This quote and image is a part of TUG’S GUIDE LINES FOR POLITICS. All of the 99 Quotes about Politics, Economics and our broken system of Democracy today, can be bought and downloaded from Amazon for Kindle HERE:
I remember a conversation with someone back last summer, when I mentioned my interest in politics. Their face crunched up as they exclaimed ‘there are better ways to get things done in the world’.
Politics is of course an emotive subject. It’s about our tastes, how we appear to others and therefore who we really believe we and the world to be. And that’s why subjects such as which side of the ‘Brexit debate’ that you may or may not be on, have resulted in people quite literally viewing others as it being a defining focus or reference point to who they really are.
It isn’t. And to make someone else wrong, simply because you have heard or seen something that gives you just a snapshot of their point of view, and then take it as way to stereotype everything about them and who they really are, is just lazy. If you’ve ever done that, I’m afraid it says much more about who you are!
‘Leave politics for the politicians’ is a very enlightened way of looking at politics. But few would now disagree that these are far from being enlightened times.
Like the person I mentioned above, the reality that we will all have to face, sooner or later, is that if we really want things to change in any meaningful kind of way, democracy – and therefore politics, and how we then govern everything, is the only genuine method to find and implement a better way.
The fundamental problem with politics, is the people who are in politics today.
To be clear, those people are not just the representatives of one of the political parties that we have to choose from. They are the representatives of them all.
The inherent problem with changing politics, is that most of us are happy to wait for someone else to do the changing for us.
What we don’t see is that someone else will certainly change things, but the change will only be on the basis of what works best for them – no matter what they say or what they lead us all to think.
The reality is that we all have to accept the need for change and when we have, we then need to accept that we all have to take part and have a role to play too.
Understanding how different or specific parts of our political and economic system work often begins a process of peeling away the layers of the onion for a lot of people. Call it a watershed or eureka moment if you like.
Politically awake since I was a teenager, I was a Town Councillor for 4 years, a Parish Councillor for 3 years and a Borough Councillor for 8 years, where I was also the Chair of Licensing for 4 of those. I was also a local government officer too.
Whilst I’ve been blogging and writing books about politics in a detailed way for over a decade, I appreciate that the best way for anyone to see those different perspectives or variations on what they already know, is to present a succinct view. Then wait and see what they think.
Following on from my two very recent Books of 99 Quotes, ‘TUG’S GUIDE LINES’ and ‘TUG’S GUIDE LINES FOR BUSINESS’, ‘TUG’S GUIDE LINES FOR POLITICS’ offers 99 Quotes covering the broken state of the political and economic system, how they work, and how or what we will have to do to change things so that The System genuinely works for everyone, and everyone can find happiness in life, no matter what they have, who they are, or what they do.
Although I never knew my Dad as a younger child, the world of business, the do’s and plenty of the don’ts walked right in with him at the same time as he did when I was a teenager.
Up to six different businesses on the go at any one time gave me early insight and understanding of what entrepreneurship is really all about. It helped me not only with my own start-ups and businesses, but also opened a door to being an effective operations and project manager for charities, local government and in other employed roles too.
Tasting the successes, failures and frustrations of what really happens in business from the moment that an idea begins, and taking away the invaluable lessons and currency of experience along the way has given me the opportunity to share the understanding and the insights I have, and this is what TUG’S GUIDE LINES for business is really all about.
Wherever I’ve been able, I’ve sought to help others and give something back in the form of business advice, coaching & mentoring and even tutoring business planning at a university business school. But what has been clear from many of the conversations about business and management that I’ve had, is that there’s no better lesson that can be shared than the ones that make any of us really think.
So, in the second of my TUG’S GUIDE LINES books, here are 99 quotes on managing your own business, start-up or thinking about what being in business, for you, really could mean.
Whatever your interest, I wish you well in your venture. Whatever happens, it will enrich your life!
As both a blogger and a writer, my most annoying habit for the reader is likely to be the default setting I have for writing more than I should when trying to explain something that otherwise might fail to make sense.
With a view of the world and the subjects that I most often write about that currently sits outside the norm, I find myself doing this a lot.
But when it comes to lessons, guidelines or even rules for life, I absolutely accept that we all have to get to the top of the mountain that is every step in understanding the bigger picture, at precisely the moment that we are supposed to – and that means in our own sweet time.
TUG’S GUIDE LINES was going to be the structure of another e-book, right up until the moment that a good friend said that the titles or quotes I had read out to them word-for-word, were more than enough, just on their own.
So here we are. A deviation from guidebooks, collections of blogs, the proposal of new political philosophies and just sharing the basic nuts and bolts, wrapped up in 99 quotes that represent some of the key things that I have learned and understand about life.
The chances are that most, if not all of these quotes will make you really think – and that’s what they are there for.
I don’t expect you to agree with all of them. But that’s what the different journeys that we are all on are there for – and overlapping and finding commonality can be so much fun!
If you want to comment or talk about any of them constructively, please get in touch or comment online wherever you might see them.
I wrote about the damage union barons would inflict on their members credibility in pursuit of strikes just a short while back. Most of us would genuinely sympathise with anyone looking to maintain their monthly balance sheet and to be able to at least afford what they are used to after all.
However, the strikes and the rhetoric being pumped out has certainly taken us into the realms of two wrongs don’t make a right.
Very regrettably, the wilful blindness of the government in now attempting to supress protests against the issues that are now proving to be an inconvenience for them – rather than facing reality down – are speeding up the disintegration of our political system and system of government.
What is happening could easily prove to be the catalyst that ushers into power a very unsavoury alternative indeed.
Whilst it would be easy to cast that light upon Labour, today’s official opposition in the UK have nothing to offer any of us that the Tories haven’t already stolen and made their own.
Keir Starmer doesn’t focus on real issues that people are facing and just talks about things like the cost of living crisis. He keeps coming up with would-do solutions like destroying the House of Lords or plans to tinker around the edges of our collapsing NHS and call it ‘life and death reform’ instead.
Popular as his ideas might sound, the Labour leader is doing nothing more than promising us that in exchange for us all giving Labour a majority at the next General Election, his equally out-of-touch political party will simply pick up where the Tories left off.
Labour’s promise of change will be no more meaningful than the repackaging of public policy and moving the pieces on the chess board around. This, when we are all crying out for changes to the way everything is run and governed that will be significantly more profound.
The strikes – even though they seem ridiculous when we do the maths regarding the salaries that some of those striking are already earning – are sadly legitimised by the reality that the prices of everything we buy and need for life are now well and truly out of control.
Legislating to stop the strikes or even lessen their impact, will not solve the problem that caused them or gave union members reason enough to vote for them to take place.
What would help immediately, would ideally be this or the next government bringing an immediate halt to big business and financial sector greed, along with rolling out emergency legislation to end the almost universal levels of profiteering that are now at work and having a massive effect on the lives of us all.
Yes, the legislators are there to legislate. But the power to legislate must be used as a power for good on behalf of us all, not just to help the legislators or their friends as all our politicians now do so, instead.
The government, the opposition and all of the politicians combined who hold elected seats today could stand together and bring this whole travesty to an immediate halt for us all.
But they won’t, because they are too scared of facing down all those who have control over money, simply because of the damage it could do to their careers and what it could do, just to them.
What about everyone else? What about US ALL?
No, this really isn’t an anti-technology blog. Quite the opposite. It is a blog focusing on the question of what drives technological advances and what purpose their implementation is really for.
Is all the technology that we already have, that we are being offered and that we are being promised: Making life easy? Making life reliable? Making life cheap?
The chances are that once you have stopped to think about it, your answer will be at least one of these, but probably all three.
But tech is easy, reliable and cheap for who exactly; is this really about the end result for you?
If we look subjectively at all the technological development there has ever been, right since the industrial age began, the general consensus would likely be that the rise of tech has only ever been good for us. That no part of it could possibly represent anything bad.
With the arrival of the internet and the smart technology age, as we dip our toes further and further towards a waterfall of AI, it really does seem that everything in life couldn’t be progressing faster or improving at an increasing or exponential pace.
But as the ease with which a fully-tech-orientated life seems to be taking shape, the upcoming generations are no longer fully familiar – if indeed familiar at all, with the process of traditional learning and remembering information and processes of thinking that will equip them in dealing with the future experiences that they cannot yet see. And why would they, when a search engine linked to their smart watch or phone, can instantly do it all for them instead?
This rate of so-called progress is coming at a massive price. It’s not just the dangerous lie that knowledge is the same thing as experience that is breaking the fabric of society and our humanity apart.
It is both the dependency and preference that we have for a tech-takeover of our lives in every sense that is supercharging the process of us all forgetting and proactively leaving behind the people, the individuals and the human beings that we really are.
We are told and conditioned to believe that technological advances have created an age where it is no longer possible for humanity to go backwards in any way. Why would we question this when every stream of accepted information or media narratives tell us that the flow and breadth of Information, pharmaceuticals, digital money and foods that even 100 years ago could never have been dreamed of, really do make us all, the unwitting participants in a game where we are actively being led to think and believe that we are all the new gods.
The technology that we already have is great, and it is mind boggling to visualise what is yet to come. But have you noticed how someone who we would probably only ever catch a glimpse of on social media or TV is always doing well out of it, whilst somewhere, someone and indeed many others are suffering as a result – usually in growing numbers and well outside of the media view.
Whether it’s the people who are no longer needed for the jobs that they were trained for relying on food banks or the billionaire tech moguls being able to declare that their latest inventions will mean nobody will really have to work again, technological development is being used as the tool of money-obsessed-age.
Technology and technological advances are not being used as the tools to improve and enhance life and humanity in the ways that each and every one of them genuinely could, in the right hands.
The uses for technology today and how we could be using them look very much the same. But man cannot have two masters.
For as long as tech development is driven by profit, the humanity and freedoms we so believe in are being sent back to the stone age at a like-for-like increasing pace.
The metaverse and the world of virtual reality may not have taken off in the ways that it has the potential to do so yet. But as we have seen with the drug-like hypnotic ability that computer and video games have on different people, we must surely be very close to turning point where people can step into a pretend world where they never again have to leave.
Again, the question must be asked, ‘What is this really all for?’ ‘Who really benefits from the general population losing touch with everything that matters?’
A growing population that has the resources and information available for everyone to think freely in a way that history has never allowed normal people to do so before is a problem for the people who abuse the power and responsibility they have gained at the top.
Like lambs to the slaughter, we willingly embrace the march of tech as it preaches the message that we are one step closer to a quality of life that we can’t even begin to imagine, each and every day.
We ignore the loss of jobs, the redundancy of our skills and talents. We are blinded to the dependency we are all building upon machines and processes that the wiping of history through the whims of the strangely all-powerful woke will quickly leave even the most educated of our younger generations unable to understand.
The nightmare story of life within a dystopia that we ridiculously still believe is restricted to the pages of great works such as 1984 is already unfolding around us all. But instead of rejecting it, we are embracing it like we are all the lead in some modern day parody of Oliver Twist, where we are falling over ourselves with the begging bowl and crying out for even more.
Tech would be even more beneficial and helpful to us all, if its overriding purpose were to improve life and its use were to be restricted by principles such as choosing restraint and consideration over its use, rather than the default setting today, which is always to do use it, not because it is morally right and healthy for everyone to do so, but simply because its profitable for someone, and they can.
It is both sad and very regrettable that technological advances have become yet another tool where those who already possess so much, are effectively unopposed by anything as they impose even more restrictions and choking controls on life and our ability to flourish, just so they can have even more of the power, money and influence that they will never use as they could and really should.
The harsh and uncomfortable truth is that none of those who are bought into and fuelling this specific kind of technical age and motivated this way will ever say, is that without care for humanity and what the basic tenets of life are and should always be about, the few can only become smaller in number.
Whilst the power, wealth, influence and control of the few continues to grow, all others will become the soulless slaves and bodies, drugged by a technologically engineered experience where they believe they have everything, but actually have nothing. All under the auspices of a repressive system harnessing tech for all the bad reasons we can imagine.
This is nothing less than a process of enslavement by tech. Not imposed on us voluntarily, but voluntarily imposed.
We are all playing a part in allowing this to happen. But the alternative needn’t look or feel like the rejection of tech in any way.
The freedom of us all hinges upon our readopting and repurposing tech for uses that are genuinely useful and important, so that it is used to benefit the many, rather than coming at cost to the many in ways that will only ever truly benefit the few.
If you really want to understand the basic equation of all the problems that we, our communities, our country and the world has, it is this:
We value money more than we value people, our humanity and a good existence or life.
OK, so there are plenty of ways that we tell and convince ourselves that we live and experience good lives. But have you noticed how pretty much 99.9% of the time, our happiness or how we feel about something or an experience we are having, all comes down to using something that has been paid for or bought?
The money obsession or conditioning that we all have, means we place a financial value on everything.
We look at every part of life in terms of what the direct or indirect material value of everything is. The only exception to this is the relationships that we have with people we genuinely care about and what those relationships mean to us.
We are, in effect, completely absorbed in the way that we now live and how we perceive everything. This means that we are blinded to the alternative way of life that exists, which would be better for us all, in every healthy, balanced, fair and just way that is imaginable.
We don’t see that money or the lack of money, is the common factor with all the problems that we, our communities, the country and the world has. That there is never enough of it. And as more is created, the disparity between those with less and those with more gets wider and wider as the value that either rich or poor possesses also gets further and further apart.
For as long as material wealth continues to be the value set or benchmark that makes this world work, because of the belief that we all place in it, the number of problems that society has will continue to grow. There will be fewer and fewer solutions available to solve the growing number of problems that society has.
The alternative to this system and the hurt that it is causing those who believe they benefit in some way, is the complete rejection of the money based order and The System as we know it.
The solution to all our problems is the adoption of a people first economy, that places the value on people, humanity, community, our environment, the legacy and the responsibility that we have to all others, above money either being a benchmark for life, or being considered in any way to be and be valued as a ‘thing’.
The way this will be achieved is through the adoption, implementation and assurance of The Basic Living Standard.
The Basic Living Standard equation or formula is this:
All individuals will be able to support themselves fully on the equivalent of the lowest paid weekly wage, in a basic and healthy way, without debt or the need of support or help from any 3rd Party.
All laws, regulations, administrative and business practices shall reflect this basic requirement that underlines the basis of a truly just, fair and balanced society, and how it will operate and thrive.
The reaction that you may have might be that ‘This is impossible’. ‘This isn’t the way that the world works’. ‘You are suggesting we go backwards and live in what we understand to be feudal times’.
But this is not the case.
What you are hearing from that excitable voice from within, is the resistance to change of a system that you have been convinced is still serving you well.
But The System isn’t serving you well. The System isn’t serving any of us well.
The System is serving money and everything to do with money very well indeed. And the cost to us as individuals, as communities, as a country and as a world, is much greater than anything that the lie which is money can buy.
Few will see or be able to visualise the shift that will exist once the transition from a money obsessed way of living, to one that is truly people-centric in every way, until it actually exists. And as we walk forward into the uncertainties that lie in 2023 and the years that lie ahead, this is indeed the biggest problem and the biggest obstacle to better lives, good health and the real happiness that so few of us consciously recognise as being what we are missing from our lives and that we so desperately want.
The choice, as always, is yours. Together, it is ours.
This is about people and values. Our abuse of people and values is what all the challenges we are now facing are about. This is the outcome that all the difficulties we must now experience are for.
In my last blog written towards the end of last week, I was making light of the reality that with my elderly Mum passing away on Christmas Eve, the anniversary of my Dad’s passing on 12th Night had effectively meant the two of them had managed to sandwich the whole of the Christmas period inbetween.
Sat at the bar, in The Old Elm, Churchdown, as I was, I found myself talking to a local man I had seen out with his lovely chocolate Labrador. We didn’t talk for long, but in the time that we did, he mentioned that he was a volunteer at the local food bank, which is housed on Cheltenham Road East, at GL3.
Despite visiting Tesco pretty much every day since it opened about 8 years ago, and using the great Barber’s van that parks right outside the Hub every week, the fact that there is a Food Bank based there had completely passed me by.
I was more than a little disappointed, as I had donated a very large amount of in-date items that I had only cleared as I was sorting through my Mum’s things to what I thought was the closest Food Bank in Cheltenham – on that same day!
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter which Food Bank donations go to. But as there is such an extraordinary and growing need for this kind of support – from not just those who we might expect, but from people we really might not think need to ask or go in search for help of this kind – it does of course make sense that any help that we can give should go to our local community and the people who are in need, who we might be passing in the local street each and every day.
You don’t need to be homeless, out of work, without a car, a phone or many other things to be going hungry – no matter what too many of our politicians or other out-of-touch people who have a public platform might so patronisingly declare.
What makes the unfolding tragedy of the cost-of-living-crisis even worse, is the way The System works, where people in positions of authority have made it so, that ongoing help of this kind requires those in need to create a very big official flag telling the world who they are.
Yes, there has to be a way to prevent fraud and abuse of charity and giving. But many people who need help are thinking twice, because of the problems that the knock-on effects of telling the world that they are struggling – for whatever the reason might be – will cause.
I’ve written about ‘Hungry No More’ – serving the people who share the area I live in today who need real help, because whether we need that help ourselves or are able to give it, every local Food Bank needs to be known by us all, for however long a need for them should regrettably remain.
If you are in Churchdown, Innsworth, Longelevens or Longford, or the wider Cheltenham and Gloucester areas and have the ability to help or even spread the word too, Hungry No More are looking for donations that in particular include:
We are all experiencing an uncertain world and might be surprised by how just easy things could change and for us all to find ourselves needing the help of people who aren’t really strangers, even for just a short time.
Please help Hungry No More if you can. Or if you are reading this from further away, please find or get online and search for your Local Food Bank, or check out orgainsations like The Trussell Trust.
Hungry No More can be contacted by phone on 07824 043895 or by e-mail at innsworthhungrynomore@yahoo.com The address is GL3 Hub, Cheltenham Road East – and they are opposite the Churchdown Tesco.
Thank you everyone – and especially all the local volunteers who are giving so much of their time.
With us living through what seems to be the rise of unreported chaos, escaping talk of nothing but politics seems all but impossible. Especially when it seems that our politicians still have the ability to stand in front of the Country and pretend that nothing is, as everyone apart from them, feels and sees.
Our usually hidden Prime Minister broke cover yesterday to announce 5 pledges that he will deliver on in ’23. Doing so provoked a range of responses including one of my own and drew some unfortunate parallels that really do show us that instead of even trying to stand on the shoulders of giants, the people leading us today, really do believe that nothing matters in terms of what they actually do. It’s all about what they say.
So, let’s have a look at these 5 Pledges (or what look more like sledges with the use of a red pen!):
Hilarious really. As Chancellor, Rishi Sunak printed all of the cash and wrote the cheques to fill all of the grabbing hands that have benefited from all of his profligacy.
To be fair to him, there are massive worldwide influences now at play that on their own make this pledge near impossible for any Government to control and therefore fulfil.
But he could make a really big difference right now if he were to start reigning in all of the corporate profiteering, that his unwritten promise in his responses to Covid opened the flood gates to. The moment when greedy companies and retailers concluded they could charge the public whatever they want, and the Government will just step up and fill all the gaps in.
You can’t grow the REAL economy from here. Not when you are taxing it in every way that you possibly can. When you are allowing and helping big business to squeeze out all of their small competition with big-business-friendly gestures and rules. When small businesses are closing down every day, because the so-called help you’ve dished out already has penalized all the wrong people. Certainly NOT when you are not prepared to deal with the real causes of all the problems that we have (MONEY, GREED, DEBT, POWER IN THE WRONG HANDS etc.).
What you can do, with power in government and with a lapdog of a willing press, is manipulate figures and statistics to make it look and sound to everyone that your plan to grow the economy has been a success.
In reality this would mean suggesting that the economy is the same thing as the amount of money that’s in circulation – and if you want to look at that more closely, go back to point 1 above!
The kind of debt reduction our Prime Minister is talking about here can only come about by reducing the amount of money that the Government spends, and/or raising the amount of taxes that we pay, either directly from our pay-packets, or more likely in many more hidden ways that we aren’t supposed to collectively see.
Debt is totally out of control already. Both for us as a Country and for the majority of us as individuals too.
But this was always part of what Rishi Sunak and all of the politicians who have supported Neoliberalism, Globalism and even the European Union too (which is just globalism on a continental scale) have ushered in, facilitated and made legal – even though if many of them were to be asked, they wouldn’t even understand how!
There is only one way to get rid of debt at the unworkable levels that it has now reached.
That is to take everything back to the start and begin all over again.
The Politicians we have won’t do that voluntarily. To do so would expose the part they have played in creating the mess we are now in.
But as the system they are working so hard to save – by making false promises such as these 5 Pledges tell us – The System is already on its way to collapsing anyway.
You might think things are bad now. But wait until the real fun begins.
Statistics, Statistics and damned lies is the title or saying that immediately comes to mind here (yes, again).
As painful as the delays are for the real people who are suffering them, waiting lists or rather their reduction is no reliable measure to tell us about the state of health that the nation’s health service is really in.
Simply fire hosing money at existing NHS Trusts and private healthcare providers will allow the Government to be able to declare that they have delivered on this pledge.
But it won’t solve any of the institutional or systemic problems that the NHS faces.
It won’t solve the recruitment problem.
It wont stop too much of the money that is supposed to go to frontline care and workers being redirected to back-office managers and consultants with titles that professional nurses, doctors and practitioners would never have.
The NHS needs emergency surgery of its own from top to bottom and it needs it now.
The politicians won’t do that, because of the difficult decisions and political challenges they would face. Not least of all because successive governments of all kinds have been papering over the cracks and using lies that people will now hang on to, to keep the NHS existing.
All of this, when the NHS just existing should never be a part of any responsible governments plans.
So easy to say, yet so hard for any of our existing politicians to do, when we are yet again at a point where politicians from all sides will not acknowledge nor face the causes of the problems that make risking your life by crossing the freezing English Channel in dangerous boats so very attractive in the first place.
Nobody in the political establishment will talk about the incentives that drive very desperate people to do this.
No, those crossing The Channel certainly aren’t refugees – whatever the do-gooders want everyone to believe.
They are economic migrants looking for easy money and an easy route to a better life. They see the risk – and the financial gamble they knowingly take as the gate fee to getting them there!
If the Government want a quick fix to the small boat problem, the only way will be with the help of the French and the EU.
Yes, The Government could achieve this quickly. But Rishi and his circle of friends would have to sell out to Macron and his EU Bureaucrat chums to do this. Nobody should be under any illusion that to do so will come at an incredibly high (and deliberately hidden) price.
***
The chances are that as we get deeper into 2023, it will quickly become clearer and clearer that in respect of most, if not all of these 5 Pledges, the Sunak Conservative Government will fail.
By tying himself and his Government to the mast in this particular way, Rishi Sunak has done little more than fire a starting pistol for a sledging race that will lead to the return of Boris, a 2023 General Election, and in all probability both.
Either way, without the way that everyone is thinking about any of this, beginning to think very differently indeed, so that we can all experience meaningful change, we are at best only going to experience more and more of the same.
In all likelihood, everything is just going to continue getting worse and worse.
Adam Tugwell 