Over recent weeks, Secretary General of the RMT Mick Lynch has solicited a paradoxical feeling of respect towards a union baron, simply because in interviews he has appeared to take the Government position on wage rises clinically apart.
Whilst many commentators and journalists have been fawning over the eloquence of his speaking skills, the reality that few accept is that Mr Lynch’s greatest asset is his comparative ability to speak truth to power. Especially when the powers we have today do little more than obfuscate with invented truths, diversions and lies.
Like any good sales pitch, the union patter on the need to strike in order to force ‘reasonable’ wage rises has indeed contained some certain truths. Truths that many of us can relate to, as we watch prices rising exponentially almost by the day.
However, just as the politicians we have running the Country, who fail to consider the law of consequence and the bigger picture – rather than just responding to headlines or whatever is on the table today, fail to look beyond themselves, this union push to secure explosive wage rises can only fuel the speed of the race towards a complete financial and systemic collapse. Indeed, it is likely to cause the very people it is supposed to be helping the most pain.
Yes, the simple and most obvious answer to the cost of living crisis would be to give everyone a pay rise that matches the rate of inflation. A wild rate that is currently heading for ten and may even go as far as twenty percent.
Yet just as would-be Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s massive and unnecessary spending spree in response to the Covid Pandemic put inflation and the price rises of essentials on crack, raising wages continuously to meet what will likely now become constant price rises, will just make an existing problem and the pain it causes the people who didn’t create that problem even worse.
Few can and even fewer want to see or understand the real causes and the history of the problems that the UK now faces. It is just too easy to blame someone they don’t agree with or don’t like at a very shallow level, whilst making the fundamental depth and breadth of the corrosive issues and practices that are institutionally still at work, significantly worse.
Greed, or rather the drive to make money, accumulate wealth, ambition and attaining power, are the seedbed and growth accelerator of each and every problem that the UK – and much of the World – is now experiencing.
So long has this addictive malaise been at work, our whole system of governance and the systems, procedures, regulations and laws that relate to everything, now support the funneling of wealth towards those who already have more. Just so that they can obtain even more.
Politicians have always had the ability to stop this and to rebalance the system so that it works fairly and equitably towards everyone.
However, to todays weak-minded and glory seeking politicians, public representation is not what getting themselves elected is about.
If our politicians were to use the power and responsibility that they have – as they proved that they can do, when they took the massively damaging steps to shut everything down during Lockdown – they could stop the escalation of prices that do not need to rise in just one day.
They won’t. Because they are all in it up to their bloody necks.
Our politicians believe that their future depends on maintaining the status quo and continuing to do things the same way that they always have been.
With inept and incompetent politicians who lack even the basic ability to lead, and union barons who have been gifted circumstances that those who can change things now refuse to control, we find ourselves within a rich mix of events and circumstances that together with all the very different problems that we individually face are now adding up to a very dark, but nonetheless perfect storm.
The failure of those to act whose responsibility it is to act, coupled with the failure of others to show restraint whilst neglecting the responsibility that we all have to consider each other, does indeed foretell that the only destination we can reach will be an unmitigated crash or complete system collapse.
It is sad indeed, that none of these people who have the power and influence to do things that will help us, can see, value or appreciate what we all truly share in common. And that instead, the only thing that defines and unifies them is the commonality of their selfishness and greed.
Adam Tugwell 