My Experience of Dementia

I haven’t posted a blog for quite a while and want to bring you up-to-date with events in my life over the past year. If you have tried to contact me and received no reply, I want to offer an explanation. I am now 89 years old, just 2 months away from my 90th birthday. Just over a year ago, I was diagnosed with vascular dementia. A friend is helping me to post this, as I now find it difficult to find my way around a computer. I want to share my experience with others who might have dementia and also with those who care for them.

When I was diagnosed, I was shocked. I was told to focus on the joys in my life rather than the handicaps. There are many things I still enjoy. I love spending time with my friends and family who are all very supportive and understanding. My grandchildren are a delight. My garden gives me great pleasure, although I find it hard to work in the garden because my mobility is now limited and I am in danger of falling. I use a walker and have a stair lift. Most days I take a short walk to a nearby café for coffee, but it is annoying that I must always have someone with me.

Many of the things I used to enjoy, I can no longer do. At age 87 I went to a gym 3 times a week and worked for hours in my garden. I have written 5 books and many articles and used to write a monthly blog on my website. None of this is possible now. I was having a lovely time, and it is not easy to accept this dramatic change.

I find it really frustrating that my short term memory is now so bad. Put yourself in my place. If you couldn’t remember things, how annoying would that be! It’s not so much that I can’t think, it’s that I can’t remember what I thought. Sometimes I forget what I set out to say half way through a sentence.
I can’t remember a conversation five minutes after having it. Keeping a sense of humour helps. In a conversation with a group of friends, I find it easier to take part if I can talk about a subject I choose. Joining in with their subject is harder.

Reading is another issue. It’s one thing to read but another to understand what you are reading. When you are reading a book or newspaper, you have to remember a train of thought, and this is now difficult for me. So what was once a great pleasure is now a challenge, but I keep trying.
One afternoon last week, I had a rest as usual. I was very tired after a long walk. When I woke up, I was very confused and in a panic. I didn’t know who I was and where I was. I thought I was working as I used to do years ago. It was very strange and confusing. After a while, I was OK. My wife told me that when I was in hospital recently after a fall, I had a day when I was in a delusion, very similar to today but prolonged. I thought I was leading a workshop at an Oxford College and the doctors were the participants. I wanted to tell them that they needed to compromise with me and let me go home. I didn’t understand that I was in a hospital, and I have no memory of any of this. The incident at home was a bit different, in that I knew something wasn’t right.

I hate the feeling of being out of control. I find it very hard not being able to go anywhere on my own. I dislike being “looked after” and need to be treated with respect in spite of my limitations. Thankfully, there is much that I can still do and enjoy. I love going down to the Saturday market in our town, especially in the summer when I can sit outside at a café table with a coffee and watch the activity in the town. I really enjoy being out and about. Sitting at home can be boring. I don’t want to do crosswords and puzzles. I want to be among people and in touch with the world.

Although I am no longer active as a campaigner for positive change, I still offer my website and writings as a resource and hope they will be of use for some time to come.

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Some timely thoughts on Boris Johnson and the Conservatives – I think most of the time Boris does not have command of his brief. He just enjoys power- sees politics as a game he wants to win. He is not really a man of the people although he presents himself in that way. I’d like to see a government that really has the interests of the whole population at the heart of their politics. I do not believe that is the case with the Conservatives. Unlike Sir Keir Starmer, many in the current Cabinet are very privileged. I am looking forward to the time when we have a Labour/Liberal/Green government in power.

Racism in the UK: Is the UK institutionally racist?

Published with the agreement of Shutterstock Images.

 A report in Pink News,the brand for the global LGBT+ community and the next generation, whose mission is to inform, inspire change and empower people to be themselves, says claims that there is no evidence of institutional racism in the UK, by a leading race equality think tank, the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities are a “gross offence”  and “extremely disturbing”. The commission was set up to investigate and report on racism in the UK following Black Lives Matter in the summer of 2020.

The UK Government is condemned over ‘disturbing’ report claiming there’s no evidence of institutional racism in the UK, wrote Patrick Kelleher March 31, 2021.  

The commission’s report claims that the UK “should be regarded as a model for other white-majority countries” on race issues because children from ethnic minority backgrounds were found to do as well or better than their white counterparts in school, and there is no evidence of institutional racism in the UK.

Leading race equality groups, have expressed their profound disappointment after the Government Equalities Office released key findings from the commission’s report on Tuesday evening (30 March), showing that the commission had dismissed the effects of structural racism.

Halima Begum, chief executive of the Runnymede Trust said the commission indirectly acknowledged a lack of institutional support for young Black and Ethnic_groups_in_the_United_Kingdom  students by attributing their success at school to “minority aspiration”. She said the finding is a “clear acknowledgement by the commission that immigrants and ethnic minorities are left to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, urging their children to over-achieve in school, precisely because there is not the necessary institutional support available to them.”

Begum continued: “The very idea that government evidence confirms that institutional racism does not exist is frankly extremely disturbing. A young Black mother is four times more likely to die in childbirth than her white friend. A young Black man is nineteen times more likely to be stopped and searched by the Metropolitan Police than his young white neighbour.” She felt massively let down by the report.

David Lammy delivered a stirring response to the government’s diversity report after the Commission on Race and Ethnic disparities found no evidence of “institutional racism” in Britain. On his LBC show, the Labour MP listed the names of families who had suffered first hand from institutional racism. He said: “Young people are saying black lives matter and Boris Johnson stands in their way.” It comes after Tony Sewell, the chairman of the race commission said, while there was anecdotal evidence of racism, there was no proof that it was structural, saying there was data to show some ethnic minorities were doing well in the jobs market and in education.

Cressida Dick refused to quit over vigil policing and dismissed ‘armchair critics’. TheMetropolitan police chief stood firm after criticism from the London mayor and the Home Secretary: ‘If it had been lawful, I’d have been there,’ said Cressida Dick after the Sarah Everard vigil. Britain’s most senior police chief defied pressure to resign as she dismissed “armchair” critics amid widespread outrage over officers manhandling women who were mourning the killing of Sarah Everard.

According to Patrick Vernon, the race report is stuck in a time-warp – it doesn’t engage with the realities of being a minority in 2021. The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities is in denial about the past, and about the future in a post-pandemic Brexit Britain.

Air pollution is another disparity. People of colour are more likely to live in an area with illegal air pollution levels. Research by the Environmental Defence Fund Europe shows that toxic nitrogen oxide (NO2) is on average 24-31% higher and the most deprived Londoners are over six times more likely to live in areas with higher pollution than the least deprived ( Page 4 Resurgence Ecologist May/June 2021).

If you want to take action, here are some groups to support:

• So White a campaign group seeking to tackle institutional racism in the charity sector.
• Liberty an independent membership organisation. We challenge injustice, defend freedom and campaign to make sure everyone in the UK is treated fairly. We are campaigners, lawyers and policy experts who work together to protect rights and hold the powerful to account. Together we’ve been making the UK a fairer, more equal place since 1934.
• The National Education Union is a campaigning union with a clear vision of what our education system should look like. Together, we want to shape the future of education for the benefit of teachers, support staff, leaders, and pupils.
• The Runnymede Trust rejects the findings of the “independent” Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities published on the 31^st March 2021.
• Black Pride who say that the report by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparitieshttps: prompted by last year’s Black Lives Matter protests, was not universally welcomed and racism is a virus .
• Black Health Initiative.
• Choked UP

Reading

The Black Napoleon by James Hannon.

Natives: Race & Class in the Ruins of Empire by Akala. From the first time he was stopped and searched as a child, to the day he realised his mum was white, to his first encounters with racist teachers – race and class have shaped Akala’s life and outlook. In this unique book he takes his own experiences and widens them out to look at the social, historical and political factors that have left us where we are today. This is a very powerful book.

Why I’m no Longer Speaking to White People about Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge.

Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities published on the 31st of March 2021.

I am an author, writer and speaker. In normal times, I give participative talks in communities, universities, schools and at conferences. My latest book The 21st Century Revolution – A Call to Greatness was Oxford Alumni Book of the Month for November 2016. Professor Katherine J. Willis, CBE, Principal of St Edmund Hall and Professor of Biodiversity, Department Zoology, University of Oxford said “I am greatly enjoying it; you write beautifully”. I update the book through my Blog https://brucenixon.com/ which includes many other topics.

If you value what you have read, please spread the word.

The case for a four-day week

Here is a summary by the New Economics Foundation of a new book which argues that shorter working time should be at the heart of post-pandemic recovery.

The Case for a Four Day Week by Anna Coote, Aidan Harper and Alfie Stirling

Shorter working time should be at the heart of post-pandemic recovery. That’s the message of The Case for a Four Day Week, published by Polity, and written by NEF’s Anna Coote, Aidan Harper and Alfie Stirling. It sets out why reduced working time is good for human wellbeing, for the natural environment and for building a prosperous economy – and shows how it can be done. Drawing on a wide range of experience across the world it provides, for the first time, a practical roadmap for moving from today’s standard workweek towards four days or 30 hours as the new norm.

It’s an idea whose time has come. As governments struggle to cope with Covid-19, going out to work for five full days a week is suddenly the exception rather than the rule. The number of workers who know what it feels like to have more free time has risen dramatically. So has the number of employers with experience of reorganising staff time. That’s good news.

The bad news is that restrictions on everyday life are hitting the poor hardest – through loss of jobs and income, as well as through delayed healthcare for other illnesses and enforced conditions that threatened mental and physical wellbeing. Few believe the economy will simply ​‘bounce back’ in 2021 and there’s no chance the effects of pandemic will vanish as swiftly as they appeared.

Moving to shorter working time can build on the good news and help put an end to the bad. In the first instance, it offers a way of sharing a reduced supply of jobs among more people, cutting the numbers of unemployed and releasing others from the multiple strains of long-hours working. Crucially, this strategy is more than a temporary fix – it underpins a long-term transition to a fairer and more sustainable economy. So it’s part of a broader policy agenda that includes raising hourly rates of pay, so that no one is forced work long hours to make ends meet.

The book demonstrates a range of social, economic and environmental benefits that can accrue from a shorter working week. With rates of pay protected, it can improve wellbeing by reducing stress and anxiety, and making it easier to combine employment with domestic responsibilities. It leaves men more time to care for their families and opens up more opportunities for women to reengage with the labour market. If this is to work well, it’s important that hours are as flexible as possible, to suit different needs. Some will prefer five short days to a three-day weekend, for example. Others may prefer more time off when becoming a parent, or perhaps an earlier but more gradual retirement. Gaining more control over one’s time is just as important as cutting hours.

This strategy is more than a temporary fix – it underpins a long-term transition to a fairer and more sustainable economy.

There is evidence that when people put in fewer hours, the quality of their work improves, which can boost economic productivity and rates of pay. When people have more disposable time, they are also less likely to buy energy-intensive ​‘convenience’ goods such as processed ready meals, or to opt for faster and less sustainable modes of transport, such as a car instead of a bike, or a plane instead of a train. Cross national comparisons show that countries with lower average hours of work have a smaller ecological footprint – irrespective of the level of overall consumption.

As the book demonstrates, this can happen now. It is a realisable vision, backed by lessons from history and plenty of practical examples from around the world today. And there’s a clear pathway for change.

Calling for an eight-hour, five-day working week was once considered a dangerous fantasy – until trade unions fought for it from the mid-19th century onwards, and employers began to realise it could be good for business. In the last two decades there have been popular experiments with short-hours working in many countries, including Sweden, Germany, the United States and New Zealand. Governments have passed laws to support reduced working time in France, the Netherlands and Belgium. The largest union in Germany, IG Metall, negotiated a 28-hour week with a major employer in 2018.

Changes happen gradually and unevenly, combining voluntary, negotiated and statutory initiatives. But the end goal is universal: to benefit the whole population and reduce inequalities, with everyone entitled to sufficient pay. A shorter working week is not a stand-alone strategy, but part of a progressive agenda that addresses major structural issues including industrial strategy, welfare state reform and climate mitigation.

The route map for transition starts with measures to support innovations by trade unions, individuals and employers, and then builds on existing entitlements with extended care leave, additional public holidays and tapered retirement. It proposes a standing Commission on Working Time to conduct independent analysis and ​‘map out a consensual path towards increased statutory paid time off in return for slower future pay growth overall’. Further along the route are proposals for a legally enforceable ​‘living wage’ that matches reductions in working time, public reporting of working hours by employers and gradually lowering statutory maximum weekly limits. Reduced working time is seen as integral to progressive programmes such as community wealth building, universal basic services and the Green New Deal.

Our understanding of what is ​‘normal’ is neither natural nor eternal but a human construct that alters in response to new conditions and experience. Today’s ​‘normal’ is certainly in flux and the time is ripe for change.

The world’s bad guys are winning. Is anyone going to stand up to them?

Here I am hosting Simon Tisdall’s article in the Observer Sunday 7th February 2021

The world’s bad guys are winning. Is anyone going to stand up to them?

From the coup in Myanmar to the autocratic regimes in China and Russia, western values are under increasing threat

Blame Joe Biden for not stepping in more quickly, or Donald Trump for encouraging authoritarian rulers. Blame Barack Obama for lifting sanctions. Easier still, blame China for propping up a military junta and putting profit before people.

The International Court of Justice warned of ongoing genocide, but nobody was saved. UN security council members argued endlessly about what to do. The finger of blame also points at Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel heroine turned sellout.

Yet while recriminations over last week’s coup in Myanmar may be inevitable, they are beside the point. The issue now is what is the international community going to do about it? The quick answer, based on recent precedents, is not a lot.

This dilemma not only applies to Myanmar. Across the world, to put it crudely, the bad guys are winning. The coup is another landmark in what David Miliband, a former UK foreign secretary, calls the “age of impunity”.

It’s true the US has set an unusually bad example. In November Aung San Suu Kyi won a clear election victory. Myanmar’s army chief, Min Aung Hlaing, alleged fraud. Peddling a lie and ignoring the constitution, he plotted to overturn the vote by force.

Sound familiar? In Washington on Monday, Trump faces trial for a similar, albeit failed, insurrection. Yet such a reckoning is a democratic rarity. Public protests are growing in Myanmar. So is repression. Who will bring Min Aung Hlaing to justice?

It’s also true China is playing a cynical game. It denies backing the coup, which is plausible. Its huge investments require stability, not a return to pre-2011 pro-democracy agitation. Yet China will be the winner if the west reverts to punitive sanctions. This outcome would render the generals triply damned: hated at home, ostracised abroad, and more dependent than ever on Xi Jinping.

The coup is seen by some as the first big test of Biden’s commitment to global democracy. Analyst Azeem Ibrahim claims a US-China deal is possible.

“The US could recognise Beijing’s commercial interests … in exchange for China’s support for forcing Myanmar into humanely resolving the Rohingya crisis and entrenching the power of the [pro-Beijing] democratic forces in the country,” he suggested.

This scenario was optimistic, Ibrahim conceded. China pays only lip service to democracy – witness its crackdown in Hong Kong. It obstructed efforts to punish the generals for genocidal attacks on Rohingya Muslims in 2016-17 which killed thousands and forced three-quarters of a million to flee to Bangladesh.

Xi, too, stands accused of genocide – in Xinjiang – yet appears untouchable.

The Birds in our Garden

We know that nature is a cure. We live in uncertain times that are very difficult. Many people are dying every day. They are someone’s loved ones. It is very difficult for people, often overworked, in care homes and the NHS and distressing for them to constantly endure this day in day out.

Humans are animals who need each other. We are very social beings. We need to touch, to hug, embrace and kiss. At the moment many of us communicate and see each other remotely. But, sadly, we cannot touch or hug. We also need to laugh. The latter is something we can certainly do plenty of. It is a great release. Technology such as Zoom enables people to make visual contact. WhatsApp enables people in our road to function as a social and caring community as never before. We have become closer; we have got to know each other far better. We help each other out in all kinds of ways. It is wonderful to have such devices. Despite all this, the fact remains that it is a very strange time in which we are unable to do many things that define us as a species. And we need solace. This is where nature can help. There is nothing more beautiful than a tree in the snow.

Every morning when I get up, the first thing I see is a beech tree.

Just looking out of the window at trees and birds enhances our wellbeing and raises our spirits. Even better is to be out there with them.  

Blue Tits are a garden favourite. They are one of the easiest garden birds to attract to your garden, and they are frequent peanut feeders. They are acrobatic, inquisitive and colourful.

Source unrecorded – please inform me if you know.

As I look out of the bedroom window I see Blue Tits eating from our bird feeders on the old gnarled pear tree.

Alas, these birds are very quick to detect my presence, however discrete, and they may fly away. Hence the difficulty of taking bird photographs.

I managed to take photograph this Blue Tit before it flew away.

There can be as many as a dozen Blue Tits flying about our garden. And soon Blackbirds, Thrushes, Robins, Pigeons and Chaffinches join them, though these birds tend to stay on the ground. Here is a male Chaffinch, far more colourful than its female counterpart.

Male Chaffinch – Wikipedia

Sometimes I hear an Owl in the night.

Thanks to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) for the image above.

Here I just managed to catch a pigeon and a squirrel before they disappeared.

If I am not quick enough squirrels will completely empty the bird feeder. Their acrobatics are impressive. They happily eat upside down.

Soon snow drops will be in full bloom, followed by blue bells, both Spanish and native English, then primroses and daffodils.

Snowdrops and Christmas Roses

Then I shall be planting salad plants; and finally in May, I shall be putting out heritage climbing beans, squash and zucchinis. Then we shall be in full summer with grapes and other fruit.

One final thing – Bird song. Why do birds sing? This is what the RSBP say.

“Bird songs are common sounds to us all, but why do birds sing? Imagine you’re a male willow warbler, and you’ve just flown 2,400 miles (4000 km) from Africa. It’s spring, and you need to find a mate quickly. However, your home is a woodland and you’re the colour of leaves. What better way of advertising to a passing female that you are here and would make a fine father for her chicks than by having a clear, loud and recognisable song?

However, song also has another, just as important, function. Most songbirds will need to hold down a territory, so song is a way of staking ownership and telling other males to steer clear.

Technically, only the group of birds called ‘songbirds’ sing – warblers, thrushes, finches and the like. What sets songbirds apart is they actually learn, practice and perfect their songs, whereas the calls of other birds are hard-wired into them from birth, and they don’t perfect them.

As in so many things in life, there are some blurred edges to this definition of song. For example, some songbirds such as starlings and goldfinches also like to sing as a group, while our beloved robin sings all winter – males and females – in order to defend feeding territories.”

Wellbeing and health are what matter most. Above a basic level, wellbeing has little to do with wealth. According to Fast Company, it has much it has more to do with social progressThe ten countries with the highest wellbeing have shown that economic measures of success, such as gross domestic product (GDP), have little to do with wellbeing. So we should not assess a country by its GDP? tells you about the level of economic activity, but not necessarily whether nations are bettering people’s lives.

Perhaps the numerous lockdowns over the past year have prompted many of us to pause in our busy lives and re-connect with nature. I am fortunate in having a garden and nearby countryside to enjoy. Feeding the birds and watching their activities in our garden has been a source of delight and solace, even on grey winter days.

If you love birds, do support The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

I am an author, writer and speaker. In normal times, I give participative talks in communities, universities, schools and at conferences. My latest book The 21st Century Revolution – A Call to Greatness https://www.compassonline.org.uk/the-21st-century-revolution-a-call-to-greatness/ was Oxford Alumni Book of the Month for November 2016. Professor Katherine J. Willis, CBE, Principal of St Edmund Hall and Professor of Biodiversity, Department Zoology, University of Oxford said “I am greatly enjoying it; you write beautifully”. I update the book through my Blog which includes many other topics.

If you enjoyed what you have read, please spread the word.

Opposites make the whole.

Satish Kumar’s wisdom is that opposites make the whole.  

So, for example, there is always the bad news, like Donald Trump. But then there is the election of Joe Biden, representing very good news. Although progress may not be linear, over time it is the good news that ultimately prevails. That is how humanity advances. Similarly, there are excellent democracies like New Zealand . And there are dictatorships like China and Russia; dictators like Xi Ping and Russian President Putin, who bumps off his opponents.

Can we imagine today the devastating war of 1939 to 1945 between the main countries of Europe? I believe that is the course of history. I for one am so glad to be living today, rather than 50 or 100 years ago.

Here is another example of bad – absolutely awful. During World War 2, Alan Turing cracked the enigma code and that shortened the war by several years and saved countless lives. Yet In 1952, Alan Turing was arrested for homosexuality – which was then illegal in Britain. He was found guilty of ‘gross indecency’ (this conviction was overturned in 2013) but only avoided a prison sentence by accepting chemical castration. In 1954, he was found dead from cyanide poisoning.

Biden calls for a “one nation” approach, for working together, repairing alliances, rising to the occasion in creating a new and better world. Joe Biden’s success over his long political career has come from seeking gradual reforms, building coalitions and aiming for bipartisan compromise rather than pursuing or leading a revolution. 

Trump was a divider. Biden is a unifier. He emphasized unity in his inaugural address in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, the dangerous scourge of misinformation and bitter partisan divisions in modern-day America: “To overcome these challenges, to restore the soul and secure the future of America, requires so much more than words and requires the most elusive of all things in a democracy: unity.”

Joe Biden sends a clear message to the watching world – America’s back.

Politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire destroying everything in its path

His success over his long political career, in fact, has come from seeking gradual reforms, building coalitions and aiming for bipartisan compromise rather than pursuing or leading a revolution. (I am indebted to The Conversation for these comments).

The position of women today is so much better. This is better for everyone. More top leaders are women and, on the whole, I believe they make better leaders than men. Think of the most influential women to day such as Angela Merkel. Then there is New Zealand’s highly regarded Premier. Roughly a third of UK MPs are women, thank goodness – generally they compare so favourably with some of their aggressive male counterparts. And more and more women occupy top positions. For example Frances Lorraine O’Grady is the General Secretary of the British Trades Union Congress (TUC), the first woman to hold the position.  That is not to say that we have not got much further to go.  In In 2020, only five FTSE 100 companies are steered by women.

For black people in Britain, the same is true. Black or brown men and women are in greater evidence in the news every day. Again we have much further to go.

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Preview(opens in a new tab)about:blankAdd titleOpposites make the whole.

So, for example, there is always the bad news, like Donald Trump. But then there is the election of Joe Biden, representing very good news. Although progress may not be linear, over time it is the good news that ultimately prevails. That is how humanity advances. Similarly, there are excellent democracies like New Zealand . And there are dictatorships like China and Russia; dictators like Xi Ping and Russian President Putin, who bumps off his opponents.

Can we imagine today the devastating war of 1939 to 1945 between the main countries of Europe? I believe that is the course of history. I for one am so glad to be living today, rather than 50 or 100 years ago.

Here is another example of bad – absolutely awful. During World War 2, Alan Turing cracked the enigma code and that shortened the war by several years and saved countless lives. Yet In 1952, Alan Turing was arrested for homosexuality – which was then illegal in Britain. He was found guilty of ‘gross indecency’ (this conviction was overturned in 2013) but only avoided a prison sentence by accepting chemical castration. In 1954, he was found dead from cyanide poisoning.

Biden calls for a “one nation” approach, for working together, repairing alliances, rising to the occasion in creating a new and better world. Joe Biden’s success over his long political career has come from seeking gradual reforms, building coalitions and aiming for bipartisan compromise rather than pursuing or leading a revolution. 

Trump was a divider. Biden is a unifier. He emphasized unity in his inaugural address in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, the dangerous scourge of misinformation and bitter partisan divisions in modern-day America: “To overcome these challenges, to restore the soul and secure the future of America, requires so much more than words and requires the most elusive of all things in a democracy: unity.”

Joe Biden sends a clear message to the watching world – America’s back.

Politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire destroying everything in its path

His success over his long political career, in fact, has come from seeking gradual reforms, building coalitions and aiming for bipartisan compromise rather than pursuing or leading a revolution. (I am indebted to The Conversation for these comments).

The position of women today is so much better. This is better for everyone. More top leaders are women and, on the whole, I believe they make better leaders than men. Think of the most influential women to day such as Angela Merkel. Then there is New Zealand’s highly regarded Premier. Roughly a third of UK MPs are women, thank goodness – generally they compare so favourably with some of their aggressive male counterparts. And more and more women occupy top positions. For example Frances Lorraine O’Grady is the General Secretary of the British Trades Union Congress (TUC), the first woman to hold the position.  That is not to say that we have not got much further to go.  In In 2020, only five FTSE 100 companies are steered by women.

For black people in Britain, the same is true. Black or brown men and women are in greater evidence in the news every day. Again we have much further to go.

Incidentally, another piece of good news today is that Unilever will force its tens of thousands of suppliers to pay their staff a living wage as part of a new range of commitments that is expected to impact millions of workers globally.

What you can do to use your power: Support organisations campaigning for democratic reform: Make Votes Matter , The Make Votes Matter Alliance, Compass-Together for a good society, Politics for the Many , the Electoral Reform Society, The Citizens Assembly Project, Constitutional Convention, Unlock Democracy, Counting Women In, 5050Parliament and Voice4 Change.

I am an author, writer and speaker. In normal times, I give participative talks in communities, universities, schools and at conferences. My latest book The 21st Century Revolution – A Call to Greatnesswas Oxford Alumni Book of the Month for November 2016. Professor Katherine J. Willis, CBE, Principal of St Edmund Hall and Professor of Biodiversity, Department Zoology, University of Oxford said “I am greatly enjoying it; you write beautifully”. I update the book through my Blog which includes many other topics.

If you value what you have read, please spread the word.

Incidentally, another piece of good news today is that Unilever will force its tens of thousands of suppliers to pay their staff a living wage as part of a new range of commitments that is expected to impact millions of workers globally.

What you can do to use your power: Support organisations campaigning for democratic reform: Make Votes Matter , The Make Votes Matter Alliance, Compass-Together for a good society, Politics for the Many , the Electoral Reform Society, The Citizens Assembly Project, Constitutional Convention, Unlock Democracy, Counting Women In, 5050Parliament and Voice4 Change.

I am an author, writer and speaker. In normal times, I give participative talks in communities, universities, schools and at conferences. My latest book The 21st Century Revolution – A Call to Greatness was Oxford Alumni Book of the Month for November 2016. Professor Katherine J. Willis, CBE, Principal of St Edmund Hall and Professor of Biodiversity, Department Zoology, University of Oxford said “I am greatly enjoying it; you write beautifully”. I update the book through my Blog which includes many other topics.

If you value what you have read, please spread the word.

A Broken Democracy

Democracy for Sale by Peter Geoghegan review – the end of politics as we know it?

I am hosting on my Blog the following review by John Naughton in the Observer dated Sun 16 Aug 2020. The openDemocracy journalist, John Naughton, delves into the web of power, money and data manipulation that is bringing our electoral system to its knees

These threats to democracy have, for decades, been visible to anyone disposed to look for them:

As we try to face the future, we are usually fighting the last war, he says, not the one that’s coming next. One of the most striking points the political philosopher David Runciman made in his seminal book How Democracy Ends was that democracies don’t fail backwards: they fail forward. That’s why those who see in the current difficulties of liberal democracies the stirrings of past monsters – Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, to name just three – are always looking in the wrong place. And if that’s true, the key question for us at this moment in history is: how might our current system fail?

What will bring it down? The answer, it turns out, has been hiding in plain sight for years. It has three components. The first is the massive concentration of corporate power and private wealth that’s been under way since the 1970s, together with a corresponding increase in inequality, social exclusion and polarisation in most western societies; the second is the astonishing penetration of “dark money” into democratic politics; and the third is the revolutionary transformation of the information ecosystem in which democratic politics is conducted – a transformation that has rendered the laws that supposedly regulated elections entirely irrelevant to modern conditions.

These threats to democracy have long been visible to anyone disposed to look for them. For example, Lawrence Lessig’s Republic, Lost and Jane Mayer’s Dark Money explained how a clique of billionaires has shaped and perverted American politics. And in the UK, Martin Moore’s landmark study Democracy Hacked showed how, in the space of just one election cycle, authoritarian governments, wealthy elites and fringe hackers figured out how to game elections, bypass democratic processes and turn social networks into battlefields.

All of this is by way of sketching the background to Peter Geoghegan’s fine book. It’s a compulsively readable, carefully researched account of how a malignant combination of right wing ideology, secretive money (much of it from the US) and weaponisation of social media have shaped contemporary British (and to a limited extent, European) politics. And it has been able to do this in what has turned out to be a regulatory vacuum – with laws, penalties and overseeing authorities that are no longer fit for purpose.

His account is structured both chronologically and thematically. He starts with the Brexit referendum and the various kinds of unsavoury practices that took place during that doomed plebiscite – from the various illegalities of Vote Leave , through Arron Banks’s lavish expenditure  to the astonishing tale of the dark money funnelled through the Ulster DUP and a loophole in Northern Ireland’s electoral law. One of the most depressing parts of this narrative is the bland indifference of most mainstream UK media to these scandalous events. If it had not been for the openDemocracy website (for which Geoghegan works), much of this would never have seen the light of day.

Geoghegan’s account of the genesis and growth of the European Research Group is absolutely riveting.

The middle section of the book explores how dark money has amplified the growing influence of the American right on British politics. This is a story of ideology and finance – of how the long-term Hayekian, neoliberal project has played out on these shores. It’s a great case study in how ruling elites can be infected with policy ideas and programmes via those “second-hand traders in ideas” of whom Hayek spoke so eloquently: academics, think tanks and media commentators. In that context, Geoghegan’s account of the genesis and growth of the European Research Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Research_Group – the party within a party that did for Theresa May – is absolutely riveting. And again it leaves one wondering why there was so little media exploration of the origins and financing of that particular little cabal.

The final part of the book deals with the transformation of our information ecosystem: the ways in which the automated targeted-advertising machines of social media platforms have been weaponised by right wing actors to deliver precisely calibrated messages to voters, in ways that are completely opaque to the general public, as well as to regulators.

Remainers will probably read Geoghegan’s account of this manoeuvring by Brexiters as further evidence that the Brexit vote was invalid. This seems to me implausible or at any rate undecidable. Geoghegan agrees. “Pro-Leave campaigns broke the law,” he writes, “but we cannot say with any certainty that the result would have been different if they had not. Instead, the referendum and its aftermath have revealed something far more fundamental and systemic. Namely, a broken political system that is ripe for exploitation again. And again. And again.”

And therein lies the significance of this remarkable book. The integrity and trustworthiness of elections is a fundamental requirement for a functioning democracy. The combination of unaccountable, unreported dark money and its use to create targeted (and contradictory) political messages for individuals and groups means that we have no way of knowing how free and fair our elections have become. Many of the abuses exposed by Geoghegan and other researchers are fixable with new laws and better-resourced regulators. The existential threat to liberal democracy comes from the fact that those who have successfully exploited some inadequacies of the current regulatory system – who include Boris Johnson and his current wingman, Cummings – have absolutely no incentive to fix the system from which they have benefited. And they won’t. Which could be how our particular version of democracy ends.

Now I add some extracts from final paragraphs of the book: “There seems little prospect, either, of reorienting Britain’s lop-sided first-past- the- post electoral system …. that punishes consensus-building and vastly over-rea wards winners. The constraints on how we participate in public life are fast disappearing. The challenge is to create a more responsive version of the public sphere for the digital age, one which is not controlled by giant tech companies and which, unlike, unlike the sham “digital democracy” preached by Five Star and the Brexit Party, is genuinely participative.

Like the climate, democracy is fast approaching a tipping point. If the opportunity for change is not seized, the worst aspects of the present malaise – disinformation, dark money and spiralling polarisation- could well push us beyond a point of no return.

It is not too late. I am still an optimist, just as I was in rural Ireland two decades ago. Democracy faces many perils, but there is still time to act. We can build better systems, we can imagine more democratic forms of politics, and conversations. But we should be in no doubt about the urgency and scale of the challenge”. 

I add the good news: the growing use of Citizens Assemblies and the advocacy of Progressive Alliances for example and Progressive Alliances advocated by Compass.

Democracy for Sale: Dark Money and Dirty Politics by Peter Geoghegan is published by Head of Zeus (£14.99). To order a copy go to the Guardian Bookshop https://guardianbookshop.com./. Free UK p&p over £15.

What you can do: Join the Electoral Reform Society; Unlock Democracy, Compass , sign up for Open Democracyto keep well informed and Lobby your MP.  

I am an author, writer and speaker. In normal times, I give participative talks in communities, universities, schools and at conferences. My latest book The 21st Century Revolution – A Call to Greatness was Oxford Alumni Book of the Month for November 2016. Professor Katherine J. Willis, CBE, Principal of St Edmund Hall and Professor of Biodiversity, Department Zoology, University of Oxford said “I am greatly enjoying it; you write beautifully”. I update the book through my Blog which includes many other topics.

If you value what you have read, please spread the word.

Exploitation of the poor borders on evil, say clerics driven to tears by debt crisis

I am hosting this important article that appeared in the Observer dated 06.12.2020 https://www.theguardian.com/money/2020/dec/05/exploitation-of-the-poor-borders-on-evil-say-clerics-driven-to-tears-by-debt-crisis

Church pleads for government help as BBC film highlights the struggle of two Burnley community leaders to feed most needy

Pastor Mick Fleming is on the frontline of the pandemic – not in hospital wards and care homes but battling with loan sharks and landlords who are propelling debt-encumbered, low-income families towards an ever more precarious future.

Fleming, of Burnley’s Church on the Street charity, has spent months dealing with the fallout from the pandemic on the most vulnerable people in the Lancashire town. He and Father Alex Frost of St Matthew’s church have distributed food parcels and hot meals, and have helped families stretch their meagre incomes to meet life’s other basic necessities.

“I’m with people every day for whom gas and electricity are luxuries. People are getting into debt to pay for basics, and small loans quickly turn into colossal sums. It borders on evil the way some people prey on the most vulnerable,” Fleming told the Observer.

“We take food parcels to people, but what’s the point if they can’t cook the food because there’s no gas or electric? So now we provide hot, cooked meals as well.”

Fleming and Frost came to national attention last week when a powerful BBC film of the priests and their work was shared widely on social media. Both men wept on camera as they talked about the challenges caused by Covid – but, said Fleming, “an average day is far in excess of what was shown in the video”.

Following the broadcast, they set up a fundraising page with a target of £10,000. It reached almost £55,000 within two days, and the pair have been inundated with offers of help and messages of support. “It’s all a bit overwhelming at the moment,” said Frost.

This weekend, a coalition of almost 500 church leaders has written to the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, to highlight the growing crisis of household debt that millions of families are facing this Christmas. Their letter says: “We have heard countless stories from people who have faced awful choices, such as between affording food or falling behind on rent. Many of our churches have been on the frontline of providing food and essentials. Hundreds of churches provide debt advice for those at risk.

“We know from experience that this situation is exceptional and therefore requires an exceptional response.” Signatories to the letter include representatives of the Methodist church, the United Reformed Church, the Church of England, the Scottish Episcopal Church, the Salvation Army and the Catholic church.

In August, Citizens Advice estimated that six million people in the UK had fallen behind on household bills because of Covid – a figure that is likely to have risen significantly in the past few months.

Six months ago, Step Change, the debt charity, estimated that 4.2 million people had borrowed money to make ends meet, using credit cards, overdrafts or high-cost loans. Again, the numbers are likely to have dramatically increased.

The faith leaders’ letter points out that 350,000 households face the possibility of eviction because of rent arrears. “For many, this will be a frightening Christmas period,” they say, with worry and stress potentially leading to long-term mental health problems.

The Covid crisis has exacerbated inequality, with higher earners who have saved money during the pandemic paying off over £15bn of debt while low-income groups have taken on £10bn in debt.

Chris Carroll, who runs a debt advice centre in Newcastle, said one low-income family she worked with had seen their progress to free themselves from debt go into reverse during the pandemic.

“The dad was a chef, he lost his job back in May. The mum worked part-time on minimum wage but had her hours cut. They have two children at primary school. In February, they were just about debt-free and had turned their lives around by careful budgeting. Now they’re using credit cards to put food on the table and loans to pay the bills,” she said.

“People are borrowing money on big rates for very ordinary things. It will take years for these families to get back on track.”

Not all creditors were sharks, she said; some had been wonderful. “Some have offered payment holidays or removed the interest, or even written off debts.”

Paul Morrison, a policy adviser to the Methodist church and a trustee of the Trussell Trust, which supports a network of more than 1,200 food banks, said the debt crisis was expected to worsen.

“This is the calm before the storm. We thought the storm was going to hit in the autumn but now the real crunch is likely to be January or February when the reality of debt hits families.

“Debt is treated as an individual problem but this debt crisis is caused by policy decisions relating to the pandemic. This is something for which we all have a responsibility.”

He would like to see a debt write-off, “but I’d be happy if the government recognises that action needs to be taken on this issue”. The letter asks the chancellor to “work with communities, churches, charities and creditors to create a comprehensive and just solution to the unique problem of lockdown debt”.

In Burnley, Frost said the number of people accessing the food bank at St Matthew’s had “just gone higher and higher. And we’re just one food bank in town – probably the smallest of four or five. People keep asking me, what’s the endgame? I’m not sure I know. I’m not a politician. I’m just doing what I’m called to do as a priest – helping the poor.”

This article was amended on 7 December to correct a reference to the United Reformed Church; not United Reform Church.

Exploitation of the poor borders on evil, say clerics driven to tears by debt crisis

Bruce Nixon is an author, writer and speaker. In normal times, he gives participative talks in communities, universities, schools and at conferences. His latest book The 21st Century Revolution – A Call to Greatness was Oxford Alumni Book of the Month for November 2016. Professor Katherine J. Willis, CBE, Principal of St Edmund Hall and Professor of Biodiversity, Department Zoology, University of Oxford said “I am greatly enjoying it; you write beautifully”. I update the book through my Blog https://brucenixon.com/ which includes many other topics.

If you value what you have read, please spread the word.

Constitutional reform: then and now (1995-2020)

I am hosting this article with thanks to the Constitution Unit of UCL. Posted December 4 2020

In the latest blog celebrating the Constitution Unit’s 25^th anniversary, human rights academic and advocate Francesca Klug recounts how aspects of the constitutional agenda of the mid-1990s were realised, and what lessons we can learn about how to entrench its achievements, prevent democratic backsliding and stop erosion of hard-won rights.

When I was at school, I learned nothing about the British constitution, but one thing I did absorb was this: although we do not have a written founding document, our invisible constitution was apparently uniquely successful and therefore inviolable. However, during the 1980s, I gradually became aware that there was something a bit odd about this perfect constitution. In other democracies, many of the controversial or unpopular measures introduced by Margaret Thatcher’s governments – such as the ‘poll tax’ and broadcasting and book bans – could be challenged in the courts. In the UK, however, there was nothing citizens could do to overturn such policies, except take to the streets to protest or wait up to five years for another election. 

This powerlessness and lack of accountability was a major driver behind the founding of Charter 88 in 1988, led by Anthony Barnett and Stewart Weir. I was lucky as a relatively young activist to be asked to join its council. We called for holistic change: a democratic second chamber, electoral reform, devolution, freedom of information and a bill of rights. And we had one major overall objective: we wanted the people of this country to have more power over the decisions which affected them; what in today’s money might be called ‘taking back control’. We sought this not for its own sake, but as a means of making our society fairer. 

It took a little time, but this message started to persuade people at the highest levels of the Labour Party. John Smith succeeded Neil Kinnock as Leader following the Conservatives’ 1992 general election victory and the following year he gave a landmark speech to Charter 88, entitled ‘A Citizens’ Democracy’. For the first time, he articulated a clear objective for wholesale constitutional reform. Its purpose, he said, was to ‘restore democracy to our people – for what we have in this country is not real democracy: it is elective dictatorship.’ The use of the term ‘elective dictatorship’ is interesting, as it partly echoed Lord Hailsham, a former Conservative Lord Chancellor, who had coined the phrase two decades earlier. Notably, in this speech Smith committed the Labour Party to the introduction of a human rights act based on the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), which turned 70 years old this month. 

John Smith died unexpectedly the following year, but Tony Blair, despite some scepticism, largely kept faith with his predecessor’s commitment to constitutional reform. The precise objectives articulated by Smith, however, seemed to wither away and the purpose of the proposed policies became more obscure. In particular, there was no unified narrative to link them together and no sense of what might come next. 

By the late 1990s, Labour was in government and I was a senior research fellow at the Human Rights Incorporation Project at King’s College Law School, led by Professor Robert Blackburn. I was lucky to have the opportunity to work closely with then-Home Secretary, Jack Straw, and his advisors and officials, on the model for incorporating the ECHR into UK law which would become the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA). The Constitution Unit – which had been formed in 1995 and celebrates its 25^th anniversary this year – was also closely involved, along with Liberty, Charter 88, Justice, the IPPR and other NGOs and lawyers. 

Straw asked us to devise a model that would meet two key challenges: maintain parliamentary sovereignty whilst also ‘bringing rights home’ so that they could be exercised effectively in the UK. It is strange that in the 20 years since the HRA came into force, legislation that enabled individuals to claim their human rights through UK courts directly – rather than being required to appeal only to judges in Strasbourg – has been attacked for diluting British sovereignty, rather than increasing it. 

In terms of the narrative, there was generally a confusion between two objectives. The first was a minimalist vision: we already have these rights so nothing much would change other than ‘bringing them home.’ The second was maximalist, epitomised by Jack Straw’s description of the HRA as ‘the most significant statement of human rights in domestic law since the 1689 Bill of Rights’. Regardless of which vision motivated the government, too little was done to communicate what these changes would really mean. The judiciary received training, but the government did virtually nothing else to prepare the public for what was to come, despite two years elapsing before the HRA came into force in 2000.

Less than a year later, the dreadful events of 9/11 saw the government shift its position, to the point that it began openly briefing against the HRA and criticising judicial decisions; such as when the Act proved an impediment to detaining foreign suspects without trial. This paved the way for the increasingly shrill anti-HRA rhetoric adopted by the Conservative Party and Conservative-supporting press. Once David Cameron became Leader, the Conservative Party pledged to replace the HRA with a so-called British bill of rights. Ten years and three Conservative Prime Ministers later, no such replacement has been forthcoming, although Chris Grayling, as Justice Secretary, produced a policy paper revealing the nakedness of the promised ‘Emperor’s Clothes’ bill of rights. No new rights were proposed, and only ‘the most serious’ human rights violations would be protected, in all likelihood eliminating many of the benefits that the HRA has accrued to thousands of people in everyday life. Terms like torture would be ‘more precisely’ defined and the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights would be subject to parliamentary approval, a proposal warmly supported in Moscow.

In truth the Cameron government only ever wanted to restrict the scope of the HRA, rather than expand it. Boris Johnson’s 2019 election manifesto dropped any pretence of making the HRA bigger and better by relabelling it as a ‘British bill of rights.’ Instead, what is promised is an ‘update’ of the HRA, and last month, Lord Chancellor Robert Buckland confirmed his intention to soon establish an inquiry into the Act. There are no specific details on what is proposed but the direction of travel towards ‘death by a thousand cuts’ is pretty clear. The Overseas Operations Bill already seeks to introduce limits on the HRA’s ability to hold members of the military to account beyond specific time limits, even in cases of torture and murder. Alongside the government’s repeated attacks on ‘lefty human rights lawyers’ with ‘their grand theories of human rights’, are serious threats to curtail asylum and deportation appeals, signalling that the universal application of the HRA – a hallmark of the very idea of human rights – is likely to be a major target. An ‘Independent Review of Administrative Law’ is also underway, examining whether courts should be told by parliament what is, and is not, eligible for judicial review. The drum beat of anti-HRA rhetoric has been bolstered by some unpopular judicial rulings. But with the passage of time an increasing range of people have benefited from the HRA, both inside and outside the court room. Popular outcomes have included: the Hillsborough Inquiry; the prosecution of the London cab rapist John Worboys; the disapplication of the bedroom tax for disabled people who need a spare room; and the establishment of an inquiry into the use of ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ notices during the COVID-19 pandemic, alongside new guidelines for family visits to care homes. Should the government attempt to repeal the HRA now, I believe they will have a fight on their hands! 

The constitutional reforms of the Blair and Brown governments should have been the precursor to the UK finally adopting a written constitution, drafted and enacted following a major national conversation and debate, ideally involving citizens’ assemblies. Instead, devolved governments are seeing EU powers returned directly to London under the cover of the EU Withdrawal Act, there have been repeated threats to public broadcasters such as the BBC and Channel 4, and most striking of all, the UK government no longer feels the need to hide its intention to break international law if it does not get its way. Numerous retired judges, MPs and peers, across all parties, have expressed grave concern about the risks posed to our democracy by these and other escalations. 

Looking back, there is one simple lesson can we learn from the last 25 years. If you introduce piecemeal legislation on constitutional reform with no overall narrative, and fail to properly engage the public via consultation, participation and education, then a later government with a different leader can all too easily reverse your achievements. Indeed, they may not just erase the gains you made, but could even succeed in strengthening the elective dictatorship that John Smith and Lord Hailsham warned about so long ago. 

This blog is an adapted version of the contribution made by the author at a recent Unit event, Constitutional reform: then and now, at which she spoke on a panel alongside former Lord Chancellors Jack Straw and David Gauke. To watch all three contributions, you can view the event in full here. 

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About the author

Professor Francesca Klugis a Visiting Professor at LSE Human Rights and Sheffield Hallam Centre for International Justice. As a Senior Research Fellow at King’s College Law School, she advised the then Labour Government on the Human Rights Act.

Bruce Nixon is an author, writer and speaker. In normal times, he gives participative talks in communities, universities, schools and at conferences. His latest book The 21st Century Revolution – A Call to Greatness was Oxford Alumni Book of the Month for November 2016. Professor Katherine J. Willis, CBE, Principal of St Edmund Hall and Professor of Biodiversity, Department Zoology, University of Oxford said “I am greatly enjoying it; you write beautifully”. He updates the book through his Blog available at https://brucenixon.com/ which includes many other topics.

If you value what you have read, please spread the word.