Introduction

I have set up this website because, after 63 years of trying to understand, tolerate and make allowances for people, I can no longer be associated with the stupidity of the human race while it fiddles as Rome burns. Having arrived at this point I have decided to publicly state that I no longer wish to be identified as a human being as I have absolutely nothing in common with the vast majority of the species.


I hereby resign from the human race.

I must put in a health warning here and emphasise that this resignation is a purely philosophical act and I am in no way advocating that people should resign permanently by taking their lives. Although I later speak of human beings as parasites of this planet, I am in no way advocating any physical act to remove them. I’m fairly confident that nature will do this job.

The site exists for me to put forward ideas about the human race that I have not read elsewhere, and for anybody who sympathises with me to join in the debate and my resigning.

It is hard to express just how very different from humans I feel myself to be without it appearing that I might believe myself superior. But here goes.

I do not feel the need to have faith in any fantasy figures, be they gods, devils, fairies or little green men. I resent the suggestion that I lack something because of this.

I do not feel the need to associate my feelings with any village, town or nation, and simply see myself as another form of life in the biosphere we call Earth.

I do not see human beings as having any greater or lesser right to exist on this planet than any other life form.

I do not see consciousness as any sort of pinnacle in evolutionary terms. On the contrary, as you will see from my first essay, I question the assumption that consciousness is a good survival strategy at all.

Contribute to the Discourse

If you have related views and opinions, email me, Terry Parr, at terry@resign.org.uk. Send me your relevant ideas in essay form and I will add them to the site.

Trade Unionism in a Hostile World

I suspect that some of you don’t think the world is hostile to trade unions but please remember that in some countries doing what I do can lead to imprisonment, torture and death but thankfully not here well not the last two at least.


At this moment in time unbridled capitalism thinks it has won the argument but that is only because capitalism panders to peoples greed and at the moment people think it is alright to be greedy. Interestingly I wrote this before the riots and if there is one good thing to come out of them it is that people are beginning to question the rampant greed in our society.

The sole purpose of unbridled capitalism is to exploit everyone and everything to make a fast buck and the purpose of trade unions is to defend workers from exploitation and this conflict of interest automatically leads to a hostile relationship between capital and labour.

Can I remind you that capital also has its unions and they are the CBI and other employers organisations and clubs and their industrial action is to threaten to take jobs out of the country or in the case of the banksters to threaten to take our money overseas if we don’t allow them to carry on plundering the public purse whilst still paying themselves exorbitant salaries and bonuses.

Since the post war heyday of unions we have been under attack. This attack really took off with Mrs Thatcher using the law, the police the army and Mr Murdoch and his right wing press to crush all dissent whilst she exported jobs to the third world. This attack continued with Mr Blair and New Labour’s failure to repeal one word of Mrs Thatcher’s anti union legislation and continues with Mr Milliband wanting the unions to have less influence in the Labour party when Labour is mostly funded by trade unionists. Lately we have had Vince Cable wanting to ban striking altogether. Now the last time I looked, not being allowed to withhold your labour was called slavery.

Let’s have a closer look at these dreadful organisations that are portrayed as a threat to the very fabric of our society. At the moment there are six and a half million members of trade unions in this Country, that is as many people as voted for the Liberal Democrats in the last election. My union has 1.4 million members which is probably more people than all the signed up members of the three main political parties put together and my branch has 3,700 members which is more people than most of our councillors represent.

My branch is a very broad church and we have members from all levels within Cambridgeshire County Council and the other organisations we work with. I can’t tell you about present members but I can tell you that the previous Chief Executive and Directors of HR, finance and resources were members and we have many senior officers in membership now. We have a mixture of political opinions as well, with about a third of our members paying into a fund which supports the Labour Party so I assume the rest of our members support other political parties.

I think you must agree that these organisations are hardly as unrepresentative or lacking in a democratic mandate as the right wing press would have you believe!!

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At the end of my talk there were two questions which I will answer here:

Q: Did I think it fair to conflate unbridled capitalism with small businesses?
A: If the small business is creating wealth and sharing it fairly with its employees then why do they see themselves as exhibiting unbridled capitalism and aren’t they more socialist than capitalist.

Q: What would I put in capitalisms place?
A: I am not arrogant enough to believe I have the answer to this question but I do know that we can’t continue to exploit the planet and its people the way unbridled capitalism is doing at the moment.

I will finish by asking you to consider this:

If money was to disappear overnight what else would have disappeared when you got up in the morning?

The answer is that nothing else would have disappeared, except maybe a couple of the deadly sins, because money is virtual and nothing relies on it for its existence.  

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