Happiness and changing clocks

 

At some point in the wee hours of the morning, I lost an hour as the clocks changed. Because of that hour my aspirations for the day, to get to Oxford for lunchtime, all flew out of the window.

Now I understand that farmers and the like might need to make the best use of the sunlight, and I recall the idea of British summertime was introduced to help the war effort (that’s WWI, and the Germans started it first)

But in a society where everybody (who wants one) has a watch, isn’t it about time that we started letting people make their own mind up about whether they want to sleep through sunny mornings, or get out there and fight the enemy.

So instead I headed to a South London boozer, and friends old and new, and got sucked into a conversation about happiness.

For whatever reasons for today I’m kind of happy with my life (female companionship aside). The world might be going to shit, but at least I have the opportunity to do something about it.

In the arena of the pub conversation I said as much, and it transpires that the denizen I was duelling with was far from happy with his life. Happiness is simply a matter of chemicals in your brain and due to a lack of serotonin in his he has to take complex drugs to boost the production of happiness.

So drugs to keep you happy, drugs to make you sad, or drugs to keep you stable? And who gets to determine how happy/sad we should be and how happy are they? and who determines that? and if such drugs are necessary how come so many are illegal?

Alternatively take your life in your hand and do something about what it is that creates that state that puts you in that mood you’d rather not be.

Or it could be the change in the sunlight hours?

[3010]

Teaching Nothing

A mixed day of climb traing at Greenpeace in the morning and teaching people to be treasurers in the afternoon. Not that I know much about being a treasurer, but I host a mean skillshare and luckily enough people came who had that information to share to make the event a success.

And then excessive alcohol consumption till late, mixed with a self indulgent bout of meloncolny because I’m bored with being single. Or at least bored with not being able to call on people to keep me company, or to play with, which I suspect amounts to the same thing.

[3011]

Death of Campaigners

And so to the third day of this management course and wallowing through the misery of thinking too much about the failings of our internal structures. Still there is nothing new here, that wouldn’t apply everywhere. But it would be good to think we could do better that this.

We employ clever people who know every detail about an issue, often in an academic way, people who would make great researchers and we call them campaigners. Now to me campaigning is a separate skill that involves analysing in detail a situation, figuring out what you’d like that situation to be and then creating a plan about how to make that happen.

You don’t need to be an expert, or look good on TV; you just need the right amount of ruthlessness and to be able to see the path through the thicket.

Despite our failings campaigners often succeed, or at least hang around the organisation for a while. And so after a suitable period of service they become managers, and senior managers, who often as not have no real aptitude to manage.

So we force good researchers to become bad campaigners, and good campaigners to become bad managers, and old managers to become senior managers guiding our strategy.

Still the world seems to be changing, with our hands on the tiller.

[3012]

License to Manage

Day 2 of this management and leadership course and my cynicism has gone into overdrive. This is a course that makes sense and that every manager at work has been on. So how come they manage to fuck it up in such a spectacular way.

For every example our trainer suggests of bad management, I can think of several examples that are worse. So I wonder if our entire senior management team (with 1-2 exceptions) should be sent for re-education.

Or instead maybe managers should be issued with a management licence (akin to a driving license). And every time they make a spectacularly bad managerial decision they can be reported and punished with points on their license. After they get 10 points they should be sent back on this course, with special emphasis on the participative culture part.

My colleagues disagree; they think any manager earning 10 points should have that license permanently revoked. Such managers should be demoted to a job they can actually do.

After the course I return to the office for late night working and then to the pub with someone from the firm who I really respect. And so we explore the state of the staff body and whether poor management is an inevitable consequence of the staff we have.

In common with every organisation we reckoned staff fit into one of 4 (maybe 5) categories.
A – Baleful staff. If they didn’t turn up to work tomorrow (or ever again) the organisation would be better off.
B – Basically shit staff. You’d notice if they weren’t around, but it’s worth the organisation going through the pain and turmoil of sacking them and getting someone better.
C – Coasters. Staff doing their job on cruise control, nothing much to moan about but in this organisation passionate talented people would murder to have a chance to work here.
D – Inspiring Doers. Staff who make stuff happen, who push the organisation forward, who often work stupid hours, who are creative and devoted to the cause.

And maybe a 5th category combining inspiring people (D) with a few really big flaws that probably makes them worth firing.

And so in an orgy of cynicism we labelled everyone we work with into one of those categories. Out of 120 people we reckoned we had
A (10%) B (30%) C (50%) D (10%)
Obviously a sick twisted exercise but fun.

The question is, does this hold true everywhere?

[3013]

Participate in this!

Democracy is an old and tired system. In the modern form it has evolved from the flowering of British republicanism mixed with the secret societies that conspired to launch the American Revolution, into a system citizens barely care exists.

The organisation I work for challenges the ideas of a democratic mandate and promotes the vision of a participative culture. That everyone affected by a decision should participate in the decision making process. That debate around a decision will in almost all circumstances improve the quality of decisions taken. And in its truest form participative decision making is much more than the tick box system of amodern consultative processes. The UK planning system might be a example of where government has tried to introduce participation, but even that system is under attack from the Barker review and the forces of darkness.

So after the first day of three, of a Management course that looks at how, as an organisation, we are supposed to have an internal participative culture it’s hard not to laugh. Maybe senior management needs to be sent for re-education?

The recent decisions that I have witnessed with my union hat on, are clearly not in any way participative. The debates about the future of the organisation have been shredded by my colleagues as not being in any way participative. And it is increasingly clear that there is them, the senior managers, and us the middle managers, and them the workers.

But there is certainly participation on the colour of the paint, and the price of paper clips

[3014]

30 Years echoes

 

There are classic moments in history when the actions of a few change everything. In October 1967 a march of 70,000 on the Pentagon turned ugly, but endures in history as a milestone towards the eventual withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam.

Yesterday all over the US people once more marched against the war to mark the 4th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. In Washington 10,000 met at the start of the 1967 march to again demand the withdrawal of US troops, this time from Iraq. Crossing the Potomac the marchers ended the day in the cordoned off corral by the Pentagon. Little if any trouble ensued.
In 1967 the anti war movement generated an entire counter culture, embracing new ideas and new ways of life. By no coincidence the Ecology movement was born, as a radical offspring to traditional conservationist groups.

In 2007 the anti war movement is being handled by the establishment, it is well managed, and a comfortable day out for the kids. Somehow the anti war movement lacks the passion of 1967, but things may change.

The Vietnam War claimed 60,000 American lives (and 1,300,000 Vietnamese). The Iraq war has to date claimed 3200 American lives (and 60,000 Iraqis). Maybe it's a numbers game, maybe the controlling interests have learnt their lesson well?

Wherever the tipping point of public opinion about the war is, we haven’t yet reached it. The military industrial complex still strangles US politics and until the tide turns firmly against the war I can’t imagine what alternatives exist.

[3017]

Philosophy of non violence and breaking the law

 

Social change is a peculiar and elusive goal. The majority of us hope human society will evolve to deal with the difficulties that beset it, and yet those changes seem just out of our reach.

I vote, am active in my union, write letters to my MP, work with community groups to communicate ideas about issues I care about, have lobbied my MP in person and occasionally I break what society has defined the law.

And yet the law is a difficult thing. When I was 18 there were many different forms of demonstration and protest that the law has now made criminal offences. Democracy doesn’t seem quite what is used to be. The Criminal Justice Bill did Freedom of Speech no favours, and the barrage of new Terrorism laws are terrifying.

Today I facilitated a workshop helping individuals learn about Non Violent Direct Action at the Lewes community recycling centre. The centre is another alternative beacon hosting diverse groups such as Campaign Whale and the Common Cause collective.

The day challenges people to think about violence, non violence and puts them under stress to see how they behave, a test people can fail. It also teases a few ideas about the philosophies of non violence.

Ideas from Quakers bearing witness, shining a light into the dark corners of society, bringing public attention to those who try to hide their misdeeds. Voyages to the source of such problems, or banner drops and media stunts to awaken people, and let them makes there own decisions about what's going on.

Actions from the civil rights movement and the UK anti-road campaigns, stopping such misdeeds through non violent means. Blocking the bulldozer, boycotting the buses, making crimes against nature and society expensive and inconceivable to those perpetrating them..

Philosophies from Ghandi and Buddhism. Ways of thinking from Satyagraha, the quest for truth to Soteriology, the liberation from suffering.
That by our non violent actions and by the ever more desperate steps the state takes to prevent those actions, then we will demonstrate the truth of our arguments.
That between the great injustices that are done to society and our environment and the aberration of using violence to promote ones arguments there is always another way to achieve change.

[3018]

Pots of gold to spend?

 

Today was very much dominated by a meeting at the delightful warehouse in Birmingham. Bought by the local Friends of the Earth group in 1977, it provides office space for the group, the national organisation and lots of other organisations for social change. There is a drop in information centre, a veggie/vegan café, and a vegan mini market.

I’ve always maintained that I was inspired to be a campaigner by dance music and festival culture, but I can very much imagine that if I grew up in a town with a decent alternative hub like the Warehouse or RISC in Reading then I would have found the same path much earlier in life.

Such places provide a valuable refuge for local groups and a point for people to meet, exchange change ideas and network. It is no strange coincidence that where there is a decent organised alternative social centre then there are strong groups of passionate people dedicated to changing the world.

So if anyone has pot and pot of money, and doesn’t want that money to be lost in the income stream of an NGO then why not use it to support another such centre, to light a beacon showing the way forward to a different future.

Until then perhaps there is hope in the network of anarchists and a disparate chain of squatted social centres that never last.

See Reading International Solidarity Centre (RISC), warehouse, Cowley Club, Manchesters basement social centre, London Action Resource Centre (LARC),
And more Social centre network

[3019]

Take me Spanish Caravel

 

Tomorrow the Arctic Sunrise sets sail to Copenhagen, her voyage round the UK over, and the disarmament tour done. Part of me sails with her.

I joined the ship on a snowy day back at the beginning of February. Sailed through a North Sea littered with oil rigs to Leith, the port of Edinburgh. Struggled through a force 10 wind around the north coast of Scotlan to a gentle respite at Brodick on the Isle of Arran. And then to Greenock and the excitement of the Faslane blockade (described elsewhere)

My time aboard may have been short, 3 weeks and a little, has gouged out my holidays from work for a year, but it is such an intense and insular environment that its hard to forget and difficult to remember if it was real.

The ship made it to London in time for the Trident debate and has a new crew now. This evening was a chance to say goodbye with a soiree on what now seems to be such a tiny vessel. At sea it encompasses your life and existence; in port it is a tiny poky, warren. Perched on the side of an inflatable, looking over the heli deck, rambling on about life and experiences on board seems like the most natural thing in the world.

So farewell Arctic Sunrise

[3020]

You can’t get me…

Society to my mind is balanced between the desires of the powerful and the needs of the weak. Power accumulates to those who have power, and those who seek power need the support or approval of those in power. The needs of the weak are on occasion championed by individual powerful people (of the philanthropic bent), but are more reliably represented by banding together into secret societies, guilds, unions and in a true sense, democracies.

I have of late become a Trade Union representative for the Transport and General Workers Union at a liberal, fair minded, benevolent employer campaigning for social change. Today my first case saw a man fired and all but escorted from the building (we lack big burly security guards)

I suspect in a big financial firm he would have been paid to resign, in industry the union (in the day) would have been strong enough to defend him, in a nice liberal NGO which doesn’t do this sort of thing, he may well have been shafted.

The case could be argued either way, and to an extent I’m glad the organisation has the guts to purge people but the manner in which it was done lacks compassion. Equally by purging the trouble makers, those who speak up or disagree, then perhaps we simply reinforce a hierarchy of dead wood.

If change is needed within the organisations promoting social change then bring it on, but let us at least do so with a degree of humanity and kindness.

[3021]

Hazards of direct action

 

In the wee hours of the morning a couple of us launched an 8.5m Greenpeace RIB from a slip down by Putney Bridge. Crawling up the river at a leisurely pace, with few stops to get the timing right, we acquired a climb team from the side of Tate Britain pier. Speeding past two police launches, having an early morning brew, with a wave we slammed the climb team into a barge just off the House of Parliament.

And then things went a little tits up?

With the camera man stretching higher to get a better picture angle a police RIB bore down us. As we turned he fell badly on his ankle breaking/shattering the bone. In an attempt to keep him out of police hands we sped back to Putney and an ambulance as he screamed with every bounce of the boat. Back at the slip his injuries proved disabling and so both we and the police waited for the ambulance together.

An unfortunate accident, and a baleful reminder that although Trident and Britain’s Weapons of Mass Destruction are lethal, fast RIB’s on the Thames can be dangerous too.

[3022]

You Tube footage is here

A day with no cake

 

Alcohol is a strange poison, amusing to imbibe and when drunk in sufficient quantities makes one prone to creative and crazed ideas. I’m uncertain as to whether that’s a blessing or a curse?

A civilized drink a month or two back, followed by an uncivilized array of cocktails led to a battle of cake making skills yesterday. Lacking much in culinary ability I lost. Still I did get to eat my competitor’s cake.

Naturally with cake much alcohol was consumed which led to several new creative and crazed ideas. Undoubtedly some of those ideas involved changing the world in a positive way, but the parodies I remember were those of a dark and totalitarian future where necessity had imposed fundamentalist green ideologies on society

Perhaps it was the influence of the chocolate

[3023]

Sunday morning Purdah

 

As reasons not to get out of bed on a Sunday morning, initiating a blog seems like a terrible idea, but everything seems to be happening next week so if I want to say something now is the time.

As the UK government enters the political purdah before the Scottish and Welsh elections on May 3rd every bad idea and difficult piece of legislation is about to hit the house.

On Tuesday the consultation about the climate change bill is likely to be launched

On Wednesday the Trident debate and a CND march to add colour

And somewhere in the works the Sustainable Communities bill is negotiating parliamentary stumbling blocks such as Phil Woolas (Oldham East and Saddleworth)

Interesting Times

[3024]

Climate Change Bill is here
Trident debate is here
Phil is here