Fake Mink Rug

Hi folks
If you have just looked at this for the first time, welcome! So as I was telling you, I do a regular weekly cartoon blog (clog?) called Fake Mink Rug.Here's an example from that blog below. If you scroll back through my posts you will see others.

And so I'm giving you the opportunity of having fun once a week and supporting me in using my talents, Yip, I will send you a cartoon once a week and you can exchange that for a regular micro payment. Many people are enjoying these already. They say they improve their day, make them laugh and look at things from another angle. That's my gift.
Why my cartoons? They will be relevant to your life and also local,national and global events. They wont be censored by larger interests (editorial and corporate). They won't be necessarily green, red, blue, left or right. They might even make you laugh, or at least look at something another way.They will get me drawing and writing which will be greatly beneficial to my mental well-being, my family's well-being, and yours. Basically, if you pay, I can do what I'm good at, and you get the service. And the satisfaction of knowing you helped get the cartoons out and supported the artist to do so.
It is an arrangement built on trust (what the?) so its up to you what you do with the cartoon once you have it. If you forward it,perhaps you could forward the deal you have and give them a chance to pay for what they get also? I'm also hoping that you won't print it where someone makes something out of it, but not me.
You can decide to pay or not
If you have already seen some of my work you may want to sign up now. Its best to make a monthly donation from your account as an automatic payment. This will minimize transaction charges. Alternatively you could make a lump yearly payment for 52 cartoons.
(Other payment systems like PayPal make micro payments expensive because there is a bank charge for each automatic payment)

Suggested payment options:          
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$1000 per month; etc. You get the idea!
Free for 1 month (yes that is an option!)


I'm thinking of you personally as I type this. 

Just click here and you can join up; a subscriber.

Duncan

School bullying

Love yourself now!

I want to encourage you to keep the faith.That means staying true to loving you.The only constant unconditional loving presence is by you and for you.You must stop judging, which means relinquishing the power you have given your mind.You may be adored by many others and mistake that for love, you may be loved by only one other, and mistake that for love-you will know if it is taken away.
 Some call this practice being loved by God.It is the same thing-this 'knowledge', which is experienced, and the unrelenting refusal to believe the accumulated thoughts of criticism, comparison and judgement of yourself.You will need bravery for the task as the world wants you to judge and condemn and punish; and we do it to others and by proxy, ourselves.
Yes, if you want to think this way there is plenty of evidence to condemn yourself and the entire mass of humanity.And we have been practicing since we were born; mentored by adults into this way of thinking.
Self love needs practice. It is a worthy and noble path which is open to you.You can begin today.
More on this soon
With love
Duncan .

Yes I really have updated my photo!

Big news-I've updated my photo! Stop the world!
Yours sincerely
Duncan
ps I joined Linked In-why? Cause I'm a sucker and there just seemed to be so many possibilities out there..........you know the thing; keeps you hanging on....... Anyway I keep getting emails saying there is a job for me as CEO of a major pharmaceutical enterprise or Team Leader in Systems Analysis which sounds more like a punchline than a job title.How are they matching me? I wrote that I was a major human resource and some other tripe but the computer wasn't put off. Cometh the time; cometh the man.
pps I havent really updated my photo. But I'll keep you posted on that one-I'm sure you cant wait!

Hello from the volcano

Hi tena koutou.
Yesterday Alice Ina Toby and I went for a trip to our nearby volcano. Mt Ruapehu to check out a summer route to the summit. Apologies for my sunbloc smeared face. Its a little more personal hello to you so we can build things eh.

No one wants to know about bullying

Everyone is perhaps too busy implementing 'programmes' to have time to learn about the cause of bullying.
The stark reality that our institutions are bolstering a cultural belief in 'get want you want by force', replicating a belief that goes from the bottom to the top of our triangle structure of every institution of society, including most families and most if not all schools- the powerless at the bottom and the powerful at the top. It occurs to me that children have no power; power in a real sense of ability to call into their lives a sense of direction, autonomous freedom to make choices, the ability to protect themselves against assault physically emotionally or sexually.Some cultures which have a top heavy structure are particularly ingrained in abuse. Polynesian cultures divest considerable power in the top and can reign absolutely over their societies. Churches used to exercise similar privelages and therefore abuses.Many still do. They all attract those leaders who do not experience themselves as powerful and who are magnetised into getting their  needs met at others' expense.
The children who find themselves in these organisations are repressed and suppressed by machinations of torn loyalty, secret 'don't tell' pacts, fear of reprisal, shame and guilt-most of which are not innate but created at birth and nurtured through messages overt and subtle as they grow up.Abused children have no union, no support network, no value enshrined in law. They aren't as well protected as pets-the organisations that look after animals are not snowed under by over  20,000 cases a year (current stats of reported abuse in NZ)
They belong to a toxic organisation called the family, which guarantees secrecy from prying eyes and anyone who might care.
We want to make noises because we feel bad about it happening. But we aren't going to examine our means of support, our jobs, our professions. I understand this process- why would you look at something that might mean change or even redundancy? This is a self preserving aspect of human society.

We need honesty and courage to face some realities- such as it's us that have built the bullying platform where this behavior thrives.We don't need punishment, we need change.

I can well remember my time in the staffroom discussing an oft picked -on student. " Well he has got a mouth on him/her".was the refrain. That's why they got picked on- because they gave someone cheek. In my observations, the bullied child tries to defend themselves, and why wouldn't they? Do we expect to be assaulted or worse, excluded, and be silent? This is not a dispute  and everyone knows it. These children are ritually put through suffering at the hands of their antagonists.
As yet I've had no replies to my requests to talk with either the Manawatu Standard or The Children's Commissioner (see my last post).They have received my letters and acknowledged that and told me they would get back to me.I'm skeptical but hopeful they will kia kaha.

Post script: I apologise to those children in my care that I didn't back them enough and go into a blind rage or publicly resign on that staffroom conversation alone. I apologise to the students I witnessed being bullied at school when I was growing up, and who didn't get my support (except weakly).

Letter to David Rutherford, NZ Human Rights Commissioner about bullying

David kia ora, nga mihi to you
Having listened to the article on National radio yesterday Monday 23rd here I am compelled to respond.Something you wont like to hear is that the Education System at primary and secondary level is a bullying system, indeed it models it and makes a fertile environment for bullying.If we take Victoria University's Vanessa Green's  description that bullying is about a power imbalance and that it is 'regular', then this fits the teaching profession. In schools,you (a teacher)tell others what they are to work on,when to sit, stand, eat, be tested.When the child resists because they want more freedom or dont want to do whats asked you call him or her 'disobedient' or 'defiant' Then coercion is quickly replaced by force.You then exclude them from rewards such as their freedom or punishments (In my day the cane) or by constant montoring of their attendance etc.How different of this is  from bullying in the peer to peer context?

An overlooked reason why its so prevalent is because the system is creating it.
 I am a trained teacher - recently exiting myself from this system after my involvement for20 years; in part because because it is one that models power imbalances and creates bullying.
I encourage you to read more on the subject and withhold any judgement that I could be so wrong. It seems incredible I know; to question  something as readily accepted as being a model of human behaviour and just a part of life as the primary/ secondary system are.

Bullying also happens when you lump together (by force) one agegroup.In my experience of teaching, and backed up by my research from other experts in the education field, when you have a more natural social grouping you mitigate against bullying. I can give a concrete examples from my experience an area school where the form class was year 9-13, the accidental influence of older youth on younger classes of school children at a state secondary school, to the almost absence of bullying in homeschooled social situations (my children are homeschooled)
Of course we cant single out the school system as the 'cause'-you are right in you analysis that it  reaches deep into out culture. School is a part of this culture.We believe violence and force are legitimate problem solvers and ways of getting what we want.

I only want to point out that the problem is in part created by the people who are being expected to solve it.
Its not just my thoughts.Read California 's ex teacher of the year 1999 John Taylor Gatto and others..

Opening this up will create havoc and defensiveness,and in my experience will not make it to the popular media. We hesitate to question the unquestionable-that the school system is fundamentally flawed and fosters a bullying environment

In a brilliant repaste, national radio this morning held up educator Yong Zhao  http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2570375/yong-zhao-educator .He talked about the educational environment that looks to the present situation and the future.He used words like entreprenuership, creativity, empathy when describing the new system yet to be realised. The chicken coop we call schooling is going to disappear, and- when we relinquish our addiction to problem -solving and meeting our needs through violence- with it much of bullying.
I am happy to engage in this debate.I look forward to venues and opportunities to discuss and listen.
As for the solution? Well that's to be negotiated, surely. The first step is to recognise the illness without blame, judgement and retribution!