This morning has passed milestone: I’ve recorded my first vlog for @TugsRamblings and it’s now uploaded and published too.
I bought a great little DJI camera about 18 months ago and although I’ve made a few videos and posted them on another channel, Tugs Ramblings heralds a new approach and one where I’m going to see if I can move away or expand from the approaches that I’ve taken to blogging and writing books up to now, and talk about anything that comes to mind.
Setting up blogs, social media and a YouTube channel does feel intimidating, even for me and I’m glad that the new offering is at least beginning to take shape!
Finding AI image generators has been a great help and I am still feeling amazed by what you can now produce in a matter of moments – depending on what words you enter into the computer.
I like talking whilst I’m walking and that’s why I’ve decided that calling this approach Tugs Ramblings might be a good idea!
Today’s video was about The Basic Living Standard, which is an idea or proposal that I have been writing and talking about since early 2022, and which is built around a benchmark that would ensure that every working adult, working a full week, would be paid enough to support themselves with all the basics and essentials that they need, without having to claim benefits, call upon charity, or go into debt.
You’d think it would be simple for everyone to see really, but its not. And its because its not simple for everyone to see and accept, that we can be certain that the system we have today is broken – and probably beyond repair.
Link to today’s video below. Please like, subscribe and share!
We were once free to ignore or mock the presence of voices such as Katie Hopkins and Tommy Robinson. We jumped on the let’s-call-it-extremism bandwagon that the mainstream narrative afforded us, regrettably at the expense of precluding different opinions that could have done us a lot of good, if we had the good sense to listen and hear them long before now.
We don’t have that luxury anymore. Anyone would be a fool to ignore the danger of some ‘new’ movement quickly being fashioned across the restless and frustrated corners of our society, that will be more than happy up step into the void that has been created by the absence of genuine political leadership for such a long time.
The decision of our politicians not to listen, rather than using public office to do whatever the hell they and their political party’s want hasn’t come without a heavy, steadily accumulating cost.
The ignorance of a brewing undercurrent of very normal people who are sick and tired of being the butt end of every public policy our politicians now deliver, whilst policies that run contrary to what would be good for everyone are relentlessly pursued, means that we may soon reach a tipping point when everyday British people will simply say ‘no more’.
Whilst it has become popular to blame racism for any view or thought which can be considered contra-narrative, the problems caused by the failure of the progressive multicultural project are only part of a much bigger, quickly growing problem.
It has become a cultural norm for politicians to engage in what is probably best called political gaslighting, where the mainstream media adeptly help them create the idea in our minds that anyone who suffers from any one of the growing injustices of our time is suffering alone and that everything is rosy for everyone else.
However, the victims of useless politicians are not alone. People are realising this in ever greater numbers and those responsible are on a fast track to being found out.
Even more of us are going to realise that the cost of living crisis, explosive inflation of the prices of the essentials and basics that everyone needs, the collapse of public services, and everything that real people believe to be wrong, but the narrative tells us is right, are definitely wrong and have been created deliberately, through someone else’s incompetence or design.
These things didn’t just happen to any of us in a way that politicians suggest. These are wrongs that weren’t unavoidable. And even the merest hint that we brought it all upon ourselves is not only unjust; it is an outright lie.
As more and more realise this, people are going to join the groups and movements that some very angry people lead, with consequences that could quickly be disastrous for us all.
Not least of all, because there isn’t currently any kind of sensible or reasoned choice that actually represents anything different to what we have already got.
Regrettably, it would take much bigger politicians than the ones we have already got, to recognise their own folly and for them all to step aside so that they can be replaced by genuine public representatives. Good politicians and leaders who genuinely understand, accept and are motivated by the reality that we elect politicians to make decisions which will have outcomes that are always in the best interests of us all.
It’s anyone’s guess how long we have got and what event or issue will prove to be the last straw.
However, change is coming. And when push comes to shove, we can only hope that Lady Luck is shining, and we have leaders available who will step in and do their best for us, rather than doing only what is best for themselves.
After a long time writing blogs, more and more e-books and a few attempts at vlog and podcast creation too, I’ve decided that its time to shake things up a little and start by changing my approach.
A new approach required looking at the images I use on posts and I finally decided that it was time to cross the rubicon this morning and see what would happen if instead of using a picture gallery online, I just stepped over the imaginary bridge and tried out image generating AI.
Being suspicious of anything that wants you to sign up or try a free offer, my digging around soon led my to Microsoft’s own version ‘Microsoft Designer’, and I have to say that I am admittedly stunned by what I have found.
I was writing a blog post or rather editing a page from a recently published book to put on my main blog this morning and wanted to see if I could illustrate the point about politicians only dealing with the effects of problems whilst ignoring the causes, and thought a ball of used band-aids or sticking plasters outside the Houses of Parliament might be just the thing. (You can see the result!)
WHAT KIND OF WIZARDRY IS THIS!!!
I confess, this shit is amazing – and the fact it’s available from Microsoft for free does bring with it some reassurance too, given that we should all be a little careful when giving away information that any sign-up requires from companies we have never heard of or don’t actually know.
The trouble is, the ‘wow’ response we are all having to using AI – in whichever form we are using it, is blowing minds everywhere, and we aren’t then giving our use of it or the implications of using it another thought.
Every societal problem that this country has, alludes to ways of being, to laws, regulations, public policies and the actions or activities of politicians who have either allowed or encouraged these problems to exist.
These problems are often just accepted as the causes of the problems that we face, in themselves.
Yet the problems that we see are in many cases only the effects of other problems and the real causes of those problems are hidden from view and treated as if they don’t even exist.
The solutions that politicians do come up with fail, because they rarely, if ever, address the real cause.
With the complexity of interconnectedness that exists between every area of public policy, the failure of politicians to address one problem because they’ve used nothing better than a sticky plaster to ‘fix’ it just leads to other problems developing, that successive parliaments and politicians then just attempt to fix in exactly the same way.
Imagine a big ball of used plasters that incompetent politicians just keep kicking down the road and you will have a good idea of what real problems mean to them.
We are in the mess that we are in now, because the effect of one problem has been addressed as if it’s the cause, leading to another problem or more effects of that problem which have then been treated the same. Meanwhile, all the time this has been happening, nobody has ever dealt with the real or root cause.
If we want things to change, we must elect public representatives who understand this and will take the risks necessary to fix all the causes of the problems that society faces – no matter who or what interests are involved, and how resistant they will be to changes that will be fair to all and ultimately benefit everyone.
This blog is based on an excerpt from Days of Ends and New Beginnings, published on Amazon for Kindle. Please click link below for more details:
What is it that is common to all the things that are happening around us?
What is it that influences everything in life without most of us even being aware?
What is it that really sits outside of us that has fooled us into living our lives in a way that has been conditioned to benefit others, whilst making us all believe that the decisions, we make have always remained our own to define?
The commonality that flows between everything and everyone in this world today is money.
Everyone and everything is connected by the creation of money, its accumulation, its worship.
Life as we know it is run by a money-based system that has conditioned us all to believe that the value of everything in life can be determined by what somebody has, where somebody lives, what somebody earns, what somebody owns.
What few of us realise is that we have all been enslaved by a money-based system. A culture that has affected us all so deeply, it has even taken over the way that we all think.
Obsessed as we are with the money-focused world, even the most intelligent of our economists and academics will not accept that the world is able to function in any other way.
Even though many have already or will quietly admit that they cannot see where the growing crisis will end, the establishment still refuses to question the belief that whatever happens next or whatever the world may look like in the future, it will continue to be money-centric.
The alternative truth that even the greenest, socialist, new-worldish of our communities cannot reconcile is that an economy doesn’t have to be all about money or even based on money for that economy to be successful, or even to exist.
Money is the lifeblood of the system we have today. Because the value of money is the only way that anything is now valued and is therefore accepted as being relevant to everything.
This is how our belief system has been encouraged to work by people who benefit from us all thinking that way.
Our beliefs shape our priorities and form the basis upon which all our assumptions and our entire value set is constructed.
Changing that value set all begins very close to home.
Firstly, it’s about the way that we think and thinking the right way.
Secondly it is then about doing everything the right way in the world outside of ourselves that we can see and interact with, without digital or remote contact.
Meaningful change will therefore be about locality and community.
Neoliberalism perpetrates the myth that egalitarian living will be achieved by letting the ‘knowing few’ running big businesses, banking, finance and the markets run riot with minimum restraint.
The biggest part of the lie is the suggestion that by allowing private interests to control everything through the removal of regulations, the creation of rules that help them, their own interpretation of any rules and the subsequent abuse of a broken legal system to enforce them, everyone and the public good will be truly well-served.
However, the truth that we are now experiencing is that by deregulating markets and financial activity to the extent that has already taken place, the power that should be in the hands of legislators and policy makers on behalf of us all, has been passed to private interests whose priority is greed, profit and not the public interest in any way.
They haven’t finished. The extension and growth of Neoliberalism is dependent upon reducing the reach and impact of government at every level.
It doesn’t matter what process is followed or becomes necessary for the Neoliberal outcome to be achieved.
Smaller government is a key Neoliberalist aim because the less government there is, the more power and influence will have been transferred into private hands.
The outcomes for the people who need good governance most of all can only get worse under the Neoliberal view of smaller government, as it will be impossible for even the status quo to be maintained.
This blog is an expcert from Days of Ends and New Beginnings, published on Amazon for Kindle, April 2024. Please click the link below for more details:
Government and politicians have willfully overlooked this truth for decades, whilst helping to remove the regulation and safety barriers that once helped to keep life for the lowest paid affordable to live.
Whilst many pour score upon the lowest paid and society’s most vulnerable and buy into the propaganda that their financial misery is somehow self-inflicted and that only they are at fault, the truth is that the prices of all the essential basics that we all need would never have escalated and reached the unstoppable highs that they have already, if the whole business and financial system hadn’t been manipulated to serve the interests of profiteering and greed.
We have all been conditioned and enslaved by money, the accumulation of material wealth and the status that goes with it.
These are the only things in this world that count. Today.
The function of every real business and organisation is to provide goods or services that support or improve the lives of people. Not to generate income. Yet the businesses that don’t do anything to support or improve the lives of people are the ones pushing up prices and making life for everyone else so hard.
This, the cost-of-living crisis and all of the UKs social problems have come into being because we have become obsessed with money as the key priority in life, rather than having values and humanity which are the benchmark of how a good life should be.
However, the world is changing, and it is changing fast. Nothing is certain in the way that we used to believe, and we are now experiencing a time of chaos and change that cannot offer any certain outcomes for any of us, unless we all embrace the need for meaningful change as a conscious and voluntary choice.
This blog is an excerpt from The Basic Living Standard, published on Amazon for Kindle, April 2024. To find out more, please follow the link below.
We can only solve the problems that society faces if we give the lowest paid the means and opportunity to earn enough to sustain themselves independently and without the need for support.
The national minimum or living wage will never achieve this, because within this broken financial system, the nearer the minimum wage gets to the true cost of living, the faster the cost of all the essentials that we all need will inflate or go up.
We need nothing less than a paradigm shift from a money-centric system to one that puts people first in every respect.
The Basic Living Standard introduces the principle of Locality Based Economics and offers the basis of a new financial system in which we can achieve financial freedom for ALL.
If you are looking for fiction, this is no story. But the snapshots, views and experiences that you are about to share will make you question much that you previously accepted as truth.
Everything you are about to read about the past, about what we are experiencing today and where the future could take us is certainly interconnected.
But the way that the world works suggests that every issue that has happened, that we are experiencing and that we will need to address in the future, sits in isolation in some way.
Until we see the relationship that exists between everything and the problems we face, then accept that we will only solve those problems by thinking differently, our future will continue to be written by interests that will never be aligned with our own.
Touching on everything that relates to the way this Country is run, from education to cryptocurrency, the true value of money, to growing food at home and rules for the internet and AI, Days of Ends and New Beginnings lifts the stone and shines light on many of the issues, motives and reasons for the problems society faces, that have until now been carefully hidden from view.
Repurposing the inevitable period of chaos and change we are now experiencing so the outcome is meaningful change that will benefit us all isn’t a certainty. But by considering what is likely to change, what positive change will look like, and how we can take steps to thrive and survive as we experience that change, the chances are that we can all become a positive influence on what our future will be.
If you are ready to embrace meaningful change, it’s time to look inside.
Forgive me if I am wrong. But I was under the impression that the run up to an election was the time for politicians to come up with the giveaways and promises that were designed to buy votes. Not turn potential voters away.
Yes, its cynical I know. But very few of us could honestly say that we expect anything from politicians of any of the political parties we know today.
Deep down, we all know, that the messages, soundbites and slogans are typically aimed at the many of us who aren’t really asking questions, in the hope that we will mindlessly walk to the Polling Station at some point in the coming months and hand our vote to politicians who really shouldn’t be anywhere near public responsibility of any kind.
However, without real alternatives, that’s exactly what the next General Election Day promises to be. The chance for us either to refuse to vote, because there’s no real public representation to vote for, or to vote for the Political Party that we currently believe is most likely to do us the least harm.
Yet Friday showed us all something different.
What we heard from the Prime Minister went way beyond the desperate words of someone leading a party that has been trusted with the responsibility of government for too long. Forlornly doing the best they can to limit the scope of the coming electoral disaster.
Rishi Sunak’s speech on Friday heralded a level of ignorance, cold-heartedness and outright hatred of others, who our politicians identify as not being the same as themselves, now being manifested in a way that we might not have seen in the UK since the Victorian era or perhaps even before.
Don’t be mistaken. The so-called attack on sick culture, those who supposedly live on benefits as a lifestyle choice and people with disabilities, whether they be physical or of the mental health kind, may indeed be a popular policy amongst those who are still earning enough to cover the unstoppable inflation of prices for every basic essential that every human being needs, to remain human.
But the number of those who have more than enough is dwindling all the time. And if they are not already, many who are already working full time jobs will soon be asking themselves how long it will be until they have to reach out to ask for benefits, charity from somewhere like a food bank, or most likely use a credit card or some other financial device like a loan and go into debt, just to pay the bills, have food on the table or sit on a winter evening with light and enough heat.
Creating the idea that nobody should take more than 12 months to get a job really would be quite an insulting suggestion – even if it were meant to be a joke.
But to suggest that the way to tackle the mental health issues that those claiming unemployment related benefits suffer is to push them into work, tells us all too clearly, either a) how ridiculously out of touch or b) how inhuman or actually evil, the people running the UK today really are.
Being in Poverty today
As someone who grew up in poverty, I experienced all the stereotypical issues that the majority of today’s politician’s actions would suggest qualifies someone like me for life’s dustbin.
Last Autumn I found myself at the end of a long journey, studying a postgraduate course in Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security and visiting a local Food Bank to undertake research and relate my own experiences from childhood in the 70’s and 80’s to what those with a comparable life experience have to deal with today.
What I found was extremely sobering, when put in the context of how poverty is considered by decision makers and those who formulate public policy.
Whilst a technical awareness and therefore systematic approach to provision for the poor has existed in some way for much longer than many realise, the dynamics of poverty are continually changing. Yet ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’.
The only way that any of us and especially those who should be making provision to help those in need could do so in a way that goes beyond basic giveaways or cash handouts – as is how the benefits system really operates right now, would be to gain a direct understanding of what it is really like to be at the mercy of the welfare and benefits system today. And for as long as the problem exists, to regularly revisit and keep tangibly in touch.
Everything that government and the public sector provides through welfare and the benefits system today is focused upon dealing with the effects of the problem. Rather than doing even the slightest thing to address the causes of the actual problem itself.
Taking benefits away without addressing this will not encourage anyone to help themselves. It will just remove some of the help that is already nowhere near enough and condemn countless more to worse than anything anyone in living memory has seen before.
Being out of touch is no excuse for any politician. Least of all a British Prime Minister
The underlying message that anyone paying close attention would have understood from Sunak’s speech on Friday was This is the fault of the people who are in this situation.
They are the guilty bastards here and helping them beyond what we can get away with means we are throwing money away that we could spend on something that will help us get elected again.
That a Prime Minister of the UK could be a former banker and billionaire who has never wanted for anything and has absolutely no idea of the hell that people on the breadline experience every day, whilst politicians and the media gaslight us with messages like ‘INFLATION IS GOING DOWN’ is bad enough.
But to stand there and tell the Country that there is no excuse for not working when people cannot support themselves when they do, is frankly beyond absurd.
The problem that politicians helped create and won’t tackle. But are happy to blame on anyone else
It should be obvious to the political classes that anyone who can work and earn a wage that covers their costs without them needing to claim benefits, call upon charity or go into debt is usually happy and unlikely to cause any form of social problem for anyone else.
It should be just as obvious that when a benefits system that does everything that it can to devalue those seeking support, to the degree that claiming benefits is a cause of mental health issues for many in itself, that switching from being fully dependent upon benefits and other help, to then being dependent upon benefits, other help AND working perhaps full time, doesn’t offer a genuine incentive for anyone who is already feeling like the world is against them.
Working full time in any job that doesn’t pay the employee enough to survive independently and without support may be considered legal by today’s politicians and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
We need leaders. Not morally bankrupt politicians who see the workings of the world in purely financial terms
The majority of those on benefits today and the increasing number who are set to join them, as technology like AI takes over jobs, are all victims of the current system of governance and leadership which is wholly money-centric and facilitates a public sector that is financially and materially self-obsessed.
People and the humanity that governs real life no longer matter.
Because money has become god and an increasingly dehumanised set of values has been inserted and taken its place across our culture and within daily life.
If we remain on the pathway and the trajectory that politicians have set us upon, the levels of poverty that we are experiencing today are set to get exponentially worse.
It doesn’t need to be this way. It never should have been
Every function of business, or government and any not-for-profit organisation has benefit or service to people or human beings at its core.
The function of every action taken in the world should therefore always be with people and the benefit to humanity in mind. Rather than being the upside-down system that it has become, where everything every decision or action is based purely and unequivocally on what profit can be made or carrying out any necessary task for the absolute minimum that those in charge believe they can afford.
This is why prices, and the cost of living, are out of control. Everything else we are told is just another excuse.
The reason that politicians will not even acknowledge this, is because the blow-back or retribution that would come from the businesses and the elites that fund them, that they look up to and whom they wish to emulate or be, would be ruthlessly destructive.
Fulfilling the role that we are correct to expect of our politicians could easily lead them to being the future benefits claimant they are so happy to make it so difficult to be today.
That’s why no matter what they say, nothing they do will ever lead to meaningful change.
The Basic Living Standard
People on low wages and benefits cannot afford to survive or function independently and without help today.
Because making a profit for those who control and influence the system has become far more important than ensuring that life for everyone within the system is something that each and every one of us can afford.
Yet that is exactly the message that we can all see and hear just as soon as we begin to understand how business, money and government really work.
Facts are facts. And if we were to change, transform, reform, renew or reset the whole system, so that we put the ability of the lowest paid to support themselves independently at the heart of everything and what everyone does, rather than funneling everything towards wealth accumulation in a system that only ever works out well for the few, the problems that society faces – that the rich caused and now want to punish us all for – would quickly disappear. Along with the majority of the other issues that are causing such deep division and unrest within these very turbulent times.
Making it a legal requirement that everyone working a full working week must be paid enough to cover the costs of all essentials and basics, without the need for benefits, charity or going into debt does of course sound impossible at first glance.
But that is because the system has now reached the point where it is so skewed, the messages in every direction are screaming at us that real life is no longer something that everyone can afford and that by creating a situation where others gain, you will inadvertently create circumstances where you will be losing yourself.
However,for some to be rich doesn’t mean that others must be poor, and we now need leadership that is prepared to put the needs of humanity first. Rather than continuing to suck up to and pay homage to those who are obsessed only with the bottom line.
None of the politicians we have to choose from today are even in the room with the changes that now need to be made.
It is unlikely that they even understand the realities of what needs to be done.
It is highly regrettable that we have reached a point in human history where it has become culturally acceptable, and it is therefore considered ‘normal’, for others to be poor and that we overlook or just accept this as long as we continue to be doing alright for ourselves.
That’s how our leaders view everything today and how every one of us who isn’t being touched by the realities of the cost-of-living crisis and the explosive inflation that the elites have created but tell us in the same breath doesn’t exist, still believe.
Would it be better for us all to care about each other and enjoy the benefits of what it is to be truly human? Or spend every minute that remains of our lives building layer after layer of protection around ourselves and the fake money that only we believe in, so that everyone else exists in misery and pays a very real, but nonetheless incalculable cost for our greed?
“The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.”
It’s nearly the middle of April and 2024 has been a washout. You don’t need to be a farmer to know there’s little that feels normal about the wet weather and I know I’m not alone in feeling like it’s been raining nonstop since Christmas.
Is there a conspiracy at work? Is the weather being manipulated? Is this all part of some concocted grand plan?
Well, in terms of the things we should really be worried about, getting lost in the debate over whether Mother Nature or some malevolent force is behind the growing threat of a failed harvest this summer is the only real rabbit hole there is to fall down.
Hopeful as I am for our struggling farmers, that the weather will turn around and put everything back on track, the sober way to start thinking about issues that should really be concerning anyone looking at the wider U.K. food security and production situation is to question how decision makers will frame what may soon be recognised as the 2024 harvest crisis and how they will then respond.
Of all the food security issues we are facing today, which include but are not limited to deglobalisation, climate change, retail profiteering, political ineptitude and anything that falls under the manufactured problems that need a logic defying solution too, weather should never have been the one problem that has the potential to end up making our fragile food security situation even worse.
The reality that we and our farmers face, is that a failed harvest across in 2024 will play straight into the hands of those who believe and advocate that the U.K. doesn’t need to grow its own food.
There is an unsettling belief at work within the establishment that our food supply can always be guaranteed to come from somewhere abroad, and that new technologies and factory foods – like ground up insects, lab growing and warehouse production – will solve all problems. This mindset results in the fallacious idea that there is little reason to continue pandering to farmers who can only be productive when they are a) told what to grow, and then b) are paid for doing so.
Farmers are being set up to fail
For an essential industry already in crisis and under attack from an establishment that views food security and all of the highly beneficial add ons that U.K. produced food can give British people as trivia they can do without, the ongoing storm is one that couldn’t have landed at a less helpful time.
The real risk to U.K. farmers is that government will make token gestures, but in truth do very little to help the industry in the immediate aftermath.
This is likely to lead to many more business exits for what should really be thriving farming businesses, and a situation arising quickly where the U.K. becomes perilously close to losing the ability to feed itself, even at emergency or wartime levels, using recognisable farming methods that are beneficial for everyone involved in the food chain.
Whilst there is growing unrest among farmers, a belief that the powers that be will eventually step in and save the day still regrettably persists.
It is regrettably fair to say that the misconception that government understands the risks to an already critically vulnerable food supply is easily dismissed when we consider that the equivalent of around only 54% of the food we eat is currently grown in the U.K.
Decision makers either don’t see the risk or they don’t want to see the risk. And whichever it is, the result for U.K. farmers, U.K. food production and U.K. food security is pretty much the same.
U.K. farming, the infrastructure that supports it and the legislation that facilitates it might not be anywhere near able to feed the uk population without help today.
But that doesn’t mean that it cannot. It certainly doesn’t mean that the industry shouldn’t redirect, reform and repurpose where needed, so that U.K. food sovereignty is no longer viewed as being pie in the sky.
The wide range of green, environmental, climate, food quality, nutrition, transparency and other farm and food related issues, that have different activists fighting each other for air would all be resolved by getting behind U.K. farmers and food production to refocus. U.K. agriculture will only be saved by moving away from the Globalist/EU production models to one that puts locality and traditional methods at the centre – albeit in a 21st century form.
The power for change sits within the hands of our farmers themselves and the trades that align around U.K. agriculture.
Although many still don’t see it this way, it would be wise for anyone and everyone with an interest in being able to grow or eat a regular, sustainable supply of good, healthy and nutritious food to watch carefully what the establishment does and how it responds if the realities of a 2024 harvest crisis begin to unfold.
If you lost your job and had no savings or help from loved ones to fall back on, how would you feel if you took any job you could to find that you still couldn’t afford to live?
If benefits put you in the same position, would you take the job or conclude it would be better to just ‘sign on’?
Without enough money to pay every bill, to eat, to stay warm, to travel and do everything else you need to do for yourself, would you feel good about selling yourself to a prospective employer – especially as the worry of the debt you are in starts to mount up?
These are all real questions that increasing numbers of people are asking themselves today and every day.
The real travesty is that too many others have been asking these same questions for a very long time and without the cost-of-living crisis and runaway inflation problem, had previously been hidden from our view.
Our obsession with money and the accumulation of material wealth has meant leaving increasing numbers of people behind. Whilst a broken and privately controlled money system has steadily funneled the volume and value that we believe money to have towards a progressively smaller number of ‘the few’.
We have been conditioned to believe that for us to experience material wealth, abundance and to be financially rich, that others must have the experience of being vulnerable or poor.
It is an equation that works well. Until we find that we ourselves are the ones who need the help – as many of us living in this broken system regrettably now are.
Everything wrong with society that we see whether it’s price inflation, crime, crumbling public services or out of touch politicians, are all symptomatic of the same thing:
We don’t value each person as a human being, and we don’t value every person in the same way.
The key to a better life, better future and a better world for all, is a return to values and humanity that can only be achieved by shifting the focus of everything to locality and to ensuring that every person is able to sustain themselves financially, without the need for support.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch. So, when it comes to giving away money, anyone who thinks that a Universal Basic Income is going to help anyone and in particular our farmers, either has an agenda they aren’t sharing, or they don’t have any real understanding of the true cost of making UBI work.
UBI is certainly well intended. A lot of research and thinking has gone into the trials and projects where a localised equivalent of a guaranteed basic income has been tried.
The problem is UBI is a solution that uses the creation or printing of money to enable it to work.
Money creation or printing is an essential part of the FIAT monetary system that we have today. The same system that is the root cause of all the money related and inflationary problems that we and our farmers are facing.
It is ironic that giving cash handouts to farmers would only build upon the culture of dependency that now exists, where the conditioned over reliance on subsidies and guaranteed contracts have made farmers vulnerable to the greed underpinning big money and profiteering retailers. Corporate interests that are not only taking all the profit that would be available from the food chain if it were accurately priced, but they are also using their market positions to inflate prices even further so that they can continue to take even more, without giving a damn about the impact and consequences for us all.
Minded that every one of us needs food every day in pretty much the same way that we need water and the air that we breathe, it defies sense or logic that British Farmers should be in a situation where they cannot have a secure, financially sound and fair-income-paying business, in return for providing a service which really should be considered a public good.
That farmers cannot survive and there are now organisations suggesting that UBI is the answer makes very clear that the working model or operational platform for British Agriculture is broken.
This reality is all the more alarming given the fact that in a time of growing world crisis, we only grow the equivalent of around 52% of our own food in the U.K.
Regrettably, the farming problem isn’t one that good politicians would be able to fix in isolation. Because the issues farmers are facing are interconnected with many other areas of public policy that are breaking down today. All for no bigger reason than we have now had decades of politicians and the political parties they represent that have become increasingly poor.
If good politicians were representing us all as they should be today, the focus on farming would be to use legislation to immediately end the profiteering, price manipulation and speculation taking place that keeps taking money from the food chain without adding any form of value.
The next step would likely be to provide financial support and other legislation to help farmers transform food production and the pathway to retail to a system which is a contemporary version of what we had historically, where food was produced and consumed locally and in much more original, unprocessed and therefore healthier forms.
However, we don’t have good politicians and when the eagerly anticipated General Election comes, we will not have the option of good politicians to choose from even then.
This leaves farmers with a very difficult choice. To remain at the mercy of poor politicians who say lots but do very little. Or step back from conformity with the current broken system, take the risk of funding change themselves and then taking the lead and working closely with consumers who are the other key stakeholders in the food chain, so that food security, healthy nutritious food, and viable food producing businesses supplying every one of our local communities are brought back.
Some of us are already unable to eat healthy meals, because heavily processes foods are all that we can access. Others miss meals so they can feed other members of their families, whilst increasing numbers don’t eat because food is a luxury that they cannot afford.
It’s easy to dismiss the realities of other’s life experience when we’ve never had to go without a good healthy meal at any time in our life. But that doesn’t mean that any of us are safe or protected from the questions surrounding food in the UK today, that left unanswered may mean that we all have massive problems in store.
Politicians are treating UK Farming and Food Production as a political inconvenience and as if they will always be able to get the food that they need from Europe or from other Countries abroad – because they all assume that imports will always be safe.
Meanwhile, the elites look upon the stories of food being grown in warehouses, from ground up insects, from fungi or from processes that are even worse, and are very happy with the idea that this is how the masses will soon be fed, because the true realities that underpin manufactured, processed and synthesized foods are not a problem that they believe could ever affect them.
Food is a basic essential of life. Food is therefore a public good. Yet generations of politicians have allowed commercial interests to take over almost every part of food production and supply, so that small numbers of very wealthy people and the companies they own can make more and more money from addicting as many of us as possible to foods that taste nice and look good, whilst they seem to be good for us, because these highly attractive and fashionable foods are a luxury that most people can afford.
The politicians and the narratives that the money behind this food controls, tell us that with Climate Change, the needs of Net Zero and too many people to feed, the food of the future will not come from any farming of any traditional kind.
But this is a constructed story that simply isn’t true. Its about destroying the ability that we currently have to feed ourselves and creating a situation where the same people who have created so many of our problems so they can make money, will be able to make even more, because they will make democratic forms of government redundant and will be able to assume absolute control.
This is no conspiracy theory. This is what the systematic destruction of UK Farming and the ability of UK Farmers and Food Producers to run viable businesses has been all about.
If we don’t wake up to the reality that the future the establishment proposes for us all because they know better, isn’t the healthy future that any of us either need. Nor is it one that is necessary for us to have.
However, without change, we will soon no longer have any choice.
The world has many problems. But it is the abuse and manipulation of money and how that affects every part of our lives that is the real problem that underpins them all.
Those who care only about money, don’t care about people. That means that are not worried about what any one else eats, especially if there are public health systems in place that will continue to address the problems they cause and that their friends with pharmaceutical companies can also continue to make profits from, by providing many different expensive treatments for. But never any cures.
Politicians will not address the issues that the World faces. Because it is not in the interests of their ‘careers’ and whatever they believe they have to gain in the future, by going against these ‘interests’ and by making decisions that are in the best interests of the people who elected them instead.
This is why when asked, politicians appear to understand the problem and talk about solutions. But nothing ever happens that addresses the real issues that they have facilitated and therefore caused.
Food is our Freedom. As long as the Food we eat remains under our control
What we eat is the foundation of everything that we do. It is the foundation of our future. It is the foundation of our lives.
If we surrender what is left of our ability to choose what we eat and where our food comes from, we will no longer be able to make choices about our health or the health of the people we care about.
The only way that we can maintain the little control we have over food and then increase it, is to ensure that the UK Produces all of its own food.
We must ensure that the food the UK Produces always comes from natural processes, growing and animal husbandry that takes place on local UK Farms.
It is no understatement to say that the food we eat that makes other people very wealthy is slowly killing us, and in the process of doing so, is actively destroying our health.
We need to put Food Production and Supply back into the hands of people and business that we know and can trust.
Whilst we continue to be without politicians who will stand up for us and legislate for us all as they should, the best way that we can help to instigate the changes that we all so desperately need, is to buy as much basic or essential food that isn’t processed, from local farms or from small shops and businesses that source everything they sell from local farmers and suppliers.
Basic or essential food is food or food products that we buy in a form that is recognisable for being in its original form, or has undergone basic processing such as milling, pasteurisation, breadmaking or cheesemaking etc., that doesn’t involve the addition of manufactured ingredients or additives and could or traditionally would have been processed or prepared by hand.
The more we use small businesses, independent retailers who are committed to local food production and farm shops and box schemes that are from identifiable sources too, the more accessible and affordable the food we should all be able to eat every day will become.
It’s a lot of responsibility for every one of us. But the people we elected to take that responsibility on our behalf are effectively refusing to do so. It’s the actions we all need to watch, rather than just accepting the words.
Instead of leading us, it is the Politicians who need to be led.
The best way to lead our politicians is to demonstrate how change works without them. So that joining the growing momentum the People create will feel right to them, rather than making a choice which they currently believe would make them look like they are wrong.
There is nothing in life that everyone shares the same need for, whilst having such individual, specific or idiosyncratic approaches to, as food and what we eat.
Minded that to be healthy, we should all have access to at least 2 nutritious meals per day, it is amazing that so many of us think so little about the food that we eat. Where it comes from. What it consists of. And whether the food we are eating is actually benefiting or harming us, despite the fact that eating continues to be a socially shared activity, and what we put in our mouths is just as important as the air that we breathe.
The lack of interest or ‘taking food for granted’ of those who aren’t really thinking about the food that they eat, regrettably makes the issues that surround food and how it can be used to further the interests of those who are aware of that disconnect, very easy to exploit.
In times like those we are experiencing and with the very uncertain future that we currently have, this means we are quite literally in a situation where food cannot only be used to control us. Food can also be used as a way to hurt us both physically and emotionally, whilst Food Security and access to the supply of food is and can continue to become less safe, as it is progressively taken away from us as consumers and from the people who grow and produce it.
Food Complacency
On the face of it, too many of us are happy to accept the idea that if we have eaten and therefore, we are not hungry, it doesn’t matter what we actually eat.
Take that one step forward again. Many have an increasingly restricted choice about what they eat, because the priority of what they eat isn’t based on a decision between what might be on offer. It is based solely upon what the person or family can afford.
Whilst there are many who would happily debate the questions of whether food is a fundamental right or whether food is a public good, the fact is that we are only in a position where we can even have such a debate or that it is possible for these questions to exist, because there are other cultural, legal, ethical and many other manmade ‘rights’ that place some of us in a position where we can control what anyone or indeed any living thing on the planet can have access to.
Meanwhile, the questions that we should be asking but are not is whether it is right and proper within any part of Food Production and the supply chains around food, that any parts of it can or should be privately owned, and where they are, what those interests should allow them to do to food and how we access it.
The absence of ethics in profit-driven Food Production and Supply
Food is a basic requirement for life that we all share. Yet the processes, issues of ownership and what food can be used to achieve for anyone with the power to do so, have now become all that food is really about.
The entire food supply now revolves a global system that quickly moved way beyond improved methods for feeding larger numbers of people and became all about the money that can be made by those who are in control instead.
The creation of large food chains, where so little can be seen has meant that the real truths that have increasingly underpinned all parts of food production for so long can easily be hidden.
When so much of the food chain processes has been hidden and maximised for the profit that it can provide to vested interests, the next step for those who are driven by greed is to then manipulate and change the content of food so that every bit of profit that it contains from every ingredient that can be added, can then be exploited and profited from just the same.
Food in its most basic or natural forms is the healthiest for all of us that it is possible for it to be
Whilst basic processes such as milling, pasteurisation, cheesemaking, baking, hanging, smoking and all those things that are ancestors have been doing to store, preserve and create meals from basic, natural ingredients have done for centuries, it stands to reason that adding anything to food that isn’t readily available to us in some natural or hand-processed way, isn’t going to help anyone who eats it, because our digestion is designed to work naturally with foods that we eat in natural forms.
It’s an equation that doesn’t require us to understand science for us to make sense of. Because it really is common sense that we all eat food in its most basic or unadulterated forms.
The Taste Trap
Before reaching any conclusions, it’s also important to understand the role that sugar and salt, and more recently, anything that appears to improve the taste or feeling that we have from eating food that contains it has had, and the genuine take-away that we should be having from it.
It is thought that sugar was first recognised for its sweet properties around 8000 years ago. However, sugar didn’t come to Western attention until the time of The Crusades in the 11th century, and even then was a luxury until at least the 16th century when the first industrialised sugar processing began.
Although it ultimately comes from natural source, Sugar must be processed to be used in the way that we use it as a food ingredient and in the refined forms that we add it to drinks like coffee and tea.
Sugar in its modified or rather in its changed form is highly addictive. And if you understand the role that excess sugar plays in health-related conditions such as diabetes and obesity, it is also much easier to see the relationship that exists between eating any kind of food or ingredient that doesn’t resemble its original or natural form, and the impact that it can have on the human body.
The body is effectively tricked by unnatural ingredients and responds in what often end up being very destructive ways when those harmful ingredients are consumed regularly or in quantities that are simply too much for the very clever system that our bodies have to deal with.
In these modified forms, these artificial ingredients are no better than being a poison that becomes more and more dangerous in its cumulative forms.
In respect of the ingredients that are added to foods to enhance the taste and hide many other ingredients within processed foods and the UPFs that we wouldn’t otherwise consider eating, the line in the Savage Garden hit song ‘Affirmation’ – “junk food tastes so good, because it’s bad for you” is absolutely correct.
We are being conned into eating foods that we shouldn’t, so that those who make and sell them can continue to make a profit – with the true cost always being at the expense of our own health and wellbeing.
Whether we like it or not; whether we believe we have a choice of what we eat or not, as a nation, the UK is addicted to foods that are actually harming and, in some respects, killing us.
The people who are pushing us in this direction and want us to become even more reliant on manufactured food, rather than the fresh food that can only come from a local garden, field or farm, are very happy to exploit that addiction so that they can keep benefitting. Whilst the whole process is doing each of us and the whole of the UK more and more harm.
The Ethics of Food are about Taste all the same
The odd thing about taste is that it manifests as both a physical sensation and also in the way that we think. That’s how addictions generally work, after all.
So, when anyone becomes obsessed by a particular way of eating, because of the way that they think, the rules of addiction – and the need to force others to join us in that same addiction so that they can share that particular form of guilt, inevitably also play out, no matter how clever or compelling their arguments might be.
When people are at peace with their eating habits or indeed anything else that defines them as the person or the individual that they are, they will not experience any need to force their own approach into the lives of anyone else, no matter what the habits of those other people are, or indeed, what it might be that they eat.
It really shouldn’t matter what anyone else eats. The only thing that we should all be concerned with is that each and every one of us has access to natural, healthy and fresh food in an adequate quantity from which we can then exercise any health-related, ethical or other form of choice that doesn’t impact upon the choices of anyone else.
The Food Hangover is just one way we know that the food we eat isn’t good for us
Whilst few who drink alcohol would relate their drinking habits to being an addiction at any level, it is unlikely that anyone who has ever had more than a few sips and done so on a regular basis, hasn’t had a hangover at some point afterwards. Before they find themselves back in a place where they feel physically the same as they did previously.
Headaches, sickness, insomnia, feeling ‘groggy or lethargic’ or generally not feeling anything like ourselves, are typical post-alcohol reactions that we class as hangovers – because we have been drinking ethanol, which is a poison.
When we have been eating foods that are processed and are filled with many additives and manufactured ingredients, the results for any of us taking note, can be similar if not exactly the same.
Food that is natural or in forms that we can recognise in their original form when we eat them very rarely make us feel unwell. Unless we eat too much of them, or they haven’t been prepared in a way that removes any bacteria or anything else that can harm our bodies in some way.
The direction of UK Farming and Food Production is all about a greed-driven reliance upon manufactured food
It is at this point that it is time to recognise just how important the problem that UK Farmers are facing really is, for us all.
There isn’t some great conspiracy at work in the way that conspiracy theorists are increasingly presenting it.
However, there are people who for one reason or another have gained significant power and responsibility over the lives of others. They see it as being imperative that the whole world is changed so that everyone behaves in ways that they have decided that the world can sustain, which at the same time will coincidentally ensure that those same elites can continue making obscene profits, being quite literally ‘baked in’.
Everyone making money out of the masses eating manipulated ingredients that will cause increasing levels of health problems and in all probability lead to early deaths, isn’t worried about the nutritional value of the food that people eat.
The most important thing to all of them is ensuring that the masses can never make the argument that they are going hungry. In that way, no matter how bad the food may be for anyone, if its tasty and available, the elites will always remain in control.
Today, UK Farmers still have choices over what they grow and how they grow it. Even though many are tied into contracts that are ultimately controlled by a very small number of companies who control the food supply and whose longer-term profit-making interests will benefit if independent Farmers go out of business, so that they can control even more of the food supply.
Those with roles that are there to help, don’t help anyone at all
The useful idiots that we now have in government and running policy and services across the public sector don’t help matters at all.
Whilst very few can accept this truth at first glance, the reality is that decades of farm and food production related subsidies have only served to move more and more of the power that our Farmers and Food Producers once had towards the big companies that incentivise and control politicians.
Meanwhile, Agriculture has become more and more dependent upon the political lead. Whilst local infrastructure and everything that supports local and independent food production has been progressively destroyed, either legislatively or in direct physical form.
If we can accept this – and that’s by no means an easy thing to do, we can also then accept that UK Farming and Food Production needs to go in the completely opposite direction, embracing much more traditional methods of food production and returning Farms, Farming and Food Production so that they are providing everyone with the basic, natural, healthy, nutritious and fresh forms of foods that we all actually need.
For us all to have and benefit from this, means that Agriculture and growing food must be right at the heart of our communities once more.
Mindful eating
The battle to save natural food production in the UK (and in other areas of the world too), only exists today, because so many of us take for granted the lives that we have and the continued access to food and everything else that makes life seem so easy. All without being conscious of the real cost to us, or without recognising that we do have a choice.
Greedy profiteering companies only produce foods that can harm us on the scale that they do so, because we keep on buying and eating them, without ever giving any thought to anything that these companies and the people behind them are doing.
If we all began looking at the ingredients of foods and take note of where the food or where the ingredients actually come from, we would very quickly see the difference between ‘natural’ food that we can recognise because it usually resembles its original form, and everything else which doesn’t look like or resemble anything that we could recognise in nature.
This is a very quick and effective way of being able to tell if eating or drinking anything, is likely to end up harming us in some way.
Changing the way we eat is how we keep our freedom to be who we are
The harsh truth that we all need to face:
The control of food is power and the power behind food is a way that those dependent on someone else’s food supply be controlled.
Whilst the UK Farming and Food Producing communities now have a massive fight on their hands to regain control of their own destiny – not least of all within that community, the fact remains that we can all help change the direction of UK (and World) Food Production by changing the way that we approach the food that we eat.
By doing so, we will ultimately help ourselves.
The smallest steps are the biggest when it comes to change of this kind. And if we all start to do what we can to reject processed foods and UPFs wherever and in any way that we find them or that they come into our lives, the impact that we can collectively have upon the food chain and the way that food is produced would become meaningful in no time at all.
Changing the eating habits that we have is not easy for anyone. Not least of all, because our habits are the truth we have chosen to believe.
However, the truths that we believe about food today are not truths that we can call or should be prepared to accept as our own.
Good, healthy, nutritious, locally produced fresh food IS a public good and we all deserve to be able to access enough of it every day and at prices that we can all easily afford.
We can only make this possible if each and every one of us exercises what still remains of our freedom of choice to change the world for the better, one choice at a time.
To do so meant mentioning the founder, James Melville. I don’t know James personally, but because of my ongoing interest in politics and the true depth of the problems that the U.K. is facing, I have been aware of him since he first appeared as a growing voice in what I’ll call the anti-lockdown ‘movement’ that appeared in the summer of 2020 following the first lockdowns.
Whilst I have discussed my reasoning that NFNF will not be able to achieve anything more than the range of existing organisations that are already working on the issues UK farming faces or have tried to do so before, it is also important to recognise what this new campaign is doing differently: NFNF has reached a much wider audience and has captured the imagination of people in ways that many of the existing lobbyist organisations supporting UK Farming have not done, so far.
The impact of NFNF is down to marketing and online campaigning. Or rather, making the best of the communication mediums that are currently available to anyone or any organisation that wants to change anything in the public realm, and isn’t already in a position where they have a platform where they could have the same effect just by opening their mouths.
The people who could do that – who arguably should already be doing that on behalf of UK Agriculture, are the people who are already in power. The people who we have elected and the people with roles in the establishment, who aren’t getting the things that they should be right. Because they are putting what’s important to them or what’s important to the people who are important to them, first.
Having the exposure that James has generated repeatedly since he emerged online, or being one of those people with public responsibility who isn’t using it as they should be, all adds up to the same outcome, IF there is no understanding or appreciation of the cause of the problems beyond an obsession with their effects, along with an appreciation of how everything in government, politics and the establishment really works today. Which genuinely isn’t anything like what most of us expect – even some of those within it.
Appearing to have a platform, with growing support and ‘breakthrough’ messages that give the immediate belief that those behind it can achieve things, will bring many different people and interests out of the woodwork who want to use that exposure for themselves. Usually because they aren’t getting the level of success with their own approaches, that they can see that new platform has.
It’s this visually-derived focus that brings groups like Together, climate deniers, right-wingers, anti-Brexiteers, and all sorts of different people with badges those who disagree with their priorities have given them, who identify with the issues that UK Farmers face tom banners like NFNF.
They see a vehicle that could be the answer to whatever problem they see as the priority, believing that their ‘fix’ will be the one that fixes everything for everyone else too.
The biggest obstacle to a successful outcome or resolution to all the common issues that Farmers share, is what we are now seeing unfolding in the disagreements about NFNF.
Different groups and individuals are attacking each other or piling in on individuals who have said something they don’t like about their take on what NFNF are going to do, and using links, affiliations and everything but the issues around what will actually work, when the point is being missed that in its current form, with the current mentality and the current lack of genuine engagement of a kind that social media simply cannot give, there will be nothing meaningful that NFNF can achieve.
The truth is that there is a massive range of people with different skills, experiences and talents that need to be involved in any movement that is going to succeed in delivering change for UK Farmers and Food Producers, where so many have already failed or been bought off with meaningless compromises before.
The parallels between this new campaign and how entry to the current political system works are frightening. Success in one area of business, obtaining a platform or just getting yourself elected doesn’t equip anyone with the understanding that it takes to do anything and certainly not where the realms of public policy interconnect and interacting with a completely broken system are concerned.
We shouldn’t doubt the good intent behind NFNF. But it’s been said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions and a large number of rightly angry, desperate and frustrated people are getting carried away by an idea that presents a good story, that in reality will end up a very long way from what it now seems.
We cannot have all the things that we want. That much is clear from the reality that we are all living through.
We need to focus upon the things that we genuinely need.
What we have the power to do is recognise the key things or rather the aims that we have in common. Such as saving U.K. Farming and making sure that everyone in the U.K. has everyday access to good, healthy, natural and farm-grown food.
It’s easy to dismiss workable solutions on the basis that they don’t appear to deliver the solutions that we want. But that’s really the most important point.
If we work together to deliver what’s right for everyone and not just what we want, what we want is likely to be delivered or will become a lot nearer by doing so.
We will then be winning multiple times over. Rather than fighting each other for no good purpose and not delivering anything to help anyone at all.
The real problem and barrier to progress in achieving the meaningful change that UK farmers and food producers need, is agreeing on what change is needed and what that change will therefore be.
The number of people, business owners, organisations and lobbying organisations that have an interest in the future of farming and food production, simply because of the many areas that the food chain touches and relates to, is mind boggling.
Every one of them has a different take on what’s happening. What the real issues or causes and effects of the problems are. And therefore what the solution needs to achieve.
In many cases, that also means they will already have an idea of what the solution needs to be.
This is where everything hits the metaphorical brick wall. Because we all have a habit of getting emotionally tied into the dynamic of the experience we have vs the problem as we see it vs what we know the solution needs to be or look like for us.
Work together. Find all that we have in common. Then we will have common cause
It’s frustrating to watch the same old arguments unfold and play out between different interests that have so much more in common than what are probably just a few ideas that divide them.
Ideas that would probably be progressed anyway, by focusing on what aims we share in common, with the people that we might today be refusing to listen to. Because the few things we appear to disagree on appear to make everything else they have to say or can do to help us, wrong.
For instance, we all:
Need to eat (healthy food that will not harm us)
Need to drink (clean, healthy water)
Need food and water that is natural with a good nutritional base
Want eating healthy food to be ‘normal’ or easy
Want food to be readily accessible to us at a price that we can afford
Need Food Security
Need the UK Food supply to be sustainable
Need the planet to continue being able to support our lives
Want to be happy
And there will certainly be more.
However, the issues we see about issues like climate change (and whether it’s real), money, being vegetarian or vegan, rewilding, wild animals, animal welfare standards, who deserves to be guaranteed access to food, hedgerows, building on productive land, what a sustainable life really looks like and just about everything else that can be argued as being personal to us and therefore how we see ourselves, is a belief.
It isn’t what we have in common.
That’s why adopting a purist approach and saying anyone or all of these priorities we have MUST be the end result, in order for us to agree, is what stops us all from coming together to achieve something that could quickly become very good.
This post has been taken and adapted from the book Food From Farms Guaranteed, published on Amazon, 16/02/24.
We need to ask the questions: ‘What does it mean to be a stakeholder?’ and ‘Who are the real stakeholders?’
Because the interests of the people who are guiding, influencing and controlling the most visible forms of food standards that communicate what farmers do to those who consume the food produced, are not focused or aligned with the interests of the most important stakeholders who are located at each end.
The focus of power and influence in UK food production is instead directed to the many middle parts of what is in the main an otherwise unnecessary chain.
No value is added. But production prices are squeezed from every angle, whilst the price to the consumer is repeatedly being raised.
The role of commercial, profit and greed-led businesses in UK food production is bad enough. But any argument that statutory authorities have the right to dictate the direction of food production and also insert themselves into the food chain as a key stakeholder, is willfully and deliberately misplaced and, in all honesty, wrong.
Government and the public sector exists to serve the people. Not to make every decision that will dictate what any person or what any business can do.
This is where we are all getting our relationship with the establishment and every part of it wrong.
This post was taken and adapted from the book Food From Farms Guaranteed, published on Amazon, 16/02/24.
Whilst I am hesitant to say anything that places lobbyist organisations like the NFU and any of the representatives who speak for them in a bad light, because I don’tintend to, it has to be said that no matter what meetings they have, what promises they receive or whatever headlines they make, lobbyist organisations like them will not achieve the results that farmers need.
Because for them, the approach that would be needed and the perceived risk to the relationships that they have with politicians, government departments, NGOs, business and retailers, or many other organisations by doing what needs to be done, is perceived to be too high.
This isn’t a criticism. This is how established and well-known lobbying organisations work, right across every area of public policy.
They value the relationship that they have with the establishment more than they do the need to do whatever it will take to achieve meaningful solutions for the people and businesses that they represent.
That results in compromise, fudges and being grateful for nothing more than politicians, business and public sector leaders paying lip service to the idea that the change they offer is the same thing as a genuine outcome being achieved.
To be fair, one of the myths that too many of us have bought into is the idea that politicians and the establishment do actually know and understand what they are doing. That they have integrity with the responsibility they have to the electorate, and that they are therefore people we can trust.
Few have a real appreciation of the interconnectedness of every problem that exists within the realm of Public Policy, and I’m afraid that I speak from experience when I say that this very much includes the politicians who are supposedly in Westminster and within the devolved Administrations who are there to legislate on our behalf.
This post has been taken from Food From Farms Guaranteed, Published on Amazon 16/02/24
Adam Tugwell 