[GD]

Link to International Simultaneous Policy Organisation (ISPO) Website

How can we get our governments to follow something like the Uppsala Protocol when we can't even get something like the Kyoto protocol implemented (properly)?

Can there be a way to avoid a financial collapse? Can we make our money systems (more) sustainable?

The problem:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')oday, global markets and corporations so comprehensively overpower individual nations that no politician or political party dares make the first move to solve global problems for fear of putting their own nation at a significant economic competitive disadvantage. Though legislators know that serious world problems such as global warming, monopolistic corporate power, poverty and environmental destruction all demand decisive action, they are loath to implement the policies needed to solve them - policies such as higher corporate taxes and tougher environmental protection laws. They legitimately fear that in today's liberalized global economy, investors, corporations and jobs would simply pick up and leave for more congenial destinations. However good their intentions, governments feel bound to conform to a straitjacket of market- and business-friendly policies. That's why, despite their election promises, even socially progressive parties end up following much the same policies when they get into office, and little, if anything, changes.

[GD]

I guess I should've ended the post like this:

What do people think?
Worthwhile or waste of time?


GD

[vegasmade]

In practice, it seems like a perfect solution. The reality isn't so rosey. Here in the US, we've become so focused on our red state/blue state strife, we can't agree to disagree. Those things which really need attention aren't debated, because they aren't considered problems. Our attention is aimed at the most marginal of issues, leaving the real problems to fester unnoticed. The realities of America aren't seen for their global effects, only their 'so-called' benefits to our bottom lines. In this regard, America is not well off. Internationally, it looks only slightly more possible.
Not until proof of the futility in our current system is vouge, will any change be possible. I'm very afraid the proof may only come after it's too late to fix it. The idea is good, but unlikely to be effective.

[GD]

Hi Vegasmade,
Thanks for the reply.
All of those problems with the politics of the US that you have mentioned are pretty much the same over here in the UK too.
We had a "meet the leaders" question time special on the BBC just last week where the main 3 party leaders faced a panel of members of the public for half an hour each.
The topics for discussion focused mainly on tax, hospitals, Iraq war, immigration, university tuition fees.
Climate change, energy resource depletion and whether we are going on a massive nuclear power building program were not mentioned once. (I was seriously wondering whether the panel were "pre-screened" or hand-picked as to avoid the (really) difficult questions.)

I also believe that any big changes are going to come too late to avoid the big problems that PO will serve up. When the problems do start to happen, it will become clear that some fresh policies are needed (I'm not sure people will want to scrap the entire system and start from scratch).

Adopting SP (and telling your election candidates) means you send a signal to your politicians that you want change for the better (and a cooperative strategy also!).

SP, however does not need blanket support. Our elections tend to be decided by a small minority of key undecided / "swing" voters. (The current UK election is being targeted at only 2% of the population - the swing voters).

The quotes below illustrate how ISPO aims to take advantage of this situation (apologies if this gets a little repetitive).

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')url=http://www.simpol.org/dossiers/dossier-UK/html-UK/implementation-UK.html]What is ISPO's implementation strategy?[/url]
Why will Political Parties around the world want to adopt SP?

That SP is low, or no-risk when it comes to be implemented; that it is universally acceptable and that its adoption cannot validly be refused are all good reasons why it will succeed. But there is a further reason: because today pseudo-democracy means that, whatever party we vote for, and in whatever country we happen to be, the policies delivered remain substantially the same; whatever they may promise prior to elections, today’s political parties - including Green parties - cannot deviate from market and corporate demands as a result of financial markets' ability to quash any public policy they dislike by the threat of capital, corporations and jobs moving elsewhere. Democracy has thus been subverted in to pseudo-democracy in which political parties can offer no prospect of substantive reform. Instead of providing a mechanism through which our democratic rights can be expressed, political parties have therefore become substantially obsolete as a means of change. Because virtually all countries are part of the global economy, we are all subject to pseudo-democracy. It therefore simply no longer much matters which party we vote for, or whether we bother to vote at all.

As more and more people come to realise this, they will increasingly be prepared to vote for ANY party that adopts SP seeing it as the only way to restore genuine democracy, economic and environmental security and peace around the world. Furthermore, we must remember that in most countries it takes only a relatively small number of people to influence the ‘swing’ or ‘floating vote’. The target, therefore, is to get that ‘critical mass’ of people in each country to adopt SP. When political parties realise that a critical proportion of the electorate is prepared to vote for any party that adopts SP, they are going to find adoption rather difficult to resist.

[Doly]

This looks very clever, but suppose that a party's policy was aggresively :
1) Back the Upsala protocol
2) Fight resource wars to get the rest of the oil

Assuming that you are in favour of 1 and oppose 2, what do you do?

[GD]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Doly', 'T')his looks very clever, but suppose that a party's policy was aggresively :
1) Back the Upsala protocol
2) Fight resource wars to get the rest of the oil

Assuming that you are in favour of 1 and oppose 2, what do you do?

[GD]

A short while ago, I posed a question to the Simultaneous policy organisation people in London:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')his "peak oil" situation is coming within the next few years and will have dramatic implications for mankind.

So my question is:

How can Simpol help mankind cooperatively effectively to reduce our energy dependance and move toward sustainable society in a peaceful manner?

[vegasmade]

Hi GD! I thought this thread had gone dead. It's an interesting response they gave to your question. It was almost a realistic scenario!
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')P could facilitate all of this peacefully but the question is whether humanity will sieze the opportunity it offers in time to avoid a chaotic and violent melt-down. The paradox is this: that for a peaceful transition to occur, a greater level of crisis is required before people will wake up: desperation is required! If and when that occurs, a rapid uptake of SP (or some other similar plan yet to be devised) could occur. But if the crisis becomes too critical too quickly, there is the distinct possibility that people will be overwhelmed and melt-down could then occur. Either way, it will be a close run thing. All we can do, I feel, is to try to get SP just far enough into the public consciousness around the world so that when imminent melt-down threatens, enough people and politicians will know that a solution is available and ready. If and when that occurs, peaceful change could come very quickly indeed.

[GD]

Hi vegasmade,
You make some good points, it is true that our current path is “last man standing” as opposed to “cooperative powerdown”.
I largely agree with the points you make, but I differ in that I haven’t given up hope. This is why (apologies if I’m getting a bit repetitive (again)):

SP will need support from a significant number of people. The opposition shown by the public to the invasion of Iraq gives an indication of the potential for support for this type of thing. Also watch the upcoming G8 demonstrations in Edinburgh. A massive desire for real change is already in place - SP gives the people a chance to register it.

Roughly 50% of all those eligible to vote choose not to (in US and UK). Why? There is nothing (or very little) to choose between the candidates. SP gives them something to vote for, as, if it makes no difference who you vote for, then you might as well vote for whichever candidate adopts SP.

Quotes from the website:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')o this point in my life, I've found nothing more worthwhile of becoming involved with than SP. Sometimes all the hard work at the grass roots level for various organisations can feel futile in the broader, oppressive political landscape, and SP speaks directly to changing the broader political landscape .... [It] has caught my attention and passion like no other movement before.
Kerri Smith
Activist and adult educator, Australia

-------------------------------

Empowering the Protest Vote

In the twenty years that I have been afforded a vote, I am unashamed to say I have never used it. My theory was that not to vote was the best way of securing my protest to all or any political parties. As the years have gone on, my decision at 18 to adopt this tactic has been fuelled by what is happening in the world. As soon as I had digested your information I signed up [adopted SP] without hesitation.
Mark Davey
Entrepreneur, England

[GD]

Live 8 - Making Poverty History?
Or Entrenching Our Irresponsibility?
By John Bunzl, Trustee
International Simultaneous Policy Organisation

The very name "Live 8" used for the rock concerts being held around the world on 2nd July to coincide with the G-8 meeting of the world’s richest nations indicates a focus on just eight politicians. It thus implies that just eight people could, if only they are sufficiently pressured, change the world by finally making poverty history. Bob Geldof KBE certainly seems to agree that these eight people have this within their power when, in referring to the original Live Aid concerts, he recently said, "We couldn’t change politics 20 years ago. It was a different world. Now it’s not a charity, it’s about political justice." Live 8, he says, "has to be this great national moment. This country gets to change the world and tilt it in favour of the poor. … These eight guys should do this thing." [1]

These eight guys should do this thing!

Well, that would be nice. But can they? Does the G-8 really, genuinely, have the power to make poverty history? Does it really have that much power at all? Geldof and Bono by all accounts certainly think so. But are they not, perhaps, simply in thrall to the very attractive idea that some small group of people must have massive power and could change the world if only we put enough pressure on them? It’s tempting to think that someone must be in control of the global economy because, after all, aren’t our politicians supposed to be in charge of it? But how frightening would it be if we were to discover and to have to take on board the truth that no one is really in control; that the global economy actually runs on a kind of auto-pilot and governments and their appointed institutions such as the IMF, the WTO and the World Bank are merely puppets in a game over which they have no significant control? How frightening would it be, in short, to find that politicians and corporate executives are merely sitting in first class because there is, in reality, no pilot in the cockpit?

And it’s not just rock stars who seem to believe that a restricted group of politicians or business people have the power to change the world. The thousands of NGOs (Non-Governmental Organisations) that make up the ‘global justice movement’ and who consistently campaign against global poverty and other global problems all essentially adhere to the central tactic of blame, shame and protest to advance their cause. But blaming politicians or multi-national corporations inevitably carries with it the implication that they act wholly out of their own free will and thus have the power to change their behaviour. Blame implies power. After all, why else blame them?

It may be true that politicians and their appointed institutions have some power to reduce or cancel debt and to increase aid to poor countries and doing so would doubtless provide some short-term relief. But if we have a genuine intention to make poverty history, we should recognise that aid and debt are merely symptoms of a global economy that isn’t working. It is not therefore politicians’ performance on aid or debt that will determine whether poverty is made history or not. Rather, we need to assess the extent to which politicians have any significant power over the deeper workings of the global economy itself.

Power Over Markets or Markets Overpower?

If we look, firstly, at corporations, investors and business executives who are the global economy’s main actors and whose behaviour is often blamed for many of our global ills, lets consider whether they act purely out of their own free will and whether they therefore have the power to substantially alter their damaging behaviour. It should be clear that in a competitive global market any corporation or investor taking on greater social or environmental responsibility – and thus an increase in its costs - would only lose out to less responsible competitors causing a loss of its profits, a consequent loss of jobs and, ultimately, the prospect of becoming the target of a hostile takeover. Corporate execs are thus largely obliged to do what they do for as David Korten has accurately pointed out, "With financial markets demanding maximum short-term gains and corporate raiders standing by to trash any company that isn't externalizing every possible cost, efforts to fix the problem by raising the social consciousness of managers misdefine the problem. There are plenty of socially conscious managers. The problem is a predatory system that makes it difficult for them to survive. This creates a terrible dilemma for managers with a true social vision of the corporation's role in society. They must either compromise their vision or run a great risk of being expelled by the system."[2]

And what about politicians and governments? With no barriers to capital and employment moving instantly to any country where costs are lower and profits therefore higher, how should we expect governments to unilaterally impose increased regulations or taxes on business when that would only invite employment and investment to de-camp elsewhere? This collective governmental fear has become so ingrained and accepted that it has long since attracted its own code-name. For whenever you see the phrase, "maintaining our international competitiveness", you will be witnessing an unspoken inter-governmental race-to-the-bottom; a vicious circle which forces every nation to down-level social and environmental protection so as to better out-bid competitor nations for capital and jobs. It is therefore the global free movement of capital which drives the ever-widening gap between rich and poor and which explains why the environment is continually sacrificed at the altar of competitive economic growth. Such a political environment thus inevitably precludes the implementation of just the kind of measures needed if global poverty and so many other pressing global problems are really to be consigned to history. Because any government or restricted group of nations that moved first would lose out to all the others. And that is why nothing changes exept that our problems only get worse. Because governments, too, - even the G-8 - are largely powerless to buck the vicious circle of global capital flows over which they have no significant control.

International Competitiveness Emasculates Democracy

Which party we may vote into government or what their pre-election promises may have been consequently no longer much matters. Once in government even Green parties are forced to jettison their most cherished policies in the name of maintaining their nation’s international competitiveness as the German Green party has shown. This is why party politics has become little more than an electoral charade in which all parties become ‘business parties’ and none can offer substantive solutions to global problems. While we may have the mechanics of democracy, the reality is a kind of pseudo-democracy in which whatever party we elect, the policies delivered inevitably conform to the profit-seeking demands of foot-loose global capital. There is no democracy; there is merely the illusion of political choice. Conventional party politics cannot therefore save us.

Even the WTO, IMF and World Bank whom we might expect to have a greater measure of control are, in fact, merely reacting to forces well beyond their influence. This encourages and justifies their close-held delusion that competition is an exclusively beneficial phenomenon. For in having no control over the global free movement of capital or corporations, and thus in accepting that state as a "natural given", what else can they do but recommend that each nation improves it’s attractiveness to global investors by implementing structural adjustment and privatisation programs? Taking their free movement as a natural given thus constrains these institutions to prescribe yet more competition as the cure to our global ills and not less. Sacrificing society and the environment thus becomes neatly and logically justified by the ever-present need for each nation to "improve its international competitiveness". In failing to realise that economic competition becomes destructive when it fails to occur within a framework of adequate global regulations which protect society and the environment, the WTO, WB and IMF serve only to exacerbate the problems they think they’re solving. They are not in control. There is no pilot in the cockpit.

Because we so often refuse to see what is so plainly in front of our eyes, I will repeat myself: There IS NO PILOT IN THE COCKPIT. There IS no restricted group of politicians who can change the world. Such is the nature of the vicious circle of global capital flows that the system runs all by itself. No pilot needed. No pilot available.

For all the good Geldof, Bono and the global justice movement have undoubtedly done to bring global poverty and other global problems to wider public attention, they ultimately do us a disservice by perpetuating the common belief that politicians have substantial power. After all why, despite all the promises they manage to elicit from politicians regarding greater debt relief, increased aid and so on, do global poverty and other global problems only get worse? It was to broadly this question that Bob Geldof, during his interview on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross (BBC 1,10th June 2005), rather limply answered: "I don’t know". For Bob Geldof and NGOs, the first crucial step to understanding why their campaigns have little, if any, lasting effect would be to finally take on board and accept that those they believed to have significant power simply do not have it.

Adolescence or Maturity?

Very many of us would likely agree with the proposition that humanity’s aggregate mode of behaviour in the present age of scientific materialist globalisation, with its wars, grabs for natural resources, terrorism and unbridled consumption, is a sure sign that we find ourselves in the full flush of our species adolescence. Evolution biologist, Elisabet Sahtouris, notes ruefully that "Young species are found to have highly competitive characteristics: They take all the resources they can, they hog territory, they multiply wildly. Sound familiar?"[3] Indeed, one of the traits of adolescence is the avoidance of reality; the propensity to ignore the unpalatable, to remain dependent upon others, to blame others for our problems and to expect others to sort out our own mess. In short, the hallmark of adolescence is the abdication of responsibility. By maintaining the illusion that politicians have the power to change the world on their own, by abdicating responsibility to them, and by encouraging us to think that all we need to do is to buy a little white wrist-band and go to a rock concert, Live 8 regrettably perpetuates our avoidance of responsibility. It encourages us to think that someone else – in this case eight politicians – can save the world for us.


Fortunately, the road out of adolescence and towards humanity’s adulthood is being pioneered through the work of a number of as yet little-known organisations whose supporters have taken the crucial step of releasing themselves from these delusions and who, in taking proper responsibility, realise that they themselves, co-operating globally with other citizens, must take the necessary action. They know that no one else can or will do it for us. One such group is the International Simultaneous Policy Organisation (ISPO)[4] which offers a way for citizens the world over to firstly take back control of our hollowed-out pseudo-democratic processes and, secondly, a way we can co-create the policies necessary to achieve environmental sustainability and global justice. Finally it offers the crucial means for us to bring our politicians to implement them simultaneously so that no nation, corporation or citizen loses out to any other, thus allowing us all to escape the vicious circle of destructive global competition in which governments, corporations and citizens are presently locked.

By using our right to vote in a completely new way which makes it in the vital electoral interests of politicians to support Simultaneous Policy, it thus has the potential to turn the destructive, competition-led politics of globalisation on its head by offering global citizens a practical way to take back the world with a new politics of citizen-led, international co-operation for our emergent - but yet-to-be-born - sustainable global society. As Elisabet Sahtouris comments: "Simultaneous Policy is an imperative if we are to evolve humanity from its juvenile competitive stage to its co-operative species maturity. A wonderful ‘no risk’ strategy for finding agreement on important issues in building global community!".

It’s time we grew up.

John Bunzl – June 2005.
John Bunzl is the founder and a Trustee of the International Simultaneous Policy Organisation (ISPO).
Adopting the Simultaneous Policy is free! Please go to: http://www.simpol.org/dossiers/dossier- ... sp-UK.html
Simultaneous Policy: Re-Discovering Our Collective Humanity
Footnotes:
[1] See http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressr ... ross.shtml
[2] When Corporations Rule the World, David Korten, Kumarian Press & Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1995.
[3] Elisabet Sahtouris, adapted from Understanding Globalization as an Evolutionary Leap presented to the Institute of Noetic Sciences http://www.noetic.org/, July 2001. For more by Sahtouris go to: http://www.ratical.org/Lifeweb
[4] Global website http://www.simpol.org. UK website http://www.simpol.org.uk

[Tyler_JC]

Why do we want to "make poverty history"?

I'm currently enjoying the benefits of global inequity and so is every single person with a computer or a telephone.

To make poverty history would mean taking my money and giving it to someone else. The global average income is like $6,000. That's too low to afford a computer in my country and in the rest of the 1st world.

I'm sick of these wealth redistribution plans across global lines.

It's never going to happen and it probably shouldn't happen.

Think of the damage to the planet if everyone moved up into a 2nd world standard of living, or a 1st world.

There isn't enough stuff for everyone to be happy. That's the sad truth of it. If these countries want my sympathy, I suggest they work on reducing family size. Otherwise they are condeming themselves to a future of misery.

Yes, it is Us V. Them. You just don't understand which side you're on. Unless you want to live like a 18th century standard of living, you are still using more than your fair share. That puts you in my boat. The other boat is dirty, disease-ridden, poor, overcrowded, hungry, undemocratic, and lacks all modern advantages like electricity and clean food.

Our boat has A/C in the summer, heat in the winter, excellent food in abundance, water on demand, TV, the internet, X-Box, material goods galore, safety, democratic ideals, universal education, and why anyone would want to give this up (without being forced to by PO) is beyond me.

[GD]

It might well be ironic that "every single person with a computer or a telephone" is "enjoying the benefits of global inequity" might also opt to end such a situation. Or you may even think it's plain stupidity...

You might be sick of the idea of ending poverty, but many are sick of the idea of continuing poverty, and are willing to make that sacrifice on moral grounds. (Need I say "take a look at the support for the live 8 concerts tomorrow"?) Many more people would be on board too if they weren't deluded by a grossly irresponsible media...)

--------------------

Wrt the 2nd & 3rd world countries: If you think there isn't enough "stuff" to make everyone happy, you might want to consider what "stuff" the rest of the world will require in order to be happy. I would imagine the rest of the world isn't quite as materialistic as the average American (or European), and some basic human rights would go a long way to making them happier. (Maybe they won't really care about not having x-boxes or 3G mobiles...
I could also go on about sociatal degradation in th west - increasing levels of drug / alcohol abuse / prozac prescriptions (now detectable in the water here in the UK) / suicide rates and question if we really are happy... but that's a discussion for another day).

Education, basic health care, sanitation etc, are all easily do-able - in an environment of peace and stability - you don't need to be mega-rich. (But the fact is it's hard, when more of your GDP has to go on paying the world bank than on healthcare.)

------------------

As for democracy, well, to believe we actually still have it in the west, now there's a grand scale delusion. SP gives us a way of reclaiming it. It would also promote it across the globe, now that surely can't be bad.

-----------------

Its a simple fact that the western way of life, cosy as it is, is highly unsustainable; even if you were to take global oil production peak out of the equation, forget about wealth redistribution etc, etc... we'd still be riding for a fall due to the nature of our debt-based capitalist system, the degradation of the environment caused by indusrial & domestic wastes, hydrocarbon pollution (that's only scratching the surface...).

We might be having a ball at the moment, but we're inhibiting our very own grand-children's chances of survival. That is the boat we're in.

But the truth is (and you know it!) that our boat has long since hit the iceberg, and our choice now is whether we sink or swim. (And soon, we will not be giving a sh*t about air-con or x-boxes...)

-----------------------

Overall, your post has the tone of the "US v THEM" paradigm that, you are right, IS our dominant modus operandi at the moment.

SP allows us to cast our minds eye into the future, and see the policies proposed above in a modus operandi of cooperation, separated from the fear and mistrust of today's ultra competitive world.

This is the duality of SP, what is unthinkable today is possible tomorrow.

I am suggesting that, even if you're a hard-ass republican, and you are an advocate of more war for resources, you ought to also have a plan b, 'cos if it doesn't work out, maybe if we can all agree to it, we could help each other out of this mess...

That, I think, is worth a shot at least.

[GD]

[url=http://www.simpol.org/dossiers/dossier-UK/pdf_UK/EvolutionaryBiology_SP.html]Evolutionary Biology and The Simultaneous Policy
Vision-Logic for the Next Stage in our Evolutionary Future[/url]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'E')volutionary biologists are increasingly questioning the Darwinist view of evolution which describes it largely in terms of competition and natural selection in favour of a "post-Darwinist" stance that more properly recognises the crucial role of co-operation. But since major transitions from competition to co-operation occur only at certain critical and short-lived points of evolutionary crisis, it is perhaps unsurprising that co-operation’s significant role has hitherto been under-valued and under-explored. Today, as humanity increasingly faces a critical point of crisis in terms of our survival on planet Earth, it is essential that light now be shed on how co-operation has worked in evolution, and how it can be made to work now if we are to have a sustainable future.

[EnergySpin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'i')t is essential that light now be shed on how co-operation has worked in evolution, and how it can be made to work now if we are to have a sustainable future.

[Barbara]

$ 6000 each is not that bad. Can't see why in the world we have ten times that while there's people living on $20 per month.
Did we deserve it? Not for sure. It just happened we're born "on the right side" of the planet. I's say "go with the redistribution" and let's go on with those $6000. So we'll see, at the end, who is smart and who simply sit and starve.
(My guess: Chineses and Indians would rule the world in two years. Forget about that stupid "Western supremacy"!)

[GD]

An SP article on the recent UK election:

The UK General Election 2005: A Proving Ground for SP’s Novel Voting Strategy

John Bunzl, Trustee of Simpol-UK, argues that SP offers electoral incentives within present “pseudo-democracies” that are significant enough to drive governments to address global problems they currently ignore, and lists the ways in which UK election results successfully confirm that voting citizens now possess a viable process for developing global problem-solving policies, recognised by politicians as worthy of their support.

Citizens’ attempts to improve representative democracy

From the time elections were first invented, citizens have cast their votes in increasingly sophisticated ways. First, those having the vote learned to use it in its most direct and obvious form: by simply choosing a candidate and then voting for them. As time passed and citizens became more aware of the quirks and biases of their electoral systems, they learnt the practice of ‘tactical voting’ whereby one no longer votes directly for one’s preferred candidate, but for the candidate most likely to result in the least unwelcome candidate being elected.

Today, despite representative democracy having spread across the globe, national governments seem more incapable then ever of meeting many of the world’s most critical challenges. While politicians endlessly profess global warming or global poverty, to name but two examples, to represent the highest of their priorities, decisive action is markedly lacking and adequate policies to address these issues remain all but absent from party manifestos.

Despite the spread of representative democracy, therefore, citizens increasingly find that it is failing to deliver solutions in a globalised world. This is evidenced by a marked trend towards reduced voter turnouts in national elections. After all, if voting no longer makes any appreciable difference, why bother?

Democratic deficiencies associated with globalisation

What voters sense but perhaps fail to clearly realise and articulate is that the forces of globalisation and international economic competition inevitably make healthy democracy unworkable. Since capital and corporations can quickly and easily move investment and jobs to wherever in the world that regulations and taxes are lowest and profits therefore highest, governments are inevitably restricted to a very narrow band of market and business-friendly policies options.

Competition between governments for inward investment and new jobs effectively prevents them from implementing any policy likely to cost business more. This, of course, means that just about any policy which would protect society or the environment, nationally or globally, cannot be implemented. With these policies having become effectively out of bounds, no political party in power – regardless of its colour or of what it may have promised in its manifesto – can buck this vicious circle.

Democracy has thus been reduced to what might be called “pseudo-democracy” in which whatever party is elected to govern, the policies remain substantially the same: i.e. they remain confined to whatever may be required to keep business and capital markets happy; to whatever is needed, in short, to maintain the nation’s “international competitiveness”. Meanwhile, global – and many national – problems are left to deteriorate. It is therefore of little surprise that citizens feel their votes make no substantial difference. Frustration and apathy inevitably grow while the global predicament worsens and becomes increasingly unstable.

In the present age of globalisation, therefore, voters are confronted with a new and altogether more challenging question: how to join forces with voters in other countries to use our votes in a new and powerful way that drives the politicians of all parties to implement global problem-solving measures in such a way that no nation need compromise its international competitiveness?

The novel global role in party-political democracies offered by SP

The Simultaneous Policy (SP) was designed precisely to provide an answer to that question, and the UK General Election on 5 May 2005 provided an appropriate “proving ground” on which to test SP’s novel electoral approach. SP goes an important step beyond tactical voting because tactical voting still entails citizens voting for policies which are developed, not by citizens, but by political parties. SP, by contrast, invites citizens to develop their own set of global problem-solving policies.

Indeed, since international competition keeps these issues out of the reach of political parties, who else other than ourselves could do so? But taking over the task of global policy-making is accompanied by the proviso that SP’s policy agenda be implemented simultaneously by all or sufficient nations, and that citizens who adopt SP give strong preference at election time to politicians who pledge to implement it.

This electoral incentive, combined with the fact that simultaneous implementation removes the fears politicians justifiably have about safeguarding national competitiveness, are designed to offer politicians a win-win way of building the necessary international consensus required to implement the far-reaching policies our world, its environment and its peoples now so desperately need. So how did SP fare?

Six-point confirmation of SP’s successful intervention in the UK election

In the event, 38 candidates across 33 constituencies signed the Pledge to implement SP alongside other governments and 10 were elected to Parliament. Back in January 2004 when the campaign on the ground had barely started and Simpol-UK was still to be formed, we expected that our impact during an early general election would be minimal. The 10 MPs who have signed the Pledge is double our early expectation. Furthermore, they came from all the main political parties as well as from Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalist party. It is expected many more will sign up as the campaign grows. So these results show, I suggest, that we succeeded in proving:

1. That the SP ‘technology’ which allows adopters to use their votes to encourage candidates of all parties to pledge to implement SP works very well (in the UK political context, at least). This confirms that it is not necessary to be a political party to gain official acceptance for SP’s global policy agenda. In short, SP’s novel political approach seems to be compatible with, and yet to transcend, the system of conventional party politics.

2. That adopters were very effective indeed in persuading mainstream party candidates to make the Pledge. As the number of adopters grows larger still we can expect increasing support from MPs.

3. That politicians across the political spectrum appear to recognise the need for, and indeed the common sense of, simultaneous implementation in a globalised world. SP thus seems to have very broad cross-party appeal (or at least it is not incompatible with a wide spread of party-political views/approaches).

4. That some MPs sitting on large majorities (i.e. safe seats) were prepared to sign up to SP simply because they think it's a good and practical approach to solving global problems.

5. That SP appears to have been particularly effective in marginal (i.e. very unsafe) seats. In some of these, we were able to get Pledges from more than one of the competing candidates. The increase in the number of marginal seats in 2005 as compared to the 2001 election bodes well for substantially increasing the number of SP-pledging MPs at the next election.

6. That since candidates from Plaid Cymru and UKIP signed the Pledge, it would appear that SP is not incompatible with nationalist-oriented parties. Indeed, astute nationally oriented politicians will understand that, far from compromising national autonomy as one might at first expect, the implementation of SP would paradoxically serve to enhance it!

Implementation of global problem-solving policies is now politically achievable

All in all, the 2005 election showed, I think, that with SP, citizens at last possess a viable process for developing global problem-solving policies and that it is a process which politicians across the political divide see as serious, practical and worthy of their support. Indeed, many politicians seem to understand how destructive competition between nation-states increasingly puts solutions to global problems beyond their reach.

But SP now provides a way to bring them back; only this time with the people – you and me – determining the policy agenda. SP thus appears capable of reinserting these issues into every country’s national electoral ‘space’ where citizens cooperating globally can, through their adoption of SP, finally develop their own solutions. And they can make it in the electoral interests of politicians around the world to implement them – simultaneously – for the good of every nation; for the security of every corporation; for the welfare of every citizen; for the preservation of our planet; and for the good of all humanity.