La Mulâtresse Solitude - Live free, or die:

 

 

This is La Mulâtresse Solitude who was born in slavery in the plantations of Guadeloupe in 1772, who went on to become  a legendary figure in the anti slavery struggles of the nineteenth century.

Solitude’s  mother was an African , possibly from Sierra Leone  who was  reportedly raped  by a French sailor during a voyage on a slave ship,her  name La Mulâtresse which means female Mulatto is derived from her origin. Mulatto is now a derogatory term for the first generation offspring of a Black person and a white person. This had some importance for her  in the racial hierarchy of the society of the time Solitude, was a woman of legendary beauty. Each of her eyes was of a different coloration. It is alleged that her exquisite good looks led powerful békés to fight one another with the hope of getting Solitude. Her mother fled the plantation where she was enslaved, leaving Solitude with her masters. Solitude, immortalized by André Schwarz-Bart’s eponymous novel (1972), was a brown-skinned woman of legendary beauty. Each of her eyes was of a different coloration. It is alleged that her exquisite good looks led powerful békés to fight one another with the hope of getting Solitude. Her mother fled the plantation where she was enslaved, leaving Solitude with her masters. 

A revolution of enslaved plantation laborers in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) begun in August 1791 forced France to legally abolish slavery in its colonies  in  1794  after Napoleon took that move in order to avoid a  generalized slave revolt in all his colonies. But eight years after the abolition Bonaparte took control of the country after  his wife, Josephine, herself a native of Martinique, talked the Emperor into reinstating slavery in the West Indies, as slaves were vital to the plantation way of life for the rich French overseers and sent about 3,500 troops led by General Antoine Richepance to Guadeloupe to enforce this decree 

On May 10, 1802, Louis Delgrès  a mulatto military officer born as a free man on Martinique in 1766.  who  had  gained military combat experience fighting for the French against the English in the years leading up to the Napoleonic Era,  strongly opposed the reinstatement of slavery in Colonial France by Napoleon, a man previously admired by Delgres took up arms, and called men and women to his side to fight for the freedom they had lost and launched a  proclamation entitled : ' To the whole universe, the last cry of innocence and despair'.

Solitude now classified as a ' maroon' was one of hundreds of women who responded to the call and fought at the side of Delgrès, inspiring many with her courage. She was pregnant at the time and it's possible that she was driven by a determination that her child should not be born into slavery, she was said to be a fierce and fearless warrior expertly wielding a machete against the French troops. who “pushed herself and her belly into the heart of the battles” at Dole, Trou-aux-chiens, Fond-Bananier, and Capesterre. After eighteen days of combat, Richepance’s side overpowered the rebels

Delgrès and his supporters, including Solitude, were forced to retreat to Fort  Saint Charles which was held by the resistance.  At the Battle of Matouba on 28th May, 1802, Delgrès ignited gunpowder stores, committing suicide along with many of his comrades, this strategic plan did though manage to kill approximately four hundred French soldiers in the process. The occupation force killed approximately 10,000 Guadeloupeans in the process of re-taking the island from the rebels.

 The heroism of Delgres  was not at first appreciated by France, but later in 1998 Delgres, along with leader of the Haitian slave revolt, Toussaint Loverture, was admitted to the Pantheon in Paris, the burial place of many of the greatest heroes of France.  

Solitude managed to escape but was captured soon after in the woods of Basse Terre and before a  military tribunal, she and the other survivors was sentenced to death. However Solitude was temporarily pardoned until she gave birth to her child because her child was the property of a slave owner . One day after delivering her baby, on November 29, 1802, Solitude was executed,and  according tp accounts , maternity's milk slowly stained her nightshirt, She was thirty years old, her last words before she was hanged would be Live free, or die: "

No one knows the whereabouts of the child,  but Solitude´s story illustrates the too often forgotten powerful  role of women in the struggle against slavery. After her  death  Solitude almost  disappeared from the annuals of history, but  step by step her name is  now remembered as a heroine and martyr on Guadeloupe, and in 1999, to commemorate the abolition of slavery, a sculpture in the memory of her was inaugurated as homage and recognition of the victims of the slave-trade and anti-slavery resistance leaders. The statue was installed at the De la Croix roundabout intersection on the Boulevard des Héros, in Abymes, Guadeloupe. In 2007 a statue was erected in her memory in the ile-de-France region of Hauts-de-Seine . This statue is made of iroko, a kind of African wood and steel. Sculpter Nicolas Alquin acknowledges that it is the first memorial to all "enslaved people who resisted." Her name is  also  commemorated in songs, poems, immortalized by André Schwarz-Bart’s in  his eponymous novel (1972), and a musical Solitude la Marronne. La Mulatresse. Solitude a heroine of resistance to oppression is also being considered for inclusion in the French Pantheon.

End the hostile environment – defend asylum seekers and refugees

 

I am horrified and saddened at the moment, by the tragic news  that 31 men, women and children who, through no fault of their own, who were  simply safety in the UK with hopes and dreams for the future have perished in  the cold, unforgiving seas of the Channel, one of the busiest shipping lane in the world. They had packed themselves into a flimsy unseaworthy dinghy on the French cost on the final leg of what they hoped would be a journey to a new life where they could do what we all take for granted – work, make friends, have fun and be safe from any harm.

Sparking outpourings of grief and renewed demands that both the U.K. government and leaders across Europe end their woeful immigration policies that force desperate individuals and families to risk ever more dangerous and deadly journeys to attain refuge, asylum, or a better life.

All this happened  at a time when we had the Tories and the right wing  media  ratcheting up racist scapegoating of refugees and migrants, trying to whip a frenzy about scores of people crossing the Channel and coming to Britain. We should all reflect on the fact  that many of these people left their homes because of reasons outside their control, whether that was conflict, poverty, economic injustice or climate change. The UN’s Refugee Agency estimates that 20 people are forced to flee their homes every second. With global inequality at unprecedented levels,  modern borders have become a form of global apartheid: segregating who can and can’t access resources and opportunity, in Britain there is even an explicit policy aiming to create a ‘hostile environment’ for migrants – launched by  Theresa May, when she was Home Secretary.

This Hostile Environment has since  sadly killed many and destroyed the lives of thousands. Boris Johnson has  said ‘appalled and deeply saddened’ but the rationale is that the more hostile and the tougher the policy the less likely men, women and children are to risk their lives at the hands of people traffickers Instead of taking a compassionate and realistic approach, his government is ensuring that the Channel becomes increasingly more dangerous and deadly. Instead of ensuring that people can get to the U.K. safely, the government pursues ever-higher fences and illegal 'pushbacks' at sea."

No one should ever have to risk their life to find safety. But hostile policies mean most refugees have no choice but to take dangerous journeys to find safety in the UK.

The UK has such  a proud history of welcoming refugees and asylum , of showing compassion and kindness to people fleeing danger and violence, people  who just want a safe place to call home.But that history has almost been forgotten in the last few months with increasing polarising language, and the dehumanisation of people in desperate circumstances,

The government needs to accept that if there were more safe and regular routes in the first place for people – such as a wide-ranging resettlement programme, humanitarian visas and reformed family reunion rules – fewer people would feel the need to make such dangerous journeys in the first place. Both Labour and Conservative governments have actually curtailed safe routes in recent decades through more draconian asylum and immigration laws forcing people to take dangerous journeys instead.

Displaced people have a right to seek safety in Britain , the government must urgently rethink its punitive policy and find some genuine compassion.The long standing demands of campaigners to ensure safe passage and treat migrants and refugees in a fair and humane manner must now be considered as a matter of urgency.

My thoughts now with the the latest victims of the "hostile environment"  people forced to turn to traffickers to escape poverty and war. This latest tragedy must allow us to to show that refugees and migrants are welcome and that the racist hostile environment must end.  No one is illegal, no borders are  necessary only compassion, Please sign the following petition. 

https://act.refugee-action.org.uk/page/93735/action/2

As we are distracted by news of Prime Minister Boris Johnson waffling on about Peppa Pig, the NHS in England is being dismantled.

As we are distracted by news of  our Prime Minister Boris Johnson waffling on about Peppa Pig, the NHS in England is being dismantled. It is entirely possible that his behaviour is designed to distract from that fact. MPs today will vote for the third and final time on the Health and Care Bill before it heads to the Lords. 

The Tory Government's health and care bill focuses on restructuring parts of the NHS in England to create a ‘truly integrated’ healthcare system that involves less central bureaucracy, but will see it being split into 42 parts, with private companies being able to sit on the board of each part and decide who gets funding. It will put profit at the centre of the NHS and is a threat to universal healthcare. It is bad for staff, it is bad for patients.

Successive governments have been plotting to dismantle the National Health Service for many years. The Health and Social Care Act 2012 removed the obligation on the Secretary of State for Health to provide us with healthcare, which was central to the founding of the NHS in 1948, ‘free at the point of delivery’. Primary Care Trusts and Strategic Health Authorities were swept away, to be replaced by Clinical Commissioning Groups, partly run by general practitioners, but also a major point of access for private service providers. In 2013, Public England, a new executive agency of the Department of Health, was set up. All of these measures paved the way for privatisation.

Over the decades, the NHS has been deliberately starved of funding, so that when the Covid pandemic hit, it was ill prepared. Due to this and government bungling, the UK had the highest death rate per capita in the world. And instead of making the very most of the resources available, the Government took advantage of the crisis to flout tendering laws and award contracts to friends and family with no experience of sourcing PPE and whose only interest was in maximizing profits. We have also seen in the pandemic how bringing in private firms has wasted vast sums, and absolutely failed us as patients and as a country,To save money, there will be more down-skilling, such as nurses replacing doctors, which has happened during the pandemic, causing staff stress, lack of patient trust and greater risk of accidents.

Opponents of the bill are warning that it will pave the way for the English NHS to be replaced by a profit-driven American-style system, which would incentivise private health providers to cut and deny care to increase profits. The United States has one of the worst healthcare systems in the world and the most expensive. Health insurance does not cover all procedures, patients needing long-term and expensive treatments are often refused them. If they can’t afford private treatment, they are just left to suffer and decline. 

The Johnson government’s Bill is also a Service Withdrawal Bill that will  remove the statutory duty on the Health Secretary or on the new NHS Boards to provide hospital care.Integrated Care Boards will be able to award and extend contracts for healthcare services, of unlimited value, without having to advertise, including to private companies. This is what the Department of Health has got away with during the pandemic, and very lucrative it has been for friends and relatives of Government ministers. Short-term contracts to private providers will also damage established relationships between NHS staff and patients.

The Trade Union Unite has been one of the loudest and fiercest critics of the proposed bill, voicing concerns about its impact on services, accountability, funding, professional standards, privatisation, safety, and terms and conditions.

Earlier this year Unite’s national officer for health, Jackie Williams said:“The Westminster government’s new Health and Care Bill is a Trojan horse for more privatisation, cronyism, austerity and a licence for politicians to run down and sell off the NHS."

The British Medical Association has also come out in opposition, thinking the timing of the legislation is "particularly unwise. while we are still tackling Covd 19 and resulting backlog of care" and that " the Bill addresses none of the problems the NHS is currently facing"

The Health and Care Bill will put far too much power in the hands of private companies, who will be allowed to profit from people’s health, contrary to the principles of the NHS. 

It really beggars belief  that it has even gotten this far. Privatisation of the NHS should be a deep red line for every citizen, It should not  have been up for debate in the first place. Reform, improve, invest, make it more efficient, yes but lets not go down the path of privatisation. 

Until recently, the NHS was the envy of the world, the best value for money. But cuts to services year on year and more and more privatisation ( even now you have to pay to have your ears syringed) has knocked it down several places and will only get worse if this rotten disgusting Government under Boris Johnson gets it way and this Bill is passed. Sadly it might be too late, the Tory Government has already gone ahead and approved a plan to make the poorest people in the UK pay for the social care of the richest.  If  todays Bill is passed we face many bleak days  ahead. Imagine if your sister, brother, dad, mum, auntie etc  were MP;s and voted for it. Personally, I'd disown them. If you haven't already go to https://www.yournhsneedsyou.com/ and urge your MP to vote against it! It's rather urgent now.

Still Dreaming of Joe Hill

  

I've written about Joe Hill here many times here previously. He remains a huge inspiration, politically and artistically, for people across the world over the last century, and I’m glad to be one of them. He was murdered on this day in 1915 by government firing squad at the Utah State Prison in Sugar House for a crime he didn’t commit.

Joel Emmanuel Hägglund  was born in Sweden in  October 7th 1879. Joe aged 22 left for the United States in 1902 with his brother Paul and travelled the country extensively in search of work and the golden opportunity of the American dream, but he soon found that dream was a nightmare for many working men and women there. Joe joined the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) in 1910, at  the time workers across the country were being betrayed wholesale by the American Federation of Labor, a so-called union that collaborated to suppress the struggle for vital workers’ rights. While the AFL would exclude immigrants, non-whites, women and poorer laborers, the IWW was open to all, struggling for all together. In the early years of the 20th Century, the IWW was crucial in winning many of the rights Americans take for granted today,  and spread across the world, too.

Hill as a wobbly was incredibly active, whether it was organising strikes with dockworkers in San Pedro California, helping rebels in Baja California to overthrow the Diaz dictatorship or aiding workers with the Fraser River strike in British Columbia. Even fighting in the Mexican revolution His activities ensured he was blacklisted wherever he went so Joe just kept on moving around the States. 

Hill taught  himself piano violin and guitar and roused workers with songs he wrote such as Casey Jones and The Preacher and the Slave, the Slave, The Tramp, There is Power in a Union,  the Union Scab, and a hundred more. Many are still being sung today. Hill’s songs, because they were so easy to learn, so fun to sing, and condensed vital messages so skillfully, spread across the country, sung by crowds of workers regularly at strikes and protests. They became important for the movement: a way of keeping spirits high, of reminding everybody where they stood and with whom, and of spreading the word. His last song, The Rebel Girl, celebrated his comrade and friend, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, hero of the Bread and Roses strike and long time chair of the Communist Party USA. It was first sung at Joe Hill’s funeral. He was also a prolific cartoonist for  his union. 

Hill made his way to Utah in 1914 and settled in Park City where he got a job at a local silver mine. He wasn’t long in Park City when he was arrested and framed for the murder of a local grocery store owner and his son. Masked robbers had broken into the store and after a brief gun battle they left the store owner and his son dead. That same night Joe turned up to a doctors clinic with a bullet wound. The doctor grew suspicious of Joe’s gunshot wound and informed the police who promptly arrested him.

On the night in question Joe  had been with a married woman that night, 20 year old Hilda Erickson and in a pith of jealousy was shot by her husband,  but Joe  refused to disclose this in order not to disgrace them, even though it might mean his death.

The real culprit of the grocery store murders was an out of state career criminal  Even though the police had strong evidence to pin point the crime on this particular character they instead chose to frame Joe. Hill stayed in jail for well over a year..Despite the flim­sy nature of the evi­dence, Hill was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death, with the pros­e­cu­tor urg­ing con­vic­tion as much on the basis of Hill’s IWW mem­ber­ship as any puta­tive evi­dence of his involve­ment in the crime. In an article for a radical socialist newspaper Hill gave his own opinion. He wrote: “There had to be a scapegoat and the undersigned being, as they thought, a friendless tramp, a Swede, and worst of all, an IWW, had no right to live.”

 An inter­na­tion­al amnesty move­ment pressed for a new tri­al,  including Helen Keller and president Woodrow Wilson, of all people demanded his release. There were vigils everywhere, and often where the people gathered they would sing Joe Hill songs.

Shortly before facing the firing squad, Joe Hill wrote his last will and testament in the style he’d always written that now reads like a secular text:

 

My will is easy to decide,

For there is nothing to divide.

My kin don’t need to fuss and moan;

“Moss does not cling to a rolling stone.”

 

My body? Oh, if I could choose

I would to ashes it reduce

And let the merry breezes blow

My dust to where some flowers grow.

 

Perhaps some fading flower then

Would come to life and bloom again.

This is my Last and final Will.

Good Luck to All of you,

Joe Hill

 

On November 19th 1915 Joe Hill was taken out into the yard, blindfolded, with a paper heart pinned to his chest. His last spoken word on this world was “Fire!”

His body was sent to Chicago, he’d  previously written to Bill Haywood another IWW leader, who himself would later be victim to another trumped-up murder charge. Hill’s letter said “Goodbye Bill. I die like a true blue rebel. Don’t waste any time in mourning. Organise… Could you arrange to have my body hauled to the state line to be buried? I don’t want to be found dead in Utah.”

Up to 30,000 people attended his funeral. Joe was cremated and his ashes divided into 600 envelopes that were sent to IWW branches across the globe.

Since then  his songs have  continued to be sung, and the struggles he took part in continued, and the victories he helped win still inspires countless numbers of people people. His life and work continued to be an inspiration to political songwriters from Woody Guthrie to Pete Seeger and Phil Ochs to Billy Bragg and Utah Phillips. Hill has been immor­tal­ized in a wide vari­ety of cul­tur­al expres­sion, includ­ing poet­ry by Ken­neth Patchen, fic­tion by Wal­lace Steg­n­er, and a song by Alfred Hayes and Earl Robin­son, pop­u­lar­ized by Paul Robe­son, promis­ing ​“where work­ing­men are out on strike, Joe Hill is at their side.”

The ballad of Joe Hill was written  by Alfred Hayes  in the summer of 1936, whilst at a left wing retreat called Camp Unity. By that September the song had been  published in the Daily Worker and became a popular song with  members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade fighting Franco's fascists in Spain.

Haye’s song had been a popular one with the folk revivalists of the 1940s and 50s but it wasn’t until Joan Baez sang it at Woodstock did the song enter the mainstream. Luke Kelly sang it on The Dubliners 1970 album Revolution thus bringing it to the fore of the ballad scene in this part of the world. The song has to this day helped keep the memory of Joe Hill alive. 

 

The Ballad of Joe Hill 

 

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night 

 

Alive as you and me 

 

Says I ‘but Joe you’re ten years dead’ 

 

‘I never died’ says he ‘I never died’ says he. 

 

‘In Salt Lake City, Joe’ says I 

 

Him standing by my side 

 

‘They framed you on a murder charge’ 

 

Says Joe ‘But I ain’t dead’ says Joe ‘but I ain’t dead’ 

 

‘The copper bosses shot you Joe, 

 

They filled you full of lead’ 

 

‘Takes more than guns to kill a man’ 

 

Says Joe ’and I ain’t dead’ says Joe ’I ain’t dead’ 

 

And standing there as big as life 

 

And smiling with his eyes 

 

Says Joe ‘What they forgot to kill 

 

Went on to organize, went on to organize’ 

 

‘Joe Hill ain’t dead’ he says to me 

 

‘Joe Hill ain’t never died, 

 

Where working men are out on strike 

 

Joe Hill is at their side, Joe Hill is at their side.’ 

 

From San Diego up to Maine 

 

In every mine and mill 

 

Where working men defend their rights 

 

Its there you’ll find Joe

 

 

Hill captured people's imagination with his aphorisms, songs and cartoons. Using popular cultural forms allowed his ideas to find broad purpose in his day and across time. What English speaker today doesn't know the phrase "pie in the sky"?

He conveyed revolutionary ideas in down -to earth language relatable to anyone who has has had too work to survive. His example tells us that revolution won't be carried forward by dry theoretical treatise alone. Wee need to expres our revolutionary desires in plain tal and with music and humor.

In 1988 it was discovered that an envelope had been seized by the United States Postal Service in 1917 because of its “subversive potential”. The envelope, with a photo affixed, was captioned, “Joe Hill murdered by the capitalist class, Nov. 19, 1915”. The Chicago IWW laid claim to the envelope, scattered some at sites of struggle, but also followed up a suggestion by Yippie activist Abbie Hoffman: portions were given to modern day Joe Hills, like Billy Bragg and Michelle Shocked to be eaten. Billy Bragg did indeed eat his, and still carries Michelle Shocked’s packet wherever he plays. So Joe Hill is metaphorically here among us, as we still daily struggle on, keeping his memory alive in all our dreams and aspirations.

I will end with an old poem of mine  that I hope releases my sincerity, and affection for Joe Hill, that recognises the courageousness of his actions. This rebel songwriter that many of us can't forget. His legacy still resonating widely across the world.

 

Still Dreaming of Joe Hill 

 

Through the dusty ages
the earth creaks and moans,
dark shadows try to break people bones
the air is still , thick with mire,
daily each border, delivers human shame
parasites still create walls of oppression,
build bloodstained monuments that can't thwart hope
because the mighty human spirit carries resilience,
within us all, lay rivers of resistance.

Standing together we are strong
in our palms, another world glows,
with unity's strength 
we set people free,
no tyrant's grip 
can ever stop us,
we serve the weak and defenceless
protecting with dignity and defiance.
 
Today we still remember
when Joe Hill was shot down,
his enduring dream survives 
gives us strength,
shoulder to shoulder 
solidarity lives,
an injury to one
is an injury to all.

Remembering Zen Philosopher Alan Watts

 

Alan Wilson Watts who died on this day  in 1973 was a theologian and philosopher, whose work helped introduce Western audiences to popularized notions of Zen and Asian philosophy. He was a giant in  the middle 20th century,  but  his essays and books on Zen are still relevant to the current generation.

He was born on 6 January 1915, in Chislehurst, Kent, England to Christian parents. His father, Laurence Wilson Watts, was an employee of Michelin Tyre Company while his mother, Emily Mary Watts (née Buchan), was a homemaker who also taught missionary children in China. He developed an interest in Buddhism while he was still a student at King’s School, Canterbury which was next door to Canterbury Cathedral. As the only child of his parents, Alan grew up playing alone by the brook, learning to identify wildflowers and butterflies. Another factor that had an immense influence on his upbringing was his mother’s family, which was religiously inclined.Watts also later wrote of a mystical dream he experienced while ill with a fever as a child.

Subsequently, at 14 he declared himself a Buddhist and joined the Buddhist Lodge in London, where he met many scholars and spiritual masters, who helped him to shape his ideas. He was a prolific writer and began writing at the age of fourteen. Many of his early works were published in the journal of the Lodge.

Though he was frequently at the top of his classes scholastically and was given responsibilities at school, he botched an opportunity for a scholarship to Oxford by styling a crucial examination essay in a way that was read as presumptuous and capricious.

When he left secondary school, Watts worked in a printing house and later a bank. He spent his spare time involved with the Buddhist Lodge and also under the tutelage of a “rascal guru” named Dimitrije Mitrinović. (Mitrinović was himself influenced by Peter Demianovich Ouspensky, G. I. Gurdjieff, and the varied psychoanalytical schools of Freud, Jung and Adler.) Watts also read widely in philosophy, history, psychology, psychiatry and Eastern wisdom. By his own reckoning, and also by that of his biographer Monica Furlong, Watts was primarily an autodidact. His involvement with the Buddhist Lodge in London afforded Watts a considerable number of opportunities for personal growth. Through Humphreys, he contacted eminent spiritual authors (e.g. the artist, scholar, and mystic Nicholas Roerich, Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan, and prominent theosophists like Alice Bailey).

In 1936, aged 21, he attended the World Congress of Faiths at the University of London, heard D. T. Suzuki read a paper, and afterwards was able to meet this esteemed scholar of Zen Buddhism. Beyond these discussions and personal encounters, Watts absorbed, by studying the available scholarly literature, the fundamental concepts and terminology of the main philosophies of India and East Asia.

By his own assessment, Watts was imaginative, headstrong, and talkative. He was sent to boarding schools (which included both academic and religious training of the Muscular Christianity sort) from early years. Of this religious training, he remarked “Throughout my schooling my religious indoctrination was grim and maudlin…”

Watts spent several holidays in France in his teen years, accompanied by Francis Croshaw, a wealthy Epicurean with strong interests in both Buddhism and exotic little-known aspects of European culture. It was not long afterward that Watts felt forced to decide between the Anglican Christianity he had been exposed to and the Buddhism he had read about in various libraries, including Croshaw’s. He chose Buddhism, and sought membership in the London Buddhist Lodge, which had been established by Theosophists, and was now run by the barrister Christmas Humphreys. Watts became the organization’s secretary at 16 (1931). The young Watts explored several styles of meditation during these years.

Watts’s fascination with the Zen (or Ch’an) tradition—beginning during the 1930s—developed because that tradition embodied the spiritual, interwoven with the practical, as exemplified in the subtitle of his Spirit of Zen: A Way of Life, Work, and Art in the Far East. “Work”, “life”, and “art” were not demoted due to a spiritual focus. In his writing, he referred to it as “the great Ch’an (or Zen) synthesis of Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism after 700 CE in China.” 

In 1936, he attended the World Congress of Faiths at the University of London, where he met Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki, esteemed scholar of Zen Buddhism. He had already read his works; the meeting fascinated him to a great extent.  Two decades later, in The Way of Zen he disparaged The Spirit of Zen as a “popularisation of Suzuki’s earlier works, and besides being very unscholarly it is in many respects out of date and misleading.”

He moved to the United States in 1938 and began Zen training in New York. Watts left formal Zen training in New York because the method of the teacher did not suit him. He was not ordained as a Zen monk, but he felt a need to find a vocational outlet for his philosophical inclinations. He entered Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, an Episcopal (Anglican) school in Evanston, Illinois, where he studied Christian scriptures, theology, and church history. He attempted to work out a blend of contemporary Christian worship, mystical Christianity, and Asian philosophy. Watts was awarded a master’s degree in theology in response to his thesis, which he published as a popular edition under the title Behold the Spirit: A Study in the Necessity of Mystical Religion. 

In 1945, on receiving his master’s degree from the seminary, he became an Episcopal priest and joined the Northwestern University at Chicago as its chaplain. He was very popular among the students, who joined him in a spirited discussion on Christian as well as Eastern philosophy.

 During his stay at Chicago, Watts wrote three books on Christian mysticism. However, he found it very hard to reconcile his Buddhist beliefs with Christian doctrines.Watts did not hide his dislike for religious outlooks that he decided were dour, guilt-ridden, or militantly proselytizing—no matter if they were found within Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, or Buddhism. Moreover, he got entangled in an extramarital relationship. So he left Chicago and in early 1951, shifted to San Francisco.

Watts gained a large following in the San Francisco Bay Area while working as a volunteer programmer at KPFA, a Pacifica Radio station in Berkeley. Watts wrote more than 25 books and articles on subjects important to Eastern and Western religion, introducing the then-burgeoning youth culture to The Way of Zen (1957), one of the first bestselling books on Buddhism. In Psychotherapy East and West (1961), Watts proposed that Buddhism could be thought of as a form of psychotherapy and not a religion. He considered Nature, Man and Woman (1958) to be, “from a literary point of view — the best book I have ever written.” He also explored human consciousness, in the essay “The New Alchemy” (1958), and in the book The Joyous Cosmology (1962).

Alan Watts was profoundly influenced by the East Indian philosophies of Vedanta and Buddhism, and by Taoist thought, which is reflected in Zen poetry and the arts of China and Japan. After leaving the Church, he never became a member of another organized religion, and although he wrote and spoke extensively about Zen Buddhism, he was criticized by American Buddhist practitioners for not sitting regularly in zazen. Alan Watts responded simply by saying, “A cat sits until it is done sitting, and then gets up, stretches, and walks away.”

Sometime now, he also started experimenting with psychedelic drugs and its effect on mystical insight. He began by taking mescaline.Later he worked with marijuana and wrote about their effects in his forthcoming books. Next in 1958, he worked with several other researchers on LSD, earned him an enthusiastic following, ranging from beatniks and bohemians to psychoanalysts, theologians, and intellectuals. He added advice on diet, dress, sex, yoga, Taoism, and the Vedanta to the core of his Zen Buddhist spiritualism. This Is It (1960) and Psychotherapy East and West (1961) were very popular in the United States, as were his syndicated radio and television programs and many campus lectures. Watts associated with such proponents of beat as Jack Kerouac, who portrayed Watts in the character of Arthur Whane in his novel The Dharma Bums (1958) and as Alex Aums in Desolation Angels. Among his large circle of friends are such luminaries as the writer/philosopher Aldous Huxley, poet Kenneth Rexroth, composer John Cage, and philosopher Joseph Campbell. Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Richard Alpert ("Ram Dass"), and Timothy Leary and lent support to their experiments in consciousness expansion. In the spirit of the liberated counterculture era he helped shape, Watts had experimented with LSD to attain spiritual insight as early as 1958, before Leary and Alpert used the new hallucinogen at Harvard. He defended LSD as a useful tool, a "sacrament" for Westerners in their search for knowledge, but he cautioned those seeking enlightenment to use the drug prudently. Nevertheless, Watts also enjoyed luxury, tobacco, alcohol, fine food, travel, and sexual affairs. When criticized because he eschewed the asceticism usually associated with Zen Buddhism, Watts called himself an "unrepentant sensualist. " 

Watts  LP This Is It is about the first hippy LSD  jam sessions  ever recorded. The record was a huge sources of  of inspiration  for the 60's scene. The LSD seemed to transform from a rather stiff British intellectual into a more looser free spirited beatnik, someone who could laugh wildly attend parties of abandonment , play bongos, dance wildly and produce long nonsense rhymes for himself and others amusement. 

Also in 1962 he organized the Society for Comparative Philosophy, which published the Alan Watts Journal. His interest in bridging East and West and in finding some common ground between Christianity and Buddhism continued during the turmoil of the hippie and New Left years. But his deceptively lighthearted example led one critic to suggest that Watts's epitaph might be taken from the second chapter of Ecclesiastes: "I thought of beguiling my senses with wine, though my mind was concerned with wisdom. "

His friendship with poet Gary Snyder https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2021/05/happy-birthday-gary-snyder-poet.html nurtured his sympathies with the budding environmental movement, to which Watts gave philosophical support. He also encountered Robert Anton Wilson, https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2012/03/robert-anton-wilson-180132-110107-maybe.htmlwho credited Watts with being one of his “Lights along the Way” in the opening appreciation of Cosmic Trigger. Werner Erhard attended workshops given by Alan Watts and said of him, “He pointed me toward what I now call the distinction between Self and Mind. After my encounter with Alan, the context in which I was working shifted.”,

From early 1960s, he went to Japan several times. Also from 1962 to 1964, he had a fellowship at Harvard University and in 1968, became a scholar at San Jose State University. In fact, by the late 1960s, he had become a counterculture celebrity with many followers as well as critics.

Soon he began travelling widely to speak at universities and growth centers across the US and Europe and by early 1970s, he became the most important interpreter of Eastern thoughts in the Western world.

In regards to his ethical outlook, Watts felt that absolute morality had nothing to do with the fundamental realization of one’s deep spiritual identity. He advocated social rather than personal ethics. In his writings, Watts was increasingly concerned with ethics applied to relations between humanity and the natural environment and between governments and citizens. He wrote out of an appreciation of a racially and culturally diverse social landscape.

Watts led some tours for Westerners to the Buddhist temples of Japan. He also studied some movements from the trWatts was a prophet of the idea that we can seek our spiritual fulfilment outside of traditional religious commitments and communities. He preached the ‘wisdom of insecurity’ — not clinging to any particular religion. He was a nomad-prophet for our uprooted age. He preached the wisdom of the body, the spirituality of sex, the validity of psychedelics as a spiritual technique, the superiority of Asian wisdom to Christianity, and the possibility of escaping history by focusing on ‘the Eternal Now’aditional Chinese martial art taijiquan, with an Asian colleague, Al Chung-liang Huang.

Watts’ books frequently include discussions reflecting his keen interest in patterns that occur in nature and which are repeated in various ways and at a wide range of scales – including the patterns to be discerned in the history of civilizations.

Watts was a prophet of the idea that we can seek our spiritual fulfilment outside of traditional religious commitments and communities. He preached the ‘wisdom of insecurity’ — not clinging to any particular religion. He was a nomad-prophet for our uprooted age. He preached the wisdom of the body, the spirituality of sex, the validity of psychedelics as a spiritual technique, the superiority of Asian wisdom to Christianity, and the possibility of escaping history by focusing on ‘the Eternal Now’

 But his main message, which he repeated over and over throughout his career, was that there is no separate self, that there is just IT, the Tao, the Brahman, and you are inescapably part of it, so relax and let go, rather than trying to pull yourself up by your spiritual boot-straps. Over-strenuous spiritual practice will actually just reinforce your ego. You are already perfect, already enlightened, you don’t need to do or change anything. There is no ‘you’, just IT.

Watts married three times and had seven children (five daughters and two sons). In 1936, he met Eleanor Everett at the Buddhist Lodge and got married in April 1938. Their eldest daughter Joan was born in November 1938 and the younger daughter Anne in 1942.

Towards the end of 1940s, Watts became entangled with an extramarital affair with Jean Burden; as a result Eleanor had their marriage annulled. Although he never married Jean, she remained in his thought till the end. He also kept in touch with his mother-in-law Ruth Fuller Everett.

In 1950, Watts married Dorothy DeWitt. They had five children; Tia, Mark, Richard, Lila, and Diane. The marriage ended when in early 1960s Watts met Mary Jane Yates King while on a lecture tour to New York. The divorce was granted in 1964 and Watts and King got married in the same year.

Despite his innate wisdom he failed as a husband, and drove his third wife to the bottle with his philandering — he would pick up a different college girl after most talks (‘I don’t like to sleep alone’). In fairness to him the women of his life knew what he was about, so I wont pass moral judgement.By his own admission  he failed as a father to his seven children: ‘By all the standards of this society I have been a terrible father’, although some of his children still remember him fondly as a kind man, who initiated each of his children into LSD on their 18th birthday. He was vain and boastful, ‘immoderately infatuated with the sound of my own voice," although he didn’t try and hide his failings, and hey who at end of the day is perfect. Lfe is about mistakes, but  i also about learning from them, Watts perhaps  in his mystical ' Life as a Play ' talk learn from his mistakes or know something was wrong.

Until the middle of 1960s Watts lived with King on a houseboat docked in Sausalito until crowds of visiting disciples and admirers made that impossible. They retreated to an isolated cabin in Mill Valley, near San Francisco, called Druid Heights, located on the southwest flank of Mount Tamalpais. At the same time, he continued with his lecture trips.

But by the end of his life he was having to do several talks a week to make enough money to pay his alimony and child support. And he was drinking a bottle of vodka a day to be able to do that. He died, exhausted, at 58. Snyder remembers: 

he had to keep working, and as you keep working, you know, you got to play these roles, and you also keep drinking ’cause there’s always these parties and so forth, so that doesn’t help you slow it down. So he just wore himself out. It was out of his control, that was my feeling. The dynamics of his life had gotten beyond his control, and he didn’t know what to do about it. 

One of his lovers, the therapist June Singer, visited him in hospital when he was admitted with delirium tremens. Why didn’t he stop drinking, she asked. ‘That’s how I am,’ he said to her sadly. ‘I can’t change.’

Ultimately, Watts seems to have worked incredibly hard at his career, at his public profile, at the endless talks he gave on campuses, on radio and on TV. In other words, on the external self. And he worked very little on the inner man , psychotherapy bored him, while he felt too much meditation ‘is apt to turn one into a stone Buddha’.

For Zen writers like for Shakespeare, life is but a dream, and if you are not living in the present you are living a fantasy. Watt taught, above all else, that everything is transitory. Yes he died of alcoholism after having been a heavy drinker all his life,  but he never expressed guilt or remorse because of his addiction, and he never missed one of his lectures or deadlines for his written works.

So his life to me could hardly be called a tragedy. It sounds incredibly interesting, and often incredibly fun.  He was energetic, friendly, charismatic, full of ideas, alcoholic, egotistical, lonely and definitely not an authority on 'how to live'. Why, was he so unsuccessful at putting his own teachings into practice? Did he struggle but not succeed? I suspect he was never serious in the first place but a relatively easy-going personality who wished to be content as a popular success but obviously his inner demons required sedating through the use of alcohol.

The question that cannot be answered is why after a lifetime involved in Buddhist studying and proselytising was Watts not a genuine practitioner. I suspect there are two reasons. While I do not believe in the efficacy of the various Buddhist meditation techniques there is no doubt that they are difficult to practice and require long term committment and effort and Watts was able to live very well on his intelligence, charm and style. This required no such effort. Secondly he had, after all, met all the recognised Buddhist and other "masters", rinpoches, swamis, gurus, etc and he had probably already decided that if enlightenment existed at all there was nobody who had attained it. And the consequence of his egoistical drive to self-promote was the flowering of Asian wisdom in western culture. 

On all accounts he sounds like a likeable and friendly man, without the tendency to greed, malice or domination that one sees in some spiritual teachers. And his books genuinely helped thousands of people, giving them a holistic vision that consoles them in dark times. Does it matter that he had such a messy life himself?

His body was cremated and half of the ashes were buried near his library at Druid Heights while the other half at the Green Gulch Monastery.

Watts remains one of the most respected and quotable writers on Zen Buddhism in the English-speaking world. Across a multitude of books, speeches and recorded lectures, he championed experiences and conscious living over the accumulation of things and is still referenced by many in the fields of politics, religion, philosophy and the arts.Today, new generations are finding his writings and lectures online, while faithful followers worldwide continue to be enlightened by his teachings. 

 Watts’ eldest daughters, Joan Watts and Anne Watts, own and manage most of the copyrights to his books. His son, Mark Watts, serves as curator of his father’s audio, video and film and has published content of some of his spoken lectures in print format. You can watch his talks on YouTube for hours, I've enjoyed them immensely.

There are thousands of books, essays, numerous You tube videos one can view and other materials that have stemmed from his work and all of them are impressed with affection, as if the people who read or heard him had somehow established a liaison with the author. Alan Watts was a  fascinating enigmatic characters, not flawless in anyway, but an individual who helped establish a bridge to the beautiful world of Zen who was also responsible for sparking the passion of innumerable seekers of wisdom and spiritual delights with his ability to make Eastern spirituality understandable. Who was always adamant about making a path for oneself, saying: “the menu is not the meal”

Here's a video from one of my favourite short Watt's lectures animated by the creators of 

South Park and here is a link to his official website https://alanwatts.org/

Under the Skin

Finding laughter among the darkness

Catching infectious smiles, voices that reciprocate,

Beyond the bullshit, echo chambers of deceit

Not offering a glimmer of light arraigned

Promises abandoned, broken smashed 

Hatred stemming from politics

World leaders heartless and unsympathetic

Fragments of exhaustion fluctuating

lets keep moving through regardless 

Each of us a cell of awareness 

Imperfect yes and incomplete

Genetic blends, with uncertain ends

On a fortune hunt that's far too fleet

We all bleed the colour red

Black, white, gay or straight

We can start revolutions

Turn everything on it's head

Find a unity of breath.                                                                                                                                      

Armistice Day/ Remembrance Day : A World Without War

Armistice Day/Remembrance Day, also known as Poppy Day  commemorates the sacrifices of members of the armed forces and of civilians in times of war, and is specifically observed on  November 11th  to recall the end of First World War hostilities. Hostilities ended "at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month" of 1918, in accordance with the armistice signed by representatives of Germany and the Entente between 5:12 and 5:20 that morning. ("At the 11th hour" refers to the passing of the 11th hour, or 11:00 am.) The First World War formally ended with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on 28 June 1919.mark the time and date since World War I was ended 

Because red poppies bloomed on the Western Front during World War I they became a symbol of remembrance of the the horror of war  especially to those who have experienced the suffering and grief that war brings and are often worn in the UK around the time of Armistice Day, with sales raising funds for people who have served in the armed forces, and their dependents, through the poppy appeal of the Royal British Legion

Armistice Day was born and was designated as “a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated.”and became a focus of grieving families who vowed that never again should valuable lives be wasted. In the 1920s and 1930s it became an occasion for peace activists around the world to rally in support of disarmament. However the annual dedication to world peace somehow mutated into the glorification of war and hero worship of the military. Armistice Day changed from a day for peace into a day for displays of militarism.  This “rebranding” of Armistice Day has continually gnawed at me. My unease has nothing to do with honoring veterans: indeed they should be recognized, supported and held up for their service. But what happened to the “peace” aspect of the original Armistice Day?

The Peace Pledge Union  the oldest secular pacifist organisation in Britain. along with many pacifists support the wearing of white poppies as an alternative. They were first produced in 1933 by the Co-operative Women's Guild, a coop  made up largely of women who had lost husbands, fathers, sons, brothers and friends in World War One. They were worried by the growing militarisation of Remembrance events and the detachment between the red poppy and the need to work for peace. The Guild's General Secretary, Eleanor Barton, called for renewed commitment "to that 'Never Again' spirit that was strong in 1918, but seems to grow weaker as years go on". 

 On the Peace Pledge Union they  write: "There are three elements to the meaning of white poppies: they represent remembrance for all victims of war, a commitment to peace and a challenge to attempts to glamorise or celebrate war.

"White poppies symbolise the conviction that there are better ways to resolve conflict than through the use of violence. They embody values that reject killing fellow human beings for whatever reason.

"Nearly 100 years after the end of the “war to end all wars” we still have a long way to go to put an end to a social institution that even in the last decade has contributed to the killing of millions."

White poppies represent remembrance for all victims of war (including the vast majority of war victims who are civilians), a commitment to peace, and a challenge to attempts to glamorize or celebrate war. Some have claimed the wearing of the white poppy is a sign of disrespect for former soldiers and armed forces personell. However the Royal British Legion, has made no official opinion on the wearing of white poppies stating it is a matter of choice and 'does not have a problem' with people wearing the white poppy. Some people choose wear both red and white, so please be aware of  creeping poppy fascism that to me serves no purpose at all.

Lest we forget that the trenches of  the First World War were a vast area of darkness and danger, dank and miserable conditions, often infested  with rats who ate the flesh of the dead. The stench  of unwashed humanity, all squashed together, combined with the smell of rotting flesh, and overflowing latrines, and the lingering smell of death and battle on accounts must have been unbearable.  Over 16 million deaths and 20 million wounded in what is considered to be among the deadliest of conflicts in human history.

With the incomprehensible loss of life of that Great War, communities back home were in some ways silenced too. Not just by the silence of peace but by the silence of loss: The silence of the Lost Generation, who never returned home to talk and joke, and live and breath. They were silenced by the grief of so many lost in communities, often because their loved ones had signed up with their friends together, Kitchener’s ‘Pals Battalions’ from the same factory, or sports team, or village.

We should not forget either the 306 British and Commonwealth soldiers who were shot  on the orders of the military top brass, many suffering from shell shock, and what is now known as Post Traumatic Stress. Charged with desertion after  becoming dazed and confused, young disturbed, traumatised teenagers some of them , who had simply volunteered for duty. https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2015/11/shot-at-dawn-in-first-world-war-and.html

Many other soldiers during the First World War were driven to suicide, or left with  mental exhaustion, depression and shell shock because of this war. It has taken time, but the stigma of mental health issues  caused by conflict are  very real indeed. In the end  no glory in war, only sadness. 

Today I  remember the millions killed, wounded, widowed, imprisoned, orphaned,and honor military resisters, not forgetting either, those caught up in conflict across the globe in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Gaza etc nor do I forget  the arms dealers currently still making profits out of war, from slaughter and mass misery , not sparing a thought to the carnage they continually help unleash while still wearing their red poppies with pride. Let us all live in the hope that a world of war will be no more.

And yes  people have said that it's not possible but the sanctity of human life beyond its own unreasonable divisions is not worth abandoning.

Tory Party Sleaze and Corruption

 

‘Selflessness. Integrity. Objectivity. Accountability. Openness. Honesty. Leadership.’ These are the Seven Principles devised by Lord Nolan’s 1994 Committee on Standards in Public Life to promote a code of conduct that all public servants should follow. Following the news in the last week, it is apparent that our country has elected a government that is attempting to rip to shreds all of these rules.

 Lord Acton famously once said: ‘power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’: ambitious people who think themselves untouchable tend to bend the rules for their purposes. Nonetheless, what shocks me is the level of corruption we are seeing in our country, and how this country has become numb to it. This is unsurprising based on our incumbent primus inter pares: Boris Johnson who has paved the  way for an unprecedented level of sleaze and scandal. Whether it was the dispute over who paid the furniture for Downing Street, or his oddly timed  Marbella holiday in a villa owned by the family of environment minister Lord Goldsmith.

Johnson has already been admonished on four occasions, most recently over a £15,000 holiday to the island of Mustique between December 26, 2019, and January 5, 2020, but this was later overturned by the Committee on Standards.

Johnson has already been admonished by the commissioner on four occasions, most recently over a £15,000 holiday to the island of Mustique between December 26, 2019, and January 5, 2020, but this was later overturned by the Committee on Standards.dubiously funded holidays, or tennis matches with dodgy donors, Boris has pushed the envelope out of what it is acceptable for our political leaders to do. 

This has been apparent with the Owen Paterson lobbying scandal that has engulfed the government this week. Paterson , was found in breach of ministerial code by the independent watchdog for these type of matters. He was found to have repeatedly lobbied ministers and officials on behalf of two companies he worked for as a paid consultant. 

On top of Paterson’s £81,932 salary, he took home £8,333 a month to lobby on behalf of healthcare company Randox Laboratories. 

As Johnson announced Covid safety restrictions in March 2020, the government  handed Randoz a £133 million contract to ­manufacture Covid tests. 

The Sunday Times newspaper has revealed a phone call on 9 April last year between Paterson and the Tory peer Lord Bethell, who was the minister responsible for ­handing out contracts. 

According to documents, civil servants were trying to cover for the fact that Randox did not have the equipment it needed. 

In an email, an official wrote that Matt Hancock health secretary at the time, would send a letter to universities “asking for loans of the various things we need”. 

Campuses would have to give up testing resources and send them to Randox, they continued. 

Randox later received a £347 million contract. Paterson’s lobbying interests extended to sausage company Lynn’s Country Foods who paid him £12,000 for just 24 hours of work each year. 

Last month the ­independent Parliamentary Standards Commissioner found Paterson had breached the tame paid advocacy rules. 

Paterson had, on 16 occasions, used his House of Commons office for meetings relating to his private business interests.

 

 

He failed on a number of occasions to declare those interests. 

The Committee on Standards suggested Paterson should just be suspended from the Commons for 30 days. This was set to be voted on in parliament.  

In an effort to save him even this punishment, Johnson instructed Tory MP Andrea Leadsom to put forward an amendment and set up a committee to prevent his suspension. 

 Parliamentary votes on these reports are usually free, i.e. the party whip allows MPs to vote with their conscience, and so MPs typically endorse the recommendation of the Standards Select Committee. Yet this time the government imposed a three-line whip , and the Leadsom Amendment to the motion to suspend Paterson was backed. The amendment was half-baked and an outrageous watering down of current processes. It aimed to not only set aside Paterson’s suspension, but also to throw the Standards Commissioner on a bonfire and chop up the Standards Committee for firewood. A new committee of MPs was to be set up to decide the future of the Standards Select Committee, which interrogates the work of the Standards Commissioner,

Tory whips threatened MPs with the loss of local funding unless they fell into line. MPs duly voted for it. But the stench of corruption  was too much. The government was forced to go back on itself and announced there would be a vote on Paterson’s suspension.

The government narrowly won the vote 250 to 232, and the former MP announced he would resign and self pitying leave “the cruel world of politics”following his shameless lobbying for big businesses.

What was outrageous was that when the debate in the house happened, the cowardly PM was nowhere to be seen. Sorry but he is always available for a photoshoot or somehting like that but when he us under fire he disappears.

I've read  that Con MPs said  the vote was not about letting Paterson off the hook but rather introducing a fairer system. The flaw there is that is they weren’t planning a fairer system. They wanted to scrap a public committee & replace it with a Tory mates-led committee. Arrant corruption. 

 Amid fallout from the “sleaze” row Labour Party leader Keir Starmer  who has not previously been noted for his voice of opposition at least had the tenacity to accuse Boris Johnson of "corroded trust" in MPs. The Labour leader told the emergency debate in the Commons that the PM had given the "green light to corruption".

Also this week we have also heard about the MP and former attorney general Sir Geoffrey Cox who had been accused of pocketing hundreds of thousands of pounds to help stop ironically the exposure of corruption in a Caribbean paradise. the British Virgin Islands (BVI) during lockdown.n his second job as a lawyer advising the Caribbean tax haven..

Iain Duncan Smith is also facing questions over his £25,000-a-year second job advising a multimillion-pound hand sanitiser company after he chaired a government taskforce that recommended new rules benefiting the firm.in a brazen conflict of interest

The MP and former Conservative party leader chaired the Task Force on Innovation, Growth, and Regulatory Reform, which reported back in May after he and two other MPs were asked by Boris Johnson to recommend ways of cutting supposed EU red-tape.

However, the fresh spotlight on moonlighting by MPs has now prompted questions about the taskforce’s recommendations that alcohol-free hand sanitisers should be formally recognised as suitable for use in the UK.

The report made no reference to Duncan Smith’s relationship with Byotrol, which provides the NHS with 92% of its non-alcohol sanitiser. It retains the former Tory leader as an adviser for £25,000 a year, according to his declaration in parliament’s register of members’ interests.

In a message to investors after the recommendations of Duncan Smith and his fellow former ministers George Freeman and Theresa Villiers, Byotrol welcomed how an “influential UK government-sponsored taskforce has recommended a regulatory ‘green light’ for alcohol-free hand sanitisers”. Its directors were also quoted in a report as saying that it delivered a “powerful boost” to the firm.

The taskforce said in its report: “Current guidelines in the UK on non-alcohol based hand sanitisers are unclear. As a result, there is confusion in industry and among consumers as to what products are safe and effective to use, and we may be unnecessarily limiting the range of sanitising products available.” It called on the government to review guidance “to place alcohol- and non-alcohol-based on a level playing field”.

Duncan Smith was a director of Byotrol between June 2009 and May 2010 and has previously declared share options. Both have been approached for comment.

Byotrol, which is based in Cheshire, said in August that its revenue almost doubled and its pre-tax profits rocketed by more than 600% following “exceptional demand” for its sanitising technologies due to the pandemic. It reported a revenue of £11.2m for the 12 months to 31 March, up from £6m the previous year.

Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, said: “The prime minister needs to explain why he think it is justified for one of his MPs to be paid by a company that stands to benefit from a recommendation of a taskforce chaired by that same MP. This is exactly the kind of brazen conflict of interest that proves that the Conservatives think it is one rule for them and another for the rest of us. 

“Did this MP declare an interest when these matters were discussed and reported on by the taskforce? Why is the prime minister failing to act over these glaring conflicts of interest?”

More than a quarter of Tory MPs have second jobs with firms wbose activities range from gambling to private healthcare, making more than £4m in extra earnings in a year, Guardian analysis has found.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/nov/09/at-least-a-quarter-of-tory-mps-have-second-jobs-earning-5m-a-year These aren't MP's 'with second jobs. They're lobbyists with second jobs as MPs. And if we don't do something to stamp it out now, it's only a matter of time before it's as corrupt here as it is in the US.

 It's been interesting to see Tory MP's saying thy can't live on £82 k a year when they thought some of the poorest people in the country could cope with £20 a week less. The party of low wages, austerity, exploitaiton and poor ambition. With a huge slice of sleaze and a massive dose of  corruption and a total lack of morals,.It’s one rule for us, and no rules for them The criminals are right here Cressida Dick, arrest them!

Boris Johnson did not cause all these mounting scandals, but it was his nature of governing and what he views as acceptable that is seriously harming our political culture. Over the centuries this land has produced some absolute rotters, but I honestly cannot think of anyone worse than this lying, arrogant, cheating dishonest, incompetent, racist thug with blood on his hands,

The Conservative Party Party is  also facing demands for a police investigation into a fresh cash for honours scandal. The SNP are demanding action from the Metropolitan Police to determine whether any criminal offence has been committed after it was reported party treasurers who meet a £3 million threshold in donations are virtually guaranteed a peerage.

The Sunday Times and Open Democracy found 15 of the last 16 Tory treasurers have been offered a seat in the Lords having each donated more than £3m.

The most controversial appointment was that of Lord Cruddas, who took his seat after Boris Johnson rejected the advice of the House of Lords Appointment Commission not to grant him a peerage.

An ex-party chairman explained: “Once you pay your £3m, you get your peerage.”

The report found that, since 2010, 22 of the party’s main financial donors have been given peerages after donating a combined £54m. Two Labpir  and five LibDem major donors have also been handed peerages.

SNP MP Pete Wishart said the latest scandal was corruption – “plain and simple”.

He commented: “The Tory corruption scandal is growing worse by the day. It’s now beyond all doubt that the honours system has been abused by the Tories. The Metropolitan Police should launch a fresh cash for honours investigation to determine whether a criminal offence has been committed. 

“It is utterly appalling that so many millionaire Tory party donors have been handed life peerages by Boris Johnson and his predecessors. But this isn’t just a scandal for the Tories – the Labour Party and Liberal Democrats have also been dishing out peerages to donors as though they were sweeties. It is corruption plain and simple – and it absolutely stinks.  

“The undemocratic House of Lords is packed with hundreds of Tory, Labour and LibDem donors and cronies, who are making laws without being elected and claiming allowances at our expense. It should have been abolished centuries ago but, whenever they’ve had the opportunity, the Tories and Labour Party have instead chosen to continue benefiting from the broken system – milking taxpayers for every penny they can get.”

 Sadly Starmer  chose last week to announce that Labour was no longer in favour of abolishing the House of Lords.

Wishart continued: “This is just the latest scandal for Boris Johnson who seems to believe he is immune to abiding by the rules everyone else does. Whether it’s cash for peerages, changing the standards system to suit him best, or soliciting dodgy donations for the refurbishment of flats and holidays, he is reigning over a system that he’s using to benefit him and his party.

“People in Scotland are looking in horror at what’s going on at Westminster. The sooner Scotland can become an independent country, and shake off this broken system, the better.”

 Regardless of Boris Johnson’s attempts to appeal to the whole country  his same tendency to serve the elite has manifested in the government’s COVID-19 pandemic response. Nearly £1 billion in government contracts ’have been awarded to 15 companies with directors, or people with controlling interests over these companies, who have donated £12 million to the Conservative Party’. That is to say, public money has been funnelled to Tory donors in vast quantities. The problematic nature of these transactions is obvious: any argument that those bodies which were awarded contracts are the best suited to the job is naturally suspect as a consequence of their relationship with the Conservative party. This suspicion is further justified when many COVID contracts have been awarded without competition and in breach of transparency rules,.

During the last year of the pandemic, the wealth of British billionaires increased by over a fifth. In a similar period, food bank use increased by about one third. This stunning inequality is unlikely to be addressed by a Conservative party whose raison d’etre is to protect the existing centres of wealth and power. Yet Labour leader Keir Starmer’s current search for rich donors to replace the subscription fees of a reduced party membership gives little reason to think that the opposition offers a viable alternative to the current plutocracy. To build a Britain that works for the many, the impetus for change will have to come from the ground up.These scandals and the furore to  which it has given rise have deep roots in our political system and highlight the structural flaws that so urgently need to be addressed. But incredibly knowing all this corruption is going on in plain sight, the public still vote for the Tories and they are still ahead in the polls.I wish people would wake up and realise that Britain is  being run by the Bullingdon State; a chummy elite who are above pesky things like parliamentary standards and so-called ‘transparency’ behaving like arrogant masters pursuing their own interests while the little people find supermarket shelves empty as prices and taxes rise.

Whoever leads them, the British Conservative party is diametrically opposed  to the good of the British public and deliberately acts against their interests. Their motives driven by authoriarianism designed to disenfranchise all, unless  you are not a millionaire, the Conservative Party is not your friend, they are enemies of the people.

The Conservatives with their feelings of self entitlement believe they are born to rule. Unconcerned by any principles except their maintenance of power, they U-turn  on positions at a drop of a hat, betray promises and even sacrifice their own in order to maintain control.The interests they serve are not yours or mine, but those of the bankers, financiers, fossil fuel magnates and the elite, look how they have voted.to pollute our waterways to keep their donors happy. I cannot believe the UK keeps  accepting this crap.

There will likely be many more scandals .As to the outcome of the investigations into these scandals, they’ll undoubtedly conclude that lessons must be learned and rules tightened, etc. In other words, business as usual, unless that is, both Scotland and Wales manage to break free from the rotting corpse of Westminster and the stench of Tory corruption,  because we can't  allow  Boris and the Tory's  to keep getting away with what they have up to now, surely we all deserve so much better.