Back in April, I wrote about the 5G conspiracies that were bouncing around and why links had been drawn by many normal people who were looking for a way to explain what feel like unexplainable events, then joining up a few of the wrong dots as they did so.

The more things change, the more things stay the same.

Some three or four months on, it is the Government’s handling of the whole Coronavirus Pandemic, the Lockdown and the Social Distancing measures they have implemented that is focusing the minds of many sensible people in exactly the same troubling way.

It is a regrettable that the Government has already and continues to make decisions or mistakes that are piling up a list of catastrophic consequences for us all.

Individuals and families, owners of small and medium sized businesses and a raft of others were immediately left behind when the economy and our business operations were literally brought to a halt in March, whilst little or no consideration was given to the consequences that the shutdown of everything would have upon so many.

The situation the Government created led to the creation of a range of pop-up organisations and activists focusing their ire on the decisions that the Government has taken. Sadly, in a genuine disconnect between the idea of representative government should be and what it actually now is, these very frustrated people do not understand that the concept of politicians listening to anyone who has a story to tell rarely happens or makes any difference when it does. despite the narrative that the business of government to represent others and get things done.

The activists and leaders of these organisations are good, genuine people who know that the ‘new normal’ that is being forced upon us by an out of touch political class simply isn’t right. But as time passes and more and more of the injustices that have occurred come into focus, it really does seem to many more that the decisions taken must have been planned and that there is some bigger secret strategy or conspiracy at work.

But there isn’t. There is no bigger strategy in play. Even though it looks like Dominic Cummings has one and is completely in control.

There is no conspiracy. The politicians that we have elected are just making very stupid decisions for reasons so simple as not having the experience of dealing with a real crisis and continuing to get things done.

Too many of the politicians we have are in elected roles for completely the wrong, self-serving reasons. They have no idea what it really is to lead. This is why things have gone so very wrong with the handling of Coronavirus and have began ending up the way that they have .

There is no big brother watch list for those venting their spleens about what the Government is doing wrong on Twitter. At least not yet. That will be a problem for us all if we don’t fulfil our own roles collectively in making sure that politics in the UK is done right.

The Politicians we have are insulated by the disconnected reality that is their belief system. They don’t have the skills and experience to lead. They are too self centred to listen. They don’t have the motivation to understand what life is like beyond their own bubbles of experience and the gilded cages they live in. They do not see anyone other than their own kind as a tangible threat to their position and all that they do.

It is basic human nature at its worst and is the constituent problem with all that the Government and the public sector do. Yet most of us find it impossible to believe that people who are as out of touch as the majority of our MPs are, could have been elevated to such positions of power, doing the things that they do, without there being some grand plan guiding them.

Sadly, we elected them and put them where they are too.

The best thing that all of the groups that have formed and the individuals and activists who are supporting them could now do is start focusing on what comes next.

Creating a political movement that will either step into the breach if the Government should fall, or win against the Conservatives and all of the current Political Parties that mirror their behaviour when the time for the next General Election comes is the best and will be the most effective thing that everyone could now collectively do.

It feels like the Government is in charge of events. But the truth is that they are not.

The processes that exist in Government and the Public Sector are the only things that are keeping the show on the road. But they have given us all the impression that the politicians remain ‘in charge’.

The only difference has been that when Politicians have had to make decisions that break new ground that existing process and history doesn’t cover, that has been when the overriding lack of understanding has shone through and everything we have taken for granted has began to be broken by the stupid decisions that have been made.

Out of a population of more than 60 Million People in the UK, the task of finding 650 politicians who have the skills, life experience, motivation and wherewithal to make decisions and create public policy that will really be in the best interests of everyone really shouldn’t be all that hard for us to do.

The problem is that it is because the system has been taken over by politicians who make stupid decisions who then recruit politicians to replace them who in the same situations would do exactly the same, the whole system is now well and truly broke.

Don’t get angry. Get prepared instead.

One of the most frustrating things about reading my LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook feeds is the number of you who are suffering because of the inadequacy of government and the poor decisions politicians are making.

The work of those involved with campaigns such as ForgottenLtd, Excluded UK and Keep Britain Free is inspiring for many for us, but unlikely to yield the fruit that such passion and motivation should deliver, just like any public campaign should do so when the reasoning behind it is justified and fundamentally right.

Regrettably, Government of all levels – whether it be Westminster, your local Borough, District or County – simply doesn’t work in the way that it should. Politicians and the Officers under their ‘control’ are rarely attuned to what their responsibilities to you and I and voters like us really are and the only reason that the plates keep spinning isn’t because there is leadership, but because there are well established processes that remain in place. (It’s when a politician has to decide to do something that isn’t covered by history or a textbook that things inevitably go wrong!)

The hardest thing to accept is that much of the damage from the Lockdown and social distancing to normal lives, incomes, businesses and the way that people feel and think has already been done, even if the damage is not yet there for everyone to see and experience as it soon will be in plain sight.

The politicians will not back date the help and the remedies they should have provided from the start, even if they could. They will not change, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t.

We may well be stuck with the Johnson Government until at least 2024, that is if events that they cannot control do not get there and catch up with them first.

As it stands, the only way to change things for the better is to play the democratic process and the broken British Political System at its own game and provide political options for voters in future elections that will actually deliver during their time in office as they actually should.

Yes, it’s a very hard pillow to swallow, to have to accept that the people that we elected in 2019 are out of touch and that they don’t want to hear anything real that you and I have to say. The reality is that they have lives that insulate them against real-world experience and so they have no currency invested in making life better for anyone other than those that they readily identify with.

Politicians are misusing and abusing the power and responsibility that they have been entrusted with. They are storing up a list of devastating unforeseen consequences for us all as they do so, whilst focusing only on their electability and personal gain.

It is only by creating a completely new political movement, driven by people who are not influenced by myopic issues, the tunnelled vision of political philosophies or the influence of others with money or power that we can establish a new way of doing government that works for everyone and everything just the same.

It will happen one way or another, once enough of us have had our lives touched directly by the stupidity of the current political class and the majority of us accept that we cannot go forward as a Country or as individuals or as businesses whilst the leadership and the pool of politicians that it comes from continues to be the same.

 

It is because the politicians that were elected to our Parliament last December are so out of touch with real life that so many people are facing catastrophe at home, in their business or are having the most bizarre and de-humanising restrictions placed upon daily life.

Yet it is the very same reasons that make our politicians so out of touch that they will not respond to the needs of real people, do not have the forward vision to see the catastrophic impacts of what they do, or possess the awareness or maturity to change and adapt so that they do.

Social Media feeds are alive with new organisations, groups and activists that have come into being since the beginning of the Lockdown and have a focus on the people whose existence has at best been forgotten, overlooked or literally ignored by the Government and its policies. Others increasingly centre on the injustice and random imposition of unnecessary social distancing measures that are being used for political purposes right now but pay little heed to the social impact and damage to British life that will inevitably follow.

This is not how a democratic government is supposed to work. But because we have such anger and frustration with the lack of response and the injustices of a system that we have only noticed when we find that we are the ones getting burned, there is a massive disconnect between where we are all now and what steps and what time it will take for us all to turn it all around and get to a place where UK government and the public sector will work for us all as it really should.

Politicians generally become caricatures of their own idea of what a politician should be, no matter the level or tier of government to which they have become elected. The injustices that are now coming to light nationally have been occurring the same, just in different forms right across all forms of government for a significant period of time.

Attempts to change decisions by lobbying, by petition, by legal action will never change the mind of any government that has been constructed in the way that this one has. Any campaign that looks successful will only have succeeded in convincing this political class that change will improve the chances of their re-election from those they already had.

To achieve the change that is right and experience the change that we want, we must play the politicians at their own game. The politicians that we have will not change so we have to change the politicians first.

Yes, you are probably now thinking ‘what about my business!’, ‘what about my job!’. ‘what about my income!’. ‘what about having to wear a face mask!’. These are the problems that we didn’t knowingly ask for and didn’t knowingly invite into our lives. But they are already here and whilst we may not like to admit it, they are here because of the way we have previously voted.

If we want things to be fair for us for the future, it is now that we have to make what feels like a very untimely choice. The choice to replace the politicians and the political parties that we currently have and that it will be no good waiting until 2024 to think about making a start.

All of the arguments and points that groups like Keep Britain Free, Forgotten Ltd and Excluded UK are making are valid and would never have been needed if we had different politicians in power, it was a different world and a different day.

These voices will not be heard by nor change the approach or the wider policies of an incompetent government that was unwittingly put in place to take charge at a time of national crisis. But that energy and the pain that is being experienced by so many now can be used positively to create change for the future if it is redirected, re-channelled and re-distributed right now.

 

Never has the curse of a short term memory been more prevalent than it is within today’s political class and those who choose to emulate them.

Reading articles in what are now some of the more respected online journals and magazines, it is easy to become overwhelmed by an almost universal narrative that all of the political situations that exist are isolated events in themselves.

This is exactly the way that the Politicians would like us to see what they do. It’s certainly what they are aiming for and the short term memory of those of us whose futures are being written by all that they do is a great help to the politicians cause.

One of the most interesting developments of late is the switch of the Opinion Polls in Scotland towards supporting Independence from the UK, riding on the back of the SNPs non-stop efforts to gain and win a second Indyref in the shortest available time.

Commentators and the SNP fall over themselves to relate the current situation in Scotland and the prospect of Scottish independence as a direct and isolated consequence of Brexit.

It is anything but.

Devolution and the Regionalisation of the UK was always part of the EU’s or European Project Plan. When Tony Blair and New Labour rode in to power on their 1997 landslide victory, the new Prime Minister did all he could to ingratiate himself with the would-be European Super state, and underscored his commitment to the Devolution Strategy by portraying it as being a plan that was completely his own.

As Strategies go, the aim of Devolved Regional Government, sold as localisation but created as a tool to disable the function and power of National Government is a textbook example of how a foreign power can overcome a nation by breaking it up from within by using its own tools of government to do so.

Devolution was always a long game. What we have been witnessing in Scotland and to a lesser degree Wales too, is a successful outcome from the EU strategy to break up the UK and subjugate the 4 separate parts under permanent membership and political leadership from the Bureaucracy of the EU.  

The strategy went drastically awry when the UK technically left the EU before the dastardly deed was done. But before even that, the plan that would have seen England broken up into devolved Regions suffered a failure to launch through the EU’s oversight that the English collectively see themselves generally as one, just as the Scots and the Welsh more obviously do.

Sturgeon and the SNPs contradictory obsession with leaving the British Union so that they can then ‘re-sign’ Scotland to the EU is ironic. The EU’s failure to keep the UK as a Member, effectively means the level of devolution that the Scottish Parliament has reached is likely to already be providing the greatest level of autonomy it could ever realistically have.

We don’t know what even the immediate future holds. The EU may not even survive the financial crisis that is following and building momentum behind the Covid-19 pandemic. But there is a good chance that the SNP will find themselves able to justify another Scottish Independence Referendum to the Westminster Government and that this time, it will be one that they will win.

What Sturgeon and the SNP will not be so wiling to recognise in their battle for glory is that Scotland will not be able to function as an isolated nation-state for very long. So even if the EU is there for the SNP to have talks with when the SNP’s battle for ‘independence‘ has been won, they may not like the answers that come back.

When that time comes, being part of the British Union is likely to be a very attractive option then that will never be available to them then as it is to them right now and then as it was before.

 

 

 

You’re probably wondering why things don’t seem to be working as they should. Looking back at the Lockdown it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the government is in control of everything that’s been happening and that everything that has happened has been the result of reasoned decision making at the highest levels.

Look more closely and you begin to see the mistakes. The errors in judgement. The key milestones when decisions were taken that have resulted in things taking a turn for the worse, for us all.

Without fail, these are the points where decisions have been made where there is no history to reference. Where no precedent has been set. Where none of the members of the Government have ever had reason to tread or cast a view before.

Where everything else that has taken place has been concerned, the decisions have seemed easy. Because there has been a guidebook, a framework, a way of doing things, or what is known as a procedure to address events of these kinds when they take place.

Events that fall outside the scope of procedure, where procedure is outdated or doesn’t cater for the needs of our 21^st Century World, require leadership skills that our Politicians and the people that advise them simply do not have. That is where everything to do with Covid and the Lockdown has begun to go very wrong.

People who are or have always been insulated from the ways of the world and the life experiences of the governed should never be given the responsibility to govern. Yet that is how our broken British Political system works.

Earlier this week, one of the more in-tune MPs at Westminster, Tory Steve Baker wrote in a Tweet that ‘All our imaginations were unequal to the task of foreseeing the consequences of closing down a large proportion of our economy and society.’

Outside of Parliament and outside of the establishment, at least some were not so blinkered or deficient of the understanding and foresight necessary to know what the Government was about to unleash and how inadequate and destructive the financial remedies would be, that like the Lockdown, the Johnson Government imposed by choice.

If there had been a procedure in place to address a national crisis of the kind presented by the Covid Pandemic, the provision that was made may well have been better than what elected Politicians put together, making choices that have illustrated that they are well and truly out of their depth.

As with the off-the-shelf test and trace strategy that government failed to implement, there would have been a risk that politicians would think better of using it in the heat of the moment. But one can certainly live in hope that’s what their ‘decision’ would have been.

Instead, the rise of movements of those disenfranchised by the Lockdown and inadequacy of the financial remedies such as #ForgottenLtd and #ExcludedUK illustrate only the tip of the iceberg that exists in relation to the lack of provision and support for people and businesses that were stopped in their tracks and the disparity that exists between what the politicians believe and what is actually going on for people in the world outside Westminster.

When politicians of the level and ability of Steve Baker are putting their hands up and openly admitting that they are not capable of living up to the responsibilities of the jobs which many of them long coveted, it is quite clear that whilst this political class continues to run the Country, as a people, we will continue to be well and truly damned.