International Diplomacy

In theory international diplomacy enables sovereign states to communicate, negotiate, and cooperate with one another. As well as those 3 it's functions are intelligence gathering, image management, policy implementation & promoting interests. In international negotiations there needs to be a clear goal and strategy of what can be exchanged to reach an agreement. All very noble, but does it work?

There are organisations that rely on international participation such as the United Nations, the World Trade Organisation & the International Monetary Fund. NATO, (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation), is different in that it is a political and military alliance of countries just from Europe and North America.

According to the Carnegie Endowment UN aid programs save lives but are often slow, bureaucratic, and occasionally marred by cowardice and/or mismanagement. Particularly the Security Council, is in desperate need of reform. It is definitely one of the most dysfunctional parts of the UN, largely due to the widening ideological gulf between the five veto-wielding permanent members, (P5),usually Russia and China on one side and the United States, UK, and France on the other. Numerous member states have competing interests which challenge international order. Time and again, the Security Council has failed to take any action because one or more P5 members blocks things using their veto. The organization has to become more efficient and less political to tackle the multitude of crises it faces. It's a toothless tiger.

I have recently seen amazing documentaries showing just how America & it's European allies failed spectacularly in the Jugoslavian war of 1993 - 1995. UN troops watched the Srebrenica genocide & were unable to do anything. Then again, in the Rwandan genocide of 1994, when 1,074,017 people were brutally killed  94% of whom were Tutsi.

Today the Israeli government is waging war in Gaza & allowing atrocities in the West Bank. There is a real danger that will escalate to Lebanon & Iran. Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, but the war has continued on & off since 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea. War began in Sudan in April 2023, but little appears in the press or media & it's hard to see that there is any international diplomacy going on. 8.2 million people have been displaced. More than 25 million need humanitarian assistance, and deteriorating food security risks are triggering the worlds largest hunger crisis.

More than ever we need international dialogue & international solutions to the dire situations that beset us. Overarching everything is the Climate Emergency, which will never be solved unless all countries act in the interests of everyone. All to often, particularly in America, (but they are not alone), self interest overrides the necessity for hard choices to be made for the benefit of others. If you live in a war torn country where death & devastation mark every hour of every day you need a United Nations that can force a cease fire & negotiation. If you are in danger of starvation, through no fault of your own, you need a United Nations that can deliver temporary food supplies & a long term, concerted, effort to ensure it doesn't happen again.

I have just lost faith that we have the people or organisations that can get us out of this. Our only hope is the NGO's, the Charities, who understand the problems & can see what needs doing. Diplomatic language won't solve this mess. We need people who will speak truth to power & we can all do that in our own way. 

We should care. We should make ourselves heard.

Changing your Mind

Is it better to be a "my mind's made up" person or an "I've changed my mind" one? 

"A wise man changes his mind, a fool never will." — Spanish proverb. "You will find that it is necessary to let things go; simply for the reason that they are heavy." — C. JoyBell.

I'm not saying that vacillating,"wavering between different opinions or actions; being irresolute", is a good thing. I'm also not saying that being indecisive works well. I have known people who were unable to make their mind up what they wanted for breakfast, never mind who to vote for in an election. I find that level of indecisiveness very irritating & time wasting.

On the other hand I find people who are completely unable to see a different point of view almost impossible to cope with. It's like having a conversation with a brick wall. It's deeply arrogant to believe that you know everything there is to know & therefore your opinion must be right.

I am unashamedly liberal socialist in my views. I think that the many extreme disparities between peoples & individuals are at a crisis point. I believe that we are at a critical point in the climate emergency & the very future of our world as we know it is at risk of oblivion. I believe that if we are to survive we need to make serious changes in how we live together in our ecosystem. 

But if reliable evidence to the contrary were to emerge, I hope that I would be capable of changing my view. The crucial ingredient is reliable evidence. 

We humans are too impressionable, too willing to follow the herd. Why on earth do we follow unelected "influencers" in our millions. Why do the Taliban believe that their "vice & virtue" laws relating to women are acceptable? They include a ban on women’s voices and bare faces in public. Why do people tolerate & even believe in authoritarian dictators like Assad, Putin, Kim Jong Il? Presumably it's both indoctrination & fear.

 

If you live in a democracy & are free to think & speak out you are very lucky. That is one of the reasons I think that "no platforming" is so deeply worrying. We are able to challenge what someone says & believes. We can bring evidence to support that challenge. There are many countries in this world where that is not possible. Where people who have tried to do that are either dead or in prison. Dissidents & journalists are brave in the face of repression.

We simply cannot know everything there is to know about something at a given point in time. We need to be open & flexible. The ability to change your mind is a valuable freedom. We need to protect it. 

 

 

Food Security

I was shopping in a big supermarket yesterday. The mange tout & sugar snap peas came from Peru. The green beans came from Kenya. Why aren't we growing these basic vegetables in the UK? It is the season when they can easily be grown here. My husband grew green beans every year. They are prolific. 

Beans from Kenya come by air freight. Kenya is 4,475 air miles away. Kenya sends out about 350 tonnes of vegetables and cut flowers each night ready to be sold next day in UK supermarkets. Leguminous vegetables (peas, beans, mange tout) constitute the largest proportion of Kenyan imports to the UK. Kenya is on the East coast of Africa.

Peru is on the West coast of South America. Air transit time from Peru to an airport in the UK is approximately 3 days. It is 4,032 air miles away. Transit time by sea from Peru to port in the UK is approximately 28 days. Peru is now the world leader in blueberry exports, growing from 223 metric tonnes in 2021-22 to more than 286MT in 2022-23. It is the UK's largest source of blueberries.

I fail to see the logic of transporting basic foodstuffs half way round the world by ship, never mind by air. The cost, financially & in terms of air pollution, must be huge. Then there is the ethical & human cost. The key to this is money. Agricultural workers in countries like South America & Sub Saharan Africa get minimum wages. The minimum wage in the UK is much higher. We get cheap food because the people who harvest it are not paid as much as we would have to pay workers here.

We routinely buy fruit & veg out of season. I would say we shop quite mindlessly. We just select what we fancy or what we need for a recipe. Much of it is frozen & that impacts on the quality. I'm tired of complaining to supermarkets because apples rot when left at room temperature after being frozen. I spent much of my late teens & twenties in rural Herefordshire, where there were orchards everywhere, log ago grubbed up because there weren't enough people to pick them. I've now reached the point where I'm looking at the origins of all the fruit & veg I buy because so much travels huge distances in refrigerated containers. 

We are an island. We need to be as self sufficient in food as possible. We should have learned that after 2 world wars. Hopefully there won't be a third, but that really isn't the point. In a world disrupted by the climate emergency food production is being adversely affected worldwide. Wars elsewhere impact on food production. Acute hunger remains persistently high in 59 countries with 1 in 5 people assessed in need of critical urgent action.

It isn't just fruit & veg. There is a dark side to the flower trade. There is widespread exploitation of workers. In numerous flower-producing regions, the rights of laborers are trampled underfoot. Workers, predominantly women, are subjected to grueling hours, meagre wages, and rough working conditions. The danger of pesticide exposure is a risk, with many bearing the brunt of health issues due to insufficient protective measures.Then there is the environmental toll taken by the flower trade. From water-intensive farming to the rampant use of fertilizers and pesticides, the industry has carved deep scars into our environment. Even the process of shuttling these blossoms across continents leaves a carbon footprint that feeds into our mounting climate crisis.

Like so many areas of so called civilised life our choices & decisions are coming back to bite us. We really didn't think enough about the long term impact & results of so many consumer choices we made over the years. We became mindless consumers. We didn't think things through or even care what our choices were doing to our world or to people in other countries.

Well we do know now. The evidence is easily accessible & overwhelming. We need to stop, think, & make better choices for everyones sake. 

 

Self Image, Self Esteem & Self Confidence.

Who do you think you are? - literally. Not what your genealogy is - the line of descent traced continuously from an ancestor. Who are you as a person? What is your personality? What are your values? Importantly what is your self image - is it honest?

We each have a mental picture of ourselves, of our characteristics - 

intelligence, beauty, ugliness, talent, selfishness, and kindness...We have a tendency to create an ideal self. We have the capacity to overlook our flaws & exaggerate our good qualities. We are able to justify our actions or non actions. We have a different perception of ourselves as an individual & what we are like in social situations. Self-esteem is how a person feels about themselves and their abilities. Self-image is how a person sees themselves and how they believe others see them.

It matters to us how other people see us. There is a whole PR, (Public Relations), structure that has developed.  It's purpose is to manage and disseminate information from an individual or an organization to the public in order to influence their perception. The PR business has been with us for longer than you might think, probably back to America in the 1900's. But it seems to have existed in ancient civilisations, Greece for example. The world wars saw the concept of propaganda emerge. 

Today, with modern instant communication, PR has become an art form. A fundamental technique is to identify the target audience and to tailor messages that are relevant to each audience. Focus groups reveal   the needs and desires of the audience. A deep understanding of that gives the PR people huge power. Messaging is the process used to create a consistent story. The aim is to remove doubt & influence the "right" decisions.

My point is, more than ever, we each, individually need to be aware of how easily we can be swayed. We like to think we are in control of our thoughts & actions. We think that we make the right decisions. But do we? 

I think the 21st century is a dangerous world where our self image & self esteem is really important if we are to withstand the intense & widespread manipulation, propaganda, & interference in decision making, that has become our "post truth" world of "special advisors", P R specialists & general unelected, often foreign, malign operators. 

We need to sharpen our skills of research & critical thinking & fight back. The unacceptable is being made acceptable. We see that today in so many places - the sad refugee & migrant situation, wars in Ukraine, Gaza & 12 other countries, a global food crisis where people are starving....

We need to be people who will not accept other people's suffering & dying. As well as self esteem & self confidence we each need to be able to have the best self image possible as a human being. We each need to be prepared to challenge the propaganda narratives. 

It is a war that we need to win.

 

Customer Service?

I have two strands to this, tipping people for serving me & customer service when I buy goods.

Firstly tipping. Tipping is supposedly to reward low paid people like waitstaff and deliverers. I really find this problematic for all sorts of reasons. In 2024 the UK living wage for adults over 21 is £11.44 per hour. 18 - 20 year olds get £8.60 per hour. 16 - 17 year olds & apprentices get £6.40. Presumably for unskilled jobs, although I would say that Carers for example are not unskilled & many are on basic wages. The argument being that tipping is neccessary to increase the wage paid by employers. My feeling is that the employers should be paying a wage that people can live on, without needing tips & tipping just allows employers to get away with not doing so.

The other strand to arguments for tipping is supposedly paying extra to people who provide good service. But shouldn't service be good anyway? The UK has been criticised for looking down on service industries as a job. It's probably still due to our class system. But we all rely on service industries & in countries like America, France & Italy the same snobbishness doesn't apply. Again my argument would be that I shouldn't need to tip for a meal or drink being brought to me. It's part of what I pay for when eating & drinking out. The responsibility is with the employer to pay serving staff properly. No one tips people working at tills or stacking shelves. 

Then there is that great misnomer customer service. Some companies are great at it. It's easy to contact them when there is a problem, particularly to be able to speak to a person without going through several phone menus, awful music & a long wait. My previous broadband provider was excellent. There is nothing worse than a computer issue & they were great at sorting it out. If  I've been sent faulty goods there are UK companies that really don't quibble. They make arrangements for the goods to be returned & replaced providing that the fault is genuine. 

But there are also rabbit holes you end up going down in order to complain, involving excessive menu's & waits on a phone, chatbots, non response to emails, prevarication & delay hoping that you will lose the will to live. Ultimately, if it's really bad you may have to threaten the Small Claims Court, Citizens Advice, Trading Standards, the Media consumer programmes....It has just taken me 2 years to get a company to remedy an issue with a green roof & even now it isn't fully resolved, although it's better than it was. 

My point is that companies need to realise that the power is with the consumer now, both in Law & in their understanding of what it is reasonable to expect. We are better informed through advice online & in the media. Rating companies & service has become an art form. Reviews are everywhere. Publicity is not difficult to get if a company behaves really badly. 

But it shouldn't need to go that far. Companies need to keep their clients on side. They will be more successful & get repeat business if they treat customers well. Customers should not have to fight for good customer service.

We are a consumer society. Growth depends on purchasing & financial stability is the basis of economics. Alienate your customers at your peril. Finally don't pay your workforce peanuts & your senior management & shareholders millions. We won't stand for it any more.  

Unbalanced Minds

Tacitus, a Roman historian & politician, said " I give only one example of the falsity of gossip & heresay, and I urge my readers to beware of incredible tales, however widely they may be believed, & instead to believe the unvarnished truth". He was a wise man & his quotes are worth reading. "A bad peace is worse than war". "Mens minds, once unbalanced, are ready to believe anything". https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/2936846.Tacitus 

Tacitus did not have the debatable benefit of Social media & instantaneous communication we have in the 21st century, but what he says is really relevant today almost 2,000 yeas after he wrote. We are swayed by what we see on TV, our computers & phones. We read truths, half truths & lies. We listen to gossip. We don't routinely fact check. We assume what we are being told is the truth. 

We are living in a post truth era. We really don't know who to believe & who to trust. How can we rely on our own capacity to discriminate between lies & fact? How can we know how to behave? When image & public relations are everything & we demand charisma from our politicians we can easily be swayed to believe anything. Statistics are manipulated. The BBC now has to have a special department to verify fact. Malign Foreign agencies hack into our communications. Artificial Intelligence & algorithms rule, facial recognitian can be manipulated.

I wonder if we know what reality is?

In this world seemingly it is easy to whip up mob rule. Mindless, ill informed, criminals & yobs rampage destroying everything in their path & terrifying people. People are injured, businesses are destroyed & looting is commonplace. This is not a demonstration against some injustice. This is wilful illegal behaviour, largely by men high on testosterone & adrenaline who are just out for a fight. 

Riots can arise out of perceived grievance or dissent - poverty, unemployment, poor living conditions, governmental opression or taxation, conflicts between races & religions even football matches. People may feel they have grievances & are not being heard. Rioters possibly want change & want to be heard. 

Whatever the reasons, real or imagined, this is not acceptable in a so called democratic & civilised society. 

The question is what do we do with them when we catch them? Because with todays surveillance techniques it certainly should be possible to catch them. We need to have a public discussion about justice & criminality because our justice system isn't working. It isn't as simple as Crime & Punishment. Locking them away in poorly staffed, unsuitable prisons won't work & there isn't the capacity anyway. We need to consider using more restorative justice & community sentences. 

Criminals need to understand what they have done & why the reasonable majority won't tolerate it. 

Violence & Rioting

Violence is destructive. It can be against objects, property, people, animals...It can be behaviour by an individual or group, threatening, harming or injuring individuals or others, or destroying property. Violent behaviour often begins with verbal threats but over time escalates to involve physical harm. Verbal violence can involve using hate speech.

"Behaviour involving physical force intended to intimidate, hurt, damage, or even kill.".

It is important that we try to understand the causes of violence. What makes a person behave in a way that is not acceptable to the majority of society? It's a complex mix -  There are biological, psychological, and socioeconomic influences that need to be considered. 

Causes of aggression can be biological including genetics, medical and psychiatric diseases, neurotransmitters, hormones, substances of abuse, and medications. People possessing neurotic traits are prone to cruelty and violent behaviour. Extraversion is related to violence and alcohol use in males and females. Neurotic individuals record high levels of stress and violent acts. Apparently Assertive Debaters are the most likely of all personality types to say they don't shy away from physical fights. Debaters love to challenge others, test limits, & push boundaries. Sociological causes of violence include frustration, exposure to violent media, violence in the home or neighbourhood, and a tendency to see other people's actions as hostile even when they're not.

I can't remember the last time I hit someone or deliberately pushed them. My generation did smack children if they were very naughty, generally on the back of the legs, but that was 50 years ago. The idea of doing physical harm to someone just hasn't been part of how I would deal with conflict or disagreement for decades.

The current violence in UK cities & towns, starting in Southport, is a shock. It has spread like a virus across the UK fuelled by online influencers, anti-Muslim extremists and fascist groups, spreading lies & disinformation. The violence has nothing whatsoever to do with the tragic death of 3 children in a knife attack allegedly by a 17 year old boy. 8 other children & 2 adults were injured. 

Police, who had to deal with what must have been a very traumatic scene at the stabbing & with the aftermath, must have been deeply affected. But now, days of violent disorder has followed & they have to cope with that too. Many officers have been injured by the mobs bombarding them & setting fire to buildings & vehicles. They are specially trained, but I have no idea how they cope with what they have seen & experienced.

Ordinary people, Muslims & Refugees in particular, have been barricaded inside & subjected to terrifying threatening behaviour. 

There is no excuse for this criminal behaviour. Linking it in any way with the tragic events last Tuesday dishonours all of the people involved who are shocked & grieving. This is direct action, far right, politics disseminated & co-ordinated via social media. Many "demonstrators" are not local, they are bussed in. The English Defence League, which is Islamophobic and xenophobic, has evolved into a diffuse idea spread mainly online. 

The difficulty is establishing how representative this is of the UK today. I want to believe that these yobs are simply mindless, ill educated, criminals. However, very right wing conservatives, supporting the Rwanda plan for example, like Suella Braverman, Priti Patel & Jacob Rees Mogg have fired an anti refugee hard line groundswell. The boats crossing the channel do need to be stopped on both H&S & humanitarian grounds. But not by whipping up the sort of anti foreigner rhetoric we are seeing now.

People are obviously struggling financially. The housing situation is dire. 16 years of huge macro economic problems starting with the financial crisis, Brexit & a pandemic have had a very detrimental effect. But the Conservative government record is poor to say the least. People are struggling. 

But refugees & migrants are not responsible for that & not all refugees are Muslims.

Heatwave Killer

The hottest day in Oxford was the 19th July 2022 when the maximum temperature of 38.1°C was recorded. Temperatures have soared past 30 degrees again. This current stifling heatwave follows on from an unusually wet & stormy Spring.

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learn-about/past-uk-weather-events

In my youth I loved the sun & would spend hours trying to get a tan in blazing heat in places like Greece & Turkey. I'm lucky not to have had a problem with Melanoma. 

Now I literally cannot stand the heat. I hide away in my North facing front room & remain as still as possible. Any exertion causes me to be very uncomfortable, overheating & becoming breathless. It isn't my pacemaker that is unable to cope, it's me. I slow down, struggle to exercise, sleep, eat and easily become dehydrated. I have complete heart block / heart failure & other co morbid health conditions, which all deteriorate too. I become exhausted & need more energy which means my pacemaker needs to work  harder to keep me going.

But I am so fortunate. I live in a country with a good health service, I have a personal alarm & can summon help if I'm in trouble. There are good hospitals in Oxford. I have access to reliable information & know what to do & what not to do. My house is comfortable. I have a daughter & her family who live nearby. I can cope.

So many people can't. They really struggle. 2022 saw the highest number of recorded heatwave deaths over the last seven years in England, at 2,985, which followed the second highest in 2020, at 2,556 heatwave deaths, and 2023, which saw 2,295 heatwave deaths. These are excess death figures. The stress of a hot day can increase the chance of dying from a heart attack, other heart conditions, or weirdly, respiratory diseases such as pneumonia. The human body can't tolerate its temperature reaching 43 degrees C (about 109.4 degrees F). Anyone who reaches that core temperature — 99.9% would die. Heat also kills in more subtle ways — by worsening pre-existing issues, like cardiovascular or renal disease.

Extreme heat should be taken seriously. Climate change should be taken seriously. It isn't just people who are suffering. All wildlife is affected by extreme temperatures too. Intricate food chains are disrupted as hot weather also affects insect populations and dries up the soil. Heatwaves play havoc with already-declining insect numbers. Mammals become dehydrated.Trees prematurely drop their leaves. Warmer water affects amphibians & ponds dry out. 

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/about/state-of-climate  

Time is running out. The scientific evidence is plentiful & verified. We need to make difficult choices & accept changes to our lives that will impact everybody. If we don't this will only get worse.