You created the one percent

First published in 2015

 

As promised, here is your checklist for redirecting finance in a more positive direction. It is important for you to circulate it to as many people as possible to encourage them to do the same. You can do as little or as much as you choose, but the more people redirecting their lives away from feeding what is now a seriously malfunctioning machine the better. The 1 percent that everyone complains about only became the 1 percent because the 99 percent put them there.

My suggestion is that you do one thing at a time, so that you do not become bogged down with the details.

If you are in Europe, sign this https://stop-ttip.org/

And this https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/page/s/eu-ttip-petition#petition

And this https://www.change.org/p/to-the-eu-and-uk-governments-do-not-sign-up-to-ttip

Open an account with an ethical bank, again I have posted links to some of the banks which market themselves as ethical investors on the Better Person Project  You will find them under the appropriate drop down menu.  The reason I suggest this before doing anything else is because changing all your monthly payments over to a new account is a pain in the neck, and considering the other slightly more time consuming things I will be adding to this list, it is important that you start with this.

This means that you will be encouraging positive rather than negative investments from the banks that you choose to deal with.  If we can encourage a swing towards ethical investment, it will influence the more mainstream banks to do the same.  One person matters. One thousand people matter.  One million people and we have actually achieved something. You matter.  Open the account.  If your country is not represented, find the bank in your country that invests ethically and add it to the website, please.

In the event that you hold savings, consider investing a little in a ‘lend with care’ or social capital project as you will achieve two things – first, the person you are lending to will not have to go to a bank and give them more business, and second, you will get a much better interest rate than the banks have been offering. Again, I have added links on the Better person project site, and if you find more, or better ones, you are free to add them without fear of my scraping your data, or whatever.

Stop shopping with large retailers such as supermarkets, ‘iconic’ brands etc.  The big global fashion labels in particular, are owned by about 6 investment companies.  Not that they are particularly evil investment companies, but if you wish to achieve an impact in terms of diversifying the market, you want to feed the smaller companies until they are in a position to compete.

Supermarkets are a menace, because you are lulled into giving them a proportion of your income every week, so one company benefits disproportionately by cutting costs or advertising more widely.  This is easy for a raw foodist, because chances are if you are shopping in a supermarket, you are paying too much already.  Non raw foodies will find it more difficult.

I completely understand as I sometimes do the shopping at 3am and Asda (Walmart) is the only one open, but if we are to start making a dent in this, it starts at home. Reducing your spend to the minimum and using your spending power to encourage competitors is key.

As a side effect, smaller retailers are frequently located in places where it is more practical to walk, and you may be able to use your car less.

Communications companies are just as outgrown.  Investigate smaller companies who offer the same services that you currently enjoy.  It is worth considering spending slightly more in order to grow a competing company, rather than get additional TV channels that you do not even watch thrown in as part of a deal to maintain the economic status quo with a company like Sky, Virgin or the equivalent.

It is a question of habit, and being aware that the price of convenience is the difference between being forced into a minimum wage job by a giant retailer, or opening a store yourself, if that is what makes you happy. Just as thinking before you eat makes a difference, so does thinking before you let a penny out of your wallet.

Bear in mind, if you choose to do this, that it was not entirely your fault that you were sucked into a situation where your government became powerless against the businesses that supported them.  The original book goes into quite a lot of detail as to how it was done, and how people were weakened in the face of ultra convenience.  I shall take a look at publishing the finished material, but for now – I think this is enough for us to be getting on with.  If we can get around the time consuming problems associated with rechannelling our own money, it will make it much easier for the next wave of people that get on board.

 

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Inappropriate Use of Bank Resources

Given that using email to er email people and using instant messenger to instant message people rather than risk yet more hysterical verbal interactions are supposedly not allowed at my previous job, I find it hard to fathom how people are justifying using bank resources to repeatedly hit the website.

Also, after a brief respite earlier in the week, I see the perpetrators of the events which precipitated my current project are still wasting their time hitting this website.

What they are hoping to find is anyone’s guess.  I am highly unlikely to say anything new when the sheeple are sitting hitting the website every day.

Speaking of sheeple, I had never previously had quite such cynical colleagues.  At least two of the people I spoke to referred to banking as being inherently immoral.

“Banking is not immoral at all, it is amoral.”  I replied.  “Like economics, which reduces people to behavioural units, it is comforting and has no morality at all.”

“But, but, but what about the Rothschilds?”

“What about them?  They started out in a ghetto with a box of money under the floor and were very brave.  They have always been very nice to me.”  I said.  This is actually true, the Rothschilds are not unpleasant, either as a company or a family.  You may not approve, but there is nothing to approve or disapprove of.  They worked very hard, and now they have more money than is sensible or practical.

I am sure even Wolfe has an off the cuff comment about the Rothschilds, but I imagine it will mostly be for effect and he actually agrees with me, as he does about many things.  I am trying to get back into the habit of target setting, and the current one involves seeing him the next time he is in the UK, complete with finished game and books.

What effect does this cynicism have on these people?  Does it make them more intelligent?  No, it makes them frightened.  Does it make them think strategically to redress the perceived social imbalance?  No, the very thought of losing money or convenience is alien to them.  All they really want is someone to blame, whether that is me, because I am not like them, or you, because you have more money than them is immaterial.  I see this every day, whether it is someone erroneously referring to Boris as being born with a silver spoon in his mouth (I am sure he laughs at this as much as I do)  or people who cannot quite put their finger on why they think my mere existence ‘does something to them.’

Twisty said it best I think.

“You are doing something to them.  You aren’t like them, which means they might have to actually use their brains.  That is inconvenient, and they do not like it.”

I did not have this problem ten years ago, working in much the same environment.  Then, the far more advanced back office bankers simply accepted that I was not like them and asked interesting and pertinent questions.  There was none of the fear or suspicion that I got this time.

So much for conspiracy theories.  I have written quite a bit on how you change the world without being seen to do so, and it has been largely ignored, as has much of the associated material written by fellow economic historians and economists alike.  Nobody wants to hear the truth, because it might cause mild inconvenience and mean that you miss a box set here or there in order to make things better.  It is far easier to find someone to blame.

Having watched Wolfe being pilloried for years for stating the blisteringly obvious alongside some more entertaining material he likes to use, I now find this far easier to accept.  People are stupid, they like being stupid, and they will continue to be stupid right up until the hypodermic is in their arm.  Then they will wonder if perhaps they should have listened.  Briefly, before their eyes shut for the last time.

I wonder if it is possible to continue to care about this, when it is so impossible to get the message across to people who don’t actually want to listen.  I have seen Wolfe go from angry, to accepting, to acquisitive in the course of a decade.  I have watched the decline in moral philosophy in the Labour movement in the course of a lifetime, and I have seen the rise of hypocrisy, waste and dishonesty in business in the course of a few short years.

Once upon a time we celebrated whistleblowers, encouraged people who thought differently and we grew a celebrated economy based upon progression.  Now we have cultivated a nation of whinging, self-serving yes-men, and we are surprised at the decline it fosters.

Bring on more rebels.  Only by questioning what we are told do we find the truth, and only by actually listening to people.  Until we can manage that, we are doomed to the fate of a fallen civilisation, much like all the ones that went before.

Just wait until they get around to murdering you, whether it is literally, your spirit, your work ethic or your sense of justice.  You won’t know what hit you.  We already live in a corrupt little nest of vipers.  I got first hand experience of it twelve years ago, and things are far worse now.  The Asean nations will mop the floor with us, probably within my lifetime, unless we change direction now.

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Empowerment and the Garden Economy

First published in 2015

 

I may have to disappear for a week or two as I have a feeling Best Adventure Ever is about to burst forth.  It is a far more complex book than Best Scandal Ever or Best Romance Ever and deals with a lot of things at once.  A more advanced reader will notice that they pick new things up the more times they return to the stories, some of it is only really intended for Wolfe.  I basically write free books for an audience of one, with a giant side salad of entertainment for everyone else.  I hope he appreciates this, I wouldn’t do this if I did not believe him to have the capacity to find gemstones on a pebble beach.

I don’t suppose it really matters, the work gets done, and it’s his loss if he doesn’t.  In any case, all the Best Ever….Sam Redwood stories will always be free.  They are gifts, intended to spark interest from readers at some future point in their lives if not right now.

Today I have been considering the matter of empowerment.  Many motivational speakers like to talk about empowerment.  In the event that you are a bit tired and browbeaten, depressed, middle-aged and underachieving, lazy or perhaps a tad dim, empowerment is a subject that you will fully appreciate.  As something of an empowerment gourmet, very few of them think much about it beyond – the audience will like this, the audience will admire me for saying this, the audience will buy my empowerment course etc etc.  You know the scene – Tony Robbins has probably a hundred or more members of staff doing mini empowerment courses all over the USA, as do many others.

So here is my empowerment for the bombast-hating and probably more intelligent rest of the motivation market. You matter, you matter, you matter.  Stop assuming other people will do things for you, and that your participation doesn’t count.  You dug yourselves into a hole, now it is time to look in the mirror, tell yourself that you count, and dig yourselves back out of it again.  Nobody can do it for you!

Very technical, isn’t it? Yes, your last hundred dollars/pounds/million yen matter.  Open your ethical or SRI bank or building society account now, so that when it is operational, you can transfer your wages or income into it.  Prepare for changing your broadband/tv/telephone account by collecting the relevant information and STOP GOING TO THE SUPERMARKET ALREADY! If you are desperate for the latest Prada, look for it on Ebay instead.  Consider if you will still want it next season.  If the answer is no, then you don’t need it and would be better off spending your time finding a chic new designer item nobody else knows about.

I updated the information on Better Person Project for the UK last night, and will take another look at the slightly more complicated USA this evening.  I am ashamed to say that had not looked at it in quite a long time as I had been fighting off my Wolfitis over the winter and spending too much time with the worst-eater-in-the-world Twisty.  This stops now.  I will just have to drown myself in work instead. All because somebody somewhere decided that I did not matter – you see how this works?  Telling people that they do not matter disempowers them, and then they do nothing and try to compensate in other ways.

So, repeat after me, I matter, and I am now going to make a difference. Enjoy whatever beverage comes to hand, and start making plans to redirect your money away from the conventional routes.  It’s not only important for you, it’s important for your future, and your potential children’s future. There is no future economic plan that justifies the world’s wealth going into so few hands.

Feed the saplings, cut down the old trees.  The economy works much the same way as a garden.  If you persist in feeding only the established forest, the old trees will still fall down but nothing will grow.  DO IT NOW!

 

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Let Down Again

Yet again, let down by a so-called friend.  He actually invested in the Boris project to begin with, presumably on the basis that I would keep him around longer because he certainly had no intention of doing anything but sabotage it.

Apparently explaining to him about a million times that the project was not actually political had zero impact, and his primary concern, as usual is for himself.  I am supposed to want to not progress any of my work, listen to decades old stories of how someone said something nasty to him once, and busy myself fussing over his health.

I have done this for him for years.  Despite two assaults on my person, terrifying acts of aggression towards random individuals which I managed to remove him from, mood swings which were entirely bizarre and huge legal and health events, I have stood by this guy.

All this counts for precisely nothing, which should be a life lesson.  I am not sure what the life lesson is supposed to mean,  but I am sure I should have ejected this guy years ago and not allowed him back no matter what he said or did to ‘make up for it.’  It was just about persistent manipulation and nothing else.  Encourage me to waste my time, and then take great pleasure in making absolutely sure it counted for nothing.

So, we can assume that I can get on with my work now, although I still need to find an extra income stream pending the completion of two key pieces of written work, and two key pieces of artwork.

Since the last job ended, I have wondered because of what happened, whether I have a thing for Indian dudes.  I have devoted myself to eyeing them up as a result, and the conclusion is that I have no more thing for Indian dudes than any other dudes.  That one was apparently special.

Having said that, I have a very calm colleague at work at the moment, whom I like being with, who after investigation turned out to be Punjabi.  He is an extremely Scottish Punjabi however, probably a bit more Scottish than I am, so I do not think we can draw a conclusion from this beyond that I fear men from the UK more than i fear men from elsewhere, because several of them have beaten me up in the past and strangely enough, that doesn’t appeal.

My skin cracked up at the beginning of last week due to the six weeks of looking for work and nothing else.  I have cured this by returning to a very strict diet of supermix, increasing the low level of carbs, and returning to a regime of hardass walking.  I have now returned my skin to its glorious normal and lost ten pounds.

I may experiment with mono-filming my new piece as I am now heartily tired of people letting me down on projects and I am no further forward with having someone I can phone in order to stand next to a camera whilst I work.

This is most frustrating, and I do wonder whether I should just drop the performance elements of my work altogether since other important things are being neglected as a result of the sheer frustration of getting simple things done and out.

I have several placards to finish.  I think I will do it anyway, on the basis that I may try doing this without the fun bits.  It seems like a bit of a downer however.  Why are people so boring?

 

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Back to Work

At last the website seems to be free of staring brat infestation!

At Last! Thank you that man!

 

Ina Disguise is out tomorrow

Much love to Boris, I am preparing a gift for you poppet.

 

Ina

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8 weeks later

It has now been 8 weeks since I was unfairly terminated over a non existent relationship that failed to happen over a 7 week period.

The bank and management noobs involved are still obsessing over the website.  Evidently I made an impression.

They are still trying to hit posts that were removed weeks ago.  One of them consists of two sentences and a nice graphic of one finger.

Meanwhile, I have come up with a solution which would suit everyone, even the vile couple.

This is the difference between a leader and some followers.  I am about a hundred miles further away from this.

This tendency to look at things too closely is what makes people stupid.  I am constantly thankful for my alternative career.

I do miss him though, even though he doesn’t actually do anything apart from stare and get annoyed.  This is silly.  I have met some very nice, calm down to earth people who know nothing about my alter ego, and life is much less fraught now.

I have made some very good contacts recently, so I do have other things to do, however I am still driven to make sure that 1.  SB2’s career doesn’t get destroyed because of the company he keeps. and 2. Staff get to have some peace and dignity in the future.

I am so sorry that isn’t good enough for you all. Perhaps you should move somewhere more bitter and inane.

 

 

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There Is No Escaping Destiny Boris

Ahh, you won’t get out of it that easily Boris.  The fates can delay us, but no matter how naughty you are, you are still going to be my dream pick for PM.

I was thinking of doing a short film of a burkha wearing superfan waving a large Boris for PM banner, but we got a bit side tracked this eve, so I have a couple of long letters to do before I can fit it in.

Hope you are OK apart from that.  The Viscount didn’t even pick up his replies, so I think the castle option is bombed out.

Apart from that, still sorting out the borrowers issue with the previous job.  I know it is tiresome and it has slowed me to a dead stop due to the frivolousness of funding one’s own artwork, but I cheered up markedly when I saw your article, so thanks for that.

Have some serious talks on the way, so am drafting a few reports to deal with the ongoing employment culture issue.

After that, I do think Lucifer Ogilvie is a good idea, so I am going to run with that whilst I do the shoes.  I think any actual contact will have to wait for next year once that is done.

I may make you a few films though, now that I have mended the broken director.

Have fun, my little cabbage,

Ina

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No thanks

“You see the real problem is that you are too bright, too experienced, too fat to be dated without some questions being asked and you don’t seem to be sufficiently ashamed to be kept in your place. You need to understand that you are nothing, you will always be nothing, because if you are nothing we feel like we are something. That is the real reason.”

Nobody will actually ever say that, of course, they will continue to invent mansplaining reasons why I am never to be given a break and why being bereaved simply means I am open to more abuse from increasingly stupid people.

I would like to encounter somebody who is actually capable of resolving problems, not more blaming me and moving on with substandard and unfair behaviour. The real shame is that I am still vulnerable to this bullshit.

I am tired of listening to stories about other people’s problems.  I would like the problems other people have caused me to be resolved and I would like some assurance that there will be no repeat of behaviour like this ever. It is not acceptable.

This is looking increasingly unlikely, and I have rarely, if ever, been surprised.  I watched two unrelated groups of nurses make assumptions and murder my mother to demonstrate that this is how the world works.

Not surprisingly I have very low expectations, and they are getting lower by the day.

I don’t see why I should be an enabler of stuff like this.

I’m tired of being told that people with twenty years less work experience are worthy of deciding what I can and cannot do for a living, and I am tired of people who cannot read a CV, never mind make judgements on who does what.

I am tired of no nice surprises.

I am tired of caring.

 

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Time to rebuild Ina

It may be a false alarm, but I got a day off from Staring Brat 2 today.  Perhaps the English wife managed to persuade him to concentrate on producing some tiresome kids instead.

I was chatting to a friend about something else, and found myself saying this was all these people were likely to do with their lives, so my interest in what they are doing is extremely limited.

Why?  People go through their life stages in the order they do because they are told to conform.

Born, childish when children, teenage rebellion, getting a job, getting married, having kids, feeling old, then becoming old and dying.

It simply does not occur to people that there is an alternative to this.  They persist in watching TV and they are told what to want, what to buy and what the expectations are at their age.

I am very glad that I was born to a father that questioned everything.  I definitely got that gene.  I am not sure how the other three managed to miss that small point.

Even telling people about the risks associated with a brand of water has caused the fear recently.  I informed someone at work about the heavy metal content of a popular brand, and was met with slight contempt.  People who conform are so conditioned to accept that anything branded is what it says it is that showing them how many lies they are told is actually hazardous.

Amusingly, this manifested in Twisty this week, when he unexpectedly came across a Wolfe video.

“He looked – juicy.  He must be on some sort of drug.”

“Yeah, probably a health food related drug.  The dude eats well.”  I replied.

Twisty witnessed me losing 160lb and pretended not to notice.  He then witnessed my mother going from death’s door to as well as she possibly could be whilst the NHS continued to hound me as a witch for burning and he still thinks the NHS are there to heal people.

I dragged him back here, because his health was again in decline, and restarted pineapple, mullein and coffee.  He is now able to sleep again.  When is he going to take the hint?  He has been witnessing my little miracles for years now.

People believe whatever shit they want to believe.  They are a waste of time as a rule.

The website has been rather battered by the nasty stuff that has happened over the last few months.  Without the pests at the previous company, there are very few regulars left.

So, it is time to again rebuild Ina, and see what can be done to reverse this sad trend.  I was rather upset by this last episode, and only just made it out for a walk yesterday.  When I looked in the mirror today I looked as if I had been battered.

This leads me to the conclusion that people are to be ignored rather than being deserving of any care or affection.  This is a gift from Staring Brat 2, which he imparted via the lies of omission and general maliciousness, however I am glad that my core is now freezing cold. It will make it much easier in the weeks ahead.

 

 

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