Conversation of the Month: the General Election
This thread is a place to feedback the opinions, ideas and proposals from People’s Assemblies around the country on the topic of the upcoming general election, the XR Future Democracy “conversation of the month” for November. We are exploring using a central place (I.e. this thread) to gather local perspectives and feed them back into a national conversation for all to see and contribute to.
We will be inviting assembly facilitators/note-takers to collate local discussions and upload them here.
If you have attended an assembly on the topic of the general election, or are able to share perspectives from your local group, please add to this thread!
Please see the following doc if you need some starting points for a people’s assembly on the GE in your local group: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1H-URiGEqSnMt5jlTebxAKLDcQnBfgVZV36BCQjtN4To
Further resources:
XR UK Election Rebellion Kitlist: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xrCg3TrvfxbYkO1Oho5o5e0qiGGD8C1f0T1-ptXuNsw/mobilebasic#h.kbvikahqkpbu
More about People’s Assemblies: https://rebellion.earth/act-now/resources/peoples-assemblies/
For information on how to run a People’s Assembly please see the PA manual: https://rebellion.earth/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/XR-PeoplesManual.pdf
Allan Rowell · Wed 13 Nov 2019 8:41AM
So this is my perspective.
It is interesting that Caroline Lucas was the first MP to sign this proposal.
"Destructive Global Competition [from p.31] Neoliberalism gained hold, as we know, during the 1970s, based on an economic vision that enchanted not only politicians and elites but also the ordinary person in the street. It was put into practice through deliberate policy choices on the part of national politicians, notably US President Ronald Reagan and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
But the central argument of this book is that, from around the mid-1980s onwards, the implementation of neoliberal policies ceased to be the free choice of politicians and instead took on a momentum all its own. It was as if economic leaders were on autopilot. Once international competition reached a certain level of integration and intensity, once the global market – and especially financial markets – developed to a certain critical tipping point, the global competitive pressures that this created were themselves sufficient to automatically drive governments towards an ever-deeper application of neoliberal policies.
The vicious circle of Destructive Global Competition (DGC) had got going to such a point that it became self-sustaining. Once multinational corporations and global investors gained the ability to move capital and thousands of jobs seamlessly across national borders, the genie was out of the bottle and the vicious circle was set in train. Without realising it, governments were then caught in the endless pursuit of their ‘international competitiveness’ – caught in the game of forever outcompeting each other at cutting taxes and regulations in a bid to retain jobs and inward investment.
From then on it drew politicians and governments into its destructive vortex, and it is now running beyond anyone’s control. It is this automatic functioning that not only encourages the turning of a blind eye to the destructive aspects of competition the real danger is that it places the people charged with setting the rules – governments – into a state of paralysis. They are now unable to address seriously the global problems that confront us. It’s not that they don’t want to act, it’s that they can’t"
Keep abreast of the latest Candidates/MP's to sign-up:
https://uk.simpol.org/basics/general-election-2019