One day soon I hope to be able to invite people to do something. My vision is that we need to collaborate in a way that has been seen before but ussually happens rather spontaneously.
People move into new housing estates, they join new groups, go to new schools and many other exciting things that are part of our human culture. And, they grow together into a special kind of community where there is a real bond between the members. Often there is not really an overriding common goal or even social status or condition. They just happened to be in the same community at the same time as something new happened and they grew together with a social cohesion that sometimes can be quite special.
We are living in a Britain that is ripe for a new social phenomenon of emerging social cohesion just because we are here together. This time it will be different though because the something new is not so much something physical as a common recognition of a new condition. That condition is an awakening of a new kind of life condition and a new need to match it.
The seeds are already planted in individuals and groups.
This evening i quite suddenly found myself inspired to write again. Perhaps the effects of my trip to India are finally wearing off. Unusually for me this post contains a little bit of my personal history…
jon
What exactly does it mean to be British?
Well, for most of my life i lived without really knowing what it meant at all. At least, not consciously.
Sorry that we have not posted so often as we began 2010 but I took the first ten days of the year away from the UK and off to India. Thanks to Keith for holding the fort in my absence. The cause of my absence was Cycle India 2010, a cycle ride through the Indian countryside in aid of HEAL, a small UK based charity that supports an Indian school and orphanage.
Cycle India 2010
The great news was that when we were done our group of thirty cyclists from the UK, US and India and our wonderful Indian support team had together raised over eighty thousand pounds for the charity.
Matthew Glover, Head of Fundraising, HEAL UK
My involvement began around eight months ago when a good friend and one of the organisers of the event, Matthew Glover, asked if I would be interested. I was. But, inactivity and a liking for the kind of food that adds large amounts of weight to the body over a number of years meant that interest alone might not be enough to get me through 190 miles of cycling over 4 days. After a few weeks of deliberation and some tentative, and very slow, outings on a bike I committed.
I want to share a few pictures that I hope tell a story of our adventures in India.
Cycle India Cyclists
This shot was set on a bridge in a very pleasant area. We had just flown down a particularly good downhill section and had stopped for refreshment. It was a great group of people and everyone really enjoyed themselves.
As part of his pre-election manoeuvring, Conservative leader David Cameron, according to the BBC, has today accused Labour of ‘moral failure’ and presiding over a country in both economic and social recession.
He has said the UK rewards parents who split up and is a place where professionals are told to follow rules rather than do what is best.
As an example of what he calls ‘broken Britain’, Cameron talked about the case of 2 brothers sentenced today for brutally attacking 2 other boys in South Yorkshire.
The brothers, aged 10 and 11 at the time, attacked their victims in Edlington, Doncaster, last April. They threatened to kill their victims, then aged 9 and 11, stamped on them and attacked them with broken glass, bricks and sticks. The brothers admitted causing grievous bodily harm with intent.
While stressing that the case is not typical, Cameron cited it as a shocking example of what he calls Britain’s broken society, one of the key themes of the party’s campaign but a diagnosis rejected by the government which said the Doncaster case was “uniquely terrible and extremely rare”.
In a book of interviews with him by GQ editor Dylan Jones, published this week, Cameron is quoted as saying: “I’m going to be as radical a social reformer as Mrs Thatcher was an economic reformer, and radical social reform is what this country needs right now.
“Margaret Thatcher in her time realised that the big challenge was reviving Britain’s economy, and we should recognise that the challenge for the modern Conservatives is reviving our society. Keep reading →
At some point very soon we are going to be facing the real consequences of the banking crisis. Government has already announced cuts and more will follow as the full implications of the costs involved come home to roost. Does this crisis mark a downward turn in the modern western capitalist system? One that may we not completely recover from?
One probable, and short term, consequence is that local authorities will have their funding from central government severely cut back – one reliable source has told Keith a large amount of the 60% of the funding local authorities get from central government is going to go. We would expect that the government will try to spread the blame around as much as possible. Letting local authorities take decisions at a local level will both help this to happen and also cause local problems.
Epitomising the need for strong structure backed up with a profitable business model Shaffi Mather discusses his new model for fighting corruption in India and beyond. In Spiral Dynamics values based language, a classic healthy blue/orange collaboration to overcome an unhealthy red corruption.
In true entrepreneurial fashion his ideas are not limited to a single area – he has also created an ambulance service in three states of India that is growing fast and very successful.
Shaffi presents his ideas and progress to date on one of the TED talks which are well worth a free you tube subscription.
Did you know that company directors have to act in the best interests of their company at all times? It is written into English law. There are other laws that directors must abide by like health and safety and filing annual accounts etc.
But, if you stop to think for a moment, if there is not a law against it and it will be good for a company then that companies directors must do it – whatever it is. There are an awful lot of things that companies can do legally that are not good for their staff, wider society or even the world or environment.
So, if you are a company director and you make a moral decision not to do something because you think it might not be best for another even though it would have been good for your company then you are breaking the law.
If someone breaks into your house, do you have the right to defend it? Keith has a new post about an extreme case of this over at his blog that involved grievious bodily harm on both sides and what appears to be a judicial response somewhat lacking in common sense. The problem is that in this case, and a growing number of others, the law sees the rights of everyone to be exactly the same regardess of whether they are behaving legally. A politically correct justice that results in some very uncommon sense decisions.
Integralian has a new blog called Hot Snow and has kindly let me copy the latest post here…
The COP15 Climate Control Conference starts on 7th December, running until the 18th. Thousands of delegates and officials representing multiple countries and interests will interact over the 11 days of the conference. The delegates will all be requested to log into a computer system designed to help them find other individuals with synergy and common interests. They will be able to locate expertise, examine a plethora of documents, find codes of best practice and identify solutions to encountered challenges. Powering this system is an application of Meshworks ™ operating on a Gaiasoft platform.
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