"Yes, and here's to the few Who forgive what you do And the fewer who don't even care " My Confessions updated......
The strangest thing I have noticed is how poor we are at understanding individual Psychology. Many but not all can not see how they are really frightened little children wanting to be liked, how each vote they gain, or approval they experience some how makes them feel whole. others fails to understand the collective and often becomes harsh, uncaring and arrogant. Them there are those who lost a faith and found a faith. I mean those who raised in a particular religious all their life seek an alternative faith but never quite get there.
But enough of that ...in 2005 I stepped down as leader of the Wales Green party. I was burnt out, a frantic election cycle , the battering of the anti wind farm brigade, and a gentleman from a former Intelligence background and now Green Activist spreading rumours and seeking to discredit me. The Welsh Party was much smaller it probably had only 300 members. We had contested 10 seats in the general election, contested over 35 seats in the Swansea Council elections of 2004 and built a solid party in Swansea of over 150 members. Within a couple of years the same naval figure had managed to shrink the party dramatically, and in the general, election that followed he managed to gain the lowest Green Vote in Swansea West ever recorded.
I ceased political activity and developed a company training counsellors. That fell apart and left with large debts, a declining economy, and the growing realisation of my fundamental unhappiness and I sort to bury my head in the sand. I spent and spent, the funds dried up and finally I had an affair. This crisis occurred long after my role as a Green politician...yet if you read a certain account of my bankruptcy case you would imagine it had occurred at the same time.
I even saw a post about me being “ a self confessed adulterer” how simplistic it sounds, how different it actually was. The implications and result of my bankruptcy have been repeatedly resurrected by anyone who wishes to dismiss any argument that I have raised. All I did was to keep on paying my bills that I needed to pay to maintain everyday life The large institutions, the credit card companies missed out and I was labelled a fraudster. I am almost tempted to create a Psychological Syndrome. I will call it the Shrewsbury/Bartolotti projection. Its a process by which all that is wrong , all that is hated, all that is missing in someone's life is absorbed into the motivations and meanings of another's life. Julia Kristeva called it abjection.. It can be described as “There looms, within abjection, one of those violent, dark revolts of being, directed against a threat that seems to emanate from an exorbitant outside or inside, ejected beyond the scope of the possible, the tolerable, the thinkable. It lies there, quite close, but it cannot be assimilated. It beseeches, worries, and fascinates desires, which, nevertheless, does not let itself be seduced. Apprehensive, desire turns aside; sickened, it rejects. A certainty protects it from the shameful—a certainty of which it is proud holds on to it. But simultaneously, just the same, that impetus, that spasm, that leap is drawn toward an elsewhere as tempting as it is condemned. Unflaggingly, like an inescapable boomerang, a vortex of summons and repulsion places the one haunted by it literally beside himself “ Victor Hugo described it as
“No Beast is there without glimmer of infinity, No eye so vile nor abject that brushes not Against lightning from on high, now tender, now fierce. Victor Hugo, "La Legende des siecles
What is indeed surprising is how so many people who seek to transform society, who try to understand why people do the wrong things at the wrong time find it impossible to resist beating their opponents with perceived insight into their psyche. To believe in rehabilitation but not for those they disagree with is a sad perception and outlook. . The ad hominem argument is used with the precision of a Cruise missile. Please search the net you will find plenty of arguments using this cluster bombing approach,
I tried a short period in Plaid Cymru . I have always believed in an Independent Wales and I was battling with an uncharacteristic bitterness was told that they were a Green party and yet while I found some excellent Ecosocialists there , I also heard things that made my self recoil, I heard defence of the badger cull, the expansion of aviation, the support for Nuclear power and the narrow hypocrisy of the Chapel mentality. I left very quickly for much of the time within Plaid I had been urged to condemn the Greens, to issue a press release but I never felt happy to do that. I saw in my mind the faces of those who had supported me, campaigned with me and built the Green Party, people like John Matthews, Miranda Podger, Owain Clerk amongst others. There is only one Green party, there are many pallid copies but the Green analysis is the only one that is valid , that thinks beyond the short term.
I retuned to the Green Party in Autumn 2013. I was determined to be an ordinary member but once more I began to be involved. I became the agent in Neath for the General election of 2015 and was the agent in the Uplands by election in November 2014. I v=became the Election Agent for the Neath Port Talbot Green party and was elected onto SOC in January of 2016. I find myself in this campaign once more doing the Election Agent role.
I have survived these years of turmoil because of two events. At my lowest moment when I least expected it I found someone who has been with me ever since and so I have never been cynical of love. The other reasons are three figures of Philosophy, Neitzche Heidegger and Sartre . One day the day I was declared bankrupt I watched three documentaries about them. You can find them above this paragraph.
Has this been a confession, an explanation I dont know but I will conclude with Dylan's quote form the Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest.
With virtual total control of the Labour Party Corbyn is now able to make it a true member based democratic organisation. There can be no excuse for not having mandatory reselectionn for every MP and for every Councillor. In Wales real signs begin of a powerful Corbynista wing creating an alchemical process of renewal. There is now real speculation that a Scottish like renewal of Labour will begin here. In Wales there are 2000 Momentum members and I begin to detect an emergence of an outlook that is about Welsh self determination, and is of Green and Ecosocialist philisophy in form.. Plaid have the McEvoy problem at present and there are real threats of alleged legal action being circulated by his trained attack dogs that do much to silence criticism. It's no accident that Anne Greagsby is now behaving in a way within Plaid that she did bith in n the Greens and in the days when she worked as a staffer for Julie Morgan. The ego of the Broflake of the North were much wounded when Neil McEvoy chose not to join 'Jocs' UKIP like Frankenstein party of the centre nationalist right. Perhaps the likes of the " Big G" and his conspiracy theories were too much even for the ego of the big McE. The men who applaud him. laud him and share his populism and prejudices fear women, the trans gendered and all approaches and lens outside their own. I have met them by the bucket load AND they are afraid of women, loath feminism and diversity AND diffetence. Their social conservatism and insecurity makes them who they are and it is so easy for them to hide behind the defence mechanisms of the alt right with its limited and simplistic jargon.
Welsh Labour is far from perfect but real possibilities are now happening. The coming Deputy Leadership campaign will be most revealing. The post Carwyn Jones Wales will be a true test of reform both within Welsh Labour and of its future.
Following on from the war of McEvoy^s ego we will see which way Plaid moves. Leanne Woods excellent ecosocialist legacy will be tested as the civil war between McEvoys acolytes and the rest breaks out. Right wing populists usually set out to destroy and I am afraid that the socialists and Ecosocialists within Plaid are about to find that out. I give you some Sunday thoughts as my hangover fades and I consider possibilities and futures..
..
It is quite clear now and the hour is getting late. The choice now is how the major figures of the Left respond to the next election. I could imagine both Leanne Wood and Caroline Lucas being able to cooperate and provide critical support for a Corbyn government. The role of the Greens and Plaid may well be to introduce and influence radical policies in that government. The 40000 members of the Green Party and the Ecosocialist wing in Plaid will be essential to keep a left wing Labour government honest. However the issues of devolution, a Welsh identity and that of Europe need a socialist and green approach and critique.
In any case the post Corbyn left Labour Party will need their input to retain its credentials and outlook. It is refreshing break from the Blairite tendency but it really is getting late and it is this that has led me to my decision to join Momentum and with it the Labour Party. I have no issue with the Green Party and it's wonderful and thoughtful agenda but I grow tired of the Greens inability and acceptance of having to be ' nice ' to nasty little fascists and those who glory in an alt right outlooks. I will maintain my friendship and emotional support for the excellent people I met there. However I have repeatedly warned of the dangers of staying silent and accepting prejudiced and ignorant behaviours and outlooks.
This has been no conversion of a Damascian kind on the road to Ystradgynlais. It has been a "slow train coming" of reasoned thought and debate both within myself and with a range of other people. On January 29th I joined Momentum and with it the Labour Party.. I have now served my probationary period within Labour and I look to the future. Corbyn is an honourable decent man who has been right on most things. He scares the establishment and that is what is important. I want to see Corbyn out No 10 and John Macdonnel at number 11 because I want to see the paradigm change and with tbatmany new things become possible. This is what breaking the mould is really about and it is only this way that new deals for Wales, Scotland and for the excluded and the oppressed to be empowered. There is no other way and the long game he is playing on Brexit is the best possible solution.. Perhaps my decision will surprise many of you and annoy others. As I have said this a new decade for me and I feel hope return to me. I have no illusions just how many challenges lay ahead in joining Welsh Labour. However a very decent man with first class instincts on Animal rights , socialism and fairness to all makes it the best way and there is a world still to win...no centre party will ever make that possible.. I have always been an Ecosocialist. The real decision was how to use my beliefs; faith and passion in the most effective way.
“Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage we did not take, towards the door we never opened, into the rose garden"
Well, the moral of the story
The moral of this song
Is simply that one should never be
Where one does not belong
So when you see your neighbor carryin' somethin'
Help him with his load
And don't go mistaking Paradise
For that home across the road
The strangest thing I have noticed is how poor we are at understanding individual Psychology. Many but not all can not see how they are really frightened little children wanting to be liked, how each vote they gain, or approval they experience some how makes them feel whole. others fails to understand the collective and often becomes harsh, uncaring and arrogant. Them there are those who lost a faith and found a faith. I mean those who raised in a particular religious all their life seek an alternative faith but never quite get there.
But enough of that ...in 2005 I stepped down as leader of the Wales Green party. I was burnt out, a frantic election cycle , the battering of the anti wind farm brigade, and a gentleman from a former Intelligence background and now Green Activist spreading rumours and seeking to discredit me. The Welsh Party was much smaller it probably had only 300 members. We had contested 10 seats in the general election, contested over 35 seats in the Swansea Council elections of 2004 and built a solid party in Swansea of over 150 members. Within a couple of years the same naval figure had managed to shrink the party dramatically, and in the general, election that followed he managed to gain the lowest Green Vote in Swansea West ever recorded.
I ceased political activity and developed a company training counsellors. That fell apart and left with large debts, a declining economy, and the growing realisation of my fundamental unhappiness and I sort to bury my head in the sand. I spent and spent, the funds dried up and finally I had an affair. This crisis occurred long after my role as a Green politician...yet if you read a certain account of my bankruptcy case you would imagine it had occurred at the same time.
I even saw a post about me being “ a self confessed adulterer” how simplistic it sounds, how different it actually was. The implications and result of my bankruptcy have been repeatedly resurrected by anyone who wishes to dismiss any argument that I have raised. All I did was to keep on paying my bills that I needed to pay to maintain everyday life The large institutions, the credit card companies missed out and I was labelled a fraudster. I am almost tempted to create a Psychological Syndrome. I will call it the Shrewsbury/Bartolotti projection. Its a process by which all that is wrong , all that is hated, all that is missing in someone's life is absorbed into the motivations and meanings of another's life. Julia Kristeva called it abjection.. It can be described as “There looms, within abjection, one of those violent, dark revolts of being, directed against a threat that seems to emanate from an exorbitant outside or inside, ejected beyond the scope of the possible, the tolerable, the thinkable. It lies there, quite close, but it cannot be assimilated. It beseeches, worries, and fascinates desires, which, nevertheless, does not let itself be seduced. Apprehensive, desire turns aside; sickened, it rejects. A certainty protects it from the shameful—a certainty of which it is proud holds on to it. But simultaneously, just the same, that impetus, that spasm, that leap is drawn toward an elsewhere as tempting as it is condemned. Unflaggingly, like an inescapable boomerang, a vortex of summons and repulsion places the one haunted by it literally beside himself “ Victor Hugo described it as
“No Beast is there without glimmer of infinity, No eye so vile nor abject that brushes not Against lightning from on high, now tender, now fierce. Victor Hugo, "La Legende des siecles
What is indeed surprising is how so many people who seek to transform society, who try to understand why people do the wrong things at the wrong time find it impossible to resist beating their opponents with perceived insight into their psyche. To believe in rehabilitation but not for those they disagree with is a sad perception and outlook. . The ad hominem argument is used with the precision of a Cruise missile. Please search the net you will find plenty of arguments using this cluster bombing approach,
I tried a short period in Plaid Cymru . I have always believed in an Independent Wales and I was battling with an uncharacteristic bitterness was told that they were a Green party and yet while I found some excellent Ecosocialists there , I also heard things that made my self recoil, I heard defence of the badger cull, the expansion of aviation, the support for Nuclear power and the narrow hypocrisy of the Chapel mentality. I left very quickly for much of the time within Plaid I had been urged to condemn the Greens, to issue a press release but I never felt happy to do that. I saw in my mind the faces of those who had supported me, campaigned with me and built the Green Party, people like John Matthews, Miranda Podger, Owain Clerk amongst others. There is only one Green party, there are many pallid copies but the Green analysis is the only one that is valid , that thinks beyond the short term.
I retuned to the Green Party in Autumn 2013. I was determined to be an ordinary member but once more I began to be involved. I became the agent in Neath for the General election of 2015 and was the agent in the Uplands by election in November 2014. I v=became the Election Agent for the Neath Port Talbot Green party and was elected onto SOC in January of 2016. I find myself in this campaign once more doing the Election Agent role.
I have survived these years of turmoil because of two events. At my lowest moment when I least expected it I found someone who has been with me ever since and so I have never been cynical of love. The other reasons are three figures of Philosophy, Neitzche Heidegger and Sartre . One day the day I was declared bankrupt I watched three documentaries about them. You can find them above this paragraph.
Has this been a confession, an explanation I dont know but I will conclude with Dylan's quote form the Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest.
..I
laugh as I read the Observer about a new centre party. It is founded by
millionaires and will be pro business. I am not sure how it breaks the
mould when we have had the main political parties peddling that lie
from 1979 till the election of Corbyn in 2015. To a great extent the
anti neoliberal approach and ecosocialist agenda had been beta tested by
the Green surge of 2014 2015. Corbyn has shifted the middle of the road
and the rise of Momentum with irs 40,. 000 members means that a new
agenda is forged.
With virtual total control of the Labour Party Corbyn is now able to make it a true member based democratic organisation. There can be no excuse for not having mandatory reselectionn for every MP and for every Councillor. In Wales real signs begin of a powerful Corbynista wing creating an alchemical process of renewal. There is now real speculation that a Scottish like renewal of Labour will begin here. In Wales there are 2000 Momentum members and I begin to detect an emergence of an outlook that is about Welsh self determination, and is of Green and Ecosocialist philisophy in form.. Plaid have the McEvoy problem at present and there are real threats of alleged legal action being circulated by his trained attack dogs that do much to silence criticism. It's no accident that Anne Greagsby is now behaving in a way within Plaid that she did bith in n the Greens and in the days when she worked as a staffer for Julie Morgan. The ego of the Broflake of the North were much wounded when Neil McEvoy chose not to join 'Jocs' UKIP like Frankenstein party of the centre nationalist right. Perhaps the likes of the " Big G" and his conspiracy theories were too much even for the ego of the big McE. The men who applaud him. laud him and share his populism and prejudices fear women, the trans gendered and all approaches and lens outside their own. I have met them by the bucket load AND they are afraid of women, loath feminism and diversity AND diffetence. Their social conservatism and insecurity makes them who they are and it is so easy for them to hide behind the defence mechanisms of the alt right with its limited and simplistic jargon.
Welsh Labour is far from perfect but real possibilities are now happening. The coming Deputy Leadership campaign will be most revealing. The post Carwyn Jones Wales will be a true test of reform both within Welsh Labour and of its future.
Following on from the war of McEvoy^s ego we will see which way Plaid moves. Leanne Woods excellent ecosocialist legacy will be tested as the civil war between McEvoys acolytes and the rest breaks out. Right wing populists usually set out to destroy and I am afraid that the socialists and Ecosocialists within Plaid are about to find that out. I give you some Sunday thoughts as my hangover fades and I consider possibilities and futures..
..
It is quite clear now and the hour is getting late. The choice now is how the major figures of the Left respond to the next election. I could imagine both Leanne Wood and Caroline Lucas being able to cooperate and provide critical support for a Corbyn government. The role of the Greens and Plaid may well be to introduce and influence radical policies in that government. The 40000 members of the Green Party and the Ecosocialist wing in Plaid will be essential to keep a left wing Labour government honest. However the issues of devolution, a Welsh identity and that of Europe need a socialist and green approach and critique.
In any case the post Corbyn left Labour Party will need their input to retain its credentials and outlook. It is refreshing break from the Blairite tendency but it really is getting late and it is this that has led me to my decision to join Momentum and with it the Labour Party. I have no issue with the Green Party and it's wonderful and thoughtful agenda but I grow tired of the Greens inability and acceptance of having to be ' nice ' to nasty little fascists and those who glory in an alt right outlooks. I will maintain my friendship and emotional support for the excellent people I met there. However I have repeatedly warned of the dangers of staying silent and accepting prejudiced and ignorant behaviours and outlooks.
This has been no conversion of a Damascian kind on the road to Ystradgynlais. It has been a "slow train coming" of reasoned thought and debate both within myself and with a range of other people. On January 29th I joined Momentum and with it the Labour Party.. I have now served my probationary period within Labour and I look to the future. Corbyn is an honourable decent man who has been right on most things. He scares the establishment and that is what is important. I want to see Corbyn out No 10 and John Macdonnel at number 11 because I want to see the paradigm change and with tbatmany new things become possible. This is what breaking the mould is really about and it is only this way that new deals for Wales, Scotland and for the excluded and the oppressed to be empowered. There is no other way and the long game he is playing on Brexit is the best possible solution.. Perhaps my decision will surprise many of you and annoy others. As I have said this a new decade for me and I feel hope return to me. I have no illusions just how many challenges lay ahead in joining Welsh Labour. However a very decent man with first class instincts on Animal rights , socialism and fairness to all makes it the best way and there is a world still to win...no centre party will ever make that possible.. I have always been an Ecosocialist. The real decision was how to use my beliefs; faith and passion in the most effective way.
“Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage we did not take, towards the door we never opened, into the rose garden"
Well, the moral of the story
The moral of this song
Is simply that one should never be
Where one does not belong
So when you see your neighbor carryin' somethin'
Help him with his load
And don't go mistaking Paradise
For that home across the road
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