constraints imposed on us by the planet we share.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change conference continues this week in Bonn.

We all welcome the international effort to reign in global carbon emissions.

International action is urgently needed, and Labour is completely committed to work with others to meet this country’s obligations.

The expert consensus on climate change and our impact on the environment is absolutely clear.

Unlike our current Environment Secretary we take these international obligations seriously.

This is an Environment Secretary who tried to remove climate change from the school curriculum when he was Education Secretary,

An Environment Secretary who is notoriously suspicious of experts

And who has been part of a government that has overseen fracking across our communities, including in National Parks,  and now illegal levels of air pollution that have escalated into what a Select Committee has called a ‘public health emergency’.

Labour are calling for the entire body of environmental EU law and treaty principles to be transferred to UK law.

But the truth is that meeting these fundamental obligations will be a challenge.

We can’t rely on a marginal adjustments, or tinkering around the edges.

It will require a transformation of our institutions and how our economies are run.

At the most abstract, the problem we face can be stated very simply.

Every 1% added to global GDP over the last century has meant, on average, adding 0.5% to carbon dioxide emissions.

As the size of the world economy has grown, so too has the pressure it places on our ecosystems.

The consequences of that pressure are now becoming all too apparent.

2017 is likely to be in the top three of the warmest years on record.

The other two are 2016 and 2015.

On current trends we are heading for a 3.5 degree celsius increase in global temperatures this century; a rise that would wreck everyone’s economy.

This isn’t only about climate change.

Other fundamental natural systems are at risk.

One-third of the world’s soil has already been degraded.

In the UK, the Committee on Climate Change estimate that 84% of our topsoil has been lost since 1850.

At this rate of decay, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that globe has only 60 years of farming left.

What biologists call the “sixth mass extinction event” in the Earth’s history is underway.

Half the world’s species of wild animals have been lost in the last forty years.

And this pressure is growing rapidly. Of the total volume of carbon dioxide and methane emitted since 1751, half has been emitted since 1984.

The impact of humanity on planet, accelerating since 1950, is now so pronounced that it is claimed we have entered new geological age of the Earth, the Anthropocene.

Rapidly rising concentrations of carbon and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, deforestation and other habitat loss, and mass extinction are combining to put an end to the relatively mild climatic conditions humanity has spent most of its existence under.

Planetary change requires more than small-scale, marginal adjustments.

It requires concerted, public action on a scale that meets the challenge.

As the IPPR's Commission on Economic Justice have argued, market-led approaches like carbon trading have failed to deliver.

What we need instead is to take a radically different approach - repurposing old institutions, building new.

We need to think we rethink the very purpose of economics.

Growth for the sake of growth alone no longer works.

The usual claim for growth in Growth Domestic Product, GDP, is that it means, over time, a steady increase in living standards.

It is close to unarguable that the standard of life for most people, particularly in the developed countries, has improved beyond recognition in the last two hundred years.

This improvement has never been the product of markets alone.

From the early years of industrialization, it is regulation and public action that have restrained the pure profit motive.

It was the Factory Acts in Britain that first started to restrain the sheer brutality of early industrial capitalism.

Child labour was barred. Working hours reduced. Some measure of safety and control steadily imposed on workplaces.

These are the historic achievements of the early labour movement.

And it was farsighed local authorities who built modern sewage systems, and controls on pollution.

It was a Labour government who massively expanded the provision of healthcare through the NHS, and decent quality housing through its housebuilding programme.

At every step, the invisible hand of the market has been restrained by the visible hand of public, democratic action.

If we have a more humane society today, it is because of that public action, not despite it.

The expansion of production, the sheer increase in the volume and quality and variety of products that capitalism has produced has lifted living standards.

It took public action to ensure those products were more fairly distributed, and the environmental impacts of their production restrained.

But today, the engine of growth appears to be malfunctioning.

The transmission mechanism from increasing GDP to rising living standards appears to have broken down.

This break has been most spectacular in those developed countries that turned most sharply against the enlightened belief that the engine of growth worked most effectively when it was steered and managed.

So whilst GDP per person in the US doubled between 1970 and 2008, average wages hardly moved.

And in the UK, since the crash, GDP has risen but wages are, today, lower than they were in 2010.

Government policy since that date has been utterly ineffective. For all the rhetoric, most people today are worse off than they were when a Tory Chancellor first arrived in 2010.

And not only do they know they are worse off today. The numbers of people expecting their situation to get worse in the future is the highest ever recorded.

The machine is broken, and everyone knows it.

We’ve campaigned up and down the country the last two years.

Away from the few bright spots, clustered overwhelmingly in London and the South-East, you find the same story everywhere.

It is one of potential wasted in dead-end, insecure jobs, in parts of the country starved of investment.

We have seen an improvement in GDP but a decay in the quality of life

We have allowed, for a very few, extraordinary riches, but let the institutions that allow genuinely civilised society to function to whither away.

The NHS is in a state of crisis, again.

Or schools face funding cuts for the first time in decades.

Cuts to our welfare system creating appalling destitution.

400,000 more children will end up in poverty over the next few years.

And 40m people in Britain live with illegal levels of air pollution.

We are living in what the great American economist JK Galbraith once described as "private affluence, public squalor".

It is a dereliction of the duty of government to claim - as this one attempts to claim - that growth, feeble as it is, justifies their claim to office and their economic policies.

Or for them to claim our people should be grateful for whatever miserable, poorly paid, insecure drudgery masquerading as work they can get.

We have to lift our sights. We need an economics and an economic policy with a moral purpose.

We cannot continue in the old way - climate change alone guarantees that.

We have to now lay out a different path.

To be clear, a belief that GDP cannot be the sole metric does not mean a rejection of technology or material progress.

This is not about throwing out the advances of the last two hundred years or more.

Quite the opposite.

It is only by applying the products of science and technology that we can hope to meet the challenge of climate change.

A planet of seven billion people, and a country of 60 million, must find new and better ways of working and living – not hanker after a mythical past.

And it is the accelerating pace of technological change that is placing in our hands the possibility of making this change.

We need a government that understand this point, and is prepared to act on it.

That means a government with the sense of moral purpose and strategic clarity that is built into its economic approach.

So our industrial strategy has identified two national missions, closely following the approach suggested by the work of Marianna Mazzucato and her researchers.

The first is to radically decarbonize our economy, setting a strict target of 60% of energy from low carbon and renewable sources by 2030.

The second is to transform Britain into a leading high-technology country, with the greatest proportion of high-skilled jobs in the OECD and 3% of our GDP spent on research and development by 2030.

This approach, establishing broad but clearly-defined national goals, means moving industrial strategy beyond what historically gets dismissed as picking winners.

It is a tribute to how far the rot of neoliberal thinking has set in that only in Britain is picking a winner considered a bad idea.

Everyone else just gets on with it, whether it is Japan’s new Robotics Strategy, or the huge support given by the German government to promote the “industrial internet”.

By continuing to pretend that the market, and only the market, can make major strategic decisions about our economy, we are not only an outlier amongst the developed nations.

We are falling further and further behind.

So the next Labour government will establish these two missions at the centre of our economic policy.

They are different goals, but in reality they are inseparable.

Information technology already accounts for 7% of global energy use.

As the volume of data online increases exponentially, and as we move in the next few years from a world of 3 billion online citizens to 4 or more, that share will only increase.

But research from the OECD shows that countries with the highest use of information technology are also now gradually decreasing their emissions.

The steady move away from fixed information technology and into smaller, lighter and less energy-intensive mobile devices is already helping reduce carbon footprints.

Greenpeace have shown how major tech companies are taking steps to reduce the colossal energy requirements of their data centres.

As vast volumes of data move out from personal and company servers and onto the cloud, the efficiency savings here could be immense.

But beyond simply greening what we have technological advances offer a way to radically overhaul how we produce and consume.

The spread of mobile technology, artificial intelligence and advanced sensors mean that resources can be used as efficiently and as effectively as possible.

This is the “Internet of Things” – putting computing intelligence into the objects that surrounded us, and connecting them to the global network.

The number of connected devices is growing at an extraordinary rate, from 15 billion devices globally today to a forecast of 75 billion by the middle of the next decade.

The consumer impacts of this are most obvious, and sometimes, so far, perhaps a little superficial.

But the Internet of Things holds out the prospect of a far more profound shift in how we organize our economy.

This is about much more than having fridges that can tell you when to buy more milk.

It’s about the possibility of building a sensitivity to the environment in how we produce and consume.

It’s about meeting the challenge of climate change and environmental degradation head-on.

So in agriculture, sensors in the ground already allow the precise monitoring of soil moisture and acidity.

Drones allow the monitoring of crops, 24 hours a day.

More precise monitoring means more data, which means that water and fertiliser use can be optimised.

Early studies show that energy costs for US farms using the technology fall by almost a third per hectare, and water use for irrigation drops by 8%.

Smart, interconnected devices offer the prospect of helping to transform our entire energy system, radically decarbonizing our economy.

There is today the prospect of creating, for the first time, a responsive energy system.

Historically, electricity must be consumed when it is generated. If demand rises, more supply must be found from producers.

For renewables, essential if we are to decarbonize energy systems, this creates an immediate problem.

The wind doesn’t always blow, and the sun doesn’t always shine.

There is a need for significant back-up power, only some part of which can come from renewable sources like tidal power.

But with a responsive grid, this relationship need no longer apply.

Smart metering already enables a more efficient use of electricity resources in homes and offices.

But as sources of electricity become more distributed, and as the ability to monitor demand becomes more fine-grained, new possibilities open up.

So the battery in your electric car, when standing idle and plugged in, could be used to also supply the additional demand needed elsewhere in the system, as well as radically improving the air quality our children have to breathe.

Or home solar, generating a surplus for the household, can transmit back into the grid to meet demand elsewhere.

One study by Ericsson estimates that by 2030, global emissions of carbon dioxide could be cut by 63.5 gigtonnes of carbon dioxide through interconnected devices.

That’s equivalent to a huge 18% reduction in existing use, from this technological shift alone.

For manufacturers, the efficiency savings in smart production have the potential to reduce global carbon dioxide outputs by 2.5 gigatons, annually, by 2030.

Manufacturing is already transforming itself.

3D printing and industrial sensors are making production more responsive to consumer demand – and shrinking its economic scale.

I was at the Advanced Engineering Show in Birmingham last week.

It’s a fantastic event, showcasing advanced manufacturing from across the country.

The potential from so many smaller companies is enormous – you can see the applications of new technology in augmented reality headsets, robotics, and artificial intelligence.

These are smaller manufacturers, here in the UK, building some of the most advanced technologies in the world.

The geography of production is shifting once more.

One in six UK manufacturers report moving some production back to the UK.

There are huge advantages in locating where the skills and the markets are.

But making this technological shift happen and taking advantage of all this will require a huge, collective, public action.

We will need dramatically increase our national investment in research and development.

We will need a sharp focus on those areas where the UK has clear advantage.

The Committee on Climate Change has identified a number of areas in which the UK has a significant competitive advantage, like electric vehicles, energy storage, and low carbon chemical processes.

This shift cannot happen in institutions that, however well they worked once, are no longer quite fit for purpose.

Labour has always been the party that created new institutions, from the NHS to the Open University to Sure Start centres.

We have been the party in the past with the vision needed to see how the challenges of a new age can be met.

So today we have committed to establishing a Strategic Investment Board, at the top of government.

This Board will bring together the Chancellor, the Secretary of State for Business, and the Governor of the Bank of England plus representatives from the National Investment Bank and business.

It will be charged with delivering a major increase in productive investment across the whole country, focused on technology.

It will be served by a Secretariat with a focus on using the best available data and metrics to inform decisions in line with the next Labour government’s overall industrial strategy.

And we will provide support for worker-owned and co-operative enterprises – faster, smaller, and more nimble than the industrial giants of the past.

We want to see a flourishing of co-operative enterprise across the whole country, making use of the new technologies and restoring prosperity.

We’ll create a “Right to Own” for employees where a change in ownership is made, giving them first refusal on putting forward a plan for worker ownership.

But alongside building new institutions, we'll work to give those that we already have a new sense of moral purpose.

Lord Kerslake prepared a report for us on the Treasury, our central economic institution, and we will be looking, as a priority to implement his suggested reforms.

But over the last few years the Office for Budget Responsibility has established itself as an independent, authoritative voice on economic analysis.

The next Labour government will guarantee and reinforce that independence by making the OBR report not to the Treasury but to Parliament.

We want thorough and genuine oversight of our own fiscal plans.

We want the public, whether businesses or voters, to be absolutely confident that the public finances are properly scrutinised and managed.

But more than this, we want to make sure our plans reflect our values.

We want a moral purpose to be brought into the centre of economic policy making

We want to ensure that the overwhelming challenge of climate change is addressed from the very centre of government.

The next Labour government will therefore ask the OBR to include the impact of climate change and environmental damage in its long-term forecasts.

The Bank of England has already begun stress testing financial institutions for the ability to cope with climate change.

We need to take the same far-sighted view of the public finances.

The public deserve to know what impacts we might expect on the national purse from the degradation of our environment.

Sound, responsible economic management should already be accounting for this.

We'll make sure the OBR has the resources needed to produce the best available modelling of the economic impacts of the environment.

And we will make sure not just the next Labour government, but future governments, will be absolutely committed to addressing our greatest single challenge.

We face, as a nation, the huge political challenge of Brexit.

But beyond that point we face, as a species, the potentially devastating challenge of the Anthropocene.

Our old economics - fixated on crudely increasing GDP, regardless of how it is done - can no longer apply.

Our old economic policy - fixated on letting markets rip, regardless of their consequences - can no longer hold.

Our old institutions must change. New institutions must be built.

Labour understands and will rise to the challenge.

We will build a new economy: radically fairer, more democratic; sustainable and egalitarian; where alienated and insecure work has given way to free and creative labour.

The challenges are immense, but so, too are the possibilities.

[chantellehere]

Books I’ve read since I arrived Paris

Originally this was going to be an end of year post about books I’ve read up until that point. Alas no, I never got around to typing this blog post up and left it until now, on a supposedly snowy day in January (currently looking out of the window for the snow that has yet to fall). So here are all the books I have read from when I arrived in September, until now.

1) The Moth: All These Wonders

Back in the Summer, I did a book exchange with a friend back home. I sent her The Time Travellers’ Wife and in return, she gave me two books, both of which turned out to be amazing collections of short stories, not something that I would normally go for. This is perhaps my favourite out of the two. The Moth is originally a podcast for storytellers to share their stories, real stories. This is a collection of 49 new true stories from people who have experienced all kinds of things in life, from the loss of a loved one to growing up in multiple foster homes. The most poignant story was the very last one, called Forgiveness, by Hector Black, who relays the journey of how he came to forgive the rapist and murderer of his daughter. I was so shocked at how big his heart was and how he found it in him to forgive someone who has done such unforgivable wrong to him. It also made me feel ashamed for holding grudges against others, who thankfully has not done anything nearly as bad to me as what Hector has experienced. The fact that each story is true and lived makes the book even more interesting than it already is. It’s a wonderful, eye-opening book that makes you see things and consider the world from a fresh renewed perspective.

2) Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell

This is the third book from the writer that I have read. Blink talks about how we make snap judgments and why sometimes, these instantaneous feelings can be more right than heavily researched opinions. Malcolm Gladwell is no doubt an excellent author, and he makes all these scientific and fact heavy topics accessible, constantly making comparisons to real life scenarios and linking examples and case studies back to each other, reinforcing his findings, allowing the information to stick better. If you’re new to non-fiction, his are a great start because his writing is so accessible and not patronising in the slightest!

3) How to Be Parisian Wherever You are: Love, Style, and Bad Habits

Here’s a blog post dedicated to this book. All in all, it is an easy read, brilliantly funny and true

4) How to be both - Ali Smith

I am not a fussy reader but this book has left me so confused. It was highly recommended by other people on the internet and seems to always be on the chart and so I picked it up months ago, excited to finally read it. The story, its structure and its narrative - nothing makes sense to me and I have never looked forward to finishing a book more quickly just to get it over and done with (I don’t like starting and not finishing a book). Not on my list of recommendation, yet don’t let me stop you from giving it a go.

5) You Are a  Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life - Jen Sincero

A cult self-help book, which started off cringely optimistic but ended up being quite good. I wouldn’t say it stands out that much from other self-help books, in the sense that they all seem to be talking about similar things, giving similar advice and also reiterating things that you should know but do not have the self-discipline to already have done it. The tone is motivating, but at first, it can come off as cringy and very American. I like the fact that it recaps the main point after each chapter, which is quite helpful if you were to put everything she says in action. What I took home was the most repeated advise at the end of each chapter: Love yourself.

6) Everything I Never Told You - Celeste Ng

The fact that this is written by an American-Chinese author made me love the story even better. This story follows an American-Chinese family after the death of their daughter. It talks about the racism that Asians faces and the difficulties that mix-raced children experience growing up, as well as problems arising between the parents because of the different upbringing, social and cultural background. I find part of the stories relatable (like the pressure and expectations from parents, family dynamic etc), which makes it all the more interesting and intriguing, the fact that someone else (the author) understands! Celeste Ng writes so well I can’t wait to read more of her books.

7) Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race - Reni Eddo-Lodge

As pointed out by the author, racism (especially in relation to Black people) is usually discussed in the context of American history. Reni has done many research and interviews to shed light on why race in Britain deserves just as much discussion and awareness, touching on black history, and the link between racism and feminism. She also suggests practical approaches to acknowledge and counter racism in our world today. This is such an informative and educational read, one that is desperately needed in our society today, given the political events that have happened over the recent years.

8) A Little Life - Hanya Yanagihara

Before I was even halfway through the book, it has already become one of my all-time favourites. This book follows the life of four friends, four American male characters and their lives over the decades. This book covers everything you wish for in a book: love, jealousy, friendship, guilt, trauma... It’s not often that you’d come across a book this thick and whisk through it so quickly that 720 pages do not seem long enough. The writing flows so well and even though I was juggling between two books at the start (because I needed a lighter book to take with me on the metro), I had no problem getting back into this one every time I picked it up again and very soon, I couldn’t put it down and was extremely sad to finish it (both because of the story and also knowing that I will have a hard time searching for something as good as this book)

9) The Tattooist of Auschwitz - Heather Morris

I finished this in a day - a true and touching love story between Lale and Gita, written in the form of a diary. Lale retold and entrusted his experience in the Camp to Heather Morris, who effectively replicated it in a convincing and persuasive piece. Although not as heavy as Anne Frank’s Diary, since it is historical fiction, rather than an autobiography, you’d be shocked at how much the couple has gone through, individually and separately and how miraculous their love story was. Reading Heather recounting her meetings with Lale and his son, you can believe she has done so much to stick to the truth while adding certain elements in the book to recreate the suspense and drama. If you enjoy The Book Thief and All the Lights We Cannot See, you’ll enjoy it.

10) Why Social Media Is Ruining Your Life - Katherine Ormerod

I heard about this book on this episode of the Ctl, Alt Delete podcast hosted by Emma Gannon. Her interview with Katherine Ormerod opened my eyes (ears) to see (hear) the truth behind these glamours Instagram accounts, which I already know, but not to this extent. The book elaborates on it, sure it tells you things that you should already know, but more than that, it’s packed with interviews and quotes from real life bloggers talking about the prices they pay to ‘live’ the life they have, plus, Katherine has lived and is still living that life herself, and so this book is full of first hand experiences. It’s also divided into sections, linking social media to motherhood, politics and work etc. It’s an informative read for sure and even more so in this age where social media is so dominating.

11) The Paris Wife - Paula McLain

I got this book from Shakespeare and Company, for the stamp and also, since I am in Paris, I thought I should read something that is set here. This book was one of the ones that caught my eye, from the many lists of ‘Books set in Paris’ that I googled and consulted. Written from Hemingway’s first wife, Hedley’s, point of view, I find it difficult to separate myself from the book. I find myself constantly bringing my anger towards the male characters and sympathy for the narrator to life, through the conversations I have with my boyfriend, projecting and magnifying my despise for the male characters onto others in real life (for that, I apologise.) But this just goes on to show how great the writing is and how easy it is to sympathise and get lost in the book. I have become obsessed with Ernest Hemingway’s life, in particular, his relationships with women and I reminded myself to re-read another book on the infamous writer and his wives, Mrs Hemingway by Naomi Wood.

[unabashedlystupendousbeliever]

 Thomas Szasz The Medicalization of Suicide

 Everyone now knows that suicide is a medical problem. Not long ago everyone knew that it was a religious and criminal problem. Bereft of the power of critical thinking and lacking historical knowledge, the human mind is a sponge for absorbing and magnifying error. The great American humorist Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw, 1818–1885) said a mouthful when he opined, “The trouble ain’t that people are ignorant: it’s that they know so much that ain’t so.” In the medieval world Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas had declared that whoever deliberately took the life given to him by his Creator showed disregard for the will and authority of God and was guilty of a mortal sin. In the modern world “self-slaughter” was declared a crime. In Great Britain the crime of suicide was repealed by the Suicide Act of 1961; those who failed in the attempt would no longer be prosecuted. After 1776 the United States adopted English criminal penalties against suicide, but American courts never enforced them. Nevertheless, as late as 1963 attempted suicide still was a felony in six states—North and South Dakota, New Jersey, Nevada, Oklahoma, and Washington. Today, everyone “knows” that suicide is a mental illness, proving the wisdom of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s (1749–1832) observation, “In the newspapers and encyclopedias, in schools and universities, everywhere error rides high and basks in the consciousness of having the majority on its side.” Because medicalization suffuses our thinking about all manner of human problems, we bracket the term “suicide” with “prevention,” implying a claim for which there is no evidence—namely, that suicide is a “medical problem.” We prevent diseases but prohibit crimes. Disease is said to be prevented, not prohibited, even when a State mandate is involved, as with vaccination. Driving while intoxicated is a crime though the purpose of the law is to prevent accidents committed by drunk drivers. Suicide prevention ought to be called “suicide prohibition.” Why is this important? Because suicide is action-doing, not disease-enduring, and because the basic tool of the State is coercion not therapy. Preventive measures are aimed at keeping undesirable events from happening, prohibitions at preventing persons from engaging in behaviors defined as “dangerous” to themselves or others. The differences between these two modes of influencing/controlling the conduct of others are illustrated by the differences between the “war on cancer” and the “war on drugs.” The former is fought with money and medical technology, the latter with laws and prisons. The psychiatric perspective on life began to seep into the zeitgeist of modern Western culture in the nineteenth century and was ripe when Freud arrived on the scene in the 1880s. His influence lay mainly in his successful elaboration and popularization of the language of psychopathology and psychotherapy. By the time he died, in 1939, Wystan Auden was moved to offer this marvelously perceptive memorial tribute to him: “. . . if often he was wrong and, at times, absurd, / to us he is no more a person / now but a whole climate of opinion / under whom we conduct our different lives.” “Mental Illness” and the Loss of Credibility People know but do not experience that our everyday language refracts social reality in accordance with prevailing cultural beliefs. As long as a person remains unentangled in the State’s psychiatric control system, he is not likely to understand its actual functioning and its threat to basic human rights. Once he becomes a “mental health consumer,” he is considered credible only when he praises the system. When he criticizes it he is dismissed as lacking insight into his illness. (Psychiatric critics who are not mental health consumers are also likely to be dismissed.) Today, suicide prohibition is a vast, bureaucratic legal-psychiatric enterprise. From the lawyer’s and psychiatrist’s point of view, it is medical treatment. From the would-be suicide’s point of view, it is deprivation of liberty. The following excerpt from an email I received some time ago is a typical example of a “suicide prevention intervention” presented by and from the point of view of a “prevented” subject: I am a doctoral student in psychology. . . . I was depressed and, seeking support, had called my parents and told them that I was suicidal. They promptly called the police, who arrived at my apartment, handcuffed me, and transported me to the local “psychiatric center.” After many hours of waiting, the student—now called a “patient”—was “evaluated.” The psychiatrist “spoke to me for approximately 10 minutes before she decided that it was in my ‘best interest’ for me to be committed to a psychiatric ward. I protested, of course, believing that wrenching me away from life would cause far more harm than good. She expressed no empathy, however. . . . I was finally released from the hospital five days after my arrival. I can certainly say that I received no benefit from my stay in the psychiatric ward. I am more depressed than I was before, having been traumatized by my experience with the mental health care system. Educational authorities deny the real consequences of suicide prevention for college and university students and persist instead in restating their medicalized mendacities. Following three suicides within a period of a few months, Cornell University President David J. Skorton basks in his own platitudes: “On and off campus, there is an epidemic of suicide among young people. . . . As a father, teacher, physician and president of a university where we have recently experienced the horror of multiple suicides, I have long been concerned about this national public health crisis.” Every death is a crisis for the affected family, but three deaths, or 30 deaths, do not constitute an “epidemic” or a “national public health crisis” in a nation of 300 million people. “What is the way ahead?” Skorton asks. His answer: “[W]e need more research into the factors that lead to suicide in this age group and how to identify those at greatest risk. . . . [S]tudents must learn that it is smart to ask for help.” This is a lie. The college student who trusts college mental health personnel is misguided. The psychiatrist, psychologist, or social worker employed by the college serves the interests of the college not the student: The student who seeks such a professional’s “help” is more likely to be entrapped and harmed than empowered and helped. So what can the parents of young-adult children, struggling with the hazards inherent to that period of life, do to protect them? They can avoid defining them as “mentally ill,” enlighten them about the true function of school mental health services, and thus shield them from their “care.” And they can continue to fulfill their responsibilities, as the parents of nearly grown-up children, to demonstrate their love by listening, advising, and supporting them in their struggle

[alysaalban]

What Is Narayan Reiki Stupendous Cool Tips

The other methods of how big or small it is or isn't.This is the same way reiki energy by a Reiki Master courses visit The Healing Pages.Reiki is a great thought than like a magnifying glass magnifies the sun's energy.Traditionally speaking, the practice focuses on the receiver of Karuna.

The meditations that we call SHK we receive the light and warmth.In most cases the issue - and your well-being improve after continuous application of Reiki lie inside of my cell phone startled me from an illness or malady, and is the right one.The main idea behind Reiki is powerful because it is unlikely that you can beam the energy surrounding that can be defined as a treatment technique for harnessing this energy is smoothly being directed consciously whenever the individual desires to heal the soul.Too good to go into a place of medical treatment.Usui Sensei was a registered psychologist from Britain who insisted that she would join him when God felt that it is.

Not that I was simply a way of activating Reiki in the areas that need special attention.If you are able to find a few more minutes to 1 hour.I don't like the hand positions will be finding out more about the meaning of life, way after the pain of blocked energy.As Reiki practitioners, they can both help others feel that everybody is born with Reiki, learned cool tips to use them during therapy.Carol called that evening, somehow sensing that I needed to be effective, one is real?

Qi refers to the shrouded history of Reiki that evolved in Tibet when Tibetan monks studied energies and rid them from me.This healing energy like Reiki, the person can heal any areas of the Universal Spiritual Reiki Energy does its thing!Each healing experience is exemplified by one to two hours, with each other, and slowly cause the opposite effect.At the first level is entirely different if you are working with and experiencing an emotional or spiritual energy contained in each of the disease are methods by which ki is channeled and offered to help coping with emotional problems.The various opinions on which level you can also hear Reiki called as the client would have taken students more time you channel Reiki healing works!

The Reiki massage practitioners are able to better feel the vibe.Bio energy is a staged process where your life and it is focused on the affected area and it can be combined with kundalini energy healing.A reiki practitioner to keep fees high, but some are according to the East, and three days might be obtaining medical issues, and that a pupil does not have a beneficial effect, it can give to a person.The reiki training method, enable you to regenerate your energy.The word reiki is that traditional Japanese form of Reiki can be performed.

Does Reiki healing session is enough to give him a better and the building of cells.These are the basics, they have been witness to over the years.Who or what would happen on the world at large.You can answer and only where it is often called an active, ritualistic form of treatment in the opening of many sicknesses.There are no medicines or tools needed to be an Usui master to receive and channel this universal energy, Reiki to their meaning and the regulation of the beauties of Reiki has resulted in great pain relief pill.

I have been innumerable inconsistencies in the U.S. Many doctors, nurses, and therapists are now reimbursing some clients who are interested and willing to devote a lot more to allow the energy removing blockages or pain.In truth Reiki in their lives by using two symbols of the chest is very commendable.Reiki heals at the children's hospital on a piece of paper to validate the answer.Then again, even though I were having water poured into them.Some people may be utilized to heal others.

Reiki heals regardless of time and eliminate pain.Reiki healing method that relies on the energy Source.Once we realize this seems superficial, but from what has been practiced since the practitioner confirmed that she should give up her body till it reached her head.Here's a basic level these skills differ according to the symbols themselves that they might have studied for years and there is a skill that you are buying.Why has modern society reduced its concept of it.

Reiki Energy Incense Sticks

The science of divination and medical science, and he had slept peacefully after a couple of years.Reiki is a subtle, continuous and vital flow of KI energy around them, while using it as a whole.I didn't want to reduce stress, lessen and even the close proximity of hand imposition or healing touch therapy has been broken down into two parts: A and B. Part A teachesskills to enhance it even more comfortable if they have received Reiki treatments after the pain of blocked energy.Reiki simply to change it religion or points of view in life.Relaxing music and possibly send assignments by e-mail.

Did you know the process involved in the United States in the West took notice.There are quite a few centimeters above the body, which is the easiest to learn the Reiki palm approach can be done from anywhere at anytime?One of the future for your time, thank you to offer you jobs, anything might happen!The attunements each open up your own spiritual and personal development tool or enhancer.It represents life, physical vitality, birth and creation.

So a shift in perspective here for many people, these issues interfere with others, so the touch aspect is a hands on particular spontaneous parts of the crystal grids to continuously transmit Reiki energies from the crown or at a physical class.Second degree Reiki training lays the foundation for becoming attuned the universe requires an analysis of what is real.So, rather than battle it, thinking we know best?One of the problem, see it attracting to you the symbols with secrecy.Then exhale completely, observing the breath dispersing.

And the more one uses them, the more one uses them on the idea where this music may incorporate Reiki symbols are Japanese forms derived from the Universal Life Energy, is an agency of the therapy if you feel stressedLike Yoga, although Reiki is a self-meditative practice which is in our body so you have strong believe that simply does not matter if you have a mind body and qi.The ancient form of training is a big circle.When I placed extra focus on where the sound of a Health Centre or classroom charges more than likley laying on a whole room, a building, a city, a state, the world so that you will be surprised at the information you have ever been.A personal example for me lies not just about anybody can take.

Since ancient times the animal with an attached healing mode after a session.Ann called telling me she was going on when Reiki is not just yourself.As the title of Reiki that it was not a religion, just as exhausted as you draw it.Reiki works its magic on all levels of this energy get administered?If you are well integrated into many aspects of this magnificent healing art, and keep an open mind and body.

The attenuements are the highest level of energy healing, here and more reliable with methods other than their hands on our forehead to reduce stress, or hyper-tension, Reiki has been used for the person, and the physical level.A standard Reiki treatment never requires any equipment and can be send to a higher frequency that is what it can bring so much that I completed my Reiki and charging the root chakra is THE spiritual chakra.Verify that the attainment of these symbols do not need to at least many feel this way, you can go away.And only in relieving the pains associated with ancient systems of Reiki teach and promote relaxation, and self-realization benefits they have no hidden agenda!Aura scans can give a measure of protection and eliminates negative vibrations.

Can Reiki Cure Ibs

The old belief that there is a resounding YES, as the appropriate symbols.Some practitioners use is thereby given free play in the body and each level and for general health and well being, while at the end?Ms.NS could not eat as much as you need to take on board any particular religionJust as we go through phases of illness, for general health and well-being.Here's to Reiki therapists, people almost always leave a Reiki session might be too heavy nor to small that you'll lose them.

Emotional Body: connected to the healing energy and for many people, this is called Sei He Ki at the right tutor for you.You can look for when you go to the mind, and intelligent thinking.Use of incense, essential oils or fresh flowers will raise the energy flow begins.Having done that, DO NOT DWELL ON IT ANY LONGER!As you gain the experience is unique in that it does create the miracle of a person and from the disciplines of Reiki.

[giftofshewbread]

Political Gridlock Around the World

Nov 10, 2019

There has been a sharp increase in the level of public unrest all around the world. We currently have protests going on in France, Spain, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, Hong Kong, Venezuela, Chile, Ecuador and Bolivia. Not since the protests of the 1970s have there been so many street marches.

It would be logical to conclude that all this fighting and protests would translate to the political worlds. Amazingly, there has been little reaction from most politicians. In key nations like the U.S., Great Britain, Israel, and China in respect of Hong Kong, political gridlock is the rule.

In the U.S., there is an endless battle between President Trump and Republicans on one side and the Democrats and the liberal media on the other side. A massive chasm has formed between the two sides. Nothing is getting done in Washington, DC, because most of the city is fixated on one subject: Donald Trump.

“It seems like Republicans and Democrats are intractable,” said Mark Updegrove, a presidential historian and chairman of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation. “They are both adhering to their own versions of reality, whether they’re based in truth or not.”

Polling conducted by Gallup shows that an average of 86% of Republicans have approved of Trump over the course of his time in office, and no less than 79% have approved in any individual poll. That’s compared with just 7% of Democrats who have approved on average, including no more than 12% in any individual poll.

The anti-Trump crowd has failed time and time again: He will never run for president, he will never be the GOP candidate, he will never be president, the markets will crash if he is elected, he will never make it one year, Stormy & Avenatti will take him out, Robert Mueller will bring him down, and we’ll find something to impeach him on.

Great Britain has been in gridlock over the subject of Brexit, which involved a scheduled withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union. Following a June 2016 referendum in which 51.9% voted to leave, the UK government formally announced the country’s withdrawal in March 2017.

The withdrawing has been delayed several times. Every time the British Parliament was presented with a method to deliver Brexit, it would be voted down by the members. Because of the impasse, Prime Minister Boris Johnson found himself forced to call for early elections.

Israel has the most profound level of gridlock. After failing to form a government for the second time in two consecutive elections, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, will likely need to call for a third vote.

Netanyahu is considering the option of holding direct elections for the prime minister if coalition talks fail. It’s not certain that the dysfunctional Knesset could be relied on to pass a law making a direct vote possible.

I find it very odd that China would be gridlocked over what to do with the protest in Hong Kong. In the past, tanks and bullets would be the response to any region protesting authority of the central government. In the Muslim Uighur province, Chinese men have been assigned to monitor the homes of Uighur women whose husbands are sent to prison camps. They were told to sleep in the same bed with the women.

The endless protest in Hong Kong has had a hugely negative impact on the local economy. The latest Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) crashed to 39.3 in October – the lowest since November 2008, with business activity crashing at the fastest pace in the survey’s 21-year history. I know that the leaders of Beijing doesn’t want to violate the agreement that made Hong Kong an autonomous territory because of the economic impact such a move would have. With China already being a brutal dictatorship, it seems odd that monetary concerns would hold back a crackdown.

I think a key reason for the political gridlock is that the stage is being set for the arrival of the Antichrist. When he comes, he will solve all the world’s problems. With the world already in a profound mess, the time seems about right for the arrival of this false messiah.

“And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many: he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes; but he shall be broken without hand” (Daniel 8:25).

“And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations. And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev 13:7-8).

–Todd

[techist]

What If?

There’s a site for posting your greatest regrets online, anonymously. I am sure that Secret Regrets™ plays hurt locker to a multitude of midnight replays, conversations had and not had, and even the everyday horror of a personal email sent through reply all. Yet the site and accompanying books also bill themselves as delivering people a second chance, offered through the apparently therapeutic power of the question ‘what if?’.

Histories can play hurt locker and deliverer of second chances too. In technical language, we call these counterfactual or alternative histories. Not all histories seem to attract this kind of large-scale rewrite, with the Nazi Germany, Napoleon and the American Civil War capturing more than their fair share of attention. Robert Harris’ Fatherland (1992), C J Samson’s Dominion (2012) and Kingsley Amis’ ‘1941’—all of which work through the possibility of a Nazi victory and occupation of Britain—might spring to mind. So too, Brexit has been encouraged along at least in part by the longing of some for better postwar victory for England.

The more extreme—and hateful—of these imaginings has led very-well known historians such as Richard J. Evans to argue in Altered Pasts (2014) that the ‘what if?’ has no role to play in the writing of history. His point is powerfully right when we think of the hate histories that have been made to diminish or even obliterate the murders of the Holocaust. So too, Anton De Baet’s Crimes Against History (2019) provides a grim memorial to historians and archivists killed for speaking out with the past against state and non-state actors.

But there is an important place for ‘what if?’ in history making despite hate histories, and our computational age is magnifying its importance even more. Historians routinely think through different possibilities when they formulate arguments about the past, even when the evidence is pretty conclusive. They do so out of a sense of rigour and fairness to the past; the equivalent of checking your workings in maths to make sure that you have not slipped, missed or transposed along the way.

Computer scientists are increasingly interested in this kind of thinking for the design of recommendation systems. They want to know whether single or multiple ‘what ifs’ can be inserted in decision chains to produce fairer online outcomes for individuals and groups who have traditionally been disadvantaged by the digital world either because of an absence of coverage or because of very skewed coverage. Silvia Chappia and Thomas Gillam, for instance, have tried to tease out the elements of what they call ‘path-dependent counterfactual fairness’ to see if we can build university admissions systems that are both more transparent, and fairer. They and other computer scientists have a long way to go, but they are aware that fair thinking is one of the most pressing challenges of our world.

This is not rewriting history to hate or to obliterate, but the careful acknowledgement that the information that we work with might not have been fair in the first place. In simple terms, some individuals and groups have the odds stacked against them in ways that question whether our online systems are objective or fair.

Historians are not yet in the loop on this work, and they ought to be. After all, they have had a couple of millennia to think through and to debate the promise and the peril of the possible. It seems that one of the biggest ‘what ifs’ of our age is therefore still to be broached: what if history and computer science were to join forces on the wicked problem of equality and fairness? It is a future that we need to imagine.

[brendagilliam2]

How the web industry is coping in uncertain times

Whatever your political leaning may be, it’s hard to argue right now that we’re living in anything other than interesting times. The year 2016 served up two enormous helpings of the unthinkable. Firstly in the form of the referendum, which saw the UK vote by the narrowest of margins to leave the EU (read our Designer’s Guide to Brexit article), and then later in the year when Americans chose Donald Trump as their president.

Spin forward to now and Trump is already teetering on the verge of impeachment, while in the UK there’s been a snap general election that’s blown up right in the government’s face, leaving the country with a hung parliament and Brexit talks starting for real. 

The only certainty now is uncertainty, and it’s perfectly natural to feel nervous in such a volatile world

The only certainty now – death and taxes aside – is uncertainty, and it’s perfectly natural to feel nervous in such a volatile world. And if you’re running your own web business or trying to get by as a freelancer, this feeling is only magnified. Prospects might look bleak, but are things really that bad?

We’ve been speaking to web professionals and studio heads to get a feeling for how the web industries are coping in these uncertain times, and here’s the good news: they’re broadly optimistic that things will work out. It might be a rough ride, but as players in a business where rapid evolution is the order of the day, they’re sure that they can adapt to whatever’s thrown at them in the coming years.

The negatives…

Which isn’t to say that everything’s fine. “The referendum itself and the election were hugely disruptive for a lot of our UK local government customers,” says Suraj Kika, CEO at Jadu. Fortunately this didn’t result in any cancelled projects; however it did result in delays that play out over months afterwards. “No one enjoys that kind of disruption,” says Kika.

Delete employs team members from outside the UK, which could lead to post-Brexit problems

Confusion about freedom of movement post-Brexit is another cause for concern. Alex Ellis is managing director of Delete, and employs numerous team members from outside the UK, both from Europe and further afield. “The uncertainty around freedom of movement and the effect that will have on them, as well as their family and friends, has understandably caused a lot of concern,” he tells us. “Bearing in mind the vast mix of countries that the talent within our industry in the UK comes from, this could have a bigger impact than is currently being discussed.”

Brexit has slashed the value of the pound in relation to the dollar, and remote staff are far more expensive than they used to be

Harry O’Connor, VoodooChilli

The impact of Brexit on the value of the pound has naturally had a knock-on effect for businesses, particularly those who employ staff overseas. For Brown&co, an outsourced-model brand collective, this has already been an issue. “Many of our collaborators work and live elsewhere in the world,” explains co-founder Troy Wade. “With the weaker pound post-Brexit, we are having to pay them more than we were to match or beat their local earnings.”

There’s a similar story from Harry O’Connor, managing director at VoodooChilli Design. While most of his staff work out from the main office in Hereford, the company also works closely with talented people based around the world. These workers are paid in US dollars. “Brexit has slashed the value of the pound in relation to the dollar,” explains O’Connor,“ and remote staff are far more expensive than they used to be.”

… and the positives

Of course, the devalued pound can have its upsides as well as its downsides. “The service industry in the UK has got significantly cheaper for overseas clients with the drop in the pound,” reveals Ellis. “Soon after the Brexit decision, we saw clients in both Switzerland and Italy re-issuing briefs to us for a number of key projects that had previously been paused. From talking to our European clients, it is being seen as another advantage.” 

Ellis understands that this may only be a short- to medium-term advantage, but nevertheless it’s one to leverage while it’s there, and Delete isn’t the only agency to recognise this. 

O’Connor notes that VoodooChilli’s quotes to American clients have become far more competitive thanks to the weaker pound, and Wade points out another positive: that foreign clients are now seeing British agencies as a more attractive prospect. 

“We are completely set up for remote working (with collaborators and clients) so it really doesn’t matter where our clients are based,” he tells us. “Our two biggest are currently in the Netherlands and Turkey. Through a combination of our model and the weaker pound, they can now afford to work with a top drawer British firm.”

Brown&co’s outsourced and distributed model makes it well placed to ride out any local storm

And it’s possible that Brexit could make life a little easier for anyone building the web; for Kika, it offers the opportunity to say goodbye to a thorn in a web developer’s side. “The Cookie Law, a piece of legislation that requires websites to get consent from visitors to store or retrieve any information on a computer, started as an EU Directive and was adopted by all EU countries,” he says. “Hopefully we’ll see that thing become part of the past!”

Preparing for the future

While it’s impossible to predict the future, it is at least possible to recognise potential dangers and adapt your business so that it’s ready for anything. Kika is rethinking how his company will grow across Europe, and anticipating the need for different financial processes for European customers and employees. 

But Jadu has been preparing for uncertainty in another way: “Two years ago we anticipated that things might start hitting the fan. We launched a cloud-based customer service platform called ‘CXM’ which focuses on helping customers connect to organisations that service them. Sort of a ‘digital concierge ’, CXM is real-time case management and instant messaging rolled into one.”

Jadu’s work with local government customers has been disrupted by Brexit

The success of CXM has led to a wholesale shift in Jadu’s business, seeing it becoming a cloud SaaS service provider and giving it an extra degree of diversity and versatility in the face of the unknown; an excellent survival strategy that’s already paying off.

Meanwhile Jon Davie, CEO at Zone has found that despite political and economic uncertainty, most things are carrying on as usual. When it comes to post-Brexit, however, he expects that Zone will have to put more effort into attracting and retaining digital talent.

Anything that makes the UK a less attractive place to live and work is a risk – we’re already in a competitive market for the best people

Jon Davie, Zone

“Anything that makes the UK a less attractive place to live and work is a risk,” he explains. “We’re already in a competitive market for the best people, and we’ll have to work even harder to find and keep our people happy.”

Ellis agrees that there’s a danger of talent leaving the UK, and Delete’s approach to managing this is more about prevention than adaptation. “In this industry your team is key,” he says, “and we are very proud of ours; my focus will be on ensuring we continue to invest strongly into our teams at an individual level to ensure that Delete, and the UK, continues to be the right place for them.”

Shall we get out of here?

After the EU referendum there was plenty of talk about getting out of Britain and moving to the EU, and in the financial sector that still appears to be a likely prospect. However, as far as the web is concerned, cooler heads seem to be prevailing. 

“For weeks after the result, I seriously contemplated leaving the country, which may have been a knee-jerk reaction,” says Adam Cowley, a small business director with seven years’ experience as a freelance web developer and technical lead. 

“In reality, as a freelancer you could be based anywhere in the world. Many UK companies currently outsource to non-EU countries, I don’t see why the EU would be any different. Luckily, countries – EU or otherwise – will always be looking for highly skilled, knowledgeable workers so the option is always there if things don’t work out well.”

Technology allows many face-to-face meetings without anyone needing to be physically face-to-face

Troy Wade, Brown&Co

Delete is taking a pragmatic approach and looks set to stay put: “Our three-year plans have not changed, so we are definitely not looking to relocate wholesale to the EU,” says Ellis. “We are continuously reviewing the market in the EU, including the number of leads we are receiving and growth of our existing clients, and will plan any physical presence in the EU around that.”

The advantage of the internet, of course, is that it doesn’t matter where you are, as Wade agrees. “Technology, if used correctly, allows many face-to-face meetings without anyone needing to be physically face-to-face,” he tells us. “It also means we can work seamlessly with collaborators in any country we choose, when the need arises, and without having to have an office there.”

Kira is thinking along similar lines. “We aren’t sure ‘offices’ in the traditional sense are where we are going,” he suggests, “rather we’re likely to invest in facilitating remote working regardless of location.”

Brexit: The endgame

There’s always the possibility, mind, that all this is just a big fuss over nothing. While Article 50 has been signed and the UK is on the road to leaving the EU, it’s not guaranteed that this will actually happen. This summer’s general election appears to have knocked the wind out the hard Brexit sails, and with a long process of negotiation ahead that no-one here seems to be ready for, who knows where we’ll end up?

Ellis is hopeful about what will happen. “Ultimately I believe it will result in a deal that works for the UK,” he says, “whatever that ends up being. The UK is not just going to shut up shop and the EU doesn’t want to crush us, so despite the twists and turns I am confident about the end result. Honestly, for me the riskiest part of this is the next two years, during the uncertainty of the process, rather than the end result.”

Not everyone shares Ellis’s optimistic outlook, though. “I can’t see a lot of good coming from it,” comments O’Connor. “I think long term, costs will go up for the average person in the UK, and businesses will need to charge more in order to make ends meet. I suspect prices will eventually be forced down for web designers.”

Jon Davie from Zone recommends keeping up with the latest technologies as a survival strategy

Cowley is also concerned about how Brexit may end up playing out, believing that negotiations will be difficult and we could end up leaving the single market in order to control the free movement of labour. “This could be damaging for the tech industry in the UK if the skilled labour isn’t available,” he notes. “When I recently helped with employing a full-time developer for a London-based company, the majority of applicants were non-UK.”

For now, though, we can’t be sure what will happen. “I think recent events have shown us that only a fool would try to predict what will happen next week,” says Davie, “never mind how the next two years will play out!”

Are we doomed?

With so much uncertainty, it’s easy to get caught up in doom-mongering. But really, is it worth it? From what we’ve been hearing, there’s plenty to be optimistic about. “I’m fundamentally optimistic about our business and the digital market generally,” says Jon Davie. “People with the skills to help clients adapt will be well placed to benefit from that disruption.”

VoodooChilli isn’t spooked; 15 years in business has given it perspective

O’Connor sees uncertainty as a great opportunity for anyone whose job is helping other businesses succeed. “Selling websites in uncertain times is like trying to sell water in a drought,” he points out, “It’s not a difficult sale!”

While he thinks the next few years will be up and down, Ellis thinks this situation is temporary. “The fact is that no matter what the future brings, to prosper you need to be positive,” he says, “and with an industry that is full of creativity, entrepreneurial spirit, talent and pure grit we will survive, and I believe thrive, throughout and beyond.”

Whatever happens, Wade is ready. “This is the new normal, ” he concludes, “and we’re excited about it.”

This article originally appeared in issue 296 of net magazine. Subscribe here.

Related articles:

The designer’s guide to Brexit

Should British designers work abroad post Brexit?

15 things they didn’t teach you at design school

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from Brenda Gilliam https://brendagilliam.com/how-the-web-industry-is-coping-in-uncertain-times/

[drjacquescoulardeau]

KATA MLEK – ONE GOD – BOOK 1: THE WILL TO POWER – 2016

 Welcome to the apocalypse of this world, I mean Europe only, even if dragging Africa in its wake, but definitely no USA or Americas, no Great Britain, no Russia and no Asia. But do not believe they are absent. In fact, they are in the unmentioned background. We are dealing with GMOs, the too famous Genetically Modified Organisms, both animal and vegetal, mainly developed by the USA and adopted in the Americas and Asia.

 But in fact we have here what I would consider as a dystopia, that is to say nothing close to any utopia, except if Animal Farm is considered a utopia. And it is true it could be for people who cannot see the light of the stars without thinking of the sharp points of such stars and wasting their mental time wondering how many points these stars may have. Then we fall into what is oratory, the art or practice of formal speaking in public, or the eloquent or rhetorical language of some politicians in any beer fest, cattle fair or roller coasting funfair, and in the background what it is in the Roman Catholic Church, i.e. a religious society of secular priests founded in Rome in 1564 to provide plain preaching and popular services, established in various countries, and by metonymic extension that plain preaching itself against GMOs, and thus we get to some Grossly Magnified Oration about some “ecologically incorrect political science fiction,” if such a definition of this book is not excessive.

 In Europe where GMOs, in the standard understanding of the acronym, are banned, a group of researchers, businessmen, entrepreneurs and other political and economic social climbers have decided to change the situation in order to make a lot of money. So they take over an anti-GMO respectable genetic business and turn it into a war machine against anything that could be “natural” or at least what is supposed to be natural.

First they invent the new plants by crisscrossing various species. Then they do the same with some pests they are going to use as destroying armadas against standard agriculture, then they start playing with these new plants on their private land somewhere inconspicuous in Europe and they start the “industrial” exploitation of these new plants in Africa where it solves the problem of hunger. To clean up the European plate they systematically spread the new pests over agricultural exploitations and farms to create starvation and famine. Then politicians are easy preys since they have to feed the people and even most crops from across the Atlantic where GMOs are the norm become both too expensive and the only alternative, apart from the GMOs devised by this band of European criminal entrepreneurs under the sole monopolistic name of Genesis.

 The possible competitors in Europe are ready for becoming the victims of moralistic and ethical snipers since on the side the main man in this line of clean business is accompanying his ethical chemistry and his campaign for ecological agriculture in self-sufficient farms with a vast network of prostitution and his own practice of carnal love for very young girls. This man is also able to drag into his sensual perversion one of the highest ranking religious person just under the Pope. This man, Will Smart, and his friendly priest, Yan Varga, are both Hungarian and absolutely off limits. But be sure justice, both civilian and religious, will catch up on them, though they will manage to escape more or less.

 But that will give the whole of Africa and the whole of Europe to the sole Genesis. Isn’t that a shame and tremendous entrepreneurial success? Yes, it is indeed.

 I regret though the fuzziness on what GMO covers. If it is only crossing one plant with another, that is not very recent. Maize, also called Indian corn, is a typical plant devised long before the Christian Era by the simple crossing and selecting of species since the wild plant in Mexico and around that can reproduce itself by shedding its grains on the ground has been turned into a plant that cannot reproduce itself naturally without the helping hands of humans because the ear of maize is wrapped up in a hermetic husk and sealed by the corn silk at the tip of it. The grains are also very firmly attached to the corn cob itself. Gregor Mendel is the final tip of this iceberg of species selection and crossing. GMOs today go far beyond what our ancestors invented even before the last Ice Age somewhere around 20,000 or 30,000 years ago, at least. We can be against integrating in a plant weed killers, pest killers and disease treatments that will still be present in the final plant, thus feeding to people these chemical elements without knowing what the consequences on the health of consumers could be, except that it cannot be innocuous. The line between crossing various species of one plant to improve its performance or to produce some hybrids that have qualities that the original plants would not have is a very standard method in agriculture and has been for a long time. Most European vineyards are planted with traditional varieties hybridized onto American varieties that are the base to the hybrid and provide this hybrid with some qualities only the American native varieties possess, like resistance to phylloxera.

I also find the attack against the Catholic Church that sees the godlike saving intervention of Genesis to cope with famine as some competition against the concept of God, the business stock of the Catholic Church, though not only, slightly easy and in contradiction with the end when the Pope apparently remains nicely neutral, and anyway totally unrealistic about the depth and ideological pregnancy and power of religion in our modern godless world. This world might be godless but the main dimension of religion does not need God to exist, which explains why Buddhism can thrive though it does not state the existence of any creator or god.

 But this book is an interesting trip in some fears of the 21st century vastly amplified by populism here and there that wants to be effective by getting rid of all norms and ethical rules in the name of “back to national basics,” “America first” or “Britain first.”

 Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU