Leeds Trolleybus Enquiry Day 21

Leeds Trolleybus Enquiry Day 21

June 10    2014

Day 21 of the Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry saw the completion of the cross examination of Mr Sean Flesher, Head of Parks and Countryside.  Links to the recordings of the day’s questioning from five different objectors follow and I add commentary below these.

http://www.mixcloud.com/CosmicClaire/leeds-trolleybus-enquiry-day-21-june-10-2014-first-morning-session/

In the first morning session of day 21 of the Leeds Trolleybus Enquiry, June 21 2014,  the Inspector Mr Whitehead asks a series of questions of Mr Sean Flesher, Head of Parks and Countryside, on impacts on green space, and is then followed by Mr Bill McKinnon, for Friends of Woodhouse Moor on how NGT would impact there.

http://www.mixcloud.com/CosmicClaire/leeds-trolleybus-enquiry-day-21-june-10-2014-late-morning-session/

In the late morning session of day 21 of the Leeds Trolleybus Enquiry June 10 2014 Mr Bill McKinnon of the Friends of Woodhouse Moor completes his cross examines Mr Sean Flesher on the impact of the proposed trolleybus route on the most used park in Leeds.  He is then followed by Mrs Eileen Pattison speaking for Middleton Park Labour Party about the impact of NGT on Belle Isle Circus.  Lastly Mr Stuart Natkus representing Headingley Land Developments on the proposed public parks for Headingley Hill.

http://www.mixcloud.com/CosmicClaire/leeds-trolleybus-enquiry-day-21-june-10-2014-early-afternoon-session/

In the early afternoon session of day 21 of the Leeds Trolleybus Enquiry, June 10 2014, Ms Dawn Carey Jones cross examines Mr Sean Flesher, Head of Parks and Countryside on green space issues of the impact of the trolleybus route.

http://www.mixcloud.com/CosmicClaire/leeds-trolleybus-enquiry-day-21-june-10-2014-late-afternoon-session/

In the final session of day 21 of the Leeds Trolleybus Enquiry, June 10 2014, Neil Cameron QC for the Applicant introduces Mr Paul Hanson who is responsible for traffic modelling for the NGT scheme and takes him through his summary proof of evidence.

I was only able to attend the Enquiry today for a short period, so I have had to rely on feedback from those who attended and of course the audio recordings, for which I am most grateful to my colleagues amongst the objectors who took care of these.

The locations dealt with in the questioning today were essentially the three main green spaces that the trolleybus route would pass through, and for which new roads would be required: Woodhouse Moor, Headingley Hill and Belle Isle Circus.

To sum up what I gathered from what I heard myself and what others told me about, there is an issue which came up again and again in various  guises, but had one single theme and thread running through them. It is my belief that this is the core of how Leeds City Council wish to present their scheme, however in my own view this is like Dorian Grey, whose real face is hidden on a painting in an attic, and not as pleasant as that shown to the public.

This can be summed up by the fact that Mr Flesher has repeatedly maintained that these parks and green spaces would actually be improved by the presence of a trolleybus route passing through them.  One surely has to be adept at mental gymnastics to understand this, but in essence what he was saying was that because a few benches, a disabled access pathway or a few new planted trees to ‘mitigate’ the destroyed mature ones might be planted, that the parks would then fulfil the ‘Leeds Quality Parks’ standards which they do not now apparently, even though as was admitted for instance, Monument Moor is accessible to wheelchair users as it now stands.  There is just no formally designated access route.  (Mr Ward claimed similar things about the intended partial demolition of buildings up Headingley Lane.)

Belle Isle Circus, which is a grassed area roundabout of a sufficient size to act as a park, with mature trees around much of its perimeter, would also apparently be upgraded by the passage through its centre of a new trolleybus route (with poles and cables of course) because a few extra park benches and improved disabled access would be added.

A similar claim is made with respect to the meadow on Headingley Hill behind St Columba’s church.  While this land is technically private it is open to the public, and I may have mentioned before how the lady who leases this land allows what is known as ‘permissive’ access.  This beautiful and completely unspoilt countryside meadow within a hundred yards of The Original Oak pub would have a two lane trolleybus road (again with cables and poles) built through it requiring the felling of a substantial number of superb mature trees dating from the Victorian period, and nearly all in good health.  Remember this is within the view of Headingley Castle which Mr Ward the other day admitted would suffer a ‘harmful’ impact, and that a trolleybus once in each direction every six minutes would mean the passage of a forty five foot bendy bus once every three minutes.  But the taking of the remnant fragments of land into public ownership and designating them ‘parks’ apparently improves them.

This is an entirely paper based exercise which bears no true relationship to what would actually take place, which in material fact would be a serious loss of natural environment and open parkland which would be invaded by the frequent and incessant passage of large vehicles for over 18 hours of each day.  It is mere sophistry, the arguing that black is white.  We have truly entered Orwellian territory here, where truth is lies and the government can define words to mean whatever it wants them to.

Briefly I should also like to mention Mrs Eileen Pattison’s short but pertinent set of  questions.  I have already referred to the problems for Belle Isle Circus, but we must recognise that she is speaking for the local Labour Party which is going against the Labour group which dominates the Council.  This Labour group is becoming more and more autocratic and out of control.  I have mentioned Eastgate, Royal Park School and the suspension of Cllr Illingworth elsewhere, but it is interesting that the Labour Councillors for the area have felt themselves obliged to follow the dictates of their high ups on the Exec Board rather than the grass roots feeling of those who would be most directly impacted by the proposed development.  As a former Labour voter this is one reason why I do not now vote Labour (except for the good Cllr Illingworth whom I regard as a human being rather than a politician, having known him for some twenty years).  My understanding about the Labour Party was that it was supposed to represent the people, or at least that is what Keir Hardy intended so far as my knowledge goes, not that it was intended to become a new top down dictatorship, which is what we have now.  And I think many of us have become concerned with its overly cosy relationship with corporations and property developers.  Victoria Gate:  I rest my case.  The trolleybus is little different.  Three line party whip on their members who would otherwise be inclined to vote with the wishes of their constituents, and a refusal to make any attempt to properly consult on the type of solutions Leeds should seek for its traffic congestion (which is a city wide problem, and not even at its worst in Headingley.  Have you been on the Kirkstall Road at five thirty on a weekday afternoon?)  Instead they bulldoze ahead and call those such as myself and others who campaign against it ‘Taliban’.  Perhaps these despots should look in the mirror once in a while.

This is an immensely serious matter we are dealing with here, not just for those communities on the proposed route, but by extension for the whole of Leeds, West Yorkshire and even the whole country when truly fallacious arguments such as those which are employed to justify such extensive environmental, conservation and heritage degradation. 

Frankly, the arguments are laughable. 

One can only hope that the Inspector is wise enough to see through the smokescreen of technical language, ‘quality standards’ and gobbledegook, but one has to be concerned that he is constrained by the legalese structure and format which is imposed by central government on how he is required to assess the issues. 

But this witness does not stand alone.  Probably the youngest to take the stand so far, he has also been on the shortest period of time, and I would suggest that he is little more than a glove puppet for the powers that be.  We should remember the high ups such as Mr Farrington, who was demonstrated to be ignorant (he had never heard of the Liverpool trolleybus scheme that was rejected in 1999 until the first day of the Enquiry) or Mr Henkel, whom it would appear was shown to have mislead the Enquiry in his criticism of First when actually he, or his team, had done those very things that they made accusations about.  If I have misunderstood what was said, I should be most grateful to anyone who could refer me to the point in the recordings which can help me clarify this.

There certainly is no question that Mr Ward admitted to Mr Natkus that there were matters which did ‘not appear to add up’ in submitted proofs.

So we can only hope that the Inspector will look more deeply than the beguiling front and recognise what is going on beneath that surface.

There was a certain amount of impatience from the Inspector in the later part of the day regarding repetition of questions which had already been asked or topics which had been covered, and this is understandable on his part, however it is very difficult for objectors who have not been present to always follow what has already been covered.

You may well say ‘What about the audio recordings?’, and indeed ~ however there are two things that come to mind with respect to these. 

Firstly, it takes time to process and upload these, and there is a delay so that someone in an afternoon session could not reasonably be expected to have heard the morning session as it may well not even be online until later, and Ms Dawn Jones was subject to this limitation in her own questions, a large number of which had already been touched on by Mr McKinnon before she arrived.  However, it was also the case that I understand from Ms Jones that she believed she would have taken these questions in different directions to those taken by Mr McKinnon. 

The second point is simply that even given a fast internet link, the time taken to follow the proceedings through the online recordings could take up all one’s time every evening.

Last week Mrs Peerless, the specialist assistant Inspector for Heritage referred at least twice to the recordings, but Mr Whitehead the chief Inspector had not done so to my recollection.  However today he did and I felt this was not entirely proper, being as these recordings which I am co-ordinating and being assisted with by other objectors are an informal project we are undertaking.  We are doing this equally both for our own reference and as a public news service, given that the mainstream media coverage of the Enquiry has been scanty at best, and almost entirely lacking in the quarter of public service broadcasting which has a duty to the license payers to keep them informed.

Thus for the Inspectors to refer to the recordings as if they were an official source is improper.  I mentioned this to the Programme Officer, as it would be improper of myself to make unsolicited approaches to Mr Whitehead, and asked her to convey my concern that this overstepped boundaries.  I was encouraged that after the close of the day’s proceedings Mr Whitehead did come up to me and we had a few friendly words about the matter.  While I am happy for all, including the Inspectors and even the Applicant’s team to refer to the archive, it was agreed that it would not be correct to regard it as a formal service which everyone should be expected to have listened to.

For myself, my main point about this is that with the ease of digital recording, and the massive increase in availability of data storage which has only really become possible in the last five years or so, it is negligent of Leeds City Council to fail to make a formal set of recordings which they could make available as podcasts.  Our own recordings which are currently hosted on www.mixcloud.com/CosmicClaire are not at present downloadable unfortunately, because we are constrained with the availability of free space.  We should like to be able to put them out as podcasts so that people can listen with greater convenience, but our prime concern in choosing Mixcloud was to have a site which would have free unlimited upload capacity so that it would not suffer a takedown if we were unable to maintain payments at any time.

However, the team of Objectors and I are very proud of what we are achieving here and when all this is over we shall be looking at lodging the archive with some public library resource either in Leeds, where there are a number of places where this could be done, or elsewhere.

As to the failure of Leeds City Council to take responsibility for doing this, the excuse of ‘too expensive’ is, again, laughable.  It has cost us almost nothing in financial terms, so we have to look for other reasons.  At the top of the list we would suggest that it is not considered desirable for the Public Enquiry to be truly public.  As objectors we are happy for it all to be out there (barring the loss of the odd minute or so from time to time) as we are confident that what is being said is good evidence against this insane scheme.  Just as NGT withheld the consultation results until it became unviable, we would suggest that LCC are deliberately being obstructive towards this.  However, since none of them have come to the Enquiry and none have been questioned, they have not been put on the spot in the way that the NGT witnesses and counsel have, and so have not responded to popular demand.  One feels that they are painting themselves into a corner, and the longer this goes on, the more difficult they will find it to change their strategy, but at the same time this demonstrates the unrelenting autocracy of the Exec Board.  As someone once said, by your works are you known, and withholding of information is not something that encourages confidence in this day and age.

The effects on the Whitfields in Hunslet for instance have not been exactly publicised by the Council, so find out what they purpose for the good people of that community in this video made recently.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GE3HelZD-A

Leeds Trolleybus Enquiry Day 14

               Leeds Trolleybus Enquiry Day 14

                           May 21   2014

Today saw a new witness sit behind the desk on the left hand of the Inspector at the Enquiry.

Links to audio recordings of each of the day’s sessions are below with brief descriptions of each session.

My thoughts on the days proceedings follow after the links.

http://www.mixcloud.com/CosmicClaire/leeds-trolleybus-enquiry-day-14-may-21-2014-first-morning-session/

The first morning session of day 14 of the Leeds Trolleybus Enquiry, May 21 2014. Mr John Henkel, acting director general of Metro takes the stand as a witness for NGT.

Neil Cameron examines on behalf of the Applicant NGT.

http://www.mixcloud.com/CosmicClaire/leeds-trolleybus-enquiry-day-14-may-21-2014-late-morning-session/

The late morning session of day 14 of the Leeds Trolleybus Enquiry, May 21 2014. Mr John Henkel, acting director general of Metro continues as a witness for NGT. Cllr Barry Anderson (C. Adel) cross examines.

http://www.mixcloud.com/CosmicClaire/leeds-trolleybus-enquiry-day-14-may-21-2014-early-afternoon-session/

In the early afternoon session of day 14 of the Leeds Trolleybus Enquiry, May 21, 2014, the cross examination of Mr John Henkel, Acting Director of West Yorkshire Combined Transport Authority continues from Mr Malcolm Bell, Mechanical Engineer.

http://www.mixcloud.com/CosmicClaire/leeds-trolleybus-enquiry-day-14-may-21-2014-late-afternoon-session/

In the final afternoon session of day 14, May 21 2014, Gregory Jones QC cross examines John Henkel, Acting Director of the new West Yorkshire Combined Transport Authority on the legal advice that has been taken by NGT and how this has affected their consultations, amongst other matters.

John Henkel is a much different witness to his predecessor Jason Smith.  A much older man to start with, former director of Metro and now acting director of it’s successor the WY Combined Transport Authority, if I have that correct.  It was elucidated in the final session from a question by Gregory Jones QC that this was the naming as it stands.  Previous posts of the audio had the ‘Metro’ usage as throughout the Enquiry that is the appellation that has been applied.

He is also more measured in his responses than Mr Smith.  In the session with Mr Malcolm Bell questioning which I witnessed I had the feeling that he was somehow dodging a fair amount of what seemed good questions.  Indeed the Inspector agreed at one point that Mr Bell was asking good questions, which is probably as close as anyone can expect to a compliment as we are going to get out of Mr Whitehead.

Perhaps it is the team of six legal experts behind him and his numerous years of study and practice at his art, but when Gregory Jones begins his questioning, it is as if scales fall from our eyes and we see through the fog which surrounds a witness to the truth of their meanings.

The legal advice, or ‘legal analysis’ which Metro (as then was) had  seemed to be somewhat in question as to its proper status and there ensued a long interchange about anti-competitive behaviour. Mr Jones posited that there would be the suggestion of the absence of a competitive market if head to head competition were not to be allowed, and of course the prioritisation of NGT over regular buses on roads which both share for long sections of the route surely has to raise such a question.

First had not been found to have engaged in anti-competitive behaviour and yet to use a phrase I found amusing, Mr Jones suggested that NGT had tried to ‘play the man and not the ball’.  The instance of this was the NGT documents which mention ‘the reasons for the (First’s) objections’.

Mr Jones took particular offence at this on behalf of his client, because he asked whether there was any suggestion of his client’s reasons being improper, not true and therefore dishonest?  He argued that such comments in the NGT proofs should be ignored by the Inspector as they were clearly an attempt to tarnish First’s reputation in front of the Enquiry.

We then followed with a searing examination of the financial risks involved in the scheme if it were not successful in gaining enough revenue to pay for itself over a six to eight year period.  I cannot urge my readers strongly enough to listen to some of these sessions from Mr Jones on the audio player links and ask themselves whether the NGT and former Metro team have any credibility left at all.

We were left by the end of the late afternoon session with a strong impression of the immense financial risk for the city and people of Leeds involved in engaging in such a project.

An amusing sideline I discovered today was a web forum called ‘Skyscraper cities’, where Tbus, a group of trolleybus aficionados and lobbyists hang out.  Someone had posted a link to this blog for which I thank them.  Someone a couple of posts on called this blog ‘massively biased’.  Well I had to laugh.  I am a resident of Headingley and I am giving my views on the insane trolleybus scheme which would devastate a string of conservation areas and damage communities and environments both sides of the river.  And I am largely reporting on how I see the progress of the Enquiry.  What these kind of people mean when they say something is biased is that it doesn’t conform to what they want and expect of us.  The fact that communities all along the route are saying ‘No’ and withholding their consent to this is a factor which cannot be ignored, no matter how much the people with minds of metal and wheels try to persuade them otherwise.  It is something that these proponents cannot compute in their heads and so they continue to seek to impose their madness on us all.  For I do genuinely believe it is a kind of madness which the proponents of this are suffering from, believing that it is acceptable, and that it can be calculated and justified on the basis of a cost benefit analysis, to destroy whole green environments which have evolved over centuries.  Or to tell people that they will just have to live with the fact of this intrusion in their lives and get used to it for the benefit of the control freaks who put it there.

All along so far we have seen shortcomings in many aspects of the proposals, most especially consultation and that really sums up what this is about.  Having a plan they wish to impose which has not in any way been consented to.

Before I close I will just trail a piece I am anticipating posting during the half term break next week.  If you have read other entries in my blog before those on the trolleybus you may have noticed several on the subject of the history of possibly Headingley’s most famous literary former resident, Professor JRR Tolkien, who lived in several different houses along the A660.  I believe strongly that the eco-ethics which are embedded throughout his works can inform our discussion of how we wish to frame our future.  Many of the trees along the A660 which were Victorian or older plantings will be trees which Tolkien knew as he went up and down along that road.  For those of us who take a special interest in his works this is an opportunity to feel a connection with him through his well known love of trees.  But the greater insight is the recognition of the continuity of the life within our local environment.  To seek to destroy so many trees and so much of the history which they embody and have witnessed is a disregard for the entire community along this road.  Headingley deserves to have some low level Tolkien tourism, there is still enough context left hereabouts to get a strong feel of the history of this local Shire, and how it might have been ninety years ago, but if the trees were cut down and all the roads enlarged that would be lost.  I am reminded of Orwell’s 1984 in which history is rewritten so often that no-one knows what it originally really was, and what is worse, no-one cares.  Let us not ever become so detached from our roots that we do not care about what was here before us and how we relate to it.  The threat of NGT is the threat of a mindset which cares not about these things, only about quotas, and statistics, and how these can be used to manipulate the world.

Leeds Trolleybus Enquiry ~ What We Are Fighting For

Leeds Trolleybus Enquiry 

~

 What We Are Fighting For

I'd like to take the opportunity to post a picture which my friend, and co-objector to the Follybus, Chris Foren, Chair of the A660 Joint Council, just sent me of Headingley Meadows, directly behind St Columba's Church on Headingley Lane.

This beautiful piece of land has never been built on in recorded history, although it is possible that there is mediaeval or Anglo-Saxon archaeoogy lying beneath the ground.

The lady who leases this land has told me that she purposely leaves it unfenced on the side where the photographer is standing, and where there is a small road going up to Headingley Castle (now private flats), so that it is publicly accessible for anyone to walk on and enjoy.  Beyond the trees in the distance are two fenced off fields where she grazes her horses which you can see from the top deck of buses as you go by on Headingly Hill.

Leeds City Council with their NGT project want to drive a two lane road with poles and overhead cables through all this (and more) so that trolleybuses can have a short cut with a Headingley bypass.  

Headingley has very little green space but the Council want to destroy what little it has, all of which is publicly visible, and part of which is open to the public.  The Council say that they would create a 'pocket park' for public use out of part of this land if they put the trolleybus through it.  While attempting to destroy this land, they perversely claim to be adding to green space by creating a park area which would have a trolleybus running past it one way or the other every three minutes, and which would be a fraction of the existing publicly accessible space.

At every turn the Council and their NGT planners are attempting to degrade our environments and persuade us it is an improvement.

For an inner city area, could you get much better than this?

You can reach this field, which will soon be blossoming with wild flowers, by walking up the small side road next to the telephone exchange by the Original Oak and opposite St Michael's Church.  It is unfenced and open to the public.

 

If Leeds City Council and NGT cared as much about the environment and public access to green space as the lady who keeps these beautiful fields, they would not be trying to destroy most of it, while claiming to be giving the fraction of it which would remain to the public.

Behind the cameraman there are nearly two dozen majestic Victorian planted trees most of which would be sacrificed to the trolleybus route.  And they talk about creating a public park out of a postage stamp remnant which would have a forty-five foot long trolleybus rolling past every three minutes.  If what was being proposed wasn’t so serious it would be laughable that they think we can be hoodwinked by this sham.

Contact your local Councillor and tell them that you will withold your vote from them next week in the local elections if they do not pledge to resist this insane trolleybus scheme, or write to Cllr Keith Wakefield (Leader of the Council) telling him he should resign for attempting such crimes against the environment and people of Leeds.

keith.wakefield@leeds.gov.uk

Brave New World

Before  I begin this latest blog, may I just post links to my other blog Waking The Monkey! the online version of my book of the same title about my experiences at the Hundredth Monkey world healing camp

Introduction to Waking The Monkey!

Contents

Chapter 0: The Fool

Chapter 1: Arrival

Chapter 2: And So It Begins… 

Chapter 3: Mururoa Allting

 And so to my thoughts on one of the most important books of the twentieth century...

Brave New World

I’ve just finished reading Brave New World, written by Aldous Huxley in 1931.  As many people know, it is a famous and highly influential seminal book that has given immense insight into the present and ongoing state of the developed world today.

It could almost be taken as a textbook for the implementation of the ‘dumbed down’ culture which has so taken hold of the mass mind.

Clearly a great deal has already been written about this over many years, and it is not my intention to simply repeat all that.  However I would urge anyone who has not read it to find a copy and read it.  I found a nice old orange and white 1950s Penguin edition in my local Oxfam bookshop, readers of this blog will know of the pleasure I take from old editions.  At a mere 200 pages it is a very easy read, only taking me two days.  It is a curious mix between the description of the banal culture which has become endemic throughout the world and the deep philosophical insight of John Savage who has grown up in an ‘uncivilised’ reservation with only a technical handbook from his mother, and the complete works of Shakespeare for his literary education.

This device is used to allow the immortal bard to speak through John Savage, quoting mostly from the Tempest (Miranda’s comment about the ‘brave new world’ which comes to her in the form of the drunken sailors used for the title), but also, Hamlet, Othello and other plays.

While brilliant in his usage of this poetic language to critique the emotionally vacuous values of the society conditioned to only seek pleasure and consumption, while avoiding all conflict, it is also the keyhole view into the essential flaw of the philosophy espoused by the world state, but which Huxley barely touches upon in this work.  It is intriguing that he later explored the spiritual dimension and his other most famous work ‘The Doors of Perception’ engages with this to a degree.

The key feature of the Brave New World is the control of everyone from conception, first by chemical manipulation of the foetus and then through childhood conditioning, in order to suit them perfectly to their economic function in society.  Even the deliberately retarded lower castes are happy with their lot because they have been built to be so.  And as the Controller for Western Europe explains to the rebels near the end of the book, when Cyprus was cleared and repopulated exclusively with Alphas, the intellectual and administrative class, they soon came to civil war since they all wanted the ‘high grade’ jobs and rebelled against ‘a spell of low grade work’, and shortly begged the World Government to reassume control.

In the Brave New World there is no social mobility, no unexpected chance, no variation that is not planned for.  A stifling and stultifying stagnation has descended upon human society allowing for no change, development or evolution of any kind.  Even most technical innovations are dead ended since they are considered a threat to stability.  John Savage himself is a similar threat since he refuses to engage in free sex or the pleasure drug soma and is a potential social contaminant of discontent.

Huxley, writing as he was in the aftermath of the Great War, the Russian Revolution and at the time of the Great Depression, appears to be posing a dilemma between the chaos of the nationalist, class and economic struggles of his time and the stability of total control.  Perhaps I should not disclose the final denouement for those who have yet to read this great work, but suffice it to say that Huxley, through his hero Savage, appears to see no way out.

Not that he is advocating the totalitarian behaviourist state:  his sympathies appear to be with the philosophical insight and existential plight of the stranger in the strange land who is Savage, yet poses in opposition to this the crushing weight of the Controller’s argument that too much freedom inevitably leads to conflict.  Thus only the elite of elites should have the power to make real choices, relieving the mass of the population, even most of the Alpha class, of this burden.

So far so bad.  But Huxley has himself presented the crack in the armour which potentially offers a way out, though whether he saw it himself or not at the time is open to debate.

It is the exclusive reliance on intellectual and academic development as the criteria of class position.  He himself was a product of the British class system which itself was founded on such an assumption, at least for those who had to work rather than being born to the aristocracy.  This was the product of centuries of social Darwinism whereby power and control had become the sole deciding value.  All other values are seen as either subsidiary, subservient to it, or else irrelevant and either to be discarded or destroyed as a potential threat.

What might be termed the ‘yin’ values of the native peoples (on whom he based his savage reservation of Native Americans) of lands overtaken by the Empire of Western Dominance, or within our own culture as ‘feminine values’ are seen as of no economic value, and therefore have no place within the Brave New World.  When shall we see womanly times?

It is in ‘the spell of low grade work’ that the key lies.  All the Alphas on Cyprus wanted to be the Administrator who tells everyone else what to do.  None are willing to sweep or sow or cook.  But these things in themselves have value, it is only that the value assigned to them by the Alphas is small, though they benefit from them as much as anyone.  It is no coincidence that the term ‘Alpha’ is often associated with ‘Male’.  The Alpha Male is the leader of the tribe in so called ‘primitive’ cultures or animal herds.  But even in such cases the Alpha has earned that position by taking risks and showing better leadership or greater strength than his rivals.

In modern society apparently too many people think that they deserve this status while it actually becomes less and less useful.  A popular song tells us that ‘Everybody wants to rule the world’.  At least too many do.  While in actual fact we need to take responsibility for what is in our own purview, and not seek to dominate others.  Such domination is an avoidance of things we might think to be beneath our dignity, while actual dignity is found in engaging with these things.  An unwillingness to get our hands dirty is a sign of alienation from the real world.  Role models such as ‘royalty’ as seen today are a perversion.  The ancient kings would stand at the front of their army in battle, would lead by example, were servants of their people, would die for them if required, and so earned the right to be the Alpha.  They did not inherit wealth and status and power simply through the accident of their ancestry.

I believe it was Martin Luther King who said (though I am willing to stand corrected) that should life put us in the position of sweeping streets for a living, then we should sweep the street as if we were Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel.  When a mother washes her soiled infant she does not see it as low status work, but does it with love and treats her child as though he were the infant Jesus.  This is the highest status work that can be imagined, a labour of love and service.

If we all gave that devotion to whatever tasks life presents to us, and equally, if we all valued such tasks when performed for us by others then there would be no ‘low grade work’ or ‘high grade work’, but only devotional service to the whole community.  We would not need people to be bred and conditioned to ‘love their servitude’.  It would not be servitude ~ servitude is a relationship to a person or a system which is in domination and command over one.  Service is the correct nature of work when carried out in freedom rather than coercion.

But a system of thought which sees only economic value and sees no spiritual value in people will only see their work in terms of economic value, human relationships become no more than commerce instead of love, respect and trust.

This is the grand conflict the world faces today.  The economic, financial and corporate elites, and those whose souls are stunted by generations of separation from what it truly means to be human such as the royalties and aristocrats who trace their ancestries into the mists of history are in danger of destroying the human race with their unsatiated lust to keep the billions of ‘proles’ as Orwell would put it, in perpetual servitude.  We see this in the debt enslavement and dispossession that has advanced apace in recent times.  Ancient nations in their entirety have been swallowed up into the servitude to the bloated coffers of these elites.  Human need has been discarded for the greed of these power elites, and the sleight of hand which leads to both Huxley’s Brave New World and Orwell’s 1984 is almost complete.

The only antidote to this is the assertion and practise of human value.  Service through willingness and love.  Revolution by force will only replace one power elite with another.  The Alpha Controllers of the world cannot see this because they are trapped in their own prison of intellectual domination, while they separate themselves from humanity and their own souls.  The challenge of the present time is not one of economics, intellect or how to ensure the people love their servitude, but one of soul, human feeling and service to one another through love and respect.

Afterword

My own background is one in which I was brought up with an Alpha education at schools which I am reliably informed are in the top class of the English establishment.

There is no question in my mind that academically speaking they were indeed very good.  But while I had seven years of Latin, science teachers who were the best in their field, an introduction to literature that I would probably not have had in the state system, and so forth, the regime brutalised me and left me so damaged that it took me many years to find a way out and heal myself.

Without delving into the idiosyncrasies of my personal psychological makeup suffice it to say that by my late teens I had embarked on a quest of personal spiritual discovery that has spanned the last forty years of my life.  I could perhaps have taken the opportunity to integrate myself into the system and had a more comfortable life in material terms; I remember how in my late twenties my father offered to pull some strings and find me a position in the Civil Service, but I couldn’t give up who I was.

It has been a lonely path in many ways, and for that I identify with the experience of John Savage.  Like him I was in part spat out by the class in which I was brought up, but also like him, I had spat it out too.  Rootless for some years I sought a place where I could give service only to find, even when such a place where I now abide presented itself, that I was a fish out of water in many respects.  It is a tragic irony that the community I have given service to often treats me with suspicion and it has been a hard realisation that this is a class mistrust.  I once had a working class friend who perpetually accused me of looking down on her because of her class, despite the fact that I never once said anything to give her cause, while she was almost obsessed by my class background.  Sadly a case of projection.

Like John Savage I seek a world beyond the class expectations and dominance that we find in our society today, but it has been a grim realisation, slow to dawn on me, that like the Deltas of Huxley’s world, too many people are wedded to the position they found themselves born into, though unlike those contented Deltas, they live in a state of class envy and resentment.

If we are truly to find a new way of being which can lead the world out of the parlous state into which it has fallen, we must first free ourselves from our conditioning, free ourselves from judging others by their class, their race, their education, their religion, their economic status and all the rest; we must see each other as unique souls worthy of respect, worthy of being served with love in humility, and dispense with this corrupt and perverse model of human relations as mere commerce for profit in which one party is bound in servitude to another, even to soulless corporate bodies, worse even than the ties of serf to mediaeval lord, in which at least some elements of loyalty and responsibility might show themselves.

To achieve this we must first see the dignity of the human soul, in oneself and in each other.  We must have compassion even for the lost soul of the dominator who seeks satiety in sucking us dry like the symbolic vampire, for in that symbol lies a profound truth.  We, though materially sucked dry, have that which the vampires seek, because they have lost contact with their souls.

We must renounce the servitude which repays us only with soma and circuses and reclaim our souls, give ourselves in service to our fellows and find that value in them shown in the washing of the disciples feet by Jesus.  To do so is not to submit, but in the recognition of our soul value we assert ourselves as more powerful than those who seek to exploit us.  It is better to die free than live in chains.

We must shine our light for others, though the darkness comprehend it not, neither can it overcome it.