If you had spoken to an economist just a year ago, they are likely to have told you that a situation could never exist where oil could not be sold. Yet that is exactly what has happened around the World in the past 48 hours.

Oil has long been known as black gold for good reason.

In its refined form it fuels and lubricates our cars, lorries, buses, trains and aeroplanes and is used in the manufacturing process for a seemingly endless number of different things.

Its sale, trading and transportation has become such a key part of the World economy at large, economists and industrialists watch both the price and the quantities being sold at any time very closely. Downward fluctuations in price are often a good indicator of the economy slowing down – simply because less production and use of oil means that demand for everything else has dropped.

Oil production has been used as an economic weapon for a long time. One of the most unsettling realities of the interest that the West has had in the Middle East and Arab States since the Second World War has been maintaining dominance of the control of the Worlds oil supply – as the taps being turned off would normally mean that everything else can be brought to a halt – or supply restricted to the point where the prices of everything go through the roof because of the key role that oil plays in the production of almost everything today.

Oil has always been about money. Those who own the oilfields or have monopoly over the supply have until now been guaranteed to be able to write what seems like an endless cheque.

Not any more.

Suddenly, the vulnerability of their bomb=proof industry can be seen for what it as and the role that it plays within our lives.

Despite the fear that COVID-19 has created, and the damage that is being done as a result of the very poor choices and decisions that our Politicians have made, there are good reasons to be positive about what the future and the post-COVID-19 world will hold for us all.

The stranglehold that big business, the banks and the finance sector has on us all because of the way that money is generated, manipulated and given false value by the trade in commodities like oil is being broken.

Right now their grip is being destroyed by a tiny little Virus that neither we, the Government nor they can control.

A great door has been opened and we are literally entering a different World to the one that we have all previously known.

Money is nothing. It is an idea. A construct and nothing more. Money only works because we consent to it being a means of exchange. Yet it has become so important in our lives, we have culturally come to the belief that the possession of money and the other trappings of material wealth are the only things of value and the only way that we can truly assess what someone is actually worth.

Having our lives shutdown by the Lockdown has began to show us all what money and wealth is really worth. We have a choice between attaining and attempting to keep a false material wealth that always sits outside of us, or recognising the true value within us all that is never in transition and remains and intrinsic part of us all.

No, I am not making light of the pain and anguish that many people are already or are likely to go through in the coming weeks and months simply because the Chancellor and the Johnson Government haven’t got the financial support for everyone who has lost their income right.

In fact, one of the most telling reasons that the Government has got this all so very wrong, is the inherent belief within the establishment that Money is the god that underpins all things and that it must continue to flow at all costs or everything will go wrong.

It won’t.

The lesson that the Johnson Government will soon learn if it has not done so already is that they should have used the responsibility and the power they have to bring the economy to a halt whilst they dealt with the COVID-19 emergency, instead of continuing under the ridiculous assumption that bailing out people and small businesses because they suddenly have no income was the right and only thing to do.

This Government has simply turned an emergency into a crisis and made things considerably worse for us all.

Because of what our Politicians have done, as individuals, as communities and together as a Country, we are now set on a pathway which is going to cause us all a considerable amount of pain.

The flip side is that we are already and will continue to look, feel and think differently about the World around us and the way that things are being done.

Our values are already changing and are going to change further still. Whether it’s as simple as being because we can now see how working from home can introduce a much higher quality of life, or that we don’t need the regular visits to restaurants, coffee shops and out-of-town shopping villages – simply to be happy as we once thought we did, we are collectively going to see life and everything around us through a very different lens.

We will no longer see celebrity and status as the be-all and end-all. Instead we will see the value in conversation and relationships with others around us in ways that we can already appreciate today, that before the Lockdown we never even realised we had.

The march of globalisation is now over no matter what any banker, economist or business leader thinks. Jobs once lost from the UK will ultimately return.

We are going to want to shop locally with local traders and local producers who we can trust to be there in ways that big business cannot. As we do so, we will help our local producers to produce more efficiently and more cheaply and we will see the value in consciously considering and supporting the use of shorter and more considerate supply chains for the provision of everything that we use in our everyday lives.

The political system in this Country will not survive what our current politicians have done.

The Political Parties we have are part of an establishment that is out of touch with the realities of life for those who are governed.

Those who govern us in the future will have to understand everything that they are working with around them in the sense of a genuine and empathetic three-hundred-and-sixty-degrees world view.

Governance is going to be about the consideration of consequences in all that a Government or Authority will do and no longer about what a politician can gain from getting a job, rather than what they are there to give and do on behalf of us all.

We are going to work together and see community and collaboration as a way to do things for the benefit of everyone, rather than just a way to further our own cause. The power that is there to be harnessed by working together will be beneficial for everyone, because it will no longer be about money and its imaginary value, but about caring and consideration for all.

Much too much credence and power has been given to people who call themselves specialists and experts in one or other field and they have played a significant role in bringing us to where we now are. They are usually highly intelligent people with qualifications as long as your arm. But intelligence given by anyone without care, consideration and thought for others is wasted. It will never account for anything of real value in whatever they do.

The real opportunity that has come from COVID-19 will be the fall of money as a god, the reevaluation of what real wealth really is, and with it the return to a way of being and seeing the world where everyone has value, no matter what it is they do.

2020 is going to be a big year for us all.

The clock is ticking. Every minute. Every hour. Every day.

We are living through an extraordinary period of change.

As we all struggle to make sense of our new way of living, confined to our homes, passing each other at a distance and in many cases wondering how we will soon afford to live, it is easy for any one of us to allow national and world events simply to pass us by as if there is no risk that we will ever be found out.

Yet the problem that we all now face is the Government that is supposed to be leading us at this time of national crisis is doubling down on all the mistakes it has already made. It is on target to make things considerably worse for us all.

There is talk today on the media channels of apportioning blame to the Government for failing to take COVID-19 as seriously as it could have done at an earlier point in time. The difficulty in doing so is that the Government would still have taken the same disastrous steps that it has done since and would have done so then.

The inescapable truth undermining the Coronavirus is that there is no form of reasoned control of the epidemic that comes without the price being far too high for us all in so many different ways beyond the specific impact on health of the Virus itself.

Sadly, for many of us facing the struggles that we are, it is only with the benefit of hindsight that we will be able to look back at late March and April 2020 and see that the Government let the Lockdown go too far and didn’t do anything near enough to mitigate the losses that it has inflicted upon people, businesses, industries, sectors and the whole economy at large.

The Government isn’t coping with its responsibilities and it is not going to do so.

The Government is obsessed with the words of specialists and experts, and using data as the anchor upon which it can pin its decision making on.

Yet Coronavirus is new and there are absolutely no guarantees or anything set in stone about what will happen if it continues to prioritise the Coronavirus emergency rather than the crisis that it has created around us all at large.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a series of unknowns and variables from start to finish. This its nature and how it will all play out until a Vaccine has been found, produced and is in comprehensive use. Nobody knows how long this process will actually take.

Everything else across our lives was full of comparative certainties that give security to each and all of us simply because in general terms, we are focused on what we can all control, rather than the things that we can’t.

What the Government did by upending our lives with the Lockdown in the way it has – in a rush to try and control a Virus that it simply cannot control – has been to compromise us all, our jobs, our businesses, our communities, our industries, our sectors and our economy at large.

These Politicians simply weren’t big enough to make the right decisions for no better reason than that they would be unpopular and that to do so would be to go against the false populism that our out of control media has stirred up since the COVID-19 chapter began.

If the decisions had been made in isolation and there was nothing further for the Government to now do, the situation we are facing would be certainly not be looking as bad. But Coronavirus and the impact it has had on this Country and on the World at large is not now going to simply disappear and go away.

There will be decision after decision to be taken that will effect how we as a Country live with the Virus in the coming months and years. There will be decisions to be made about how we save our own economy and get back on track during a downturn that has all the makings of a catastrophe for the World economy too. There will be decisions about our relationship with the EU which may now need to protect us from what might be its imminent collapse. There will be decisions that need to be taken about the changes that we now need to our public sector, the way we work and live or what we know as the British way of life. There will be hard decisions about seeing off trade wars, re-localising our production, going green and significantly reducing our dependence on globalisation as the way to get things done. Above all that, the Worldwide changes that are underway bring with them a significant risk of armed conflict in the months and years ahead, especially with the rhetoric and even law suits being targeted at China, whom the small-minded and profit hungry are looking at to lay all the blame.

These decisions are just the start and are only but a few.

This Government has already proven that it cannot think ahead, work strategically, operationally, or simply to do what’s in the best interests of everyone right from the start.

With a growing list of historic decisions that will now have to be made, these are not the people we want to be steering the ship that we are all now sailing on.

This is nothing as simple as a change in political make up and a switch to the left from the right. Labour, the Liberal Democrats nor any of the existing political parties can offer anything  better than the Conservatives can. They have all been created, developed and have thrived within a system that has no concept of what is morally or ethically right.

Nor is this about a fall back position to a form of government made up of all the usual suspects, the bankers, the so-called business leaders, the rich, the famous, the people who have a name. They might all look different, but when it comes to power and responsibility, these are people who will continue to forget everyone but themselves like this Government has done – just the same.

We are now in the realms of needing a shake up of the whole establishment and the removal of those who have and won’t to be replaced by the people who can and will.

At first glance it would appear oxymoronic to even suggest that there could be such a thing as a good dictator.

But that doesn’t mean that one couldn’t exist.

We need real world views informing all that we now do as a Country. This cannot be achieved by people who have only had lives of privilege, don’t understand what it is to get their hands dirty and have no understanding of how everything in life is relative to experience for us all.

To get us all through the mess that is here now and the chaos that is coming will require single-mindedness with a healthy respect for all the ways of the world at a level that none of our Politicians will ever possess or be equipped to have by the advisors that they surround themselves with.

We need all of the voices for change heard, but not so prioritised that one voice for one issue becomes the voice that leads them all.

We need a form of government that works like a genuine committee, where all perspectives are heard, but treated equally, so that no undue influence can be given to whoever is liked most, can buy others or is most likely to return the favour if they are given undue support.

Above all, we need an executive decision maker who will answer to these real representatives of the people, but is ready and well equipped to make the decisions that need to be made in the moment and has the confidence to make them, knowing that they can be justified on the basis that they have done or will always do what is right.

Our democracy has been taken over by irresponsible insiders behaving like thieves in the night.

The political system that we have pays nothing more than lip service to Voters in return for the massive trust it has been given.

The establishment at large is not equipped to deal with the COVID-19 emergency, the crisis the Government is causing through its actions in response, nor the World-changing events that are now on their way and will come in the weeks and the months ahead.

We need the government to change its approach or for there to be a change in government NOW.

 

image of V’s mask from the film V for Vendetta. Thanks to unknown.

 

 

Without realising that they have done it, the Government has given us a master class in divide and conquer.

The financial support being provided for some of those who have lost income as a result of the Lockdown is so piecemeal and all over the place, it has literally played up to the way that we think culturally. It has left different groups falling over themselves to try and secure the same payouts that they perceive to have been already given to everyone else.

The upshot of all this has been that the only thing the Government has done which unified people was to create and then perpetuate the myths about their efforts to ‘protect the NHS’, using it as leverage to create groupthink and a false populism about key workers that has led to people clapping on their doorsteps like clockwork once a week.

If a) protecting the NHS was the only thing that was important and b) it was actually what the Government intended to do, this strategy would go down in history as a stroke of genius.

However, what ‘protecting the NHS’, the creation of the Nightingale Field Hospitals, the Lockdown, Social Distancing, heavy-handed Police enforcement and a growing list of other things tell us is there is a complete absence of rudimentary management practice at the heart of government that looks at all the different factors and influences across this situation and then comes up with plans that join up all the dots.

Doing so would be an approach that may not be immediately popular. But it would at the very least consider everyone and therefore would actually work for us all.

The Government’s key error from the start of the Coronavirus pandemic has been an over reliance on words, views and influence of scientists, medical specialists and epidemiologists to manage a national crisis, purely on the basis of prioritising only the medical issues that relate to it.

This has served to sow fear on an unprecedented level across the UK population in such a way that COVID-19 has become an irrational motivator that in the minds of many. A false populism has been deliberately created that means normally intelligent and sensible people will prioritise Coronavirus above all else – even to the point where it will run counterintuitively to the specialisms and ways of doing normal things that they themselves know best.

Herein lies a real problem as the Government now attempts to create a strategy for the next set of fudges that will be inflicted upon us. They will be sold to us all as a reasoned, stepped or traffic light approach to ending the Lockdown in stages.

The Government will sell the exit as being fully considered and thought-out. But instead of weighing up the pros and cons and taking an equitable and fair approach that is in the genuine interests of everyone, the Government will continue to be swayed by yet more specialists in specific fields where their ‘advice’ and their ‘view’ will be given through the myopic lens of their own specialisms coupled with their own fears of Coronavirus. It will not be what will be best for everyone just to get on with and complete their own jobs in times that we are all finding very challenging.

For instance Education specialists are already making noise about a staggered or piecemeal approach to facilitating the return of children in different age groups to schools at different times instead of just treating them all the same as they should. The exams have been dealt with and education is equally important for everyone.

You cannot please everyone at a time like this.

There will be some who are happy and others who will end up completely miffed.

What the Government should be committed to is working only with what they can control. They must accept and work considerately with the limitations that exist in respect of everything else.

The reality is:

• There is currently no cure for Coronavirus.
• There is no definitive timeline for when a vaccine will be identified, tested, produced in sufficient quantities and then given to everyone who will still need to be vaccinated at that time.
• Everyone is at risk of contracting Coronavirus without a Vaccine
• Of those who catch Coronavirus, some will die, some will become very ill, some will have little or no symptoms at all.
• Other illnesses, diseases, health conditions and deaths from natural causes are responsible for killing more people than COVID-19 each and every day.
• The Lockdown has began to destroy the economy. Businesses closed down temporarily will never reopen and this number will rise each and every day that the Lockdown continues in any form leading to loss of income, job losses, bankruptcies, debt and then all of the personal issues such as depression and anxiety that follows. It has already led to a rise in suicides since the Lockdown began.
• The Lockdown is creating significant safeguarding issues across society. Domestic violence has risen since the Lockdown began. Divorces will rise. Vulnerable people are at increased risk because they cannot escape or even have a break from contact with their abusers.
• The Nightingale Field Hospitals are nothing more than a white elephant. They are not offering the additional capacity that the Government promised and are there for little more than publicity purposes so that Politicians can claim they are getting things done.
• Likewise, the Private Hospitals that have been ‘taken over’ at significant cost to the Taxpayer, are not being fully used.
• The existing NHS facilities are running as best they can but have been beset by supply chain and resource management problems that the Government was already aware of, but had done little or nothing to head off.
• The NHS is severely understaffed. During a time of national crisis, it stands to reason that  rules and regulations can and should be relaxed to allow on-the-job training for healthcare assistants within all of our Hospitals.
• The only plan the Government has is to keep the flow of ill COVID-19 patients into hospital at the level of capacity which is available within the existing NHS.
• The only way the Government ‘Strategy’ can succeed and be maintained is either to maintain the Lockdown until the Vaccine is ready or to allow some loosening of the Lockdown once patient numbers drop, until they go up again and then reintroduce the full Lockdown. This process would need repeating over and over again until Coronavirus is no longer any risk, with a full Lockdown being implemented many times.
• There is and will be no level of certainty that any lives can genuinely be saved until mass vaccination has taken place.
• There is no guarantee that the lives of any Coronavirus patients can be saved by the Lockdown, whilst we can be sure that the Lockdown is already on the way to causing significant economic and social harm to the whole Country – which will result in the loss of many more lives over the long term than would be lost to Coronavirus if everyone were to be infected by the Virus at the same time.
• The hysteria that the Government and the Media have created is promoting an irrational fear of catching and dying from Coronavirus, when it is most likely that everyone will die from another cause.
• We don’t know what Coronavirus can, will or won’t do and who it will effect.
• We do know what the Lockdown is already doing, will do and who it is going to do it to.
• The Lockdown MUST be brought to an immediate END. Not in part, but in full, allowing people to behave like adults and allowing them the choices of what to do.

If the Government continues to complicate its responses and all that it is doing to manage the COVID-19 Crisis, rather than taking the most simple approach, it will simply continue to create even more problems for the Country and for each of us as individuals.

Yes, people are genuinely concerned about people dying from Coronavirus. But people are dying all of the time. The only thing that is different with COVID-19 is that it is new and the Government – with the help of the media – has sensationalised it and given it celebrity status in many minds.

The only way that this Crisis can be managed for the best interests of the many rather than the few is to end the Lockdown and then manage the symptoms of those who have Coronavirus as and when and where they arise.

The fact that the Government is failing to resource the NHS as it should is not good enough reason for the Lockdown to continue as it is right now.

In the Second World War, Churchill mobilised the British People with brilliant rhetoric that looked reality straight in the eye. When the call went out for metal to build Spitfires and paper to make bullets, everyone did their part. They felt they were making a genuine contribution and had some ownership or investment in everything that was being done.

If the Government were to come clean and stop trying to hide its weaknesses, many more people and their communities would want to help and do their bit.

Some would happily make PPE. Others would be happy to begin working with the NHS.

They cannot do this whilst they and the whole Country are locked down and their freedom to be who they are is being curtailed.

With things as they are, people are understandably more worried about whether their jobs and businesses will continue to exist in a few weeks, rather than getting down to doing what they are all good at and genuinely helping to get this all done.

The following suggestions for ending the Lockdown and getting the UK moving again are taken from my Blog Why it’s time to end the Shutdown & how to let life resume and face whatever happens next and was published on this Blogsite on 6th April 2020:

It’s time for the Shutdown to end now. It’s time for life to restart.

There is no perfect way to plan the fight against Coronavirus, or to put together a strategy for ending the Lockdown, letting life restart and managing cases of Coronavirus either now or thereafter. There are simply too many unknowns and variables within what is a live and evolving Crisis for that ever to be the way.

However, we can ask that the Politicians do their best, and in terms of ending the Lockdown now and getting life back on track, these are some of the key things that they can now do.

Notification of Coronavirus Symptoms

Perhaps the key factor or source of information that the Government needs going forward, is clear and decisive record of who has experienced Coronavirus symptoms – even if no medical intervention has been involved.

• Upon first experiencing Coronavirus symptoms, individuals should be able to Register using their individual identification data on the Government Portal.
• This responsibility to register would become that of parents, carers and guardians for children and vulnerable people
• Nobody should be able to claim Coronavirus Sickness Benefit without having registered first.
• In the first instance and until such time as it is confirmed whether symptoms of Coronavirus could be suffered more than once, individuals would be able to claim only once,
• The data can then be used to distribute the Coronavirus Antibody Test once it is universally available and thereby technically available to all
• On completion of registration, the Government Portal should allocate a unique reference number for every individual to use to claim benefits such as Coronavirus Sick Pay and payment holidays

The NHS

It will remain essential to keep resources flowing towards the NHS so that it can manage the critical stages of the Coronavirus related illness that some people will inevitable suffer – just as they are now.

Field Hospitals, Intensive Care Units, Ventilator numbers and the recruitment rate of staff will have to continue to rise until the natural infection rate and the number of people it will effect critically at any particular time has been reached.

This will not be long once the restart has begun. But there is likely to be a period of time where it doesn’t look like the NHS can cope and numbers of people are dying who might have been saved, had more resources been in place.

‘Protect the NHS’ is the Trojan horse argument that led to the shutdown as the chosen way to attempt to manage demand in the first place. It’s where the Government went fundamentally wrong.

• Local Trusts should set up Designated Reception Centres, separate to GP Surgeries and Hospital Reception areas used for other purposes
• Local dedicated helplines should be provided to field calls from those with symptoms
• Dedicated Ambulance provision should be put in place for Coronavirus sufferers
• The general emergency Ambulance fleet should be kept separate.
• Serious consideration should be given to requiring benefits claimants to report for duty as healthcare assistants, with full pay, work and training options to be offered after a qualifying or probationary period.

The Restart itself

The way to lift the Lockdown isn’t to try and overcomplicate things by using terms such as calling it ‘gradual’ or ‘taking things in steps’, or anything else that even hints at there being some form of managed delay.

Whilst we might all like to think that the world as we knew it before March could just be switched back on at 9am on Monday morning it won’t happen no matter what we do. The time it will take those businesses still operating to return to full operation will take a lot longer than it took them to shut down. That is before you take into consideration the natural trepidation that many people are going to have as a result of the negativity and scaremongering that has taken place on the part of the media.

Even now, barely a fortnight in to the Lockdown, things will have changed markedly and they will continue to do so each and every day until the new norm for life begins.

People and businesses are going to work differently, travel differently and think differently. So the resumption of participating in everyday life will take time under its own steam, without anyone or anything else being involved.

Social Distancing

Social distancing in areas where people are usually in close proximity will be a good measure to retain formally, even though people are likely to keep their distance for some time as it has already become an accepted part of life.

Even if social distancing plays no further active part in dealing with Coronavirus – given that there are very recent suggestions that the Virus can remain active in air for up to three hours – it will help address any social awkwardness that will exist for some people once the Media’s negative messaging campaign is over and done.

Sick Pay

• Everyone working who has unable to work because they have caught Coronavirus should be able to rely on having Coronavirus Sick Pay
• The Sick Pay should last a calendar month from the date of registration
• There should not be a laborious process of application involving claims for Universal Credit or applications via Jobcentres or the DWP.
• The Coronavirus sick pay should be claimed on behalf of employees by employers and paid as part of the monthly PAYE process
• The self employed and/or contract workers should be able to claim their sick pay back as part of their next Annual Tax Return.
• The reference number allocated at registration should be used by employers for PAYE purposes and on individual Tax Returns.

People

Fundamentally, it is essential that every member of the population is treated like an adult, trusted to do the right thing and given no excuse to do otherwise. To support everyone, the Government must ensure that all practical issues people may experience if and when they suffer with Coronavirus has been mitigated against adequately and given added value as an incentive too.

Put simply, if there’s no way people can lose out, they will do the right thing.

• Any individual, their parent, carer or guardian will register Coronavirus Symptoms using the Government Portal
• Upon registration, individuals should be required to immediately self-isolate and remain isolated for a minimum of 14 days
• Upon experiencing escalating symptoms, individuals should report to local NHS designated reception centres or call designated helplines if transport or an ambulance is required
• All domestic bills, rents, leases, loans, interest and debt repayments to stopped for a month as a ‘Payment Holiday’
• Individuals to use the reference number provided when they registered with the Government Portal to confirm they are on a legitimate payment holiday with debtors or those they should normally pay.
• A payment of approx £100 per week to be payable to every individual Registered in the ‘Coronavirus Window’ for a period of four weeks to cover food and essentials

The Vulnerable

• The vulnerable have to be allowed to make their own decision about the risk, about remaining in isolation, or returning to ‘normal life’. They should not be pressured to go either way.
• Benefits Claimants without medical conditions and unemployed should be tasked with providing the support currently provided by volunteers.

For Business

• Businesses of all sizes should be protected from the impact of the Lockdown for the period of time it will take things to return to or find the new normal, once the Lockdown has been lifted.
• Where necessary support should be applied retrospectively to the 23^rdof March 2020, if not the point in time before that when levels of business within marketplaces are recognised as having began to decline in response to the early stages of the Coronavirus Crisis.
• All businesses should have a 3-6 months ‘payment holiday’ from rents, leases, mortgages, repayments, interest, debt
• Heavy fines and/or jail terms should be immediately awarded by a District Judge without trial or appeal, to any Creditor, Company, Director or Partner thereof refusing to facilitate the ‘payment holiday’ and/or attempting to recover any related sums using other or additional debt devices or levying additional payments or raising prices relating to that relationship

Funerals

For the duration of the Coronavirus Pandemic, the Government should intervene to ensure that the disposal of bodies is facilitated without delay, without price gouging or profiteering and is provided on the basis of a same-level, community service for all.

• The Government should set a fixed, realistic cost for a ‘standard’ funeral with a transparent minimal fixed margin and no additional payments being made for anything not specified
• The Government should pay the cost of ALL Funerals at the standard rate for the duration of the Coronavirus Pandemic
• Local Authorities should administer the allocation of care of the deceased and funerals to local undertakers on a take-it-in-turns basis
• Local Authorities should administer payments to undertakers and make them immediately
• All funerals should be provided on the same basis and not open to change or being ‘upgraded’ by additional payments from families etc
• Funeral Insurance payouts to either be split with the cost of the standard funeral being returned to the Government and any outstanding balance returned to the family or estate, or simply paid out to the family or estate

The Media

Whilst free society needs a free press, the current approach, lack of ethical standards and reliance on dressing up subjective opinion as news requires that Government take a different approach and one that doesn’t play into the system as it is.

• The forward briefing, advance copies of Government speeches and embargoed press releases need to stop.
• Regulation needs to be introduced that requires news to be news, and for the mainstream media to promote the wider concept of the principle of charity in all things, rather than constantly looking for every opportunity to create negative spin.

As you scan the Sunday Newspaper headlines today, you will see that the media is finally beginning to turn on the Government over its woeful handling of the Coronavirus Pandemic and the shameful Lockdown that is condemning more businesses to close and more people to lose their income, jobs and livelihood for every minute, hour and day that it goes on.

There is simply no excuse for the Government having taken the decisions that it has to shutdown the Country and then fail at every step to mitigate the losses and unserviceable costs both to employees and businesses alike for the whole time that the Lockdown continues and then for the resumption period that will follow it beyond.

This isn’t about it having taken time to realise what the Politicians are doing hasn’t and isn’t going to work.

With the Nightingale Hospitals clearly a white elephant vanity project that was all about the headlines that these Politicians could generate with a media which is as irresponsible as they are, the lie has been given to the call to action ‘protect the NHS‘ which was used to manipulate a trusting public into thinking that this attack on liberty and our way of life for years to come was genuinely justified and in our best interests to support it.

It wasn’t in our best interests to support the Lockdown at the start and it is not in our best interests to support the continuation of the Lockdown at any level now.

Our Country is rudderless and set on a path of destruction which is going to take the lives of people not affected by the COVID-19 Virus. Lives that would not ever have been at risk if the Country had not been locked down by the Politicians who are ‘in charge‘.

The Politicians we have today, who sought power through a political system that only favours its own – whatever political party they are from – are not equipped with the experience of life, the understanding of people or the wherewithal to lead anything. They do not posses the basic humanity and selflessness which is necessary for any national leader to have at any time to run a Country like the UK – not least of all during a time of national crisis.

These Politicians come from a political culture that genuinely believes that whatever they tell us will be so.

They have presided over the ascension of money as a god, and bankers, financiers and the heads of big business behaving as if they are the masters of the universe – all whilst everyday people have already paid an unfathomable cost for their shenanigans even before the Coronavirus Pandemic began.

The ineptitude of our Politicians over the Lockdown has now taken this lack of consideration for others into a completely different league.

This whole episode has now gone way beyond the need for basic political reform, where questions needed to be asked and action taken to stop the gravy train from flowing that keeps people who would be genuine representatives of the people from ever gaining public office because their way has been blocked by people driven only by self-interest, ambition, gaining power and the glory they covet which carries with it a level of responsibility that we can now see they have no idea how to use. (apologies – it was all said in one breath!)

We now need this political system replaced – not just changed.

We don’t need any more people who are in politics as a career and have no experience of life outside of think tanks, media jobs and the Westminster bubble beyond School and University.

We don’t need any more people who look good to the media because they have done this or done that, or look good because they represent this community, that community or anything else which is fashionable or politically correct.

Politics is about getting decisions right about every part of life right – not just one.

We don’t need any more people who say yes to all the right people at exactly the right time to keep power brokers happy. Our leaders need to know when and to whom they should say no and they MUST be prepared to do so.

We don’t need any more people who have read lots of books about political and economic ideas but have no understanding of how to deal with a crisis of any kind because that kind of management doesn’t come in a text book.

What do we need?

We need people at the top who put everyone first.

We need people at the top who know how to listen and hear advisors but not be swayed by one perspective when there are multiple voices and ideas to be heard.

We need people at the top who are ready and able to make each decision as it comes, not based on how it looks or how it will play out during an election in 5 years time.

We need people at the top who are not so fragile and insecure that they attempt to control everything and everyone.

We need people at the top who are big enough and confident enough to be honest and communicate to us all the things that they think we don’t want to hear as easily as the things they do think that we do.

We need people at the top who know how to represent others and have the life experience and wherewithal to represent. 

Ultimately, we need to do away with the party political system as it exists today.

We need to have a political party system that works to deliver public policy that works for us all as it should do. Not one filled with political parties whose role has become little more than one to prioritise anything and everything that will enable them to continue to exist and retain power in their own interests.

It would be great if each and every one of us were able to wake up tomorrow thinking as one and realise that the first and most significant step to change for all of us is for every one of us to responsibly withdraw our consent for the Government to continue as it is.

I’ve written in the past about Revolution being the last thing that we need. But times have changed.

The damage that the Politicians we have today are doing, coupled with the reality that the system as it stands will not allow or facilitate the change that we need means that now,  in a time of national crisis, we all must begin thinking about what good government looks like in a very different way to what we may have experienced in the past.

We need everyone and everyone’s interests treated equally.

We need public policy that reflect the views of all.

We need everyone to be treated fairly, even when for some reason, a decision made is something that they don’t personally like because it doesn’t favour them personally in some way.

We need people represented equally whether they are young or old by people who understand the perspective of all others, whether they agree with them or disagree.

The problems that this Government has created will not evaporate the moment that the Lockdown ends.

What the Government isn’t telling us is they have no plan to manage COVID-19 without the use of Lockdowns and the social distancing restrictions they have created continuing until such time as a Vaccine has been identified, tried, tested and rolled out – which could be many months or even years.

This crisis and the ongoing series of new problems that it is creating and will continue to create daily has only just begun.

We need leaders who can get their head down, forget about what makes good headlines and do whatever needs to be done to help us all.

The politicians we have now do not understand and appreciate that being a big beast in politics isn’t about winning a popularity contest. It is about taking decisions that you can justify and are prepared to stand by and see through from the start – when everyone including an unforgiving media says that you are wrong – because you know that what you are doing is right and in the best interests of everyone – even the people who don’t see it and will very loudly disagree.

My regret today as I look at what is likely to unfold in the coming weeks – unless the Government does a U-Turn of biblical proportions – is there is neither the time nor the rational thinking available to address the change in the way and on the timeline that would be ideal in the sense that it would achieve the democratic consensus that it could, should and in normal ‘peacetime’ surely would.

If the public withdraw their consent for the Government to govern, democratic elections will not be the next thing that fills the gap that it will create. Put bluntly, there wont be the time.

And here is the biggest risk. Like the Politicians we have who have attained their power without due regard for the responsibilities that would have, then made decisions that are going to hurt this Country more than they will help, simply because they couldn’t cope with a crisis, many normal people will behave in the same way in a crisis. They will look to the empty vessels that  make the most convincing noise for advice and direction when the shit hits the fan as it is likely to do in the coming weeks.

Without even thinking about it, we could easily see a populist dictatorship come into being in what we had before the Lockdown thought to be a model democracy. It will be led by a person or people around them who will prioritise keeping the power that this crisis will have gifted them – whatever the cost.

It doesn’t seem plausible that the Johnson Government could fall in the coming week but the reality is that if this Government doesn’t change tack on the Lockdown, the financial support it is offering to people and to businesses, and deal with Coronavirus cases as they arise – as it always should have done – then it really could fall.

What we should all hope is that if it happens, is that there is someone ready to step in and turn this all around and then see the whole of the COVID-19 Crisis through as a leader really should, whilst making the changes to the way that the UK works that will make things better for everyone for the long term future – as any good Government should.

In time, what would then be real democracy could then be restored – once the structure of the Country has been changed to work collectively and collaboratively to the benefit of us all, and not as it is now – just for the few.

Let’s hope for a responsible revolution and a return to new and better times which are human and considerate of all.       

As white elephants go, the Nightingale Hospitals are likely to be the very worst we will ever see.

With a Lockdown imposed upon the Country that feels more and more like the early stages of a Police State than a restriction on daily life that is designed to help, the ‘temporary’ end of our liberty was firmly sold to us on the basis that it was the only way to enable the Government to do all that was possible to ‘protect the NHS’.

Of that dubious sales script, one of the most contrived-to-be-convincing excuses the Government made for the requirement of public support for the Lockdown was the time that it was going to take to set up, equip and then open the Nightingale Hospitals, the first of which was set up in an Exhibition Centre in London’s East End.

Once it had opened, it didn’t appear to be the case that the London Nightingale was immediately struggling from over use like many established NHS Hospitals around the Country that are still throwing everything that they have available at COVID-19.

In fact, some started to question how these ‘Field Hospitals’ would actually be staffed, given that the twenty thousand or so retired and de-registered medical staff who answered the call to come back could at best only meet what is known to be the NHS’s pre-Coronavirus and therefore immediate or existing staffing shortfall.

In the past 24 hours, the real story has began to find its way out.

Instead of the Nightingales being the genuine additional capacity to support the whole of the NHS to fight the COVID-19 Crisis that we were told by the Government that they would be, the facilities they offer are only being made available to specific cases and the patients who are most likely to survive. Furthermore, a place will only be offered if the transferring hospital provides the staff to care for that patient too.

On reading this, you are probably wondering to yourself ‘what is the point?’.

Well it’s a good question to ask. Because the pretence for this ridiculous Lockdown was all about helping the NHS to cope.

Now, with three weeks of this highly dubious Lockdown already passed, it is clear that the additional space to manage the so-called ‘peak’ of the Pandemic in the UK was put in place with the intention of it being no such thing.

If the Government is picking and choosing which patients its flagship ‘Field Hospitals’ are going to treat, it can only mean one thing: That the Nightingales have been set up as a publicity stunt to provide figures and data that can be manipulated to show that the Government is achieving results when all the time it is not.

Meanwhile, the Lockdown has already began to destroy jobs, incomes, businesses and lives as the support that the Chancellor has provided does nothing to help people and protect the economy in the way that it should.

Then there are the patients suffering medical conditions and diseases like cancer are being sidelined or their treatment delayed by Hospitals up and down the Country as existing staff and resources are re-tasked to concentrate on prioritising Coronavirus patients.

So even when it comes to addressing the medical aspects of this National Crisis, the Government is telling us all one thing, but doing nothing like what it is saying or indeed anything like what it really should.

There was no excuse to shut down the whole Country under the pretence of supporting the NHS in the first place.

But to have done so when the Government itself is not doing all the things that it should to help either the NHS or the millions of people and businesses that it has effectively put under house arrest offers no logical, responsible or even reasonable excuse.

The more we see of this Government and its clear inability to cope, the more we see the real truth unravelling and finding its way into the light. It is clear that these Ministers and their advisors are making it all up as they go along.

All they are doing is based upon how the things they do and say will look, rather than what the results will be. The Nightingales are a vanity project, clearly all about the Government being able to tell everyone how great they were at dealing with the COVID-19 Crisis.

But this approach is helping nobody. It is just another part of the almighty and escalating mess and chaos that the stupidity of the politicians who are supposed to be leading this Country has created.

For what is happening now on the Johnson Government’s watch, there simply isn’t any legitimate excuse.

The NHS has been in need of desperate top to bottom reform for years and successive Governments have failed to address the real systemic issues in the Health Service over a long period of time.

Good leaders would have recognised and accepted this in the early stages of the Crisis and done everything necessary to ‘come clean’ and explain to us all that there was simply no way that the resources and staff would be available or ready in time to head off or prevent every death that it might be have been possible to prevent, had everything already been in place.

Instead the Government has taken us all on a wild goose chase. They have given false hope and false promises, removed our liberties, set fire to the economy, and fired the starting gun on the destruction of quality of life for countless millions, probably for many years to come.

All because they have no idea what to do, and stupid is as stupid does.