Why? Tell me why?

Some of my correspondents have commented that my blog is too long. One said it needs to be 'more pithy'.

OK. I hear you.

* * * * *

Oh wah, oh wah, oh wah, oh wah, oh wah, oh wah
Why do fools fall in love?
Why do birds sing so gay?
And lovers await the break of day
Why do they.

So chirruped Fankie Lymon and the Teenagers a zillion years ago. Ah, yes. I remember it well.
The song has been buzzing through my mind as I've applied it to more up-to-date events that call for answers to 'Why? Tell me why?'

For example, (Q1) why do so many people turn to 'the government' for solutions to their problems, even when it seems clear that they could find solutions themselves? And (Q2) why do so many believe 'the government' when they are told there isn't enough money (for NHS, for social care, for police manpower, just as starters)?

 

Never mind who said it. Do you agree with what he said? Yes?  Go back to Q1 and ask yourself why people seem to want the government to run their lives when, mostly, what government does has nothing to do with protecting the people. Petitions for this, demands for that, running through the streets to complain about all manner of perceived injustices, and snarling angrily in the on-line comments columns of whichever daily newspaper or broadcaster has upset them today. Why? Tell me why!  Is everything the fault of someone else?

In fact, the snarling bit is the thing that gets to me most. These days coarse language is just a start when people exchange insults and the feelings seem to run deep.  Maybe it's always been so and it's simply that my upbringing doesn't lend itself to instant reactive vituperation.

When people behave this way all 'the government' needs to do is to keep the population arguing within itself. Easy peasy. While we fight our neighbours we have little time to worry about our government, have we?

I was at dinner with friends a little while ago and, inevitably, the conversation got around to the events of the day. I asked: Are you a sovereign person? (Or maybe I said 'do you think of yourself as a sovereign person?) The immediate reply was: 'Yes, of course I am!

So I asked what seemed to me the obvious next question: If you are sovereign, why do you/we surrender our/your sovereignty whenever a new government regulation is published? Sometimes - not always, of course - the 'government' demands something that seems unjust, unfair, not in your best interests or even downright dishonest. As an example, under threat of all kinds of retribution the government demands, via an arms length organisation (Department of Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency), that you pay annual Road Fund Tax/Licence fees but it doesn't spend the money on roads. Surely, that's a fraudulent demand for money backed by intimidating threats if you don't comply, isn't it? As a sovereign being, why do you/why do I comply? Why do you allow yourself to be intimidated?

The answer that we all use, including me, is: 'Well, life is just that bit easier if we don't debate and argue everything. So we give in for the sake of peace and quiet - and we don't get a fine or a gaol sentence. Yet we still assert that we are sovereign beings. No wonder we are continually under pressure and sometimes feel depressed. We aren't being true to ourselves. We aren't being honest.

And Q2? I hadn't forgotten Q2. That question is absolutely basic and is central to the deception under which all of us live, often without realising it.

How often do you ask yourself the question: "Where does money come from?" and when you do ask, what answer do you give yourself?  I can recall in years gone by that I'd worked out that Arabs had all the money because we bought their oil. And the Chinese did well because we bought the food they prepared and sold here and afterwards sent the money back to China. How naive. Clearly, whilst it plays a part, trade isn't the whole answer. Trade exchanges goods and services and provides great benefit but it doesn't create money.

Does your answer ever include the idea that money is made out of thin air? Magicked into existence from nothing? Well, hush my mouth and perish the thought. Nevertheless, more and more of us have come to that realisation. The bankers and 'the government' have known it all along. They just didn't tell us (which is dishonest) or, if they did, we didn't pay attention (which is foolishness on our part). We concluded, simply, that the purpose of life is to collect as much of the stuff (money) as we can and the devil take the hindmost. No wonder a wise man once wrote that 'the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.' Money isn't evil, note. The love of money is the problem.

That £20 note we fold into our wallet or purse is nothing more than a promissory note. It says so right under the fancy writing that reads  'Bank of England'. 'I promise to pay the bearer on demand.' Who says so? The Chief Cashier for the Governor and company of the Bank of England.
THE COMPANY, please note.

And he added his signature. He undersigned/underwrote it on behalf of the Governor and the company. We take it at face value but rarely challenge the promise. Probably, it's just as well that we don't but we might fare better if we understood the reality.

The reality that many of us now understand, is that money is created out of thin air via simple book-keeping. You ask the bank to lend you £100,000 to buy your house (and the bank encourages you to ask!) and the bank simply writes that amount on one side of its ledger and assigns it to you, thus creating instant debt to be repaid with interest. The interest will be real and is based on the sweat of your brow. You have to find value added ways to obtain the money to service the manufactured debt that you agreed to when YOU undersigned/underwrote it. So we place ourselves into a form of slavery to enable us to repay a manufactured debt. Looked at that way it all seems a bit cock-eyed, doncha think?

I conclude with a statement by Ron Paul. Who he? He is an American libertarian Republican and an author, physician and former politician. He was formerly the U.S. Representative for Texas' 14th and 22nd congressional districts. He noted that the Founding Fathers, when drawing up the American Constitution, didn't assert that it is about democracy. Instead they used the words 'liberty' and 'pursuit of happiness.'  After breaking away from the constraints imposed by King George and his henchmen, the founding fathers considered themselves to be free men. Or, put another way, they claimed their right to be sovereign people. And there is nothing a tyrant hates more than that.

I don't think I need to say more this week.

Michael

What exactly do you mean by that?

If I referred to someone as a 'linguist', I wonder how people would think that a linguist is someone who speaks many languages and maybe works as a language teacher or as an interpreter at the United Nations? I'm not, of course. In fact, these people are more accurately called "Polyglots". While many linguists are polyglots, the focus of linguistics is about the structure, use and psychology of language in general. (Definition courtesy of University of Arizona).

Like so many nouns, the word linguist is a label. So, what exactly do I mean by labelling? Labelling or labeling is describing someone or something in a word or short phrase. For example, describing someone who has broken a law as a criminal. That's straight forward, isn't it?

Let me try more suggestions. If I used the label 'conservative' to describe someone (with or without a capital C) what am I saying? Well, I suggest it depends on what I mean and you understand by the term and often our understandings are not the same. If you consider yourself to be a socialist (another label), for example, it is likely that the label 'conservative' conjures up a different image in your mind to the image in the mind of a conservative. So, it seems we must weigh in the balance: who said it; to whom was it said; were the interpretations likely to be the same; was the purpose of the speaker likely to be the same purpose as the listener? Or, as Wikipedia has it: Labeling theory is the theory of how the self-identity and behaviour of individuals may be determined or influenced by the terms used to describe or classify them. You get the idea, I'm sure.

'Rule of Law' is a term bandied about without much definition attached to it. I speak from a school of thought that interprets Rule of Law as including the ideas of 'causing no harm', and 'being honest', and 'being peaceful' and these ideas are expressed as Common Law - the law of the people. That's a subject not much spoken about by politicians and lawyers, except in derogatory terms.

To use words knowing that your listeners are interpreting them differently to you is dishonest. Being dishonest contravenes my understanding of the term Rule of Law.  'Being dishonest' can't ever be interpreted as being peaceful either. Too many politicians refer to Rule of Law as meaning those government statutes they have created and then enforced upon a more or less compliant population. Judges are paid by the state to enforce them. Interpreted in that fashion, it cannot mean Common Law. It must mean Statute Law, which isn't the same thing.

So, Common Law and Rule of Law mean different things depending on who is using the terms and Rule of Law without the addition of  'and Common Law' is very likely to be a dishonest use of the label, possibly intentionally.

Here's the thing: when you choose to live so that, intentionally, you cause no harm; and intentionally you are honest, and intentionally you are peaceful, GUESS WHAT! They can't touch you for it.

Aw, c'mon, I hear you say. I can live by those rules and I'll still get picked on by someone. They'll think I'm a softie. That's he way of the world.

Thus we come to the nub of the matter. Rule of Law and Common Law also open the door for Trial by Jury as opposed to trial by diktat (also known as statute and Trial by Magistrate).  Think about it.

_ _ _ _ _ _

Years ago as a young telegraphist I learned the difference between communication and broadcasting. But not everyone understands the difference. Metaphorically speaking, broadcasting is throwing your good grain into the wind and hoping it will land somewhere fertile. Broadcasting doesn't require anyone to think about or care from where the message emanates, and the broadcaster, often, doesn't much care who receives his message. His job is to broadcast.  Thus, blogging is broadcasting. In the case of the listener, a judgement is necessarily made about who or what is being listened to - which is why I don't listen to Radio 1 but I often listen to Radio 4.

On the other hand communication happens when the good grain is targetted at an intended recipient or recipients - and the recipient responds with confirmation that the message has been received and understood. Thus, communication is a two-way street.


And that's how the world goes about its business. Think about it.

* * * * *

In UK, if you buy your own home and save for your old age you end up paying for your own stay in a care home should you need one.  If you rent your home and spend all your earnings the state will pay for your time in the care home at the end of your life.

So wrote John Redwood MP today in his 'John Redwood's Diary'.  If you are unfamiliar with the name, John Alan Redwood is a British Conservative Party politician and Member of Parliament for Wokingham, Berkshire. (Salary £74,000 p.a., plus, plus, plus). What a lot of labels in one sentence.


It is probably true to say that anyone who would write the opening paragraph (above) is unlikely to be someone who rents his home.

He has been the MP for Wokingham for 30 years. He is the author of several books as well as, prior to becoming an MP and sometimes while still being an MP, he has been a schoolteacher and a Director of a merchant bank, a temporary postman and the Chairman of a major Stock Exchange quoted industrial company, a County Councillor and a University Professor, a shop assistant and the pioneer of privatisation worldwide, a bank clerk and the Head of the Prime Minister's Policy Unit. He is paid by various newspapers for his written opinions and appears regularly on television poltical programmes. Clearly, he is no slouch. Nor is he broke.

As an MP he has been a cabinet minister, an under secretary of state and is a Privy Councillor. He held 'shadow' roles when the Conservatives were in opposition during the Blair years.

Surprising to me, he campaigned for the UK to leave EU and continues to do so. On that basis I'd call him a good guy. Conversely, he generally has voted against laws to promote equality and human rights, according to www.theyworkforyou.com. That makes him a not-so-good-guy, depending on your point of view.

Point of view can be interpreted as 'opinion', can't it? Or, maybe, it can be 'prejudice', can't it? So, the same question pops up time and time again. What do you mean by that?

Try this for size:

prej•u•dice (prĕjˈə-dĭs)

►

• n. An adverse judgment or opinion formed beforehand or without knowledge or examination of the facts.
• n. A preconceived preference or idea.
• n.The act or state of holding unreasonable preconceived judgments or convictions.
   
   According to Wikipedia, Prejudice is an affective feeling toward a person or group member based soley on their group membership. The word is often used to refer to preconceived, usually unfavourable, feelings toward people or a person because of their gender, beliefs, values, social class, age, disability, religion, sexuality, race/ethnicity, language, nationality, beauty, occupation, education, criminality, sport team affiliation or other personal characteristics. In this case, it refers to a positive or negative evaluation of another person based on their perceived group membership. Prejudice can also refer to unfounded beliefs and may include "any unreasonable attitude that is unusually resistant to rational influence".
   
  And they CAN touch you for prejudice! And they have statutes to back them.
   
  _ _ _ _ _ _
   

Upon My Word!

I stumbled on a neat web page this month. It goes under the name 

www.differencebetween.net

 

It attempts to clarify words and meanings for simple people like me. For example, when I searched for a difference between ‘war crimes’ and ‘crimes against humanity’ it provided me with (in part):

War crimes, which may be committed during civil war or interstate wars, include summary execution, the exploitation of private property, torture, and the deportation of people against their will. The Geneva Convention’s Article 147 specifies that these acts are war crimes when they are committed in times of war (Richards, 2000). Crimes against humanity can be defined as the deliberate persecution of civilians on the basis of factors such as race, political beliefs, culture, or religion (Bassiouni, 1999). Crimes against humanity, which are often committed by government officials, usually result in acts of sexual violence, extermination, imprisonment, and human enslavement (Holocaust Encyclopedia, 2016).

I tried again by asking for the difference between Islam and Muslim. The response (in part) was:

Misuses of Islam and Muslim

• Islam: grammatically speaking, Islam should only refer to the religion or acts done in the name of that religion, never a person who practices that religion. Islamic community and Islamic art are correct, Islamic man is not.
• Muslim should be used to describe all people of the Islamic faith but not the faith itself. You may say that you are interested in the religion of Muslims, but never in the Muslim religion.

So far, so good. Let me try again. What is the difference between a journalist and a reporter? The answer, in part:

The Reporter is the person who reports on an event taking place anywhere in the world. He/she does not add their opinion or analysis to the report. Journalism, however, unlike reporting, would involve getting ‘under’, or ‘beneath’, the news. It can involve steps like investigation, analysis, and well thought out commentary or opinion. A journalist goes through all these steps when he writes a piece. In the case of an airplane incident, the journalist would go a few steps further than just reporting what happened. He would investigate the history of crashes for that airline or aircraft model, and talk about the maintenance issues, etc.

Hey, this is good. Good game, good game. I think we’re on a roll here. One more try, please.

What is the difference between a statesman and a diplomat? No explanation offered. Oh.

OK, what is the difference between a bigot and a fundamentalist? No explanation offered. Oh, dear.

One final attempt. What is the difference between a Prime Minister (or Premier) and a President? No explanation offered.

Aw, c’mon. Something isn’t right here. Here’s a good one: What is the difference between justice and revenge? No explanation offered - AGAIN!

Hmm. Makes you think, don’t it?  Maybe computers aren't all they're cracked up to be. Maybe it really is a case of GIGO.

⧫⧫⧫⧫⧫⧫⧫⧫⧫

Looking for definitions the old fashioned way - longhand!

British Dictionary definitions for education:

education

/ˌɛdjʊˈkeɪʃən/

noun

1.

the act or process of acquiring knowledge, esp systematically during childhood and adolescence

2.

the knowledge or training acquired by this process: his education has been invaluable to him

3.

the act or process of imparting knowledge, esp at a school, college, or university: education is my profession.

British Dictionary definitions for propaganda:

propaganda

/ˌprɒpəˈɡændə/

noun

1.

the organized dissemination of information, allegations, etc, to assist or damage the cause of a government, movement, etc

2.

such information, allegations, etc

 

propaganda in Culture

propaganda definition

Official government communications to the public that are designed to influence opinion. The information may be true or false, but it is always carefully selected for its political effect.
 

The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition
Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Cite This Source

There now. There is ALWAYS a way to make a point even if we have to rely on lies, damned lies and statistics to do it. 

⧫⧫⧫⧫⧫

Do you know the name: Umberto Eco? Permit me to introduce him.  

Umberto Eco was an Italian novelist, literary critic, philosopher, semiotician (look it up), and university professor. He is best known internationally for his 1980 novel Il nome della rosa (Name of the Rose), a historical mystery combining semiotics in fiction with biblical analysis, medieval studies, and literary theory. (According to Wikipedia, that is).

He was born on 5th January 1932 and grew up under Mussolini's fascist regime and he died last year from pancreatic cancer.

I am grateful to Open Culture (.com) for making me aware of Eco's written list of the common features of fascism. In today's climate, they make interesting reading.

"It is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it", he believed.

1. The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”
2. The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”
3. The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”
4. Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”
5. Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.”
6. Appeal to social frustration. “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”
7. The obsession with a plot. “The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia.”
8. The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
9. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”
10. Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”
11. Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.”
12. Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”
13. Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.”
14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”

 Does it remind you of anybody?

 

 ⧫⧫⧫⧫⧫

MK Column

There is a two-headed organisation in Plymouth which publishes under the names of the British Constitution Group – BCG - (www.britishconstitutiongroup.com) and as UK Column (www.ukcolumn.org ). UK column broadcasts daily via the internet and publishes news articles that have a different perspective to main stream media (MSM). BCG publishes articles relevant to the British Constitution and conducts occasional meetings-cum-conferences. The first major conference was held last year in Winchester where the ‘Winchester Declaration’ was first published. The next conference is scheduled to be held in Nottingham on 22 April.

In Milton Keynes area there is a fledgling group of people with diverse interests and concerns who have joined together and have chosen to call ourselves ‘the MK Column’.  We subscribe to the two Plymouth organisations.

If you would like to identify with UK Column or BCG, simply go to their respective web pages. If you would like to identify with MK Column (and you don’t have to live locally to do that, please call me on 07599 295225 or send an email to mkcolumn@gmail.com. We will be pleased to hear from you.