Is it time for a National Social Care Service?

 I started this blog to help myself make sense of the rather messy situation that has resulted in what will be a long global recession but concentrating on the UK as an anchor (globally would be too broad with too many local factors). In particular I wanted to focus on the reason why social care is consistently kicked into the long grass, when not addressing it will create more problems than it solves. It seems we need a modern Aneurin Bevan to strike boldly for social care as he did with the National Health Service.

The answer to solving the social care crisis in 2023 is hard because one has to look simply at our ability to pay for it. On the other hand, we are paying for it now through the consequences of not paying for it - and the knock on effect threatens to engulf the whole country by clogging up the works.

To understand where we are now, it is essential to consider the ‘how we got where we are’, which necessarily involves looking at the problem from the top down. However, as will be mentioned, the problem is that there has been too much weight on looking at the problem from the top down. A good analogy might be viewing a beautiful Rolls Royce from the top, not noticing four flat tyres and no petrol in the tank but can’t see how to make it go.

The economic state of the UK, indeed the world as we head towards a global recession in 2023, is like the Gordian knot reputedly cut through by Alexander The Great. Endless tinkering for the sake of profit and a piece of the economic pie, has focused successive governments on money and business, without which there could be no economy. But where we are now demonstrates that disregard to the mechanics that contribute to money and the economy is just as catastrophic.

The sub prime mortgage crash of 2008 resulted in a global meltdown that threatened to bring down the banks; and indeed managed one or two. This was a money crisis. It prompted the central banks to reduce interest rates to zero (to encourage borrowing) and to inject new money into system (Quantitative Easing) to keep the banks running and to lend this money to generate investment. Instead the banks and big corporations used the money to buy their own shares that artificially boosted their value.  Over the years there were several rounds of QE that only resulted in big business bloating their share prices and making shareholders richer. The tax payer bailed out the banks and the banks (and corporations) helped themselves.

Then the world got sideswiped by the Coronavirus pandemic, lasting two years and shutting down much of the economy. Those people who were deemed as ‘essential workers’ carried on working while everyone else was told to stay at home. Top of the essential pile were hospital staff, followed by retail, refuse collectors, cleaners, carers and postal workers, to name but some. Every Thursday, during the height of the pandemic we emerged from our houses to clap the efforts of those who had to keep working despite the risks. These were the people who it was deemed imperative to keep the country going. Not on this list were all the things involving money and business, a stark lesson in what must be in place to allow money and business to grow.

I write this blog in November 2022, where in the aftermath of the coronavirus, there followed the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the result of which caused a sudden increase in the cost of oil products (including gas, petrol, diesel kerosene etc). This was in tandem with the clogging up of the worlds trade supply caused by countries closing borders during the virus. Shipping containers were not moving and in short supply and the price shot up fifteen-fold.

When an economy overheats, causing inflation, the banks raise interest rates to encourage people to borrow and spend less. When the economy shrinks, causing deflation, the banks reduce interest rates to encourage people to borrow and spend more. The 2022 problem was not caused by overspending but did generate inflation due to a supply shortage.

The rising cost of energy and fuel to drive cars, also caused a knock on increase in the cost of food and other consumer goods, resulting in an inflation that prompted the bank to raise interest rates, which in turn added more misery to mortgage owners (See Liz Truss) who now had to pay not only for the additional fuel and energy costs but more for the money they borrowed when borrowing was cheap.

When you look at what essential elements in the cost of living has gone up, it does not make sense for the banks to make it even more expensive. You cannot stop buying energy, fuel or food. Like the essential workers in the pandemic, they are the foundations of basic survival. However, inflation makes everything more expensive and to stop it getting out of hand, people must spend less; and this will have a dreadful knock on effect. We are likely to see many businesses fail because demand has to come down. Yes, we can reduce our energy consumption by being careful but the cost is now so high there are many who can afford little else. Mortgage increases further leech away the ability to consume non essential products. This all leads to higher unemployment and a further erosion of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) that is essential to economic growth.

For the UK, it is fortunate that we only had reliance on around 4% of gas supply from Russia but the cost of not buying gas from Russia has increased the demand by reducing the supply. The other suppliers decided not to increase their supply in order to cream record profits off the back of higher prices. So the world is held hostage where the price for oil and gas is set internationally. Electricity is linked artificially to oil, which in my mind is not in favour of the push to buy electric cars or domestic air heating systems.

So we have a supply crisis that has caused inflation, which threatens to throw millions of households into poverty. You can also expect a rise in crime, where legitimate alternatives to earn money to make ends meet is strangled.

After the 2008 economic crisis, the UK government decided on a period of austerity measures that limited the pay increases of many public sector workers, a position that the employees have never recovered from and while they reluctantly went along with the narrative, now find themselves significantly worse off. There are stories of nurses who work full time and then have to go to a food bank to feed their children. We know we are in a cost of living crisis when people working full time and not claiming any welfare benefits, are having to go to food banks to make ends meet.

So at the time of writing this, we are in the middle of strikes over pay and conditions from nurses, Royal Mail, university lecturers, teachers, civil servants, railways, own-brand factory workers and the Amazon warehouse workers; the list is by no means exhaustive. Suffice it to say that we are not far short of a general strike in the UK.

To get to why we are where we are, instead of looking at economic growth through profit and productivity, we have to look at economic growth through facilitation. Ironically employers now find that they have a workforce supply problem; one I would argue of their own making (small and medium sized businesses I would argue are the exception and who are just as much a victim of the behaviour of large and corporate companies as we are).

This week Sir Kier Starmer told the CBI that the UK has to ‘wean itself off’ foreign workers. In other words, employers have to stop using cheap labour from abroad. Further irony appears to be that inflation has made the UK unattractive to workers from places like Poland where the exchange rate of pound sterling to the Polish zloty is no longer favourable. The globalism experiment, in my opinion, has highlighted the understandable attraction for employers to have goods manufactured by the cheapest route but leaves skill shortages and creates unemployment in the country it wants to sell to. Now that the UK has left the EU and free movement of people is curtailed, there are fewer foreign workers who will accept jobs at the low pay end. What is left is a yawning gap of unfilled jobs because they do not pay enough and the ‘living wage’ is evidently not a living wage.

There are a herd of elephants in this room that no one wants to address that are the main causes of poverty, which stems mostly from the actual cost of living for an individual. The nurse in a caring vocational profession who has to go to a food bank is dedicated to a profession that saves lives. There is no such dedication to an office cleaner or factory worker or bus driver (another list not exhaustive) who cannot see any reward to the job they do and if there is no monetary reward or compensation for actually doing the job, what is the point?

Another elephant is the extortionate cost of agency staff in hospitals. Nurses often become agency workers because it pays better. There are approximately 44,000 job vacancies for nurses in the NHS, which tells you a lot about why nurses have chosen to strike for the first time in the history of the NHS. Andy Burnham (Mayor of Greater Manchester and a former Health Secretary under Labour, noted that paying the nurses instead of agencies would pay for itself.

But the conditions for hospital nurses are equally as stressful. Hospitals are running to capacity and ambulances are held for hours outside the Accident and Emergency Department, not because there are not enough beds but because the hospital cannot discharge patients who are well but need social care intervention.

Simply put, there is not enough social care. Why? because the care staff are low paid and undervalued, the care homes are becoming more expensive to run, the social workers are stressed out and in short supply to be able to facilitate discharges and mental health is the poor relation and the first casualty in any economic cutting exercise. These are some of the flat tyres holding up the Rolls Royce.

Ambulances backing up due to bed blocking is like a canary in a coal mine. Digging a little deeper we can see that there are many people who would like to go to work and fill these jobs but many are waiting for hospital appointments that they can’t get because there are no free beds in hospital due to bed blocking due to lack of social care; you can see the domino effect.

Another layer, is mental health for whatever reason. People discharged from mental health to the community lack the necessary support to keep them mentally well. Lots of mental health crisis ties up the police, hospital and social work, all of which would be obviated with the right level of mental health support and give these essential employees the freedom to do their job rather than fire fighting.

Child Care should also be mentioned as another elephant that generates a barrier to work, along with an army of unpaid carers who have little or no support.

The UK government is currently trying to solve the problem from the top down and yet the long term need is to solve the problem from the bottom up. In every business it is obvious that you must have a firm foundation on which to build a successful enterprise. And yet some businesses are happy to cream profit from the top for their shareholders while shaving the bottom from their employees - and then wonder why they can’t fill those job vacancies?

I have long tried to establish how the Government, doesn’t matter which party, works out how the minimum wage (now laughing called the living wage) is formulated? They are clearly afraid that if we saw the formula, we would see the obvious flaws. What the formula clearly does not do is include things like the cost of housing rent, rates, energy and food; if they did there would be no need for food banks as much as there is now and people could afford to eat and heat. If the Government wants a truly productive work force, they have to make sure to pay attention to people’s health and well being before in order to facilitate economic growth.

Here’s a thought. Some time ago the budget for hospital procedures was given to GPs. Is there an argument to give the social care budget to the NHS? Whatever the case, the Government needs to find the money to finally give this elephant the attention it deserves. We need something that allows the NHS to function in the way it was meant to. Do we need a minister for Social Care to do what Aneurin Bevan did for health?

Energy Crisis 2022; What To Do?

 Where to start? The page remains resolutely blank. Only writing these words is better than doing nothing at all.

So we are facing an energy apocalypse but because the government wants to have a Prime Minister (a.k.a scapegoat) in place before telling the people they are supposed to govern what they plan to do about it Until then, solution proposals remain resolutely …blank.

For those people fortunate enough to make money out of the business they invest in, profit is not a dirty word (they say). But it is only those who defend their profits that are trying to justify what is going on right now; and can afford to make the argument for it.

Profit is fine but crippling profit is not. Business needs consumers - the demand to meet the supply. Without demand there is no supply and ultimately no business. Consumers need money to spend. This is the simple reality we face with energy bills increasing well beyond the ability to afford it.

The latest warning about the cost of energy comes from entertainment outlets, like pubs and restaurants, who will simply close down because it is not viable to run a business on such high energy charges. Not that there will be anyone going out as potential customers learn to choose whether to eat food or heat their home. For many people in the UK this is already a reality.

High profits and low wages is an insane combination. It is even worse when the UK sold a national necessity abroad and can only watch the profits disappear over the English Channel. The dream of globalisation reveals the unintended consequence of abject dependency on what clearly should have remained an essential self sufficient goal.

While international methods calculate the cost of oil, bringing the world to its knees in the process, I find it bizarre that some want to take away the cost of building renewable energy when the road out of this extortion is to promote more renewable energy.

It was reported by Offgen (30 Aug 2022) that buying back the energy companies would cost £2.8bn. Yes we could nationalise the energy companies again but I would like to see them become not for profit organisations instead. Government should not be running businesses. Gordon Brown made the Bank of England independent to stop government interference. Likewise I would see energy, water, the NHS and education go down the same independent ‘not-for-profit’ route.

In five day’s time we will know who the next Prime Minister will be; I suspect Liz Truss, who is the ideal scapegoat to cock it up and force a general election, which the Conservative Party may well lose and she would become the shortest serving Prime Minister in British history.

There are strikes for more wages and inflation is running at its highest level for 40 years - the consequences of high profits and low wages. Millions are facing the abyss of the bleakest winter ever known in the Western World. We may even get to experience poverty like those who live in Afghanistan, Yemen or other war torn countries unless our government is prepared to take some truly radical steps to rewrite the way the UK does business.

Where to start? …but starting at least is better than doing nothing at all.

Capricorn Ingress December 2021

 When the Sun moves into Capricorn at the Winter Solstice, the seeds of the year to come are planted. How they grow depends on our awareness of them and how we manage the energies, how we feed them and how much we care for them. What follow are the planetary aspects at play that will shape the year of 2022. This chart is mostly set with the UK in mind but where houses may differ in other parts of the world, the aspects between planets remain the same.

The unsapected Neptune in the 2021 Capricorn Ingress chart commands a powerful position in its own sign of Pisces (20º31’). This is set in 10th House if chart is set for London (UT), which places ethics and working practices not only at the front of our minds but opens the mind to new possibilities to different and better ways to govern and administer. Jupiter, the traditional ruler of Pisces is also in the 10th House but will not enter Pisces until 29 December 2021. However, this may imply that we are on the cusp of societal changes that marks further development of what, after the COVID_19 pandemic is spent, constitutes the ‘new normal’.

Many financial irregularities have been coming to light over PPE contracts, spurious undeclared donations for Downing Street refurbishments and other irregularities like office parties being held during a National lock down. On the opposite end of the scale we had nurses within the National Health Service, working to the point of exhaustion, being offered a weekly round of applause, followed by a measly 1% pay increase with inflation rising to 6%. So claps do not pay bills, 1% is an insult but it is ok to splurge billions on a test and trace system that does not work.

The Moon in the 2nd House opposes a Venus / Pluto conjunction in the 8th House. The people’s values (2nd House) are at odds with the way the Government has been spending other people’s money (8th House). Moon also inconjuncts Jupiter, implying the source of the disgruntlement. It is one thing to obey the law (Jupiter) but when those in power appear to think there is one rule for them and another for everyone else, we have a problem.

Jupiter forms part of a T-square to the Nodes with Mars at a loose parting conjunction to the South Node in the 6th House of work. Big business seems to have done reasonably well compared to small businesses. Self employed perhaps the most neglected throughout the pandemic. With the North Node in the 12th House, the focus is placed on the unmanifest; that which has had to be brought into existence through extraordinary circumstances. The result of these extraordinary measures are to be counted later in the enormous debt that countries across the world have had to accumulate to keep the crumbling system going for just a bit longer. On a more positive note, the event of Mars moving into Capricorn, at the end of January, could signal the beginning of the end of the COVID_19 pandemic itself (for the industrialised Western World at least). Saturn in the 9th House would imply continued travel restrictions for the UK.

We may never know the level of corruption and trickery (Mercury in the 7th House) at the hands of the Government (Mercury semi sextile Jupiter) but we must also acknowledge necessary cost of the development of a vaccine to combat COVID_19 and that we have not yet ensured that there is a global administration of it (‘We are not safe until everyone is safe’). Never more so has the difference between the haves and the have nots been highlighted so meaningfully.

The final important aspect of the Capricorn Ingress chart is the Saturn / Uranus square in the fixed signs of Aquarius and Taurus respectively. Uranus is retrograde (11º09) and is applying to the square with Saturn (10º49).

The breaking down (Uranus) of structure (Saturn) has perhaps not been so easy to see as it is at the moment. In the London based chart the square crosses the 9th and 12th Houses, suggesting a gulf between what crumbling edifice exists and the need to bring in a change that has yet to exist. On a global level the likelihood of extreme weather events look set to continue.

There have been suggestions in the UK of the need to change the voting system to Proportional Representation (much resisted by those who seek power through the First Past The Post System). There has also been talks globally about a Universal Basic Income, trialled in a few places to see what the impact might be. There are further discussions regarding the whole banking system (global financial reset) and whether crypto currency has a role to play in it. While Saturn and Uranus remain in fixed signs it seems unlikely that the new and innovative necessities required will be entertained but at the same time the present structures continue to degrade. The Saturn Uranus cycle is at its closing square, so we are now seeing the beginning of the end for many of these corrupt and outmoded systems, however there is no quick fix in sight and we should continue to promote better and more equitable structures for the future.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are not coming; They are already here.

7 July 2020

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are not coming; They are already here.

The story has been with us since the writings of the book of Revelations and so people have linked the arrival of the four horsemen of the apocalypse with the second coming of Jesus. It is an acceptable illusion that has blinded people to the very evidence in front of them, awaiting the arrival of four physical horses with the archetypes astride of pestilence, war, famine and death. The illusion is so well done that very few people, who are not experiencing any of the above in the present day, realise that they are waiting in vain. The four horsemen of the Apocalypse are not coming; they are already here.

The present archetypes are not what you might envisage as frightening personas in true Hollywood style. Pestilence does not look like a walking ebola advert, War is not a fiery armoured soldier, famine is not an emaciated starving perversion and death is not the grim reaper complete with scythe and a black hooded cloak.

I wonder how many consider the global sweep of COVID-19 as a pestilence? It certainly fits the bill for some people, especially the old and the infirm. Coronavirus is the most Darwinian of viruses to inflict the human race all at the same time. It must be blessings from heaven to all those who faced the ruinous prospect of shortages in pension funds, care homes, underused houses, housing shortages, health insurers, private healthcare, the ever increasing demand on society for an increased elderly population and not enough people of working age to keep the taxes coming in.

Look at how the disease simply took over everyone’s life. We had to stay at home to stop the virus spreading. In the short term it has prevented the virus from rising exponentially to infect us all but it is not completely conquered. That may take time and possibly a vaccine. Before then there will be questions about how it started and maybe who is responsible for wrecking our health and hastening the demise of our already sick economy; yes the economy had its own virus but we’ll get to that later.

The astrological events of the last year, namely the cycles of the conjunctions between Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn, have all related to a complete shift of global proportions. Whether you believe in astrology or not, you cannot deny that so far the events have lived up to the astrological symbolism and there is not reason to believe they will not continue to do so. Pluto’s involvement with both societal planets has been dragging up the old outmoded muck from the past and bringing tremendous amounts of corruption to light. So many things that the structure of our society has been founded on no longer works. The demand for change is irresistible. The need for new paradigms is inevitable. The power to make those changes are presently in the hands of the four horsemen.

The coronavirus is only one manifestation of the pestilence plaguing the planet. When you look at the meaning of pestilence you can easily equate it to the malpractice of fake news,  ubiquitous shopping malls, hundreds of rubbish TV channels, advertising bombardments, packaging waste, non-biodegradable plastic, pollution, planned obsolescence, throwaway disposables, slave labour, poverty wages etc. In the same way that we become the recipient of a disease we did not want, we are also the recipients of all these other things that we also do not want. The constant invasion breeds intolerance, fear and in some cases fosters bigotry and discrimination.

Pestilence has been around for some time, as you can see, but its most obvious persona has only one goal, to replicate itself in the host and grow, just like COVID-19. It does not care if it kills the host. Its only goal is profit for its shareholders; corporations.

Those of you who know me will already have seen my demand that corporation and state should be as separate as church and state. If one looks at the reasoning behind the latter, it is clear why the former must follow the same reasoning.

Corporations have become very powerful in political spheres, donating money to politicians in return for favourable outcomes to them, powerful lobby groups capable of not only turning policies to help themselves but even writing the laws on how to do it.

Any politician taking donations from a corporation already does not work for the people who voted for them. The race for market share means corporations will spend millions to political campaigns and have muddied the waters so much you can no longer see were the line is between those who are supposed to make the law fair and those who want to make the law theirs. It is another virus that this time filters into the halls of political power to replicate the policies that corporations desire to increase profit for their shareholders. 

But corporations don’t just corrupt politicians. They corrupt the environment, stripping the land, raping natural beauty spots, diverting rivers away from villages, exploit cheaper labour in other countries, pillage, poison and pollute natural resources irrespective of the damage it causes. In addition it manipulates share prices and bends every tax loophole to avoid contributing to the very societies it steals from. They are headed up by an army of lawyers working full time to ward off every lawsuit and complaint going their way.

Corporations want more for themselves and to get bigger. Their goal to maximise profit is to be in every corner of the world, just like the disease of artery clogging junk food and sugary drinks sold in every ubiquitously advertised fast food chain.

Pestilence is the corporation. It wants to take you over and when you have nothing left to give it will leave you for dead.

Jupiter expands while Pluto brings to light corruption. The first of three conjunctions of the new cycle in Capricorn was on 5 April 2020, then Jupiter will go backwards and hit Pluto again on 30 June and then the third and final conjunction will be on 12 November 2020; only 9 days before the Jupiter Saturn conjunction.

It is interesting that COVID-19 has had a detrimental impact on business. Corporations are shedding jobs like a dog moults hair. Millions of people will lose their jobs because the ‘stay at home’ narrative works against their interest. People not earning money and in fear of losing their livelihoods and maybe not being able to afford to pay rent or mortgage stand to lose much. Corporations have no moral compass. They will tighten their purse strings and wait for the next fat profit opportunity to come along. Meanwhile a global depression looms that will make the 1930s depression look like a minor recession.

George Orwell is often misquoted in his iconic book ‘1984’ that war should not be won but should be continuous. The bit about being continuous, however, is something he did mention. I imagine a box of Lego bricks built into objects until the box is empty. What to do next? Break them all down and build something else. This way the game is continuous.

Profit has to be continuous. We live in a debt economy where scarcity increases value. Sometimes that scarcity can be created artificially, like bringing up oil at so many millions of barrels a day in order to maximise profit. But value can also be increased if you introduce the factor of uncertainty. There is nothing like a good war to generate instability and make things like oil more expensive. It is also good to spend extraordinary amounts of money on weapons to lay waste and entire region. It is further a good thing to then rebuild what has been knocked down. Think of it as a real life box of Lego; build it up and knock it down... repeat.

War costs money, lots of money. Governments spend billions on military might and create an arsenal that also costs billions to maintain and upgrade. Even when a country is not at war they will get ready for one.

Is it not strange that the banks will lend money to both sides? If the banks did not lend money for war then war would be either short lived or fought with sticks and spears. Hundred of years ago the governments would need to find gold to pay for soldiers to fight a war. Now it is available on credit; kill now pay later. Either way the bank continues to make a handsome profit. It was Mayer Amschel Rothschild who is reported to have said, ‘Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation and I care not who makes the laws’ Perhaps the central banks have amended this quote slightly to,’ permit me to lend the money and I care not who makes the war’. It is not so great a stretch to suspect that the heads of central banks may not foment war per se but will no doubt actively remove any obstacles to loan that enables one.

Some countries experience today the results of war, for example Syria and the Yemen. The United States has been at war with someone for almost 100 years. It is not in the bank’s remit to advise policy on war but there is also, just like a corporation, no moral compass to make the world a better place. Another popular misquote is that ‘money is the root of all evil’. The love of money is the correct quote and it serves the argument well that those who wish to profit from conflict have no concern over how it is spent.

War is the Central Banks.

Money doesn’t grow on trees. Well at least this is what we are told until someone magically finds the money tree and creates billions out of thin air. Since 2008 there have been rafts of quantitative easing, designed in the first instance to encourage banks to lend to business.

They didn’t do that.

Instead they bought their own shares and increased the value for their share holders. It was cheap money with a low interest rate. Corporations did the same and every large company gorged on cheap money.

Fast forward to 2020 and we are still seeing quantitative easing, only this time to inject some liquidity into the system. But now those people at the bottom of the food chain are struggling to make ends meet. The middle class has been squeezed out leaving only the very rich and the working class. In 2020 the stock market has never been higher and yet the gap between rich and poor has also never been greater. The neoliberal policies of Reagan and Thatcher (they were at least the figureheads) has proven to be a failure. Keynes has not worked, Hayek has not worked. A new economic model that sustains both the manufacturer and the consumer is needed.

But the stock market does not manufacture. It barely holds stock anymore. It is a house of futures markets, casino bets on currency values, debt derivatives, credit default swaps and occasionally commodities. The stock market set up bleeds the people dry, creating a world of profit completely separate from the every day matters of ordinary people. It serves the banks, corporations and hedge fund managers all looking for that glorious profit that will make them richer. 

And when the stock market crashes and takes out the odd bank or pension fund, ordinary people end up losing their jobs or their life savings, pensions and those prudent investments everyone is advised to make for a modest and comfortable retirement.

Rich people and finance houses fight each other to suck up as much of the market share they can get their hands on, insatiable and unstoppable, sucking the life out of the ordinary day to day economy and the people who live in it.

The Stock Market is Famine.

The final horseman is the result of being a slave to the corporations, the banks and the stock market.

Ordinary every day people have neither the money in sufficient quantity or the inclination to be involved in any of the above and yet they, we, become the recipients of the fallout.

People are the victims of corporate irresponsibility, immorality and complacency.

Likewise banks only lend to you when it suits them. Mark Twain summed up the bank’s attitude to the individual perfectly saying. ‘A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain’. And if you are unlucky, that same bank will lend money to a country who drops a bomb on your house.

In 2008 when the stock market crashed and the banks were in danger of disintegrating, it was down to the ordinary person to suffer austerity and for the governments to put the tax payers in more debt to bail the banks out. I have yet to see the banks offer to pay back the tax payer.

I think most people would be happy to see the break up of every corporation into smaller entities, every bank into the normal high street bank looking after the interests of the local economy and the stock market return to investment into actual stocks. Nothing would be ‘too big to fail’ and no entity could hold governments to ransom.

But governments, with their short term politics and ideals developed through the filter of profit driven entities mean that the people who should be working for you are actually working for the corporations, the banks and the stock market. Between them all they end up causing the death of millions.

It was interesting to note in the UK when during the COVD-19 first days, the emphasis on the health of the nation was superseded by the emphasis on the economy. Businesses were screaming at the government to let them open up again. Their profit was more important than people’s lives.

It is tempting to point the finger at governments and say that the government is the last horseman. Death, however, comes in many guises and while Pestilence, War and Famine cause death by the millions, it is the government’s inaction to stop it that gives Death a free passage.

The Saturn Pluto conjunction of 12 January 2020 marked the beginning of a new 33-year cycle that will bring in a new and lasting structure to the world. It seems that this new structure begins with a complete unravelling of the old economic system and coupled with the effects (but not exclusively) of COVID-19, the planned global economic reset has started with a bang. What was, until the virus, an extend and pretend artificial liquidity boost to allow those in the know to grab as much asset as possible before the crash, is about to disintegrate into chaotic climax of the Hayek principle. The business world is changing. Jobs are changing. Consumerism is changing. Automation is coming in and people are going out; the problem with that being that automatons do not consume. 

Once the depression loses its grip, there will be new and innovative ideas, hopefully to bring in a more sustainable and environmentally friendly economy. For this to become a positive outcome for the ordinary person, the governments must establish policies that are right for the people and not for the horsemen.

The last of the three conjunctions is the Jupiter Saturn conjunction of 21 December 2020. These two planets are the societal planets that symbolise business. It is only natural to see failing businesses within the last quarter of the return cycle. When you consider how the economy has taken a pounding, business puts up its prices to try and recover lost profit during the lock down, consumers have no money because they did not earn during the same lockdown and all this right on top of Christmas, it is not a huge leap to consider that retail is going to be one of the hardest his sectors, followed by manufacturers who supply them.

The 21st December is also the winter solstice so the Sun goes to 0º Capricorn, triggering the previous conjunctions of Saturn to Pluto and Jupiter to Pluto. The seeds of a new beginning may begin to germinate in the face of the destruction created because we did not realise that the four horsemen of the apocalypse have been with us all along.

Anyone who says they don’t want to get involved with politics are just as affected by all of this as those who have paid attention. You don’t have to affiliate with a political party or argue with each other with trite tribal rhetoric on social media. You just have to understand that everything that affects you comes from a political decision and while you are not troubling your local politician, you leave the door open for large corporations to tell your elected representative what to think.

Death does not have to be a one way trip into oblivion. Death is a transformation from the old outmoded and corrupt models to something new and exciting. Ordinary people, in a quantity of numbers, can affect the kind of change and transformation that Death represents.

When coronavirus struck, most of the people were told to stay at home and do nothing. But there were many key workers who could not do that. There were also many volunteers who could not stay at home and many innovators who made stuff for the emergency services like protective equipment. It was not surprising how many people rose above the crisis and did something to help. In the face of a crisis we transformed and became a closer and more caring community. Death changes everything.

So perhaps it is fitting that the last part of this article goes to George Floyd; a black man who was killed unnecessarily by police who placed him in a choke hold for 8 minutes and 46 seconds until he died.

Not just a community, but the entire world rose up in protest. This was truly a global response to an ongoing and unresolved issue about racist attitudes towards people of colour in predominantly white countries. This kind of discrimination is not exclusive to white  people and examples can be found in India, Africa, China...the list is not exhaustive. But we have to start somewhere to unravel what has been created over hundreds of years of attitudes passed on from generation to generation. If the law says we should all be treated equally then the law has to reflect some form of redress when that does not happen. But laws are only created and upheld if we, the people, subscribe to them and some things cannot be enforced. We have to change. We have to transform.

Death is a change we cannot reverse. But why should we want to reverse it if the end of the world, another misquote perhaps, is just the end of the world as we once knew it. In order for us to transform our lives to live in a better and safer world, we have to allow those things to die that prevent our transformation. We must be the change we want to see. Alone we cannot change the world but we can change our world. But when the world comes together, as it did for George Floyd, you realise that you are not alone and collectively we can make a difference.

Universal Basic Income: What Is The Formula?

Even in politics, the viability of the Universal Basic Income (UBI) is being taken seriously. It provides everyone of working age a basic income. It should be a basic income to cover basic needs. That way anyone who does not want to work can at least have enough money to buy food.

People should receive UBI even when they work, paid for by the employer as a part of wages. This way not only is the employer not out of pocket but the government is paying money to people who would otherwise be claiming welfare for being out of work; except there is now no longer a need to process certain benefits or employ staff to bully people into jobs they do not want to do. There are no punitive sanctions, no square pegs in round holes, no time wasting job interviews for people forced to make applications and no stress. UBI is not more expensive, it is actually cheaper, if the level of UBI is pegged against current welfare benefits.

The whole of UBI is paid via the tax service. There can be no fraud. Even self employed can expect UBI to come out of their income, and if we head towards a cashless society, there can be no cash in hand, or off the cards.

It all sounds great but is it realistic? Can there really be a UBI that meets the basic needs of people?

In the light of the COVID-19 pandemic, where the need for everyone who could not work to be compensated in some way, the UBI would have been a perfect safety net to ensure everyone was at least able to buy food.

But in the 21st Century, we should perhaps evaluate what constitutes a basic income. Food and water is obviously top of the tree in terms of need. Next is shelter and warmth. In many affluent countries, shelter is supported through a welfare system, especially where people rent places to live. Under the old system of unemployment, people had to demonstrate that they were looking for work to be entitled. If this entitlement was established there would be an automatic entitlement to housing benefit. In the UK, this did not stop local authorities from changing the amount of housing benefit they were willing to pay and started to ‘cap’ how much they would give to those who rent. Once again the stress to demand people look for work that they are unsuited to, could be invoked to cover housing; the benefit to UBI thereby diminished.

Warmth, a need that is met currently through heating utility companies, is paid for according to how much is used. If a person in receipt of UBI is not employed, they will have to find room in their basic income to pay for it.

Receiving money for food, housing and utilities is not a theoretical concept. People in receipt of benefit for being unemployed, receive a nominal amount of money each week to pay for everything except a certain percentage of rent (paid by a government housing department). Invariably it is not enough and does not account for people who smoke or drink alcohol, neither of which are basic needs but the reality of today is that smokers will prioritise smoking at the top of the tree of needs and drinkers will prioritise drink.

So being brutal and ignoring these unnecessary lifestyle choices, it brings us to what actually constitutes ‘basic needs’.

I worked for the Department of Work and Pensions for many years. I got to understand (and apply) systems, procedures and the way that government benefit works. I got to understand the conditions of entitlement and who would be entitled to receive what benefit. Although many years have now passed and the welfare system has undergone changes, the basic principles remain.

There was a letter that every benefit recipient received, telling them how much money they would be entitled to. The declaration included a statement that informed them that the amount awarded was the ‘lowest amount’ a person could afford to live on. What it did not say is how the government arrived at that figure and how it was calculated year on year? Despite several attempts to acquire the ‘formula’ I received no response from the Department of Work and Pensions; not even an acknowledgement. Therefore I concluded that there was no formula and some government in the past had simply made it up. The welfare benefit weekly amount was, in fact, not enough to live on.

So while the UBI is a great idea, there is no point in simply swapping what amounts to a personal benefit for UBI, because personal benefits no longer cover the basic needs, even more so as the cost of living increase over decades have far outstripped the increases in personal benefit.

‘Basic needs’ is one of those wide sweeping terms that mean different things to different people. No two people are likely to agree on what constitutes a basic need; any smoker or drinker will prove that point. However, the world of the 21st century contains some basic functional necessities that did not even exist in the 1980s. The formula for personal benefit was calculated well before then. Reform is long overdue but how that reform takes shape must come back to answering the question I asked many times. What is the formula that decides the lowest amount of money a person can live on?

Food
Right at the top of the tree, this is by no means easy to calculate. People on low incomes do not eat healthy food, not necessarily because it is too expensive but because there are cheaper alternatives that allows them to afford other ‘basic needs’. This is not a case of having caviar taste with fish finger income, it is more a fish finger taste with tea and toast income.

Of course there are people in the world who, with no income, would love tea and toast. But the government, if they value the safety and security of the people, would surely want those people to be healthy. With levels of human displacement and war, the argument for UBI has to begin where the concept is at least viable.

The other side of the argument is for people not to rely on handouts but to get a job, then they can eat healthily. This is not the case. Those in low paid jobs will come away from benefit but will still need a top up to pay for rent. The so-called minimum wage also does not cover the basics.

It has been established during the COVID-19 pandemic that some of our essential key workers are cleaners, refuse collectors, retail shelf fillers and delivery drivers, many of whom are paid low wages. We do not need overpaid lawyers, sports people, actors, stock brokers, bankers, chief executives and so on to make sure we have access to good healthy food.

Warmth
Utility companies are for-profit companies. They get paid their profit up front before repairing a single pipe or wire. They also determine what the charge to the customer will be before lifting a finger to earn it. You can switch companies as much as you like but the the deference between the lowest and highest charging companies is pennies. Worse still, if you find it difficult to pay, they slap an insurance onto your tariff that makes your energy even more expensive.

People on low incomes struggle to keep on top of their heating bills. Most on low incomes end up with a ‘key meter’ to buy energy in advance. Once the money is spent the energy stops, be it half way through cooking dinner or in the middle of a sub zero temperature winter. This is a brutal system.

Utilities is another item that must be paid for with a personal benefit. If you add the additional rent that must also be paid for by the benefit, there is not much left for anything else.

Communication
Everything nowadays is going on line, from applying for benefits, shopping, news, job hunting and price comparisons to entertainment, social media and education. So if you need to apply for benefits you have to go on line. If you need to apply for a job you have to go on line. The world is geared to internet based working, without which some needs to access it will cost elsewhere via internet cafes. Whether you use a computer (if you could even afford one) or a smart phone (contract required) you need to have an on line presence to function in the world today. Governments have talked about making sure that entire countries are networked with internet. If it is that important to them it must surely be a basic need. Mobile phone contracts cost alarmingly, even the most basic of contracts will cost around 5% of the personal benefit. Internet at home is considerably more and beyond the reach of most low income households.

One also has to consider how basic need includes health be it physical, emotional or psychological. Humans need to interact and socialise. Without connectivity, people will start to become dysfunctional and well being is disregarded as a choice rather than a basic need.

In conclusion, the UBI sounds great in principle but it counts for nothing unless governments look honestly at the lowest end of the food table. In the same way that the lowest amount someone is supposed to live on is an uncalculated and arbitrary figure, likewise is the so-called minimum wage, which is designed to force employers to pay a certain amount. The minimum wage does in no way constitute a living wage. In the UK there is a working tax credit for low paid workers. This is nothing more than a subsidy to the employer, paid for by the tax payer and therefore an unnecessary welfare cost. But it also means that the minimum wage cannot be a living wage, otherwise the working tax credit would cease to exist.

The UBI needs to be costed properly according to basic need, otherwise it is not a basic income at all but just the same unexplained figure with no ability to calculate necessary increases into the future.

The Crowley Tarot Spread

The Crowley Tarot Spread.

I have been asked, on occasion, to explain how to perform what I know as the Crowley spread; a tarot spread reputed to be designed by Alistair Crowley but I have no evidence to support that. However, as I have known it thus for so long, it has been easy to ignore the provenance and simply try to understand how to work the spread. It feels like a Crowley spread because it is devilishly complicated.

There are many tarot spreads that are laid out in a particular pattern with a specific focus. The 10-card Celtic cross is the most common starter spread. It is a great beginner’s spread but as with all disciplines there comes a point where you seek a more fluid way to interpret meaning from each card, especially as you begin to understand how tarot cards interact with each other.

It took me several years to become comfortable with the Crowley spread but the more I used it, the more I discovered the boundaries of designated  positions could often be a restriction to more revealing interpretations. What was more exciting was the way that the spread generated a past-to-present-to-future-influence not only by the way in which the cards were revealed but also indicated where past influences affected the present and future influences manifested from past experience. For me this is the tarot spread of all spreads for free flowing interpretations.

So let’s start to unpack the spread and describe to you how it is done.

The deck is shuffled - by whom is up to you, however, it would be beneficial for the querent to perform the task number 2. I am aware that some readers do not like the querent touching their cards, however, it should be pointed out that these mass-manufactured cards have been handled by scores of people during the production process. So there is nothing wrong with asking a querent to cut the cards; and you can always recharge them after the reading.
The deck is placed face down on the table. The querent cuts the deck into two piles (it does not have to be even) and then the two piles are cut again to leave four piles on the table.
The next thing to do is decide which card will represent the querent. This is an important designation because it will define how much of the reading is apparent to the querent’s past, present and future. Every card read before the querent is reached can be considered as the known past, present and future intention. What comes after the querent card is past influences, present consequences and future options. It may be worth noting at this point that this is not the only division of past, present and future indications but this division is perhaps the way the querent sees it.

The sign of the zodiac will decide if the querent belongs to one of the four elements. For me the designations are Fire = swords, Air = rods, Water = cups and Earth = pentacles. You may choose for yourself what you believe the designation should be, as I am well aware of the argument between the elements attributed to swords and rods.

Next look at the age of the querent and choose an appropriate card to identify as the querent.
Child to 20 = Page
20 -40 = Knight
40 - 70 = King for male, Queen for female
70+ = Emperor for male and Empress for female.

Once you have decided which card will represent the querent, you must then sift through each of the four piles, without changing the order of the cards and remembering to keep the piles separate from each other, to discover which pile the querent is in. Whatever pile the querent resides in will be the cards you use for the reading (which is why you have to keep the piles separate). All other cards are discarded and play no more part in the reading.

If you were to divide the pack of 78 Tarot cards into 4 roughly equal piles, you would end up with an average pile of 19 to 20 cards. However, I have performed a reading with as little as a pile of 9 cards and as many as a pile of 35 cards. The interesting thing about this is that the fewer the cards, the more potent the meanings and the urgency of it (We would be talking a lunar cycle at most). If there are only two rows of 7 (14 cards or less in total), the situation is immediate to the point that head and heart are in concert, which means both air and water command the first row and the second row becomes the physical line. More than 28 cards becomes trivial and suggests the querent’s mind is focused on numerous things and therefore nothing is particularly important compared to other matters.

For the sake of this exercise, I am going to suggest we have arrived at a random layout of 22 cards. The cards are laid out, face down, in rows of seven cards. The top row represents the mind. The second row represents the emotions (because head and heart do not always agree). The third row represents physical happenings and the last remaining card starts the beginning of the fourth row, which represents obstacles. A fifth row tends to be further obstacles and thus indicates that the querent is in someway the author of their own difficulties or trapped in circumstances over which they have very little control.

It is important to note that the spread represents only the corporeal body and whatever spiritual influences or spark of divine intervention is most likely to be found within the suit that you decide represents fire. The esoteric principle is that to cause something to happen we must think something before we can decide how we feel about it in order to generate the motivation to act in the physical world. The other way up is how we react to something: first there is the physical event, which we respond to emotionally first and then rationalise it before deciding if we want to cause something to happen; and so the cycle of cause and effect is established in the layout of the spread.

As mentioned earlier, the cards are face down. You cannot cheat by seeing them all at once (and they will mean less this way in any case). You must turn over each card one at a time and interpret what you see in the light of only the overturned cards. It is important not to be tempted to sneak peak at the cards around it as it will not help you in the end. The story has to unfold in the order it is designed to happen.

Another thing to know before you start your reading is that the spread is divided into 7 columns but three distinct areas of influence: The first 3 columns deal with issues that are either past or issues that have happened in the past but have a significant bearing on the future.

The middle column deals with where the querent finds themselves ‘today’; the present.

The 3 remaining columns on the right deal with issues that may be consequences of past actions already manifested and potential future options in the light of those manifested actions.

In the case of the 22 card spread, the 22nd card sits at the bottom of the first column and will therefore be read in the light of the original consideration, i.e. that being the first card to be turned over is the top left card in the first column (and also the card immediately preceding the obstacle card)

A further aspect you can detect comes from looking at not only the immediate surrounding cards to the one you read but also the vertical and diagonal lines they belong to. I hope this aspect will become clearer as you lay out the spread.

So staring with the first card, top left. Turn it over and consider this is what the querent is thinking of (first card in the line of thought). This should give you a starting thrust for the remainder of the reading.

The second card will be the top right but it is achieved by counting 7 cards including the card you just turned over. On each count of 7, apart from the card you just read, you only count the face-down cards. As there are no face-up cards to reach the second card this does not matter yet. The second card is how the querent sees the future based on knowing nothing more than what they know at this point.

Count another 7 cards (including the face-up second card) and you will get to the card in the 6th column in the emotional line. This is how the querent feels about the interpretation of the first two cards.

Count another 7 and you will get to the card on the physical line in the 5th column. This is the first indication of what has become manifest in the light of the preceding cards.

The next count of 7 will start to jump cards that are face-up. Count the face-up card you just read in the physical line 5th column (that’s 1). count the last card on the physical row (that’s 2). Count the obstacle card in the 4th row (that’s 3). Go back to the top and SKIP the first card in the top row because it is already face-up. count the next card in the top line 2nd column (that’s 4). Count the cards in the 3rd, 4th, and 5th column (that’s 5, 6 and 7) and turn it over. You should now be looking at the card in the top line of the 5th column. This card is just to the right of the centre column that represents the here and now. Therefore it is logical to assume that in the light of the cards interpreted so far, this is what the querent thinks they ought to do, given what they understand their circumstances are.

If you count the next two cards correctly, skipping those that are already turned over, the next two cards should be those in the 5th column but in the emotional line first and then the 6th column of the physical line. So what does the querent feel about the situation and what do they want to do about it?

If you have successfully counted the cards in batches of 7 to this point, you will be able to successfully count the remaining cards, remembering to count the face-up card you just read and count 7 and by not counting any face-up cards on the way.

If, at any time in the reading, you turn up the querent’s card, you can then identify where they are in their situation. A querent at the very first card implies quite simply that the reading is all about them and their aspirations. The querent at the top right implies that the querent is looking to the future that is yet to come. The querent in the middle column places them at the present, and if on the emotional line they are at the centre of their circumstance. If placed at the end of the emotional line then they have emotional concerns for the future as it is unknowable. If at the end of the physical line then the consequences are unknowable. (there is no 8th column).

To further complicate the reading, any card turned over before the querent means that the card relates to the past (even if it is in columns 5, 6 and 7); Future influences are often carried over from past events. Say a person has had a bad relationship and reflects those feelings towards their next relationship? The effect could be most discomfiting and shape future relationships.

Likewise, any card turned over after the querent is discovered becomes issues that affect the future. So if the cards turned over after the querent appears in columns 1, 2 or 3, then past events may yet play a role in shaping the future.

Cards drawn before or after the querent in the middle column may reveal where the querent has arrive on this journey today. Finally the obstacle cards may indicate something that has already happened and needs to be resolved or something that could happen and therefore may be avoided.

As you turn over more and more cards, don’t forget that each new card can interact only with those that have turned face-up. It is important to consider these as they appear because once you have turned over all the cards, the interactions are there but the water is muddied by the permutations.

At the end of the reading you may wish to look at the number of major cards and minor card suits that make up your spread. This is particularly useful for those who study numerology because it will reveal what the querent needs to cause to happen (major cards), what inspiration they may need to draw on (Fire), the direction to focus the mind (Air), the most positive emotion to employ (Water) and the best action to take (Earth).

And that is the Crowley spread. People are complicated beings and their lives intermingled with past present and future influences. This spread attempts to reflect that and I have found no other spread that comes near it for it’s flexibility, nuance and complete inclusivity in the manner that tarot was designed to express.