Are we living in a fake democracy?

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Please see that question as a rhetorical one as the answer is not only yes, yes, and yes, but that we have nowhere, and I repeat and mean nowhere, democracy. Not in a single country of the world at this present moment.

Being permitted to vote every four or five years for the next captain and crew of the ship only to have it continue on the same course towards the abyss is not democracy. The truth of the matter is that we are not even living in a fake democracy; we do not live in any democracy at all.

As Mark Twain said, if voting would make any difference they would make it illegal. And as they have not made it illegal in all those years it must mean that it does not make an iota of a difference.

The fact is that not a single country that claims to be democratic and have democracy is and has nothing of the kind. They who claim that and they who believe that have no idea what democracy actually means in reality.

With every year that passes, another corrupt politician or political scheme is exposed. With increasingly right-wing political parties serving the interests of capitalism over the basic humanitarian needs of the people, is it possible that our system, for democratic it is not, is rigged against the majority in favor of an elite minority? I think the answer here is also a very loud and definite yes.

We only need to look at the European Union and especially with regards to the way they are dealing with Greece. Predominately the reason for having made it is difficult as possible for the Greek government under Syriza is that the great majority of Euro-Zone member states wish to remove the radical left Syriza from power in Athens.

Other methods of the EU are also more than undemocratic, even in the way democracy is seem by most at the present time, in that they, if there has to be, in a country, a referendum will, should it be a negative outcome, as in Ireland with regards to the Lisbon Treaty, force the member state to keep holding a referendum until the outcome is a positive one. If people still believe that we have democracy anywhere then they must be rather daft.

Now, let us look what democracy actually means. It means “the people govern themselves” as the word democracy comes from the Greek “demos” which has two meanings, in the same way that the second part of which the word is made up, “kratos”, has a second meaning. “Demos” means either “the people” or “the village” and “kratos” means either “govern themselves” or “pulls the cart itself”. So it is either “the people govern themselves” or “the village pulls the cart itself”. In both cases it is the people who do the governing, if you get the meaning.

And now someone show me any country where such democracy exists, where the people actually govern themselves. Such a self-government of the people also means that there is not state. The state and its apparatus are diametrically opposed to true democracy and it is this that we need to understand before we can even look at establishing democracy.

Democracy came from the village and to the village it must return, I wrote a while back, and this because true democracy can only work in small groups, in the village or the city block, which must become the village in the city. You can read my articles on this subject of democracy needing to return to the village here and here.

© 2017

The pathological consumption of the majority

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The pathological consumption of the majority, for I do know that not all participate in it, has become so normalized that we scarcely notice it.

The way the majority buys things that is, aside from the essentials, with which we are not concerned really when it comes to consumption for we all have to eat, have at least some clothes to wear, need toilet paper and other things.

What I do mean here with pathological consumption is buying the things that really they don't need and only buy because the latest version is on the market or whatever. It is killing our Planet, other people and ourselves in the end.

There is nothing really that they need, nothing that they don't own already, and still they keep on buying. The new smartphone that has more bells and whistles than the one they only got six months ago and which they still have not used to its full potential, and so on and so forth. And then there are all those things that really are of little use, such those unitaskers for kitchen and elsewhere that will never, actually, be used but be just white elephants. And yes, alas, I have also managed to buy one or two proverbial white elephants for the kitchen at times. Some people work just so they can afford the next new gadget, etc..

Researching her film The Story of Stuff, Annie Leonard discovered that of the materials flowing through the consumer economy, only 1% remain in use six months after sale. Even the goods we might have expected to hold onto are soon condemned to destruction through either planned obsolescence, meaning that they are designed to break or fail quickly and cannot be fixed or perceived obsolescence, that is to say by becoming “unfashionable”. When the new iPhone comes out it is obvious that an old one is unfashionable; or at least so we seem to have been programed.

Grown men and women devote their lives to manufacturing and marketing often a load of rubbish, and dissing the idea of living without it. “I always knit my gifts”, says a woman in a television ad for an electronics outlet. “Well you shouldn’t,” replies the narrator. An advertisement for Google’s latest tablet shows a father and son camping in the woods. Their enjoyment depends on the Nexus 7’s special features. The best things in life are free, but we’ve found a way of selling them to you, and we, the majority at least, have been brainwashed enough to believe that we need those things for our enjoyment of life. Things have gone so far that people go for hikes in the woods, along trails, etc., either glued to the screens of their smartphones and/or having earphones on or in and listening to some music, or podcast, or whatever. Pray, what's the point?

The growth of inequality that has accompanied the consumer boom ensures that the rising economic tide no longer lifts all boats, not that it ever really did. In the US in 2010 a remarkable 93% of the growth in incomes accrued to the top 1% of the population. The old excuse, that we must trash the planet to help the poor, simply does not wash and the trickle down economy does not work and it is a load of hogwash.

So effectively have governments, the media and advertisers associated consumption with prosperity and happiness that to say these things is to expose yourself to opprobrium and ridicule. When the world goes mad, those who resist are denounced as lunatics. Well, let's be lunatics then and swim, like living fish, against the current of this madness.

The problem is that the system is not broken but that it was designed in this way. So, what are we to do? May I suggest we break the system and make a new one, one that benefits all of the Planet; people, animals, and the biosphere as a whole.

To some extent some of us are already doing it by moving away from the consumer culture and -society, by reusing, upcycling and by making do and mending. By growing some of our own food and by making things that we want and need ourselves, even, as I love to do, from items that others regard as waste.

However, those that are doing this not only encounter ridicule at times, as said above, but are even seen and proclaimed – by governments even – as a threat to the economy and the nation. Thriftiness was declared by some politicians (in the UK) not so long ago as akin to domestic terrorism.

© 2017

System change not climate change

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Would any sane person think dumpster diving would have stopped Hitler, or that composting would have ended slavery or brought about the eight-hour workday; or that chopping wood and carrying water would have gotten people out of Tsarist prisons; or that dancing around a fire would have helped put in place the Voting Rights Act of 1957 or the Civil Rights Act of 1964?

Then why now, with all the world at stake, do so many people retreat into these entirely personal “solutions”? Why are these “solutions” not sufficient? But most importantly, what can be done instead to actually stop the murder of our Planet?

While “personal solutions” have some effect, even the smallest things, but they will not really change anything unless we are, all together, prepared to change the system. It does not matter how “green” and environmentally-friendly you may make your lifestyle capitalism will still remain unsustainable. Thus system change that is required for the world to become a better place where people and the Planet count and not (just) money.

When it comes to climate change the question we also have to ask ourselves if why is the emphasis placed so much on the word “carbon” and everything almost is, even when it is pollution in the form of soot, and such, all called carbon, in the latter instance “brown carbon”. So, why? Because carbon has become a tradeable commodity, so to speak, with modern day indulgences, called carbon certificates and such. That does not make it right; the opposite rather. So, in other words, are we being sold somewhat of a falsehood or at least a half-truth?

The Hippies, who often today are being belittled, warned us already in the 1970s about pollution and what we were doing to the Planet by doing what we were doing. The message still stands for it is pollution that has been the culprit and is the culprit, industrial pollution and the pollution from vehicles, from the burning of fossil fuels, coal, oil and gas.

Many people today seem to forget that in around that same time of the Hippies scientists were telling us that the world was going to be hit by a new ice age and that we were going to end up with glaciers all over the place and to some extent the very same signs that then were claimed to be the signs of global warming were cited; the expansion of the Sahara and the Sahel, and books were written about it and movies made.

Fact is that the Earth is going through some kind of climatic upheaval but despite the fact that everyone – or almost everyone – is jumping up and down in triangles claiming carbon-dioxide and other “greenhouse” gasses being the culprit such changes are not something new. And, no, the last changes did not happen millions of years ago; they happened around a thousand years ago, and it would appear as if there is an almost 500 year cycle from cold to warm to cold, etc.

When the Romans were in Britain they grew grapes in this country, apparently almost as far north as Hadrian's Wall, for the making of wine. Then, and more for reasons of climatic change than anything else, in the early fifth century they just packed up and left.

Some centuries later the Vikings settled on a large island that they called Greenland and unless they were all seriously colorblind the “green” part of the word should be a giveaway. The island was covered in forests and meadows.

In the tenth century the son of the Viking chieftain of Greenland, one Leif Eriksson, arrived on the Labrador coast and, according to records, was presented with sweet black grapes by the local inhabitants. But less than hundred years later the Vikings seem to have abandoned Greenland for climatic reasons.

In the sixteenth century frost fairs were held on the Thames with the river, apparently, frozen to almost its total depth. The cold time seems to have then carried on, more or less, as far as winters are concerned, because some of the summers seem to have been very hot and dry at some times during King Henry VIII time, until about the beginning of the Industrial Revolution when it started to get warmer, incrementally, to where we are today.

While some of the climatic upheaval, or climate change, today is due, no doubt, to what we have been doing, in the name of progress and profit, to the Planet, some of it, probably around fifty percent, or even more, is due to the cycles the Earth seems to be going through on a more or less regular basis.

What we are facing at this very moment also is an Earth axis shift, which the powers-that-be claimed to be a shift of the magnetic north pole, and this will impact on the changes even more than anything. The magnetic north pole, by the way, cannot shift or move, at least not according what we were taught when I was a little younger, as it is located, according to what were taught, on an island off the north coast of Canada. In know that Wikipedia and other “sources” today claim it to be different but I am not buying that.

If the Earth axis is tilting, or even if it is that the magnetic field of the Planet is changing, this will have an impact on the likes of the Gulf Stream, the Jet Stream and many other weather and climate phenomena, and no matter how much we cut “carbon” it will not make much of a difference. That is not to say that we should not reduce or eliminate pollution of the air, the water and the soil, etc. we should and we must. But we must, along with this, also prepare to adapt to the changes and prepare.

But this is not going to happen in the current political and economic system where everything is run by some hidden agendas that just do not make sense to anyone who is prepared to think for him- or herself. The great problem is, though, that many, the great majority in fact, it would appear, are not prepared to think for themselves and want to leave that all to the politicians, the very same who have gotten us into much of the mess in the first place in many instances.

We have to be and create the changes that we want and need and the models for a new society, community by community and area by area and while there are many things that can be done on a individual basis others may and do require a community to do them.

There are some things, as said, that we can do on our own, and those can also be done on a larger scale, such as withdrawing our support for the current system; refusing to partake in the wild consumerism that we are being encouraged to partake in; and others. Creating the new models of the society that we would want, however, can only be done in a group, in a community, in a village, and therefore we must find like-minded folks to work together with.

© 2017

Our society has lost sight of what is truly important in life

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Our society has indeed lost sight of what is truly important in life and it is high time to find it again.

What if – Instead of worrying about whether we should give kids gold stars for participating or gold stars for being the best, we would involve them in real world activities where the end result of the activity itself is the reward?

Teach them gardening, woodworking, repair skills, fiber arts, sewing, cooking. Get them out hiking somewhere with a gorgeous view. Raise animals – have them learn to care about something other than themselves. Have them help out a grandparent or elderly neighbor.

Schools, unfortunately, do not teach things that are important to children but teach them how to pass tests instead. Woodworking classes, or even “Design & Technology”, as they were called later, cooking (Home Economics), and such have gone out of the window and instead they are just taught to – basically – memorize what they require to pass those tests so that the schools look good in the so-called “league tables”.

While lessons in “mindfulness”, in meditation, as being introduced in some primary schools in Britain now, are a good idea there are other practical aspects that are important and that from a very early age. Practical skills such as using tools to make things, to grow things, to cook, and so on.

Memorizing dates and events and information that they will, more than likely, never need in their lives after school is not just a waste of time. It prevents proper learning. It would be much better to teach kids to read and write properly, and to enjoy reading for the sake of reading, as well as where to find the information that they may want to know. It is not what you know but knowing where to find the information and to use this information that counts.

Most important of all are life skills, practical skills, and the skill of critical thinking. Schools, teachers, and others also fail kids and society in that they do not teach them how to think but what to think. This is not new at all. School and the compulsory school “education” was, after all, invented for the very reason to indoctrinate children into what to think rather than to teach them critical thinking.

In addition to that everything is geared to academic “success” which in the end means that we have people with PhDs flipping burgers are burger joints. There are only that many places available for all those that have attended university and gotten a degree in this or that, and more often that not, as is now very often the case, in useless subjects. However, schools will insist to push pupils, even if they, the pupils that is, are not interested, towards academic subjects and university and it can be one heck of a fight for the student and his or her parents to get the school to accept the young person's decision to pursue a non-academic career.

Working with one's hands is nowadays seems to be considered by educators and people in general as something dirty and a career in “manual” trades, whether agriculture, horticulture, forestry, carpentry, plumbing, and whatever else, as something that no one really should aspire to. And then we wonder that we have no carpenters or plumbers, and whatever else, and complain that they are all Poles.

Everything is being geared to making lots of money and then still more, often at the detriment of others in society. We have lost what really matters in the pursuit of what really does not and we must rediscover those things that really matter.

© 2015

Changing the system

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The system cannot be improved, it must be changed. The problem is that the system is not broken, it was designed this way, that is to say to be benefiting but the wealthy few and leaving the poorer section of “society” out in the cold, literally.

When talking here about the system I am not referring just to the political system or the economic one separately but to both combined as one as, to more than one degree, they do go hand in hand.

Capitalism does not work and never will in bringing the working class and the poor in general to a better living standard and the “trickle down” approach is at best a fallacy, at worst a total lie that is known to be the lie by those who are its advocates.

And the political system of what is being referred to as “democracy” also does, cannot and will not and never, as the people do not really have a say in their own affairs. They are being governed, from above, which means they are nothing but slaves and our system is but a new version of feudalism.

The people, in the main, however, do believe that voting allows them a say in how they are governed – please note that being governed means that one is not a free person – and that the rulers are doing their bidding.

The fact is that if voting would change anything it would have been made illegal long ago. The “right” to vote, and so-called democracy, is being used to keep the people quiet, that is all, plain and simple.

When from the electorate, being 100%, only 35% turn out to vote because the rest has become disillusioned by the process, then a majority vote out of the 35%, of say 55%, which then would be less than 20% of the entire electorate cannot be seen as having been given a majority mandate to govern. The truth is that in such a case, and it is the case in the UK in most elections, that 80% of the electorate voted against any of the parties represented on the ballot by abstention. And I have not even mentioned spoiled ballot papers.

Often people like to say that government is a necessary evil. That, by the same token, then also would equate that evil is necessary. But I don't think anyone would agree with the latter, that is to say that evil is necessary.

The system that there exists at the present, political and economic, is geared to create a ruling class, a ruling elite, that will lord it over the masses like feudal lords and masters and treat the people as serfs and it does not matter whether it is in Britain, other countries of Europe or the USA. It is the same everywhere even though many Americans claim that, according to the Constitution they, as individuals, are sovereigns in their own right. Try to assert that “right” and see where that gets you.

In all truth the system is one and not two, as the two components really cannot be separated from each other and thus it is capitalism that, in itself, is the problem. It is geared to suppress and oppress the people to keep them “down” in order for the lords to have a pliable labor force, and to have such a pliable labor force full employment, for instance, is an anathema. Without a large pool of unemployed workers capitalism simply cannot exist and function.

Capitalism requires, for it to function, that a certain number of the population is unemployed as otherwise they could not scare the workers that they have into accepting bad condition, low pay, and all the rest. As long as unemployment exists the capitalists can wave the sword of loss of job over any worker who kicks back at low wages, bad conditions, etc. and who joins a trade union.

For that very reason there will never be enough jobs created by those capitalists for each and every member of the labor force in a country or an area. It simple would not be profitable for them to do so even if they have the order books full to overflowing and it is not ever going to happen. And that is why we have to change the system to one where everyone can have work in which he or she is happy.

© 2015

The Problem With Society Isn’t Greed

Greed Is a Symptom of a Deep Need Going Unfulfilled

A lot of people reacted to my comment on Facebook the other day that greed is more a symptom than a cause of our current system, with all its inequities. I’m asked, What is the cause of greed? First I’ll say what I think greed is:

Greed is the insatiable desire for that which one doesn’t really need, or in amounts beyond one’s needs.

When we are cut off from the fulfillment of our basic needs we seek out substitutes to temporarily ease the longing. Bereft of connection to nature, connection to community, intimacy, meaningful self-expression, ensouled dwellings and built environment, spiritual connection, and the feeling of belonging, lots of us over-consume, overeat, over-shop, and over-accumulate. How much do you need to eat, to compensate for a feeling of not belonging? How much pornography to compensate for a deficit of intimacy? How much money to compensate for a deep sense of insecurity? No amount is enough.

Read more here.

Beyond the Fear of Living Without Money

Living without money is an issue that many are concerned about but not many people are talking about solutions. Many of us already live in either poverty or near poverty levels.  Is the answer found in government assistance and the material world or is it found in going beyond this ego-centered, materialistic world and finding a new way of living?

The world’s economy is based on economics, which is backed by the banking system that is designed to create debt.  For example, imagine that I am your local conglomerate bank and there was only $100 in existence. If I lent you that $100 and expected you to pay me back $110, how can you possibly do this when there is only $100 in existence?  Where are you going to come up with that $10 extra dollars that never existed? This is the global Ponzi scheme that banksters have been playing since the inception of currency.

The mainstream media continues to push ego-centered, materialistic programming while its advertisers support this mentality.  In the meanwhile, we are blinded by reality as we play into the system that has entrapped us as being economic slaves to the elite.  It’s a no-win situation.  The rich get richer at the expense of our hard work. Is this our true, divine reason for being here?

Read more: http://www.bodymindsoulspirit.com/beyond-the-fear-of-living-without-money/

THE POWER OF SIDE EFFECTS: TOWARDS A COLLABORATIVE SOCIETY

In the first part of the series “The Quest for New Value(s)”, I argued that the collaborative economy was a convenient “catch-all” concept, utterly insufficient to create a new paradigm shift all by itself. Yet we fiercely need a paradigm shift. My take is that the true paradigm shifter we are looking for is less the collaborative economy than its indirect impact on our social organization and our culture. Although less visible, they have the power to profoundly upset the current social order and are the key to what, at OuiShare, we call a collaborative society.

It’s time to explore what this collaborative society we started talking about a few months ago is. The consequence of this adventure is quite obviously the end of consensus: there is no guarantee that the social visions each one of cherishes are one and the same.

The “collaborative economy” and “collaborative society” approaches are peculiarly different: the latter is prescriptive while the former is descriptive. Having the ambition to build a collaborative society implies that we have at least a set of principles, values, beliefs, wishes, in one word, an affirmative vision for which we could fight for. Some would call it an ideology. I am certain most of you would prefer to avoid to talk about ideology altogether because of its heavy historical burden. But thinking about society exclusively in economic terms is actually the most hidden and perfidious form of ideology, and it’s called neoliberalism. This ideology’s biggest asset consists in disguising its set of values and beliefs under alleged rational and scientific terms. Maybe talking openly about the ideology associated to a collaborative society is more honest, yet more dangerous.

Read more: http://magazine.ouishare.net/2014/11/the-power-of-side-effects-towards-a-collaborative-society/

A new, better world is possible ... but we have to create it

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

A new, better and fairer society and world is possible but we have to create it and give it life. No one can do it for us, and capitalism and the power-that-be certainly have no interest in doing such a thing. In fact they will do their darnedest to prevent us from doing so.

Only we, ourselves, together, in small steps, can create and make this new, better and fairer world and society by getting, to start with, off the perpetual growth economy bandwagon and the pursuit of more, and ever more; more money, more possessions, the latter which often means more debt, which means more work and less time for ourselves, our families and our friends.

The perpetual growth economy and the race for more, more, and then still more, never being satisfied with what we have, is not sustainable and does not make for happiness either.

People who are lucky enough to have employment work more and more and ever longer hours – or two jobs – to satisfy the constant cravings for ever more and “keeping up with the Joneses”; in fact has become a race to always be one better than the Joneses. This must change for the sake of our sanity and for the sake of the Planet.

Capitalism is geared to the exploitation of man by man and of Nature by man and it cannot be reformed. Therefore it must be consigned to the dustbin of history, and the sooner the better, and a new system applied. The so-called communism that we have seen under Stalin, et al, also was but a different form of capitalism where the state was the owner and slave master. Thus something different still is needed; true communism.

This brings me to the point of the state (we will come back to the replacement for capitalism later).

The very state itself must be abolished and replaced, though not with another kind of state. The people must govern themselves; true democracy, out of the village, the demos.

The state is not of benefit and neither it is needed. If fact, the state is one of the problems, if not indeed the problem, for the new society and world that we must create to be created.

People often like to say that the state is a necessary evil. But that would also mean that evil is necessary and that really is an oxymoron. The fact is that the state is evil and thus must be abolished.

The replacement for this is the village. Yes, we have had that one once before, the village, I mean, and to the village we must return and so must democracy for from the village it came.

We have to imagine it to make it happen.

Imagine that there truly was equality for all? It can be made to happen but it is up to us to make it so.

Imagine that the corrupt minority did not exist and were actually genuinely interested seeing true equality for all! Well, the problem is, presently, that they still do exist but we can make a change and we must imagine a new way.

Imagine a world not based on money and the exchange of money? It is possible and it is being done already. While, presently, it may not be global and maybe global is something we also must get away from and look entirely at the local, the village, level. However, new ways, and some are actually old ways, of exchange are already in existence and local currencies have been in use in many places for years already and they are, by no means, new. Thus, it can be done.

Imagine a life where everyone is taught to work together and in return receive a life where they are always well fed, cared for, free to study and learn and develop right through their life from cradle to grave! This was the way it was intended in true socialism though, alas, that system got corrupted by power crazy individuals. The idea was for work to be a duty as well as an honor and that all work was equal in value. Can it become reality? Yes, it can, if we can but imagine it and create it.

Imagine there was no such thing as the elite? All we have to do is take away their pedestal upon which they have placed themselves. They are no better than us. There are no “betters” despite the fact that still some people – a great many of them – seem to believe that because they have been indoctrinated almost from birth that this is so. That there are some that are better than the majority of the people.

Imagine that not one single soul had to suffer or worry, ever! It is possible.

And while there may be some, quite a few, in fact, no doubt, who will dismiss this as utopian who says that utopia cannot be imagined and created. This utopia is, in fact, called true socialism and it is possible.

© 2014

The people must liberate themselves

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

No organization of the working class – how ever well intentioned – and especially no party in the political sense can do this task for them. And all too often then, if tried, it becomes a “top down” approach no better than what went before; at times even worse.

All too often such attempt is, however, made to hasten the process of liberating the working class. This liberation is not a liberation at all but just a jump from the frying pan into the fire, exchanging one master, the capitalist ruling class, for another, the political party.

Nationalization of industry and means of production is one of those attempts, then calling it “owned by the people” though it is rather “owned by the state”. This is not was was and is meant by “the means of production in the hands of the workers”. It just transfers the means of production from being in the hands of the capitalists into the hands of the state, with the workers just exchanging the previous master for a new one in the form of the state.

The means of production and the land must indeed be placed into the hands of those who do the work and not the state. Nationalization does not put the means of production and the land into the hands of the people who work the machines and the land but it is but a transfer from ordinary capitalism to state capitalism. In fact, the state itself is something that needs to be abolished if the people are to be free, but that is another story.

The liberation of the proletariat and the peasantry, of the masses, must come from and be done by the grassroots and will require leadership of high caliber. This has to be a leadership that guides and nurtures rather than one that imposes its way and views onto the masses. The party is not always right, as we have seen often enough in the past.

Change, and this is true for political change as well as change in other quarters, cannot be imposed on the people from above (by force of arms or coercion) how ever well intentioned. It must come from the roots through proper nurturing by those who have seen the light of the new dawn.

© 2014

How to live (properly and well) in the 21st Century

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Why do we get the urge to publicise our private emotions and relegate our family and friends to cameo roles while we worry over the ups and downs of reality show characters or celebrities to fill the void of emptiness and loneliness? Why do we try as much as we can to act out a role, convinced that what we consume defines how successful we are, how independent we are, how worthy we are of attention?

Because it’s what we respond to best. Because deep down, we prefer the conformism of running the rat race like a hamster on a spinning wheel and the standardised consumption of “keeping up with the Jones”. We prefer the quick fixes of consuming, because we fear freedom – the freedom to be what we want to be rather than what we think others want us to be – embracing our complexity and tolerating our contradictions, doing things for the pleasure of doing them without calculating how we appear to others.

Whether it is our libraries or our post offices closing, our parks or our open spaces and other things not being looked after anymore, what can help us recover through the recession in a way that builds collective spirit and social solidarity?

The Big Society should not come from above, directed and “ordered” from government and enforced, basically, in that they cut services and then say “if you want them kept open you have to provide the people to run them”.

In some of our towns and cities this is happening even as far as the repair of potholes in the roads is concerned and the cleaning of the sidewalks. People, council tax payers, when complaining to the council, were told that they could have brooms and such provided to do it for themselves. The council, they were told, did not have the money to do it.

Having said that, when you look at our continental European neighbors, such as and especially Germany it is the norm there for the people to sweep and keep clean the sidewalk in front of their homes, etc. In fact, it is a legal requirement and that also extends to keeping the path free of ice and snow in winter. No one complains about it; they just get on with it, and often in neighborly cooperation.

Parks and open spaces can, indeed, to some degree, be run with, though I hasten to add not (entirely) by, volunteers and it will actually be one great way to involve the entire community of users, maybe even the young people, often referred to as YOBs. Doing some volunteering in the parks and open spaces of their neighborhood may, actually, give them a sense of ownership, but also of belonging and self-worth.

I do believe that many of our young people who do cause problems suffer from despair and a serious lack of self-worth and self-confidence, even though they act as if they have all the self-confidence in the world.

It is, I think, to some extent our serious consumerist society that is causing our ills, including the YOB culture and such like. In fact, I think that it is more than just to some extent; I believe the majority of our society's ills can be laid at the door of consumerism. And it is not just us, as people, who are to blame for this consumerism. Nay, it is our very governments.

We are told to go and spend, spend, spend, our way our of the recession, despite the fact that that does not work and we are told that we need this or that new and then to recycle what we no longer want.

Goods, that is to say, products, are no longer made to be able to be repaired, with very few exceptions, and everything has an obsolescence of a year to three factored in. If things work on after that you are lucky, and then things break down, as said, they cannot be fixed; they are made thus.

Things need to change and I do not mean here only things in a physical sense, as in products and goods, but the way we live, the way we travel, where we work and live, and how we interact with one another, and how we take care of our community assets.

It is time that we got off the idea that government has to do everything for us. In fact, I do not even think that that is a good idea for government to do everything for us. There are many things that volunteers and we, personally, can do things as well, maybe even better, than can government.

The most worrying sentence in the English language, as far a myself and many other people are concerned is “I am from the government and I am here to help you.” It also makes us dependent on and slaves to and of the system.

While I am the first to want to keep the welfare state – in its basic and original form – that we have in Britain there are many things where government has no place in our lives and many places where we, as people, individuals or groups, should get things done ourselves which we demand at present that the government do.

Time for some real changes and those changes begin with us and must come from within us...

© 2012