We are regrettably navigating our way through times where emotions and the fear that drives them are having a disproportionate level of influence on what government and society collectively does.

Knee jerk reactions and decision making are the order of the day. Rather than reasoned, well thought out and methodical thinking that brings its rewards. Not through the extinguishing of immediate baseless worries, but by achieving the results that are right but unlikely to be clear at that precise moment in time.

There is no way to describe the murder of an MP in the middle of his local constituency clinic held in a church in any way other than being absolutely horrific. But there is also a significant danger that the emotional and fear driven responses to this dreadful event we are now witnessing may push immediate changes to public policy that could prove to be highly damaging to our society.

Those with a public voice within the discussion and debate taking place haven’t paused to consider just how raw emotions now are – including their own.

Taking a deep breath and counting to ten before thinking through the wider dynamics and consequences of the decisions they are now pushing would be a much better and more productive approach for us all.

Of the issues remerging between tackling Islamic extremism and the security of public representatives, both physically and online, it is the topic of online anonymity which seems to be shining through as the one where the crowd has focused its finger of blame.

As yet, and as may never be proven to be the case, there is no clear or overwhelming evidence yet that online anonymity even played a part in radicalising the individual who allegedly committed this crime, if as suggested, extremism was the motivating cause.

To hear or read the way the issue is being addressed by the public court of opinion, you could easily conclude that this is not the case. That the series of events and the way they unfolded are already unequivocally known by all, and that it is as such fair to conclude that online anonymity must be ended for all.

However, as with most situations, the question of whether having to identify yourself and who you are must be a requirement to have any kind of voice on an online public platform is a long way from being black or white or cut and dried.

The Trolls

There is a real problem with online trolling, abuse, woke activism and ‘piling-in’ from social media accounts that do nothing to identify the source or who is involved.

As things stand, setting up one or multiple anonymous social media accounts is very easy. There are no real systems or procedures in place to stop anyone who knows how the online platform sign-up processes work from using a range of user identities. They can do so simply to attack or criticise others, to publicise fake news or propaganda, or to build up very successful campaigns that could radicalise, promote conspiracies or built upon nothing but a tissue of lies.

Whilst the Police or Security Services can of course trace sources using IP addresses and other methods too, the reliance upon this system of reverse-engineering the process to find people who have broken existing laws or need to be warned puts an unnecessary burden on already stretched resources. That is of course if the alleged offence is considered troubling enough to be pursued.

Social Media account holders effectively have a free-for-all if they so desire.

So, if you are angry, frustrated and have it all underpinned by idealistic views and a sense of entitlement that the way social media account anonymity does nothing to counteract, you really can go to work on social media causing problems for others and saying whatever you want, pretty much without fear of consequence, unless you choose to use language that very few would see as a risk-free choice.

Whistle-blowers and Truth-tellers

Many of the comments ripping their way around the social media channels at the moment focus on a demand to legislate to end online anonymity. What they don’t do is address the argument that supports the need for anonymity for those with legitimate reasons, whilst excluding only those who have a malevolent purpose or simply get a kick out of being a troll.

With cancel culture and the explosion of woke or idealistic thinking based on lack of life experience and experience of others and a lack of tolerance for the views of others too, there exists a significant number of people who have knowledge and understanding that we all need to experience. These are people who can help everyone, but who are too afraid to speak out and put their name to what they say for fear of the consequences. Attacks and abuse that most people would agree are built upon nothing more than unreasoned and unacceptable hate.

The truth is only painful to those who need to hear it or wont accept it.  And in an age like the one we are now in, we have never needed the truth to be shared about everything with everyone in the way that we do right now.

With the protectionist and self-serving cultures that exist across high-level business and the public sector, we also need to protect those who want to bring light to the realities that underpin all the ills that society currently faces, without fear of professional repercussion or unnecessary overt risk.

Beyond those with a legitimate need for the protection of online anonymity, there are those of us who have simply not yet found the confidence to put a name to their voice. And if these individuals want to speak and do so without any intent to cause others any kind or any level of harm, why should they be discouraged from doing so?

Afterall, the very step of removing that online anonymity may be the one factor that halts their journey from one kind of life to another. Just another barrier to social mobility where lack of consideration of others could easily take away yet another individuals choice.

Social Media Platforms as online policeman

In an ideal world, we should be able to expect the owners and operators of the social media channels to already be dealing with these problems by tackling them before they even begin.

But the social media platforms aren’t doing anywhere near enough to tackle the problems that exist within the social media sphere.

Controversy, bad news and negative information are the catnip for posts going viral and as such the source of massive revenue generating clicks, they have little incentive to deal with or implement an effective way to police this behaviour when their master is profit and commercialism, rather than the wellbeing of the public that they tell us they are there to serve.

Online Anonymity for those who need it and a paper trail for all

Online anonymity is a privilege. Not a right.

Simply ending online anonymity will be a massive attack on freedom of expression and freedom of speech. Yet there must be a system that removes the voice and influence of those who wish harm upon others, simply because they disagree with them or want to impose an alternative view or truth.

The social media platforms could create a forward process of verification that would amount to the same thing as an application to gain a username, which could allow users to post anonymously, simply because their verified details are stored and therefore known.

However, you can bet that if the media platforms thought that there was a profitable or beneficial reason for them doing so, they would have already implemented such a system voluntarily by choice.

Such a lack of attention to this need and the existence of verification systems like that on Twitter which are seen by users as a badge to impress followers with rather than one which should give confidence in the legitimacy of their voice, realistically mean that these commercially-driven enterprises cannot be relied upon to develop and administrate a system that basically puts the needs of the public good first.

It necessarily follows that the best way to administer such a system would be to place it within impartial, third-party hands, where personal data is reliability kept safe, but where the level of legitimacy exists that will give confidence to all the parties involved.

The way to do this would be to do something like expand the scope of the services provided by the Information Commissioners Office (ICO), and require all users of public online (social media) platforms to register with them for a small fee, where their details will be logged and in return they can be given a unique identification number that the user can then register with online platforms to gain (or renew) their username, with the platform then continuing to allow them to exercise anonymity if it is the users choice.

Being given what is in effect a license to participate in public forums where privacy or protection cannot be assured as there is an absence of other appropriate regulations or rules would mean that all users immediately have skin in the game, as this method of access is something that could itself be withdrawn.

Yes, the system would be reliant upon having a robust system of governance in place which meant that it could not itself be abused or used to restrict access for anyone just because of who they are.

But at a time when the social media platforms are themselves restricting the publication of political material and the content of posts from people they don’t approve of or like, the fact is that an impartial qualification for users of this kind, might well have hidden benefits that could bring balance back to a heavily skewed system and help us to get things right.

There are plenty of attention-grabbing headlines out there at the moment. Yet beyond the ones that are creating the most noise, there is one working its way quietly through the different channels which really should be provoking a lot more thought than it might be.

Over the weekend, news has begun to surface that the Chinese Government successfully tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile in August, which flew around the World in low-level space before then descending to hit its target.

On its own, you might respond to this story by thinking ‘So what?!’. But in the context of everything that China is now doing and how they are imposing their presence in different ways around the World, we really should be considering the message that this aggressively ambitious and tyrannical State is sending in respect of its future plans.

In an age of conspiracies and at a time when China is known for the forceful approach it uses to impose the news it decides should be the accepted truth, there is now an inevitability to a new arms race that will extend far beyond the sabre rattling and build-up of conventional military capability in the region of the South China Sea we have recently seen.

Whether the stories of this apparent quantum leap in military technology are true or not, it is the response from Western leadership to the perceived threat and the resultant perceptions of our politicians to this news that will constitute both a real and troubling risk to us all.

Whilst everything the Chinese Government is doing, whether economically, politically or militarily is now a genuine threat, the result of the action or the pathway to what we may now anticipate to be future action will only be inevitable if Government behaves as if it is and our politicians respond in a way that suggests that that the Chinese must be feared on the basis that the ‘if’ has already been ‘done’.

Some will fall into the trap of believing that our politicians can take a measured and sensible response to anything they are afraid of, but nonetheless don’t completely understand.

Yet the handling of the whole Covid Pandemic has demonstrated that this is not the case. Some 20 months on, the UK is on the brink of an economic if not complete cross-societal crash. But the Johnson Government is still insisting on rolling out freedom-zapping polices based not on what has actually happened, but on the picture they have created around what could be within the Covid ‘myth’.

Taiwan, activity and rhetoric around the South China Sea, their behaviour towards Hong Kong and then our close partners like Australia, their treatment of the Muslim Uighurs, the increasingly questionable role they played in the arrival of covid-19 and the economic crack down they are now pursuing on companies in China itself, all point to a very clear plan for World dominance. And that was before a nuclear capable missile system that could render even the US defence systems useless came into view.

To the Chinese Government, people of any race are expendable – including their own. And it is with this in mind that whilst the Chinese Government may not find the idea of worldwide Armageddon desirable in terms of the outcome that they are working towards and now so clearly want, we should not fall into the trap of thinking that they will never use such weapons, IF they have them to use.

The Chinese Government arguably understands the weaknesses of contemporary Western Political thinking, better than Western politicians do themselves. So, they may well conclude that their measured use of such a weapon will force what they clearly recognise as being weak-minded leadership in the West to capitulate, because our political class do not understand the realities of choice.

The leaders that we have are not leaders. And the role they are playing with China today and those closer to home who behave like them carries worrying echoes of the whole sorry episode through the 1930s when challenged with an ambitious tyrant in Europe who had none of the capabilities that the Chinese do, the political class and the establishment around them insisted that appeasement was the one and only way.

In the Chinese Government, we are not dealing with an entity that plays fairly or conducts itself primarily in open view or in plain sight.

The Chinese Government has worked tirelessly and ruthlessly to embed its people across Western society. And with the financial influence it has wielded – which has been snapped up and given a warm welcome by greed-driven Western Politicians and businesses – they already have significant levers of influence and infiltration that they are clearly now using as part of a greater strategy to undertake and achieve their nefarious aims.

For as long as we have politicians in power who do not recognise the difference between right and wrong where self-interest is concerned and doing the right thing, even when the outcome of doing so remains completely incalculable or unknown, we have now entered a time when we are at risk from Chinese influence and plans.

The UK should now be working proactively and with purpose to disentangle ourselves from everything that touches Chinese Government reach. Meanwhile, the UK should also be rebuilding and developing both our defensive and offensive military capabilities, whether they be cyber, in the air, at sea or on land.

At this moment in time, the Chinese have made no land grabs other than to create Islands in the South China Sea as part of its claim to a broad territory where in every respect other than its accepted name, there are a number of other Countries and sovereign powers that have a much clearer and fair territorial claim over this rather large area of sea.

But if they should invade and take Taiwan by force – which now looks like it will be their first overtly expansionist step, there will be good reason to believe that we will have entered the first stages of an inevitable war. Inevitable, because once the Chinese have taken Taiwan and seen that the Western powers will not fight them over what is an independent Country that is aligned with Western values, they will be emboldened to begin projecting their power elsewhere either by taking further territory or by making massive regressive demands on the way that the rest of the world operates and works.

Whilst Marxism and any form of socialism is completely flawed, recent history is littered with the corpses of the innocent people who are disappeared as this twisted ideology that has been painted as being in the interests of the community are imposed.

But that doesn’t mean a Country like China and its ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) won’t continue to try. And it is because of this and what is happening right now that the UK and the whole World beyond is facing a period of massive risk and what may well now be an inevitable period of significant war.

Any service necessary for each every one of us to function in our daily activities and continue to be an active member of society should be shielded from the constraints and bias of private interests and maintained under impartial public or community control.

Yet this is not where we are in the UK today. The problems that having so many public facing services under the direct control or heavy influence of private, profit-making interests is now impacting our lives like never before.

First things first. My reason for writing about ‘Nationalisation’ today is of course related to the energy crisis being caused by escalating prices of natural gas supplies which are being brought in from Europe and beyond.

It is important to be clear here that the price of these supplies before they reach the UK wouldn’t matter whoever is in control of utility companies across the UK.

But the fact that we are in the situation that we now are says more about the way that Government has dealt with the energy question for a long time, and how successive governments have failed us strategically over and over again.

This is where I will refocus onto the rather pressing question of who controls public energy provision in the UK and therefore the ongoing cost.

The pathway to today’s mess

Privatisation was probably the most damaging legacy of the Thatcher years. Not because the many Public Companies that were sold off didn’t need to be run better or placed in more capable hands as they most certainly did.

Privatisation was inherently damaging because that ‘Conservative’ Government failed to recognise that any shareholder-led business will always put the value of their business and what they earn from it before anything else. When handed a virtual monopoly, the owners of private ‘industries’ will ultimately dictate the prices of everything so that their margins rise and are maintained first.

Yes, a public sell-off sold to us all under the premise that we could all become owners of the services that worked for us sounded like a great plan. And it might have been, if all those shares that started off in small tranches sat in the back pockets of welders, builders and secretaries hadn’t been sold off when the promise of a quick return quickly passed them all into large corporate and deep-pocketed hands.

On the face of it, it seems extraordinary that the so-called Party of Business could not have foreseen that with the wider changes that they were facilitating and contributing at the time, this is how things would soon be.

But as we are learning to our continuing and significant cost, foresight and thought for the impact of decisions and what will then happen when the chain of subsequent decisions are six or seven times removed are in short supply when our current crop of politicians are involved.

The reality today is that the energy sector doesn’t exist to provide us all with light, heat, electricity with the purpose of serving the public in the best ways that it can.

The UK energy sector today exists to provide dividends and profit to shareholders with a level of power and influence that our politicians gave it, which guarantees that it can.

The fact that private interests can command profit levels which leave parents, families and people both old and young who live on their own, rationing their power and heat, is an absolute travesty.

With all the related personal harms that follow, such as anxiety, social issues, food poverty (where heat and power is prioritised), it is incredible that any government – Conservative, Labour or anything else – wouldn’t see and prioritise addressing this matter as a No.1 cause.

Re-Nationalisation & Cultural Reform of the Public Sector

But here we are.

We have to consider the other questions around returning to public ownership and the provision of energy in the UK today and tomorrow first.

The Labour Party is talking about Nationalisation again. And in terms of the principle of returning public services to public or community-focused ownership, I would certainly have to agree.

However, what would be as bad, if not worse than what we have and what people are experiencing today, would be for all of these companies, industries and sectors just to be returned to a situation where civil servants and union barons have control.

With the public sector in desperate need from the sclerotic, protectionist environment and culture that it now is, the last thing the UK public would need is for energy to be under the control of people who hide behind their job titles to excuse their ineptitude by being ‘public servants’. It is an entire sector living in fear of wokeism and everything that could lose them their comfortable salaries and pensions.

As such you can be certain that these re-nationalised services handed back to the Public Sector as it is would immediately capitulate to union control.

Let’s be quite fair about Unions. There was a time when they provided a great service to the low paid and to mistreated employees. The Union Movement certainly precipitated and even facilitated great and positive change.

But that was a Century ago, and with even a fraction of the rules and regulations around employment that now exist, Unions have long since become an archaic device that does nothing more than further the self interest of a few by pushing damaging industrial action. And just like with the banks and big company fat cats, it is the general public that ends up paying the inevitable price.

So whatever model of Nationalisation that were undertaken, it would be essential that public sector reform and the removal of union influence be right at the top of the policy change list, and that is where some of the biggest political controversies lie. Or at least they do at the current time.

The model would most certainly not work if it was anything near to being like the publicly owned model of service companies from the 1970’s and before. But there are ways that a good operational model that priorities service to the public first can be achieved and run on very commercial lines. Just as long as the governance and the people who are able to influence those systems of government are the right people with the right values to do that job.

Energy Provision must be practical today with idealism helping us do things better for tomorrow

Going around in what feels like a bit of a circle, we now come back to the issue at hand today.

Beyond the immediacy of the impending ‘energy crisis’ itself, the issue is UK energy self-sufficiency; How we maintain that self-sufficiency and how we meet the fluctuations of domestic and business demands night and day, seven days a week and 365 days of the year.

Right now, the UK isn’t achieving this. That is why small energy companies are going bust as they cannot supply energy to customers at the prices they have committed themselves to.

It’s why the monopolistic members of this exclusive utility club are piling pressure on Ofgem and the Government to be unleashed from the restraints of price caps that will allow them to charge whatever it costs them to buy wholesale energy – whilst maintaining or continuing to grow profits and dividend payments that will just extend the unnecessary and avoidable pain that is steadily affecting the lives of us all.

Whilst we have to wake up to the risk to us all that climate change has created, and accept that the ideas, habits and thinking behind them now have to change, we cannot allow impractical idealism rule over the process if we want to achieve aimed for result, without causing a lot more harm and pain.

Green Energy is expensive to the public, because it isn’t as efficient, reliable and doesn’t offer providers the same kind of returns as traditional sources of energy with technology and management in its current form.

Making Public Policy commitments and setting timelines to phase out technology that works now, is proven and is reliable on the basis of alternatives that are unproven, not evolved to a workable degree or haven’t even been developed yet is government and political foolishness in the extreme.

It is incredible that power stations have already been decommissioned that could have now still been in use. And before anyone one starts to argue about the need to stop using fossil fuels for this purpose – which most will readily agree must happen as soon as we can provide alternatives consistently that make sense to do so – please take a good look at what China and other Countries with significantly higher carbon footprints are doing right now.

One of those alternatives, at least for a realistic and continuing period of time, has to be a greater reliance on our own UK Nuclear Power production and the development of smaller reactors that may be easier to commission and put into service, making energy production localised as quickly as possible once more.

We are not safe from foreign or malign interest of any kind for as long as these services that are essential to our lives remain out of public hands.

It should now be the priority of government run by whoever in power it might be, to return the UK to full self sufficiency of energy production in whatever form necessary to achieve this in the shortest time.

Once we our energy self-sufficient and only when we are, the priority must then be to promote the development of the greenest alternatives possible, ensuring that they are always available, are reliable and that they make being green a voluntary and easy choice, rather than one which is imposed by law or default.

Perhaps the biggest irony in the recent spate of road closures instigated by members of ‘Insulate Britain’, is that they share an impractically idealistic approach to changing environmental policy with the very same Government that they ultimately intend to antagonise.

Both the Government and the Protestors believe that by forcing change or imposing green policies unilaterally on the UK they can change the whole world without there being any consequences or impact for any of the population involved.

There is of course a regrettable element of truth to the group’s suggestion that the only way they can force government change is by causing us all pain. As a Country, we are now in the early stages of a massive crisis which will touch everything and everyone – yet none of us will accept that reality until the real impact of it literally hits our lives direct.

Unfortunately for Insulate Britain and for us all as we peer over a very steep cliff, the kind of pain that will change the way a whole Country and culture thinks will need to reach way beyond just a couple of issues and the inconvenience that closing a few roads or airports will bring. We are talking pain that touches numerous areas of our lives.

However, if you are one of those who believes there’s no such thing as climate change or has some agenda that flourishes by pushing that way of thinking upon others, it’s definitely time for you to start thinking again.

Climate change is real. Private, profit-making interests have been pushing a low-cost retail pricing myth for decades which is very lucrative for them but has imposed significant costs for the environment and for our planet. And that’s before we even get onto the subject of the damage this has all done to the way we think.

We are now a consumer led, retail obsessed, it-must-come-at-the-touch-of-a-button, increasingly entitled society.

On one hand, we will not give up those things we take for granted easily. Yet on the flipside, the way the system operates means that very few of us could actually afford to embrace change for the better, even if we were in a place where our thoughts had caught up with reality and made it clear that we should try.

We need to change the way we think, and we need to change our thinking quickly. But we also have to work with where thinking in the UK is now and the practicalities of a situation where the way our world works right now is anything but green.

But the world is already changing. Opportunities to do things a much better way will come. But not until we have lived through and dealt with a lot of pain.

Shortages are going to become more and more commonplace. Those shortages are set to increase across all parts of the supply chain as the months go by. Rationing of goods that reach far beyond diesel and petrol may not be very far away.

We are in the early stages of a massive period of crisis and change where a rebalancing of everything is underway. But no politician, activist or high-powered influencer can control any of it now in any way.

As things become increasingly difficult for us and each and every one of us experience our lives being touched by the challenges that lie ahead, we will become more and more open to new ways of thinking. We will see new ways of working together. New ways of living our lives are set to come.

It is when the challenges really start to hurt us and affect our own lives directly that the opportunities to change policy across government, the public sector and business sectors will present themselves in a very different and future-changing manner. They will allow us to move forward in a very different, thoughtful and considered way.

The timeline to all of this may well be incredibly short or may be years long. We really are at the thin end of a very thick wedge with empty shelves and driver shortages right now. And this compilation of different but equally serious crises is going to have major widespread impacts for sure.

Unfortunately, we have a Government, political class and establishment obsessed with maintaining a level of control that it doesn’t actually have.

The politicians involved have a track record of creating policy without thought and consideration for the wider consequences, and they do so as a knee jerk reaction to whatever is going on in the media.

On the face of it, there will be some who admire the way that ‘road closure’ protestors have applied themselves, not only with glue, but in the way but they are maintaining their protests, sometimes on a daily basis.

What Insulate Britain don’t realise is they’re running a risk of instigating a change which could have serious consequences for us all. Especially as everything else around us begins to deteriorate.

As the road-blocking protests go on and get more severe, the Government is increasingly likely to turn to legislation to help them deal with it in ways that will enable the police or perhaps even the military to stop protests like these.

Once the current problem is dealt with, this new legislation won’t be parked and put on a shelf. It is likely to be picked up applied and used on the people who are becoming increasingly frustrated, angry and upset about the way the Government is treating us all over their handling of Covid and the not so new, continually self-serving world that they are now trying to impose.

Never has the time existed when we have needed reasoned and considered dialogue between people on different sides of all the debates as we do right now.

Regrettably, as yet, people haven’t been affected seriously enough as yet to take part. They are not yet ready to talk to each other, communicate with each other and respect each other in the way that we all need to.

It is going to take the impact of the changes that are coming and the challenges that we face to touch all of our lives before we are collectively ready to embrace dialogue and change in a much more positive and forward looking way.

No matter what you’re passionate about or what motivates you in terms of the things that must change, the biggest risk to change is the fact that we are not even trying to come together today to overcome the very small number of things which divide us. We must focus on the things that we share in common that will allow us to deal with the problems we face tomorrow together and in a very different way.