Today's piece is my take on the theft of designer handbags (29th October, "Handbagged", page 3). It also has a bearing on consumerism in general.
It appears that designer handbags are becoming increasingly attractive to thieves, in that they are small, light, readily portable, easy to sell and worth vast sums of money on the black market. Indeed, they raise huge sums on any market. As Laura Craik put it in the article: "Fashion brands have become more savvy about marketing, using engineered scarcity to create a 'waiting list' culture in order to push up the desirability...of these items".
In other words, the designers are deliberately limiting the supply of desirable items in order for the price to go up, and they will then make monster profits. Under these circumstances, I must ask, who are the real thieves? We can see how the law of attraction works. The people who produce the bags are robbing their customers. The goods are thus tainted with theft from beginning to end, and we should not therefore be surprised they are being stolen. What, objectively, is any bag really worth? You can only carry things in it.
On the appearance front, I've just ordered a new suit. I bought it from Roth Clothing in Stamford Hill. It's where the Chasidim buy their clothes. For those who don't know, Chasidim are the Jewish gentlemen in long black coats, fur hats and beards: a familiar sight in Stamford Hill. I'm not a Chasid by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm enough of an Orthodox Jew to have a deep distaste for spending my money on advertising campaigns, window displays, shop fittings that change every week, and planet-cooking lighting systems. I just want a suit, and Roth Clothing have suits like a monkey has fleas. Of course, they are all either black or dark blue, but that doesn't bother me: I have plenty of colourful ties to cheer them up.
People think, if I have some fashion accessory or other, I can make an image for myself, and I can be the thing called cool. It doesn't work like that. You begin by working on a cool state of being, and if you are genuine about it, your actions will follow, and you will end up having an air of elegance about you that goes beyond fashion. I knew Chasidic women who could make a plastic rain hat look sexy.
Regarding consumer goods in general, I was once asked a challenging question. Do I need a vacuum cleaner? The considered answer has to be, no. If all of a sudden my vacuum cleaner disappeared and I couldn't get a new one, I could choose to research pre World War 2 methods of cleaning my carpets. Alternatively, I could rip up all my carpets and have wooden floors at home from top to bottom. So, no, I don't need a vacuum cleaner. In which case, what am I doing owning one?
Consider the current state of affairs: in my street, there are over 50 households, almost all of whom own a vacuum cleaner. Think of the environmental impact of manufacturing 50 vacuum cleaners, and of disposing of them when they fail to function. It isn't very environmentally friendly, is it? Now consider what may happen if all 50 households had a vacuum cleaner between them, and organised a rota, so that you could designate one or two hours per week in which you would do your hoovering, and then pass the appliance on to the next person. Would your carpets still be regularly cleaned? Yes, of course. You get the same solution to your cleaning problems for one fiftieth of the environmental impact.
The way vacuum cleaners are made today, they would not last very long if used so intensively. Therefore, when vacuum cleaner "pools" become popular, the makers will say, "We had better start making machines that last twenty years!" The environmental impact goes down further, and better quality goods begin to be made. Everyone wins.
The other issue is, who will offer his/her vacuum cleaner first to be pooled in such a fashion? Few people would, at least at present. So, if I were the Council, I would organise a network of domestic appliance pools in local neighbourhoods. Membership could be free or subsidised, because everything would be paid for out of council taxes. We might even be able to get EU funding for such a project. We would then begin to understand what it is to be wealthy, as opposed to being rich. Rich means, you own lots of things. Wealthy means, you have access to lots of things. Even the poor can be wealthy if you get the system to work.
This kind of principle is called Conscious Commerce. For more on it, I invite you to e-mail jjsleeman@aol.com.
If it works for vacuum cleaners, it could work for handbags. So if we must get ourselves into a hot sweat about a designer handbag, let the Council buy one of them, and any local resident can have it for one, or more, evening of her choice. Then we can all be highly fashionable for one day every now and then. I've already seen that Richard Branson's Virgin Group has a very similar scheme for luxury cars.
If we know that we will get the chance to access whatever it is we like and when we like (within reason) then I dare say the desire to steal may be much diminished as a result.
My opinions on anything are subject to change. My love for you will not change.
Monday, 29 October 2007
Tuesday, 23 October 2007
Class
This piece is inspired, if that's the right word, by Andrew Gilligan's article "To fight the class divide" on page 12 of the Standard of 22nd October.
Firstly, it is well known that most of the people who get to the top of British society have attended certain public schools and universities, and this has been the case for several centuries. None of the social policy initiatives of modern times has done anything significant to change this. It's often remarked how people of that background seem to have an air of confidence about them, that their contemporaries from other backgrounds do not. This is most clearly noticed in the university setting. Bright children from working class families can be overwhelmed by it, and can be made to feel very inferior.
This is because the education system that most of us experience is of no value when it comes to learning "people skills". As Matt Morris put it: "I studied English, math, history, grammar, science and geography, but I was never offered classes in confidence, self-esteem, leadership, motivation, communication skills, how to build quality relationships, how to create wealth, or enjoy physical well-being or spiritual growth....As a result I entered the world with big goals, big dreams, but no real-world tools to achieve what I wanted. So like many people I struggled as an adult in the workforce." Mr. Morris now teaches personal development classes, but don't let that put you off. If the National Curriculum offered lessons to all children in such things as confidence and self-esteem, that would go a long way towards removing the class barriers.
I've no objection to private education as long as it is made genuinely available to everybody. Thus, if I were the government, I would want all children to have the opportunity to take an entrance exam for Eton, Harrow, Rugby or wherever. If they were from a poor family who couldn't afford the fees, the Government would pay the fees for them.
In one of my earlier pieces, I said that I would not take any education system seriously unless it taught kids how to meditate. It seems that David Lynch and Donovan have been putting this idea forward, to predictably dismissive comments in today's "Readers' Views". Transcendental meditation (TM), it appears, leads to "pre-medieval notions" and is at best "Californian mush". We forget that every belief system in the world, including those of James Randi and Richard D. North who wrote on the "dangers of TM", has its fair share of apparent absurdities.
To illustrate, in my religious system (Judaism) I perform a ritual on Friday night and Saturday called "making Kiddush" in which I hold a cup of wine aloft and recite a number of verses from the Scriptures stating that God made the world in six days, and rested on the seventh. I don't for a moment think that God really did make the world in six days, or indeed that He rested on the seventh. What I do think those verses mean is beyond the scope of this blog. I could cite similar examples from other religions. The point is that all beliefs, not just TM, are to a greater or lesser extent harking back to a pre-scientific view of the world.
The very fact that we think a week has seven days is only because early man observed that besides the stars, which seem not to move, there are seven heavenly bodies that appear to be in motion. These are the sun, the moon, and the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. We decided that each of them had a special influence on a particular day: hence Sunday, Monday (the day of the moon) Tuesday (Mardi in French, the day of Mars) Wednesday (Mercredi in French, the day of Mercury) Thursday (Jeudi in French, Jupiter's day) Friday (in French Vendredi, the day for Venus) and Saturday (Saturn's day). We all accept this without thinking about it, even though there isn't a scrap of logic to any of it. All we can say for sure is that a week of seven days seems to work, so we have stuck to it. The French tried to introduce a new calendar including a ten-day week after the Revolution, and nobody could live with it, so they went back to the traditional calendar.
The reason I think meditation is so important is that it works. There's nothing particularly esoteric about it. It simply involves deciding what you want to think, and then thinking it, to the exclusion of all else, for a given amount of time. In this world we are bombarded with all kind of images that tell us what we should think, and they form a distraction from life at best and an incentive for us to harm ourselves at worst. You have to develop the skills to keep on course, and the earlier you begin to do it, the easier it will be when you are an adult. We are back to the importance of learning self-confidence and inner peace as an essential tool for life.
When we get into the habit of thinking that in the ultimate reality we are all one, which is what we are, and that there is no such thing as superiority, questions of social class will not matter.
My opinions on anything are subject to change. My love for you will not change.
Firstly, it is well known that most of the people who get to the top of British society have attended certain public schools and universities, and this has been the case for several centuries. None of the social policy initiatives of modern times has done anything significant to change this. It's often remarked how people of that background seem to have an air of confidence about them, that their contemporaries from other backgrounds do not. This is most clearly noticed in the university setting. Bright children from working class families can be overwhelmed by it, and can be made to feel very inferior.
This is because the education system that most of us experience is of no value when it comes to learning "people skills". As Matt Morris put it: "I studied English, math, history, grammar, science and geography, but I was never offered classes in confidence, self-esteem, leadership, motivation, communication skills, how to build quality relationships, how to create wealth, or enjoy physical well-being or spiritual growth....As a result I entered the world with big goals, big dreams, but no real-world tools to achieve what I wanted. So like many people I struggled as an adult in the workforce." Mr. Morris now teaches personal development classes, but don't let that put you off. If the National Curriculum offered lessons to all children in such things as confidence and self-esteem, that would go a long way towards removing the class barriers.
I've no objection to private education as long as it is made genuinely available to everybody. Thus, if I were the government, I would want all children to have the opportunity to take an entrance exam for Eton, Harrow, Rugby or wherever. If they were from a poor family who couldn't afford the fees, the Government would pay the fees for them.
In one of my earlier pieces, I said that I would not take any education system seriously unless it taught kids how to meditate. It seems that David Lynch and Donovan have been putting this idea forward, to predictably dismissive comments in today's "Readers' Views". Transcendental meditation (TM), it appears, leads to "pre-medieval notions" and is at best "Californian mush". We forget that every belief system in the world, including those of James Randi and Richard D. North who wrote on the "dangers of TM", has its fair share of apparent absurdities.
To illustrate, in my religious system (Judaism) I perform a ritual on Friday night and Saturday called "making Kiddush" in which I hold a cup of wine aloft and recite a number of verses from the Scriptures stating that God made the world in six days, and rested on the seventh. I don't for a moment think that God really did make the world in six days, or indeed that He rested on the seventh. What I do think those verses mean is beyond the scope of this blog. I could cite similar examples from other religions. The point is that all beliefs, not just TM, are to a greater or lesser extent harking back to a pre-scientific view of the world.
The very fact that we think a week has seven days is only because early man observed that besides the stars, which seem not to move, there are seven heavenly bodies that appear to be in motion. These are the sun, the moon, and the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. We decided that each of them had a special influence on a particular day: hence Sunday, Monday (the day of the moon) Tuesday (Mardi in French, the day of Mars) Wednesday (Mercredi in French, the day of Mercury) Thursday (Jeudi in French, Jupiter's day) Friday (in French Vendredi, the day for Venus) and Saturday (Saturn's day). We all accept this without thinking about it, even though there isn't a scrap of logic to any of it. All we can say for sure is that a week of seven days seems to work, so we have stuck to it. The French tried to introduce a new calendar including a ten-day week after the Revolution, and nobody could live with it, so they went back to the traditional calendar.
The reason I think meditation is so important is that it works. There's nothing particularly esoteric about it. It simply involves deciding what you want to think, and then thinking it, to the exclusion of all else, for a given amount of time. In this world we are bombarded with all kind of images that tell us what we should think, and they form a distraction from life at best and an incentive for us to harm ourselves at worst. You have to develop the skills to keep on course, and the earlier you begin to do it, the easier it will be when you are an adult. We are back to the importance of learning self-confidence and inner peace as an essential tool for life.
When we get into the habit of thinking that in the ultimate reality we are all one, which is what we are, and that there is no such thing as superiority, questions of social class will not matter.
My opinions on anything are subject to change. My love for you will not change.
Saturday, 20 October 2007
Bread and Media Circuses
Once upon a time, there was an Australian Seventh Day Adventist minister called Stephen Chamberlain, who decided that he would take his wife Lindy and their children on a camping trip to Ayers Rock in the Outback. While they were there, it appeared that a dingo took their baby, who was never seen again.
At first, it was accepted that the Chamberlain family were the victims of a tragic accident. As time went on, people started to doubt their story. Some genuinely believed that it was impossible for a dingo to steal a human baby. Others thought there was something strange about the Chamberlain family. Rumours began to multiply. It was even suggested that their youngest child had been done away with in some occult ritual, and that her name, Azaria, had a secret meaning indicating that she was to be offered up to God in some way or another. In the end, the weight of media pressure proved irresistible, and Lindy Chamberlain appeared in court charged with her daughter's murder, in what came to be known as the Dingo Trial.
As you can imagine, the world's press was full of speculation about the case, and all manner of pundits on subjects from anthropology to zoology had something to say to the journalists covering the story. In the end, Mrs. Chamberlain, who by now was pregnant again, was found guilty, and taken away from the rest of her family to have her baby in prison. Most people thought justice had been done.
Some time later, a hiker who was going for a walk in the area happened upon a bloodstained scrap of fabric, which upon closer inspection turned out to be Azaria Chamberlain's matinee jacket. Apparently, it was a crucial part of the prosecution case that the garment concerned did not exist. Now that it had been found, the case had to be heard all over again, but this time we had all calmed down a bit, and could think more rationally about the evidence. As a result, the courts decided that Lindy Chamberlain was not guilty after all.
This is characteristic of legal cases that are tried in circumstances where there is a lot of media excitement. The wrong verdict is reached, and it is only by sheer chance (or, if you will, an act of Divine providence) that we find out what really happened. Ask the "Birmingham Six", the "Guildford Four", Judith Ward, and many others like them.
It will be the same with the McCann family, if the matter of their lost daughter ever gets to a trial. The police enquiry, no matter which national police force does it, will be sidetracked by pressure from the media for a conclusion. The chances of the police finding out what really happened to Madeleine, or who was behind her disappearance, by means of the enquiry currently in progress are precisely zero. The only hope for the truth to be known will be if someone stumbles upon it "by chance".
I have no children, so I cannot imagine what I would do if I lost a child. I have thought about what I might do if, perish the thought, my wife vanished without trace. I would report her missing to the police. I would not breathe a word to the papers or to anybody in the media. Indeed, I would do my very best to ensure that only those who needed to know, would be told. Wild horses wouldn't be able to persuade me to appear on the news and make an appeal for her to come back, or anything of that kind. I would not give anyone in the press the chance to think that I could possibly have been responsible for her disappearance.
The opposite of life is not death. It is television. In life, you have the opportunity to look at something from all angles, and to question. In television, all you see is what the camera is pointing at, or more accurately what some bigwig in charge of the programme will allow the camera to point at. Television trivialises everything it touches, including the loss of a loved one. I would choose not to have my life trivialised. Matters of life and death are too important to be made into a media circus.
My opinions on anything are subject to change. My love for you will not change.
At first, it was accepted that the Chamberlain family were the victims of a tragic accident. As time went on, people started to doubt their story. Some genuinely believed that it was impossible for a dingo to steal a human baby. Others thought there was something strange about the Chamberlain family. Rumours began to multiply. It was even suggested that their youngest child had been done away with in some occult ritual, and that her name, Azaria, had a secret meaning indicating that she was to be offered up to God in some way or another. In the end, the weight of media pressure proved irresistible, and Lindy Chamberlain appeared in court charged with her daughter's murder, in what came to be known as the Dingo Trial.
As you can imagine, the world's press was full of speculation about the case, and all manner of pundits on subjects from anthropology to zoology had something to say to the journalists covering the story. In the end, Mrs. Chamberlain, who by now was pregnant again, was found guilty, and taken away from the rest of her family to have her baby in prison. Most people thought justice had been done.
Some time later, a hiker who was going for a walk in the area happened upon a bloodstained scrap of fabric, which upon closer inspection turned out to be Azaria Chamberlain's matinee jacket. Apparently, it was a crucial part of the prosecution case that the garment concerned did not exist. Now that it had been found, the case had to be heard all over again, but this time we had all calmed down a bit, and could think more rationally about the evidence. As a result, the courts decided that Lindy Chamberlain was not guilty after all.
This is characteristic of legal cases that are tried in circumstances where there is a lot of media excitement. The wrong verdict is reached, and it is only by sheer chance (or, if you will, an act of Divine providence) that we find out what really happened. Ask the "Birmingham Six", the "Guildford Four", Judith Ward, and many others like them.
It will be the same with the McCann family, if the matter of their lost daughter ever gets to a trial. The police enquiry, no matter which national police force does it, will be sidetracked by pressure from the media for a conclusion. The chances of the police finding out what really happened to Madeleine, or who was behind her disappearance, by means of the enquiry currently in progress are precisely zero. The only hope for the truth to be known will be if someone stumbles upon it "by chance".
I have no children, so I cannot imagine what I would do if I lost a child. I have thought about what I might do if, perish the thought, my wife vanished without trace. I would report her missing to the police. I would not breathe a word to the papers or to anybody in the media. Indeed, I would do my very best to ensure that only those who needed to know, would be told. Wild horses wouldn't be able to persuade me to appear on the news and make an appeal for her to come back, or anything of that kind. I would not give anyone in the press the chance to think that I could possibly have been responsible for her disappearance.
The opposite of life is not death. It is television. In life, you have the opportunity to look at something from all angles, and to question. In television, all you see is what the camera is pointing at, or more accurately what some bigwig in charge of the programme will allow the camera to point at. Television trivialises everything it touches, including the loss of a loved one. I would choose not to have my life trivialised. Matters of life and death are too important to be made into a media circus.
My opinions on anything are subject to change. My love for you will not change.
Sunday, 7 October 2007
A Republican Manifesto
I haven't been reading the Standard a great deal lately due to religious holidays, but I guess it is full to overflowing with the inquest on Princess Diana. This has prompted me to publish my Republican Manifesto.
In so doing, I do not hold any grudge or feeling of ill-will against any of the Royal Family. I'm not against anyone. Nor have I any views on the personality or character of any of them. I have never met anybody Royal, but if I had done so it would make no difference. If you are a member of a Royal Family, you are schooled from your earliest years in the art of making a good impression to the public. None of us knows what the Queen or any of her relatives are really like, because we do not see them at home. Nor do I intend to join in any kind of a debate as to whether the Royal Family do their job properly. The facts are that in today's world, there is no job for a Royal Family to do. They are figureheads of ceremonial importance only, producing nothing, except for lots of column inches in newspapers together with an image of the United Kingdom (U.K.) as some kind of a medieval theme park rather than that of a modern country. It was to counteract this image, I believe, that New Labour in their early days in office started their ill-judged talk about "Cool Britannia".
It isn't enough for the U.K. simply not to have a monarchy. I see the conversion of the U.K. into a republic as a small but integral part of the process of the modernisation of all our governmental institutions, and of the production of a proper constitution for the country. It is beyond absurdity that a one-person limited company turning over a few thousand pounds per annum has got to have a constitution (called in the case of a company the Memorandum and Articles of Association), but the nation as a whole has not.
To begin with, I envisage the peaceful transformation of the U.K. into the United Republic of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, henceforth abbreviated as the U.R. As part of this process, all hereditary titles will also be peacefully abolished, so there will be no more Dukes, Earls, Viscounts and so on. The House of Lords will be abolished, and replaced by an upper chamber of Parliament consisting of representatives from the regional assemblies of the U.R.
It will be a fundamental principle of the U.R. that all political offices must be filled by a process of election. By way of contrast, not many of us know that at the time of writing this piece the most powerful woman in the country at present is Baroness Amos, the New Labour leader of the House of Lords, who also has a seat in the Cabinet. I am not saying there is anything wrong with her. I am saying that we have had no opportunity to vote on her competence for office. She has never fought any kind of election. She is what she is because Tony Blair took a shine to her. Under the constitution of the U.R., that would be impossible.
I would also propose that the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man will come under the ambit of the constitution of the U.R., and that they should lose their favoured tax status. We would want to co-operate fully with the United Nations on the matter of abolition of tax havens all round the world, so that every nation has a fair and transparent tax and finance system.
As a national Head of State, I would propose an elected President. The President would have to resign from all political affiliations as a condition of standing for election. He/she would be entitled to attend, speak, and vote, at all meetings of the Cabinet. The primary role of the President would be to assess the impact of legislation on the spiritual well-being of the nation. Civil service staff will be given to him for that purpose of a comparable number and rank to those working with a member of the Cabinet.
I would envisage that there should be no state religion, and that the advancement of religion should not be a charitable purpose under the legislation.
I would also wish to write into the constitution certain core values, which all civilised societies have agreed upon. Included in these are the right to free speech, the right to freedom of association, the right to freedom of religion, the equality of all citizens before the law, and the equality of the sexes. Included also would be the obligation to respect the lives, dignity, and property of others, and not to incite religious or racial hatred.
Most importantly, I would intend the constitution to make it clear that the objectives of Government should be to make the lives of the people more simple and straightforward. At the present we have a government that makes life more and more complicated every day. The policies of whoever is in government should be directed towards empowering the people to take charge of their own affairs so that we live fully functional and satisfying lives without the requirement for layers of regulation. That has to be the prime objective.
My opinions on anything are subject to change. My love for you will not change.
In so doing, I do not hold any grudge or feeling of ill-will against any of the Royal Family. I'm not against anyone. Nor have I any views on the personality or character of any of them. I have never met anybody Royal, but if I had done so it would make no difference. If you are a member of a Royal Family, you are schooled from your earliest years in the art of making a good impression to the public. None of us knows what the Queen or any of her relatives are really like, because we do not see them at home. Nor do I intend to join in any kind of a debate as to whether the Royal Family do their job properly. The facts are that in today's world, there is no job for a Royal Family to do. They are figureheads of ceremonial importance only, producing nothing, except for lots of column inches in newspapers together with an image of the United Kingdom (U.K.) as some kind of a medieval theme park rather than that of a modern country. It was to counteract this image, I believe, that New Labour in their early days in office started their ill-judged talk about "Cool Britannia".
It isn't enough for the U.K. simply not to have a monarchy. I see the conversion of the U.K. into a republic as a small but integral part of the process of the modernisation of all our governmental institutions, and of the production of a proper constitution for the country. It is beyond absurdity that a one-person limited company turning over a few thousand pounds per annum has got to have a constitution (called in the case of a company the Memorandum and Articles of Association), but the nation as a whole has not.
To begin with, I envisage the peaceful transformation of the U.K. into the United Republic of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, henceforth abbreviated as the U.R. As part of this process, all hereditary titles will also be peacefully abolished, so there will be no more Dukes, Earls, Viscounts and so on. The House of Lords will be abolished, and replaced by an upper chamber of Parliament consisting of representatives from the regional assemblies of the U.R.
It will be a fundamental principle of the U.R. that all political offices must be filled by a process of election. By way of contrast, not many of us know that at the time of writing this piece the most powerful woman in the country at present is Baroness Amos, the New Labour leader of the House of Lords, who also has a seat in the Cabinet. I am not saying there is anything wrong with her. I am saying that we have had no opportunity to vote on her competence for office. She has never fought any kind of election. She is what she is because Tony Blair took a shine to her. Under the constitution of the U.R., that would be impossible.
I would also propose that the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man will come under the ambit of the constitution of the U.R., and that they should lose their favoured tax status. We would want to co-operate fully with the United Nations on the matter of abolition of tax havens all round the world, so that every nation has a fair and transparent tax and finance system.
As a national Head of State, I would propose an elected President. The President would have to resign from all political affiliations as a condition of standing for election. He/she would be entitled to attend, speak, and vote, at all meetings of the Cabinet. The primary role of the President would be to assess the impact of legislation on the spiritual well-being of the nation. Civil service staff will be given to him for that purpose of a comparable number and rank to those working with a member of the Cabinet.
I would envisage that there should be no state religion, and that the advancement of religion should not be a charitable purpose under the legislation.
I would also wish to write into the constitution certain core values, which all civilised societies have agreed upon. Included in these are the right to free speech, the right to freedom of association, the right to freedom of religion, the equality of all citizens before the law, and the equality of the sexes. Included also would be the obligation to respect the lives, dignity, and property of others, and not to incite religious or racial hatred.
Most importantly, I would intend the constitution to make it clear that the objectives of Government should be to make the lives of the people more simple and straightforward. At the present we have a government that makes life more and more complicated every day. The policies of whoever is in government should be directed towards empowering the people to take charge of their own affairs so that we live fully functional and satisfying lives without the requirement for layers of regulation. That has to be the prime objective.
My opinions on anything are subject to change. My love for you will not change.
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