Teenage suicide

A report has just been published where it is suggested that 1/3 of all teenagers/adolescents have contemplated suicide If I cast my mind back to my own adolescent years I can not recall ever having come across anyone who had mentioned to me or was reported in the media of having thought about suicide. It was simply not on the agenda.
We all felt times when we were unhappy, a girlfriend who had told us she no longer cared would cause us to plunge into deep despondency but we recovered fairly quickly. Perhaps the main element in all this was that we were not so self focused,  we didn't have dreams beyond our status. We were not fed with the contrast of what we had and what others had, our friends and acquaintance were from our own background and not contaminated with the feed of visual media.

There has been, over the last decade an influential movement to inform young people, not only of their rights but of their importance. When I was an adolescent it was not a question of knowing our place, we were happy in that place, living out our youth doing things that young people do without the overweening pressure that adults carry. If we promulgate from primary school onwards the child's rights alongside the rights of an adult, if we educate them to see themselves as younger versions of an adult then we must not be surprised if they begin to behave like one, with all the attendant consequences.             

Irrespective of cost.

Now you can hear the marionette controllers. The people who pull the political strings and the plethora of reporters who report and influence the public on how to think and digest the events as they unfold, are in disarray.

CNN have their top faces in place with their commentators on the streets feeding the network with a mixture of fact and opinion. Yesterday they were hammering on about the legitimacy of elected government and the fear that Morsi, the President would be thrown out by "people power".
My god how can this have come about "people power" who !!! The "people", oh you mean the plebs.  In many Western countries the people are quashed under the financial debt of cheap credit and in the pocket of the financial industry. The employees of the CNN are singing from a hymn sheet that is based in big business and the influence of Congress.

Yesterday the media were for the rule of an elected parliament irrespective, since this was the rule of a game through which power is dispensed. Today they have woken to a new game and they don't like it. They feed the airwaves with news of an Army coup and fund the situation with memories of Hosni Mubarak and the old dictatorship. They continually called the unseating of Morsi an undemocratic event, not willing to acknowledge that democracy is under revision as the public become aware of the events around them, not any more presented through an opaque
diplomatic prism but through the interactive reporting of the mobile phone camera and the brave whistle blowers, who reveal the unpleasant facts that our elected leaders would like to keep from us.

So we have the hesitant media moguls having to bite their tongue and consider that this event was the "will of the people", the Army there to facilitated whilst a transition takes place. Perhaps the worlds, military power base, the USA, will have to take note. 
How shocking that the Americans with their Guantanamo Bay legacy can talk about the rights of the people and their democratic institutions whilst continuing to deny even the most basic rights to the internees of that infamous camp.

Look how they manipulated the sovereign states of Europe to prevent the plane that they thought the whistle blower Edward Snowden was travelling on. It was as if he were carrying an atomic weapon in his brief case, not that he had alerted the world to the despicable practices of the US, the so called, free worlds protector of freedom and they wished to punish him irrespective of the cost !!            

Democracy and where power resides ?

What is this thing called democracy. Is it a concept where the forces within a country are made more equitable and the powerful are called to authenticate their actions every four years in an election.
Where does true power reside, is it in the ballot box or is that just a charade.

In centuries gone by, power resided in the Mon achy with a hereditary system of interlocking family support which ensured that the heir's to power would always come from a small clique.
The powerful landowning aristocracy were guaranteed their lands and rewarded with more if they lent their support to the crown. Beneath them came the merchant class with money to expand their privileges as and when required. At the bottom of the pile came the workers, people who did a job, be it with a skill, such as the Blacksmith or work on the land. This arrangement, this hierarchy was set in stone for generations and only as the concept of a Parliament came into being was the Joker introduced.
Parliament of course was not representative of the people, its representative body was made up of the rich and the powerful. With Emancipation the power has been wrested from the few and now, through the ballot box, in part rests potentially with the voter.
We also know that to some degree it is still a charade and that power still resides with the hereditary class. 
Private Schooling where contacts are forged for life, the Boardroom selection system made up of friends of friends, the  school tie and a memory locker full of patronage.
Still we believe in our hard won right to vote and we go along with what the political class tell us in their manifesto how things will change for the better - just vote for me sir !!

Tehrir Square is yet another way of producing a democratic outcome. "People power" which by-passed the rich and the powerful, went straight for the jugular by overtly saying that the people in power were not representative.
They shifted the game onto another platform.   I wonder how  many leaders today are waking up with a sick feeling in their stomach, does this herald a new dawn where the Hirachy can be bypassed ??              

Protest !!

Watching the events unfurl in Egypt one is struck by the immense size of the crowds gathering in different parts of the city. Those in support of President Morsi and those who wish to overthrow him, gathering in there thousands, millions, to show support. It is a remarkable scene to see people out on the streets day after day protesting.

In this country perhaps a thousand or two would be a significant demonstration and it would have to be organised so as not to disrupt the need for our people to turn up for work the following day. It might be argued that we don't have much to protest about and anyway we are too pragmatic and have the soft underbelly of debt to service. 
 Of course the people in this country who are due to feel the withdrawal of benefits in the coming months, the unemployed, the cast off's from the armed forces who will be turned out onto the street after fighting "our cause" in Afghanistan. These and others just might feel a little miffed but for many cultural reasons, we will not protest on the streets.

The underlying problem in Egypt is that the democratic elections, fought a couple of years ago, were in a sense skewed. The Muslim Brotherhood used the religious contrivance of "faith" to support the election of their political party.
If the politics had been "inclusive" and not seen as an opportunity to change society, along Muslim lines, accompanied by the slow crack down on liberal attitudes such as the proposed introduction of Sharia Law, was the final straw.

It seems to me that here we have the nub of the problem.  Any Muslim based party must follow a religious, Islamic agenda which is seen by many none Muslims, as a return to a way of life, out of touch with modern society. Without a religious covenant, the beliefs and the fervor are alien to most people. It produces a schism, a divide that is unbridgeable.
There is the fear of religious thought which can become, in some peoples eyes, unreasonable and dogmatic. 

Democracy

If you can imagine the scene. People with massive egos and not a little personal bile, opposing their ideological enemy, each side seething with contempt for the other, ignited by caustic and abusive comments from the leadership.  



This is not a Tahrir Square stand off where people with deep concern for what they see as a "sectarian" take over of the democratic achievement won, just over a year ago. 

It seems, given the petulance of Prime Ministers Question Time and the shallow content of the questions and rebuttals, the Egyptians might give pause for thought before placing too much hope in formal democracy.

The problem within any philosophical concept of how to organise the human condition, is that human beings get in the way.
Are we not our own worst enemy, not being able to see beyond, first and foremost, our own self interest.
A country is stronger when it can identify a common interest and draw on the strength of political leadership that collectively can put aside ideology, for the common good. We have so many problems in the society but these problems become the playthings of the political class. These problems are clothed in party prejudice, a prejudice which stops creative solutions, ideas that are rejected because they might have come from the Opposition.             

Emancipation

Is it for "Real"   The pictures coming out of Brazil of street protests, people taking to the streets questioning, in the only way they can, the spending of Billions of Real on next year’s  soccer World Cup and in another three years, the Olympics.
These events become the focus of huge spending sprees, funded by the taxpayer, handing enormous profits to the usual claimants, the global "construction company's" that these events attract.
On the one hand the expenditure is explained in terms of, national prestige with the caveat that there will be substantial improvements to services around the sporting event sites and the so called, "legacy" which can mean homes and the sporting venues themselves.
The politician of course herald the benefits that the spending will supposedly bring the people, yet they never answer the question, why couldn't this money (taxpayers money) be spent anyway if the projects are to benefit the taxpayers who have to cough up the cash anyway ?
When the Olympics or the Soccer World Cup come to town, government seem able to find the cash, even when "austerity" is on everyone's lips, to fund the event.   FIFA or the Olympic Committee strides the stage setting the agenda and demanding the standards. We have to comply otherwise they will literally take their ball somewhere else.

In what is called the west, Europe/US/Australasia we have built up, through years of democracy, fairly equitable societies in which inequality is not as "in your face", as it is in other parts of the world. The slums, the sectors of ramshackle housing, the blight of human beings living in appalling circumstances belong to other parts of the world.

Brazil is one of these nations. Cheek by jowl stands the absurd. 
Rio de Janeiro with its Copacabana Beach and Sugar Loaf Mountain jewels for the rich and famous whilst, around the hills and suburbs, in the Favelas the Cariocas exist.  6% of a total population of 190 million are Cariocas, a sub specious of economic life that the Brazilian Government would like to air brush out of the picture whilst they are world stage, engaged in the business of extravaganza!!   No wonder the people are on the streets, held back by the force of Police and the Army (institutions that are there to protect the people but often used to oppress them) whilst the well-heeled soccer fans watch the game. Thank god Brazil won and the nation went home happy but what of tomorrow and the day after. 

Brazil one of the BRIC (Brazil Russia India China) countries which our financial pages speak of as financial miracles with stupendous growth and money to burn - but not on the Cariocas. 

How reminiscent of our own history when only through emancipation has the constipation of the Capitalistic System been ameliorated.                 

A Morsi moment

Is this a Morsi moment as the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, IPSA have unveiled their deliberations on MPs pay. 

At the height of the MPs expenses scandal, one of the important reforms was to make "independent" the awarding body who would recommend the extent of MPs pay increases. Having read their report I am amazed at the gulf between the public and the Executive, in this case our MPs and the mind set that those in the corridors of power have when their own interests are involved. 
The Public Sector have been under the cosh for some time and rightly so. There is no doubt the feather bedding of the conditions of employment by people who work in the Public Services, especially the very generous pension arrangement have to be brought into line with the situation the general public find themselves. The MPs are part of the Public Service, paid by taxpayers money. During the expenses scandal we found it difficult to equate what they do and everyone was shocked by the willingness to cream the expenses for all they were worth. 
MPs claim that their work is complex and vital and virtually impossible to quantify in terms of remuneration.
Do these people stand for Parliament as if it were a job and do they consider the pay before putting their name forward to the electorate. Would the millions of people who get by on the average salary (£24,000) and the many millions who earn far less, feel sympathy for the MP who claims his salary of £65,738 (another 14,000 if a committee chair and much more if a Minister), needs another £10,000 pa to meet their living costs.
The salary is of course only the tip of the iceberg.
Final Salary pensions (virtually unheard of these days), generous housing arrangements, resettlement payments, £56,250 winding up costs, benefits that include a "salary sacrifice" element, "child care", "substantial meals", and "office expenses" that are rail-roaded through the system.
Much of course depends on how we "value" the work an MP does and more to the point, what they do !!  What are these special circumstances that makes the work they do so special ? We see them debating in the House of Commons. They read a speech to an often near empty House, other MPs sitting around engrossed on their mobile phones, the Minister at work on paperwork seeming to pay little or no attention to the MP now speaking.
The MP also has their constituency work but one has to question what actually they can do, other than add weight to a constituents claim for justice with a letter with the House of Commons letterhead.  In fact they have no power and no responsibility and it is this fact that sets them apart from the professions they feel they should emulate with a comparative pay scale. The people they would like to mirror, (GPs,  Senior Management within the Public Services , Partners in a legal service),  all carry a great deal of responsibility for which they are judged, on a case by case, day by day performance which the MPs seem to have no comparable influence. 
In the survey carried out amongst MPs, the 1922 Committee and the Parliamentary Labour Party seem to be strange bedfellows although the percentages show the Tory's well ahead of the other parties in their rapacious claim for more money, this, even when one accepts that people in the Labour Party come from backgrounds of far lower financial security.     
The claim that one needs to pay higher salaries to substantiate drawing people in from the professions misses the point that the peoples representatives in Parliament do not reflect the People !!   We need people who would find £65.738, plus the superb benefits, more than enough. They would lend a voice in Parliament that is, with a very few exceptions missing in the public school event that is Parliament these days.
We miss the raucous oratory of the Attlee years when people entered Parliament through the Trade Union movement, knowing first hand the needs of the ordinary voter. This is sadly missing with the current intake of the professional political student having studied politics at University and joined the political class without having got their hands dirty. They have no concept of the ordinary concerns that "we" have. 

To add injury to injustice is the rise in the Queens purse of two million pounds now and another two million next year.  Have we gone mad, wrestling pennies from the poor, we are blind to their plight and are led to think that the Queen and her household, should be excluded from the effects of belt tightening which we now all are beginning to experience