OPEN DEMOCRACY SPEAKS TRUTH TO POWER

 Sometimes, it is enough just to share - and hope you will read and inwardly digest:

Truss and Biden - can you tell which one said that 'tickle-down' economics has never worked?  Can you read their body language? 

Daily newsletter     Why Truss and Kwarteng’s tax cuts for the rich will lower growth by Jeevun Sandher     Liz Truss claims that she is cutting taxes in today’s mini-budget because it will boost economic growth. It’s nonsense, fairytale economics.  These tax cuts will only lead to the rich getting richer and the rest of us getting poorer, creating a more unequal society as well as a less healthy and productive workforce. Across the world we can see countries with higher taxes on the rich that are more prosperous than ours. Sweden’s top tax rate is 57% (ours is 45%) yet the country produces 17% more per person than we do. If we really want to see our economy grow, we need to get cash in families’ pockets and invest in people and places. Today’s shocking income and National Insurance cuts, announced by the chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, will give the richest 5% over £8,500 annually, while only giving the average family around £400. That understates the benefit to the rich because it doesn’t include the

THE JEREMIAHS ARE PREPARED - ARE YOU?

The word is that there is a so-called 'nudge unit', working from within No.10 Downing Street, that seeks to shift public opinion in the direction that best suits the interests of those in government in the UK. When I visit my local supermarket - Sainsbury's in Penzance - and I see that I am now one of the very few still wearing a mask, or when I visit my local surgery for my life-saving three-monthly injection as I did yesterday and I read a message that mask-wearing is now voluntary and patients are encouraged to show understanding for those (like me) who choose to continue wearing them, I realize the Tory nudge unit is succeeding - possibly even beyond its own expectations. We are, after all, still in the midst of a pandemic with its own cycle of peaks and troughs.

Jeremiah tells it as it is - on Conwy mountain in Wales before the pandemic

With over 200,000 already dead having contracted the COVID virus (SARS-CoV-2), the unacknowledged government policy since February 2020 of achieving herd immunity through allowing the virus to spread through the population at a rate that meant the NHS and the coffin makers were not completely overwhelmed has certainly left its mark. Johnson and Cummings were definitely 'world-beaters' in that respect. They were rescued from their own folly by the brilliance of those in the scientific

THE WORLD SEEN THROUGH THE EYES OF A NEW QUAKER ATTENDER - PART SIX - JESUS PROTESTS IN THE TEMPLE - AND WITHIN A WEEK IS DEAD, CRUCIFIED. YET HE LIVES.

Here are the links to the first five blogposts in this Quaker series:

1 - https://robdonovan.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-world-seen-through-eyes-of-new.html

2 - https://robdonovan.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-world-seen-through-eyes-of-new_15.html

3 - https://robdonovan.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-world-seen-through-eyes-of-new_22.html

4 - https://robdonovan.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-world-seen-through-eyes-of-new_29.html

5 - https://robdonovan.blogspot.com/2022/09/the-world-seen-through-eyes-of-new.html

In my second blogpost in this series, I explored the teachings of the charismatic carpenter-turned-preacher, Jesus of Nazareth, as written down in the gospel of Mark a generation after Jesus' death. I concluded that these were the words of a man who sensed that there was now a yawning gap between how people should be living out their lives and the reality he saw in front of him. The world had become too caught up in rituals defined by a hypocritical priestly caste who did not practice what they preached. And there was too much focus on the acquisition of wealth. 

Jesus did not just teach about the dangers of money. Actions followed. When Jesus and his disciples travelled to Jerusalem for Passover, he visited the Temple and found the courtyard filled with livestock, merchants, and the tables of money-changers who converted Greek and Roman money into Jewish and Tyrian shekels. Jerusalem was packed with perhaps several hundred thousand pilgrims. Jesus was filled with righteous indignation. How best to describe what happened? He lost his temper? He made a scourge of small cords and cleared the courtyard, scattering the changers' money and overthrowing the tables, saying: 

'You have made my house a den of thieves.' (Matthew 21:12-13)

The Cleansing of the Temple - Lombard School, 18th century

In the accounts of Mark and Luke, Jesus accused the Temple authorities of thieving and names poor widows as their victims. Dove sellers were selling doves for sacrificial purposes to those, particularly women, who could not afford grander sacrifices. According to Mark (11:16), Jesus then put an embargo on carrying merchandise through the Temple, thus disrupting all commerce. Such actions were a direct

MAKING SENSE OF BREXIT - THE UK SINCE THATCHER AND HOW THE OXFORD TORIES TOOK POWER

 My debt to Simon Kuper and his analysis in Chums - How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK (2022) - is obvious and acknowledged. His Oxford years as an undergraduate (Magdalen [?] 1988-91) were contemporary and near-contemporary with so many of the men and women who now have political power in the UK. That experience has left him curious enough to do the research and come to the conclusions that he offers in his admirable book. I was an undergraduate at Catz (St Catherine's) from 1967 to 1970, around two decades before these Oxford hot-shots. But Kuper's Oxford was little different from mine. Now, thank goodness, much has changed for the better - but too late to have stopped the rot we now endure.

The Radcliffe Camera library in the centre of the university city

This is a cast list of the Oxford Tories who have shaped our land - yours and mine. I have added their secondary schooling (all private, apart from Truss's), Oxford college and the years they were 'up', as the insiders used to say:

• Boris Johnson               Eton; Balliol (1983-87)
• Michael Gove               Robert Gordon's College, Aberdeen; Lady Margaret's Hall (1985-88)
• David Cameron             Eton; Brasenose (1985-88)
• George Osborne            St Paul's, London; Magdalen (1990-1993)
• Dominic Cummings      Durham School; Exeter (1991-94) 
• Daniel Hannan              Marlborough; Oriel (1990-1993)
• Jacob Rees-Mogg          Eton; Trinity (1988-91)
• Rishi Sunak                   Winchester; Lincoln (1998-2001)
• Liz Truss                        Roundhay, Leeds comprehensive; Merton (1993-1996)

I would undo much of what they have created, but then I am a Quaker socialist with deeply-held convictions about how people should be valued, helped to live well, and enjoy fruitful lives. For these

THE WORLD SEEN THROUGH THE EYES OF A NEW QUAKER ATTENDER - PART FIVE - AFTER THE HUNTER-GATHERERS, THE WHEELS LOOSEN AND THE CRASH LOOMS

Here are the links to the first four blogposts in this Quaker series:

1 - https://robdonovan.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-world-seen-through-eyes-of-new.html

2 - https://robdonovan.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-world-seen-through-eyes-of-new_15.html

3 - https://robdonovan.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-world-seen-through-eyes-of-new_22.html

4 - https://robdonovan.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-world-seen-through-eyes-of-new_29.html

If you have made this journey with me so far, you might be forgiven for thinking that I am portraying the time of the hunter-gatherers as a paradise on earth. That is not my intention. As Rutger Bregman observes, at the beginning of his chapter, 'The Curse of Civilisation':

'Human beings have never been angels. Envy, rage and hatred are age-old emotions that have always taken a toll.' 

Rutger Bregman - Dutch historian and writer - the author of 'Humankind' in which he provides an update on recent scientific findings in a number of fields, including biology and anthropology

Yet in Bregman's words, '... our ancestors were allergic to inequality. Decisions were group affairs requiring long deliberation in which everybody got to have their say'. He cites the American anthropologist, Christopher Boehm, who has concluded on the basis of 339 fieldwork studies of nomadic foragers that they are universally concerned with being free from the authority of others. Power distinctions between people were only tolerated temporarily and for specific purposes. The Canadian anthropologist, Richard Lee, worked with the !Kung in the Kalahari Desert and quotes these words of a tribesman:

'We refuse one who boasts, for someday his pride will make him kill somebody. So we always speak of his meat as worthless. This way we cool his heart and make him gentle.'

!Kung tribes people in the Kalahari Desert - a Wikipedia image 

Hunter-gatherers do not hoard goods. Christopher Columbus, in the late 15th century, wrote in his log:

'When you ask for something they have, they never say no. To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone.'

Unfortunately, what Columbus brought in return was disease, exploitation and death.

So why did the stability inherent in the life of the hunter-gatherers come to an end? Bregman says that the science indicates at least two causes:

1. After the end of the last Ice Age, as the climate changed, an area between the Nile in the west and the Tigris in the east was turned into a land of milk and honey. Food was now in plentiful supply; there was no longer a need to forage; huts and villages were built first, then towns and temples as