Balance of power deters would-be whistleblowers from rocking the boat

Sean Ingle in The Guardian


A couple of days ago I asked a UK Sport insider why more athletes do not go public with their concerns. “Put yourself in their shoes,” came the reply. “One path is potentially well rewarded. And then there’s another that comes after speaking out. If you are a rational person, do you want to travel down the road of a Brian Cookson or a Jess Varnish? There is a massive disincentive to rock the boat.”

One can see their point. Cookson, having enjoyed a long career in sports administration, is now president of the UCI, earning £235,000 a year. Varnish, having spoken out about the problems in British Cycling – and having been largely vindicated – finds herself marginalised and ostracised. At 26 she also knows her career in elite sport is probably over. What would you do?

British Bobsleigh team told: keep quiet about bullying or miss Olympics


Of course not every complaint is serious or justified. And nor is elite sport a place to hold hands round the campfire and sing kumbaya. But in a week where fresh and disturbing allegations about bullying in British Bobsleigh and child abuse in British Canoeing were heard there is an urgent need to tilt the balance in favour of whistleblowers and honest brokers.

Indeed, lost amid the flurry of reports into British Cycling last Wednesday was the damning verdict from the financial accountants Moore Stephens on UK Sport’s whistleblower policy. In their view it was inadequate: it needed to be “more robust”, “encourage a culture of openness” and “provide statutory protection from unfair dismissal for making a protected disclosure”. The question is how.

The main problem is that a vast amount of power lies with UK Sport and the heads of each sport – and very little with the athletes, who are subject to an annual review whereby their lottery money can be cut or stopped completely.
“Player power” is often heard of in football but for those in Olympic sports the power dynamic favours coaches and administrators – which hardly encourages athletes to question them.

One coach recently told of an athlete who made some modest but justified criticisms of his sport. A few months later his lottery funding was trimmed. Perhaps it was coincidental but his fellow athletes took away a lesson: he rocked the boat and lost out. As the coach explained: “A lot of signals are sent to people to say don’t misbehave and I am troubled by that. No one is saying that bullying and other such behaviour is widespread but there is an environment that does not allow enough checks and balances.”

One can imagine how vulnerable this leaves the athletes. One false move and their livelihood is toast. It does not help that Olympic athletes do not really have a strong union. Nominally there is the British Athletes Commission, which represents 1,400 Olympians and Paralympians, but few believe it has enough resources or independence to be as effective as it needs to be.

There is another factor at play, too. Many athletes want to stay in sport, either as a coach or administrator, when they quit the field of play. For those who pick up a reputation as a troublemaker the stink is hard to shake. As the former British bobsleigher Henry Nwume, who spoke to the BBC last week about problems inside his sport, told me: “You have everything to lose by talking. Athletes know that they run the risk of being attacked, discredited and blackballed. And that continues even after they retire. They fear positions that might have been opened for them will be closed. And they will become persona non grata.”
Whistleblowers also know their accounts are likely to be belittled by athletes inside the system. This is not necessarily malicious. Coaches tend to treat potential medallists better: one I spoke to admitted he was seen as a “golden child” by his performance director and never received – or even saw – the abuse that many of his friends got. So when Sir Bradley Wiggins or Sir Chris Hoy is asked if there was anything wrong with British Cycling, perhaps one should not be shocked when they say no.

One potential solution, put forward by Baroness Tanni-Grey Thompson’s duty of care review in April, is for an independent sports ombudsman – or duty of care quality commission – which is separate from UK Sport, to “maintain public confidence that sport is conducted ethically”. To me that makes sense. But change also has to come from within.

UK Sport deserves praise for lifting Britain from 36th in the medal table in 1996 to second in Rio last year. There are many smart people in the system, too. But it surely knows now that its tunnel‑vision focus on winning can breed the type of performance director or head coach who knows the main performance indicator is medals and so puts athlete welfare lower on the list of priorities. It does not help when UK Sport’s chief executive, Liz Nicholl, insists that “99% of this system is working really well” when increasingly the evidence suggests otherwise.
The best organisations do not just challenge themselves to be better. They allow themselves to be challenged in turn. In fact, they welcome it because they know being open and subject to rigorous examination helps them improve. Next month Katherine Grainger, a ferocious competitor with vast intellect, takes over as chair of UK Sport. How she responds to the mounting issues of athlete welfare, whilst keeping standards high, will surely define her tenure.

We’re doomed by the identity trap, damned when we try to escape

Nesrine Malik in The Guardian

 

Illustration by Andrzej Krauze




Diane Abbott wrote a powerful article in these pages last week about the hatred she receives. Whatever one thinks of her politics, the veteran Labour MP has for decades been a fireball of public service. But her star has always been followed by a comet tail of toxic vapour. This personal abuse is at times snide and implied, at other times explicit, vicious and unprintable. But it is a constant in her political life, following her round, undermining her, consistently framing her in terms of her gender and her race.

Abbott’s article came just days after she received an exceptional and sustained amount of personal abuse over the article 50 vote, culminating in a leaked text sent by Brexit secretary David Davis, in which he made derogatory comments on her appearance. Her article was necessary and timely, but something about her speaking out made my heart sink. It felt like defeat; the ultimate feeding of the trolls. It is important to look beyond the headlines and understand the significance of what happened.

The fact is that her tormentors had hounded this most resilient of characters to a point where she finally cracked and, breaking a longstanding habit in a 30-year career of not commenting on personal insults, she laid it all out. She was forced to sound an alert, warning that something must be done before we get to the point in our democracy where women and minority candidates, already low in number, are bullied out of the political arena altogether.

Diane Abbott: misogyny and abuse are putting women off politics



Since then, she has been forced to go further, revealing this weekend that she does not walk or drive around her constituency as freely as she used to because, in the wake of Jo Cox’s murder, the death threats she receives can’t be shrugged off any more. It was a piece in which she used the word “I” for the first time in respect of her identity – it wasn’t about her profession or her political views. It is this forced “coming out” by Abbott as a black woman in public life that was disheartening.

Contrary to the view so widely held on the right, of this country being in the grip of a constantly aggrieved professional-victim class, few people actually like to talk about their experience of receiving abuse. It is uncomfortable and excruciating and diminishing, and above all a distraction when one just wants to get on with one’s business.

It is also, as many who are on the receiving end of such onslaughts (including myself) can testify, boring and predictable to have to keep running the gauntlet between attack and defence. There is another, silencing fear, as the bile swirls and rises around you: that you come across as attention-seeking or fragile. Above all, you want to show that the blows have not landed.

But when somebody occupies a public position, not speaking out becomes an abdication. It is a decision that is never taken lightly because it plays into the hands of the racists and misogynists whose ultimate motivating animus is to disabuse you of the notion that you can ever be anything but a woman who does not know her place or a member of an inferior race.

Oh but now you wince at the N-word. Come on now, you might say, let’s not get carried away and blow it all out of proportion. And besides, Abbott is hardly a flawless political figure who doesn’t deserve criticism. OK, she gets compared to a monkey and is the butt of her male colleague’s jokes about being too unattractive to hug, but what about sending her child to private school?

This is the line of argument that enables the masking of abuse behind legitimate criticism of an individual or their views. As if calling for a tree strong enough to carry her weight so she can be hanged, as was said, is a logical follow-on from any of her failings or political hypocrisies.

And then there are the accusations of playing the race card or the gender card – both denying that the abuse is real, and blaming the victim for using their minority status as a shield of deflection. It is a closed loop, a circular firing squad. You either accept the abuse with grace, turn the other cheek, or invite more abuse and derision for speaking out against it. The logical conclusion is that the only winning move is not to play.

It is ultimately this potential chilling effect that forces people to break their silence. Abbott said she had never complained until now. And she will have known of the potential cost to her stature, not to mention the possibility that her perceived vulnerability might encourage trolls further.

But ultimately, she said, she went into politics “to create space for women and other groups who have historically been treated unfairly”. It is only by creating this space that the abuse will subside, and that an individual like Diane Abbott will no longer be an offending novelty who is seen to only represent her own narrow racial or gender interests, rather than the people who elected her.

Diane Abbott on abuse of MPs: 'My staff try not to let me go out alone'



She and others like her are obliged to confront one of the most persistent political myths: that identity politics is a divisive phenomenon that actively seeks to separate minorities or women from the mainstream, conferring on them dispensation to act with impunity because any criticism is automatically bigotry. It is a notion that fails to recognise what is obvious, which is that identity is dictated from above. Abbott’s defining character as a black woman is imposed and kept alive by others, not by her. She has spent decades integrating into the mainstream.

Women or minorities aren’t droning on about discrimination and abuse because they’re snowflakes demanding special treatment. They do so because they keep being limited, circumscribed, told that they cannot have roles in public life that extend beyond their identity. But then they are condemned when they respond in terms of what is being attacked. But what else can one do? Hannah Arendt said: “If one is attacked as a Jew, one must defend oneself as a Jew.”

Playing identity politics, as critics describe it, seems less an offensive ploy than a defensive posture, akin to raising your arms to cover your face when it is repeatedly being punched.
The whole affair exemplifies the precariousness of how to deal with what is now an epidemic. Silence is not an option. Even those not personally distressed have a duty towards others – those younger, more vulnerable or just made of different stuff – to clear the way for them to claim their rightful positions in public life. But there is also a risk that by doing so, any progress minorities or women have made to break out of their pen is undermined. It is a quiet stranglehold. Diane Abbott is trying to break free of it, but at what price?

Trusts keep wealth in the hands of the few. It’s time to stop this tax abuse

Richard Murphy in The Guardian

If there is a name that is synonymous with tax avoidance in the UK, it is that of the Duke of Westminster. The duke in question was, admittedly, the second duke, who in 1936 won an infamous tax case that permitted him to pay his gardeners in a way that avoided a tax liability. He achieved abiding fame as a consequence of the opinion of Lord Tomlin, who in his judgment on that case said: “Every man is entitled if he can to order his affairs so that the tax attracted under the appropriate act is less than it otherwise would be. If he succeeds in ordering them so as to secure this result, then, however unappreciative the commissioners of Inland Revenue or his fellow taxpayers may be of his ingenuity, he cannot be compelled to pay an increased tax.”

That statement has, to a large degree, been both the foundation of and justification for all tax avoidance activity in the UK since. That this activity continues is evidenced by the fact that the sixth duke is said to have left an estate worth £9.9bn upon his death this week to his son and yet, despite the fact that inheritance tax is supposedly payable on all estates on death worth more than £325,000, it has been widely reported that very little tax will be due in this case. It seems that the sixth duke has put the second to shame: his forebear saved a few pounds on his wages bill while the sixth has avoided something approaching £4bn. He may in the process have even outdone the fifth duke, who argued the fourth duke died of a war wound 232 years after he suffered it to escape all charges on the estate in the 1960s.

His likely motives for doing so can be easily summarised: there may be greed involved; a belief that the duke’s heirs are better entitled to this property than anyone else; and a hostility to any claim that the state might make on property that has been apparent in the UK aristocracy since the time of the Crusades.

The English legal concept of a trust is believed to have been developed during that era, when knights departing the country with no certainty of returning wanted to ensure that their land passed to those who they thought to be their rightful heirs without interference from the Crown. Trusts achieved that goal and the concept has remained in existence ever since, representing the continual struggle of those with wealth to subvert the rule of law that may apply to others but that they believe should not apply to them.

Recent political challenges have not ended the resulting abuse. Labour tried to introduce effective tax charges on inheritance in the 1970s, the Conservatives undermined them a decade later, and every subsequent attempt to tackle tax abuse using trusts (and Gordon Brown made many), has by and large left existing arrangements intact, only seeking to prevent abuse in new arrangements. As if to add insult to injury, the 2013 general anti-abuse rule, which was introduced by the coalition government and supposedly negated the decision by Lord Tomlin noted above, cannot be applied retrospectively: anything done by a duke before that date is outside of its scope.

So why has this tax avoidance been allowed to continue? First, it’s because no one in the UK has, since 1980, had the political will to tackle the use and abuse of trusts – even though continental Europe has shown it is perfectly possible to run an economy without them. Second, it’s down to the continuing power of the aristocracy and their chosen professional agents (lawyers, accountants, bankers and wealth managers) who have been willing to compromise themselves in exchange for fees to perpetuate the situation. And third, it’s because the Conservatives, in particular, have been keen to let the situation continue unchanged as they support the largely unfettered inheritance of substantial wealth. 

Another issue is that we know so little about trusts even when they are at least as powerful as companies and are even more commonly used for tax abuse. This is because of a mistaken perception of privacy, which should only be due to individuals and not artificial arrangements created by law, which trusts are. This can be corrected: we need transparency and that means a full register of trusts and their accounts on public record above modest financial limited, as for companies.

What can be done about this? In addition to the points already noted, the obvious solution is to abolish the inheritance tax reliefs that permit this tax avoidance, whether that be for trusts themselves or for those who own private companies and agricultural land. Inheritance tax assumes that the children of the wealthy are the rightful best next generation of managers of these assets and so lets them be passed on to them tax free, perpetuating wealth concentration in the process.

To put it another way, 800 years of claims by an elite to be above the law applicable to everyone else so that wealth can remain in the hands of the few has to be brought to an end. And if now is not the time to do it, I am really not sure when it will be.

Cricket - enough with the onfield chatter

There's a difference between gamesmanship and verbal intimidation; the former adds colour and humour to the game, the latter breeds hostility © AFP

Ian Chappell in Cricinfo

On-field chatter was on the agenda again after the Gabba Test. The question being asked was: Why did India taunt Mitchell Johnson? The more important question is: Why does cricket allow so much on-field chatter?

The more players talk on the field, the more the likelihood there is of something personal being said. If something personal is said at the wrong time, there will eventually be an altercation on the field. When that happens it will be players who are punished and as is almost always the case, the administrators will escape scot-free, despite being guilty of allowing the problem to escalate to this point.

Apart from the danger of an altercation on the field - and if you don't think that could be ugly, just remember two players have bats in hand - there is the simple matter of the batsman being entitled to peace and quiet while he's out in the middle. I'm surprised more batsmen don't object to the inane chatter that regularly occurs in the guise of gamesmanship. And if I hear one more player, coach or official say this chatter is "part of the game", I'll lose my lunch.

What will happen if a batsman - and the sooner one summons up the courage to do so the better - starts talking to the bowler as he begins his run to the wicket? Will he be told by the umpire to desist? Sure he will. The batsman would then be entitled to ask the umpire: "So is only one team allowed to talk out here?" Perhaps it will take such a scenario to make the administrators realise this is not an acceptable part of the game. The issue needs to be addressed seriously and promptly.

I don't have any problem with gamesmanship. This is the thoughtful and often humorous use of wit to entice an unsuspecting player into losing his concentration. When bowling into the footmarks to Sourav Ganguly from round the wicket, Shane Warne provided a classic example of gamesmanship. After Ganguly had let a couple of balls go, Warne remarked; "Hey mate, the crowd didn't pay their money to watch you let balls go. They came here to see this little bloke [pointing to Sachin Tendulkar at the non-striker's end] play shots."

If a batsman is silly enough to fall for such a ploy then more fool him. Gamesmanship has been part of cricket since its inception and it's also been responsible for a lot of the humour that adds colour to the descriptions of the contest. There's a big difference between gamesmanship and personal abuse, or the constant inane chatter fielders use to try to distract batsmen.

Any abuse should result in the offender being spoken to in no uncertain terms by the umpires. If it continues then the offender should be hit with a substantial suspension, one that will cause him and other players to think twice before they mouth off again. And umpires should be told by the administrators that they will be backed to the hilt in an endeavour to rid the game of both abuse and excessive chatter.

One of the big mistakes touring sides make is trying to play Australia at their own game. There has always been a bit of needling/gamesmanship in the Australian first-class game because the players know each other so well.

However, in the past this was laughed off after play with the aid of a cold drink, and the next day's play commenced with a clean slate. As socialising after play doesn't often occur so much now in the international game, the previous day's hostilities are still fresh the next morning and it doesn't take much to re-ignite the fuse.

India made a mistake in taunting Johnson at the Gabba. The administrators will be making an even bigger blunder if they don't crack down on excessive on-field chatter, and it's the players who will pay a hefty price if this issue is left unresolved.

The difference between Gordon Brown and Tony Blair

Gordon Brown is back, and may be the man to save the union

He was reviled after he lost the 2010 election, but the former PM is now reframing the Scottish independence debate

• 
• • Jonathan Freedland
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  • The Guardian, Friday 27 June 2014 19.23 BST

‘Gordon Brown retains a standing in Scotland which he never really had in England. He is seen as a national heavyweight.' Photograph: David Moir/Reuters

Tony Blair was on the front page of the Financial Times this week, as the paper brought word of the former prime minister's plan to open an office in "the increasingly assertive oil-rich emirate" of Abu Dhabi. The FT explained that Blair is expanding his portfolio of business and other interests in the Middle East, which already includes a contract to advise Mubadala, one of Abu Dhabi's mighty sovereign wealth funds.

A few hours later, Blair's successor, Gordon Brown, came to London to advance some business of his own. Brown was in the capital to attend a series of unpaid meetings in cramped rooms, pressing the case for Scotland to remain part of the UK. He was rewarded with a cup of canteen coffee.

The contrast between Britain's last two prime ministers could hardly be sharper. They were always unalike, but now they inhabit different worlds. Blair has morphed into Adam Lang, the permatanned, globetrotting ex-statesman-for-hire at the centre of Robert Harris's novel The Ghost. Brown refuses the pension owed to him as a former prime minister. The jacket of his latest book, My Scotland, Our Britain, discloses that any profits will be given to charity. When he wrote recently for the Guardian, he declined the (admittedly modest) fee. As far as anyone can tell, he lives with his family at home in North Queensferry on his MP's salary. By his actions, he declares himself the unBlair – a man determined not to profit from his public position.

So while Blair has the sleek glow of the expensively dressed elite, Brown pitches up in a suit whose years of heavy-duty service are visible: there's a tiny hole in his sleeve. But the difference goes deeper. While Blair is unembarrassed, eager to sound off about the future of the Middle East – when others might have held back, given how things turned out in Iraq – Brown has proved more reticent. After his defeat in 2010, he allowed the coalition and its allies to trash his reputation, to pretend it was Brown's profligacy, rather than a global financial crash, that had ballooned the deficit. Privately, he told friends there was no point trying to defend himself, as people were in no mood to listen. Defeated leaders like him have to "go through a period when they're reviled, that's just the way it is".

He still holds to that vow of silence, more or less, on UK-wide politics, letting Labour's new generation have the battlefield to themselves. But in recent months he has broken his own golden rule and stormed back into the public square, to play his part in a contest he says differs from normal politics because its outcome could be irreversible. His fellow Scots are about to vote on independence, and he wants them to say no.

He is campaigning vigorously, speaking in Aberdeen today on the contested question of North Sea oil, packing out halls and addressing rallies day after day. "He's now a key part of the conversation," reports the Guardian's Scotland correspondent Severin Carrell. So omnipresent has Brown become that observers describe him as the most prominent, commanding Labour figure in the campaign, stirring the faithful in a way that Alistair Darling – who leads the cross-party Better Together group – cannot.

Much of this is down to the well-worn observation that Brown retains a standing in Scotland he never really had in England. North of the border he is seen as a national heavyweight, the last of a leadership class that included the late Donald Dewar, John Smith and Robin Cook, and is therefore automatically granted a hearing. But there's more to it than that.

Whatever Brown's flaws – and even his closest friends cannot pretend he was temperamentally suited to the top job – few doubt his analytical gifts. The reason he remained in command of Labour strategy for so long was his knack for understanding and framing a political argument. With the Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu, he understands that every battle is won before it's fought. It's won by choosing the ground on which it will be fought. And this is the key contribution Brown is making to the no campaign.

He diagnosed a key error in the way the argument had been framed. It had become Scotland v Britain, with Alex Salmond and the Scottish National party arguing for Scotland and everyone else championing Britain. That, says Brown, might be fine if the entire UK electorate had a vote on 18 September. But they don't. Only Scots vote in this referendum, which means this has to be framed as a choice for Scots: which Scotland will flourish, one that retains its political ties to the other three nations of these islands or one that severs those links?

It's such a simple point, it seems extraordinary anyone had to make it. But Brown is right. When David Cameron delivered his big speech on the topic in February, not only did he do it in London, he rested his case on why the union had been good for Britain. That answered the wrong question. Given the electorate involved, the only question that matters is: is the union good for Scotland? Framed like this, every issue looks different. Take the vexed business of currency. Brown reckons George Osborne walked straight into a nationalist trap when he declared that an independent Scotland would not be allowed to keep the pound: it was London at war with Edinburgh, Britain bullying Scotland.

The right way to argue it, says Brown, is to ask what's best for Scotland: to use the currency of a country you've just left and whose rules you no longer have any say over or to retain your seat at the table, with some control over your own money. The former would be a "semi-colonial relationship", says Brown, Scotland using a currency shaped by officials in faraway London. Framed like that, it's suddenly Brown who's putting Scottish interests first and, oddly, Salmond who's left defending a supine relationship to London.

The way Brown describes it, the union is no longer an imperial hangover that represses Scotland but a neat set-up for distinct and proud nations to club together, sharing resources and pooling risks. That arrangement has served Scotland rather well: why on earth would you throw it all away?

The nationalists have an answer, of course they do. But Brown's version makes it a much harder question. Now other no campaigners are following his lead, adopting the frame he constructed. On the ground, among Labour's core vote, it seems to be working; some detect a stalling in momentum for Yes. They all laughed when Brown accidentally claimed to have saved the world. But, who knows, he might just save the union.

Difficulties of being Rich

Extracted from The Soul of Money by Lynne Twist

Extracted by Girish Menon

This was a shocking idea to me. Of course the rich were human and had their woes, but I never thought of them as needy.I could begin to see it now. Their money had brought them material comforts and some level of protection from the inconveniences and impositions of more ordinary everyday life. But their money and the lifestyle of privilege also cut them off from the richness of ordinary everyday life, the more normal and healthy give and take of relationships and useful work, the best of the human experience. Often their wealth distorted their relationship with money and only widened the gap between their soulful life and their interactions around money. Sexual abuse, psychological abuse, addictions, alcoholism, abandonment and brutality are part of the dysfunctional world that hides behind walled communities, mansions and darkened car windows. Hurtful rejections, custody suits, legal battles for the purpose of attaining more and more money harden family members and shut them down from each other. The access to money and power at high levels can amplify these situations and make them even more lethal and unbearably cruel.
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The Toxic Myths of Scarcity

Myths and superstitions have power over us only to the extent that we believe them., but when we believe, we live completely under their spell and in that fiction. Scarcity is a lie, but it has been passed down as truth and with a powerful mythology that insists on itself, demands compliance and discourages doubt or questioning.

Toxic Myth # 1: There's Not Enough

There's not enough becomes the reason we do work that brings us down or the reason we do things to each other that we're not proud of. There's not enough generates a fear that drives us to make sure that we're not the the person, or our loved ones aren't the people, who get crushed, marginalised or left out

Once we define our world as deficient, the total of our life energy, everything we think, everything we say and everything we do - particularly with money - becomes an expression of an effort to overcome this sense of lack and the fear of losing to others or being left out. It becomes noble and responsible to make sure we take care of our own, whoever we deem them to be. If there's not enough for everyone, then taking care of yourself and your own, even at the others' expense, seems unfortunate but unavoidable and somehow valid. It's like the game of musical chairs. With one seat short of the number of people playing, your focus is on not losing and not being the one who ends up at the end of the scramble without a seat. We don't want to be the poor suckers without, so we compete to get more than the other guy, determined to stay ahead of some impending doom.

...As members of the global community, our fear based responses lead us at times - in the demand for foreign oil, for instance - to put our own material desires above the health, safety and well being of other people and other nations. In our own communities, we respond to the fear that there's not enough by creating systems that favor us or exclude others from access to basic resources such as clean water, good schools, adequate health care or safe housing. And in our families, there's not enough drives us to buy more than we need or even want of some things to value, favour or curry favour with people on the basis of their value to us in relation to money, rather than qualities of character.

Toxic Myth # 2: More is Better

More of anything is better than what we have. It's the logical response if you fear there's not enough,  but more is better drives a competitive culture of accumulation, acquisition and greed that only heightens fears and quickens the pace of the race. And none of it makes life more valuable. In truth, the rush for more distances us from  experiencing the deeper value of what we acquire or already have. When we eat too fast or too much, we cannot savour any single bite of food. When we are focussed constantly on the next thing - the next dress, the next car, the next job, the next vacation, the next home improvement - we hardly experience the gifts of that which we have now. In our relationship with money, more is better distances us from living more mindfully and richly with what we have.

More is better is a chase with no end and a race without winners. It's like a hamster wheel that we hop onto, get going, and then forget how to stop. Eventually, the chase for more becomes an addictive exercise, and as with any addiction, it's almost impossible to stop the process when you're in its grip. But no matter how far you go, or how fast, or how many other people you pass up, you can't win. In the mind-set of scarcity, even too much is not enough.

It doesn't make sense to someone who makes forty thousand dollars a year that someone who makes five million dollars a year would be arguing over their golden parachute package and need at least fifteen million dollars more. Some of the people with fortunes enough to last three lifetimes spend their days and nights worrying about losing money on the stock market, about being ripped off or conned or not having enough for their retirement. Any genuine fulfilment in their life of financial privilege can be completely eclipsed by these money fears and stresses. How could people who have millions of dollars think they need more? They think they need more because that is the prevailing myth. We all think that, so they think that too. Even those who have plenty cannot quit the chase. The chase of more is better no matter what our money circumstances demands our attention, saps our energy and erodes our opportunities for fulfilment. When we buy into the premise that more is better we can never arrive. People who follow that credo, consciously or unconsciously, which is all of us to some degree - are doomed to a life that is never fulfilled; we lose the capacity to reach a destination. So even those who have plenty, in this scarcity culture, cannot quit the chase.

More is better misguides us in a deeper way. It leads us to define ourselves by financial success and external achievements. We judge others based on what they have and how much they have, and miss the immeasurable inner gifts they bring to life. all the great spiritual teachings tell us to look inside to find the wholeness we crave, but the scarcity chase allows no time or psychic space for that kind of introspection. In the pursuit of more we overlook the fullness and completeness that are already within us waiting to be discovered. Our drive to enlarge our net worth turns us away from discovering and deepening our self worth.

The belief that we need to possess, and possess more than the other person or company or nation, is the driving force for much of the violence and war, corruption and exploitation on earth. In the condition of scarcity, we believe we must have more - more oil, more land, more military might, more market share, more profits....more money. In the campaign to gain, we often pursue our goals at all costs, even at the risk of destroying whole cultures and peoples.

.... Do we need or even really want all the clothing, cars, groceries and gadgets we bring home from our shopping trips; or are we acting on impulse, responding to the call of the consumer culture and the steady, calculated seduction by fashion, food and consumer product advertising?...

Toxic Myth #3: That's Just The Way It Is

The third toxic myth is that that's just the way it is, and there's no way out. There's not enough to go around, more is definitely better, and the people who have more are always people who are other than us. It's not fair, but we'd better play the game because that's just the way it is and it's a hopeless, helpless, unequal, unfair world where you can never get out of this trap.

That's just the way it is is just another myth, but it's probably the one with the most grip, because you can always make a case for it. When something has always been a certain way and tradition, assumptions or habits make it resistant to change, then it seems logical, just commonsensical, that the way it is is the way it will stay. This is when and where the blindness, the numbness, the trance and underneath it all the the resignation of scarcity sets in. Resignation makes us feel hopeless, helpless and cynical. Resignation also keeps us in line, even at the end of the line, where a lack of money becomes an excuse for holding back from commitment and contributing what we do have - time, energy and creativity - to making a difference. Resignation keeps us from questioning how much we'll compromise ourselves or exploit others for the money available to us in a job or career, a personal relationship or a business opportunity.

That's just the way it is justifies the greed, prejudice and inaction that scarcity fosters in our relationship with money and the rest of the human race. For generations, it protected the early American slave trade (The Indian caste system) from which the privileged majority built farms, towns, business empires and family fortunes many of which survive today. For more generations it protected and emboldened institutionalised racism, sex discrimination and social and economic discrimination against other ethnic and religious minorities. It has throughout history, and still today, enabled dishonest business and political leaders to exploit others for their own financial gain.

Globally, the myth of that's just the way it is makes it so that those with the most money wield the most power and feel encouraged and entitled to do so. For instance, the United States with 4 % of the world's population produces 25% of the pollution that contributes to global warming......  Meanwhile, developing countries adopting Western economic models are replicating patterns that, even in political democracies, place inordinate power in the hands of the wealthy few, design social institutions and systems that favour them and fail to adequately address the inherent inequities and consequences that undermine health, education and safety for all.

We say we feel bad about these and other inequities in the world, but the problems seem so deeply rooted as to be insurmountable and we resign ourselves to that's just the way it is, declaring ourselves helpless to change things. In that resignation, we abandon our own human potential, and the possibility of contributing to a thriving, equitable and healthy world.

That's just the way it is presents one of the toughest pieces of transforming our relationship with money, because if you can't let go of the chase and shake off the helplessness and cynicism it eventually generates then you're stuck. If you are not willing to question that, then it is hard to dislodge the thinking that got you stuck. We have to be willing to let go of that's just the way it is, even if just for a moment, to consider the possibility that there isn't a way it is or way it isn't. There is the way we choose to act and what we choose to make of circumstances.

Breaking the wall of secrecy on the sexual abuse of men by women

Our collective difficulty in understanding and addressing this taboo is tied up in our archaic conceptions of sexuality

• 
• • Ally Fogg
  • theguardian.com, Monday 9 June 2014 11.21 BST

‘How does it happen? Alcohol is implicated in a very large proportion of accounts.’ Photograph: joefoxphoto/Alamy

"You don't feel like a person any more. You feel like a thing. Like you're subhuman. It gets to you, and you stop thinking of yourself as human. You stop thinking you deserve to be happy, or that you deserve to have friends or to be loved.

"Eventually, you stop thinking you deserve to live. Maybe you act on those feelings, maybe you don't. I did. I was hospitalised four times before I finally got help and found a therapist who took me seriously and told me it wasn't my fault."

The first-person accounts posted on Reddit last week by survivors of sexual abuse have many familiar elements. They recount post-traumatic stress and emotional damage, the sexual dysfunction and difficulties forming relationships, and – most commonly – the disbelief and victim-blaming that greet attempts to report or share the details, even with trusted friends. The only difference with the hundreds of stories shared on one remarkable, often heartbreaking thread is that all were from men, recounting their abuse by women. Many told of childhood sexual abuse, others described sexual assaults, all the way up to forced penetrative sex, committed by women on teenage or adult males.

Of course Reddit is not a verified source. Anyone can register under any name, and many of the accounts were posted under so-called throwaway monikers. But before anyone dismisses the anecdotes out of hand, consider that whenever academic researchers have asked the question, they have found astonishingly high incidence of this crime.

In 2010, the largest survey of its type in the world – the US Centre for Disease Control'sNational Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey – found that the rates of men being forced to penetrate women over the previous year were identical to the rates of women reporting being raped: 1.1%. Lifetime prevalence of the crimes were 4.8% for men and 17.8% for women. Meanwhile, men reporting sex through coercion was 1.5% over the past year (6% lifetime) compared with 2% (13% lifetime) for women.

These findings were not wildly out of step with precedent. I collated much of the previous research in a blogpost. A consensus emerged that not only do a significant minority of men report having been forced or coerced into a sexual act in their lifetime, even higher numbers of women admit to having forced or coerced a man to do so. Our collective ignorance of these issues does not arise from lack of data, but from a wilfully constructed wall of secrecy.

How does it happen? Alcohol is implicated in a very large proportion of accounts, men passing out at parties and coming around to find themselves being molested, or being assaulted by a woman. Other accounts include threats, blackmail or even brute force and violence. Not all men are bigger, stronger or more assertive than all women. There is very little understanding that not only is sexual abuse of men by women potentially damaging to the victim, it is also a criminal offence, carrying a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

Whenever I have written on this topic, I receive a new batch of comments, emails and messages from men saying, yes, this happened to me too. Inevitably, I have received many more offering ridicule, mockery and outright denial. The most powerful response to such attitudes came in a stunning, stomach-twisting monologue by the actor and writer Andrew Bailey, which went viral a couple of months ago. Anyone who has ever reacted to this issue with words such as "lucky bastard, wish that had happened to me" should perhaps get their pocket money stopped until they have sat down and watched this brilliant little film to the end.

Just raising this issue is difficult. By talking about it, I will be accused of undermining attempts to address the rape and sexual assault of women which is, by any measure, the more extensive and harmful social phenomenon and public health crisis. There are indeed poisonous souls who use "yeah, well women are just as bad" as a vapid and vacuous response to complaints about male violence against women, and that is shameful. Such fears, however, cannot justify leaving any victims ignored, maligned and misunderstood. The only correct response to learning about the prevalence of male victims is not to treat female victims as a lower priority, but all victims as a higher priority.

Our collective difficulty in understanding and addressing the sexual abuse of men by women is tied up in our archaic and damaging conceptions of both male and female sexuality. No, boys and men are not always gagging for sex with anyone, under any circumstances. No, women are not invariably coy, chaste flowers awaiting a Romeo to sweep them off their feet. I thoroughly agree with the campaigners who call for better education of our young people on what true sexual consent really looks like. We also need to take on board that such lessons are not only needed by young men.

He's now in prison, but Max Clifford's macho culture lives on

Max Clifford may be in prison, but the culture he sold and espoused lives on

• 
• • Carole Cadwalladr
  • The Observer, Saturday 3 May 2014 19.30 BST

A police photograph of disgraced PR guru Max Clifford. Photograph: /PA

In 2005, I found out, quite by chance, that Max Clifford was having an affair with a married woman. I say, "quite by chance", but it was only chance on my side. It was entirely intentional on his. He had arranged a press trip to Galway – a typical Clifford hybrid affair, an opportunity to promote a number of his clients, Club 328, a private jet charter club, the boy band singer Brian McFadden and, most importantly, Clifford himself – and he'd invited along a journalist.

If you want to know how Clifford controlled the media, or the kind of power and influence he wielded for decades, consider this. Two minutes into the trip, he sidled up to me and explained the presence of the attractive 40-ish-year-old woman at his side: "By the way, Carole," he said. "For the purposes of this article, Jo is my PA."

A year later, I interviewed him and revealed in an article the story of the affair: "The girls from his office got drunk and told me what every tabloid diarist writer and showbiz reporter in the country apparently knew. And, for an ugly lesson in how the media works, here it is: none of them wrote about it because none of them could afford to offend one of the prime sources of quality scandal."

This was 2005, when Rebekah Brooks was the editor of the Sun. And Andy Coulson was the editor of the News of the World. They did not print a story about Clifford, of course. Nor did Piers Morgan at the Daily Mirror. The choice I was left with, I wrote, was "an unappetising dilemma: collude with Clifford and the entire tabloid press establishment or potentially wreck someone else's marriage".

It's nearly a decade ago, but I've thought about Clifford relatively often since then. I thought about him when Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson were arrested. When various witnesses stood in the box and talked about the ways he had tried to impress and manipulate him.

When the issue of the size of Clifford's penis became a matter for the jury, I went back to the story I wrote in 2006 to check what he'd told me on the subject. Clifford is "impervious to criticism", I wrote. He doesn't even attempt to justify himself "because I know I can't". The only thing he'd really mind, he tells me is if someone said he was rubbish in bed. Or "that I had a small willy".

It's a measure of the desperateness of his situation that Clifford allowed his penis, his "willy" as he'd have it, which his doctor claimed was "within the average range for a Caucasian male of Mr Clifford's age", to be one of the main lines of defence. This was a man well and truly on the ropes. But then, Clifford had proved that he would say anything to anybody at any time. He was a hopeless witness for his own defence: a self-confessed, bare-faced liar.

During the trial, witnesses talked about Clifford's office as his sexual fiefdom, but it was the press that was his real fiefdom. It was the expectation of control. Of obedience. But this wasn't solely down to him. He was part of a wider media landscape that regarded human nature as base, people as corruptible, public figures as grist to the scandal mill.

A media landscape that has bequeathed to us: the idea that public life is a testing ground for whoever has the most testosterone; that everybody is out for whatever they can get; that distrust and betrayal and contempt are everyday aspects of the human condition.

"Nearly everybody I've ever known has affairs," Clifford told me. "Nearly every journalist I've ever met has affairs. I haven't met one, in 40-odd years, who hasn't. It's not that I think they are, I know they are!"

Well, no, Max, you don't, actually. At the time, I wrote about how depressing it was to be in his moral universe: "A world where men are men and women are trollops." But this was what he truly believed. And for years, this was the bedrock of the culture that permeated our press, our world, our lives.

I remember one year, during these times, when the News of the World won newspaper of the year at the Press Awards. I was at the awards at the Observer table, sitting next to an American journalist, Sarah Lyall, who was writing for the online magazine, Slate. The evening, she wrote, was "like a soccer match attended by a club of misanthropic inebriates"; the tone set by Sir Bob Geldof, there to present a prize to the Sun. "I've just been down at the bog," he said. "And it's true that rock stars do have bigger knobs than journalists."

Knobs, willies, cocks. There's been a turbocharged masculinity at the heart of British newspaper culture for decades. At the heart of public life. Max Clifford has gone, undone by his need to assert himself, to dominate, to brag, to boast of his affairs, his power, his influence.

And, so it turns out, to abuse the trust not just of the British public, but of vulnerable underage girls too. It all seems so much of a piece.

Some things have certainly changed. Clifford is in jail. Leveson has come and gone. But this competition, the pissing competition that is British public life, the need to prove the size of your cock, the expectation that public figures are corruptible, contemptible, that all people, everywhere, are simply out for themselves, this idea that life is, at its core, a willy-waving contest, this has not gone. This is still here.

This is Max Clifford's world and we live in it still.

Interview with Gail Tredwell

A former member of the inner circle of Amritanandamayi group, Gail Tredwell reveals what routinely happened in the camp during her time there.

Is she stating  the truth?

Or

As the Amritanandamayi members state 'is she being manipulated' to malign the movement?

Probably, one needs a judicial enquiry to set the record state. But given the way the allegations against Satya Sai Baba were treated one's hopes are.....

It's not zero-hours contracts that are the problem, it's the bosses who abuse them

As someone who has worked a zero-hours contract, I welcome Vince Cable's consultation – and his intention to crack down on exploitation

• 
• • Ruth Hardy
  • theguardian.com, Thursday 19 December 2013 18.32 GMT

Vince Cable intends to crack down on 'exclusivity clauses [in zero-hours contracts], meaning their workers are guaranteed no hours, but are prohibited from finding work with anyone else'. Photograph: David Cheskin/PA

Vince Cable today launched a consultation on zero-hours contracts, saying he wanted greater fairness, but would not be calling for a complete ban. Having worked a zero-hours contract for just under a year, I think he's right. For many, a flexible contract where you are not obliged to work fits in well with the demands of studying or another job. The problem is not with the contracts themselves, but with the way that employers are abusing them.

It is estimated that about 1 million Britons are on these contracts, and in recent years they have become much more widespread. For those who have a steady source of income that covers rent, food and other essentials, but occasionally need to top it up with extra work (such as students in the summer holidays, or those who have retired), zero-hours contracts can be a good fit for both employer and employee.

The problems arise when companies use zero-hours contracts for nearly all their staff, as a way to cut their own costs and limit the rights that their workers have. The distinction between "worker" and "employee" is a complicated one, but those on zero-hours contracts are usually defined as workers, meaning they have fewer rights than employees. Employees are entitled to statutory redundancy pay and the right not to be unfairly dismissed. Not all workers, however, are.

If you want a job with guaranteed hours, to be forced on to a zero-hours contract denies you the psychological security that comes with knowing how much you will earn in a given month. Insecure employment means that you are constantly worrying about money and making ends meet: you can have plenty of hours one week, and none the next. There is no safety net of a minimum number of hours. There is nothing to stop you from earning nothing.

And some companies have even been using exclusivity clauses, meaning their workers are guaranteed no hours, but are prohibited from finding work with anyone else. Vince Cable has announced that he intends to crack down on these, but it is an indication of how exploitative the current labour market is that they have so far been allowed.

Zero-hours contracts enable companies to transfer the burden of an uncertain economy on to those that they employ. They are assured of a pool of workers from whom they can draw in busy times and ignore in quieter times. At the staffing agency I worked for, we were told that some shifts were "non-cancellation", meaning that cancelling the shift (even from ill health or an emergency) would incur a fine of £10. Yet the company was not restrained by its own rules: once I took a day off my internship to make a non-cancellation shift, as I needed the hours. The day before, I was told numbers had been reduced so I would no longer be needed after all. This short-term cutting of shifts happened often, sometimes just hours before you were meant to start.

A culture in which employers are allowed to treat their workers as disposable cogs in a commercial machine is exploitative, and there needs to be more regulation to ensure that those who want a stable, set-hours contract are entitled to one, while those who need to work flexibly can continue to do so. The needs of businesses should not take precedence over the rights of those that work for them – even in an economic situation that seems to have lapped up most of our principles with it.