MATTERS IN THE AIR: 8th June 2016 – in which all may share as our networking prospers the cause of inclusive justice… visit the website to view the evolving agenda for the next meeting: http://www.globaltable.org.uk/wp. Engaging with changing paradigms opens up unlimited possibilities but we need to set ego aside, along with all our cherished beliefs to recognise that “Nothing is impossible if you don’t mind who gets the credit.”
10-12am GLOBAL TABLE utilising this week’s ‘MATTERS IN THE AIR’ on issues raised in our network. Please make your comments or raise questions on any of these. We are trying to sense the richness of our networking without overburdening with detail.
12-2pm – Formal ICUK agenda – open, but attentive to that initiative.
Please note at the foot of this weekly report the current description of the relationship between the three modes of dialogue that are fostered by this weekly point of focus for a wide network. Comments are welcome about the distinctions and the common ground.
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REPORTS: are always invited from our associates in the quest for inclusive justice. Then a discussion: Those who can’t join us on a Wednesday – send us your comments and reports of your action.
VITAL MATERIAL FROM CRITICAL THINKING: “The first step is to realise that we are manipulated and how that manipulation is carried out; waking up to these things will motivate us to sever the lines of manipulation.” JANOS ABEL leading a discussion: We know that the political economy is the means by which we are manipulated and denial of access to land and the commons is one of the “strings” that binds us. Rather than sharing value that belongs to us all, the political economy extracts wealth through taxes on employment and enterprise, eg. sales taxes. The Sales Tax: History of Its Fallen Champions by Mason Gaffney Why It Matters: The sales tax has a long and fractured history. It doesn’t make sense to repeat it. The other flaw which has a long history is interest on money; it also has long been recognised as a corrosive, abusive and destructive wealth transfer mechanism and was prohibited by all the major religions accordingly. They too were eventually co-opted by the political economy to benefit the Structural Elite. These world changing ideas are to remove the flaws from the political economy and to set humanity free to self-organise and co-create. Having the means to life without conditionality would be a big step towards freedom and abundance. Time to cut our strings.
ASSEMBLIES FOR DEMOCRACY: report from 10/5/2016 in progress: http://globaltable.org.uk/wp/venue/designing-democracy-for-the-21st-century-1052016
Biomimicry in 16 mins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QZp6smeSQA Michael Pawlyn: ‘to Using nature’s genius in architecture’
CCMJ: the annual Appraisal continues….your comments are warmly welcomed
COMMUNITY CURRENCIES: interesting overview of the new Hullcoin: http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/22/hullcoin-bitcoin-volunteers-new-way-pay
COMPASS: see http://www.compassonline.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Compass-Draft-Strategy-Building-the-Alternative_final.pdf and PC’s annotated response: Compass Draft Strategy 2016: http://globaltable.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Compass-Draft-Strategy-2016.pdf – Report by MMulvey on 25th May dialogue.
CUSP inaugural debate: Monday, 23 May 2016 – 2.30-6.30 pm – Central Hall Westminster, London “The Nature of Prosperity”. The event celebrated the launch of the five-year ESRC-funded Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP) – http://www.cusp.ac.uk within the University of Surrey. After opening lectures delivered by Tim Jackson (Director of CUSP), and Jane Elliott (Chief Executive of the ESRC), there were two on-stage armchair conversations: the first was between Caroline Lucas (Green Party MP and Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Limits to Growth), and Karen Hamilton, Head of Sustainable Business at Unilever, and the second was between Dr Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, and Satish Kumar, long-time peace and environmental activist, editor of Resurgence Magazine. The unanticipated, most heart-warming, finale was a short performance of songs by Streetwise Opera: http://streetwiseopera.org. This was the first in a series of public debates (to be hosted by CUSP) to engage young and old alike across business, policy and civil society in one of the most vital questions of our time: what does prosperity mean in a world of environmental and social limits. Photos from the event are here: http://www.cusp.ac.uk/event/nature-of-prosperity/
CORBYNOMICS: a State of the Economy Conference was held on Sat 21st May 2016 – speakers included Shadow-Chancellor John McDonnell on the Labour Party’s plans to make the next Labour Manifesto even more ambitious than that of the Attlee Government, Ha-Joon Chang on a balanced and sustainable economy. Highlights of ten workshops included the Tax System (Richard Murphy), Alternative Models of Ownership – innovative work in developing co-operatives happening in Lancashire, and Rewriting the Rules to tackle inequality chaired by Richard Wilkinson of the Spirit Level: http://www.labour.org.uk/page/content/economy-conference. See Guardian report of the event: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/may/21/jeremy-corbyn-labour-economy-re-industrialisation-digital-age and John McDonnell’s blog: http://www.labour.org.uk/blog/entry/the-new-economics.
PREM SIKKA: Article: “BHS demise shows the failure of predatory capitalism” discusses this and is available at http://leftfootforward.org/2016/06/bhs-demise-shows-the-failure-of-predatory-capitalism/
ROYAL ECONOMIC SOCIETY: Quantitative Easing and the Quantity Theory of Credit by Richard Werner While the effects of QE continue to be debated, Richard Werner1 explains the origin of the term (and some misconceptions surrounding it): http://www.res.org.uk/view/art5jul13features.html
RUNNYMEDE GAZETTE: Thanks to Frank Taylor, the second May edition = European Plebiscite Special No 2 is now available: EDITORIAL • A EUROPEAN SHANGRI-LA? • THE BISMARCK MODEL • DEMOCRATIC ARMAGEDDON – RUNNYMEDE_GAZETTE_1605_(2) – and a third, the normal May edition has also arrived: EDITORIAL: AVENUE OR CUL-DE-SAC? – RUNNYMEDE_GAZETTE_1605_(3) – see Archives
WAKING TIMES: A reminder of the change of consciousness needed and now arising around the world ; All Eyes Are On the Control Matrix Phillip J. Watt, Contributor Waking Times and paradigmatic shifts in our collective consciousness.
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NEW PUBLICATIONS:
“Heralding Article 25 – A people’s strategy for world transformation” – to discuss this UN challenge in relation to our work. A profound study of the extent of the mindshift we require today. http://www.troubador.co.uk/book_info.asp?bookid=3772
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EVENTS : see: http://globaltable.org.uk/wp/forthcoming-events
Annual Justice & Peace Conference 15 – 17 July 2016 “Justice, Power and Responsibility: How Can Democracy Work for the Common Good?” *** CONFERENCE NOW BOOKING *** Booking forms from NJPN, 39 Eccleston Square, London SW1V 1BX 020 7901 4864admin@justice-and-peace.org.uk or download here Some assistance may be possible for families. Please contact NJPN to discuss.
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WEEK BY WEEK WE CONTINUE REFLECTING on the value of these three perspectives in our quest for inclusive justice. Inevitably there is overlap between each mode of approach. Each and all add richness to our searching and encouragement to collaboration:
1. The Christian Council for Monetary Justice [CCMJ] – is a wide ranging association of people examining enduring wisdom and contemporary evidence about money and its effect on society – utilising resources of wisdom from current evidence, scriptures, histories and evaluated publications to identify the deeper structural faults behind land [rent], money, lack of basic elements of very person’s inheritance of livelihood, and the over-powering by close boundaries with rigid and permanent hierarchies. It is not a membership organisation but an open association of explorers learning by collaboration and by shared evolving insights and possible actions. We long for more online reports, comments, questions etc. We dare to probe possible contemporary interpretations of the concept of the ‘Kin[g]dom of God; contributing to and learning from the specific formation of a political process, such as is being steadily evolved in ICUK described below http://www.ccmj.org
2. The London Global Open Table [LGOT] – provides an open forum for serving an even wider network of people of good faith with a weekly focus for mutual support and encouragement. All are welcome to send items for ‘Matters in the Air’ to indicate where our dialogue and action might take us in each particular week. We seek to avoid dominance by the interests of those attending and to develop the sense of the scale and influence of our network when collaboration grows: http://www.globaltable.org.uk/wp.
3. Trustees All: The Independent Constitutionalists UK – advocate and advance a targeted initiative by ‘principled-pragmatism’ to take viable, if difficult, steps towards weaving politics and economics – governance and vital trading – into a People’s Political-Economy of Trusteeship in the Harmony of Nature. We seek to travel a new path via the 2020 [or earlier] General Election. The ICUK’s Manifesto and Charter provide an incremental, imperfect process of evolving that People’s Political-Economy of Trusteeship in the Harmony of Nature in a pattern of Confederation and genuine subsidiarity for the UK: http://ww.constitutionalists.uk
A single paragraph for the same interpretive task: CCMJ- LGOT – ICUK are differing but interweaving foci for mutual support and encouragement. All three have a physical focal meeting point for their wide networks in central London every Wednesday. In their range of ways each un-earths issues of inclusive justice and tries to re-earth elements that contribute to radical change – particularly systemic structural approaches founded in a new Peoples’ Political-Economy of Trusteeship in the Harmony of Nature – or its biblical equivalent perhaps of the ‘Kin[g]dom of God’ – thereby affirming reflection, open-mindedness and activism among a far flung range of associates.
Grant us ….The serenity to accept things that cannot change
The courage to tackle the things that can
And the wisdom to know the difference.
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