It’s Simpol

It’s Simpol!
The Simultaneous Policy News

In April John Bunzl received the following most welcome self-explanatory letter from Dr Ramos-Horta, Nobel Peace Laureate and Foreign Minister of East Timor:

However you choose to describe the events surrounding the first-ever pledges of support for the Simultaneous Policy by seven UK candidates during the European Parliament election campaign in June, it seems SP crossed a significant historical threshold in the summer of 2004.

Recalling Barbara Marx Hubbard’s previous comment about SP as "the first social initiative I have found which actually offers a political mechanism to further the evolutionary imperative for greater cooperation", the pledge of support by Rosalind Gill, LibDem candidate for Eastern England, showed us that at least one politician agreed adopting SP was a step worth taking. Had she sensed, perhaps, Hubbard’s was the kind of message some disaffected voters liked to hear?

And then in no time at all, it seemed, others from the Green Party followed her lead: Caroline Lucas (returned as MEP for South East Region); Bob Ball and Councillor Sue Blount in East Midlands; Tony Cooper in the South East; Damon Hoppe in West Midlands; and Tim Turner in London. (For more background information and quotes about Gill and Lucas see the news releases posted on http://spdev.gn.apc.org/.)

One extraordinary feature of this breakthrough, as John Bunzl remarked, is that not one of these pledgers asked how many SP-supporting voters might swing the electoral count in their favour. Is this because SP has now moved closer to the mainstream of political thought in its own right as a new idea whose time has come, because voters’ disenchantment with parliamentary governance can no longer be denied? Or is it because left-of-centre politicians see support for SP as a useful way to capture extra votes?

Either way, the challenge now is to build on this new evidence of public interest in SP through the targeted campaigning of MPs, plans for which are already in place: see below under Simpol-UK news.

Under the title ‘How to bring politicians to heel’ in the 10 May issue of the London-based New Statesman, p.26, Mathew Little wrote about Rosalind Gill’s support for SP in an article focused on "a voters' group that plans to turn elections upside down by issuing its own manifesto". After outlining how SP functions politically, he wrote: "The theory is that this will eventually reach a critical mass of converted governments, triggering simultaneous adoption of the contentious policies so that nobody loses out." And he continued:

"Mike Brady, co-ordinator of the Cambridge [local Adopters’] group, says that at the next general election the campaign will try, by bloc voting for candidates who sign up, to swing the outcome of constituency votes. ‘For those candidates in marginal seats, it will become the difference between winning and losing the election.’ As Bunzl sees it, people are starting to take policy formulation out of the hands of politicians and saying: ‘We'll vote for any of you that adopts or pledges to implement our policy.’

For the political class the electorate's mutinous organising may seem sinister. But it may be the one thing that can save electoral politics from its inexorable slide into irrelevance."

§ Mike Cohen of Project NatureConnect (www.ecopsych.com/) from Portland State University’s Extended Studies Program has approached SP seeking approval for the inclusion of SP material in the accredited courses it has run since 1996. It is proposed to develop a web page SP can link to "that identifies and illustrates the connection between the unifying global principles of Simultaneous Policy and the personal nature-connected thinking and feeling principles of Project NatureConnect". The idea is:

-- to offer public information and a free online course that supports the global unity goals of SP through a nature-connected education and counselling consensus process; and

-- to incorporate the support of SP as an action step for those in PSU courses and degree programmes, as well as provide links to SP in appropriate areas of their website.

John Bunzl (jbunzl@simpol.org) is pursuing collaborative action along those lines.

§ As a follow-up to contact with EarthAction (www.earthaction.org/) both before, during and after its conference in Tenerife in 2002, exchanges are currently exploring options, in public awareness activities, for sharing networks and address lists and promoting the adoption of SP.

Does the old saying about good ideas taking 10 years to achieve mainstream acceptance apply here? Are encouraging initial successes thus beginning to surface because SP is 4 years into its full cycle of development? If so, are there external forces at work over which we have little control – voters’ political disenchantment, for instance – that gets them searching on the web for the range of alternatives that SP happens to offer? Or has there been increasing strength and competence internally among those who volunteer their time and expertise to supporting SP, as their own contribution to what Hazel Henderson so charmingly describes as the non-moneyed Love Economy?

But there’s strong evidence to suggest it’s the growing deployment of voluntary expertise based on professional experience that gives SP its current strength, motivated by personal conviction that SP offers the best opportunity there is for injecting sanity into a world gone mad.

How else does one account for the fact that busy people have given their free time to debate for over a year the best way to structure ISPO and its national organisations, and then draft and finally agree the wording of the Founding Declarations? Or to create and continue to enhance the ISPO and Simpol-UK websites? Or get the first local Adopters’ Group off the ground, encourage others to become local coordinators in the same way, and produce an impressive range of supportive guideline documents? Or take the relay in keeping Adopters informed of SP’s progress via a newsletter? Or write letters to the press or articles for distribution or booklets for publication to increase public awareness worldwide?

All this, and more, is conviction in action. After years of uncertainty it has made possible public recognition at the hustings. Hence the suggestion that SP is at the threshold of a new phase of its existence in which voluntarism will necessarily remain its significant driving force. But there will be also be a focus on seeking funding from donors, to make possible the increased professionalism our supporters appear to expect of us. So watch this space for news about initiatives now being developed within Simpol-UK’s Strategic Plan.

Brief notices and campaigning roundup

§ An article by John Bunzl entitled Evolution Biology and the Simultaneous Policy: Vision-Logic for the Next Stage of Our Evolutionary Future was published in issue 84, spring 2004, of Network Review (ISSN 1362-1221) the magazine of the Scientific and Medical Network (www.scimednet.org/), and is available online via
www.simpol.org/dossiers/dossier-UK/pdf_UK/EvolutionaryBiology_SP.html.

"To give you a flavour", John writes, "the first paragraph reads: Evolution 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."

§ After consulting SP colleagues, Syd Baumel (baumel@mts.net) finalised and placed an article titled Restoring Democracy to a Company World in Canada’s Union Farmer magazine (June 2004). It points out that "Farmers - whether family farmers in North America or ‘peasant farmers’ in Africa - have been particularly hard hit by the global rise of corporate influence over democratic governments and multinational economic institutions". Further on he writes:

"Agriculturally, Canada would risk becoming a ‘rogue state’, isolated from the global market. And the same would apply to any other sector of our economy where we might wish to include human values, not just corporate values. But we are not alone. All countries face the same loss of moral self-determination in the face of amoral market pressures. Economic globalization has pitted ‘the market’ - that is, corporate profit and its trickle-down benefits to the working class - against everything that can stand in its way: social and environmental sustainability, small business survival, labour rights, human rights, food security, public health - the democratic process itself.

"We have become a company world.

"Enter the Simultaneous Policy (SP), a global strategy that would empower we, the people, to take back that world, peacefully and democratically … "

§ In mid-June John Bunzl (jbunzl@simpol.org) wrote and circulated an article entitled The UKIP: the only party that didn’t lie? This analysed the policies advocated by the UK Independence Party during the European Parliament elections and showed that, despite the party’s claims to the contrary: "a fully independent Britain would still be subject to global market competition and thus to the self-same forces that are presently fuelling dissatisfaction and unrest. … Only global co-operation amongst the world’s nations that makes the global economy work in the interests of the environment and of ordinary people everywhere can offer any plausible way out. And with politicians having already become the puppets of global markets, it is the people themselves who will have to lead the way" – via the adoption and implementation of the Simultaneous Policy.

§ Syd Baumel (baumel@mts.net) gleefully noted in April that the splash page on the ISPO website now has an impressive Google page rank of 7 out of 10. And that the home page (and the rest of the website, it seems) ranks a very respectable 6. Then in May he reported that a search on Google with SP-type keywords showed that ‘Simultaneous Policy’ was not lost in cyber space but appeared in that all-important location: Google Page One. So let’s hope that any surfers, seeking to "save humanity and the planet", start using his two search combinations: global peace justice sustainability / global peace justice democracy …

§ It seems some SP adopters may have registered the simpol website with websites that generate bogus traffic (e.g. visitasgratis.com, thebestofnet.com), in this case to simpol.org. Good intentions are appreciated; but as they don’t actually do SP any good, it is requested that such registration should stop or be cancelled.

§ On 30 June the number of SP adopters worldwide had risen to 1310. And the monthly average of visitors to the simpol.org website approached 2400 (as compared with 1408 per month during 2003).

In its continuing need to match available voluntary inputs with an increasing workload, the Management Board now consists of these 12 members, subject to confirmation of their appointment by the Trustees:

"This has been written specifically for campaigning for SP in the United Kingdom", writes Mike Brady on the first page of this new pack addressed to all volunteers who are setting up and organising SP Adopters’ Groups. As Local Group Coordinator he can be contacted at mikebrady@simpol.org.uk or on his mobile at 07986 736179, or via the group website at http://spdev.gn.apc.org/. At the time of writing not all sheets are available; but the index lists the following comprehensive set of documents:

The Simultaneous Policy / Simpol-UK and ISPO / Simpol-UK Founding Declaration / Setting up an SP Adopters’ Group / Raising awareness of SP / Working with the media / Developing the Simultaneous Policy / Elections and candidates (including candidate’s pledge form) / Persuading politicians to sign the SP pledge (including politician’s pledge form and draft party resolution)

Simultaneous Policy Adoption form / Contact form (for meetings and stalls) / Stall display posters / SP poster for election time / SP leaflets (including the popular How do you want the world to be? in folded A4 format) / Evaluation form / Sample press releases and articles

Comments on their contents are solicited, if possible by 31 July, after which editing, layout design and printing is scheduled. And the production of a video and CD for training purposes is planned for issue in October.

Footnote: A choice of T-shirts marked with the slogan "How do you want the world to be?" and SP’s egg symbol can now be ordered from the SPAG website, as above, plus copies of the sheets and forms listed, available free.

Josie Sawers (josies@gmail.com) tells us a team of volunteer developers has been busy working on the first phase of the Simpol-UK web strategy and that a ‘minisite’ has been launched at www.simpol.org.uk. It provides a foundation on which to build a richer site in terms of content and additional features. An open-source content management system is being built into the next version to make managing, changing and adding to the site easier, and enabling a dedicated team more effectively to administer the site without necessarily having any web skills.

When the UK website is developed more fully, the team plan to package up the blank template and content management system for other NSPOs to use ‘out of the box’ should they wish to.

Footnote: Simpol-UK was given ‘Partnership Spotlight’ treatment by OneWorld UK in its re-circulation of the news release announcing the launch of www.simpol.org.uk/, which "gives a comprehensive overview of the organisation’s Simultaneous Policy (SP) proposal and is the first phase of an internet strategy implemented by a team of volunteer developers who are pioneering adopters of SP."

§ The initial list of four local SP Adopters’ Groups (SPAGs) at Bristol, Cambridge, Hereford and Reading has now increased to five with the addition of Penwith in Cornwall. Its coordinator Barnaby Flynn (barnawasp@hotmail.com) reports success in getting two notices in the local press about a public meeting on 13 July. And Maurice Adshead, coordinator of the Reading group (muirstours@btinternet.com) will be organising a Simpol-Theatre presentation and an SP stall during the WOMAD festival of music and art near Reading on 24-25 July. Volunteers to help run the stall are welcome!

§ Dropping some 1000 SP leaflets through letterboxes during the European Election campaign in Cambridge resulted in a marked increase in visitors to the SPAG website, and showed some recipients searched to find out which candidates had pledged. They also interrogated it with keywords such as fairtrade japan, international law fair trade, kyoto protocol impact, local groups cambridge simpol, etc., revealing that leaflet-dropping does stimulate interactive responses and thus increases public awareness. Thanks are due to everyone who took time to distribute leaflets in Cambridge and elsewhere.

§ In the South West European Election constituency David H Smith established contact with Green Party candidate David Taylor who wrote encouragingly as follows, but without a subsequent pledge of support:

"Thank you for your open invitation to support the Simultaneous Policy initiative. I've read through all the documents you sent and agree … that SP is evidently 'green' in conception.
I'm happy to support the idea of international bottom-up policy initiatives such as SP. This is direct democracy in action. It also looks as if the originators of SP are at least to some extent politically Green in that they support the Tobin tax, restrictions on globalisation, etc. I look forward to seeing the first specific policy proposal."

§ As part of the Management Board’s plan to campaign among UK MPs before the next election, Ebony Etienne has volunteered to identify 50 marginal constituencies for targeted action and, within those, a Top-20 list (contact via jbunzl@simpol.org).

In the related work on the Sustainability-Plus project by Brian Wills, now completed, a list of eight websites giving accountability information about MPs’ voting choices during Divisions in Westminster as party conformists or rebels, their participation (or not) in debates, their Parliamentary Questions, and their support for Early Day Motions and membership of All-Party Parliamentary Groups has been drawn up and is available from brian.wills@wanadoo.fr. The profile of a Simultaneous Policy ‘Dream MP’ has been added to the www.publicwhip.org.uk/ site; and a ninth website provides similar data about MEPs in Strasbourg.

§ Chris Macrae (wcbn007@easynet.co.uk) has created facilities to assist Adopters who wish to set up campaigning Simpol-Café Meetings. These can function as ‘mini-fora’ that bring, say, 8-10 people together to discuss SP-related topics with an informed speaker in informal surroundings – with a view to exploring solutions that adoption of SP offers.

Though this has surfaced as a Simpol-UK initiative, it is applicable anywhere in the world. Chris is thus willing to advise Adopters in other countries who foresee possibilities of organising a Simpol-Café, particularly when visiting personalities are known to welcome the opportunity to discuss key issues with small groups of civil society activists.

§ Simpol-UK will be participating in the European Social Forum (ESF) in London, 14-17 October, having recently arranged the visit to the UK of Brazilian campaigner Franklin Fredrick of the group Citizens for Water, which is concerned about the commercial exploitation of water resources by bottling companies such as Nestlé. A seminar on ‘Protecting the Right to Water’ is planned with partner organisations: Freshwater Action Network, War on Want, ATTAC-Switzerland and Baby Milk Action (which coordinates an international boycott of Nestlé over its aggressive marketing of baby foods). Can SP help to deliver the protection people around the world are seeking? Sign up to participate in the ESF at www.fse-esf.org/.

§ Applications have been made for Simpol-UK to join the Tax Justice Network, the Trade Justice Movement, and the UK Food Group. And an approach to join the Tobin Tax Network is pending.

§ Specifications for the part-time post of a Campaign Development Adviser have been drawn up, and advertisement, selection and recruitment procedures have been set in train.

§ By 30 June Simpol-UK had 368 Adopters, 44 of whom had become paid-up Members, providing some further £800 to the company’s finances for 2004.

Brian Jenkins, National Coordinator for AUSTRALIA (jenks@iinet.net.au), offers this update on activities there:

Australia is due for a federal election which Prime Minister Howard could announce at any time up to March 2005. We have decided to use this opportunity to introduce election candidates to SP in two stages.
In the near future, we will send all sitting members and senators an invitation to pledge to implement SP, using a customised pledge form. The same invitation will be directed to new candidates as soon as we learn their contact details. Then, closer to the election, we will ask all the candidates to pledge their support for proposed legislation which would give citizens power to initiate reform of the Australian Constitution. At present, only Parliament can initiate a constitution referendum, though the constitution clearly provides that national sovereignty is vested in the people.
While these measures are unlikely to attract immediate support from most candidates, they will help to put SP on the political map and create some opportunities for media publicity. Teams of adopters in the various states and territories are being marshalled to act, where feasible, through personal contact with candidates or else by direct personalised mail.
One Australian party, the Greens, has a policy platform that appears compatible with Simultaneous Policy objectives. We will be making a special effort to target Greens candidates, some of whom are already Adopters.

Oz Footnote: Doug Everingham (dnevrghm@powerup.com.au) reported that he managed to get a letter printed in a Brisbane suburban newspaper on 19 May entitled Can Voters Take Over from Guns-and-Greed Power? It summarised Mathew Little’s article in the New Statesman (see above) and told readers that he acted as SP coordinator for 40 Queensland Adopters and "welcomes all suggestions".

At the end of June John Bunzl received the following self-explanatory (shortened) pledge letter from the Green Party candidate Shawn Hunsdale in CANADA (shawn.hunsdale@greenparty.ca):

"As a candidate for a seat in Parliament, I pledge that, if I am elected, I will vote in Parliament for the Simultaneous Policy (SP) to be implemented when the governments of all, or sufficient nations, have likewise pledged to implement it, and I will encourage members of my party to join this effort.
I understand that the International Simultaneous Policy Organisation or its national member organisations will make my SP Pledge - and any cancellation of that pledge - known publicly and particularly to SP Adopters in my country or region. I am making this pledge in my own name, not that of my party as a whole."

Extracted from Richard Stimson’s Bulletin no.20 as ISPO’s National Coordinator in the USA (stimso1@juno.com) :

Early in June Dick Stimson had the chance to meet John Bunzl in London. Although they had worked together for several years, this was their first face-to-face meeting. There was some discussion of the slowness of political parties, candidates, and even leaders of NGOs to join in SP efforts. Also many ISPO Adopters are slow to work with each other to spread SP, which may be very understandable in the USA during this election year.

Both had the feeling that the world situation probably has to get worse before it can get better. If current problems rise to an alarming level, people holding or seeking power may recognize the SP approach as the best way of coming to grips with these problems. SP is now laying the groundwork for that development when the time comes.