SUMMER OF LOVE EVENT IN BRIGHTON SAT 20TH AUGUST 2011-LIBER RESH

EXACTLY 418 UK VISITORS AS OF TODAY. 1.25 Divide,add, multiply and understand. Liber Al

INVITATIONS TO THE TRANSHUMANIST AND THE SUMMER OF LOVE IN BRIGHTON

The Stele of Revealing

Fwd: Monbiot.com

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: George Monbiot <news@monbiot.com>
Date: 21 May 2011 08:06
Subject: Monbiot.com
To: heartofbalance@gmail.com

Monbiot.com

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A Real-Time Experiment With Human Lives Posted: 20 May 2011 01:40 AM PDT We can now see what the impact of has been of the police decision to turn off Oxfordshire's speed cameras. By George Monbiot, published on the Guardian's website, 20th May 2011 The experiment is over and the results are in. In April, Thames Valley police switched Oxfordshire's speed cameras back on. They had been off for eight months, as a result of the government's decision to cut the road safety grant. Then the police began assessing the damage. In the 31 days before the cameras were switched off (July 2010), the machines caught 2,286 speeding motorists. In the 30 days after they were switched back on, they caught 5,917. As many residents of the county complained, between July 2010 and April 2011, Oxfordshire became a racetrack. The effect of the switch-off seems to have been felt far from the camera sites: as soon as motorists received the message that they were unlikely to get caught speeding anywhere in the county, they appear to have felt empowered to drive recklessly everywhere. Or so a more important set of figures might suggest. In the eight months without cameras, there were 18 deaths on the roads in Oxfordshire, compared to 12 in the same period in the previous year. This was the first time the number of deaths on the county's roads had risen in four years. Serious injuries rose from 160 to 179. These are not just numbers: they are real people; some dead, some who will have to live with devastating injuries for the rest of their lives. Reading the contents of websites which celebrate excessive speed – pistonheads.com for example – you would think it was just a game: evading the police, vandalising cameras, using clever lawyers to avoid getting fined. It's not. The consequences are real and horrible. So far, the sample size is too small and the period too short to be sure that the deaths and injuries around the county are linked to the switch-off. The experiment would have to run for longer and be conducted over a wider area. Any volunteers? Perversely, there are plenty. Undeterred by the results of Oxfordshire's grisly experiment, Staffordshire has now switched off almost half its cameras, for the same reason: a lack of funds, caused by the government's determination to end the mythical construct it calls "the war on the motorist". What it is really doing is allowing speeding motorists to conduct a war against everyone else: cyclists, pedestrians, children on their way to school, other drivers. Worse still, the destruction of speed cameras by people who describe themselves as vigilantes continues unabated. Sixteen of Lincolnshire's 52 cameras, for example, have been destroyed by vandalism, in many cases by fire. In the Scottish borders, 19 have been burnt out since 2004. These acts are raucously celebrated on the boy racer sites. Here's what a spokesman for the Lincolnshire Road Safety Partnership had to say about one of these burnings: "That camera is protecting the standing traffic that mounts up at the A57 roundabout. At certain times of the day the traffic is backed up and people come down the hill at high speed and run on a bit. The idea of the speed camera is to slow them down so they can stop in time for the standing traffic that's ahead of them. And to burn that camera is just crazy – they're putting people's lives at risk by doing this." So why are people burning cameras? Because journalists and others have promulgated a powerful and dangerous myth: that speed cameras are useless, and exist only to tax the public. It doesn't matter how often or how comprehensively this myth is disproved. A study for the Department for Transport, involving more rigorous scientific methods than those just deployed by Thames Valley Police, shows that 19% fewer people were killed or seriously injured at accident black spots after speed cameras were introduced, above and beyond the general decline in accidents on the roads. As for the stealth taxation story, the last figures I've seen, from 2010, suggest that the cameras cost slightly more to run than they make. The Treasury took £85-80m in revenues, with an outlay of £110m a year. This may have changed by now. (Why shouldn't reckless driving be taxed?). Yet speed cameras are a much cheaper means of preventing speeding than any other. The Department for Transport reports a cost-benefit ratio of 2.7:1. The House of Commons Transport Committee found that "a more cost effective measure for reducing speeds and casualties has yet to be introduced." But never mind the facts: the tabloid myth is what the people who have been snapped by the cameras want to hear. Instead of being a danger to the public, they are, journalists tell them, innocent victims of a government mugging. At times the press coverage is so extreme that it amounts to blatant incitement. Here's what Jeremy Clarkson wrote in the Sun in 2007. "As I drove down the M20 into Kent last Monday, I noticed that most of the speed cameras had been burned out by vandals. This is disgusting. It is ridiculous, criminal and stupid that the person who savaged these life-saving devices should target the M20 … and then stop. Why did you not keep right on going? I can think of six cameras on my way home that would be immeasurably improved with a spot of petrol and a match." (Source: Jeremy Clarkson, 21st July 2007. Speed cameras have been burned out by vandals. The Sun.) It looks like good clean fun, as Sarah Palin's placing of a gunsight over the state of Arizona did, until Gabrielle Giffords got shot. Incitement, particularly incitement which supports a false story that people want to hear, can have consequences. More insidious than Clarkson's have been the efforts of Christopher Booker, who, through a grossly misleading use of statistics, has tried to suggest that speed cameras make the roads more dangerous. Writing in the Telegraph with Richard North in 2007, he maintained that a sharp decline in the death rate on the roads suddenly slowed down in the mid-1990s. They attributed this to the government's attempt to enforce speed limits with cameras. But they failed to mention that deaths started falling sharply again in 2003, after the number of speed cameras had doubled in three years. Similarly, they tried to argue that there was no evidence that cameras have reduced deaths even at the spots where they are deployed, on the grounds that the government had failed to account for a statistical effect called regression to the mean. The truth, they maintain, is that "speed cameras actually increased" the rate of accidents. What they failed to tell their readers is that the government had accounted for regression to the mean, and still found an average reduction of 19% for collisions which caused deaths or injuries after speed cameras had been installed. I was reminded of this over the weekend, by Booker's pathetic attempt to justify yet another of his false claims in the Sunday Telegraph. Uniquely, as far as I can tell, two articles of his have been the subject of a long section of a High Court judgement, which damned his journalism as "unbalanced, inaccurate and just plain wrong." Like all propaganda that tells people what they want to hear, Booker's false claims are likely to change or reinforce people's behaviour. So are Clarkson's and those of all the other journalists who tell people that they can act as they wish, regardless of their impact on others. The rest of us have a duty to try to correct them. www.monbiot.com

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The Wood Mouse contemplates Spring

The Birthday of Heart of Balance-Wesak-Moon in Scorpio-Praise to the Hawk-Headed Mystical Lord!

The Mahayoga Godform of Ra Hoor Khuit by the artist Kat Lunoe.

The Mind...The Mind

Round and Round in it's deep green slime goes the mind...the mind

The Heart of Balance

Walpurgis Nacht

From 'Black Pearl' Ed James Eshelman

INFINITE POSSIBILITIES by Soror Meral Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. The universe is made up of infinite possibilities. Each star or khabs chooses for itself certain events and thoughts, and makes up for itself a character or mode of behavior.The process of choice forms a layer of several astral or fine bodies. Finally, the whole complex is formed into a physical body which carries all that has been experienced in recent events of this life and in the past. The events of this life may be fairly easy to access when one probes as to the roots of certain behaviors; but far more difficult is the memory ofpast lives, and the karma that was generated there. No two stars could ever be the same. There are many marks on the final physical body to show how this might be. For instance, fingerprints are never the same; their variety is endless. Few folks realize how different every star is from every other star. Herein lies a great mischief. It may be that a certain earth character has built up what he or she thinks is a very fine code of behavior. This code is made up of what the earth person can see in the experiences of the present life, but fails to see or realize what karma there may be in the ideas that motivate him or her. Of course, the thinking process manufactures certain ideas; but nothing ever manifests unless the power of emotional push brings these ideas into actuality as something worked out on the physical plane. Hence, the code which this person may think is very fme (and which has built his or her character), the person seeks to impose upon others. To the mind of our person, the code of action and behavior has worked fme for him or her, and now must be used to guide the whole earth through compliance with it - because it is so wonderful, and could hardly be improved upon! This is called projection. We have labored long and hard to bring this fact of existence to your minds. One sees other persons through a fog of one's own ideas and behaviors. In the worst type of scenario, the experiences of the one person are imposed upon another, and sometimes on a multitude of folks. Just look at the events in the world around you. Projections are being imposed all the time upon nations, upon church groups, upon individuals - upon any sort of gathering. The one who has the most strength of character (and perhaps charisma) can sway a whole roomful of folks. Sadly, a great many persons are not aware of their own secret inner strengths, and are far from being aware of the particular characteristics of their own star. These folks are slaves to the will of a stronger personality. They are not yet free in the Thelemic sense. They hope to benefit from what is being told to them, and do not yet know that the will of one person sways them to do this or that, or to think this or that. This becomes even more powerful as a form of evil if the person who sways the multitude has built a prison of thought and behavior. In fact, this can be seen all over the world. The prisons are not just in other nations; if you look carefully, you will see they are in our own nation. They are not just in groups of other persons, they are in ourselves!

A lady of Mitylene?

1. 0 crystal Heart! I the Serpent clasp Thee, I drive home mine head into the central core of Thee, 0 God my beloved. 2.Even as on the resounding wind-swept heights of Mitylene some god-like woman casts aside the lyre, and with her locks aflame as an aureole, plunges into the wet heart of the creation, so I, 0 Lord my God!

Forthcoming title from Alan Moore

The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic by Alan Moore Share Alan Moore’s grimoire due in 2009 (or with the anticipated delays, 2010). Only 2 or 3 years to go… “Splendid news for boys and girls, and guaranteed salvation for humanity! Messrs. Steve and Alan Moore, current proprietors of the celebrated Moon & Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels (sorcery by appointment since circa 150 AD) are presently engaged in producing a clear and practical grimoire of the occult sciences that offers endless necromantic fun for all the family. Exquisitely illuminated by a host of adepts including Kevin O’Neill, Melinda Gebbie, John Coulthart, Jos? Villarrubia and other stellar talents (to be named shortly), this marvelous and unprecedented tome promises to provide all that the reader could conceivably need in order to commence a fulfilling new career as a diabolist.” via Top Shelf Productions

TOOLS FOR WORLD DOMINATION No 4-THE MINDMAP!

The Mindmap proliferates on the web. This is because it works. See a very good Chuck Frey posting here: http://mindmappingsoftwareblog.com/mmsb/wp-content/mmhp/Mind_Mapping_and_Human_Potential.pdf

The bully boy culture in the Catholic Church-A superb article by a retired priest-Eric Hodgens which I reproduce in full.

From The Age (Melbourne), Wednesday 5 January 2011: 13. Church needs to answer critics, instead it silences them The Catholic hierarchy has lost its way but refuses to discuss it. ERIC HODGENS CATHOLIC Church authorities recently censored an article posted on the popular website CathNews.com. The article, “Reflections on an Ordination Golden Anniversary”, was a reminis cence by a priest after 50 years of ministry. By midday, the link no longer worked. Inquiries revealed that a church “higher up” had prevailed on the CathNews editor to pull the link. As the censorship became public, it became the story. However, the main issue is not the censorship, but rather the view that the pulled article was arguing: that the church’s lead ership has lost its way but is not willing to discuss or even consider that there may be a point. This is precisely the mentality that got them caught in the headlights with the paedophilia crisis. They ignored, even demonised, the victims in order to protect the institution which, in this case, was indefensible. They seem to have an unhealthy institutional firewall against any criticism at all. When will they learn? Meanwhile, loyal Catholics have charged the bishops with compliantly following regressive Vatican policy which they believe is harming the church. It would be disloyal not to criticise. The Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) came to a climax in 1965 with its decree on “The Church in the Modern World”. This recognised the new soci ety that had emerged after World War II. It recognised that the modern secular state is not only here to stay but a very favourable environment for proclaiming the Gospel and, indeed, more in tune with the freedom of the Gospel than a state in which Catholic religion is established. Bishops tend to revert to established religion style when questioned or criticised. Hence the censorship attempt. German sociologist Max Weber taught us a century ago that bureaucracies tend to turn habits into values. Is that what has happened with priestly celibacy, women’s ordination and denying Holy Communion to remarried divorcees? These now burning issues were not issues in the old world. And what about homosexual love, IVF and contraception? Does forbidding them enhance the values taught by Jesus or simply stick to old rules out of habit? A vast number of loyal Catholics say it is time for review. “A vast crowd of priests and laity are alarmed at the bully culture of Rome.” A vast crowd of priests and laity who passionately love the Church are alarmed at the fundamentalism pervading the mentality of the Roman bur eaucracy and many bishops. They are alarmed at the bully culture of Rome — which surfaces in turn in the management style of so many bishops — and at the favoured status given to authoritarian move ments including Opus Dei, the Legionaries of Christ (now discredited and under reconstruction) and the Heralds of the Gospel. And they are alarmed at having a new and unsatisfact ory translation of the liturgy about to be foisted on them due to power politics at the top. This last confrontation may well backfire. Many priests are simply not going to introduce the new translation. They say that if the Anglican newcomers and the Latin Mass groups can keep their liturgy and language, so can they. Getting people to change their minds is always hard. Jesus had difficulty getting his message accepted. Maybe it is time for today’s church leaders to listen to the voices and reconsider. They might just be converted. Maybe there is no need to kill the story. The censored article can be found at tinyurl.com/2fu2n7c Eric Hodgens was ordained a Catholic priest in 1960 and retired in 2007.

Survivors Network of those abused by Priests-SNAP

This network(SNAP)has recently come to my attention via some comments on a previous blog posting and may be a support source for anyone abused at the hands of Catholic priests.

Downhill bike race in Chile is insanity at its finest!

heartofbalance@gmail.com has shared an article with you.


http://www.gadling.com/2011/03/03/downhill-bike-race-in-chile-is-insanity-at-its-finest/?ncid=&a_dgi=aolshare_email
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FOCUS & GROW! Spring newsletter

This is the spring newsletter from Delcia McNeil, a wise and rather wonderful healer, psychotherapist and visionary artist. I strongly recommend her workshops both in London and the beautiful Lake District.

HARRIER SQUADRONS BID A FOND FAREWELL TO THE DEFENCE SECRETARY

THE DECISION TO SCRAP OUR HARRIER JUMP JET SQUADRONS RECENTLY ELICITED A CLEAR RESPONSE FROM IT'S PILOTS. LOOK CLOSELY...TALLY HO!

THE ART OF BALANCE

One thing’s for sure: Finding balance in a wildly tilting world ain’t easy.

Shall Magick be our discipline of awareness? Or the mysteries of the quantum? Or the still points of meditation? Or the physical sculpting of Tai Chi? The beauty of poetry and art? The joy of singletrack? Cooking food for our loved ones with micro-attention? Breathing into the mountain before us? Working with our minds honed to razor sharpness and our hearts wide open? Working with Joy? Like basking sharks taking in the plankton of life in all it’s myriad, mad, beautiful, wild variety. Shall we swim through the world open to it all? Grounded, loving, true to our being, joyful or sad as we feel.

Let this be our first goal/paradigm/aspiration: The Art of Balance should be the business of an enlightened mind.
Grounding: Knowing who you are is a vital component to Balance.
What are your true motivations, fears and impulses? What is the nature of your shadow? Oooo…er, yes the inner daemon that lurks behind the veil. Your very own personal Choronzon.

How can we become the grizzly bear balancing on a pole while juggling fireballs and holding one hairy leg gracefully aloft while unpacking the mysteries of the universe with our razor mind and open heart or spinning a jokey myth before a group of awestruck kids? A reality surgeon. A cosmic jestor.

 THIS AIN’T NO MARKET AND IT’S CERTAINLY NOT FREE!

The masqueraded world wants you to be many things and what masquerades as the world wants you to aspire to be the kind of person that it wishes to sell stuff to. Most of the people who are running the world want to sell you stuff. It might be physical stuff like cars, washing machines, houses, cosmetic products, stylish clothes, particular types of music, handbags, a whole variety of fancy electronic toys to make your life more er…organised or whatever.
Then there’s a whole crew who want to sell you a load more stuff but this time it isn’t physical, this time it’s ideas. Ideas about what constitutes meaning in the good and successful life. And yes, you guessed it, most of the ideas depend on you buying the physical stuff from the first crew, who are often the very same people.
These ideas are often about the creation of dissatisfaction with the state of things as they are in your life right now. They are relentless about how ugly you are without that skin cream, about how short/uncool/dumb/repulsive/unplugged-in/and just plain awful you are, as you are right now. But there’s a solution, and all it takes is just a little money and you can be up there with the beautiful people, with the cool people, with the people that everybody wants to hang out with, just so that some magic and stardust might rub off on you (you won't be such a sad sack any more!) and get this-YOU CAN BE ONE OF THE MAGIC PEOPLE! All you have to do is give them some money (as indiscriminately as possible please) and you will be re-made, but this time in the likeness of a GOD, herculean and masterfully confident, but in a sort of not getting excited about stuff way, in your bulging minotaur designer drawers or a whore-queen sex-bomb temptress despising the attentions of nests of kid models with the faces of descant sopranoes and the geiger designed musculature of the alien!  Out from their glossy pages they stare at you with their beautiful dead fish eyes like sirens waiting to fuck over your very own personal odysseus.

It is almost unbelievable that anyone takes this bullshit at face value, but it infests the deepest channels of the subconscious with it’s insidious messages because it is everywhere and always. Nowhere is free from it. There is no space of privileged silence. Because far from being a king or queen, the consumer is a slave, and the foundation of modern capitalism rests on promoting dissatisfaction with the self in order to sell you stuff that you will only buy if you think it carries that certain cachet that will set you apart from all the other slaves.
And so the illusion is maintained, and standing outside this paradigm takes the most enormous courage and self-trust. To see the emperor’s clothes for what they are requires x-ray vision. To believe entirely in the impoverishments of low grade current market capitalism is to wear blinkers that exclude the true and the beautiful. It’s not the visionaries who reject the blandishments of fear-based capitalism that are weird. It’s the society that founds itself on these incredibly stupid illusions, most primarily that stuff creates meaning!
The great advantage of these free marketeers (and maybe we need to read some of their stuff over the next few weeks?) is that as with much of the world’s intellectual bullshit, there’s an element of significant truth in it all. I don’t think any intelligent person is going to reject the modern world out of hand. Beware those who propose a return to the cave!
Public health especially fresh water and free medical care at the point of need are, for those countries who have them, one of the defining points of civilisation. I also like video games and access to lots of different foods, a huge range of literature and movies, the internet and computers generally. I like campervans and electronic music and barbecues and beer and amazon and all-day opening and mountain bikes. I love it all!
But I also love the hill and the heath, the wind over the empty moor, the mountainside camped on alone at night, the summoning by the rockpool. The silence, the stillness, the intensity. The otherness.  That alone-space where you can hear the whispers of the otherworld, beyond the veil-call it what you will.
Therefore we must seek ontological banditry of the robin hood style to refashion meaning for the brothers and sisters. Remake the paradigm in the image of a child. Sculpt out a new capitalism that works for the world and does not require slaves. We have the means, we carry it in our wallets, we spend it every day. It is a very silly and easily obtainable (with a little effort) source of energy. We must direct it with our minds and hearts and for Pan’s sake-we have to wake up!

One thing’s for sure: Finding Balance in a wildly tilting world ain’t easy. But…bring it on!

More on Kenneth Grant- Beyond our Ken: a review of ‘Against the Light: A Nightside Narrative’

Beyond our Ken: a review of ‘Against the Light: A Nightside Narrative’ An, as usual brilliant essay by Alan Moore on the late very lamented Kenneth Grant. "That he was as mad as tits on a pyranha?" Also here's a link to Phil Hine's great obituary http://enfolding.org/kenneth-grant-1924-2011/

The Independent: Kenneth Grant: Writer and occultist who championed Aleister Crowley and Austin Osman Spare

Kenneth Grant: Writer and occultist who championed Aleister Crowley and Austin Osman Spare
Friday, 4 March 2011
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/kenneth-grant-writer-and-occultist-who-championed-aleister-crowley-and-austin-osman-spare-2231570.html
When Aleister Crowley died in 1947 Kenneth Grant became heir apparent of the esoteric magical order Ordo Templis Orientis (OTO). Alongside his artist wife Steffi, Grant was one of few to attend Crowley's funeral service, becoming the last living link with the Beast, whose work he championed, nurtured and refined for over six decades. From his New Isis Lodge, established in London in 1955, through to his final organisational vehicle, the Typhonian Order, Grant's occult credentials are without parallel.

Quotes of the day

Electronic musician, shamanic explorer, and information theorist Konrad Becker wrote in his essay New World Music, “new media and post-industrial data transfer are the means of subversive neurostimulation in the techno-shamanism of the global village underground,”


"I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to it's advantage."  Freidrich Nietzche

IS THE BBC THE PROPAGANDA ARM OF THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT?...AND WHITEBOARDS AS ESSENTIAL WORLD-DOMINATION TOOLS.

The march against the cuts has garnered the usual press coverage.  250 thousand people converge on the capital for a day of peaceful and fun protest and the papers and most disturbingly the BBC focus on the antics of a tiny minority.  One supposes, in an attempt to discredit active involvement with politics and to support control by the usual elite.  But that's not journalism is it?  That's propaganda and it's not what I pay my license fee for.

To flexibly change direction is essential in these troubled times, or does it indicate the grasshopper mind?  Whatever!

As an avid student of life in all it's guises but most importantly a collector of tools for changing the World, I bring you-WHITEBOARDS.

Yes folks these tabula rasa's are a great capturing tool as well as offering a canvas to mindmap your plans for world domination or to schedule your book groups reading programme.
Put them everywhere including your kids bedrooms to get them into the habit of honouring ideas and creativity.
Spend a bit more on the magnetic boards and you can use them to capture paper like a pin board but you need to be careful they don't turn into junk-boards.  A person's whiteboard is like their library, it gives you an insight into the content of their minds.  So don't let yours look like a dustbin.  Here's a typical one of mine from work.

If you have notable whiteboard pics then please send them in.  Seriously, these are the kind of tools to change the world and manifest your will in the world.

Have a great Sunday!  Success to your work.

SHEEN WARS-Charlie's descent continues unabated. This is very funny.

COMING SOON: 10 ESSENTIAL TOOLS FOR WORLD DOMINATION! The great books giveaway | Books | The Guardian

New series of 10 Essential Tools for world domination coming soon:

1)  HUMANSCALE LIBERTY CHAIR
2)  MAGNETIC WHITEBOARD

The great books giveaway | Books | The Guardian

There's some great book recommendations here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/mar/04/best-world-books-night-presents

Top 10 Best Electronic Albums of 2010

http://www.melophobe.com/articles/top-10-best-electronic-albums-of-2010/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A%20melophobe%20%28melophobe%29

Could be controversial!

Most popular post on my blog? I could hardly believe it!

Now I really understand the kind of community that read this blog.  The most popular post is about...A CHAIR!  Mind you it's a very nice, intelligent sort of chair, but it's still A CHAIR!  Oh wreaths of laurel for heroes...why will you never adorn my puckered brow?  My readers are chair lovers.  They spend hours lusting over office catalogues.  They're not so much armchair readers as desk chair experts.  I imagine they have pictures of office furniture on their walls, they have lots of scandinavian pine round the house, possibly a small fjord in the garden designed on apple laptops to resemble a mini-mountainous norwegian backdrop.  They shop by dutch road bicycle and yes...oh my God...in the front wicker basket...Yes!  It's one of those cavernous blue Ikea bags.  Save us O Pan!
Ok you've asked for it...you want it...so here goes...Feast your greedy eyes oh my children!

Seriously though, a good chair is an essential world domination tool.  If you want to do more than drool you can buy one of these little suckers here; be warned, they're not cheap!  http://www.officechairsuk.com/create-your-own-humanscale-liberty-chair.html

Fwd: Sleeping It Off in Rapid City by August Kleinzahler – review | Books | The Guardian

Sleeping It Off in Rapid City by August Kleinzahler – review Guardian Books

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/mar/19/sleeping-it-off-august-kleinzahler-review

Beautiful design can help make great poetry | Books | guardian.co.uk

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2008/oct/21/poetry-cover-august-kleinzahler

More on August Kleinzahler's 'Sleeping it off...about the beautifully subtle cover photo.  This is the cover on my edition so why would anyone make it er...red?

Some superb reviews from Silver Star-Journal of the Horus-Maat Lodge (I've got an old poem in here too!)

WHY MEDIATION IS SO COOL!

I think I have applied mediation type skills over the past twenty five years of my career both as a social worker and for the past fifteen years as a manager and leader.  I seem to have found myself in the capacity of an emergency roadside rescue service attending to failing services or organisations much as a mechanic might attend to a broken down car.

This has required a lot of negotiation and conflict resolution often when the conflict has been directed at me personally as the change agent and the originator of the distressing new systems.

At this point I guess I could proceed to a directorship of a large corporate social care organisation in the public sector and look to retire with a nice fat salary but truthfully I can think of nothing worse than ending my working days among the grey suits in endless meetings and performance reviews and other current managerial guff.

Enter mediation.  I was researching the activity as a result of developing a publicly funded mediation service for Guernsey.  My light bulb moment quickly came when I realised two significant facts.  Firstly Mediation as an activity is very much at a growth point and the growth potential is significant and may well remain so for the next decade at least.

Secondly the activity is an interesting brew of several different and attractive ingredients.  It makes a positive contribution to well-being and is therefore ethically valuable-this is important and the first question I ask about an activity in my prior commitment reflection-Is it worth doing?

It is boundaried.  There are parameters.  There are end points.  There are measurable outcomes with actual effects.  There is a skill base against which one can measure one’s development.  It is about engagement with rather than power over.  It has room for passion and artistry.  It has space for excellence.  It seeds into other fascinating areas like conflict resolution and labour conciliation.  This is all very appealing and most of all it means that as a leader I can actually go and do some real work rather than spending my time interfering with my staff.

That last comment was in jest really.  I do believe that effective balanced leadership is crucial but it needs to be like the butterfly’s wing in the air rather than the all too common thump of the jackboot.

Mediation offers me an area of practice that will complement the other areas of my work life very well and I believe it to be one of the most fruitful skill sets to manage the emotional traumas of family break-up to emerge in recent times.

IDEAS FROM GEORGE MONBIOT'S BLOG ON RESISTANCE TO THE COALITION

So here goes. We need to redress the balance between cuts and tax rises (currently 3:1)(3), as fairly as possible. That means starting with the UK’s most regressive form of taxation: national insurance. This levy is so unfair that it’s hard to understand why it hasn’t received more attention. On earnings of up to £844 a week, you currently pay 11% national insurance. On earnings beyond that point, you pay 1%(4). We should raise the national insurance rate for higher earnings from 1% to 15%(5). This would help to address a wider injustice: the poorest 10% of UK households pay proportionately more tax (direct and indirect) than the richest 10%(6).

We must close the tax gap. Tax avoidance and evasion are the preserve of the very rich: only millionaires and corporations can afford the specialist advice required to disguise their earnings. The tax gap amounts to between £40bn and £120bn a year(7,8). Not all this money can be reclaimed. We need a national target to claw back £25bn a year. Staffing levels at HM Revenue and Customs should be raised accordingly.

Of the various means of reclaiming money from the banks, a financial transactions tax (the Robin Hood tax) is the fairest and most sustainable. It’s easy to collect, hard to avoid and highly progressive, as it falls largely upon the richest people in the country(9). A tax of 0.005% on financial transactions could raise a net £13bn a year; a tax of 0.01%, £25bn(10).

The government should adopt the plan proposed by the Green Fiscal Commission: by 2020 levies on damage to the environment should amount to 20% of the total tax-take(11), with a commensurate reduction in the income tax and national insurance paid by people with low earnings. The tax exemption for private schools must end. This costs us £100m a year – to grant unfair advantages to the children of the rich(12).

Greg Philo of Glasgow University has proposed an interesting means of mobilising the money the very rich have stashed away: transferring the entire national debt to them. He’s shown that this could be done through a one-off tax averaging 20% on total assets worth more than £1m(13). It would be graduated, so that the richest people are charged at a higher rate than mere seven-figure millionaires. It wouldn’t have to be paid immediately: the asset-holders could choose to pay only the interest on the debt until they died, whereupon the capital would go to the state. This ensures, as the government has promised, that “the broadest shoulders should carry the greatest burden.”(14)

The government should set a target of 0.5% per year for reducing the Gini coefficient – the measure of income inequality – in the United Kingdom(15). To this end it should raise the minimum wage by inflation plus 5% each year until it reaches the level identified by the Living Wage campaign(16). We also need an official High Pay Commission, whose purpose is to identify, as a multiple of the living wage, the maximum remuneration anyone in the UK should receive(17).

The following new military hardware programmes should be scrapped: the Trident weapons system; aircraft carriers; Eurofighter jets. The Barrow shipyard, where new nuclear submarines were to be built, should be redeployed to produce offshore renewables: wind, wave and tide turbines(18). The money saved should be spent on a new public housing programme.

To fill looming gaps in provision and reduce unemployment, the government should raise the public workforce by the following levels: 10,000 more social workers; 10,000 more planners; 50,000 more hospital cleaners; 100,000 more educational staff; 350,000 extra care workers for the elderly(19). As Unison points out, 92% of the cost of employing a public service worker is recouped by the state, because it raises tax revenues while reducing benefit payments(20).

These measures will help to address the immediate problems of the deficit, the debt, unemployment, inequality and a threatened double-dip recession. But we also need to move to a system which doesn’t depend on endless economic growth to sustain high employment and a decent standard of living. We need a Steady State Commission, to develop a government programme for turning a growth-based, boom and bust economy into a stable system, without damaging the prospects of the poor(21).