Beadle asked for more. Oliver Twist says no

Enough! to the injustices of the housing industry

We probably know that scene from Dicken’s novel where the titular pauper orphan boy holds up his gruel bowl before his benefactor and asks for a second helping. We are used to being in Oliver Twist’s shoes – the dependant far smaller than those in authority over us, ‘fortunate’ to be in the care of an institution. We are used to being told that their benevolent provision has saved us from the streets and the gutter but we must now submit to their regimes, their fees, their rules. If we do not pay directly but live from charity we especially must accept the menu and portions given to us. We do not return to the front of the room, to the powerful one’s area, and in public ask for more. Oliver asked politely and suppliantly, holding his bowl out, but at the level of the man in front of him.

A beadle is but one example of one of our many kinds of administrators claiming authority – often more than they really have.

I hereon concentratate on those relating to housing: local authorities, legal figures, and most of all, landlords.

Did you know that judges are in fact just senior administrators?

Administrators tend not to be chosen by the people. Landlords are those who aren’t even called to office; there is no calling or bar for them in any sense.

Like the likes of beadle, landlords claim that they too are providing something – shelter – which you would suffer without. How magnanimous of them. So it’s quite reasonable for them to have to charge you – they do have to make a living, of course. And what’s wrong with making money? Investing is shrewd. Buying and selling, gaining lucrative planning permissions, making good returns, are all skills. It is a legitimate and necessary business.

I wish to stop there and get us to roll over this stone.

And then I wish us to think about the injustice of evictions, and I’ll share some of my recent experience on that, including the legal system, the council, and charities meant to assist those facing homelessness.

My story began last summer, when on the day that covid rules ended (but so did the moratorium on eviction and rent raises), my landlord asked for more. He knew of my long term financial difficulties and that thanks to the government shutting down businesses and expecting us to stay at home for many months that I was unlikely – like so many of you – to have improved my situation during the pandemic period.

A day is coming, and is now here, where it is Oliver who has the right of refusal. It is those who hitherto charged us who raise up their bowl to us. May we? Nope. Landlords, along with others we pay our bills to, have already had so much from us. They’ve hoarded gruel and the bowls it goes in for too long. They have made us beg them for something to eat. They have made a roof over our heads and the supplies that go with it something that is conditional on us placating them. They have made it their gift, not our right. They have made this placation an endless abasement, a debt that we are never released from.

I recently pointed out that that is slavery.

I want us to think about landlordism – yes, that’s the term for it – as hoarding resources and selling them back to us, as I have already written of regarding utilities (gas, electricity, water). It is known as rentier capitalism – that of hiring out resources permanently, which the users never own, even though most housing (unlike a wedding dress or a holiday vehicle or hotel) is a long term need. The landlords set the prices, not us the dweller/consumers. We can choose to some extent where we live and with whom we contract, but unless we own outright (and are not in a managed property), third parties claim rights to repossess that home and to have control over what goes on in it – who lives with us, whatcauses we promote outside of it, expecting us to submit to inspections and repairs, and often paying their bedfellow – the insurers.

In the last couple of years, the disparity of power and the poor behaviour of many landlords (including the failures of the legal system) have been exposed to the point that a sea change is occurring, internationally.

This is the water that is surrounding King Cnut:

In Britain, the hated legislation that contains the clause which gives the landlords the right to move you on without reason or automatic recompense is the housing act of 1988 (no capitals, any more than I give for the established church). Although its section 21 is infamous – that’s the bit that allows the judiciary power to arbitarily order your forcable ejection and create you homeless – the whole act is objectionable. It was created in a little chain of acts under our then conservative government (deliberately lower case). I may surprise by saying that in one sense, I support ex-prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s moves to sell off council housing because I want people to own their homes and I do not not think that councils are good landlords. There is much intrusion into tenants’ homes and lives, and if you’ve ever tried to get on a housing list – even and especially in a crisis – you’ll know how rubbish they are. I will talk more about that later. I do not support getting everyone on a mortgage, for it is a swindle and gives your power to banks, and makes you another kind of slave. At least this slow filling bucket with a hole does lead to eventually stopping casting money in a bucket, and the bucket becomes yours to do with as you wish – except for tax. Renters’ buckets never fill and they never get the bucket at the end.

But the late and controversial Maggie’s push to get us owning, not renting, affected landlords. I’ve seen figures that under 10% were renting around the time of this act. Landlords felt that they had less legal rights than tenants now (good, that is the right way round) and that their market was too small. Rent capping – making limits on how much could be charged – was spoiling their favourite doctrine: the free market.

So my understanding is that this act of 1988 was created to encourage a wider rental housing market with the freedom for landlords to charge what they want.

The infamous section 21 of that act gives the landlord the right to move tenants on at their whim, mostly to create more wealth for themselves. That’s right: the power of arbitrary homelessness is purely so that landlords are able to make more money. They can move on people who simply aren’t paying the rent that they’d like – or who stand up to them (eg over not doing repairs, dealing with anti social behaviour, or for turning up at tenants’ without sufficient warning – all of which are illegal).

Please sit with that a moment.

The clause about non payment of rent (section 8) which is internationally considered a common and reasonable reason to to evict is also about making wealth for the landlord, and is also unfair. We should and do have the right to withhold payment – for shoddy service (interpersonally), for lack or faulty goods (a home not fit for habitation, and breaking the intrinsic right to quietly enjoy), and if we have overpaid. To undermine this right is to create serious inequality and is a human rights issue. It is a form of slavery to say your home is at risk if you don’t keep paying for something which costs the owner little, which the landlords generally didn’t even build, and which never ends, and that rights are one-sided.

Why should landlords keep getting for doing little to nothing? Especially when it keeps us in work we maybe don’t like, giving a high proportion of our income away to them, whether we’re rich or poor.

Those who attack the notions that rent is theft and that most landlords are bad are landlords themselves, or attached to them. They’re feudal enough to consider that they offer a service that we would be without, if it weren’t for them. There’s still a lick of that old school “I own you”, “respect me, I’m your landlord.” They expect to act like that beadle and for us to be Oliver Twists, up to that point of the double helping.

I found this piece ‘The Myth of the Good Landlord’ by Tom Lavin very interesting, although I reject his solution: government ownership, at any level, is not public ownership and certainly not the people’s. Let us not confuse them; for the government is not benign – you just give it greater power and create it as a huge landlord.

I also have written several pieces of my own, often in emails to policy makers. I was not happy with the stance and [utter lack of] assistance of Shelter – Britain’s most famous housing charity – nor the Citizen’s Advice Bureau (there’s something legally dubious about the word ‘citizen’ – it means owing allegiance to your nation in return for protection.)

There are those who might protest that they are good and busy landlords, kept busy by the government’s growing demands. I have found that this list is less about real tenants’ safety and rights, and more about landlord compliance to checks which are lucrative to those that undertake them (such as gas engineers), and as one writer argued, is about keeping your chattels (ie us rent payers) still valuable (ie able to pay and not dead or suing due to gas leaks).

I was shocked at how much of a countersuit against eviction depends on not only on checking our electric and gas – even during the years we’re meant to have limited who came into our homes! – but on having a valid Energy Performance Certificates (whose real value I query).

Council workers asked me this first: they actually confessed (I recorded Mr PT at Norwich City say it) that their concern at the homelessness prevention team is to establish if they have any legal requirement to help; they and will dump you if not, not caring if you die in the gutter. This council spied on me after the notice period expired (still when covid was meant to be rife and restrictions in place), hoping that if I seemed to have moved on (rather than face the violence of bailiffs) that they could wash their hands of me, which they think they did.

They are wrong – read the below.

If you move before you’re pushed, the council can claim that you made yourself voluntarily homeless and thus you are not assisted; if you sit tight in a home you’re not welcome in with a legal case over you, you wonder if you’ll actually receive the papers inviting you to court to defend yourself and whether you’ll receive a fair hearing, and warning – or could the bailiffs just turn up? (You should have several warnings and opportunities to defend but I found that legal post doesn’t always arrive). Living with that fear is very stressful, as I heard other local families state on news last Christmas.

I say this not to scare, but to illustrate the injustice of the system which we must fight against.

I’ve wondered how much of my own experience to share. I’m aware of attempted repercussions, but I remind that it’s only slander/libel if it’s untrue; and that speaking out is whistleblowing, which is protected, and it is about protecting others from particular companies and individuals, and calling them to account to to make reparations. I write nothing to be vindictive or vexatious, although I believe I have been on the receiving end of both of those from those to whom I allude; my home and income was lost through the bloody-minded actions of others – especially particular individuals at the supposed Housing Options department and revenues and benefits at Norwich City Council, HMCTS (the court service), and my former landlord – a man who’s been investing in multiple properties since the 1970s, and had over 30 tenants when I moved in, on top of a presumed public pension and other business.

I had lived long term in a tiny one room home, not fit for purpose and with no commercial value, unable to move on. “A bolt hole, suboptimal at best,” said one visitor – “not a serious home”. “It’s the second worst home I’ve seen in Norwich” said another. “I wouldn’t swap with you.” Yet my landlord had received tens of thousands for my just being there.

Those concerned have been individually and personally put on permanent notice, and know who they are. At this time, I will just name my landlord, Clem Vogler of Norfolk. He is on the net for several reasons – his Dec 2018 Telegraph article on helping landlords avoid the new tax rules (he saved over £50,000) in which he confirms the size of his £4m property portfolio, and his work for infamous Golden Eye International, which is verified on his own website.

As for his interactions with me, his own words and actions convict him. Both are utterly provable and undeniable.

There will be repercussions for any repercussions.

I will here point out that

-the court, with its huge backlog, processed his forms (at Christmas) in under a week but failed to serve my countersuit over some months, despite his form missing sections

-the council wanted instrusive forms and compliance from me (as did HMCTS) to do anything

-there is strong circumstantial evidence of collusion

-the unfairness that Rent Repayment Orders (designed to punish rogue landlords) do not benefit council tenants or benefit recipients nor those with live-in landlords, and are again about those checks

-few lawyers seem really interested in championing tenants, especially if you need support to pay their fees (that legal dress down piece is coming). A real champion I found was a Californian firm – do look at what tenants were awarded. I like reading their site for empowerment.

Don’t feel that if this isn’t where you live that no-one can help.

I hope this inspires any genuine lawyers and paralegals to assist in this battle, and any true judges.

We need a new legal system, and many are looking to People’s Courts and Grand Juries.

I think it’s time that homes simply were: perhaps we could pay to buy, repair or build one but not to live in it, certainly not to the tune of what we’re used to paying. Homes need to be given to the those who live in them. As for landlord being compensated – they have been, all along. It’s called rent.

All those who have been part of the injustice should be ashamed

Every bully landlord – and bank – and those who support them (such as bailiffs) needs to make reparations, now.

We need to end this slavery and the system that makes it not only possible, but pretends that it’s normative.

My fomer landlords wrote in to the Telegraph nearly 30 years ago with his views on tyrants. The irony is clear: it is not just political dictators at a national level who are tyrants, it is anyone who ill uses (often self-given) power.

I was put at risk by Clem’s actions, and those of those courts and council, like so many others. Those doing so in these last couple of years especially are reprehensible and are guilty of crimes and liable for all the distress they caused, your losses, inconvenience, detriment to your income, relationships, health…… there are many in an eviction.

There are consequences for evicting people and all injustice – certainly in the next world, but I’d like them in this, now.

And I wish to see the end of landlordism and bully banks. The new world is here. Beadle’s bowl is empty.

If I go silent…

As already warned, if this stops (and I’m currently planning a weekly Lent piece and have advertised services each month til Sept on betweenthestools.webs.com) something will have happened to me. It is possible that it might.

On top of the below, my home is also in jeopardy

I am being harrangued for a debt I don’t owe whilst in hardship by EDF, who was given this household’s supply by OFGEM when it closed down several small companies in 2019.

Unbelievably, this is happening during cold months and a full strict lockdown!

I consider that this is a crime on several counts:

1) fraud by nondisclosure, as per 2006 act: that free energy exists and that patents have been suppressed, thus giving the illusion that energy can only be supplied by for profit companies (the same is true of water), when it is a naturally occurring, God-given free resource which has been harnessed and sold back to us, and it’s hard to avoid or find alternatives

2) the energy industry is a form of modern slavery as per 2015 act, holding us in lifelong custom: something we need, can’t easily find an alternative from or not use. This supplier took over without consent or knowledge or warning and will not relinquish without paying them; but the amount grows as they continue our abusive relationship

3) as utility acts such as the 1989 and 1990 clash with inalienable natural Common Law and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 and various other laws, some to be listed anon, that the so-called powers given to energy companies to gain money and bully are not lawful

4) removal of energy takes our rights (as in the UDHR) to eat, wash, be warm, work, communicate, and have leisure and enjoyment. Particularly, it can cut those off who rely on the internet and mains charging operated phones, thus making them vulnerable, and causing a snowball effect

5) cutting off, or the fear and bullying around doing so and ‘recovering debts’, causes mental and physical suffering, as well as great inconvenience and loss.

a) These are recoupable in monetary terms of the claimant (ie customer’s) choosing

b) this amounts to constructive demise or manslaughter  – including attempt and conspiracy to commit this serious crime (attempt and conspiracy apply for all the others below)

6) asking for money in a way which is upsetting, intimidating or distressing is another criminal offence under the Prevention From Harassment act of 1997 – and most debt demands fulfil this, and are not incidental, but designed to cause fear in the way they are worded, in the design of the ‘red, urgent’ envelopes, in the vagueness of who and where the collector is, offering a generic phone number; bluffing about their powers and a warrant; coming to the door with hand delivered envelopes to embarass in front of household members and neighbours; and the way they appear at your door to actually collect or tamper with supply

7) There is Aggravated Trespass under the Criminal Justice and Public Order act of 1994, where if you have given written notice that implied access to your property (I include remotely, in the case of smart meters), to enter the premises (including outside areas) without written permission and especially with ill-intent, is a further summary, ie imprisionable offence

8) this is also exhortion and blackmail

9) it is an aggressive sales technique, no different from drugs barons and loan sharks

10) a prepayment meter is just another way of forcing debt repayment; and as the customer doesn’t set the amount, if they do not have resources, they are still left without power and heat

11) this is closely related to the data and surveillance and weaponised energy of 5G via smart meters, and so this is

a) espionage

b) mass experimentation under the Nuremburg code of 1948

c) biowarfare

12) it is also breaking and entering, if they force or pick locks

13) any physical abuse has other crimes – such as battery, grevious bodily harm, assault

14) lying or tricking to gain entry is also a crime

15) their involving your neighbours breaks confidentiality – such as asking about you, getting them to let them in. This is against their industry code

16) during lockdowns and other restrictions related to covid, they break the coronavirus act 2020. Utility workers are only classed as keyworkers when they are keeping a supply running and safe. They are not permitted to work or travel to harass and cut off – this is especially reprehensible during an extended pandemic when so many are anxious have weakened immunity, and financial difficulties. When most of us are not meant to see loved ones, especially indoors – how can they justify coming to us?!

17) if the operatives are masked – this includes a locksmith or any enforcement with them – this heightens the offence as, despite covid guidance, it is done with criminal intent and knowingly

a) makes them look sinister, thus adding to fear of the customer

b) hides their identity and obfuscates justice

18) any persons involved, including administrators and the judge who created any warrant

19) to exaggerate one’s legal powers is also an offence

Furthermore, utility companies send out – and sell out – debts and debt collectors who have no knowledge of the communications between the company and the customer; such as whether they are misbilled, or even the right person. I also believe that poor service, such as being ignored or bullied, means a rebate on the ‘bill’.

The ombudsman have consistently exacerbated and failed to put right, and OFGEM’s policies have added to this too.

We need to take the power back into our hands; to choose our energy source and provider; to harness free, safe energy.

I am putting EDF staff on notice for all these.

Has anyone else had any similar trouble for this, especially in the last year? I would like to know the extent of the problem

I am considering class action. An expression of interest in no way commits you, especially financially.

You may be interested in my piece at https://elspethr.wordpress.com/2020/08/22/expulsion-from-the-garden-its-time-we-took-our-energy-back

And if you want to know who to contact: execteam-exeter@edfenergy.com

and ask for Operations Manager

Customer Intervention Team

Why quarantine and isolation are wrong

QI is another aspect of this disgraceful fraud and tyranny that need challenging, but I’ve not yet found anyone who’s written any guides or downloads to assist. So I felt that I should offer one.

I’m not a lawyer, but I reject the notion that we have to put paranoid disclaimers on our work to avoid falling foul of lawyers, part of the elite. A legal attack on me will bounce right back with bells. Big Ben sized ones. In excess of 13 tons.

That’s the spirit I want all of you to have. I’ve had enough of stress and fear and glass ceilings and this tell tale culture and bully boys and girls.

Who exactly are these people – these unelected rich few who think that they can dictate to us?!

How exactly do they think they are safe from our wrath and justice?

POLICE, POLICYMAKERS, PROPAGANDISTS ARE ACCOUNTABLE TO US

Some statements you can share with anyone trying to make you isolate:

1 THE VIRUS IS GREATLY EXAGGERATED TO CREATE FEAR – and I think I have to add, to control the populace and commit genocide. I really don’t see how that can not be true

2 THOSE THAT PERPETUATE THE NARRATIVE ARE PARTY TO TREASON

Yes, really. Disclosures are coming, trials are coming.

As per Article 61 of Magna Carta: to defy an unjust government is our duty

Those who stop us commit treason.

And all of you ever owned by Britain – that’s many of you – can claim this article.

(Yes there are arguments claiming this is invalid, but the principle remains)

Covid rules have broken every article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – now that’s all of you! And your country’s constitution

3 SOME OF THE OTHER CRIMES COMMITTED VIA COVID & ITS RESTRICTIONS:

(several are ‘crimes against humanity’ – marked in red: genocide is one too)

Tick which apply – most will:

• battery (including manhandling and handcuffing)
• assault
• harassment
• unlawful imprisonment: this includes temporary hold up – a blocked door – curfew, and the perception of punishment and fear to make you feel you can’t go out: lock, key and guard not required
• medical rape
• biowarfare (the disease, the tests and the vaccine)
• energy weapons (that’s what 5G is, and yes, covid is connected)
• aggravated trespass (that’s for enforcement and health workers entering your home or place of work or worship without your explicit informed consent, with intention for any of these)
• mass experimentation without informed free consent WE DO NOT CONSENT
• exaggeration of powers: as this is all based on wrongful laws, that’s pretty much everything that police try to do. Covid Marshalls and private security have no authority as they have not taken oaths; those that have (police and military) must be held to them… they are operating under the law of the sea, not the Universal Common Law of the LAND and to uphold the rights of the people they serve – that’s us, the people (not their puppet masters)
• kidnap – that’s taking you in their car, to the station, to prison or court, to ‘quarantine’
• parking a car to cause inconvenience, alarm or annoyance (so that’s road blocks and screeching up on the pavement to arrest)
• intimidation

4 YOU AND THE GOVERNMENT ARE ACTING ‘ULTRA VIRES’ – ie beyond your powers Nice pun (virus/vires). Abuses of position are the crime of malfeasance.

***AS THE GOVERNMENT IS A FAKE CORPORATION, IT HAS NO POWERS***

And neither do its police. It’s a slight of hand usurping company – it’s true round the world.

5 AS THERE’S NO STATE OF EMERGENCY, THE LAWS FALL – THEY ARE NULLED

As the ‘pandemic’ isn’t one, there’s nothing for you to be able to compel me with, and no way for you to punish me

6A UK’S HEALTH MINISTER PUBLICLY SAID THAT SELF-ISOLATION WAS NOT MANDATORY VIA THE CONTRACT TRACING APP So if you get an alert on your phone that someone you’ve allegedly contacted has tested positive and has to isolate, you are not in danger of a fine. https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/coronavirus-ignoring-selfisolation-request-from-the-nhs-app-is-not-illegal-matt-hancock-confirms-182555267.html

6B WHY SHOULD THOSE WHO DIDN’T CHOOSE THE APP OR THE TEST TO ISOLATE?

We didn’t enter the contract with you – and if we did, there wasn’t full disclosure. So it’s null & void

7 ****AS THE VIRUS ISN’T INFECTIOUS, YOU CANNOT RESTRICT US!*****

WE DON’T EVEN REALLY UNDERSTAND WHAT A VIRUS IS (LET ALONE THIS ONE)

Germ theory has been prevalent, but it was contested at the time of its creation – the 19^th C – and new evidence further negates the notion of infection. Antoine Bechamp mooted the ‘terrain’ theory – that getting ill is about the milieu or terrain of the host. (Germ theory is good for money and control, so that one got picked up, even though the proponent, Pasteur, is said to have died stating that Bechamp was right). Some facts now becoming commonly accepted in science:

-Our bodies teem with bacteria – they’re the major part of who we are (NB bacteria aren’t viruses)

-Viruses are actually neutral information carriers, and ‘disease’ occurs as the body’s attempt to heal

-We’re still learning what the nature of viruses (tiny gene code) and their building blocks really are

-Scientists have misidentified viruses when they’re actually looking at something else

-The discovery of the microbiome ‘decimates’ the germs as enemy (so let’s hide and vax) theory

-Viruses clear up dead and diseased cells and purge toxins (wonder what that could be right now?)

-Viruses are the response team to something wrong: they share information with other life forms. You’ll only show symptoms if your body has the same problem that the virus is trying to clear up. This is NOT contagion! What’s airborne and dangerous is unnatural toxins, not viruses

-Viruses don’t actively infect, or have the motivation or force to. They’re not even alive

-Viruses need a living host to transmit, so not from surfaces, and only enter us via injection

-Neither Pasteur nor scientists at the Spanish flu of 1918 could prove being to being transmission: despite coughing and sneezing on healthy people, touching the same things, even injection, they didn’t get sick. They also tried it very unethically with polio and monkeys. Same outcome

We also know this anecdotally ourselves: sometimes we get sick when others do, sometimes not

-Pandemics have always come when new technology is rolled out (also near wars of some sort)

-You can’t be an asymptomatic pathogen carrier! You only have it if you are ill with it

IE-You cannot transfer viruses between species – ZOONOSIS IS A LIE; CONTAGION’S A MYTH

https://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/why-only-thing-influenza-may-kill-germ-theory August 2020

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Germ

The Deception of Virology & Vaccines | Why Coronavirus Is Not Contagious

see also the work of Andrew Kaufman, Tom Cowan, and Stefan Lanka…and people for 100 years

This isn’t about health protection, it’s a nefarious agenda.

HEALTH CANNOT BE A BASIS FOR CRIME

The only thing that’s being spread is fear and disinformation – now, that is a crime!

8 AS THE VIRUS HAS A 99% RECOVERY RATE, WHY ARE WE HIDING FROM IT?

9 THE FIGURES ARE COOKED AND THE TESTS ARE WRONG

The deaths figures are cooked, where ‘covid-19’ is put on death certificates of many other causes, sometimes without a test; the PCR test is over 90% wrong, scientifically meaningless, and can’t diagnose a disease which can’t technically be recognised (it has never been isolated in a lab), can’t distinguish between old and active pathogens (does this test first developed 27 years ago really understand them?). It’s the treatment that the vulnerable get (or lack of) which causes the deaths. Most experience it as a nasty flu.

10 AS MOST OF US DON’T KNOW WE’VE GOT IT, WHY ARE WE HIDING?

Respiratory illnesses are not asymptomatic. Ie, you’re ill if you’ve got it.

11 VULNERABLE PEOPLE GET WORSE BY BEING ISOLATED INDOORS (and treated with ventilators, dodgy drugs and being subjected to more EMFs)

12 WHY ARE YOU ASKING ME TO SELF HARM?

-Loneliness kills, it’s an underlying condition (doctors attest to what anyone lonely knows)

-if I’m not living alone, do you want my household relations to fray?

-why do you expect me to starve? (or unable to stop someone I who depends on me from starving)

-why are you expecting me to disappoint someone else’s hope (that one treat with a loved one)

-why are you expecting me to lose money or even my business or job?

-why are you denying me association, an alienable right?

-why do you expect me to lose my mobility by not walking?

-why do you deny me air and sunlight, essential for life and immunity?

-why don’t you recognise the crushingness of disappointment?

-why are you withholding comfort from me or another in distress?

-why are you denying me this long held appointment? especially if it’s about wellbeing

-why are you denying me justice? (if you’re awaiting a court hearing)

-why are you denying me my one treat and pleasure, so looked forward to and needed?

-why do you deny me the chance to know my kids as they start life and loved ones as they end it?

-why are you denying me the chance to say goodbye to someone in this life?

-why are you tempting me to self harm and commit suicide?

13 WHY DO YOU THINK MY LIFE IS LESS VALUABLE THAN YOURS?

Do you know what’ it’s like to live alone in a small flat or bedsit with no garden?

Or to fear going home due to abuse or something else frightening in the home?

Had it occurred to you that I might have medical issues which you’ve now worsened?

14 WHY BELIEVE THE RHETORIC THAT IF I’M OUT I’M SPREADING IT and doing so on purpose or thoughtlessly? Can’t you see that you’re being manipulated and lied to?

15 WHY WERE YOU SELFISH ENOUGH TO GET TESTED AND DOWNLOAD THE APP WHEN IT CAUSES SO MUCH INCONVENIENCE AND SUFFERING FOR OTHERS WHO DIDN’T, INCLUDING STRANGERS? Aggressive, but you see my point (it reverses the usual)

16 DO YOU WANT TO BE AN ACCESSORY TO ALL THIS AND HELP TYRANNY?

17 WHY DO YOU TRY TO TAKE WHAT ISN’T YOURS TO TAKE IN THE FIRST PLACE?

Hopefully you felt empowered and maybe a wry smile. That’s the spirit. You might want to make this into a formal letter form.

WHY THIS MATTERS

If the person who’s allegedly ‘ill’ re-tests and still shows positive, it can mean a long cycle, not just for that person, but those who supposedly have come into contact. It means that quarantine isn’t just the 14 stupid days after you got off a plane, it could be rolling. As Fox news presenter Laura Ingram impersonated NZ prime minister Jacinda Ardern’s traveller quarantine, “you’re not getting out til you’re negative.” And that could mean your class, your team, your church, your household, those not in your household if you are an address of multiple occupancy. It could mean people on the same bus or cafe, people you don’t even recognise. It could happen at any time, whether worsening a lockdown or in a time of relative ease. You seem to be expected to hunker down pretty quickly at hearing the news: can you get your supplies, re-arrange your life for a week, and another, and another….?

It gives the state these ULTRA VIRES powers (ie powers it doesn’t have but creates as a legal fiction to pretend they do) to hold you in imprison without trial, without you being able to defend against them or having an advocate if you wish. You are expected to subject to their system – a test or other treatment – to be released. This is also BLACKMAIL and HOSTAGE TAKING. It’s not even for money but your genetic material. It’s a dangerous, uncomfortable test (why did Kary Mullis get a prize for it?). Or a vaccine which is giving all sorts of reactions – convulsions, burning skin, even swift death. There are concerns about the test being not only a way of getting your DNA for biometric recognition, but actually a way of inserting a vaccine without your consent or knowledge. Many think it is more of an operating system than a true vaccine. It is certainly not properly tested and full of unknown synthetic material.

Submission now means more submission, for you and others. It says, YES, you can hold me at home at will. You can tell me where I go, who I see, what I buy… my body is the state’s, not mine.

And we say: POPPYCOCK (or just the last syllable) to all of that.

Police and enforcement, we need you to stand with us, or sit down forever (in a cell of your own).

YOU TOO ARE BEING LIED TO!

Neighbours, friends, bypassers – we need you to stop tittle-tattling. There is a special article coming about you. But be aware that all the crimes I list are being committed by you – as an accessory and/or conspiracy to commit. It’s just as serious as actually doing it.

Oh… and I’d argue mental and physical cruelty, and attempted constructive manslaughter.

Is that enough for you to back off?!

Eclipse and Cosmic Christmas is coming!

via this website on Sun 20th, 8pm GMT/universal time….. no sign up needed

This Eclipse, we are told we can choose where we put our energies in these final few days of darkening. I have been livid to read of yet more police brutality, such as recorded on Ramola D’s Everyday Concerned Citizen – excellent writing, horrible news; and of course, the vaccine updates…

The phrase ‘Eclipsing Injustice‘ comes to mind, which was the title of a series by Priestess Prescence and Lettie Sullivan this year. This whole broken patriarchal system needs the intense sun to shine behind it and show it for what it is so it can be stopped, healed and transformed. Then it needs the sun to cover the darkness; but also for the divine feminine – the moon – to stand in front of the old, consuming system.

I would also like to report the police who are saying NO to health harassment, those who stood with the people on a protest marsh in Valencia, the law cases and other activism, the whistleblowers, the people who turned police and other heavies away from their gatherings.

WE DO NOT CONSENT. WE WILL NOT COMPLY OR ACQUIESCE

So I’m using this eclipse to focus on the eclipse of all that needs eclipsing, and I’ll be back a week tomorrow

Please join me for this extraordinary event when the Star of Bethlehem is due to shine once more!

A link will magically appear just before 8pm on Sunday so you can listen and look. It’ll be a permanent link, should you not be able to join me at that time. No registration is needed

I also plan a service for Epiphany next month

Why I’m An Abolitionist

Not just of slavery – take that and being anti-racist as a given – but of the police and all enforcement, worldwide.

I’ve been thinking about police for some years. I began a piece about their reform three years ago in which I quickly saw that I needed to ask deep and fundamental questions about the whole of society. And by that, I meant globally. I realised that police are key to the kind of world we live in. And by that, I mean that how they treat us is how safe and free we are.

If you’re expecting me to say: good policing means an orderly, safe world – you’re wrong.

That wasn’t what I was going to say at all.

I may begin sharing my work from June 2017, for the time feels right. There is a worldwide hunger for police reform after the horrific death of George Floyd 2 weeks ago, but sadly he is one of so many that have been brutalised by the force we have to pay to supposedly look after us. Policing isn’t just an American issue, or an issue for those countries that we dismiss as being far away and undeveloped and run by despots. Those people matter too. And they might be your country. Even if you think your country’s police are safe and reasonable, I ask you to think again.

Here is a big point to make early on: that I will not use the country specific talk of so many. American friends and readers, you are especially bad at this, as if you are a synecdoche for the whole world. You aren’t, but right now, the infamous horror on your soil is opening a platform for all of us; and I hope that the strength of feeling against this disgraceful and horrific act is going to open the way for real action on something that has been mooted for a long time.

I am also going to make a point early on which has to be made carefully, for I do not wish to alienate readers at this stage, nor to ever sound as if I in any form tolerate racism or belittle that.

I do not.

However, I do clearly state that I ABHOR ALL FORMS OF INJUSTICE and that for me, there is a bigger bottom line here than racism. My friend said: the attention’s on that fire because that’s where it’s burning at present. And I see that the Black community wants us to look at the fire, because they want us to see what’s been done to them – again. And we witness that with you in anger and sorrow.

But I want to look at fire itself – at this flammable liquid and who’s pouring it.

I am concerned that in the understandable ire and strident voices against the many incidences of racism and the disproportionate amount of police related suffering among non-caucasian people, that there is a new imbalance and set of otherness.

When I began my piece, almost three years ago to the day, I knew that otherness – the concept of people or things being different to you – was the absolute fundament of all else. This basic decision about whether this other form is similar or not to me was quickly followed by, so how shall I relate to or treat them? And that for many, that equalled fear, resentment, treating as less than, abuse.

But there is also a subverted version of this which is being seen via the speaking out, as if those belonging to the other group are all corporately guilty and are ‘other’ to the victims.

Those of us who stand – and I hope that is all of us – against the brutalities of police abuse and against racism, but who are not black, can feel that our solidarity and care must be qualified and earned. What would I or you know about prejudice, brutality, and suffering?

Well, in my own case, more than you might be assuming. I realised that it was possible to stand so vociferously in my own groups’ pain that I wouldn’t let outsiders in, even those who wanted to join with us and stand with us. I could make them feel bad for not having it bad (enough). I could assume the happiness and ease of their lives as compared to me and mine.

I would also like to say – I am on a controversial roll now – that I note that ‘Black’ is often used as a synecdoche for all those ethnicities which aren’t ‘white’ – a description I don’t like. In Britain, we called non ‘white’ BME (Black and Minority Ethnicities), and there’s a new set of initials coined, again leading with B for black. But what about Asian (a wide and diverse group), native American, Australasian; Inuit, Latin… (another broad group who seem to have a new name), Romany, Jew…forgive me if I’ve missed a group, especially if it’s yours. We are many. We are one. We all matter.

I know that black and Asian people and others are disproportionally targeted for police searches and arrests.

But that oft-quoted fact seems to have the horrible logical upshot: that more of the rest of us should be subjected to arrest and search.

NONE OF US SHOULD BE.

I want to abolish stop and search. I want to abolish enforcement targets. I want to abolish spying, weapons, and customs.

I want to abolish the police. Why does only America seem to say this?

I did a little research – it sadly didn’t take much looking – to find negative police incidents in every country I could think of. I don’t know if the beating of a Romani in Romania in April got much international coverage. It should have. “Police brutality” searches get pages of internet search results, as does “police corruption”. Searching “police + bullying” seems to be designed to bring up how to handle bullies, and how to involve the police if you are being bullied. And yet, it was through US churches that I came across a call – and not a new one – to stop calling the cops.

How else might your issue be addressed?

I’ve long felt a discomfort with calling the police. I know that they can worsen a situation, and for some people, it can mean being taken into a system that harms you, or even kill you. There’s the phrase: suicide by police. I keep seeing the statistic that over 1000 people are killed each year by police in America alone. I did a little research and was sickened to learn that these deplorable figures in the US are not the world’s highest. I’m unsure how these deaths by law enforcement were classed – direct shootings or other violence, or did mistreatment in custody resulting in death also get counted? How many of these fatalties are reported and made public? I’m reluctant to quote Wikipedia, but according to its chart, Brazil had 6000, Venezuela 5000 deaths by enforcement each year; the Philippines 3000, Syria was similar to America; India and several African countries were in the hundreds – Nigeria had 800. China isn’t on there! Interestingly Canada is around 30 a year, unlike its neighbour. Much of the rest of the West – Australia, Malta, Scandanavia, Britain – claims less than 10 deaths each, perhaps a single incident, or none. But I know that in the last couple of years, police shot and killed a suspect at a busy London railway station, as happened at Amsterdam in 2018. Thus this high drama risked many people, and the supposed bedrock of democracy – the judical system.

I give you some examples of corruption and brutality, although it’s heart rending and stomach churning. The couple who called the police over their car being burgled as they changed a tyre and the moustache twiddling policeman who implied, give me the expected bribe and I might actually show some interest. The kettled protesters in many demonstrations and the violent clashes and cruel treatments, held for hours. The man who reached for his papers in his car’s glove compartment, and was shot dead because police assumed it was for a gun. The family watching video games at home – also shot. The young women who had sex with 2 officers in exchange for her freedom – who walked free from court. The immigrant told to give a handjob in return for her papers to remain. The organised chronic infiltration of environmental protesters, even entering sexual relationships and having children with them, only to dump their ‘partner’ once the operation was complete. The police who ran drug and child abuse rings, paid huge salaries tax free and given legal exemption whilst ‘peacekeeping’. I could go on… that was just a snippet of some cross-country examples which I could bear to type. None of those were hearsay. And all of those were in the West.

I note that some tabloid British newspapers sided with Trump and the mayor of Minneapolis against the strident calls to abolish the police. I was really interested in this call, which the council of Minneapolis have supported, and that another US place which was considered unsafe – Camden – stopped its police force, and instead created a community based safety system, and seems to be better for it.

But I want to go further than replacing one set of prefects with another. I don’t simply look at official crimes statistics to see if it’s worked.

Calls for the police’s removal seem to be followed by calls for other systems, and I am against systemic control. When we speak of decriminalising cannabis or prostitution (sorry, I won’t call the commodifying of physical love ‘street work’), it usually asks for regulation which means official licensing, and that the government financially benefits from these trades.

I’m asking about the very way that we organise ourselves and who has control.

I am very clear who should not have it.

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I’ve felt uncomfortable with the police for some years – at least 10. I consider it a good day if I don’t see any. I’ve always hated customs and border controls, which puts me off travelling, and I am concerned about internal travel. Why I am anxious about this journey, I ask myself. If I am anxious taking a walk, what am I worried about?

Ah. Doing something ‘wrong’. That some official, especially during the lockdown, will tell me that I have committed a misdemeanour and am liable to be punished. I have the wrong train ticket. I crossed the road in the wrong way. I didn’t touch my smart travel card on the right place. I’m eating or drinking something outside when I shouldn’t be. I’m wearing or not wearing something that I should be. I don’t have permission from the authorities for something, like holding a meeting or playing music, or having a stall or allowing my customers to drink outside my premises. And now, that I might be deemed to be ill or walking unnecessarily, and even barred from buying food that I need, or be forced to give my genetic material to the state, or be taken away and incarcerated, or worse, for not doing those things.

Or for refusing to comply (be meek) when told off for allegedly doing any of the above.

The year I really got uncomfy with the police was the year that I started this project. There were at least three incidents of terrorism in the world at that time, and I want to say that all of them mattered – not the ones in the West or in my country more. But in May 2017, a terrorist bomb was detonated at a pop concert held in an arena in central Manchester. Immediately following this, Manchester cathedral did bag searches! Canterbury cathedral already had armed police in the grounds – two hander rifles; and there were suddenly armed police at other places that I would never have expected them (police in Britain had hitherto usually been unarmed.) Everyone I knew reported having seen them. In provincial, safe towns and cities. Outside the zoo; the library; at the railway station. And everyone going to a concert at an arena in my city had to be searched. Well, with these terrible people about, it’s necessary, sighed one ticket holder. A large annual market in a small town now has a huge police presence.

My thought was: this spreads fear and compliance to the provinces. We’re not just to think that these abhorrent attacks happen in our capital or largest cities. I note that London, Berlin and Paris each had them in recent years. And as well as being the centres of political and economic power and greatest populace, these cities are the hub of creative ideas and free thinking. It was suggested to me that Berlin’s horrific incident sent a message to a chilled, liberal, egalitarian city: It can happen to you too. When it happened in Manchester, it says: it’s not just the capital that can suffer this. None of you are safe, so all of you will need to make sacrifices.

My fear after these atrocities was not Will This Terrorism Come Here but What Erosion Of Civil Liberties Will Happen Next? Of course I was sad for those who suffered – please take that as a given. Of course I would not like such an event near me, although I realised that one in my city, a mid sized historic low crime area, would serve the Population Control By Fear agenda well.

Happily, those armed guards didn’t seem to last, but the police got new powers and ‘toys’.

Because of this heightened discomfort, I read Norm Stamper’s Protect And Serve: How to Fix America’s Police. I was more interested in reforming police per se, but at that time, I couldn’t find other books. You can see my review on Amazon, but I generally disliked the book and was disappointed. The subtitle said alot [sic]: he, as a long serving ‘cop’, was pro-police and had a fix-it mentality. He praised the ‘tools’ – that’s those ‘toys’ – which are a disgrace, and I fear are very common among police internationally.

If both of us were stopped and asked to empty our pockets, who’d you want to let enter?

He had: spray, two guns, numchucks, a taser, two sticks, plus surveillance technology.

I have no weapons and no spying devices whatever.

So even when police stop people who are found with a weapon, is their one knife as bad as all this?! Sometimes people have knives for legitimate reasons, and are not planning to harm. Knives are widely used – in mediaeval times, even monks carried them. Now I’m not suggesting that we all do, but I’m making the point that knives have multiple and good uses. All the above list have only one – to harm, if not kill. And we know that these are (mis)used, and not seldom.

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In 2017, I wanted a new kind of police. I’d long queried army and security agencies.

But now I query them all. Or rather, I don’t query, I assert: NO.

I looked into why we have police.

The answer is that they were created – usually in the 19^th century – to protect government and their lobbyists’ interests. They were to stop rioters; to keep looters from cargo. At the moment, we’re especially being reminded that the American South’s forces grew around catching and returning slaves, and that many forces have a link to immigrant control, and controlling poorer people, who are often from non-white ethnicities.

I think we need to again go broader and deeper, and say: why do any of us need this force?

‘Disadvantaged’ covers a wide kind of person, and I know that poverty and mental illness aren’t situations that can always be easily spotted. I could add many more groups, such as the so called neurodiverse, who also can be picked on by the police, and with tragic results.

Injustice goes after whoever is different. We are back to ‘other’ again. And often other is misunderstood, and seen as a threat. And how you deal with threats is to control them.

I want us to back up a little and take in that police took over from the army and private watchmen, and that they are about controlling ‘rabble’ and protecting property. They are the servants of the ruling group. It is about council revenue acquisition under the guise of enforcing the law.

I have an essay about why the rule of law is unjust. I will just say here that for law to work, it uses fear. There’s the final punishment and that of going to court as a deterrent; and then there are the people who are our first contact, those on the streets, those who pull us into that system. Note that police groups are known as a FORCE. I’ve not heard fire brigades so deemed.

It really has struck me that police have come out of a fear and materialism based culture. They say that they keep us safe, but I wonder if they’re brainwashed into believing that, or just trot it out?

We don’t believe it.

What is truly being safe? We are told, during this pandemic, to keep safe, but I recall a card I loved.

Two butterflies; one in a net, one flying outside. The latter says:

You are safe, but I am free

I know which I’d rather be. The flying butterfly is in many ways safer as well.

When I walk about, am I scared of burglars or gangland war? For some, yes, that is a very realistic concern and it is not impossible that I could be attacked, or that my home could be.

We have a name for government licensed home attackers: bailiffs. (Sometimes they’re even attacking and pillaging on the behalf of the government)

And now, for some of us, we have home attacks in the name of health.

I am more concerned at being stopped, harangued – not by ‘criminals’, but by the very people who define what crime is. For I, like many of us, don’t fit, stand out, do or are something which the establishment doesn’t like. Let us find our unity, not demarcation, in that and go from there into an adventure of new possibilities and an equal, caring world.

————————

I’ve much more to say, which will include my thoughts on why I don’t admire Robert Potato Peel; how we can avoid using police and what a world without police could be like.

I end by reminding that we are all valuable, all deserving of going about freely and without fear or bullying. We’ve recently seen the extreme of police bullying in those murders, but bullying starts with the milder end – the right to stop, interrogate, search, take something from you, watch you.

I believe that we must burn this candle at both ends and stop both.

I remind again of our solidarity as beings, however we self describe and whatever groups we affiliate with. Let our anger at evil acts not cause division and tip the seesaw the other way.

Let us remember too – and I find this harder – that our enforcement workers are people too, and fellow citizens. If any are reading this, please ask how being a good, decent and loving being fits with the tasks you’re given and the very ethos of your work’s existence.

If it were my world, you’d all be having new employment with immediate effect.

It’s all of our world and I’m not trying to rule it (I believe in facilitation, not ruling anyway), but I’ll be sharing my thoughts – which I’ve actually worked on for many more years than three – on how I suggest and invite to build something better than what we’ve all endured for so long.

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1549 Kett’s Rebellion

During my Robin Hood phase, and unable to get to Sherwood Forest, I went to Nottinghamshire, and then to woods where other rebels gathered. Those woods have just been the backdrop to a play on the anniversary of that gathering, in Norwich.

And again, I’m led to decisive historic moments and battlers for justice. I haven’t forgotten Eliot’s Dorothea and Will – the more gentle kind of battlers – and I’ll pop up my article on their story shortly. I’m also returning to that famous forest so they’ll be more about Robin et al too.

But let me stay with Robert Kett – perhaps a name you don’t know, unlike Robin, or Boudicca, or Braveheart – our best known British freedom fighters, who’ll need little explanation, wherever you are reading this from. But Kett has much in common with all these. Perhaps he is Norfolk’s Robin. And let me link Kett, as the play did, with our current climate.

I’m not going to analyse the pantomime-like play, but its theme. The oft sung song reminded us that although the setting was nearly 500 years ago, it ‘could be any time’ – and ours. The mayor was doing a David Cameron impression. The mean ‘nobs’ all from the same school administered cuts to welfare and bullied plebs in a very familiar way.

*

The piece of news that I’m most thinking about from the last few days is the police shootings in America. I feel a little intrepid to comment, for it’s emotive and needs to be expressed well.

What I will say is that the  events at the Dallas protest turned the focus from the shootings by the police to the shootings of the police. I note that there was 1 officer for every 8 people at that demo, which is heavy. And that the demo which followed involved the police using smoke against the people.

The brutality of the killings – and sorry ‘fatal shootings’ won’t do – and the disproportion of the police’s reaction to the situations – over motor offences! –  has made me livid. I join those (isn’t that the whole world?) calling for justice and the curtailing of armed police and this heavy, ugly way of dealing with the public. A public who pay for the services of those who should be keeping us safe – but instead are unjust instruments of the establishment, and from whom we can be in danger.

I think many of us must feel that our growing resentment for the police, wherever we are, has been augmented by these shocking not even lone incidents.

I abhor that black people were the victims of these killings. It wasn’t hard to learn the names of the most recent ones – Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. But I noted that the day before, two more American young men were killed by the police, yet they are less talked about – I struggled to find their names. These both were from Latino heritage. It is significant that they too aren’t white – but also that the African Americans garnered the greatest attention.

Surely ‘Black Lives Matter’ should be ALL lives matter? I hope that’s a given.

There’s also a lesser known “Brown Lives Matter” movement.

I felt a huge de ja vu last night at the play, watching the king’s forces rush to stop the rebels in Norwich, who were slaughtered in battle or executed. Like the events of recent days, the aggrieved side, however we might understand their aggrievement, did things to their aggressors which I couldn’t condone.

But I did note that Kett’s army took England’s second city for a time. I know Bristol and York will want to squeal at this point ‘We were England’s second city!’ Can’t we share that title? But isn’t the point not a petty division (watch for those) but the empowering thought that people can hold a major city from the establishment.

Did the people of Norwich in 1549 feel any safer with the mob at the helm; was that their definition of democracy?

When I look at all those iconic historic symbols of independence, there’s a sadness that their effects were not only curtailed, but that were are still facing those issues, centuries later.

But did they fail? Should we give up trying to change the fact that, as the chorus sung last night “the many serve the few” and that the rich and powerful’s minority interest continue to crush everyone else?

No and no I do not. I do take hope from the fact that these names of freedom fighters are remembered and commemorated. We’re not cheering the mayors and earls who routed Kett’s group, we remember him.

Last night, we lit a beacon on a hill overlooking the city to not only remember the 3000 killed and hundreds hung in Kett’s rebellion, but all those who have struggled against oppression and still do – and feel under it. It was an exciting moment, to see the flames sweep in way I’ve never seen fire do before, to join with cheers and a banner.

Although not mentioned, we were asking and committing to the kind of world that Robin Hood, Boudicca, Braveheart and Robert Kett stood for coming into being. We are wanting a world which is against austerity, against unfair private ownership, and where the brutality of police and other law enforcers (what a phrase!) and the prejudice behind these recent incidents is history. We wish for justice and for reform – the sort that Will Ladislaw of Middlemarch wanted, the peaceful kind.

There was irony that I realised that no-one other than those at the play could see the beacon, despite its prominent position. Even knowing where to look, as I left Kett’s Heights I could just make out a tiny orange glow between trees.

It was also ironic that given this was a play about power to the people, the city council had to give permission for the beacon to be lit. A council that has many failings – lack of accountability and support to the vulnerable and providing basic reliable services; making heavy licensing laws which involve police in civil liberty abuses – but which also hung its flag at half mast for the recent homophobic shootings in Orlando.

Robert Kett, like Robin of Locksley, was one of the rich who instead of squashing the poor rebelling at his gate, joined and led them. In the play, the Mayor changed sides and opinions.

Out of the many warrior princes and princesses I admire, there is one who comes to mind who insisted on never killing, never using unreasonable force, and who stopped wars with love. She saw that forgiveness and change were more powerful than routing enemies. She saw too that the most powerful way to create change was through mind changing – and I add, heart changing.

I refer to my last post and that wonderful quote of Caroline Lucas, ‘where hope is powerful than hate’ – even when we feel we have a just cause; and that healing and uniting communities is more important than demarcation of difference, even self defining; brothers (and sisters) before otherness.

And as Kett’s county’s police motto says – we all need to feel our police’s priority is us.

A film that shows what the people can do

Today, I again saw a film that makes me inspired and alive. It is Belle, which shows us what can happen when people of conviction speak out for justice. It was an issue that felt so entrenched and widespread, with opposition so numerous and powerful, that a hope of quashing it must’ve felt extremely daring.

But this is the real story of how a major step was taken towards justice and the end of something that had caused so much suffering and been a disgraceful aberration of human rights.

It made me think about the essence of all injustice, and how it relates to continuing despicable problems.

A powerful group defines themselves as other to another and sees that other either as a threat or something less valuable than themselves. Therefore, that other is there for their profit, to be silenced and destroyed.

Once we start to care and give features to those we have commodified, once they cease to be expendable or wicked, we cannot continue treating them as we have. This is true of all earth life. It is true of those we call enemies, those and that which we would use for our own gain.

Not saying: it’s always been that way, it’s too big; it’s too costly to change or end, but: this is enough!

The more I read history, the more I see the themes of control by fear occurring, from armies to bailiffs – people carrying out the instructions of another without question. Rebels will be punished. Conformity is rewarded.

But I also read stories of people who did push for change, of balls of moss that gather in size and momentum.

Stories, actual and imagined, can give us the impetus to put faces on those we refuse to see, give voices to those who hadn’t been heard, and to empower us to take on that which pretended to be invincible.

I post this as the Tory party conference takes place in Manchester this weekend.