Warning: Tangent, Digression, and Political Rant follows:

Winston Churchill once said, “If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law”.

Here in England we are stuffed with laws and regulations, 60 percent of them coming straight from Brussels, a foreign country. The Blair administration spews out its own tidal wave of legislation too, much of it ill-conceived and impossible to administer. A great deal of it impacts adversely on personal freedoms.

In a recent example, the Mayor of London was suspended from office for a month by an unelected committee appointed by that fount of all ignorance, the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott. The Mayor’s offence? Badmouthing a journalist late at night after a few drinks. Yes, the remarks were offensive in themselves, but how come a bunch of nobodies, answerable to nothing but their own opinions, have the power to suspend an elected Mayor of London?

It all comes back to the authoritarian personality of Tony Blair himself.

That great Lockeian journalist and defender of Liberty, William Rees-Mogg, captures it perfectly in today’s Times (London). Blair doesn’t believe in “due process”, a principle of English, and now American, law since Magna Carta. In its place, he puts that most dangerous of Continental European concepts: Political Will.

The Prime Minister knows what the issue is. He is against due process as such. He has written a most extraordinary attack on the whole concept in yesterday’s Observer. The article is so incautious that he must have written it himself.

“In theory,” Tony Blair writes, “traditional court processes and attitudes to civil liberties could work. But the modern world is different from the world for which these court processes were designed.” This view that due process is obsolete explains the Prime Minister’s conduct; it explains the connection between extradition without safeguards, detention without trial, Asbos [Antisocial Behaviour Orders] without criminal offences, subjective and discretionary judgments, police powers to arrest, and increasing ministerial powers. They are all characteristic of Blair legislation; they all avoid due process of law.

Rees-Mogg can find only one word to describe him: “antinomian”. The Oxford Dictionary defines that as someone who is “released by grace” from observing the moral law.

However did we end up with this man?

If you look down the list of Syntagma Media blogs in the sidebar, you may spot a new kid on the block.

It’s COSMOSITY, the blog I’ve been playing with for a while, eventually intending it for promoting my forthcoming book: COSMOSITY. The URL is www.cosmosity.org.

As I’ll be using it solely to promote the book, it won’t be monetized in any other way. It does have rudimentary PageRank, despite benign neglect over recent months. Isn’t that typical?

Now, it will increase in activity as publication of the book nears. So be prepared to be inundated with the cosmic clatter of publishing-speak.

Of course, you’re welcome to ignore it, in which case its PR will probably go through the roof.

For those among our readers who like such things, I’ve posted a little taster from the Prologue to my upcoming book, COSMOSITY.

It’s over on Spiritual Nirvana here.

Slip over to Make The World Better for a discussion on the winter solstice, which happens on Thursday. Could this ancient Norse festival become the centrepiece of a new world celebration at this time of year, complementing our own Christmas a few days later?

Many non-Christians feel a bit left out of things at the end of December. So why not include everybody in an additional festival for the natural rhythms of the earth and universe? Everyone could surely agree on that.

Visitors who read sidebars may have noticed that our Paranormal Watch blog has morphed into “Supernatural”. This is because it was the only blog in our stable which hasn’t made steady progress since launch.

On reflection, I decided that the name was a put-off, probably too scientific for the subject matter, and it needed a makeover. So Supernatural it is. Needless to say the URL stays the same.

We’re going to do yet another makeover on the site, so stay tuned if you like to be scared witless [Slight exaggeration].

Announcing a new Syntagma Media blog on the way.

Sometime before Christmas, we’ll be launching Make the World Better ~ MakeWorldBetter.org.

The subject speaks for itself, and we’ll be calling on everyone to send in suggestions and advice.

Just in time for Christmas.

Update: This site is now up. Visit here: Make The World Better.

Syntagma Media will have a new WebPlace up and running tomorrow, Monday. It’s called Paranormal Watch and will deal with all aspects of the extended mind, morphic fields and paranormality in general.

This is a field I’ve always taken a lot of interest in, particularly through the works of C.G. Jung and Rupert Sheldrake, the former Oxford biologist. The idea was pitched by someone else as a b5media blog, but with the avalanche of suggestions hitting them over there, I doubt that 10% of them will make it online. So, since this is “one of my subjects” I thought I’d make it work. Luckily, the perfect domain name was available : http://www.paranormalwatch.com. This won’t be visible till late tomorrow.

Come on over and have a look. As they say in this game ~ more in hope than expectation ~ “Make it your Home Page”. Why do I always laugh when I see that. It’s usually the website of the electricity utility, or something like that. Maybe they have a superior sense of humour.

As that’s all I’m launching this year, I’ll be issuing a Press / Media Release later in the week. Collectors of flyers and ephemera of literary merit, may apply for copies without a press pass.

Syntagma Media will be launching a new blog : Royal Anecdotes within the next few days.

The blog will run 2, 3 or 4 anecdotes a day, depending on their length. These will be taken from all periods of history. Posts will also include current buzz on such Royal characters as Zara Phillips, Princes William and Harry, and the latest gaffes from the Duke of Edinburgh.

The Blog URL is : http://www.royalanecdotes.com

Next week will also see the launch of Spiritual Nirvana. But that’s another anecdote …

I awoke this Sunday morning with a curious image in my mind. It was the Sphinx.

In that blissful hypnogogic state between sleeping and wakefulness, I began to receive images and intimations about its meaning. Of course, we now know that the Sphinx is much older than the pyramids it seems to guard. So it has a very ancient message for mankind.

This is what I learned from this thought-stream : the Sphinx has the body of a lion and the head of a god. There is no essentially “human” part to it, yet it represents the nature of humanity.

If that seems a bit opaque, the answer is that humans are provisional creatures having the attributes of both animals and gods. Each one of us is on a path which rises from the ground of nature, beyond what we think of as human, to a kind of divine status above the mundane confines of this Earth.

People can be classified as less or more developed by reference to the Sphinx. We all know folk who are almost indistinguishable from animals. Their humour is based on sex and bodily functions, and their aspirations don’t rise much higher. These people have their centre of gravity right down at the tail of the Sphinx. Others, further up the body, have rather more cerebral or emotional attributes.

But the highest humans are centred up in the head of the god. These are the ones ready to pass beyond the physical to the various spiritual realms, which themselves are progressive. Each of us has an imperative to lift up those who are below us in the chain, as the price of further progress.

The way to get on top of this process is to become aware of it : to make the unconscious conscious. Then we can ourselves aim at higher consciousness. If we don’t do this, the process will force it on us ~ and this will be very painful. Being forced to reject earthy and physical modes of being is a kind of death. We all die many times in a single lifetime. By taking control of our progress, we avoid these distressing adjustments which “nature” makes from time to time, and we move onwards to our destiny.

So, there you have it. Quite a “dream”, but, as with all such Grade A visions, very useful for the future.

Now, where are the Sunday newspapers?