The recent news that Trump is under investigation is yet another point on the curve towards improved world leadership. To misquote the band name : Populism will eat itself !
In world that needs collaborative leadership to face complex problems such as climate change, famine, war, migration and so on, we seem to have opted for more didactic leaders with catchy but meaningless slogans. In the UK we have Brexit populism. In the US we have Trump’s version of isolationist politics, and so on.
This is why I coined the phrase ‘Brexorcism’ to change minds in the UK about Brexit. The skills involved are just as applicable in other theatres of populism.
Last week, I was asked to speak on the need to turn back from populism and discuss the contributions from psychology, sociology and therapeutic approaches to wake people up to more long-term and global outlooks on our politics. You can view the masterclass below.
I also spoke on the role of satire, humour and catharsis as a way into the most closed minds on political issues, based on our book Private Eyelines.
To get hold of the books ‘Reboot Britain’ and ‘Private Eyelines’ please go to Rage Against The Brexit Machine or write direct to me at reboot@brexitrage.com
I met a Latvian anti-Brexit sports therapist in the sauna today. Got a free consultation and some very good advice on my rehabilitation after the near death experience after hitting a lorry travelling at 50 mph on my bicycle. As well as the advice on my recovery, we had a wonderful conversation about the sheer stupidity of the British people and the gentle art of Brexorcism. I live in a 70% Brexity area. Racism is high on the list of reasons for voting Brexit and a good number of my ‘clients’ are in a state of ‘Bregret’, although some do not know quite how to say it, especially if they are high testosterone overweight males. The sauna acts as some kind of non-secular confessional box.
The social contract in a sauna prevents escalation of difficult conversations with Brexiteers in my experience. Quite a different setting to a pub or cafe. Once again, I’m finding that being nearly naked disarms even the most ardent Brexiteers in my area. I have had lots of difficult conversations with some of them this last week whilst healing my broken bones.
DISCLAIMER : The cover picture is not representative of the clientele in the sauna in Strood! Nor will you meet Johnson naked in my local sauna!
To find out how to Brexorcise your friends, family etc. read the books – now available on ETSY. For a masterclass on the topic, join us at WorldWide Wednesday on Wed Aug 03 7.00 pm via ZOOM.
Available to buy direct from the author via ETSY. Also on Amazon at a higher price.Re-Boot Britain is a practical methodology on changing minds about Europe and Brexit. Find it on Amazon or buy direct from the author via ETSY
We wish to fight the next election. Support our campaign via Patreon, Paypal or GoFundMe.
In the wake of Lord Geidt’s letter to Boris Johnson and now his additional explanation, please write to your MP via Write to Them. The only way is ethics.
“Conscious of my own obligations under the Seven Principles of Public Life (including integrity), I could not be a party to advising on any potential law-breaking”. Lord Geidt
Here is a template letter you can adapt:
Dear Boris Johnson,
I am a scientist with 50 years’ experience in academia and industry and am well positioned to take on your recently vacant role of ethics advisor.
The company I worked for before retiring required all staff from the CEO to the most junior employees to sign up to a code of ethics and take an annual on-line ethics training course followed by an online test – which was reviewed by their managers.
The test covered such things as bullying, dishonesty with e.g. expense claims, taking gifts and other inducements from suppliers, racist behaviour and so on.
This policy was rigorously enforced by the management team, as was the ethics hotline which was a widely advertised toll-free telephone service for employees, run by an organization which was completely independent from the company, ensuring there was no bias or favouritism.
It would appear that your current set-up is lacking in many, if not all of these critical requirements, and hence I am sure I can help and advise you.
Available to order direct from ebay – click to view. Discounted copies available direct from the author via reboot@brexitrage.com. Also on Amazon at a higher price.
Re-Boot Britain is a practical methodology on changing minds about Europe and Brexit. Find it on Amazon or direct from the author via reboot@brexitrage.com
Private Eyelines : Have I Got Fake Brexit News for EU is just released. Humour is one of the few weapons this Government cannot take away from us. It’s a historical and hysterical record of #Brexit and one that holds this #fascist government to account in ways that spreadsheets and graphs do not. The book helps us deconstruct the fake news of populist media from “The Son” to “The Daily Maul” “Excess” and “Telegravda”. Grab copies for yourself and your Brexity friends now on Amazon or order discount copies direct from the author by e-mailing us at reboot@academy-of-rock.co.uk Here is the book blurb below:
Satire reaches the parts that spreadsheets, graphs and logic do not. Brexit provides a rich dark seam of tragicomedy in a Kafkaesque world of gaslighting, shapeshifting and shameless lies. We live in desperately sad times. But simply drowning in the sadness of Brexit does not help us deal with paranoid populist politicians. Bittersweet levity cuts through people’s minds to their visceral core. Simply stated, satire heals.
Populist media brainwashed leave voters to believe in Brexit unicorns. I tried my hand at parodying these media to expose the lies on which the Brexit hydra reared its many ugly heads. I found that people rather liked my gutterpress pages. Some even believed that they were real!
To change minds on Brexit, it is not sufficient to break the parliamentary paralysis which continues to enable the slow-motion destruction of Britain. Nor is demographic change, aka death, a success recipe. We must actively work on the huddled masses. People almost literally eat lies for breakfast from a biased populist media, owned by people who seem just a little bit too friendly with Vladimir Putin. Private Eyelines opens up the conversation anew with Brexiteers with buyers’ remorse, or Remainers numbed into submission by six years of bullshit and bullying from our so-called political leaders.
Peter Cook is a unique combination of scientist, business consultant and musician. As a 60’s child, his mum made him watch Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, saying “it would be good for him”. It wasn’t! Instead, Peter built a solid career bringing life-saving treatments for diabetes and HIV / AIDS to the world, 18 years tutoring MBAs in academia, writing books and 28 years running a business. His early exposure to Cook and Moore suddenly came to the fore after 24 June 2016, as satire met real life through Brexit. His mis-spent youth and creativity have been rejuvenated through campaigning, writing, music, film making and speaking about our rightful place in Europe. It was good for him after all. Mum was right!
Available to order direct from Amazon – click to view. Discounted copies available direct from the author.
Turn despair into action. Join us every Monday at 8pm on ZOOM via Reboot Britain.
It’s been a week of car crash events with Boris Johnson. Somewhat unbelievably he was asked to deliver the reading at St Paul’s Cathedral on the occasion of the Queen’s jubilee. We reconsidered his speech through the values espoused by the Bible and its apostles : Mogg, Truss, Dorries, Madonna et al. This was the result. For complete clarity, we felt sorry for the Queen having to put up with Johnson and Brexit. Whatever your views on the monarchy, the Queen’s 70 years of service stand in stark contrast to Johnson’s spirit of self-service. Watch the 2 minute video and read the “Tory Bible quotes” below:
Bible quotes:
“Better is a poor person who walks in his integrity than one who is crooked in his speech and is a fool” Gove 48.52
“The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: … drunkenness, orgies, and Instagram. Those who live by selfies will not inherit the kingdom of God.”Truss 78.6
“Whoever loves Somerset wealth is never satisfied with Brexit”Mogg 6.31
“Whatever it takes” Sunak 20.21
“Whatever” Liam Gallagher 19.94
“Iwas hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me in Rwanda.” Patel 52.48
“There are six things the LORD hates: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, Brexit, disaster capitalism, spaffing and hands that shed innocent blood” Johnson 20.22
“Let your requests for media censorship be made known to God” Dorries 6.66
“God save the Queen … from Brexit and Johnson” Ellwood 20.22
Turn despair into action. Join us every Monday at 8pm on ZOOM via Reboot Britain.
I did an analysis of the car crash Mumsnet v Boris Johnson interview using the medium of the BBC Radio 4 programme “Just a Minute”, with apologies to Nicholas Parsons.
Johnson is doing the reading at St Paul’s today. Apart from talking about honesty and thou shalt not commit adultery, his reading will mainly consist of Rule Brittania, Rule Boris, spaff-waff, bazookas, Jubilee, jubilation, jubinobs party, no party, our party, my party, sovereignty … balderdash, bunkum, hokum, pokum, where’s Carrie, who’s Carrie, ah Carrie you make me feel so young Jennifer, sorry Carrie, God save me, I mean God Save the Queen; whilst roughing up his mop (hair, not wife or current lover 🤮🤮🤮) With thanks to Jackie Brook and BillieJoeMcAll on Twitter.
Well worth your time
Turn despair into action. Join us every Monday at 8pm on ZOOM via Reboot Britain.
People say, what’s the point of writing to MPs? Well, other people read the letters. It informs their views on whether they are going to lose elections and so on. Everything counts. Here’s a cracker from one of our team. Please use of modify the letter to write to your MP. Find your MP email address at Write to Them.
Dear Ms Whately,
The Sue Gray report has now been published, so I would now like to hear your thoughts.on the matter.
We knew before the report was issued that the rules that applied to the general population were completely ignored by the PM.
It now turns out that the extent of rule breaking was far worse than originally thought.
We, the UK population, now know with absolute certainty that the PM is a liar, so I want to know if he has your continued support?
If you do still support him, I would like to know why? I sincerely hope that you don’t, as this will make you complicit in the corruption and law-breaking.
The PM has said he will not resign, so do you think that a fine from the police for his law-breaking is an appropriate consequence for his actions?
I hope I get something better than a stock reply from you. This is important, and a whitewash of what has been happening at the heart of our government is unacceptable.
As my elected MP, your integrity is under very close scrutiny.
Yours sincerely
Dr. Bob
Nothing succeeds better than the glare of public transparency. If you cannot get any satisfaction from your MP in private, Tweet them in public or send the letter to your local newspaper or radio station. While we are here, read our latest newsletter and join us on Saturday 28 May in Brighton or online via ZOOM.
Turn despair into action. Join us every Monday at 8pm on ZOOM via Reboot Britain.
Guest article from Jean-Pierre Feyaerts on electoral reform. In the wake of some seismic changes to the political landscape in Britain it is time to consider this. I’m especially delighted that Reboot Britain contributed to the loss of 10 Tory councillors in Royal Tunbridge Wells and this demonstrates that we can still achieve impact with a faulty electoral system. TEN !!!
We contributed to this result at Reboot Britain along with others
An alternative to the British ‘First-Past-the-Post’ system – A Belgian perspective
People, even in England, are finally starting to see the limitation of the old fashion FPTS electoral system.
In principle that system, especially at the end of the Middle Age and Renaissance made sense when it was very important to safeguard local interests, with a special interest to the financing of wars and more generally the public finances.
With time, the system was regarded as safeguarding rather stable majorities in Parliament, at least for the duration of a legislature and avoid the need to have repeated elections before the end of the said legislature.
One (if not the major) shortcoming of the system is that it provides an over representation of a part of the population. Furthermore, the culture of compromise was replaced by the law of the strongest (with derivation to the spoiling system, like in the USA).
For the British citizen however (and probably more for the English citizen) it remains difficult to accept a proportional system and even more difficult to find an agreement on a type of proportionality (for example as used for the former election of the British members of the European Parliament).
In theory, the elected members of the Parliament (of the House of Commons), are there to represent the citizen of their constituency, not only those who voted for them but any citizen of the constituency, regardless of its preferred party. In practice, they are just the local representative of a doctrine (which use to differ from the manifesto of the party). If this is the case, the approach of one single representative has no more sense.
At least, for an interim period, it does not seem possible to move to the current political system to a political system adapted to the XXIst century (rather than the end of the XIXth – beginning of the XXth) in one stage. UK need at least to adopt a phased approach.
A rather simple one, but not used elsewhere, to my best knowledge, would be to divide the number of constituencies by two and to elect two representatives instead of one. As such, it is easy to understand, does not require too much changes (except grouping the current constituencies by groups of 2[1]).
The difference with the current system is that rather the first past the post, here it would be the two first past the post[2].
This is simple, but it changes a lot for the strategy of the parties and may give more importance to local interests.
British (in particular English) have no tradition and expertise on how to find agreements and compromises and it will take surely more than one legislature to can be accustomed to it, and the same is even more true for the voters! The experience with the Eastern European countries for returning to democracy proves that both categories needs to learn how to behave in such new environment but it cold be easier than the reform proposed in 2011. Britain needs electoral reform. It will be difficult all the while both sides of our binary politics believe they can win, but Thursday’s local elections have disrupted the cosy arrangement.
[1] In real exceptional cases, a constituency with one single representative could be envisaged or a constituency grouping three former ones with eventually, for one legislature, 3 representatives as a transitional measure)
[2] Possibly, this is the case for one or another State of the USA for the Senate election.
In the last few days I have been practising the gentle art of “brexorcism” on the street whilst campaigning to get the Tories out. These brief encounter stories are examples of what you can expect in my latest book on the subject in the story section. A brexorcism takes time, patience and skill, but these examples demonstrate how such things can be quite brief in some circumstances.
Brief Encounter I
I was late to catch a train from Strood and deposited my bicycle at the barrier to buy a ticket. The staff member had studied my bike which I use to trigger conversations about Brexit. On my return I found I had a few spare minutes as the train was late. Sam began the conversation:
SAM: “I take it you are against Brexit?”
ME: “Er, yes”.
SAM : “I’m afraid I voted for it”.
ME: “Well, people had many reasons”.
SAM: “I doubt you will be able to guess mine”.
ME: Well, let me see, was it the £350 million for the NHS? Maybe the idea of sticking it to Cameron? Or taking back control of our borders? or something else?”
SAM: “None of these – my wife is from the Philippines – she works in the NHS and had to pay £11 000 to get her into the UK. I feel sick as a dog as I now realise that Brexit has not solved this problem”.
ME: Well, I am so impressed that you told me, that is brave”.
SAM: “If I ever get the chance to go back on this decision I will”.
ME: “Thank you so much. I’m working on the case”.
We shook hands and I went on my way. I sense that he wanted to test my reaction to his ‘confessional’ and he was pleased with the result. In the book I show the methodologies behind the conversation. Key to my conversation was the bike which acts as the conversation starter and, of course, what I call UPR or unconditional positive regard in the book.
Conversation starter
Brief Encounter II
On this occasion I was with a group of young people at an open mic jam session (my son’s friends). One of their circle opened up (he knows my views on Brexit but I’d never met him before):
“I’m from Italy but I’ve lived here for about 10 years. I’ll be brutally honest. I don’t give a fuck about anyone else. Why should I? I’m 23 and all I care about is earning a big pile of cash and having a life”.
I decided to offer lots of UPR by saying that I understood why he would think like that at his age. He admitted that he might think differently if he had kids (his girlfriend was with him – from her body language, I detected that she did not fully agree with him about his self centred view of life).
ME: “I completely understand your viewpoint. We adults have ruined the planet but I personally have not given up on planet earth”.
I then showed them this video below, explaining that this was why I continue to give a fuck about my fellow citizens, regardless of their viewpoints. It made a deep impact, especially on his girlfriend. I considered that this was enough as our first brief encounter and left them to consider what I’d said. Sometimes Brexorcisms needed to be left unfinished to allow for a period of reflection … The other important factor in this interaction was the social nature of the dialogue. He had 3 of his peer group sitting at the table. Peer pressure is more important than hierarchy in social herds.
This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Strictly Necessary Cookies
Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.
If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.
