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.
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 asCasey JonesandThe 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.
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. "
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
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.
‘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.
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.
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.
