Go back to 100% reserve banking

A huge part of the problems we currently face as a species flow from the inequities of our system of money supply.

Most people imagine that money here in the UK is created by the Government and / or by the Royal Mint.

But it isn't. The shocking truth is that over 97% of our money is actually created as debt by private banks.

We can fix so many problems with our economy and the damage it wreaks on the environment by radical reform of our money supply - and we can fix none of them if we don't.

Herman Daly - a former economist at the World Bank agrees - watch his testimony for the need for monetary reform below.


Herman Daly on Full Reserve Banking from Mike Freedman on Vimeo.

Tax evasion

No wonder we can't afford to tackle climate change.

As a nation our corporations avoid paying £70 billion in tax.

We spend next to nothing trying to get it back and instead throw 624 times more chasing benefit fraud than we do our lost tax.

The wonderful website : http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/ has all the details.

But can anyone in the comments tell me why this is so?

Or can we simply assume the obvious - that public office is now simply a corporate rewards scheme for those with sufficient 'flexibility' in their integrity and morals.

Get into power and then pocket the rewards from corporate chums later.

Class hatred

Polly Toynbee writes with passion and intelligence this morning in the Guardian about class hatred.

She rails against the use of the word 'chav' and accuses the right wing upper classes of the UK of draining power, money and respect from the bottom to the top of UK society.

When considering the dim distant notion of a functional world administration (the kind which could deliver the urgently needed changes to avert catastrophic climate change) or some notion of world community or human unity - it is tempting to look at national divides, religious divides and ethnic divides and pay too little attention to class divides.



Here in the UK - class is a huge huge issue - always has been. Polly in her article argues rightly that working class people have been demonised by the word 'chav' by upper class people who despise them.

What dissapoints me about Polly's article, in fact the whole narrative of her articles is that she operates from inside a class war mentality that offers support and fire for her 'side' - but no way out as I see it.

Why do rich people with all the advantages and security one could wish for still fear and despise people who are in reality no threat to them.

What are the national group dynamics that have created and sustained this class hatred for centuries - and how do we change them? Do people even want them changed? Polly admirably stands up for sections of society that she regards as trampled and powerless - but is this actually true - Polly risks turning whole sections of society into hapless victims, who want an end to class labels and boxes but can't somehow get off their knees and have a revolution.

But DO people REALLY want to be stripped of their class identities and sense of belonging? I doubt it in many cases. Sure everyone would like more money and its absolutely true that we live in a society which is inequitous to the point of being evil - but do people really want an end to the divisive class struggle in the UK?

Do upper class, middle class and working class all have their own value systems, worldviews and ways of identifying themselves. Is this a vmeme issue a la Spiral Dynamics?

I would LOVE an end to the class structure in the UK - an end to the royals - the toffs - the tories...

...but I think its folly and perhaps even arrogant to assume that everyone else shares those wishes - indeed it is far more likely that they don't - identity and a set of cultural rules and clothes are things that some of us can cast off  - but are a life threatening loss for others.

Sadly I suspect Polly is guilty of projecting her wishes onto a section of society all too easily portrayed as victims - the venal imposition of poverty lands true with me - the idea that people rail against the cultural compact of being working class or even a 'chav ' - doesn't.

Just for a little relief

On what has been a bleak day for global news...

Have a little laugh with the good folks at http://www.globalunity.com/

Be sure to check out the 12 Dimensions

Who win my tin-foil hat wearer of the day award!

Global Peace & Unity

Found this interesting site - an international inter-faith outfit apparently.

"t’s recognised as the biggest multi-faith gathering of its kind anywhere across Europe" or so it says on the website.

It landed with me at first viewing as a rather Islamic unity - but then I suppose these inter-faith initiatives have to start somewhere, inter-faith events in the UK often seem rather white, middle class and christian to me.

<minutes go by as I read more about it>

Actually - peace and unity it may be - but as far as I can see its an exclusively Muslim kind of global unity.

Can anyone spot the Christians in this vision of global unity? Me neither!

This reminds me of my favourite poster for an event celebrating diversity - it said stridently at the bottom "please bring vegetarian organic food to share"

By all means have peace & global unity - as long as its Muslim.

There is a great description of a GP&U event in London on this blog 

I liked this line:

"On stage were a continual stream of earnest musicians emphasising their wholesome family values and commitment to Islam"

Which is global peace of a kind.

Does it not occur to organisers of an event called "Global Peace & Unity" that calling an event by that name and then calling it 'inter-faith' when only Muslims go - is a bit daft.

By all means call it 'Annual Bash Of Really Nice Muslims We Hold Once A Year In different Places Around The World' -  as this would be accurate.

As its stands I find the name rather unhelpful!

Meanwhile...

we are engaged in another race against time that some find more important.

While The Guardian covered the climate change story...

... The Sun (the most popular newspaper in the UK with a readership of 2.8 million)  was deeply troubled by who might fill the panel of judges on the X-Factor.

Small wonder we are in the trouble we are in when we have a popular press happy to pump out stuff like this.

I thunk the UK & the US are shoddily served by the vast majority of the media.

Lets look at todays headlines:

Kicking us off is The Daily Express.which has a circulation of some 639,578 readers.

they lead with an EU bashing story which will go down very well with their readership.

No mention at all of the climate change story but on the plus side you may be able to win a motorhome.

Next up is the new off-shoot from The Independent which leads on the row at the international football organisation FIFA.

Desperatly dissapointing that one of the more quality dailies leads with such a lightweight story on the day that disastrous climate emission figures were published.

Around 161,000 people bought this paper to learn what was going on in the world.

The Indy itself leads with an Afghanistan story - which though heart tugging is rather suprising given the weight that this paper has (rightly) lent to climate change in the past.

No mention at all of the emissions story so its hardly suprising if their generally left-of-centre readership regards its importance as less than crucial.

The Indy has a circulation of about 181,000

The Daily Mail's 2.1 million readers were treated to a crime scare story which is their trademark!

No mention of the climate change news of course.

But there is a 2 for 1 deal in some eateries and a royals story.

The 692,000 readers of the Daily Star had an X-Factor story - a sexy woman in undeniably nice undies and some other celeb gossip.

I doubt if this paper has ever published a serious news story.

More X-Factor news on the left leaning Daily Mirror.

1.2 million buy this paper.












These are the circulation figures for the daily newspapers in the UK for April 2011.

Daily Mirror: 1,172,785
Daily Record: 312,566
Daily Star: 692,157
The Sun: 2,783,110
Daily Express: 635,576
Daily Mail: 2,100,300
The Daily Telegraph: 639,578
Financial Times: 372,076
The Herald: 49,764
The Guardian: 263,907
i:161,151,
The Independent: 180,743
The Scotsman: 40,524
The Times: 449,809
Racing Post: 57,376

Of all of that list - I would say that the only chance you might have of a story about climate change appearing  would be The Guardian, The Independent and at a stretch The Times - a small % of the total circulation.

Of course this medium is in marked decline - but what is replacing it?

TV news? I wouldn't give much hope of the UK state braodcaster (the BBC) stepping out of line much on this or any other issue -  besides Al Jazeera, most other TV news (especially in the US) makes one want to weep.

Internet? The trouble with the internet is that people with a particular point of view just seek out affirmations that they are right - the famous balkanisation effect just creates wave after wave of cranks and extremists - so I don't hold out much hope for the internet.

No - until the owners of the major media companies decide that action on climate change is in their interest then nothing will change.

And at the moment the major players have no intertest in the ecosystem that supports them.

That may yet change - but too late to prevent very significant damage I fear.

On the brink

This article in The Guardian today paints a stark picture of a species that is vandalising its own ecosystem.

"Greenhouse gas emissions increased by a record amount last year, to the highest carbon output in history, putting hopes of holding global warming to safe levels all but out of reach, according to unpublished estimates from the International Energy Agency."

and yet the fractiouss arguing amongst nations states who are each determind that the burden of any action should not fall on them continues.

IT MAY ALREADY BE TOO LATE.

We stepped back as a species from the brink of nuclear annihilation but our collective inability to function sanely as one human community has set us on an uncertain path for the future.

Never has the need for a united human consciousness been more starkly illumninated.

People say that any notion of humans co-operating on a global scale is unrealistic - well to continue as we are is insane and doubly unrealistic - let us hope that neccesity is truly the mother of invention and that humans realise the urgency of the neccesity in time. 

A new global awareness and ethic

I believe that we are in dire need of a new global ethic and awareness.

We must learn to see ourselves as members of one single human community who share a defined, finite and relatively fragile ecosystem.

This sci-fi moment comes to mind. Click about 4 minutes in or click here

Deanna Trio explains that "the discovery that we were not alone in the universe unites humanity in a way never thought possible - poverty, disease and war will all be gone in fifty years"

What an inspiring thought! That a single event could supply the missing direction, unity, cohesiveness and harmony that so elude us today.

and yet that shift in consciousness is collectively ours to choose.

Why don't we choose it?

Saying NO to war

If we had a global consciousness of our human community - then war with ourselves would make no sense. Until that day dawns we have courageous people who will simply refuse to take a human life at the behest of the state.

I like this Cif article on this topic.

I continue to be amazed at the stupendous bravery of any currently serving soldier or marine who goes out on foot patrol in Afghanistan knowing beforehand that his command – after spending $20bn on an "anti-IED" project – still has no clue how to protect him from a cheap roadside bomb that causes 80% of our casualties. (On Wednesday, seven Americans on a single patrol were blown up and killed by an IED in Kandahar province.)

But what kind of guts does it take for war objectors, whether they're Quakers, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mennonites or secular, who simply don't want to kill?

On this Memorial Day, it might be a time to think about the outcasts who refuse to take life.

How globalisation bypasses community

This heartrending article in the Guardian is a clear example of how important our notions of community are.

Here a global mult-national company is given permission by a national government to override the rights of individuals and the rights of the local community.

The multinational energy company Shell are an organisation without national affiliation, laws or any moral principles beyond the drive to make profits.

Shell can move from country to country flouting national and international law - because as a collective species we live in a state near anarchy.

We need not look far for other examples of energy companies behaving with no regard for community of any kind.

Without even thinking I can link to Shell's activities in Nigeria

Or Chevron in Ecuador

The important lesson here is this:

In the past our notions of community and protection from threat were defined by the boundaries of our clan and family. We had a more direct control over our lives as a community. We grew our own food, sourced our own water and made our own houses and goods. But we don't do any of this for ourselves anymore - our needs are met by supply chains that have national and international connections - our work is no longer for ourselves or our local community - our work forms part of a global economic system that we cannot seperate ourselves from.

At this point I must defer to a book written in 1907 called 'Sin & Society" by Edward Alsworth Ross.

From the preface:

THIS book deals with sin, , but it does not entreat the sinner to mend his ways. It seeks to influence no one in his conduct. . It does seek to influence men in their attitude toward the conduct of others. Its exhortation is not be good. but be rational.

To modify conduct one touches the heart. To modify judgments on conduct one speaks to the intellect. The latter is the method of this book.

Its aim is to enlighten rather than to move..

In praising or blaming each of us exerts a power over his fellows. When the praises or blames of many men run together, , they become a torrent no one can withstand. Why let this moral power run to waste ? Why not use this public opinion to protect our dearest possessions ??

and critically

It never occurs to the public that sin evolves along wth society, and that  the perspective in which it is necessary to view misconduct changes from age to age. Hence, in to-days warfare on sin, the reactions of the public are about as serviceable as gongs and stink-pots in a modern battle.

Rationalize public opinion  modernize it and bring it abreast of latter-day sin - make the blame of the many into a flaming sword guarding the sacred interests of society such is the lesson this little book seeks to impress.

No less a man than Theodore Roosevelt said this in a letter at the front of the book:

You define sin as conduct that harms another in contradistinction to vice by which we mean practices that harmby which we mean practices that harm one's self; and you attack as they should be attacked the men who at the present day do more harm to the body politic by their sinning than all others.

As you well say:  If a ring is to be put in the snout of the greedy strong, only organized society can do it

 More relevant today than it ever was in 1907.

The masked security operatives of Shell operate as hired assasins and thugs around the world and yet Shell hides behind a veneer of respectablity it does not deserve.

and don't even get me started on banks!
We have no concept of community to restrain those who sin against all humanity. Dis-empowered as we all are by global productions, economics and finance - we are all potential victims or hapless colluders in wrong-doing.

How can we update our consciousness of community to have any efficacy and meaning in the face of globalisation?

Spiral Clues

This article in New Scientist reads like a chapter from Spiral Dynamics.

"Societies facing a host of dangers are more likely to have strict social norms and be intolerant of people who deviate from them. The more secure a society, the more liberal and tolerant its people."

Life conditions and Red, Blue & Orange vmemes methinks.

Too many of us for unity to be possible?

Great article from David Attenborough on The New Stateman website.

Are there simply too many of us for any notion of global unity to emerge?

But if we had some sense of ourselves as human community members then solving a problem like this would be so much easier.

 An old quote surfaces in the article.

Kenneth Boulding, President Kennedy's environmental adviser 45 years ago, said something about this: "Anyone who believes in indefinite growth in anything physical, on
a physically finite planet, is either mad - or an economist."

Sobering reality too.

All of us who have travelled in poor countries have met people for whom hunger is a daily background ache in their lives. There are about a billion such people today - that is four times as many as the entire human population of this planet a mere 2,000 years ago, at the time of Christ.

and a good question.

I suspect that you could read a score of reports by bodies concerned with global problems - and see that population is one of the drivers that underlies all of them - and yet find no reference to this obvious fact in any of them. Climate change tops the environmental agenda at present. We all know that every additional person will need to use some carbon energy, if only firewood for cooking, and will therefore create more carbon dioxide - though a rich person will produce vastly more than a poor one. Similarly, we can all see that every extra person is - or will be - an extra victim of climate change - though the poor will undoubtedly suffer more than the rich. Yet not a word of it appeared in the voluminous documents emerging from the Copenhagen and Cancún climate summits.

Why this strange silence?

and a final conclusion

Make a list of all the other environmental problems that now afflict us and our poor battered planet - the increase of greenhouse gases and consequential global warming, the acidification of the oceans and the collapse of fish stocks, the loss of rainforest, the spread of deserts, the shortage of arable land, the increase in violent weather, the growth of mega-cities, famine, migration patterns. The list goes on and on. But they all share one underlying cause. Every one of these global problems, social as well as environmental, becomes more difficult - and ultimately impossible - to solve with ever more people.

The man has got a point.

What is Community #2

So what is community?

A good definition of community can be found at the Infed.org website (informal education - a very interesting idea in and of itself)

Common themes emerge.

Place. Territorial or place community can be seen as where people have something in common, and this shared element is understood geographically. Another way of naming this is as ‘locality’. This approach to community has spawned a rich literature – first in ‘community studies’ and more recently in locality studies (often focusing on spatial divisions of labour).


Interest. In interest or ‘elective’ communities people share a common characteristic other than place. They are linked together by factors such as religious belief, sexual orientation, occupation or ethnic origin. In this way we may talk about the ‘gay community’, the ‘Catholic community’ or the ‘Chinese community’. Development in what might be called the sociology of identity and selfhood have played an important role in ‘opening out the conceptual space within which non-place forms of community can be understood’ (Hoggett 1997: 7). ‘Elective groups’ and ‘intentional communities’ (ranging, according to Hoggett op cit from cyber-communities to car-boot enthusiasts) are a key feature of contemporary life


Communion. In its weakest form we can approach this as a sense of attachment to a place, group or idea (in other words, whether there is a ‘spirit of community’). In its strongest form ‘communion’ entails a profound meeting or encounter – not just with other people, but also with God and creation. One example here would be the Christian communion of saints – the spiritual union between each Christian and Christ (and hence between every Christian). Another is Martin Buber’s interest in meeting and ‘the between’.

Now watch M.Scott Peck's 'Community Building' ruin this nice orderly idea!

No borders?

Consider a world - today - without national borders or border controls.

What would happen? I thought this guy on Cif made a balanced argument.

Because, in a world of nation states and territorial-based taxation/spending/law-making, such open borders are entirely incompatible with any form of wealth-redistribution or services provided via general taxation rather than being charged at the point-of-use.

Open-borders would naturally lead to a race-to-the-bottom, as things like the NHS would immediately become unsustainable. Any nation that offered such free services would become a magnet to the world's poor, while those with wealth upped and moved to places with ultra-low-taxation and no services for the poor provided at all.

So you could have the above right, but only if you scrap welfare, the NHS, state-schooling, etc and replace it with an entirely privatised world of private schools, private health-care and 'gated communities'. Everyone would then be 'free' to go where they wished, as long as they could afford the entry fees of course. They wouldn't be allowed into those privatised gated-communities though.

Unless you also have some sort of global world government, of course - but that isn't exactly on the cards is it? If these campaigners were demanding world government and global socialism first, then at least their demands, though wildly utopian, would be morally defensible. As it is they seem to end up being fellow-travellers of the neo-liberal right.

What is Community #1

The first in a long series:

What is community?

This most interesting analysis comes from an article in something called CyberSociology.

Is the sum of the word 'community' reasonably defined by how many disperate groups toss around the same meaning? A numbers game?

"From it's inception as a discipline", writes Dennis Poplin, "sociology has been plagued by inconsistency and ambiguity in some of its basic terminology... the word community falls into this category.

As an element in the sociological vocabulary, this term has been used in so many ways that it has been described as an omnibus word." (Poplin, 3) Indeed the term "community" has dozens if not hundreds of distinct definitions in the social sciences.

It seems that many of these definitions are based upon value judgments and political viewpoints rather than social scientific reasoning, making consensus upon one sociological definition for the term impossible to reach thus far. Even the Oxford Dictionary of Sociology states that "the ambiguities of the term community make any wholly coherent sociological definition of communities, and hence the scope and limits for their empirical study, impossible to achieve." (p.75)

Hence, we must move towards an agreed upon definition if we are to talk about something in a meaningful way. Freilich instructs us that, "since a requisite of science is specificity of terminology, we must conclude... that at this time `community' is a non-scientific term unless separately defined in every paper which uses it." (Freilich, "Toward an Operational Definition of Community," Rural Sociology, 29 (June, 1963 ), 118.)

For this reason, it is important that I present a clear sociological definition of the term community here before proceeding.

In what may be the best attempt yet to assess agreement amongst definitions of community, George Hillery, Jr. subjected 94 sociological definitions of the term "community" to qualitative and quantitative analysis. ( Hillery, 1955, 111 )

He was able to identify 16 different definitional concepts within this sample. (Ibid. 115) Hillery found only one concept that was common amongst these 94 definitions: they all deal with people. (Ibid. 117)

Despite this, there are other areas where the majority of studies analysed by Hillery are in agreement. Hillery states that "of the 94 definitions, 69 are in accord that social interaction, area, and a common tie or ties are commonly found in community life." (Ibid. 118)1 Poplin notes that in a more recent empirical study2 of 125 sociological definitions of the term community, the above definitional aspects were still present in the majority despite some changes in the usage of the term over the years. (Poplin, 1979, 8)

In the interests of keeping this piece brief, I have used Hillery's analysis of definitions of community to come to a single concise definition rather than to present dozens of different definitions. The sociological term community should be understood here as meaning (1) a group of people (2) who share social interaction (3) and some common ties between themselves and the other members of the group (4) and who share an area for at least some of the time.

or is there more to our notions of community? Is our understanding of community an ongoing emergent process (as implied by something like Spiral Dynamics) or is it an existing truth that can be nailed down and sorted out already with the right analytical tools?


I think probably both - we can make better sense of what different people with different perspectives mean when they say 'community' AND leave the door open for an entirely new and inspiring vision of human community to emerge.

Far right politics in Europe - Video

Worrying evidence of the rise of racist sentiment in Europe.

Its all very well for me to write about community and a potental global unity for mankind...

....but then this is the drift at present.

History tells us that human beings can be very multi-cultural until economic instability threatens people's lives - then a scapegoat is needed and an ethnic minority is an easy target.

Glad to ponder though that the rise of the far right in mainland europe is not mirrored in the UK - in fact the BNP is now shrinking fast after recent gains.

Tin foil hat brigade

What do you do with the tin-foil hat brigade? The loony right anti-immigration trolls were out in force on this thread on The Guardian's 'Comment is Free' section.

I asked one of them for his views and he basically said that immigration to the UK was all the fault of some left-wing conspiracy motivated only by "short term smugness and feelings of superiority"

He went on to say  "that not only should the politicians be prevented from enjoying the spoils of their crimes, but their families and descendants should also be prevented. Put an end to their bloodline"

In other words - people who have a more liberal attitude to immigration should be killed (I quizzed him about this and he confirmed it)

What can we do with such people? Can their lurid fears and hatreds be engaged with or should we just ignore them? Or deprive them of a platform?

The Far Right is gaining ground all over Europe so views like this are headed towards the mainstream - a depressing step away from any sense of global unity and community. 

Trying to understand....

In the comments section of this article I ask this question of the vociferous anti-immigration posters.

Could you say a bit more about why you appear so hostile to immigration - which has been a historical fact of life since the birth of the species?

Is it

(a) a reaction against people who bring an unwanted and alien culture
(b) a fear of over-population
(c) a fear that globalisation will make us the slaves of big capital if we are not careful

Or all the above or none of the above (and then what is then your actual beef?)

here was one response:

All of the above. And the fact that the people of this country worked and fought for centuries in order to give their children and their children's children a better standard of living than the rest of the world. Now within a few short years that is being thrown away, and to make things worse, the left is cheering it all on. It's disgusting, and I sincerely beleive that in the future those responsible will be viewed VERY negatively indeed. Politicians have sold their own people down the river. They should pay the heaviest price imaginable

and my reply

Thank you for your prompt reply. Much appreciated.

How far back are you going? Historically, if you go back far enough, these isles were repeatedly conquered by foreign invaders

* The Anglo-saxons

* The Romans

* The Normans

Our very make up as 'English' is as a consequence of repeated invasions from Europe. Even in WW2 we were assisted by foreign fighters from all over the world.

What I am puzzled by is who ' worked and fought for centuries' and for whom? and how is it being thrown away - and what do you imagine is the motivation of 'the left'?

and what price did you have in mind?

Watch this space!

World Passport

A campaign calling itself  'No-one is illegal' pulled a stunt when boarding a Euro-star train bound for France when they produced 'World Passports'  which confirmed that "its bearer is a human being, and not an alien".

I love the idea of a 'World Passport' because it illuminates the nonsense of borders and passports between people of a single species who share a single environment.

I am suprised and pleased that such a movement exists.

There is an article on the Guardian's Cif section today.

I wasn't so sure about this though:

As NOII handed out its tabloid paper on immigration, we got into conversations with people, some of whom agreed that controls were inhumane. This chimed with the findings of the YouGov survey of over 2,000 people carried out by Lush in which 54% of people agreed with the statement, "People should be free to live and work wherever they wish and enjoy all of the same rights as all other residents".

The sample was divided into two groups: 72% of one sample thought that they should be allowed to live and work in a foreign country, whereas 46% of the other thought people from foreign countries should be allowed to live and work in Britain.

One must never forget 'globalisation' currently means the exploitation of resources and human beings with no regard whatsoever for the common good. People will always vote for things to be more 'free' but at present our national borders offer some scant protection from the corporate machines - they would just love there to be no controls over the movement of people towards low paid work.

This blog....

....will trace my thoughts about that two elusive of human words and topics.

COMMUNITY & MONEY