Just so there is no doubt from the start, Brexit has contributed to the driver shortage and the supply chain issues that the UK is now experiencing. Of that there is no doubt. But to present the whole issue as being the result of Brexit, rather than Brexit just being a part – particularly when other Countries are beginning to experience supply chain issues just the same, is not only lazy, it demonstrates a lack of understanding of the much wider issues that the UK is facing. It pretty much sums up the myopic view of today’s decision makers – who may already be the most incompetent that we have ever had.

The driver shortage is more to do with the long-term influence of the EU than Brexit ever was

Yes, the driver shortage can be attributed to the ending of free movement and the absence of Eastern Europeans who were previously happy to fill the gaps within the UKs logistics and supply chain industry. But to end the process of consideration there is lazy because it naturally follows that the only reason that there can be a problem is simply because we left the EU.

It is an argument that suits Remainers who tend to be idealists who identify with the impractical idealism of what the EU represents and have lives that are untouched by the hard realities that underpin what is a UK driver shortage and the many other issues that are now feeding into and will soon explode a supply chain issues which is spreading like wildfire across the world.

The obvious questions to ask are why was or why is the UK so dependent upon a pool of foreign drivers in the first place, and why are the gaps proving so hard to fill right now, given the true state of the economy and how many people are looking for decent jobs today?

One of the key issues to recruiting professional Heavy Goods Drivers is the cost and time that it takes to gain a Class 1 License that will enable the driver to work where the greatest need actually is.

Somewhat ironically, this problem was first created or initiated by EU bureaucracy in the 1990’s when the UK was still very much a Member, and the Brexit vote was nearly 20 years ahead. The EU laid down the requirement that professional or vocational driving licensing would have to be harmonised across the EU. This resulted in drivers no longer being able to train and pass a test for a Class 1 (articulated) license in the first instance at 21 years of age, and instead required that they pass a Class 2 (rigid truck) test first, and that they then retrain and take the test for a Class 1.

As much of the logistics and supply chain industry relies on the use of articulated trucks and detachable trailers because of the capacity and weight allowances that they can carry, along with the universality that is possible when you can attach one tractor unit to many different trailers that can then be used for many different purposes, it is simply not cost effective to use rigid vehicles for so many different uses and purposes.

This reality created the first bottleneck for those seeking driver qualification. Double the cost and the need to be trained all over again with no guarantees in either case that you will pass.

The next bottleneck was the EU requirement for vocational drivers to obtain and maintain a driver CPC, which is effectively a driver good-practice qualification which is built upon the time spent in training, rather than the somewhat questionable content that covers most of the time spent within.

New drivers must do a week in the classroom (5 days) and then do the equivalent of another day every year (5 days every 5 years) in order to keep their vocational license valid.

Of course, good practice is essential for all drivers who are responsible for such large and dangerous machines.

But the approach taken by the EU and implemented by the UK Government was the work of the nanny state at its absolute worst. Anyone who has attended these courses will know that whilst well-intended, they really overlook the reality that any good logistics operator would insist on better standards from their staff just to keep their business on the road.

The cost of the training as part of obtaining a first vocational license and then keeping it going is inhibitive for the individuals who self-fund their training and add unnecessary costs to the bottom line of Logistics businesses who naturally pass those costs on.

Tax Law changes

If the end of Free Movement has reduced the UK driving workforce in any way, it is likely to be much smaller than those with an agenda for it to sound like it is would ever be big enough to admit.

Much more likely to be the real reason that so many Eastern European Drivers are staying away is the changes to the UK Tax rules in April and specifically IR35, which has made being a self-employed ‘contract’ driver a significantly less financially attractive job to have for those making the commitment to cross Europe and service the UK supply chain.

Heavy Goods Driving is a lifestyle job

Another big problem that the logistics industry has is that the work is unsociable. The hours are long and for many of the transport operations employing drivers, they cannot function economically unless the driver stays out on the road with the vehicle, maximising the hours that these expensive capital assets are working, whilst ensuring that the time and distance that lorries are running without any loads are kept to the absolute minimum. This means that drivers may be away from home every week for 4-6 days at a time.

Yes of course there are some drivers who love being out on the road all week and modern truck cabs are often very well equipped. But ‘tramping’ as this is called has a massive cost on family and home life which is not in any way covered by even the salaries that some companies have begun to pay drivers since the current driver shortage began.

Low wages & poor conditions

Perhaps the most complicated of the issues contributing to the driver crisis are wages or rates of pay. Industry today undervalues many of the roles that are key to their existence and vocational drivers are probably undervalued even more than most.

Class 1 ‘artic’ drivers can easily earn a daily wage of £150 in the current market, which equates to an annual salary of around £39K for a 5-day working week.

This sounds great until you once again bear in mind that even those drivers doing shifts and going home every night will often be out on 15-hour days, whilst those who are ‘tramping’ are technically out for a lot more. This means that more often than not, the real hourly rate that professional drivers are attracting before tax and deductions could be as little as £10 per hour and little more.

This exploitation is not limited to heavy goods operations either. In van-based ‘courier’ type operations of the kind you would come into contact with when you are perhaps having parcels from an online order delivered to your door, many ‘owner drivers’ are attracted into daily commitments of many hours that don’t have the same regulation underpinning them as heavy goods operations. On the face of it, they are offered what appears an attractive rate of pay – perhaps £15 per hour or more, without any reference being made to the costs of fuel, wear and tear and commuting to a depot that might be an hour’s drive to their delivery area being included in the rate they are being paid.

It really isn’t uncommon for the people who are being used by companies who can afford to pay them an appropriate rate to be earning less than what we know as the National Minimum Wage or Living Wage. But because the drivers concerned are ‘self-employed’ they have the choice of accepting the ‘work’ or going elsewhere – which is what they will increasingly do as they realise that there is a better level of ‘take-home’ pay to be achieved by working somewhere else.

Getting the UK Workforce into the cab

Various incentives are being paid to new recruits by large companies now. But the way vocational drivers are paid is not simply about the value of money that they receive alone. Drivers are not treated and valued as well as they should be, particularly by junior, mid and senior managers who have never done the jobs that they do, and this makes for a very challenging working environment in which to work.

There needs to be a change in mindset regarding the way that we value all ‘low paid’ employees, who are arguably carrying out functions that are equally important – if not more so – than the management roles that might fit within 5 or 6 tiers of management above them.

The Cost-of-Living crisis that is now underway without any real media attention being focused upon it doesn’t make driving an attractive vocation. Why would anyone want to work these kinds of hours week in, week out just to find that the money they earned and took home at the end of this month might be the same as this time last month, but it simply doesn’t go as far?

This problem will increasingly reach further and further beyond the driver crisis. Because the economic system that the Government favours is now out of control, they will continue to create more money using various financial instruments such as Quantitative Easing to do so. In so doing, they will make the wage problem worse and worse.

The wage rises needed for the lower paid simply to feel like they are standing still and to remain able to afford the same things that they could last month will grow and grow as this inflationary crisis deepens. But employers will not be able to keep up with the speed of the spiral as they have to compromise their businesses just to keep people employed. It will reach a point – probably a lot sooner than anyone thinks – where it is impossible for the system to go on.

This is all leading to an inevitable outcome. What happens after that is not and it will be vital for everyone that the opportunity that comes out of a very dark period of crisis for us all is governed and utilised by people who actually care about us all when they decide what should be done on our behalf.

What can be done to keep the wheels turning?

Sadly, the fire of inflation is not something that the Government will do anything to control, simply because to do so would be to admit that what they have been doing is fundamentally wrong.

This means that Companies will keep having to pay more and more to get goods delivered until such time as the economy crashes – as it is increasingly certain that it soon will.

In terms of getting more drivers behind the wheel of the vehicles that keep the UK supply chain alive, the simplest and most easy way to address the problem is to make it easier to get people qualified to fill the vacancies that industry needs to be filled.

We have to accept that International Drivers must meet the qualification and standards that any foreign country they drive in or across demands. However, for domestic journeys, there is no reason why the Government couldn’t immediately revert to the old system where car drivers could train and qualify for a Class 1 License first time.

There is also little practical reason for the 5-day Driver CPC to continue to be required as it currently is and this could probably be reduced to just one day’s training, which itself could be provided by Transport Managers and trainers working for the Logistics Company itself who have themselves gained a Management level National CPC.

The Government could also intervene to make it easier for lorry drivers to park more freely, perhaps creating a moratorium on overnight parking regulations and encouraging local authorities to open up existing car parks at night and provide facilities for drivers where they do.

***

Very regrettably, there is an increasing feeling of inevitability about what is happening. Whilst there is a focus on a driver shortage, other industries are affected by shortages and more will soon join that list too. This is very much the thin end of the wedge and the early stages of problems coming to fruition, stored up over a very long period of time and only coming to the fore now because the Government handling of the Covid Pandemic and to a lesser degree Brexit have speeded the whole process up.

The movement of goods as we have known it is coming to an end. Supply chains will have to become much smaller by necessity as well as by welcomed design, and the days when a factory sends its products 400 miles up the Country to a Regional Distribution Centre, just so that they can come back on another truck to be delivered to the back door of a supermarket the other side of the road two days later will soon be gone. Big is not beautiful and the economies of scale are going to be outed for the con that they really are.

Instead of focusing on the effects of the problems that are now popping up all over the place, there is a need for proactive action to be taken to ensure that people within local communities will be able to function and eat. Government should be investing in farm to plate supply chains of all essential food stuffs and goods that are essential for daily life, by sponsoring and supporting cooperatives and socially-focused local business partnerships that work only to provide what the employees and managers need, whilst no longer being prohibited by providing good products to end users by many different agents inserting themselves into the supply chain at every opportunity possible, adding no real value but escalating the costs.

I’ve written a number of blogs that discuss the need for political change and the reality that we need a completely new, inclusive and all-issue-facing political party or movement to achieve this.

The challenge we face together is that too many of the people who feel passionate about that change believe that the next steps are all about dealing with politicians the way they themselves see politics to be, rather than taking all the steps necessary to tackle politics and the politicians we have the way that they really are.

We must be open to the ideas and efforts of others, whilst working collectively to channel and focus them all constructively so that we all approach the problems we face in the same way.

With this in mind, I have been very open to the idea of joining and supporting the work being done to establish a political alternative by others, and I recently responded to a call to action from someone with a public profile, who is trying to use their platform in a way they see as being beneficial to everyone.

With the experience and knowledge I have of politics, campaigning, activism and the workings of government itself, I quickly became aware that many of the others looking to become involved do indeed want change, but they want that change to materialise by staying within the safety of their own comfort zone – sadly an approach that will not help anyone.

Regrettably, it is simply the case that tackling problems of the magnitude that we now face will not be achieved if everyone with a platform or an audience of some kind keeps demanding that everyone else has to do things their way, rather than doing them the way that will engage others and build a narrative that others will be committed to – because its something that they relate to and understand.

I felt it was right to lay out my stall. Below is a generic de-personalised and appropriately edited version of the e-mail that I circulated to the number of people who were given my contact details online:

***

Hello Everyone,

It’s great to be in touch with anyone who is fed up, frustrated and angry about what our politicians have done and are still doing.

What is clear, from looking at the messages that are circulating out there on social media, and from the approaches taken by the alternative political movement that are springing up, is that there are a lot of us and our numbers are rapidly growing. But, we are on different trajectories with our thinking, and probably what we want to get out of working with others, or what we believe we can achieve out of it too.

This would be absolutely fine if we were all only motivated by trying to create some kind of social network where we all have some kind of common cause.

Instead, we find ourselves facing a national crisis where a Government filled with politicians who really aren’t fit to represent themselves, let alone anyone else, have responded to the emergence of a nasty virus by forcing solutions on us all that deal with how things could be, rather than how they really are. All of this – and there’s no quick way for any of these politicians to be removed!

Clearly, we are all really happy that more and more people are at least beginning to talk about the things that are wrong. Yet with the different ideas we all have right now, the problem that we face together is rather like the scenarios of the Marvel Films ‘Infinity War’ and ‘Endgame’, where Dr Strange foresaw 14,000,605 outcomes for how the future could unfold, yet in only one of the possibilities would the Avengers actually win the war.

Right now, the need for change that we all see is different. Some of us see change being about stopping Lockdowns. Others believe change is about getting rid of masks and social distancing. There are many others who have concerns about the vaccines and use of vaccine passports too.

Of those people, many think that because they see all these things as being wrong, that somehow, perhaps through protests in London and attacks through social media, there will be a change of mind at the heart of Government, and in the thoughts of the people we see wearing masks and pushing the Government agenda back at us each and every day.

Regrettably, this will not be the case.

The opportunity that we have to change things is based on everyone working together. It will not lead to the result that we really do need from this, if we all keep focusing on our own views and experience of the past 18 months and keep pushing for the 14,000,604+ scenarios, rather than working together to get our response right from the start and deliver the winning 1.

It is important to understand that other people will not change their view of Covid or stop wearing masks because they are ridiculed, continually told they are wrong or even if the uncorrupted science is fully explained to them.

People who have been deliberately terrified by the Government need other people like you and I to give them confidence to fill the gap between what they were told by politicians they should have been able to trust and what we have all known to be the truth all along.

You might be surprised to learn that the number of people ‘against’ us, is much smaller than thought. A great many of the people you might see wearing masks and doing whatever the Government tells them are just law-abiding citizens, doing what they believe necessary and right, in the same way as none of us want to voluntarily pay tax, but inevitably do.

So, the job to be done, might not actually be as big for us all as it could be. But with a great proportion of the people that we need to see something new differently and as being credible in the way that will make enough of them want to go out and vote, it does mean that we MUST get everything, absolutely right.

This means tackling the issues that affect everyone, every day, and not just anything or everything to do with Covid – because focusing only on the few issues we feel important right now is not the way to reach everyone that we need to.

What won’t work for anyone in any good way now, is for the conversation, dialogue and brain storming that needs to happen – and that we are on the verge of starting or making even bigger – to be kept shut away and hidden behind closed doors.

We MUST take the risk of engaging with people who have very different perspectives to our own and have enough faith in the same people we would otherwise happily drink with, shop with, visit landmarks with and share our communities with, that they have something important to say about all of this too.

By tackling all the issues that this political class has either spent decades running away from or glossing over with our money that they have willingly overspent, we will be successful in identifying the common ground that we all need for the future and success of our whole Country. Above all else is, this is the roadmap to being successful in bringing everyone together to make life better for all of us too.

I will not be offended if I never hear a word from you and you simply ignore this blog. It is simply the case that the aim of delivering something better for everyone – including fixing the disaster which is this Government’s approach to Covid has and is proving to be – can only be achieved if we really get to grips with the need to work together and then do so positively and proactively as one.

The opportunity of working with others to tackle the problems that those currently in our political system have created can only be addressed by creating A New Party For All. Building a movement that we all want to be a part of over the coming months. So, at the time the opportunity to change all this comes – which regrettably will be at the next General Election – we have the right people ready to run as Candidates in every Parliamentary Constituency, have done all the work necessary and have the support network in place throughout all of our communities, to ensure that the majority of voters in this Country do not see there being any other credible choice.

We have the choice to start work today, so that we can have the change we need tomorrow.

Change will not come before. And it will be a disaster for us all if we get to the next General Election, go to our Polling Station and find that Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, none of the above and any of the other Parties that have been set up to follow particular agendas or the aims and ambitions of the people who lead them are all that we have for a so-called democratic choice.

Please do read this Blog I wrote back in May HERE, or share and start following the social media @ANewPartyForAll – which could be used to provide the foundation of what we need.

If you would like to understand better what we really need from politicians, please visit www.howtogetelected.wordpress.com and read the list of pages on the right from top to bottom, all the way through.

Whatever you do, I wish you all well with your campaigns, and hope that we will have the opportunity to meet soon.

Best wishes,

Adam

With the 20-year anniversary of the Twin Towers Attacks in New York fast approaching, the US Biden Administration has seen this date as an appropriate milestone upon which to hinge the final withdrawal of troops and a military presence from Afghanistan.

Yes, you might easily wonder upon the relevance and the link. But the War on Terror which followed the Terrorist Attacks on the United States in September 2001, was purposefully linked with Afghanistan. This land-locked, war-ravaged Country was selected by the ‘Western Allies’ as the place where the ‘fight back’ would begin.

The question that we should be asking, as we see Western Powers falling over themselves to get personnel out of the Country as quickly as possible – whilst the Taliban take over Cities and Towns daily, imposing their own medieval interpretation of Islam on a battle-weary population at every step as they do – is what exactly did we achieve by invading Afghanistan, and who really benefitted as a result?

Terror, or rather ‘Islamic’ Terror, hasn’t gone away. People are still being indoctrinated with this brutal take on an otherwise peaceful Religion, and the very same hatred of the Western World which was present 20 years ago is still very much in existence, if not even worse now as a result of the so-called ‘War on Terror’ than it was even then.

You cannot bomb or kill a way of thinking out of existence. If anything, extreme violence encourages even more empathy and support for what a very questionable cause might otherwise be, with the immediate question ‘what is so wrong with us that we are treated this way’, quickly giving way to yet more fervency of an ideology that sees justice in the pursuit of the destruction of Western thinking in every conceivable way.

Basically, our politicians and the strategists and advisers behind them, simply don’t think. They don’t think about the consequences of the decisions they make. They certainly don’t take time to think about the reality or many realities that underpin an ideology and mindset that drives other human beings to want to engage in terrible, violent acts and self-sacrifice, and why the behaviour of Western Governments over decades and possibly centuries too, has led other people and perhaps even entire nations to look at us all and think this way too.

Afghanistan is known historically as a graveyard for Armies. We, the British have been there before. So too have the Russians. And over the past two decades, even a substantial International Presence under the strategic ‘leadership’ of the United States has done nothing to turn what certainly appears to be an historic tide another and more peaceful way.

The flaw in the West’s thinking, is to look upon other cultures in Countries such as Afghanistan, and think that the way we live, the way we do things, the way we value money above all else, and the way we let business put their interests above all other interests is in some way enlightened. We believe that what we see to be an advanced way of living gives us the right to call ourselves civilised, whilst looking down judgementally on anyone who fails to share the same values or doesn’t prize the same things that we do.

The difference between what we have been conditioned to believe as perfectly normal and in everyone’s best interests, and the cultures that we see as backward shows that we have a complete lack of respect for reality.

We have the arrogance to look upon other ways of living and belief systems with a level of disdain that when thought about carefully really should be telling is that the backward cultures of the world are more likely to be our own.

Surely, we must be able to appreciate the level of hatred and the pain necessary, for the way of life that the Taliban, ISIS and Islamic State dictate to be attractive to bring enough people to their cause that they can take over entire Regions and Countries and remove the supposedly more civilised and Westernised systems that were previously in their place as if they never existed.

No, there is simply no excuse for the barbarity of what they do and the excuses they overtly give for doing so.

But until we manage any unavoidable intervention in a foreign land with a real respect for local culture and local populations in the way that we should do, rather than simply attempting to impose ways of thinking that mirror our own, we are destined to create even more disharmony, hurt our real friends and put enemies – and potentially violent ones in their place.

The trick was missed as soon as we walked into Afghanistan. Our politicians and their henchmen did what we always do at home. They snuggled up to the people with the platforms and the loudest voices who inevitably had their own agenda, rather than taking time to reach out, engage and build relationships with the people who have something worth investing in, but are inevitably hidden from view.

Despite many opportunities and hundreds of needless UK Service Personnel deaths, the approach that we took and the influence that we could have asserted on the US leadership, all we have left anyone in Afghanistan has been a sum total of damage and chaos along the way, with the final betrayal of leaving them at the mercy of the Taliban.

Both Biden and Johnson may believe that this is the end of the Afghanistan Chapter and that elsewhere, there are bigger fish for them to fry.

But there aren’t. All these foreign interventions without thought and consideration for the consequences do is cause more problems for the populations of those Countries, and inevitably a whole lot more trouble for us – no matter what our politicians do to hide it from our view.

The more sinister aspect of the Western ‘exit’ from Afghanistan this time, leaving the Country in the terrible state that it is and on the verge of all-out civil war with perhaps yet another attempt at a medieval-type Caliphate taking over, is that China is looking to develop interests there, and their involvement could easily bring legitimacy to an archaic form of despotism in a volatile part of the World and with a level of threat to us that we have never knowingly experienced before.

The chances are that in a world destabilised by the Covid Pandemic and the chickens which are decades of financial mindlessness and money printing coming home to roost, it will not be long after 11 September 2021 before our attention is drawn to the mistakes that our politicians have made and Afghanistan once more.

You’ve gotta love the way that the mainstream media somehow manages to keep on missing the real news.

In a week when the plight of Geronimo the Bovine TB+ive Alpaca was creatively made to look like some 160,000 deaths of infected cows over the same period that his owner has been fighting Defra simply didn’t exist, the pillars of our information rich society managed to overlook the further £1.15Billion of Bonds that the Bank of England has bought, extending Rishi Sunak’s mammoth money printing and public spending spree into realms which really do now span into the complete unknown.

Don’t get hung up on who is buying or who is selling what to who, when it comes to any kind of financial ‘product’, when the Bank of England or the Government are involved. Either way, this is a process of injecting even more obscene amounts of cash into an already overladen economy – all of which is effectively debt being run up on the public tab.

The thinking that underpins financial jiggery-pokery of this magnitude isn’t only flawed; it is also exceptionally dangerous. The repeated bouts of money creation that the Johnson Government has instigated since the Covid Pandemic began are so high, there is no practical way that this Country can pay anything near the whole amount back.

There is talk that our children and grandchildren will still be paying the bill. But the Johnson Government really have gone too far.

What is more, they have done this not off the back of owning something secure like gold – that actually exists.

They have literally created all of this money out of thin air, all on the principle that the system will keep rolling, accumulating like a rolling snowball, and that as long as it keeps rolling in the same direction (That means the money available gets bigger and bigger), then those driving it and who are responsible for it will never suffer from a fall.

What this apparently bright idea overlooks is the stark reality that exits when the amount of money available increases exponentially, whilst products, land, houses and capital assets that we can actually own, increase at a significantly slower rate – that is, if the amount of them available actually increases at all.

Those at the top of the money chain – who always end up with the bulk of all this newly created cash, have increasing buying power that the majority of us can only dream of. Meanwhile, they push the value of everything up significantly – alongside all the others who are milking the system or taking out value without giving anything back – whilst those on the lowest wages and increasingly even the middle classes too, simply don’t get the wage rises that mean they can keep up with price rises just enough to stand still.

By now, you will probably have realised that this isn’t a Covid-related problem. In fact, this problem isn’t really that new at all. It’s been in the making for 50 years or more.

What’s different now, is the way that the Government and the Bank of England under its instruction, has upped and is continuing to spend.

It is a matter for debate whether the money pumped out to keep the economy moving during Lockdown should ever have been needed at all. But we are well past that point now. And if we go back to the snowball idea that I mentioned above, the reason that so much money is being created and pumped into the economy, is literally to keep the whole thing moving because the Government is terrified what will happen if the whole thing stops.

SPOILER ALERT: It’s going to stop. The snowball will stop rolling and will not be able to grow any more.

The financial system and the economy are going to crash.

It’s not an if. It’s a when.

And the only question that we and ideally the media should be asking, is which will be the straw that finally breaks the camel’s back.

There are a range of different ways, and the list is growing. It could be the escalation of cost-of-living prices, like the energy price rises coming in the autumn, or even the flattening of the additional £20 per week allocated to families on Universal Credit as part of the Covid ‘bounce’. It could be a shortage of food on the shelves being caused by a shortage of drivers (that has more to do with the ridiculous standards and licensing requirements that the EU imposed on the industry rather than any lack of EU drivers caused by Brexit) and the unadulterated greed of shipping companies that have created a worldwide shipping monopoly that is seeing prices for goods transport go stratospheric – not for any good reason other than that they can name their price, based on making obscene levels of profit alone. Then there are the issues that are out of our hands such as the precarious state of the US economy, which itself is on the edge of a precipice so large, that it could end the US hold on everything economic as we watch the position of the US Dollar as the World Reserve Currency simply implode.

Whatever tips the balance, it really doesn’t matter. The way that money and economics works today is already well and truly sunk.The neoliberal dream that money can be whatever you make it is dying. That is, If it’s not already dead.

Instead of using the borrowed time that the Bank of England and the Government has left to do anything that they might be able to try to mitigate or offset this coming disaster, they are instead upping the throttle and increasing the speed of compiling and contributing events, literally treating the whole thing as if a disaster is impossible and will never happen. They are working on the premise that they can literally fake it til they make it, by printing more and more money until they believe they will have completely weathered the storm.

Think very carefully about the relationships you have with the people, businesses and community members located around you. Do all that you can to cultivate and develop them in positive ways. Because a time will come perhaps very soon, when we will all have to trade, borrow, barter, help and support the people who are immediately around us – just as life for everyone in this Country once was.

Obsessed with big headlines and the powerful job titles that each and every one of them is sniffing out next, MPs and Government Ministers focus only on what bigs them up, rather than fulfilling the roles that they were elected for.

Foreign trade deals really aren’t going to help in a world that has to reject globalisation because of the fallout from covid and the fact that we are being woken quickly to the unfolding nightmare which is climate change.

Government should instead be investing the money it has available whilst it still has tangible value. Government should support the growth and sustainability of local economies and supply chains that really do away with every kind of unnecessary journey and make it both practical and cost effective for as much of the food we eat and the products we buy to have travelled next to no miles as possible.

We really should be taking this opportunity to focus proactively on going back to improved and better ways and models of working that value every form of human input equally, meaning that a happy debt-free, safe and healthy life is something that even the poorest members of our society and communities can afford.

These things can be done in ways that will remove a lot of unnecessary pain when they are done not by necessity, but by reasoned choice.

Probably one of the most unhelpful arguments being conducted, then pushed by the media is the question over climate change, global warming and who or what is to blame or at fault.

It’s a dead cat debate, doing considerably more harm than good, simply because it is preventing reasoned discussion and action being taken to alleviate the impact on us all from the changes to the weather that are already evident and plain for us to see.

I cannot disagree with the concerns and arguments about the approach of big business and the consequences for the environment and serious risk to our quality of life from industrialisation, mechanisation, globalisation and the driving forces of greed and the motivation for achieving profit whatever the true cost.

But before we can even begin to tackle that problem in a way that will prove to be meaningful for all, there has to be an epiphany in governments right across the world. With it the recognition that public policy and the responsibility of government sits at the heart of the entire environmental debate, and that there are few areas of public policy which do not touch or fail to be influenced by the green question and environmental issues in some way.

The UK itself is already facing a range of problems from the climate changes taking place. A very good example of how different policy areas overlink in ways that are very serious, whilst being overlooked by our MPs and politicians would be the increasing problems that we are experiencing with flooding. Here, a rather large blind eye is also being covered over too, simply because housebuilding has become the obvious answer to a housing crisis that our politicians will not deal with in more appropriate ways. In so doing. Our political class are condemning existing homes, the villages, communities and towns around them to what might soon be very serious flooding problems, when taking responsibility and doing things differently could make this in many cases much easier to avoid.

Building green policy on what looks good in the media, what wins votes and what is easy to do is no way to tackle a worldwide crisis. One that will reach an inescapable point where its impacts are going to become very serious for us all.

Government cannot avoid the way the world works and why people and businesses are invested so heavily in things remaining as they are.

Ironically, the behavioural science that has been so heavily relied upon to coerce people into doing what the government wanted them to do as part of the political response to the Covid Pandemic, could be put to much better and constructive use. It could be applied to providing ‘nudges’ that govern the way people are thinking about their own impact on the environment and what they can independently do to help us all to go green.

However, using policies to force people to change does not consider the practical realities such as affordability, accessibility and what other policies green policy itself will impact – bearing in mind that you can be certain that with each step taken, there will be practical and in many cases hard-hitting consequences for us all.

To hear the Government, the media, the activists and academics preach, you could easily conclude that the UK is one of the worst sinners of the World. But it is not.

Whilst Government may feel galvanised in its ability to ‘impose’ green solutions on us all by the ‘success’ it has ‘achieved’ in forcing the UK to indulge all the unnecessary and costly responses to the Covid Pandemic it has imposed, taking this stupidity even further into the imposition of green technologies will end up in a disaster for this Country. One that will arrive much quicker and be far more consequential for all of us than the alternative of starting to deal with climate change the hard way and the right way. Currently, they are taking the easy route, as control freaks inevitably always do, concluding that giving this date or that date and a reliance on technology that doesn’t even exist, that future change is safe to impose upon us all.

In terms of the environment and the wider green issues that are involved, it is important to remember that the idealist’s viewpoint is that the problem will be solved with unilateral solutions that only affect people and businesses based in the UK. Yet isolated action will only hurt us, whilst doing nothing to address a problem that is the worlds, not just the UKs to own.

The reality is that we will not influence anyone or any other Country in a way that will be helpful to anyone, if our politicians just force through legislation such as heat pumps for homes, that are wholly impractical and consider none of the impacts on anything other than the environment itself – just as the Johnson Government has been doing by undertaking all policy decisions in isolation where Covid has been involved.

One of the biggest obstacles to progress on environmental issues worldwide, is the sordid fact that money is always and inevitably involved.

Money motivates people deeply in an emotionally entrenched way. And people who have lots of it and want more of it will not let issues that don’t agree with their own narrative get in their way.

Corporate interests are a massive part of the climate change problem. They will continue to be so until those responsible can be convinced that the same or more profit can be achieved for them, by conducting their business in a very different and environmentally friendly way.

Sadly, like most things historically, the biggest profits and margins are to be made when whatever you are doing means that you are in a position to exploit.

Morality and ethics are at a rare premium in business these days. It is the same people who are accumulating this wealth who already possess the deep pockets that our politicians suck up to and treat as if they are sacred cows.

There is as such a dangerous inevitability about the level of damage that is going to be done, before that moment of reason land collectively, and everyone starts working together voluntarily to address the issues and work better – because they have come to the decision as an informed and unselfish choice.

The saving grace to all this – strange as it may sound, may turn out to be the Covid Pandemic itself and the decisions that poor politicians have made in response.

Covid has literally seen governments around the world take decision after decision that has exponentially speeded up every problem that poor leadership has created over decades.

It means that a point is approaching where going greener will simply become the way that we all start to do things, rather than us having to wait on people who are so far choosing not to make the green choice.

Globalisation is over and done with in the way that we have known it before. The media are making very little of what is happening with shipping, supply chains and the provision of goods from around the world. But goods are not going to be available as they were before, and as the coming financial crisis beds in for the long haul, the realities of genuine localism, food and the supply of essential daily items from within a very local area, if not the immediate community itself, is going to become prevalent once again.

However, to make the very best of the opportunities that will come from a very serious crisis, it is vital that we have the right people influencing and making all of the key decisions that will need to be made.

Whatever happens next, it is essential that the decisions being made are not aimed purely at an electoral echo chamber as they have been now for decades.

Every decision being taken from now onwards will have very serious consequences for us all.

#anewpartyforall