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Liberty

Its funny how tke US and UK talk so often about liberty, yet have loads of rules we commonly break. People talk about the developing world as if the rich have all the liberty (freedom from prosection for example), but in reality everyday people with small sums of money can do much more of what they want. Parks are full of dangerous swings, you can buy food that might be on the turn, you can cross roads in dangerous places. And yes people get hurt etc. and there's no safety net. but the things that kill most of us are not these things. It's depression, lack of friends (they've done studies) work stress, or self handicapping behaviour. 

Freedom from destroying ourselves would be a difficult one to get on the statute books..

social justice

How much is social justice about income redistribution? and therefore, how much can be written off by indivual enterprise??? Here in ecuador colombians are the ones who have are notorious for making a good business. In former communist states they have to explain venture capital on the newly formed (and hugely popular) Dragon's Den. So equality comnes at the expense of success, even as success breads inequality. - It has been 200 years since Charles Darwin was born, and 150 years since he published his thoeries on a voyage to the Galapagos..

NHS

Someone said to me "you live in a developed country, why do you spend so much tax on social programmes? All your infrastructure is working". it made me think about the NHS. When it was first set up in 1948 the government (Tory would you believe???) that it was set up to make the population healthy after the war. It was assumed that once the wartime health needs were met the NHS could close down as it wouldn't be needed any more. 

How funny. 

Now we just assume it will continue spending more and more forever. Almost all of the issues for our generation require a collective response. even nationalising the banks takes us back to nation states. How does that fit with individuals and thier need? 

Infrastructure helps everyone and you can see it (that's why the UN like it) but education is harder to track. Maybethe UK should have spooned the last 10 years of cash on the world's best public transport, instead of health and education projects. just a thought..

Human rights

One of the pieces of work i'm doing at the moment is a two minute video on "the meaning of human rights" and i don't really know where to start. Lots of cliches, lots of hippy stuff - they've been degraded so heavily in the UK with the asylum thing. Are we all born equal? What would a world like that look like. Is it sooooooooo unrealistic as to be useless? Anyway, if anyone has any ideas what it means to them, I think its for $$$$$$'s so worth thinking about (cash=freedom?). Huh. xxx  

Buying social change

If we are serious about buying social change, why do we not reward success..? 

As someone who is now writing funding bids I encourage everyone to lie on their application forms. the only time you will ever be penalised is if you forget to return some paperwork. or you go to Barbados on the cash. otherwise everyone is just happy for the money to fall off the end of the conveyor belt. So i would suggest having peer review (possibly through social audits) of how successful the intervention was creating a hierarchy of social change orgs (not a silly accreditation scheme). good orgs get more money long term, poor orgs change or don't get money. this could be orchestrated by the national lottery in coordination with charity commission or someone. It still seems crazy that end of year reports contain all the information no-one cares about, and nothing about how much has been done with other people's money.. 

Oh - we moved house by the way, things are better now..

Driving my car

So far, as much as i can see, January has been about individual choices versus collective choices (and maybe always has been). the usa exemplifies the individual freedoms, and other countries exemplify the collective (chavez?). so we roll along this continuum swinging from middle left to middle right (depending on the financial situation, and how much people feel threatened). 

From the office window here i can see cars - which i think are a really interesting way of quantifying the results in hundreds of individual incidents (and those people who have done all sorts of studies on behaviours on motorways etc across different countries must think the same), however a supposedly collective society bahave well on the roads (mostly) but are not at all collectively minded. there is no sense (which i think there is in the uk) of us all getting there quicker. Just a thought. 

Oh - I should prbably mention, we're well by the way..