Change is Coming!

Don't despair, there is something we can do to mend a broken system

I’m not political, never have been. Frankly, the thought is at best off-putting, at worst terrifying. I can’t stand the glad-handing in public and the shafting behind the scenes.

Yet I have been ‘involved’ in politics throughout most of my career, first as a political and local government newspaper reporter, subsequently as press officer for a UK crown dependency.

Lately as an observer of the Armageddon that Trump, Putin and Netanyahu are bringing to the US and the world.

So I feel obliged to tell friends, family and anyone vaguely interested that there is an alternative to the stranglehold that western capitalism has given itself.

You see, I’ve just finished all 512 pages of Manda Scott’s Any Human Power. If I understood the power of social media to harness hundreds of likeminded people, no doubt a lot younger then me, and get a handle on how to communicate in and from the afterlife, I would probably be the next PM.

But I can tell you this, once you’ve got past the dreams and messages from the hereafter, Manda has actually produced a blueprint on how to overcome old school politics, the UK’s died-in-the-wool two-party system (sorry Farage and ‘Reform’, people will soon work out that you simply hate immigrants, as they will Trump’s nazi MAGA fakery) and create something better.

Starting with reform of the voting system, continuing through to abolition of the House of Lords and replacing it with a voice-of-the-people alternative through every region of the UK.

Perhaps I’ll dabble in politics. On second thought, I think I’ll leave it to younger people who understand social media, hashtags, teamwork, dreams and the afterlife.

So, buy the book. Especially if you suspect Change is Coming.

Meanwhile, I’ve been latching on to Manda’s concept of “thrutopias” in my writing. We’ve had “dystopias” (how bad can it get), she says, and “utopias” (there’s something better a long way down the line), but right now we need Thrutopias where we actually contribute a tangible understanding of how we can change things now.

I’m hoping she’ll contribute to NITS in the future, but for now, here’s a quote.

“Thrutopias need to be everywhere: in every television soap opera and documentary, in the Netflix binge-watched blockbusters, in movies, plays and radio dramas; in novels, and short stories; in poetry and song and long-form op-eds. They need to be in blogs, and on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok and filling the cascading time lines of Facebook and Twitter.”

That’s not easy in historical fiction. But it’s possible. I’ve shown drafts of the first two books in The Britannia Conspiracy series to an author/teacher friend in Spain who can see the horrid dark in what Caesar did in 56-54BCE but also the hope of what committed nobodies can do about it. The first is due out later this year – I’ll keep you posted.

Thanks for reading Not in the Script (NITS). Together, we’ve got this.