thank you again for your perceptive insights and also those of your commentators.

With regard to the discussion of having more voices and also the connection between your analogy of the Titanic and Ian's mention of Gramsci there is important work to do in "organising" not just a resistance but the terrain upon which ideas exist.

By this i mean currently the media, our schools and universities, law, democracy, the military and many other institutions in our global finance capital system have been manufactured to support the accumulation of wealth over all other ideas and possibilities.

I now wonder how best to not only be critical of such relationships but how to achieve the organisation of a majority of persons to confront the status quo. It should not be a question of waiting till people are suffering enough that it leads to violent results. Perhaps for many that is the only alternative but against well armed governments that can only end badly. I would hope it can emerge sooner than then but it will need organisers, strong personalities and critical knowledge becoming part of the mainstream.

It is one I should have read. Maybe with reminder I will.

Please keep suggesting. having more voices here, make this a better place.

I think its worth remembering that when that magnificent radical thought and action erupted and swept all fear before it, the country was as we are today. Drowning in cynicism and corruption. think if John Donne writing just prior in Anatomy of the World,

And freely men confess that this world's spent,
When in the planets and the firmament
They seek so many new; they see that this
Is crumbled out again to his atomies.
'Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone

But then suddenly ordinary men and women stirred in their hearts and minds and rose like Leviathan. We did it then and were no better then we we are now.

We will do it again. I hope to be there.

We will do it when we realise we are not the people we have been told we must be. For 60 years we have been told, we are Homo Economicus. But we are not. When we cast off that lie, as we cast off the lies of church and sovereign-lord, then we will find the courage.

These thoughts occupy me as they do you. Whether they should be part of this blog I cannot say. I don't want to turn people off with ranting and high flown hopes and thoughts.

Yes, i agree. We need to remind ourselves of our radical and heretical past. If only such an egalitarian and democratic heritage would reverbrate in today's political discourse. How do we re-invent such legacies and alternative ways of life and give them substance -theoretically, practically? These are questions that constantly intrude on my thinking. I have found no comprehensive answers, apart from the conviction that the political mainstream has nothing to offer us.

I take solace from Gramsci: "the crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born".

Perhaps such issues are beyond the purview of your blog, but I'd be delighted to hear more of your thinking about how we might approach troubling yet vital issues.

Thanks for the link. Haven't had a lot of time today. I had never heard of Mr Kynaston, but found I liked what I read. basically have we advanced any since the sinking of the Titanic. Do the wealthy still think it is their right to have the life boats reserved for them while the lower classes are left to drown below decks? And if that is still their presumption what are we prepared to do about it?

I would suggest reading – The World Turned upside down by Christopher Hill. About the English revolution and the work started there that in my opinion we have still to finish. And I don't mean the religious stuff.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/may/08/advice-new-government-books-reading

Particularly interested in how you find the views of David Kynaston