6 November 2015

The Tory housing disaster to come?

The Blog


The UK's Housing and Planning Bill, which extends the “Right to Buy” to housing association properties and forces local authorities to sell off their most valuable stock is a "potential catastrophe", a political analyst predicts.


What the Tories call an "opportunity" is in fact threatening only to "further enhance their poor-beater CV", Steve Topple has argued in an op-ed at the Political Sift political and social commentary blog.

Statistics already show 1.4 million households on social housing waiting lists in 2014, which contrasts with only 43,000 new homes being built. Cameron's UK has also witnessed a devastating 55% rise in homelessness since he came to power in 2010. Calling the new bill "self-serving" Topple predicted such legislation would only worsen these already horrifying statistics.

Agreeing with other commentators that the legislation especially attacks poorer families living in rural areas, with no guarantees of where new housing stock will be built, Topple had the following commentary:
The proposed plans to force local authorities to sell off their most valuable properties looks disastrous, at best. Aside from the fact the government is ignoring the fact many of these properties are adapted for the disabled, it also appears to brush over the serious effect it will have on council’s ability to replace these homes.
In addition, Topple comments that the "Right to Buy" will further inflate the housing bubble, which is projected to burst, although the real victims of the bill will be poor families in desperate need of social housing. Accusing the Tory government of running a "chumocracy", he points out that personal debt is already at record levels, but it will not stop Cameron's regime and his cronies from getting the helpless and the poor further into debt.

Housing Associations have already backed the "Right to Buy" legislation, but Topple urges opposition parties to "do everything in their power to stop this despicable legislation" when it comes to a vote in the Commons.


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3 November 2015

Mont Order new philosophy goes public

The Blog


The Mont Order society has scaled back its fixation on being an organization, and is now more of a value-based club with a declared set of principles and autonomous members who act with or without blessing from above.


Background: The Mont Order's unofficial conspiracy

As always, the overarching priority at the Mont Order society of writers and publications is to promote its members and their agendas. This has not changed, but the model of the group has been reformed slightly to put more energy towards supporting individual members and stop using the group as a vessel that requires its own devotion or resources.

This change can be understood from what little content was actually made public after a long conference among the Order's top members. The content takes the form of a short set of written values on cards, which can be seen at the Order's unofficial press release archive "lordre.net" and also in a video originating at the Wave Chronicle. The Wave Chronicle is a leading publication associated with the Order.



The released content for the public contains a code with seven values that the Order will not withdraw, and which sum up the philosophy or ideology guiding the present plans of the Mont Order. Of these, the second may be of the greatest interest to readers of The clubof.info Blog.

"Principle Two" declares to the world the Mont Order's most unique attribute, which is its open glorification of technological modernity, regarding it as the origin and future of the Order:

The Order accepts positive and popular globalism based on the inevitable trajectories of technology to unite disparate people across borders. Our own identity is closely tied to events in the world, mainly involving technology, as the internet enabled this group to exist. We see how technology is escaping its creators' designs and we celebrate this trend, which has also empowered us. However, we oppose with absolute conviction the neoconservative and neoliberal views of some major tech corporations including Google.

As shown, the Order has a powerful understanding of what it is and where it is going. It could be that some of the slower and less efficient features of the modern Mont Order may soon disappear, as the Mont program of values is acted upon and expounded for the foreseeable future.


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Clash of the Titans? Technology vs God

The Blog


In a feature article popular at Beliefnet within the category of "Tech Gospel", the idea of an angry God who wants to smite engineers and scientists for their apparent hubris gets discredited.



Titled "Does God Endorse Tech", the op-ed is part of the same educational effort as the L'Ordre blog, also popular at Beliefnet. The article asked, "For those of us who believe in a personal God, how should we see the relationship between technology and the divine, if there is any at all?"

It went on to confess that the God portrayed in the Bible, as well as the deities of other religions such as the ancient Greco-Roman religion, do indeed attack engineers and seekers of knowledge. The religions do all too often portray engineers and seekers of knowledge as sinful. However, it only happens when there are other factors involved.

What offends God, or gods, in most religious traditions, tends to be the attitudes behind feats of engineering and science, rather than these accomplishments themselves. In other parts of religious lore, God actively commands technological accomplishments, such as Noah's construction of the ark in order to save animals from extinction.

The op-ed concluded:

"where one seeks technology for sharing, or to give it to others unconditionally to help them (a treatment for a disease, for example) no righteous God could do anything but endorse such efforts. The god of Christianity, Islam and Judaism appears to approve of sharing, and would not hesitate to endorse or even command the creation of technologies enabling sharing."


Read more at http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Tech-Gospel/Articles/Does-God-Endorse-Tech.aspx?p=3#OiKvtlFf3GMItb7f.99


In sum, the observation of the article was that technologies should pursue sharing, dignity and equality, rather than empowering a privileged few or usurping moral authority. Further, religious people should actually consider such technologies, e.g. personal computers and smartphones, to have even been endorsed by God.

As part of its effort to gain greater recognition, the L'Ordre blog has created a new Facebook page at facebook.com/lordrecolumn, and invites its readers to actively share and sign up to its posts.


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