compassion, collaboration & cooperation iN transistion
"Let the PEOPLE decide" ...
was the general tenor of the peaceful demonstration being held in Hong Kong over this last weekend - as an integral part of the celebrations which were being held to mark the 10th anniversary of "the handover" - & what a week-end it turned out to be !
A baptism of fire for Gordon Brown the new Prime Minister & Jacqui Smith, his "fearless" new Home Secretary as - thankfully - two car bomb plots in central London failed to materialise & a third at Glasgow Airport resulted in NO loss of life - despite the fact that one of the perpetrators is critically ill in hospital from 90% burns sustained during the incident.
Apparently all of those, so far arrested, work for the NHS as Doctors or medical students - which would appear, at first hand, to present an entirely new dimension to the "problems". What price ID cards or indeed ANY form of appropriate action from an EU legal executive NOW ?
Torrential rain and flooding of a magnitude not recorded for more than 100 years and incident upon incident demonstrating examples of bravery, selfless caring, action & indeed humility - in the face of the worst of natural disasters.
The week-end was enhanced, however, by that 'spirit which is British' - manifested in the form of a joke from Prince Harry - as he and his brother William opened the Wembly Diana concert to celebrate their mother's 46th birthday.
A fitting tribute to "the people's princess" - the people of Hong Kong and -
the ever stalwart vigilence & fortitude of - the peoples of the British isles.
ALL of which must surely be in synchronicity with a superb article by Peter Miller - in the July edition of National Geographic Magazine - entitled Swarm Theory - Ants, Bees and Birds teach us how to cope with a complex world.
Deborah M. Gordon, a biologist at Stanford University says -
"Ants aren't smart - Ant colonies are"
As individuals, ants might be tiny dummies, but as colonies they respond quickly and effectively to their environment. They do it with something called swarm intelligence.
One key to an ant colony, for example, is that no one's in charge. No generals command ant warriors. No managers boss ant workers. The queen plays no role except to lay eggs. Even with half a million ants, a colony functions just fine with no management at all-at least none that we would recognize. It relies instead upon countless interactions between individual ants, each of which is following simple rules of thumb. Scientists describe such a system as self-organizing.
The collective abilities of such animals - none of which grasps the BIG PICTURE but each of which contributes to the group's success - can surely be analagous to the interconnections & the inter-reactions of interconnections of the crowds of peoples - in Hong Kong, Central London, Glasgow & Wembly over the course of the week-end - in no dissimilar way than swarming honey bees, which frequently differ about where to establish a new nest - invariably choose the best site - or "the birds" flocking through the trees of the forest in Psyop's superbly integral artistic animation for high definition MTV - perform with balletic co-ordination.
Was not the 'crowd behaviour' of those 'iPhone queueing' outside Apple's Fifth Avenue store in New York - in preparation for the next momentous stage of HOMO SAPIENS advanced capabilities of global interconnected communication - JUST one embroidered story of the ever evolving -
WEB of LIFE ?
"One of the most significant impediments to change is the entrenched power of the neoliberal economic and political paradigm. The prevailing economic dogma is that individual self-interest, expansive private property rights and globalized free trade can solve most social and environmental problems. Many challenge this view, of course, and continue to decry the dysfunctionalities of the market economy, the inadequacies of the welfare state and threats to the biosphere from climate change and resource depletion. But despite the important work of many heterodox schools of economic thought in addressing these issues, few political thinkers and players seem interested in or capable of developing a new political/economic philosophy based on practical alternatives. WE are stuck at an impasse."
As the celebrations of independence approach - and the words of the founding fathers ring loud in our ears - that ALL men are equal - let us pause for consideration of the fact that it has been estimated that the "global GDP" - better know as GWP - was $60 trillion in 2005.
That enormous production, divided between every living member of our species, comes to about $9,000 per head - imagine that as a NEW starting point and what the global collective could then DO to change the world for the mutual benefit of ALL.
We would of course TRULY have to consider turning Arms into Ploughshares
From the seeds of small acorns,
“The population undergoing drastic change is a population
of misfits, and misfits live and breathe in an atmosphere of
passion and imbalance, explosive and hungry for action.”
Eric Hoffer in The Ordeal of Change
First posted by Michael Grove @zaadz on July 2, 2007 at 12:00
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Comment by Michael Grove on July 16, 2011 at 8:16
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‘Fleeing Vesuvius’
“What a goldmine!”That was my first reaction upon digging into the contents of this book. Others might have said something more along the lines of, “Oh my God! I had no idea our predicament was this terrible! What a pit we are in!” My rather gleeful response was due to the fact that I happen to be in the midst of researching and writing a book exploring the evident fact that resource depletion, debt overhang, and climate change have brought about the end of world economic growth (as currently defined). When I drilled into Fleeing Vesuvius, I encountered a rich vein of thought very much attuned with my own, one that includes stimulating ideas and examples that were new and helpful to me.While other readers may come to this book with backgrounds different from mine, I think they will nevertheless find just as much stimulation and help as I did.The authors have applied themselves to an analysis of the most important and fateful economic transition in human history. They are among the People who are Paying Attention (PPA)—an almost completely unorganized demographic consisting of individuals who have the privilege to devote a substantial amount of time to following world political, economic, and environmental news, but who are not blinded by any fixed religious or political ideology.PPA probably number globally no more than a few million, and (if I may speak for them) have generally come to the conclusion that the world is facing a triple crisis:- The depletion of important resources including fossil fuels and minerals;
- The proliferation of environmental impacts, principally climate change arising from both the extraction and use of resources (including the burning of fossil fuels)—leading to snowballing costs from both these impacts themselves and from efforts to avert them; and
- Financial disruptions due to the inability of our existing monetary, banking, and investment systems to adjust to both resource scarcity and soaring environmental costs—and their inability (in the context of a shrinking economy) to service the enormous piles of government and private debt that have been generated over the past couple of decades.
While these three crises are converging on us, our leaders remain obsessed with one thing, and one thing only: the maintenance of economic expansion. For a variety of reasons, growth has become essential to the political well-being of modern societies.Yet our fixation on economic growth prevents our addressing any of the three crises: Governments refuse to curtail greenhouse gas emissions (and thus fossil fuel consumption) because doing so would reduce growth. They refuse to reduce their vulnerability to oil supply shocks because that would require them to proactively rein in oil use, thus threatening growth. And they refuse to explore fundamental changes to financial and monetary systems that would make their economies less susceptible to bubbles and crashes because…well, you can finish the sentence.
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... but that would require the existence of political leadership here in the UK and further to my earlier comment entitled How can the BRITISH PEOPLE have TRUST in Parliament any longer?
Charles Moore last night published an online Telegraph article entitled -
Even I’m starting to wonder: what do this lot know about anything?
The state of play of the "dysfunctional " UK Government Coalition and Opposition - so to speak - can best be described in Charles Moore's own words from the above article ...
"So this gerrymandering with jerry cans, along with the rows about pasties, dinners for donors and granny taxes, sheds light on the present discontent. People detect selfishness.
As modernisers such as Mr Maude rightly never tire of pointing out, voters judge politicians more on motive than on policy. It may sound an odd thing to say on the day after George Galloway got back into Parliament, but what people crave is authenticity. They do not need to like their leaders, or agree with them, but they do want to understand why they are doing what they are doing, whether they care about the country they govern.
It was Tony Blair who seemed to answer so brilliantly this longing for authenticity, and the disappointment which voters later came to feel about him still affects everything. Inauthenticity hangs over British politics like smog."
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Who more lacking in authenticity than Gordon Brown - the man who claimed "to have ended the cycle of boom and bust for the UK" -
Didn't he also save the world as well from ALL of its financial woes? -
IS here AGAIN at the penultimate moment of the Euro Crisis expounding the fact that IF the G20 doesn't get its act together to help keep the Euro alive we shall all be faced with potential bailouts for France and Italy as well.
Surely its the founding members of the Euro project - Germany, France and Italy - who should now be realising that the wheels are falling off the charabanc because they chose not to fit tyres to the wheels in the first place - and getting on with fixing their own self-created problem in the first instance!
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What’s especially remarkable - the close parallels between ant colonies’ networks and human-engineered ones. One example is “Anternet”, where we, a group of researchers at Stanford, found that the algorithm desert ants use to regulate foraging is like the Traffic Control Protocol (TCP) [updated with correct spelling] used to regulate data traffic on the internet.
Both ant and human networks use positive feedback: either from acknowledgements that trigger the transmission of the next data packet, or from food-laden returning foragers that trigger the exit of another outgoing forager.
This research led some to marvel at the ingenuity of ants, able to invent systems familiar to us: WOW, ants have been using internet algorithms for millions of years!
( WIRED, too, flirted with the concept of “anternet”
in its Jargon Watch column last year.)
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Representative democracy is also under severe stress. We tend to think of democracy as an attribute of political regimes rather than that of political practices. Our assumption that capitalism and modernity have an exclusive and intrinsic relationship with democracy needs to be re-assessed.
The task now is to build a narrative that creates a corresponding policy-making. This will open up the prospect to reconcile what we see as paradoxes among values and among cultures.
The Western mindset - focused on rights - and the Eastern mindset - focused on one’s duty to others - will mutually nurture themselves. An integrated geography of thought and action will appear. A real worldview - a unified society of mind - will emerge with enriched normative standards reflecting multiple histories and futures on democratic thinking.
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Our failure to help the people of Hong Kong shames us alland in abandoning Hong Kong, we are abandoning our own.
Half the world away, everyday life is approaching a new normal. Not everything is open, but in Hong Kong the bars and beaches are busy, it's been days since any new Covid-19 cases were detected, while friends there are full of the joys of Spring on hikes to Victoria Peak. But this taste of freedom will be short lived. Tomorrow, Beijing will extend its control over the territory with the introduction of the mainland’s national security law to Hong Kong.
Under the Sino-British Joint Declaration that marked the beginning of the end of British rule in the territory, it was agreed a high-level of autonomy would be maintained from the mainland for a period of at least fifty years. Yet it has come under threat as never before, from the Chinese Communist Party.
The autonomy we guarantee includes free speech, freedom of the press, free assembly of people, local control over new laws, and no interference with police or army forces. The writers of Hong Kong’s Basic Law foresaw the problem of Beijing’s overreach by writing that national security legislation of this type will be enacted by the Hong Kong government "on its own."
Tomorrow all that changes. Beijing’s communists are making
national security laws that they will impose on Hong Kong.
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This is a time when what IS on the inside is mirrored on the outside. We see in the current social and ecological breakdown the accurate reflection of worldviews that are based on notions of competitive advantage rather than collective benefit, material existence as something to throw away, and a perpetuation of the myth that what we think in our minds and feel in our hearts can be disconnected from the truth we declare to others.
- James O'Dea
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wow….
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Thanks Nishta … IT IS MY purpose to establish THIS zBlog as the THE most important to BE posted - in the context of “breaking down ALL the Tower of Ba'bel barriers” of religion, politiics & science - & ALL their diverse & mulititudinous sects, classes & categorisations.
YOUR own help and support throughout this process IS and most certainly ain't NO ISer - & ALL other support from whatever “quarter” would BE most certainly appreciated.
ONE LOVE
in humility - michael
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Sweet Michael…
Here's to free, beautiful butterflies who refuse to be framed…
http://littleskybear.zaadz.com/blog/2007/7/tori_amos_and_the_posse_...
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POWER To The PEOPLE - who will inherit that which WE have created
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“My thesis, in the simplest of terms, is: Let anyone do anything he pleases, so long as it is peaceful - the role of government, then, is to keep the peace.”
Leonard Read
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Even in a hierarchy people can be equal as thinkers.
Knowing their boundaries are respected, people think at their best.
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Our members of parliament (MPs) now are largely professional politicians, which is the root of the problem. They go into politics to make, if not money, then certainly a decent living. Because they are no longer considered to be implicitly honourable they have to enter details of their earnings and spendings
in all sorts of registers, where they can be policed like convicts on
parole. Desperate to raise cash for campaigning or for their parties,
they seem to have abdicated a sense of what is proper or right, and instead suck in the money from whichever reservoir happens to offer it.
If
you really want to be immiserated in gloom, go to a library and look up
an MP at random in Dod’s Parliamentary Companion, and just see the sort
of person you are dealing with. They boast about careers as student
politicians. They have worked as research assistants and special
advisers and have been local councillors. And that’s just the Tories:
Labour and Lib Dem MPs tend to be even less qualified, unless you count
working for a trade union or lecturing in an ex-polytechnic as a
measure of greatness.
Our coarsened nation is thus matched with coarsened politicians.
The few who are not stand out like beacons, and we revere them. The
rest are grasping, expensive for the state to run, achieve little, and
are rewarded chronically for failure. They have little idea how
to behave, are incapable of acting decently when found out in doing
wrong, and see no harm in consorting with the most shocking people. That is where professionalism has got us: politics is no longer a fit calling for a respectable young or middle-aged person.
And as we survey this swamp of oily people on the make, whatever can it portend for democracy ?
Simon Heffer | THE DAILY TELEGRAPH | Wednesday, December 5, 2007
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In the context of Alexis de Tocqueville's keen observation …
“ Can it be believed that the democracy which has overthrown the feudal system and vanquished kings will retreat before tradesmen and capitalists?”
and that the … self-interested rationalism of the modernist majority in America and Europe will [NOT] begin to see the wisdom and the necessity of global governance
as Steve McIntosh has suggested in his NEW book.
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ARE WE beginning to SEE THE LIGHT ?
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Yeh, I think so. And even if not all WE are seeing the light, the light from many WE is beginning to make the rest of the WE to see the light!
Wonderful post, Michael!
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Just as an ant colony consisting of 'dumb' ants exhibits complex, self-organizing structure that is reminiscent of consciousness, and
just as the brain, composed of singular 'dumb' neurons produces (or is
host to?) human consciousness, there might be next levels of
consciousness on a planetary scale, made up of the behaviour of 6
billion people + all other ecosystems.
Just a thought…
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just as the brain, composed of singular 'dumb' neurons produces (or is host to?) human consciousness, there might be next levels of consciousness on a planetary scale, made up of the behaviour of 6 billion people + all other ecosystems …
INDEED & ABSOLUTELY SO
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“Gordon Brown simply can't sit still, let others shoulder some of the burdens of government and focus on a few big ideas. Nor can he trust markets to allocate capital and other resources to uses most desired by consumers. That's why he will urge his G8 colleagues to spend billions on projects HE DEEMS WORTHY. And that's why he has raised taxes to record levels and unleashed hostile tax collectors on a largely law-abiding public: he really believes that HE CAN SPEND PEOPLE's MONEY more productively, or in a morally superior manner, than they can.”
Irwin Stelzer
… and he wasn't even voted in as Prime Minister by THE PEOPLE of the UNITED KINGDOM
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As an American I am not concerned about anything as ridiculous as his current sleep deprivation or assuming Obama has no political beliefs.
He is human, physically and mentally. That he states as much is to his
credit. I don’t want a hollow-headed military recruit or money driven
investment banker running the country, nor a person spouting dogma or
one so sure of himself that he can’t reflect on new and changing
information and then, if need be, change his plans accordingly. As for core beliefs I am banking on his personal history and past actions.
Partially growing up in a developing country undoubtedly provided him
with a general sense of familiarity, understanding, and empathy with
the majority of the earth’s inhabitants – all traits most presidents
seem to lack as they call in air strikes. Working as a grass roots
activist as opposed to a high money corporate shill after Harvard Law
defines his populist concerns while his work on helping to disarm the ex-Soviet republics - which in turn helps disarm the US - sounds great for international well being and/or survival. And as for his general Senate record, well that speaks for itself.
No, he’s not Superman. He is a breathing, thinking, feeling human being. Sounds like me - and many more of the readers. Sounds like a good step towards representation. Sounds like a shot in the arm for real democracy.
Mark Norling
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… but as Janet Daley has written in THE DAILY TELEGRAPH, we here in Britain must …
” Look across the pond for a lesson in listening to the people “
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Even this “listening to the people” is vague. Self-Resonsibility….mature pro-active behavior is ncessary. Otherwise false populism will arise.
The real people power is embidied in early adapters too. And natural leadership.
A doctor has to listen to his patients too. But patients must make own
decisions. And often the doctor has to contradict to childish and
adolescent bahviort of patients too.
Its all about taking responsibility in ones backyard and for all actions, no matter if at large sacale or in smaller environments.
BTW:
Looking
across-not only the pond, but across Ärm elkanal between UK and
Continental Europe could offer already enough additional lessons for
BOTH sides:):)
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YES, YES, YES, Albert, IT IS ALL about taking responsibility in ones backyard and for all actions, no matter if at large scale or in smaller environments …
BUT as Janet Daley has finished her article …
at least Britain still has some sense of the value of mass political participation - unlike the architects of the EU, who have given up on
it altogether. Having decided that democracy equalled mob rule, they
opted for a return to oligarchy. Britain does not have much time left
to decide which political model it prefers …
and IF you think that “listening to the [ COMMON-SENSE sector of ] people” is
vague, the top-down ME, ME, ME attitude of both UK & EU leaders, is
most certainly NOT one that exemplifies Self-Resonsibility or mature pro-active behavior !!
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… but alas, that $9000 per head has now been reduced to below $5400, due to the self sophistication, arrogance and greed of our new masters of the globe.
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Simpol IS as Simpol DOES
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…..ahhhh…love me or hate me on this ones calling for~
Ya' know what this means, don'cha; it means to take a whiff of ones own fart smell (and this means Everybody) of a behavioral manner, now and
again, and breathe in what comes about….it might just be an exuberant
release for all ya' know:)
Such of much and many are always an extinguishing know-it-all of this and that. All the trouble, begins with parliament…and dont'cha forget it!
They want much of our memory to serve, of little that they know….only to see the stamp on their forehead, that says, Ka'Ching… “$$”.
……and bastards they are, for it!
“V” and Love be with the whole lot of us, in the run run, huh:-)
Ri'
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THE ACTION of mastering the art of ”BECOMING as ONE with NO MIND”, realising that each and every one of our species and ALL other LIFE IS an independent extension of the interdependence of the ONE and awakening to the responsibility of the individual mind to ACT as THE COLLECTIVE MIND of the ONE.
SIMPLE IS as SIMPLE DOES … farts an' ALL
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We must use “our” memory to remember….
….to share like we did as children in kindergarten, and not be attached to things and stuff, even smells. :)
and to hold hands at the end of the day…or we will not grow much.
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And we won't grow until………….we understand our priorities as a race!
CHILDREN ARE INVOLVED IN IMPORTANT DECISIONS THAT WILL AFFECT THEIR LIVES, AND THIS PLANET!
How responsible has this world been in creating a childrens UN?
Leaders say how they believe in the children, but I do not see the children communicating and learning one on one with any of these leaders, in an organized way for even 15 minutes per week! HELLO we have Skype…even.
Are we not tired of the “half circle” with a gavel …bonk bonk bonk… and the rectangular table at financial board meetings with the CEO at the end? Where is the circle, where are the kids?
THEY ARE ONLINE. MAKE A SAFE PLACE FOR THEM TO MEET and then connect them in person,
Also with business executives, world leaders!
What ever happened to mentorship in the western world? THE KIDS ARE NOT INVOLVED, HOW CAN WE MENTOR EACH OTHER?
Whatever happened to the circle on our Gaia? Or have we forgotten our geometry….?
How important are our children to all of us?
I
have taken this idea around the world and all I seem to hear or see
from “leaders” is a circling whirlpool…. like a flushing toilet.
WHAT WILL IT TAKE?
A day for the earth to standstill?
We may be ordering just that.
But
first maybe we should try to get all of our fellow neurons some clean
water to drink. Human beings are 70 percent water and die without it.
Our brain is included.
That is 1.1 billion peoples problem everyday on this planet INCLUDING CHILDREN….we are responsible for.
It is possible for a brain to function with one hemisphere, but why use one when you can access 2?
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WHY use one when you can access 2 ? INDEED
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“To preserve [the people's] independence, we must not let our rulers load
us with perpetual debt. We must make our selection between economy and
liberty, or profusion and servitude.”
Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States of America,1801-1809.
Darling's calamitous Budget not only consigned the [British] nation to decades of debt, but also planted a poisonous legacy that will blight generations to come, says Jeff Randall in today's Daily Telegraph.
He goes on to say …
”Gordon Brown, whose face is beginning to resemble a smacked bottom, was delighted by his cipher's performance. This style of presentation –
straight from the Ceausescu handbook of statistics management – appeals
to the Prime Minister's control-freakery.
It sounds complicated, but is surprisingly simple. You start with a politically desirable conclusion – in this case, the
triumph of a suffocating state over personal responsibility,
self-sufficiency and wealth-creating enterprise – and work backwards:
cheating, lying, fiddling the numbers, until both sides of the balance
sheet appear to be in harmony. This is how Labour operated its fraudulent boom. The same trick is being tried in a catastrophic bust.”
and concludes with the following post-Budget press release comment from Compass, the centre-Left pressure group …
“We
would warn the Government that its forecasts for economic growth
contained in the Budget are all calculated on a boom-and-bust,
pre-crash economic model which assumes rising consumption, rising house
prices and the resulting consumer debt; the very same factors that
contributed to the current economic and climate crisis.”
SPOT ON indeed …
“Jefferson set out the choices. This useless Government picked the wrong one.”
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A DAMNING INDICTMENT of BRAZEN DISHONESTY & GREED is how the Daily Telegraph Editorial comment today, has described the entirety of the Parliamentary edifice which can now only be described
as …
THE Mother [F*****] of ALL PARLIAMENTS
… and that includes every man jack & woman jack of ALL the politicians in both houses - NOT JUST those who are members of the governing party.
NOT forgetting of course that our glorious Prime Minister, Gordon Brown has had to pay back cleaning expenses that he had hitherto paid to his brother and that our Home Secretary, Jacki Smith, had declared her primary family residence
as a ROOM in her sister's house in London, in order that she might claim thousands of pounds for the home where her family actually lived and where her husband was watching pornographic movies at the taxpayers expense. And ALL of you in the USA and the European Union think that you have problems with your legislature !
PLEASE - PLEASE - PLEASE - LET the PEOPLE DECIDE NOW on the future of this completely discredited process of what we have been brainwashed into believing IS
DEMOCRACY.
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How can the BRITISH PEOPLE have TRUST in Parliament any longer?
Parliament has been failing the BRITISH PEOPLE for over 40 years.
Our democracy has been destroyed, we are a pretend democracy at every level, from your local dictatorship council to the house/s of thieves at westminster -
IT IS [truly] A SHAM !
To even be considered to be called a democracy, a vital ingredient is that a country must be able to run it's own affairs and choose it's own laws
- WE DO NOT DO SO - Brussels DOES !
it is no secret that if the lisbon treaty was put to the people it would be consigned to the dustbin. However, the people did not get that chance, because
'our dictator' chose another, his option - selling our democracy to the
EUSSR.
So, Mary Riddell, when you mention trust and transparency, they only exist in true democracies and BRITAIN ain't one of them any longer!!!
Comment Posted by Gary on the Telegraph Article