Hi folks,

Once again I’m here to offer thanks and love to all of you. This weekend has seen yet another outpouring of generosity and kindness. Not only do Pranja and I now have a bed (read cushions rescued from an old motor home) to sleep on, we now also have lovely clean fresh, and above all, warm, bedding to cosy up in.

We also now have a load of pallets with which to create floors so we can get off this uneven, stony ground, a solar shower, a bike, extra seating and cushions, blankets and a lovely big crate to use as a table or something even more ingenious!

I really can’t begin to thank you all enough. This overwhelming generosity touches and moves us deeply. Thank you!

Again we were treated to the company of good friends throughout the weekend and have enjoyed some surprisingly peaceful moments around the dhuni fire; I’ve said for a long time that peace is so much more than the absence of violence, it turns out it has little to do with noise levels either! The traffic on this road is constant, yet we manage to experience peace regardless.

We did have some bad news this weekend. A friend of ours was arrested on a bench warrant yesterday. This was for failure to appear in Hereford magistrates court having been found in possession of half a joint sometime before Christmas. Yes you did read that right… HALF of a splif. Our friend was arrested in Liverpool to be transported to Hereford where, we can only presume he will be left to make his own way home to Liverpool once this dastardly ‘crime’ of causing no loss, no injury and no harm to anyone at all has been suitably dealt with by those who, we are told, only have our best interest at heart when they prevent us from enjoying the benefits of that marvellously beneficial herb, cannabis.

And onto today (Monday) and the rude awakening we got courtesy of autolift this morning. Prajna had just got out of bed when he was confronted by the sight of one of our tents being pinned in place by an autolift truck and the ranting of one of their drivers. Prajna was a bit too bleary eyed to get hold of the gist of the rant except that, once again, threats were made against Dom for waving. Oddly enough Dom hasn’t actually waved at any of the autolift drivers. Ho-hum.,

The shouting from the autolift drone was enough to wake myself and Dom, and so the kettle went on early. We’ve taken photo’s of the damage done to the tent and of the rest of the parking area, including the parking of one trailer which blocked access to a truck-sized space at the back of the lot.

Should PC Dave pop round later we’ll – And with that, round pops PC Dave… Back in a minute. Hehe.

Well that was another lovely encounter with Dave, who’s doing his very best to keep the peace around here and is right now off to have a chat with the autolift guys about this mornings threats and damage to property.

And now I want to go on to talk on a personal note about this situation and how I have come to be here…

For several years I’ve been stuck in a monetary system which I’ve done my best to escape in many creative, yet ultimately fruitless ways. It was my ambition to set up a local food co-op in Liverpool, establish an urban farmers collective, a seed-bank/seed-sharing facility and, eventually, to create, with the co-operation of others, some kind of local currency such as LETS (Local Exchange Trading scheme). I got quite a long way toward realising all of these ambitions but when it came to the crunch there were simply not enough people on board with the time and energy to get it off the ground. And an even greater hindrance: the closer I got the more I struggled with having to raise funding and the contracts I (read the co-op) would have to engage in so as to obtain the kind of funding necessary if the co-op were to be ‘legit’, so to speak.

I then began to come at the idea from a different angle, wondering if I could get folks interested in starting the co-op outside of the systems of control laid out by the State and the money masters; of course that would depend on the receptivity of those supporting the co-op idea to such a seemingly outlandish notion. Especially as it would involve squatting one of the many, many empty shops on the nearby high street.

– Even now I’m wondering if it can be done here on the side of the A41! – It seems that giving whatever we have away for free may well be the beginnings of realising at least some of these ambitions. Time will tell… 😉

In the meantime, besides making efforts to create the co-op I also sought to free myself of the financial and familial obligations I was under. – Renting a house from a family member and obliged by love and loyalty to cover that mortgage left me in a difficult position. In January 2011 I asked for the house to be put on the market. Eventually, over 6 months later, that’s what happened. And over one year and just two viewers later I decided that tenancy of the house could be transferred over to a friend, reluctant as my family member was to that idea. But desperate times call for desperate measures!

Having decided well over 18 months ago that I needed to cut myself free from all those things that bound me, and having met and hit the road with Prajna during that time made it impossible for me to continue in the same frustrating vein.

The point of all this is to demonstrate just how difficult it can be to break free and live life on ones own terms, according to ones own conscience. – The main notion behind the establishment of the food co-op, urban farmers collective and seed-bank was to create food independence for the local community and, from there to spread the idea as far and wide as possible. That I found myself stuck in the position of trying to raise funding from the likes of the national lottery and all kinds of NGO’s, with all of the bureaucracy, red tape, limitations and restrictions involved almost killed the whole thing for me.

That I was financially obliged to stay put until such time as the powers that be (TPTB) saw fit to reverse engineer the financial collapse they’ve so cynically perpetrated against us all was too frustrating for words!

And now, having finally broken free of almost all of the holds (like it or not, there is one last dependency built in to the system which can only be broken by collective effort – of course I refer to the monetary system) TPTB had on me, I find myself living on the forecourt of the highway-robbers/racketeers who stole our home.

The only options available to myself and Prajna right now, besides staying put, involve capitulating, to a greater or lesser extent, with an entirely criminal State. This is something that neither of us are prepared to do. We will live free of State control, even as that freedom confines us here, at least for now, in this amazing and magical place.

In a democracy, government is always by consent. And yet there is no opportunity to remove or withhold consent offered within this so-called democracy. – Even not voting in the United Kingdom PLC is taken as tacit consent. The words ‘None of the above’ are prohibited from appearing on the ballot paper and everywhere one goes, one is accosted by agents of the State, uniformed or otherwise, overtly or covertly, all bent on pulling us into their world of rules and regulations, of Tavistock mind control and social engineering and, ultimately, of imposing unconscionable systems on us all.

We’re told that, human nature being what it is, there must be some kind of system in place to control people. We argue, however, that human nature is actually loving, peaceful, generous and compassionate and what’s become regarded as human nature by TPTB is actually the corruption of human nature; you see, where there is corruption at the top, there will always be corruption at the bottom; where there is corruption at the macro level, then there will always be corruption at the micro level. And where there is hierarchy there can never be peace.

There’s a documentary which can sometimes be found on google vids in its entirety, or on youtube split into 10 minute segments called The Power of Community – Cuba beyond peak-oil (I could be mistaken about the sub-title, but it’s something like that.) Anyway, that documentary follows the events in Cuba after it had been cut off from the rest of the world and had endured a massive financial collapse. It witnesses the coming together of the people of Cuba into inter-related communities. Food production in streets, on rooftops, at the side of the roads, and everywhere there was space to grow, became the focus of these communities. And even though, in the early days, there was trouble with theft, before long, even those thieves and would-be thieves joined in the efforts of the community and so that problem simply and easily solved itself. I put that down to human nature myself. 😉

I mention that particular documentary in the hope that readers of this blog will check it out and see for themselves that there are so many ways we can live without money, live in co-operation with each other, and enjoy our innate humanity unhindered by artificial systems of control.

I do hope you’ve managed to stick with this to the end, and have managed to piece my meandering thoughts together into something slightly coherent!

Much love, as ever,
Kazz, Prajna and Dom. xxxx