A refutation of psycholgical egoism...

I came across this little theory a couple of nights ago in a conversation regarding altruism. It has been suggested that I am pathologically atruistic, in that I take altruism to extremes helping others to my own detriment. This is almost certainly true, but the argument was over whether I did this from "true" altrusim i.e. that I expected no reward for my actions, or from a form of egoism whether concious or unconcious whereby my actions were conditioned by my perception of a reward, whether that be immediate material reward in the form of gratitute, or an intangible but none the less real increase in my perceived status withion my group, or from some more nebulous concept of reward in an as yet undefined afterlife. I had to think about this for a while. I reasoned that if the underlying reason for my altruism was unconcious I would struggle to become aware of it, since I can not readily access my unconcious mind. Consequently this was a difficult argument to refute, other than to question the existance of the unconcious mind, and also the function should it exist in terms of controlling concious actions. It suggests that the unconcious mind doesn't simply control autonomic functions but is actively involved in the decision making process that the concious mind engages in. This presents a problem since any action could be triggered by an unconcious thought and given that the unconcious is by definition uncontrolled this would surely lead to significant issues for the courts. I'm pretty certain a defense of "my unconcious mind made me do it" simply wouldn't wash.

That leaves the issue of ulterior motives to be addressed. I have no problem with this as a concept, but I am not at all certain that it fully explains the complexity of an individuals situation. I am aware of myself as a product of a sequence of events over time that have shaped and moulded the way that I perceive my environment. I am also aware that my mind is unique, as is everyones, in terms of the neural pathways that have been created over time and how these pathways influence the way I "think" and "feel" but, and for me this is crucial, I am also aware that the decisions that I take are made from a combination of thoughts filtered through my particular mental pathways to reach a conclusion. I am in control of this process and make choices based on what is the "right" thing to do.

I don't do things because they are expected, or wanted, or needed, or from any sense of how my actions will benefit me, but simply as a function of my upbringing, pschological conditioning, personal ethics and so on. The list of filters is quite a long one, but at no point does a consideration of what benefit I may derive from the action enter the equation. Perhaps I am just not wired that way. By the same token, the consideration of what it may cost me doesn't feature as a consideration. Perhaps I am just odd, but I'm not sure that the idea of an exception proving the rules applies in logical arguement. Now of course we hit upon a snag in my own arguement. This is at best anecdotal evidence, or to put it another way, no evidence at all. I could be misinterpreting my own motives, I could be masking my true intentions from myself. I may yet be proved wrong and be a slave to my subconcious, but all I have is my own evidence and my own thoughts.

So is this just futile musing to no purpose? I would like to think not, for the simple reason that the process has made me think about why I do the things I do, why I take altruism to destructive extremes, why I am, at root a self destructive personality type, and it has also reminded me that I don't need to take the opinions and theories of experts too seriously, particularly in the softer sciences.....

The malady at the rotten core of society.....

Shakespeare once wrote "There is something rotten in the state of Denmark" and indeed we have historical records going back to Domesday in 1087AD that suggest that there has always been a feeling that society, and particularly the upper echelons of society are inherently dark and up to no good. The idea that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely has been around for quite a while and when we look back at 15th and 16th Century Italy we see corruption on a truly massive scale. It does make one wonder if there is something fundamentally twisted in the human psyche that prevents us as a species from working co-operatively as a society for anything longer than about a week.

In my own experience I have seen politicians exposed for endemic and widescale fraud, the supposedly independent and honest free press sullied by scandal, the Royal family rocked by allegations of nepotism and infidelity and even the police enmeshed in corruption at the most senior levels. This is no new turn of events however, fifty years ago you couldn't become a senior policeman without being a Freemason. You would be excluded from senior political positions based on the school you attended and the chances of breaking out of your families social status was next to nil. So, if we posit that this is something that is at the core of society, what exactly are we to do about it?

Firstly, let us consider that thinking in terms of a less complex, less pressured society as proposed for communities in developing countries and particularly hunter/gatherer societies is almost certainly a red herring. If we look to the African and South American tribes that anthropologists studied to suggest these ways of life as being fundanmentally better we see some of the most vicious infighting and abuse of status and power imaginable. Similarly if we look at the alternative political structures such as Commnuism we see systems that despite the best intentions of their proponents are invariable destroyed by self-serving individuals trying to utilise the system for their own betterment.

There can be little doubt that as a species we are a product of many generations of evolutionary development to create the creature that we now are, and trying to fight against those developments may be a battle that we can not win in the long term. It may even be a battle that, as a species we may be better off not winning in terms of our chances of survival, but on an individual day to day level, surely, it is a fight that we should make every single day......

The last American hero and anti-hero....

The man after whom this blog is named, Bill Hicks, is the subject of a documentary on BBC4 tonight in the UK, as a prelude and warm up for a screening of his "Revelations" show.  The man was my icon through my formative years, my creative idol, my passion, my inspiration, and yet I was always aware that his genius came at a tremendous cost, not simply in his untimely death, but in the problems that he faced in trying to deal with an addictive, self destructive, highly self-critical, personality. As a performer he was at the cutting edge of comedy constantly pushing audiences harder and harder, and challenging their perceptions. Through the tough times his performances were erratic and after he sobered up, his anger was often too much for many people, and certainly for a television audience, but his shows always asked questions that more people should ask.

It is rare that I recommend Bill Hicks to people that I know, because he is very much someone that you need to build up to over time. His style is aggressive and uncompromising, his stance on drink and drugs even after he gave both up was difficult for someone who has never experienced the difference between taking them recreationally, and taking them in an attempt to expand the mind in the frame of Timothy Leary. If you don't like punk, you won't like Hicks. If you don't like having to think to hard, you won't like Hicks. If you don't like questioning politics and freedom and generally held beliefs, you won't like Hicks. But if you are prepared to have everything you have ever believed challenged and broken down and torn apart then just maybe it would be worthwhile having a look and listen. Just maybe......

Why fighting against the blame culture is the most important fight....

It is often suggested that we live in a society where everything that happens is someone elses fault. Whatever misfortune befalls is it is never us who are to blame, but the system, or the government, or big business, or just the other guy. Many people are under the impression that this is a modern phenomenon, and certainly in the UK it is often the case that people blame America and the propensity to litigation that seems endemic. This again is an example of aportioning blame, and as with most of these cases, is almost certainly incorrect. Historically we have always found scapegoats, found people to blame, and generally it is people whio are "not us". Frequently the blame has escalated to the point of large scale war and destruction, but there is plenty of evidence that we have been blaming each other for a very long time.

One of the clearest examples is found in the witchraft trials that were carried uot throughout the middle ages. A village would be beset by illness, or a farmer would find livestock falliing ill and blame would be attached to someone within the community in the form of accusations of witchcraft. Often this was done to someone who was on the outskirts of the village, removed from the greater community, often with a disability of some sort. We seem to be conditioned to distrust difference, to be wary of the stranger, and to shift blame rather than take responsibility.

If we are to succeed as a species in ever increasing numbers and with ever more scarce resources we are going to be left with no choice but to become more accepting of each other and more understanding of our place in the greater global community. A part of that process will inevitably have to be an understanding that we are all responsible firstly for ourselves, secondly for our families and finally for our communities. We must take ownership of our lives and our actions and for the implications of everything that we say and do.....

From the ladys not for turning to spin city.....

Back in the heady days of the 1980's when bankers could do not wrong, greed was good, capitalism was the saviour of the planet and market foirces ruled we had a political leader who perfectly matched the times. Love her or loath her Mrs Tatcher, now Baroness Thatcher was a force to be reckoned with. Her famous speech regarding the pressure she was under to reverse her position on economic policy in which she gave the quote "You turn if you want to, the ladys not for turning" was one of many high points in her career, and there can be little doubt that she was an indomitable presence. However, whilst she may not have been for turning on her policies, she was also the first Prime Minister to openly employ media consultants and to court popularity through media engagement. From the start of her political career she was carefully groomed for high office, with voice coaching to make her oratory more acceptable, power dresssing to increase her visual presence, carefully scripted speeches and carefully manicured performances in interviews.

This position has, unfortunately in my opinion, set the tone for everyone who has come after her. The arch exponent of this new form of politics was of course Tony Blair, but even here we see a style of presentation that owes a significant debt to the work already begun with Baroness Thatcher. I have little doubt that the majority of those who seek political office do so with the best intentions at heart, and from a genuine desire to try to shape our nation for the better, but it seems that once they begin to move through the party ranks towards the front benches they are haried on all sides by advisors and mentors and coaches changing the way they stand, the way they dress, the way the speak, even the words they say.

It is not for nothing that one of the favourite comedy programmes of the majority of politicians used to be "Yes, Minister" which highlighted in a tremendously tongue in cheek way, the role of civil service mandarins in corrupting and modifying the stances of even quite senior politicians. I well remember enjoying quiet a long chat with a very senior member of the Labour opposition from the Thatcher era and being quite shocked and surprised to discover that even a character as strong and forthright and powerful as this statesman felt shackled by his own parties media consultants, who, to paraphrase his own words, had no mandate from the electorate, no political beliefs, and shared few of the moral and ethical standards espoused by the people that they were advising.

It seems a shame to me that the era of true political values seems to have disappeared. Perhaps it will return one day, when the cult of celebrity has passed, when Big Brother and X-Factor are no longer topping the viewer ratings, when newspapers aren't sold on the basis of who has the best gossip, when we finally understand that without real substance we are as nothing as a society, but cynic that I am, I am not sure if this is even possible.....

Understanding that perception is not reality.....

We are constantly bombarded by sensory input in our day to day lives and it can be quite overwhelming sometimes, but what is perhaps even more overwhelming is that what we realise we perceive from that sensory input is only a tiny fraction of what our senses are actually telling us. Our eyes for example can perceive a single photon of light. Our ears are capable of picking up an incredible range of frequencies, our sense of smell is so refined that it can detect a single molecule, and yet all of this data is instantly filtered by the brain in such a way that we are not even aware that we have perceived it. just take a look outside. The colours that you are seeing all around you are not the real colours as the eye is perceiving them, but our minds filter the input to make something manageable. It is quite incredible really.

But there is a point to all this. Our minds are strange and wonderful places and they act without concious control to keep us safe and to give us the information that is vital rather than simply overloading us. This can have a twist though, because if our perception of reality in the form of the physical world can be and is skewed by our minds, how much more likely is it that our perceptions of things which are not physical, i.e. thoughts, dreams, interpretations of other peoples intentions and so on are also being skewed in a similar way. To what extent, if at all can we rely on the information that our minds are giving us. Further, is it possible by training the mind, to achieve a state whereby we are more in control of the filters that our minds employ.

I have a friend who is a gamekeeper. She spends all day out in the fields observing, monitoring, tracking and stalking. Her eyesight is technically no better than mine (we have similar prescription glasses) but she is aware of far more going on around us than I am. She will see movement in her peripheral vision that I don't even notice and hear birdsong way before I do. She has trained herself over twenty years or so to be considerably more aware of her surrounds than I am, and logically this would suggest that she has managed to re-train the way her mind filters inputs. If this is possible, can we modify the less concrete perceptions in a similar way? If we can then it would lend far more credence to affirmation therapies as well as to things like NLP and CBT, but in order to do this do we need to better understand the way in which the mind works and how these filters are implemented and by what part of the brain?

I would suggest that we do, and that it will become ever more pressing as we become less and less attuned to our environment and more and more attuned to virtual reality......

Why living on the edge is a viable position.....

The concept of not accepting an easy life, of pushing boudaries constantly, of craving and seeking ever greater challenges and pushing ones physical and mental limits is one that can at first glance be quite appealing, at least in the short term. When it is considered as a permanent lifestyle choice it can however be quite daunting, and is almost certainly something of a selfish choice. I would image that it can be quite challenging to live with someone who is constantly taking risks, constantly looking for a sense of danger, but I can again see that short term it could be quite exciting. I watched quite an interesting programme not too long ago about a pair of base jumpers and their families. Base jumping is one of the most extreme sports there is with a massive casualty rate both of serious injury and death, and consequently the pressure placed by participants on their partners can be very high indeed.

Of course there are all sorts of ways of living on the edge, from risking life and limb in sporting endeavours to taking commercial risks in business, but they all have their consequences. I wonder if there is a correlation between personality type and the need to take risks. It would appear anecdotally that the ego has a part to play in the risk taking drive, as does a failure to lose the sense of invincibility that tends to be inherent in younger children. We are by nature an inquisitive species, and it is almost certainly a part of what has allowed us to evolve as we have to become the dominant species. It should be noted however that there is a need to find a balance between risk taking and security that will allow an individual to balance on the edge successfully and create a vibrant and fulfilled life.

It's a dream at least......

The best way to deal with the dark days......

I guess it had to happen. One of the reasons for the title of this blog is that there are times when things get a bit much, when the stress levels start to become less manageable, and the dark pit of despair opens up in front on me threatening to swallow me whole. I have said before that I don't consider that I suffer from depression. I have depression, but most of the time I don't suffer, it is just part of who I am. However there are these times, fortunately becoming more frequent when the coping strategies start to fail. So, for all of you out there who have similar experiences, and for those who don't but perhaps know people who do, here are a few of the things that I have learned over the years.

The first is that if I allow myself to really sink the first thing that goes is my drive to get out of bed in the morning. I've never been much of a morning person anyway, but on my down days it is a nightmare, and is usually a good indicator that something is wrong. When I spot this I find that sleeping with the curtains open in such a way that I get the morning sun on my face can make a difference, both in terms of making me get up to avoid the glare, and in terms of giving me a little boost of warmth. The next thing to go is my appetite. You wouldn't think it to look at me, but my appetite is extremely fragile, and again when I am down I can go days without remembering to eat. Of course doing this only makes the situation worse as no food means no energy and the depression just gets worse. here again, knowing that this is an indicator of further deterioration helps because if I spot it, I can make myself eat by diarising specific mealtimes, pre-making meals that I know I will like and generally looking after myself a little better.

Sometimes these signals get missed, or pass so quickly that I don't have time to deal with them, and sometimes the solutions don't work well enough, or don't at quickly enough, so for me, stage three is when I start to beat myself up more than usual. I start blaming myself for the most ridiculous things over which I can have no control, and at this point I am already too deeply into a depressive episode to pull myself out easily. Knowing that this is a possibility, and knowing that I have a "safe space" that in these circumstances I will use - my airing cupboard - I have put a poster up in the space reminding myself of personal matras that I have trained my mind to latch on to to pull myself back up, personal images that I know help me to feel better, and personal mottos that give me strength.

The key for me is in being prepared. Accepting that depressive episodes will happen and acknowledging that by having strategies clearly in place I can take some measure of control over my condition, which in itself tends to be helpful. I hate the idea that I am a burden on others, and detest the idea that I need other people to support me, so being able to help myself is a big step forward. Some people need that extra support and that is fine too, but for me, relying on others only ever makes me worse.

I hope that this little article helped, and would welcome suggestions or feedback from those with depression, and those who know, and help those with depression......

Progress through continuous improvement....

I am often asked if perfection in business is possible. Can one create a company where every single function and process runs at one hundred percent efficiency and everything happens at exactly the right time and in exactly the right way. I have always, and will always answer in the negative, if for no other reason than I personally believe that perfection can only ever be an unattainable aspiration. That is not to say that it is not worth striving for, having as a stated aim and ambition, or even as part of the business plan. It is also not to say that it is impossible to achieve perfection, or at least a close approximation of it in small parts of the business. However, running a business in the real world is beset with complexities and chaotic, unpredictable events that have to be reacted to and have an impact on smooth operations.

The real key to running a successful business is the way in which the imperfections are handled and how they are managed to limit the impact on overall efficiency. At one of the companies I have a small hand in Dwarf Web Design there is an ethos within the management function that every chaotic event, everything that impacts the business is an opportunity to learn and to grow and to make the company stronger. It operates as a complete team effort from the appointment bookers to the proof readers and everyone inbetween, and is managed in a communal way so that everyone has an effective input and an effective chain of command.

This may sound a little like a miltary operation, and in a sense it is. For a business to succeed it has to be managed as though the survival and success of the busines was a life or death decision and that every decision made is time and effect critical. This is the same mindset taught to military leaders, and it is taught for a reason. In order to survive in turbulent times it is essential that not just the leaders but the whole organisation learns and grows and develops. There used to be a hot phrase in management speak "upskilling" to describe what the way in which staff efficiency could be improved by better training and better resourcing. Whilst I am not a big fan of management speak per se, there are some core concepts that do make sense and this is one of them. The greater a persons range of skills, the better able they are to adapt and change and develop to meet changing demands, and the more likely a company is to achieve perfection....

Why personal development is the key to a happy life…..

There was a huge trend not so long ago for brain training software online and through games consoles, and a similar fetish for personal trainers at gyms across the country. The craze seems to have abated somewhat in the light of research that suggested that particularly in the case of brain training, the improvements achieved were not statistically significant. I’m quite happy to accept these figures on face value for now, as that is an argument for another post, but what I’m not so happy about is that these reports have led to the aforementioned reduction in use. It doesn’t really matter to me whether the improvements were real or only perceived, the mere fact that people were paying attention to their personal development was, for me, a far more important aspect.

I have, for a number of years, been of the opinion that there is something lacking in our modern education system. Something that used to be there but has been lost amidst the courses on social studies, media studies, social responsibility and the rest. That something is the joy of learning, and through learning growing and developing. People don’t seem to find enjoyment in the thrill of opening a book on a brand new subject, just for the sheer pleasure of finding out something new. They don’t seem to explore the wealth of literature that our civilizations have produced. They don’t seem to be interested in experimenting with the world around them to better understand their place in it.

The love of learning is crucial in my opinion to the ongoing stability of our society and the future success of humanity as a species. It is only through personal learning, and perhaps more importantly taking responsibility for personal learning that we can become a happy and more stable society….

The politics of correctness….

We are, none of us, perfect. For my own sins I am fully aware that my spelling is atrocious, not helped by my one and a half fingered approach to typing. A drawback you may think for a prolific blogger and writer, and certainly without my trusted proofreaders I would almost certainly be in trouble. I’m not one who is going to pull someone else up on their spelling, grammer or punctuation, put it that way. It is the same the World over, we all have our little foibles, the things that we would love to be better at, perhaps the things that we think we are good at, ut perhaps aren’t so good. This is not generally a problem, but it can become so if we lose the ability to gentle chide each other about our failings, if we become too precious about our petty fiefdoms, our talents and abilities. If I took offence when my colleagues correct my mistakes the use of my blogs would be diminished by the distraction of poor spelling. I could take offence certainly, but the corrections are presented with humour and frankness, occasionally my sanity is called into question as is my intellect, but when taken in the context of office banter, I would be extremely churlish to not take it in the spirit that it is intended.

I think there has been a knee jerk reaction to issues like workplace bullying and overt sexism that has led to an increase in caution regarding office banter, but there is a strong argument that in the modern business setting where pressures are constantly mounting and stress is at record levels that there is a place for robust humour and banter, and a need to “let off steam”. By no means is this a call for a return to the days of the subjugation of women in the workplace, or the extreme bullying that can take place in some situations, but it is my personal opinion that the balance has shifted too far away from the much needed sense of camaraderie forged in the melting pot of people bouncing off and rubbing up against each other, if you will forgive the expressions, and it is high time that this situation was rectified.

We do have a tendency in the UK of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, you can tell it is a tendency as we even have an expression for it. We need to urgently and rationally re-assess how we communicate and interact with each other in all wakls of life and all situations, and focus on finding commonality rather than worrying about the differences….

Failing health and the implications of stress….

We all get stressed by different things and to different degrees, and the way that we handle that stress as individuals varies greatly. What may be an absolute disaster to one person, causing them to completely break down may be something that is coped with easily by someone else. I have been told by a great many people that I deal with very high levels of stress well, but I wonder if this is actually the case, because there is an additional wrinkle to this tale in that different people exhibit stress created symptoms differently, so when I appear calm, that is not necessarily the emotion I an actually experiencing. So, from the point of view of dealing with stress, how does your typical overworked GP manage to get to the root of what is happening and how damaging an individual s finding that stress?

The simple answer is that they don’t. Doctors, unless they are highly specialized really have little or no chance of understanding what is actually going on psychologically speaking. Even if the Doctor does gain some insight, the current state of mental health care in this country is so overstretched that treatment options are severely limited being either anti-depressant drugs which tend to be of limited benefit and can cause serious side effects, or “talking” therapies which again have only a limited success rate. None of the treatment options available are aimed at curing the root cause of the stress, but can allow the sufferer a little relief, perhaps enough to begin to address the causes themselves.

This is somewhat surprising given that we have been seriously studying extreme stress for quite a while now. The research really began in earnest as a consequence of the First World War when soldiers were disabled by what was at the time called “Shell-shock” but which was almost certainly a for of what is now called post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It was found that under extreme stress the human mind begins to shut down, re-routing neural pathways to avoid whatever the cause of the stress is, leading to sufferers becoming increasingly isolated and withdrawn, prone to panic attacks and extreme anxiety, and with a depleted immune response. These symptoms are seen in all walks of life, not just the military and are highly variable in severity.

It is the opinion of the author that we are facing an epidemic in the UK as the effects of having to bail out the banks and the failing economy begin to bite deeper. We are already seeing the frustrations spilling out onto the streets, and I feel that there is more to come yet. We urgently need to try to address the causes of stress and find better ways of managing this chronic condition in the long term in a way that doesn’t rely on medication and unproven therapies. There are solutions, there are many people who deal with some very extreme stress, perhaps it is time to analyse the way in which some people manage to cope, and to try to adapt successes to a wider audience….

So much nonsense.....

With the worst of the troubles apparently over, the analysis is well under way into what happened and why, and this is the point, as is so often the case in the media arena, that there is a vast avalanche of complete and utter nonsense being spouted on all sides, whether it is the "string-em-up" brigade from the right, or the "no-one is really to blame" leftist liberals. I would like to add my voice to this stream, with the aim of cutting through all the nonsense and coming up with a rather more sensible idea and hopefully some sensible suggestions. This latest round of troubles started with an excuse, the shooting of a man in London, believed to be armed, by police officers. We know now that contrary to early reports the oplice had not been fired on, but there was a modified hand gun found at the scene loaded, and the police were on scene as part of an operation into organised crime. This young man it appears likely to have been involved in this operation in some way. There are arguements on both sides as to whether a community response against the police is warranted or not, but this is largely irrelevant, as what happened next suggests.

Following on from initial incidents of violent protest there was an upsurge in looting from shops across wide areas of London. It appears that the reason for this change and escalation was that the police had employed a policy of wait and see with the initial incidents giving a signal that people were unlikely to be challenged and caught for looting. Once this mindset was established there was little incentive for people to stop looting in the initial stages. It is being suggested that the police response was inappropriate, and the police have claimed that the situation was unprecedented, but it didn't start that way. I would suggest that it became unprecedented as a consequence of tactical errors made early on in the situation. Certainly things could have been handled differently but it is impossible to extrapolate whether the outcome would have been better or worse.

Moving on from the initial escalation, we saw widespread looting and vandalism spreading out across the country and I feel that this was as a consequence of the hands off approach taken by the police. The tactic was replicated in other cities and as soon as it was clear that looters were getting away unmolested it bacme open season on shops. There have however been some positives. The speed with which people have been brought to justice has certainly had an impact, as has the speed and accuracy of the uploading of CCTV images of people involved. The change in police attitudes on Tuesday night to a more aggressive strategy also seems to have helped the situation calm down, and alongside this the changing mood of local communities against the looters seems to have had a similar effect.

It will be interesting to see how this all moves forward, and what, as a society we learn from the mistakes made....

No summer holiday for politicians.....

Oh the inhumanity! Oh the injustice! Our political leaders have had to curtail their summer break early to come back and discuss the troubles that have plagued the UK over the last four nights. How are we in aposition where our MPs have so many breaks? Isn't running the country a full time job? Don't they get paid enough to keep working with maybe a twenty days of a year like the rest of us have to? I just don't get it? We are in the middle of the worst economic position in living memory, we have looting on the streets, public sector workers threatening strike action and a country living in fear of cuts to essential services. Would it not have been a good time to show some solidarity and carry on working on the issues that need addressing?

Oh, I know that politicians are terribly hard done by, working eighteen to twenty hour days, long nights in parliament, long days in constituencies, constant stress and pressure....but....I have those things in my own way, and I certainly don't get in excess of £50K a year for doing it. We are all working hard at the moment, trying to keep our heads above water, many of us working two jobs just to make ends meet and still struggling, but this is not the point. The point is that we need our politicians. Love them or hate them we do need them to be on the job, making the tough decisions, making the changes that need to be made to create the growth and recovery that we need to move forward.

This is not too much to ask I don't think. Politicians make a choice, they are not forced to do the job they do, they do it, it the main for noble reasons of a sense of duty, or a sense of wanting to make this country better. Sure, they make mistakes, they act inappropriately, they fiddle the odd expense form, but they still have a job to do, and many of them do that job well. We need to work with our leaders, and in addition, they need to work with us. We should all be contacting our MP's with our concerns, our fears, even our suggestions, and being part of the solution, rather than part of the problem. This is, I think, what Mr. Cameron really means when he talks about the big society. All of us, working in harmony and unity towards a brighter and more sustainable future where those in need are looked after, and those who contribute most are fairly rewarded, where it is safe to walk the streets and all of our children are well educated and productive irrespective of background, ethnicity, gender or anything else.....It may sound like a pipe dream, but I truly believe that together we can make it happen....

Hard decisions and how not to make them....

We are currently seeing widespread trouble across the United Kingdom, and there are a variety of reasons being put forward. Dis-satisfaction at the police and their actions, budgetary cuts to social and welfare services, political inaction in the face of economic disaster, falling incomes, rising unemployment, disaffection amongst inner city youth, anger at the state of the nation, and I'm quite sure that some or all of these have their impacts, but they are not justifications. Until 9pm last night the police in Birmingham had orders not to engage looters and rioters except in protection of personal safety. This meant that looters felt that they had free rein to act as they wanted and, in my opinion gave completely the wrong message. As we have seen, cctv footage has been widely used to arrest looters with 24 hours, but this is not the point. The damage done to property and livelihoods is tremendous, as is the harm done to communities and societies in general.

From the outset it should have been clear, indeed was clear to many people that there was a lot of opportunist thievery that could and should have been prevented. By actively engaging looters and rioters things would almost certainly have been more heated initially, but would have been resolved far more quickly. The use of rubber bullets and baton charges would have dispersed opportunist groups immediately and left a far smaller hard core of troublemakers who could have been mopped up quickly. I understand that the police are under pressure, but this is the reason for the title of the post. Tough decisions needed to be made, consistently need to made on a situation by situation basis, indeed as situations develop. More importantly these decisions need to be made quickly, and made by unit commanders on the ground in possession of the facts.

If we think about the way that military units operate in similar urban combat situations, we see that the squad leader on the ground has authority to stand off or to engage as the situation requires, assessments are made quickly and effectively and orders are followed instantly. I am not suggesting that a military solution is the way forward, but certainly there are things to be learned across disciplines. I can also understand tha there is a level of fear amongst police officers as there is little backup or support if they make a mistake and members of the public are injured or worse, but this is a consequence of the failure of our political leaders and feeds into the difficulties in taking tough decisions by leaving the police feeling isolated and unsupported. This feeling is in part because people have generally lost faith in the police.

In the current climate we need a fresh start, and fresh approach whereby we stand firmly behind our police forces, letting them know that we will still support them even when they make an occasional mistake, or there are bad apples that need to be removed. Only by acting in this way will we regain an effective police force and the control that is needed. You can imagine having a manager who encourages you to take risks, to try things, to think outside the box and allows you to do this by making sure that you know that they have your back covered no matter what as long as you are doing your best. Now imagine working for a manger who, you know, is going to stab you in the back the first oppotrunity they get....result? your performance drops, you are constantly looking over your shoulder, you don't achieve much at all....which is better?

An interesting weekend for Londoners.....

Well I guess we were probably overdue a bit of street theatre here in the UK. We typically have some form of rioting about every ten years or so, and generally it is during a period of hot weather. It is questionable as to how much if any effect the weather has on these things, but it is as good a reason as the official one. Apparently the police responded to an incident of an armed man, received fire, and returned it, killing the man. This sparked a response from the local community, leading to widespread rioting and now looting. Anything can be an excuse for this sort of behaviour, but what it tends to come down to is that our society is a lot less stable than we like to think.

There has been a suggestion historically that society is only three meals away from anarchy, but this has never been the case. We see extreme poverty and hunger around the world but seldom the complete breakdown of society despite people missing not just three meals but hundreds. The causes of civil disobedience are many and varied but boil down to just one think. Society, as we have it currently established simply doesnt work in any real sense. People don't "get on" with each other, in the main they barely tolerate each other, and are in a constant state of stress. In normal situations these stresses are dealt with successfully, but once a trigger has been found anarchy is the prefered solution.

If we want to have a society that works, and that is stable we need to completely rethink the way we do things, the way society is managed and governed and the way that it is organised. We need to find a way to encourage people to take pride in themselves, their communities and the wider World as a whole. This can not be enforced or ordered by laws but must come from within, from education and understanding between all peoples. The big problem, and one which must be addressed if we are to succeed as a species is ego. We need to find a way to deal with our egos on an individual and group level such that we remove, or at least subsume the selfishness that causes most of our problems. This is not going to be easy....

When dreams become nightmares....

Many of us have hopes and aspirations, and for some of us those develop far enough to become dreams. For some these can be as simple as being financially solvent, for others they can become much more complex, for example running ones own company, having a million opunds in the bank, having a happy and successful marriage and family life or whatever it might be. Some of us go on and achieve those dreams, sometimes through luck, sometimes through hard work and determination. Whatever the route to achieving those dreams, one would think that getting there would be the start of a period of bliss and contentment. I wonder however, just how often those dreams turn out in reality to be rather less plerasant than we anticipated. How many people have taken the big step of setting up in business for themselves, only to find that the reality of dealing with bureaucratic regulations, and finances and staff and sales and marketing and all the other headaches that come with that particular route turn that dream, which is often a dream of freedom from wage slavery into a nightmare in which one is trapped and can see no escape.

How often does what appears to be a dream relationship quickly turn sour as what were once endearing and charming characteristics become nails-down-the-blackboard spine tingling, or even worse, when that relationship becomes abusive. As a species we appear to be unique in the we strive for our dreams. We have moved beyond the immediacy of thought followed immediately by action, we do not respond simply to stimulous, we plot and plan and scheme and try to find solutions to barriers put in our way, but in so doing, I wonder if perhaps we haven't lost some of the simplicity that can actually make us happy.

There have been arguements that we are driven to have these dreams and aspirations by the media and particularly advertuising, but for me this is anj oversimplification. I am pretty much convinced that the drives which make us reach for the stars are the self same drives that encouraged us to come down from the trees and explore the savannah grasslands of African that were the birthplace of our species. They are fundamental to our evolution, but as such they should be explored and better understood in an attempt to try to create a better connection between understanding our dreams, understanding our route to achieve them and understanding that having achieved them there may be new dreams aheda, but having the capacity to enjoy the contentment of a job well done, at least for a little while....

How do you solve a problem like the budget?.....

In the UK we are beset by an horrific budget defecit which is seriously limiting the availability of government finance, and indeed seriously limiting the governments ability to engage fiscal economic controls. Unless we are very careful we are at risk of seeing our currency adversley affected as well as seeing our inflation rate rising. Already we are ina  position whereby household incomes have fallen in real terms to the levels they were at ten years ago, and recent reoprts suggest that this situation is only likely to worsen. Coupled to this we must consider that unemployment is rising, and that the job market is largely stagnant, particularly in the regions. It is also clear that the housing bubble, has, if not burst, then at least is slowly deflating. We seem to have avoided the catastrophic housing price collapse that theDaily Mail regularly likes to scare its readers with, but that is not to say that it isnt still a possibility.

So, what are we, and more specifically our poklitical leaders going to do about this? David Cameron seems fully committed to a programme of engaging communities to bring forward voluteerism to shoulder some of the burden faced by the NHS and particularly the care sector. In addition he seems to feel that by driving change in the most deprived areas he can alleviate some of the costs to government of rising poverty levels. Personally I think he is going about this in completely the wrong way, since the blitz spirit that he seems to be trying to engender was a grass roots movement caused by the extreme desperation of a global conflict. At present much of the worst news regarding the economy is being supressed and it will only be when there is complete open-ness about our national situation that the general public will understand how precarious our position is.

I strongly believe that Mr Cameron et al are failing to give the British public the respect they deserve in terms of assuming that open-ness will lead to societal collapse. I would suggest that the time for sugar coating the pill is long over. As a population we are acutrely aware that we are in trouble, and are aware that there will have to be significant sacrifices that must be made. We are prepared for these sacrifices, we understand what must be done. As a nation we are well used to hardship and struggle and we are strong enough to cope. I would graetly appreciate it if our leaders came clean, held there hands up to the mistakes that have been made, humbly and sincerely apologised for mis-leading the British public and started to work tgether, not just as a coalition but across party divides to try to fix the problems that we face. Only by doing this can the British public be moved from their current position of cynicism with regard to oplitics and be engaged to take the necessary steps to make our nation great once again.....

Cover versions and the rise of anarcho-punk....

The ethos of the original punk movement was that nothing is sacred, not religion, not politics, not monarchy or society, anarchy by another name creating an atmosphere in which artistic expression became de rigeur, and intellectual achievement was measured by ones ability to extemporise and to grow beyond formerly perceived boundaries. There have been claims that the punk movement died with Sid Vicious and the excesses of the Ramones, but far from this being the case I would suggest that there is a good arguement that within the metal genres the punk ethos is by no means extinct. When I listen to Marilyn Mansons cover version of Sweet Dreams of Tainted Love I see someone who truly understands the punk principles that you can take something wonderful, mis-shape and twist it, deform and corrupt it, and end up with something even better than the original. By darkening and introducing elements of power goth, nu-metal, fantasy and theatre the cover versions carry, forme, far more power.

Then we can look at bands like me first and the gimme gimmes and their punk pop cover versions of show tunes, country and western and pop standards. They are a band made up of members of other bands who get together specifically to have a bit of a laugh and to be irrevernt and express themselves musically with the songs that they grew up listening to converted to a style of performance that they better understand. Seeing them live is an experience not to be missed, holding true to the hard drinking punk traditions of old but with a deep vein of humour. Then you have bands like Hayseed Dixie, not necessarily punk in sound but almost certainly punk in principle making country versions of metal tracks. Even Rolf Harris got in on the act transforming some rock classics in his own inimitable style combined with his unique artistic style.

I am here to tell you that punk is not dead, it will never be dead as long as there are people who understand that we stand alone in this World, that life is short, that there are no rules but those that we make for ourselves, that there are no limits to what each of us can achieve unless we limit ourselves......

The idoiocy of British politics.....

In Britain we have a predominantly three party political system with a few fringe parties beyond that. The main parties are Conservative, towards the centre-right of the political spectrum with an emphasis on devolved power to regional centres, a minimisation of government spending and intervention and a liberalisation of the economics of capitalism to drive the economy forward. We then have the Labour party, centre-left in position leaning towards centralisation and government control, guided by quasi-socialist principles of a fair society through political intervention. Between the two major players we find the Liberal Democrats who tend to be rather more left-centric than was the case in the past, being focused on creating a better and more equitable education and health system by reducing government spending on what they consider to be non-essential areas such as defense. This is of course a drastic overslimplification, but such is the nature of blogging.

Currently we are operating under a coalition government of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, with the Conservatives being the dominant party in the coalition. We are also in a particularly delicate and fragile economic position as we slow start to emerge from a severe economic downturn. We are in an interesting position as a consequence of our economic situation that whichever party had been successful at the last election would have been faced with the need to make drastic cuts in public spending in order to reduce the deficit caused by bailing out our banking sector to the tune of almost a trillion pounds. It seems to have escaped everyones notice that we bailed out thebanks in the form of purchasing shares and that at some point the government will be in a position to sell those shares, and with a following wind they may even turn a profit on them for taxpayers - although given our history particularly with our sales of our gold reserves in the 1970's we do have a habit of missing the curve in terms of selling our national assets.

The idiocy mentioned in the title is that it appears, as a voter it makes little if any difference which of these apparently varied parties I choose, or indeed if I choose non of them. I am left in the same position of limited government action, limited accountability, limited responsibility. I want, crave and need a party that will engage with the British public at a far more fundamental level. That will understand at a core level the hopes dreams and aspirations we the citizens have for our great and beautiful nation. That will want to work hand in hand with, rather than against those of us who are committed to making our country better. But what do we get? Politicians who seem incapable of reaching a position of power without engaging in corruption, without being in the pocket of one corporation or another, without having an eye on the revolving door exit strategy that seems endemic in Westminster. I believe that enough is far too much, and that the time is ripe for root and branch change in our political system. We need to stand up and be counted as with one voice at the next opportunity we state quite clearly that given the available choices on the ballot paper we would far rather write in re-open nominations......