Steve KelseySome years ago I met a Chaplain from the Chicago Police Department. The Chaplain’s job was just as tough as you might imagine. He worked in the 1980’s in the 4th District, the south side of Chicago, which is not a gentle part of town. He wore a uniform, and he carried a badge but no firearm. His job was to pick up the pieces when it all went wrong. It was his job to tell police families someone would not come home that night. It was his job comfort the families of murder victims. It was his job to hold the hand of the officers who were not going to make it. He was in London to share his experiences with a group of company directors
Category: Politics
P2P Politics
Brexit was a triumph for a new form of politics. This mutant offspring of a love affair between Neo-feudalism and data science points towards a politics where representation is replaced by information and analysis. This bizarre child, bleating jingoism as it stomps all over the British economy, is an unfortunate advertisement for the new politics but there can be little doubt that it represents the future. And that could be a good thing, if we are smart.
Brexit was delivered by data science. Over 50 million Facebook profiles were filleted for data-points that could be mapped to political views allowing propaganda uniquely tailored towards exploiting individuals fears to blitz the accounts of voters on the final day of the Referendum. For data science and propaganda the Referendum result was a triumph. The problem with Brexit was the objective. I don’t mean leaving the E.U., I mean the use of social media and big data techniques to impose the private goals of a few onto the population by manipulating their anxieties. This is a perversion of what could and should happen when big data meets politics.
Politics for a civilised world – Part 0
There can be little doubt that we are seeing a deliberate and very stealthy restructuring of our society. This has been underway from before the Thatcher and Reagan years that saw the first surfacing of the hard-right agenda. This move was accelerated profoundly by the 2016 elections in the USA and the UK. The election of Tump in the USA and Brexit in the UK are just another step on the path that was largely unplanned but, having happened, was seized as an opportunity to accelerate this restructuring.
Their objective it to move society away from democratic norms towards a new hyper-capitalism. This is a very peculiar form of capitalism that promotes monopolies in industry and the concentration of power and money in the hands of a few. This is not at all what you would expect from the dynamics of a free market model. As evidence you only have to look at the US healthcare system where efficiency, choice and cost effectiveness are far from evident.
This is not England
My family is as English as they come. My family name of Kelsey is derived from two villages in Lincolnshire North Kelsey and South Kelsey. They have been there for a long time. A Kelsey is noted as a member of the Rump Parliament of the 1600’s, his profession a button maker. My mother’s maiden name is Cornwell and has an equally long history, deriving from a hamlet it Oxfordshire. For generations both sides of the family worked as farmhands. I am as English as they come.
In the 1930’s my maternal Grandfather Charlie Cornwell and his sons took part in the Battle of Cable Street. The East End rose up against Mosley’s Fascist Blackshirts attempt to march on the Jewish Communities of the East End. 10, 000 police had been drafted in to make a path for the fascist march but they were defeated and the march was abandoned.
Real Politic
The mess we are in today was inevitable because British democracy is, and always has been, a sham.
We are taught Parliament is sovereign, it creates the legislation that controls our lives. The MP’s that form Parliament are our representatives, voted into their roles by a majority vote. They are there to represent the views of their constituents and take decisions on their behalf.
What could be more democratic than that?
Let’s take a closer look at what actually happens.
Party Rules
To become an MP you have to be selected by a political party. This is essential, as independent MP’s have no access to the systems and processes employed by parties to promote candidates and capture votes.