Just Read and Consider...

Someone I know recently dropped the phrase '...new world order...' into a conversation we were having about the shitty state of the world and politics in general. Apart from the realisation that this person had obviously been exposed to the ravings of the - shall we say, more outré - streams of 'thought' that pass for information on't internet, I was surprised that someone older than I, [a man after all not in the first flush of youth myself, shall we say *cough*] - should buy into the mad narratives offered up by the lunatic fringe of the online community. When decades of pre-internet life and experience, a blessing to those of us born in the days of open-copper-wire telephony and 'the wireless', are swept away by anonymous paranoiacs stinking their lives away in foetid bedrooms, huddled over their laptops; one has to wonder at the levels of susceptibility - I hesitate to use the word 'gullibility' - of so many people in society to such crap. This of course is not a new phenomenon: it's as old as history itself, but the most disturbing thing is that despite all the social, electoral and educational advances that have been made throughout the twentieth century, reversing centuries of oppression of the common herd; we seem to be marching backwards at double-time to where we were before. 

Pictured is my new copy of the book I wrote about on July 14th of 2021: 'What I Saw At Bethesda'. It was out of print when I first came across a ratty, broken copy in a charity shop back then. I wrote an email to the [Welsh] publisher suggesting it might be a good idea to put the book back out there, as it is as important a book as any in demonstrating just what happens when too much power and privilege is vested in too few hands. It is a short book, but a valuable book, and I recommend that all who think we are still making progress in this world should read it. No: put it into the National Curriculum, not just here in Wales, but in schools across the UK. The problems of this world are problems created by capitalism, pure and simple; although I would add the rider that I refer to untrammelled and unregulated corporate capitalism, and not the honest day-to-day businesses of ordinary entrepreneurs and employers. Education is key: 'Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime...' Lao Tzu. The world of corporate capitalism has reversed this simple doctrine by turning society into a black box whose inner workings they alone control...