The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Your very own revolution
As councils across Scotland meet to set their budgets and communities brace themselves for further cuts, Dunblane author Mark Eyre tells Michael Alexander why he wants to play a “different game”
Are you sick and tired of feeling sick and tired? Do you feel disillusioned and disenfranchised with the way things are in society? Do you feel like you have no real choice over what you do, like politics and voting are all a charade and nothing will ever really change?
If so, you are not alone. Dunblane author Mark Eyre reckons such feelings are widespread. And he believes they exist largely because we’ve signed up to the agenda of a “fear-ridden” society, where most people settle rather than aspire and turn a blind eye to injustice.
During 25 years working in the corporate world of human resources and in the years since as a selfemployed personal development consultant, he says he has met “too many people who feel disillusioned, disenfranchised and helpless about what goes on around them”.
Now, in an effort to explore how society has got this way and, more importantly, to find out what can be done to change it, the 52-year-old father of two young children has written a book called Create Your Own Revolution.
In it, he proposes controversial tactics such as a mass spoiling of ballot papers to send out a “meaningful, positive statement of discontent” to those in positions of power.
Mark has been following the political news in The Courier’s Dundee, Fife and Perthshire editions with interest in recent months.
In particular, he has been fascinated by the escalating rows over local authority budgets, exemplified by the large cuts at Fife Council and the ongoing row over the Forth Road Bridge and its recent closure.
“These events may be the result of political decisions. However, there is no dispute that the consequences affect real people who rely on these services and who did not create the problem in the first place.,” he says.
“No amount of political fallout and inquiry will remove the real sense of injustice that many people will feel. It is time we did something to change this state of affairs.”
Born in Essex, Mark moved to Scotland when he was nine. Educated at Glasgow University, where he studied economics and politics, he worked in HR for a variety of businesses, including Royal Mail, Boots and United Biscuits.
However, even before he went selfemployed, he was disillusioned by the notion that many corporations seemed to have more power than elected governments.
Mark says the widespread nature of discontent with society in general was evident in the vast numbers who voted Yes in the Scottish referendum in September 2014.
He recently joined the Labour Party because he is “inspired by what they could be rather than what they have been doing”, and claims many of those who voted for change did so, understandably, out of hope for something different – even if many people were not entirely sure what that change was or how it would come to be.
He believes similar disillusionment is behind the rise of left winger Jeremy Corbyn to lead the Labour Party at Westminster.
He added: “Most of us instinctively know things are wrong when people doing socially responsible jobs can’t make a living or when the old are thrown out of work prematurely and their pensions are axed. When young people have massive debts before they even see their first job or when banks can mortgage the country and get away with it, despite public opinion.
“We have it drummed into us at school that it’s all about making money and nothing else matters. We come to realise this is wrong but what can we do about it?”
For Mark, that first step was to write his book after years of disillusionment and working in corporations that were “fundamentally undemocratic”.
He says he was fed up with the “futility” of voting in elections that “changed nothing of significance” and from his early adult days of being politically active, he became gradually more cynical.
He added: “I wandered around like a corporate hippie, looking for something better and generally failing to find it.
“I changed political party but that didn’t work, so I drifted away. I changed jobs but that didn’t work either, so I drifted on that one too.
“I found some salvation by getting into self-employment, my own version of declaring independence. “That helped but it was not enough. “I was left with a conundrum – how to encourage other people to believe in themselves and their potential when they live in a society manifestly unfair in how it works, sapping people’s energy and will to live.”
Mark admits he doesn’t have all the answers but insists he does hope to “expose the game for what it is” and inspire disillusioned people everywhere to “play a different game”.
It is time we did something to change this state of affairs