Council and Accountability: whom serves whom?

This is a double post

We’ve been through a time where two key matters are raised: who is sovereign, and who is accountable to who? They are of course related.

I’ve taken up sovereignty here, but the two questions are stacked: who has ultimate power and agency, and who holds that to account?

Governments have the power to intervene in as well as to provide for many aspects of our life: what we consume, what we learn, what we can do and what can be done to us; where we live, where we work, where we walk, where we ride and where we rest – our cars, and our bodies, when they go wrong, we when can’t look after our own, and when we leave them behind. Our government forces taxes at a rate which it chooses – not us – from all but those deemed on too low an income. It also takes from the goods we buy – those whose pay is not docked for National Insurance and income tax do contribute to the treasury, as there’s no such thing as VAT benefit. [Value Added Tax, for any non British readers – added onto goods we buy here].

We might be happy to contribute to both national and local government in order for them to provide the above services. But if you look at how I described them, and consider that tax is paid on pain of punishment, one might feel less comfortable with assumptions about our state.

We made heroes of our ‘keyworkers’ during the lockdown. We’ve even put out thank you notices to our bin collectors, whom we may’ve hitherto taken for granted. But mine have frequently, in ordinary times, not only strewn bins across the streets and muddled them with our neighbours (like elsewhere in this city), but not bothered to collect. I’ve frequently had mine missed, and Norwich city council and their contractor always tried to blame me. They averred that I’d got the date, time and place wrong – I hadn’t – but I noted the many rules and variables they created which made it possible for them to deem that I, not they, were at fault.

Is a missed bin so terrible, even if it’s over 40 times and you need to spend an hour cleaning due to the rot caused by their remiss behaviours? Actually, the bin service is a synecdoche for our relationship with our council. It’s the most obvious service we (as a household) receive from our council in return for our nearly monthly tax to them. We have no choice about paying it, or who provides the refuse service. If it were privately contracted to us, we’d demand money back or sack the refuse collectors if they often failed to collect all our bins. But if we tell the council that this, or any other problem brought to them, has been such for so long that we’re withholding payment, we are liable for prosecution resulting in bailiffs or prison.

Thus this is a massively imbalanced relationship, showing the one more generally between us, the people, and all tiers of our government.

Now as government rules about the virus are being devolved onto shops and services on pain of closure, this becomes a serious problem. In England, shops are given permission to refuse entry if we don’t wear masks. Bars and libraries are told to take our contact details for tracing and self isolation, or they can be shut down.

Is this the benign provider of publicly owned services that I’ve heard left wingers say they are protective of, and won’t hear criticised?

I believe that the council is accountable to me – and to you. Not the other way round.

During the lockdown, some celebrated civil servants came into work, not to provide but to harass. I know someone who was assured that their housing benefit would continue throughout, but days later, a dreaded green chevron edged envelope appeared demanding details of income on pain of benefit stoppage. The council confirmed that no it wasn’t an automated letter going out by mistake, which would be bad enough; but that they did actually require the information within a month, or the benefit would cease… in the middle of a pandemic! The council failed to action the information – which took some gathering – reluctantly provided and then sent another auto letter saying that this claimant was suspended. If they didn’t get the barcoded form with mostly irrelevant questions within another month, benefit would be terminated, and this household would be expected to henceforth pay full rent and council tax (when both were fully provided by the council). Like so many, this person had lost their income and the stress made them ill.

I find this disgraceful, and what’s even more so, is that the council often sends random letters out like this. It doesn’t write bespoke letters – in fact it often takes the involvement of a third party such as a councillor or Citizen’s Advice to get the council to explain themselves. They talk to the third party, without permission of the claimant, and spout bureaucratic rubbish that doesn’t even match the situation.

I do wonder if there is a training course for this style of response, since I’ve seen it so often. It belittles the complainant, making the professional and their organisation sound entirely reasonable.

Like other benefit providers, this East of England city council didn’t confirm if the award was reinstated or not. You just have to check your bank each day, and wonder if they’ll change their minds again next month.

The council so far won’t apologise. It doesn’t understand that it acted deplorably.

Staff should have only come into work during lockdown to put and keep claims into payment – not to take it away. This cut made me highly suspicious: at best, it’s an inefficient system – the same person said it’s their 10^th such stoppage. At worst, it’s deliberate draining and straining, trying to recoup from the centrally set ideological austerity budget from the poorest and most in need.

The council swiftly stops talking to complainants – they’ve only a two tier internal system. There’s a free external dispute resolution organisation, but the ombudsman is infamous for further unsympathetic timewasting bureaucracy. The grassroots website holding the Local Government Ombudsman to account has been replaced with a false URL and I saw an LGO report about how to ‘manage’ this troublesome group. So you and your complaint can feel not very heard.

Meanwhile, this council wasted its austerity budget on unnecessary road renewing and ever more security cameras, and new things on poles which I suspect are connected to 5G. I’m perturbed that we’re expected to accept ever greater watching and intensified harmful electromagnetic rays. It is us who need to be vigilant and the watchers need to have the lens turned on them. What are they doing?

The post viral world is demanding this fairness ever more loudly, asking who is this body who controls so much of ours (especially recently) and whether it really is in our or their interest that they act; and if it’s not time to restructure or recreate from a fundamental level. Starting with those apologies…

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I’d like to develop this notion of accountability further, taking it to our local representatives of our next level: our member of parliament.

We of the Western world are proud to speak of living in a democracy, and of universal suffrage, but voting is a passive act: you put a prescribed mark into a prescribed box on a form with preset answers. Most of us did not influence the options given to you, and nor can you make a proviso, suggestion, or say: none of the above. It’s expensive to stand for local or especially national government, and it’s as much about marketing – and which party you’re in – than your own suitability. Our first-past-the-post system in the UK ensures that half of the five main parties, and the many smaller ones and independent candidates, have no realistic chance of being elected. The proportion of overall votes for a party doesn’t translate to seats; and the systems at Westminster are so archaic – as described in Caroline Lucas’ Honourable Friends? – that it’s not easy to stand or get things done.

The public can perhaps contribute a little more at both national and local level than we may realise, but it usually involves going via our representative. We in Britain can attend meetings of either government, but we cannot speak – only watch. For Westminster, there’s a queue and a frisk, putting some off and also adding gravitas to the theatre of state in action – just as there is with its twin pillar: law.

We can make suggestions, either to be discussed at a sitting, privately considered by a minister, or just let our rep know how we feel about an issue. There are some personal problems we might want to bring to them – such as the housing benefit stoppage above, which we can take to a local councillor. To our Member of Parliament, there’s a broader range of issues; we’re often fobbed onto them when we can think of nowhere else to turn. This might include complaints procedures we’ve exhausted, before having to consider media or court action. Their portcullis-headed letters are supposed to have weight. But getting a sympathetic and timely one sent out is not easy.

The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman covers the public health service and many government ones in the UK – court administration, the valuation office, regulatory offices like OFGEM for energy, and the tax office. Unlike the other public alternative dispute resolution organisations, you can’t complain directly yourself: you must contact your MP, get him or her to sign the form and pass it to the PHSO. This means that if your MP is not sympathetic or efficient that you do not get your final chance for free redress.

I feel that many MPs are show people who make the right speeches, tweets, and appear at the right gatherings…but are less concerned for the very kinds of people they publicly supported when needy individuals appear in their mailbag.

Working Tax Credit is a top up from the tax office for those working full time on a low income. Now being phased out in favour of controversial Universal Credit, WTC was infamous for huge and often spurious overpayment claims, vociferously chased, to the point of ruin and breakdown. It – like other government support – could disappear suddenly, for specious and mysterious reasons. A random ‘compliance’ check can mean the end of your award – even if you fulfil the arduous and often immaterial request (read, demand) timeously.

Speaking to others in consumer forums and the self employed and creative community, it seems that one or both of the above is very common. I suffered both a demand and an axing 7 years ago, and still do not have an award or the backpay I am due – now several thousand pounds. This sudden cessation – which happened twice more – made it very hard to move forward financially, or in any other way. We even wondered if government cuts are related to your conformity. Are they wary of creators who question the system, but reward – with furlough pay during lockdown – those whose contribution to society (read, GDP) they approve? Has the Chinese system of social credit scoring in fact begun here in Britain, and is ‘compliance check’ rather telling? Do systems of redress only work for those whose work is recognised, who accept the money that they are, or are not, given, and do not assertively complain with threats of taking it further if not satisfied?

My MP, Clive Lewis, was slow to act and failed to send the 40 page supporting document with my PHSO claim. I found out over a year later, when the case was finally assessed – it wasn’t upheld, and nor was the review. But joining PHSO: The True Story, I discovered that this wasn’t unusual. Through freedom of information which I and someone I know obtained, the PHSO confessed that out of 33,316 cases in 2014-16, it financially awarded to a mere 845; in 2014-16, 8% of review requests were upheld, and only 1% awarded to. https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/percentage_of_review_requests_fo#incoming-927328

It was only through receiving the FOI request on my case that I realised that most of it was missing – as were the papers to the tribunal. PHSO invited me to re-enter for another round of unsatisfactory rigmarole, but Clive, who’d only once written personally and not sympathetically during that year, would not. His aide Adam was rude, stating: we’ve given you alot of time (actually not); we have many vulnerable constituents. I replied incredulously that someone living off half benefit level, literally fighting for her existence due to this cut, who had every part of her life affected, was as vulnerable as any. I came to see it as constructive demise.

But they stopped talking to me. I found out that there’s no way to report, complain about or to de-vote an MP, save the next election. Due to the popularity of Jeremy Corbyn, and the desire to stop inequality and Brexit, Labour kept its seat in Norwich South. Hence, when there was another round with HMRC and a related matter, again jeopardising my wellbeing, I had only Clive to turn to. Unlike councillors where there may be a couple in your ward, we only have one MP; and although we can approach any member of the house of lords [lack of capitals deliberate], they cannot become personally involved in our case. Hence we are stuck with one another and I now feel that I do not effectively have an MP, which means no representation in parliament, no voice, and no-one to turn to for those myriad of issues which we have only our MP to recourse to. I can’t go to the PHSO, even if they reform, nor even for the inevitable compensation for their own failings (they did at least cede that – I was one of a dozen that year).

I hope that this has shown that the much vaunted democracy that we try to protect is not living up to its name. It’s a sham elected oligarchy and plutocracy, and our member of parliament shows that our governance not a membership for the people, and our MP is not ‘ours’ in any meaningful way – they’re just who we’re delegated.

I don’t think we’ve moved far from the rotten boroughs supposedly outlawed in the 1832 reform bill. It’s time that we have a far reaching reform, asking fundamental questions, rather than tweaking and repainting what is.

I’d like to ask those in another post, but for now I summarise that both local and national government seem to give and take as they see fit; and now we have global organisations doing the same, and devolving their decisions. I have found that many other institutions and companies – from law to energy providers, banks, and especially those government agencies meant to regulate them – are not meaningfully possible to hold to account. That means that the complaints procedures, and alternative dispute resolution, if there be one for that industry, just don’t work. And that puts us rather at their mercy – and they’re not often very mericiful, as I can personally attest.

In these current times, when the ‘they’ gets greater and more distant and faceless, it is all the more imperative to restore accountability and meaningful dispute resolution.

A site to list Britain’s MPs is called They Work For You; this feels like a timely reminder for our elected representatives, but also a misnomer.

It’s time that name – They Work For You – described exactly what our governments, councillors and MPs (or whatever your country’s equivalent is) do, and that the balance between the people and those who have the privilege of serving us is restored. We do not work, in any sense, for you.

On Sovereignty

https://shows.acast.com/between-the-stools/episodes/on-sovereignty-a-sermon-for-independence-day

Priestess Elayne Kalila Doughty has proclaimed yesterday – America’s Independence Day – an International Day of Sovereignty. And in Sisterhood, I am doing likewise.

I think that when priestesses talk about ‘stepping into your sovereignty’, they mean, owning all parts of yourself and being responsible for them; of making your own choices; of becoming all that you are; of awakening and using all of your spiritual gifts.

I say ‘amen’ to all that, but that’s not really the sort of sovereignty I want to discuss.

I also think that priestesses mean that stepping into our sovereignty is stepping out of oppressive structures, and awakening to the ways in which we are oppressed or allow oppression to happen; we may even be oppressors. That’s closer to what I want to say.

I’ve mentioned sovereignty several times in recent posts, as the virus – aren’t you bored of  that as a character in your world? – has put an ultimate question into sharp relief.

I’m not talking old British coins, or our Queen, or a one time chicken factory group.

I’m not even talking about God, although I will.

I’m taking about us vs the state.

Doing a little research, I was intrigued by the phrase Sovereign Citizen, but I could find no website of such proponents, or even a neutral discussion. Each search result was about the fear felt by the ‘enforcement community’ – conglomerate, more like – of such people. America’s Southern Poverty Law Center is actually about hoiking out extremism – but just how exactly is questioning the state’s role attached to poverty?

What search results really show is what the mainstream wants us to think. Sovereign Citizens – I keep thinking of those chickens – are a threat, we’re told. They’re silly. There’s even a false website with a crude message to would-be sovereigns. They’re dangerous. They do harm. They think they’re above the law. (I’ll analyse that statement in another post). The FBI are after them. They have no legal basis – duh! If they don’t believe in the power of law, why would they even seek a legal basis? However, I have read claims to have found it. I’ve always been against anti-extremist laws, for I can see that this term is a wide net to silence dissent, and that it’s been cast and tightened for some time. As long as there are enough incidents, especially of terrorism, we can allow the law to get stricter. In Britain, we have a regime called Prevent where professionals such as teachers are meant to report, on pain of losing their own jobs, anyone coming into contact with them who sound like they might be extremist. Yes, even toddlers have been reported.

Extremism is clearly meant to be tethered with terrorism in our minds. Terrorism is a broad term and it’s used really about enemies of the state. When heinous acts are committed, we are meant to link these bombings with alternative mindsets; so that for example, the work of the Irish Republican Army and Irish Catholic independence went together. Of course they did not, and there were lesser known Protestant pro British equivalents to the IRA; and still less known were that Irish police and British troops – who the news showed us as necessary peacekeepers, if not heroes – were bullying the people. I only learned that two decades after the peacefire in a museum in Free Derry.

We are being encouraged to see those who declare themselves as Free, ie Sovereign, as a form of terrorism, although I’m not aware that Sovereign Citizens have bombed anyone or taken up weapons of any kind, or are even an organised group.

I hate that Wikipedia comes up top of search results – I try to switch it off, for it is part of the Bubble we’re meant to live in, the bubble controlled by algorithms and powerful large corporations as well as our governments and those who work for them, who censor non approved narratives. They seem to have an opinion on sovereignty too.

The first result in a box is that sovereignty is a ‘legal doctrine’. I thought that only religions had those. Oh, I forgot that the Rule of Law is one, which thinks it can override our own principles and faith. I suspect that all faiths have had to miss an important holy day due to lockdown, and that deeply upset me that my government thought that it could tell Christians that we had to miss Easter – our central festival, the fulcrum of our faith. I’ve said that I believe that church and state should be separate, and this statement is usually that established religion should not steer the state; but I mean most of all that the state has no power over faith.

One of my issues with the rule of law is that it makes law – an undemocratic, nebulous, arcane and elitist construct – bigger than our God, and our own conscience.

Law is often not about what’s right, but about control. It often suits a few rather than all and it means that our enforcement officers – I’ll be back with more posts on them – spend their days mostly pulling up on petty actions deemed to be ‘offenses’ which often shift. There are people and groups they are encouraged to worry about, but that is about conditioning. When your secret ‘services’ feel that an appropriate response to green activists is to blow them up (the Rainbow Warrior), when you infiltrate these groups long term and have kids with them to learn of their plans, when M15 know Greenpeace’s membership, it says alot [sic] – and not good things – about the values behind who’s running our society.

One of the questions I want to ask us together is what sort of society we have, and even if we have one. We’re meant to assume that we have a state, can’t escape it – I’m struggling to think of a place on Earth that doesn’t, especially who might be able to read this and introduce themselves.

But even saying this might be considered extremism. And that’s wrong. Look how anarchy – a possible cousin of Sovereign Citizens – is seen as ‘lawlessness’ – a state to fear.

But what of fearing the state?

When you read that the opposite of anarchy – which is merely no organised hierarchical rule – is statism, you realise that having a state is a thing. And therefore, you have an option not to have it. It’s especially questionable when again, the easy answers I despise on the net tell me that my country’s state is the sovereign force in it. Parliament is supposed to hold government to account (do note the word for our leadership), but it’s also the sovereign law making body, and of course, we’re meant to live under the law.

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I’ve been looking at law in the Bible recently. What kind of God made all the laws – 600 odd – that the Jewish people had to live with, controlling every aspect of their lives? I’ll say more for Magdalene day, the 22^nd July (or the Sunday following); but I want to note how living under the law is about ceding your sovereignty in many aspects of what you do. Who is sovereign and who is accountable go together. Those who are supposed to be civil servants – that’s serving us, not the High Heid’yins – are accountable to the people, not the other way around. I note that the services which our government, at any level, provides, almost covers everything we do. Thus by providing it, they also own it and have sway over it. Publicly owned means publicly paid for… for do we really have meaningful say or clout regarding most matters? Think: our streets, our education, our car parks, our pay, who lives with us… all connected to the government: they either provide it, want to know about it, or to give permission for it. They can expect us to ask permission to have chairs outside our cafe and signage outside our church – yet did they ask our permission for new CCTV and other dodgy watching devices? Or even distruptive road works and events?

During the lockdown, most of us round the world have felt that our leadership have tested how far that they can take their sovereignty, in relation to our own. We’ve had our bodies and homes even intruded into; our association and work and places of worship, our special treats and rights of passage – even saying goodbye to people who leave the earth – curtailed or banned. The more we’ve done electronically, the more our transactions have been trackable. Many of us have if not assented, acquiesced by default. We’ve stayed in and 6ft/2m apart and asked our customers to; we’ve queued; we’ve not gone into work or round our neighbours. We’ve followed the arrows (now on pavements!) and stood on the markers, like some game. Indeed, some wonder if this isn’t some prescripted charade we’re participating in…

Recently, some maintenance men wanted to do an annual check. The government expects it, they said. I am sick of the government telling me who I can and cannot have in my home; and why does this stranger, which is quite a nuisance, think that they can come in when my loved ones – save my ‘Bubble Buddy’!! – cannot?

Surely the only person who can really say who comes into my home is…me!

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Free Cannabis – yes that’s his name – of Glastonbury, where else? – writes a poem on his website about being given over to the crown at birth via his birth certificate. He couldn’t opt out, not as a bairn nor man. It’s a lifelong non-negotiable contract. Is that legally true? It’s a legitimate way of seeing it – see how law creeps in everywhere? We are kind of slaves to the state, paying into it without choice in return for provision and protection… which sounds very ominous. And we can’t really leave, for the next country, who may not have us, will have its own set of rules and expect sovereignty over us too. Is there anywhere on Earth that we can live in our own sovereignty?

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I want to discuss God and sovereignty. Those with faith have sometimes been seen as suspicious to a different faith or no faith government. It’s because believers believe that their ultimate authority is God and not any human leader. It’s why communist governments fear religion, and why the Anglican church feared Catholics – whose head was a powerful man of another empire – and all the nonconformists who just went straight to the Top – ie God. A pamphlet written in this very city four hundred years and thirty ago was burned, and its readers executed, because Robert Browne stated that a judge didn’t have authority in matters of faith. He asked that believers did not wait for the state to allow them to build new Christian communities, and said that giving civil authorities such power to violently punish made magistrates into gods and ‘worse than beasts’. This incensed our church/state hybrid, whose central pillar was the elevated power of the judiciary. A Treatise of Reformation Without Tarrying For Anie is still a hard book to get hold of.

In a public extremism consultation in Britain, there were suggestions of who might be extremists, and all the faiths we have here were given as options to tick.

I’m not going to reveal where, lest this site is attacked, but I stumbled upon an American Christian website who argues from law and scripture that we are free – that is, sovereign – citizens. They say that as Christians, God alone is sovereign of our lives.

They say that in their country, sovereignty, whilst delegated to the government, remains with the people; that since Jesus, we are no longer under the law; and that we are foreign – in that Christians are pilgrims passing through Earth, whose real home is in Glory – so that a different legal status can be conferred, via the FSI Act, giving them immunity. There’s advice on how to gain that, and what and what not to do.

Living under the law is slavery, they say. Be Not Conformed Of This World!

I have never heard Romans 12:2 used in that way before, but I love it!

An unlikely ally for me, she who is gay and woo woo friendly, but I do like to find fellowship in wide and unexpected places. Perhaps the very traditional Christians (when I don’t look up some of their other views) are kindred in that they are thinking for themselves and using God alone as their guide. Perhaps that’s why fundamentalism in any religion is literally given a bad press.

The other unexpected Christian ally – found via a nonchristian website – was a Catholic Archbishop, Carlo Vigano. He recently wrote an open letter to Trump L’Oeil.

No I do not agree with Carlo’s idea of what a good citizen is. Family excludes those who don’t have families; I fear that he means the permanent pairing of heterosexuals with values that would make me squeal from here to [titular] Ulpiana. I resented his working to make prosperity for the homeland; but then perhaps this is a clever letter, writing exactly what Trump would like to read whilst being credibly true to Catholic values. I didn’t agree with Carlo’s hell statements either. But I did like that he called out the imbalance of wealth; of creating division; that investigations are showing deliberate use of the virus for nefarious political means by the Deep State.

He even spoke of deep church! Dare I call this man a brother?

He’s awake, and he’s speaking out, against the New World Order, the powers of darkness (not giving you capitals – victory is already given to us, the side of Light), and against those in the church (he means his own, presumably, I mean literally catholic – Universal) who are willing servants by their conformity.

Perhaps in his own words:

I dare to believe that both of us are on the same side in this battle, albeit with different weapons.

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This is a time to regain our sovereignty, not to further give it away.

Our governments’ right and method of ruling must be carefully examined. That isn’t extremism – any who call it so are a fearful, controlling bully of a leadership and their lackeys.

I took my faith apart once. I decided, then, that I could rebuild it as it was, but it felt stronger having been prepared to not rebuild, or to rebuild anew.

I am wary of the role of licensing, which gives the government power over what we can do in many aspects of our life, from film viewing to fishing. I am concerned when decriminalisation amounts to regulation, which really means revenue control. We might want to protect our fish and our film industry, but the real protection is proprietory – these are OUR fish; we want money from OUR film. To be explored more another time. It also shows that what’s legal isn’t about what’s good but what the government and the powerful businesses who steer it want in on, or to have the power to stop.

It’s the last of these – about places of worship – that I’ll address before my round up.

In the late 17^th Century in Britain, after over a century of persecution (and after Robert Browne), forbidden new – ie dissenting – churches were at last ‘allowed’ to meet openly. They were, as the law called it, generously tolerated. But they needed a license for their chapels, from the state, which was the Anglican church. (Catholics had to wait until the 19^th century). Thus the Church of England patrolled its rivals, as its men had done, seeking secret services, breaking up, imprisoning, fining, torturing. Thus it was using fear and punishment to gain full sway, expecting tithes and maintenance by force from those who were not worshipping with it. It meant that it showed itself as sovereign, even though some people had opted out.

In Communist regimes, churches which weren’t banned also required a license, such as in China today. It again means that an all-seeing government feels it must give permission for people to express their beliefs and meet together, and if you give, you can take away – as in the book of Job (he’ll be a sermon soon). But it’s the state, not the Lord, who can hoik back, and make conditions, and inspect us to decide if we’re meeting its standards, and shut us down if not, and thus we are not free.

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Another thing that those priestess sisters did was to withdraw consent for all injustice. It began with the awful racist police killings in May, but now we’re asking about the very inequality and bias behind such acts that underpin society.

I like the idea of withdrawing consent.

I even better like what She-Ra – there’s a sermon in her – said:

I will not co-operate with evil.

I wonder how we can show that – and that means enforcement officers and judges; people who could report or litigate or punish something that actually is about prejudice and not fairness. So if you’re tempted to report this or other people’s social media remarks or speeches, think: what am I consenting to and encouraging to happen? (Hint: secular heresy).

When I call a sovereign citizen a dangerous freak to be stopped and weeded out, have I stopped to ask what sovereign citizenry might mean? Have I thought that this attitude of labelling nonconformity as ‘extremism’ is the state protecting itself? Am I suspicious that the remit of all English-speaking spy groups is to uphold capitalism? (Check their websites). Have I considered history or philosophy, psychology or spirituality before I made that critical statement, let alone that arrest or sentence?

So…I withdraw my consent from all the things I’ve spoken out against already.

I withdraw it from a fear based, self perpetuating status quo, from being unable to question, from a nebulous law and state pyramid which is afraid that it’s crumbling, or about to be inverted. (Hear the Magnificat). I withdraw my consent from all isms, and yes, assumed statism is one, and demonising those who dare query it is another.

I am sovereign, under God and the Double Commandment, and so are you.

Listen at https://shows.acast.com/between-the-stools/episodes/on-sovereignty-a-sermon-for-independence-day

The next planned sermon will be for Magdalene day

George Galloway – I’m Not The Only One

I first found the Respect party when I did a search for alternatives to the main ones. I was  intrigued by a social justice, anti war eco driven new political group and wanted to know more about George, their best known MP. I thought I might support and learn from him.

I have come to see him as the caustic Caledonian  – Labour’s Lucifer.

I’m Not The Only One is a hard book to read – not because I can’t understand it, though he does have a wide vocabulary, and his own word “obfuscate” best describes his writing style with sentences constructed like this – but because of his tirade. After the introduction, I wondered if I could manage the rest of the book as I felt I’d been battered with an energy like Michael Moore’s, but more erudite and snide. Happily, the tone lets up a little, but it is still an intense diatribe, though profanity free. George is often very personal and insulting about other politicians. He rarely explains a situation so you only get the George rant, which feels off kilter and his long multi clause sentences seem to hide answers to or ignore the many questions a reader will have.

George spends much time aggrandising or in apologetics. He speaks of his love for Iraq, which at first was very interesting to hear a passionate description of this country  – one he claims he knows better than anyone else in Britain. But the other thread of this book is the love that jilted him, the Labour party whose exclusion after over 30 years of marriage was still very raw in this 2005 book. He defends various things said about him regarding Saddam Hussein, Mariam the Iraqi child he brought to Britain for leukaemia treatment; the War on Want funds; a transcript of his trial in Washington – but not exactly why the Labour Party claimed to need to put him on trial. He often depicts himself as a hero – and a victim.

He had not yet parted ways with Respect leader Salma Yaqoob; and this book is before his Big Brother/Jungle appearances, and that awful rape comment, which he refused to rescind. It is pre the infamous Jeremy Paxman interview when he’d just won the London seat, and though he happily put down Britain’s rudest current affairs presenter, George repeated what seemed a deeply racist and thoughtless statement for someone who claims to understand the Middle East so well. From his website, it seems his style and sentiment hasn’t changed, treating his recent Ed Miliband meeting in the same way.

Reading this book was like a rickety high speed train where you’re glad to get to the end of the journey – or disembark early.

I am surprised but glad that Penguin has published this – it shows freedom of speech being endorsed by a major publisher. For there are some shocking accusations is this book about the truth of US/UK governments and their behaviours, particularly in the Middle East. And sadly, I think they are true. And for bringing those horrors to our attention and daring to say such against grain going risky statements, I applaud George.

I do think that George genuinely wants a better world and has taken brave steps towards that. I’m just not sure about all his methods of getting there.

An Alternative Political System

Tomorrow we in Britain vote for whether to change how we vote. I argue that our system needs a radical shake up.

There should be no ruling party; all parliaments should be hung. Our three generations of current and suceeding monarchs appear more worthy rulers than many of the prime ministers in living memory; perhaps the Royal family should have more than a ceremonial role in our politics. I believe they are no more distanced from ordinary people than politicians are.

I would like to put an end to party politics and have more independent voices in our local councils and in Westminster’s seats.

The reason not everyone votes is not apathy but the feeling that no party represents their views, and that no party is really better or different. There is also the feeling that we’re not really being listened to, like the ‘opportunity to comment’ on the cuts.

Although AV seems quite laborious, I will be voting yes because we need a change. It’s to say ‘not happy with current system’ – but I wish there was a box to say ‘want something else – but neither of the above’. I wish we could say that with candidates too.

We should be able to say who we’d like locally and who we’d like to be in parliament, as separate votes.

I would like to see an end to wards and constituencies, and being tied to the person who is standing for that area. What if they are useless, or of very different views, or known to me? To then whom can I turn? I think we should be able to approach MPs on their interests and views, as we can with Lords and MEPs.

And I wish there was a box for ‘stop running our country like a hard headed business and return to the values that matter’.

I’d put an X there.