Organisms

Examples of Organisms at Work

A Police Officer Talks "The vast majority of police officers are very hard working, but see repeated new legislation as instruments to slow us down and keep us off the streets," he wrote, each carefully chosen word reflecting his mounting frustration.

Well done that officer!

The situation that this officer describes (in short, a situation wherein the police cannot actually do their jobs properly and get criminals off the streets) is yet another example of governments being unperturbed by crime levels - despite all their rhetoric to the contrary - but very concerned to empower themselves.

UK governments over the years have gradually been increasing the number of police officers - which looks good to the gullible majority - but they have been bogging them down with mountains of paperwork to ensure political correctness - which sounds good to the gullible majority. But the fact that the police officers themselves have been complaining for years that they cannot do their jobs properly troubles the government not a jot - except in so far as this might result it bad publicity.

the government increases its own powers by employing an ever-increasing number of police officers

In other words, the government increases its own powers by employing an ever-increasing number of police officers (an arm of state control) but the police officers are handicapped in their fight against crime - because they are too often engaged in procedures designed to make the government look good - and so the levels of crime continue to rise - which then allows government to justify even higher levels of state control - which is, of course, exactly what government wants.

Governments love crime (e.g. see my piece The Governing Elite).

Look carefully again at this police officer's carefully chosen word[s] ...

Police officers "see repeated new legislation as instruments to slow us down and keep us off the streets."

Those higher levels of state control - i.e. more police officers - are, clearly, not to protect the people from crime. So, what are they for?

Well, it does not take much imagination, does it?

But, this is how the greedy Organism of Government operates.

However, also notice that the solutions suggested by the police officer - who is a member of the greedy Organism of the Police - involve more power for the police and more prison cells!

Thus, this Organism wants more power too!

I am not suggesting that there is anything particularly wrong with this officer's point of view, I simply want to point out that we continue to see how it is that these organisms are mostly concerned to serve themselves - not the people. 

The upshot is that the people - whom they are supposed to be serving - pay an ever-increasing price to buttress systems and ideas that, in fact, do not serve them well at all.

Where, for example, is the discussion about bringing up our children properly? - and allowing parents and teachers to exert far greater control over them without the threat of politically-corrected social workers descending on them with spurious allegations of 'abuse'.

Organisms!

As another example, the UK government recently garnered much public support for an increase in taxes so that it could inject a much larger sum of money into the UK's government-funded nationalised health service. This would make the health service much better, so promised Tony Blair and his cronies. And so billions more were taken from the taxpayer - with their approval.

Did the service get any better?

Nah. Well, marginally, at best.

So, where did the money go?

Well, a huge percentage of it (about 50%, I think) went to pay for salary increases for those who work in the national health service - i.e. for those who work for government!

What a surprise, eh?

Of course, the public was not told in advance that many of the extra billions would be swallowed up in salary increases. The public was told that the extra money would be spent on 'improving services'.

And the public fell for it! They gave the thumbs up to the further tax rises.

The fools.

we then find that they used this power (in this case, more money) mostly to feather their own nests.

In other words, just as with the situation regarding crime, the politicians justified to the public the need to grow 'stronger' - by taking more in taxes - on the promise of doing its job better in the National Health Service, but we then find that they used this power (in this case, more money) mostly to feather their own nests.

It was also recently discovered that hospital managers were giving priority to less urgent, simpler, easier medical cases than to more urgent cases (and, usually, more complex ones) so that their turnover of patients would be quicker and so, therefore, the government could boast that it had reduced the number of patients on the hospital waiting lists. Thus, in this instance, we see that the hospital managers were keen to get Brownie points from their political masters who, in turn, wanted to lure in the support of the voters by claiming that they had reduced the lengths of the waiting lists.

The patients who were the most in need of medical treatment, however, got shoved to the back of the queue!

Yes indeed. Not even the seriously ill and the dying must get in the way of making the hospital managers and the government look good.

Self-serving organisms!

A different example of an organism at work can be seen from a description of this week's BBC Panorama programme. It reveals the Organism of the Banks at work ...

Panorama A senior executive for a high street bank blows the whistle on how customers are pressured into borrowing money through hard-sell tactics and sophisticated marketing, and reveals how banks can profit from their financial distress.

Basically, the whistleblower told us that the banks made huge profits from people who managed to get themselves into a permanent state of debt, and so they encouraged people to get into such debt.

the biggest profits came from those who were actually unable to pay off their debts

Furthermore, the biggest profits came from those who were actually unable to pay off their debts, and who, therefore, ended up paying back interest for years on end.

A particularly interesting example of this was a middle-aged low-earning father who had a debt of £750 on his credit card, and he was not paying it off fast enough; i.e. he was not managing to make the minimum monthly payments. He received a letter from the credit card company telling him that he would have to do something about this debt or face possible action. Anyway. A few days later he received a letter from another credit card company offering him a credit card with a much higher credit limit, and on to which he could transfer all the debts that he currently owed.

It seemed as if his immediate problem was solved!

But what transpired was this.

The second credit card company was, in fact, the same as the first credit card company - both being owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland.

And so what we see here is one rather devious way in which the Royal Bank of Scotland actually intimidates people into extending their credit card limits. One letter threatens action, and another offers to solve the problem provided that the debtor takes on further debt!

Now, whether or not this was a purposeful tactic - as opposed to being an accidental situation arising because the left hand did not actually know what the right hand was doing - is not the point! As I have often stated, when it comes to the voraciousness and the greed of 'organisms', it is, indeed, mostly the case that the individuals who comprise them do not actually understand the harm that they are doing.

Indeed, even if the second credit card company had nothing to do with the Royal Bank of Scotland, the point remains the same. The Organism of These Two Companies would still be exerting a malevolent force in the direction of encouraging people to put themselves into perpetual debt.

let us not pretend that everyone working in the banks is innocent.

But let us not pretend that everyone working in the banks is innocent. The evidence from the whistleblower was that the staff working in the banks are doing everything that they can to sell, sell, and sell their products to customers - many of whom are very naive when it comes to financial matters and interest rates etc - and that they are also well aware that they are driving people into impossible situations. These people then often end up having to sell or to re-mortgage their very own homes in order to pay the banks and so get themselves out of the mess that they have gotten into.

(And, while on the subject of banks, there is a huge body of evidence to suggest that they promote wars and instability in order to make profits. In the great depression of the 30s, for example, the banks did very well indeed on the numerous repossessions of properties which they managed to acquire at very cheap prices. And many people would say that the banks, themselves, promoted the depression in order to do this.)

In summary: Our lives are constantly being buffeted and shaped by many different huge, powerful organisms that are serving themselves. These organisms control many of the big things that govern the way in which we live, but they have very little concern for us. These organisms really exist; but many of them are so huge that we cannot even see them, let alone understand what they are up to.

Their energies are mostly directed at serving themselves.

But there is also something else going on today that, in my view, was not so prevalent four decades ago. And this is the sheer dishonesty, greed, laziness and selfishness of so many people today. The lack of integrity exhibited by so many different groups of people - including many of those in the highest ranks of society - should be a real source of concern to us. And on this website, you will see irrefutable evidence that politicians, judges, senior police officers, academics, various government officials, and many others, are lying through their teeth in order to bolster their own positions in some way. And even when they are not lying, their energies are clearly not mostly directed at doing what they are supposed to be doing. Their energies are mostly directed at serving themselves.

Well, of course, maybe we all do this - to some extent or other. But, as individuals, we are mostly very puny. And so our self-serving natures do not have much import in the overall scheme of things - the big things.

But when powerful people or powerful bodies engage in such greedy self-servedness as a matter of course, which, clearly, they do, then the end result is a great deal of misery for millions of people.

Furthermore, we are continually being forced to waste vast resources on trying to deal with the never-ending problems that these groups are forever creating.

Finally, here is a description of tonight's BBC Newsnight report on the overseas aid that the UK government gives to various bodies ...

We're told that we are spending more than ever on overseas aid - UK taxpayers gave £3 billion alone last year - yet as our Business Correspondent Paul Mason reports tonight, the main beneficiaries are the aid industry itself.

Some 50% of world aid money turns out to be something known as "phantom" aid, a mixture of, among other things, double accounting, debt relief and huge amounts spent on consultants sent from donor nations.

Self-serving organisms!

End Note:

World Cup Football

As I write this, the 2006 World Cup football competition is drawing to a close.

Here in the UK, the football matches have been televised on both the BBC and ITV. And astute viewers will surely have noticed that no matter how boring and uninspiring some of the matches have been, the football commentators whose voiceovers one hears as the matches are being played have rarely had anything but praise for them - with those commentators on ITV being particularly effusive and positive.

And why is this so? - one might ask.

Well, bearing in mind that ITV depends on advertising revenue for its funding - whereas the BBC does not - perhaps the commentary on ITV has much more to do with encouraging viewers to remain glued to their TV sets and much less to do with providing an accurate description of what appears to be happening on the football pitch.

Self-serving organisms!

They are everywhere!

They are huge. They are powerful. And they are mostly serving themselves.

(Also see my piece The Governing Elite)