Salting the earth is a term historically used to describe the actions of an army or nation in retreat.

Alongside phrases such as ‘scorched earth policy’, the contemporary use of salting the earth alludes to the story of the damage deliberately done so that no form of infrastructure, food, water or supplies of any kind are left that can benefit whoever or whatever follows an army during a period of all-out war.

In the sense of the upcoming general election – This May, October, November or whenever it might be, the term is being used by Labour politicians and left-wing commentators to describe the promise from the Tories that they are set to deliver a number of tax cuts as incentives for voters, before that highly anticipated election comes.

The fear of those hopeful that they will soon be in government is that the Tories will leave them no money to spend on policies and with no politically acceptable way to raise more, IF they should win a majority at the next General Election.

Yet the truth is politicians from all sides, whether Tories, Labour, the Liberal Democrats or the SNP have been salting our future for years.

It is only through the political responses to Brexit, Covid and the War in Ukraine that ALL those who lead us – whether they form the existing government or not – are finally in the endgame of a pathway to destruction, based on greed, profit and the mismanagement of our financial systems and public money, that began decades before many of them even arrived in Westminster.

The hidden truth within the shouting is that the only way the politicians we are currently able to choose from can solve the UKs problems is by spending money. It is a message that really does tell us all that we need to know about the quality and outlook of the people we have placed in charge.

Money cannot and will not address the cause of every problem the UK now faces and the complete mess we are in. Because it has been the overreliance on money as the basis of all public policy for so long that has placed us in the mess that we are now in.

Legislators have massive power that we entrusted to them. And with it the ability to change things for the better, pretty much on a whim – if they are willing to take the risk necessary to do so.

It is because politicians hold such power that the government was able to Lockdown the UK in response to the Covid Pandemic, quite literally overnight. Imagine what they could do for us all by changing policies, if they accepted there was good reason, rather than just reacting and spending even more money that we don’t have for no better reason than fright!

The reality is politicians bankrupted the UK many years ago. We have been living on created money, as well as borrowed time ever since. And that time will soon run out.

Successive governments have relied on overspending and then trying to push growth, growth and more growth as a way to show how debt keeps falling – but only as part of the Nation’s GDP.

Yet the value of money just keeps on getting less and less and that’s why so many of us cannot even afford to shop properly or even pay for an increasing number of the things that we need.

The solutions that the UK needs will not come from money. But from legislation and public policy that puts people and communities first.

Facts are facts. Any politician complaining about not being able to spend money or find more of it to do so isn’t someone who is going to lead the UK out of our problems. But we can be confident that they will help to make them worse.

Hands up. I see the value of national service for a country that has completely lost sight of how education is failing so many of its young people. But conscription- for a needless and wholly avoidable war, is something completely different.

Proud as I am of both of my Grandfathers and their military service in WWII; one who served in the Royal Navy working with ASDIC, the other who used his craftsmen hands to maintain the guns of Monty’s desert artillery, I also know at my core, that the sacrifices they and so many others made, had selflessness, freedom and above all, humanity at its heart.

Today, we are facing the prospect of wars or another world war, that serve no purpose other than to benefit people who are abusing power and responsibility. All at a cost that very few of us can readily understand and with possible consequences that none of us have the ability to calculate.

Wars are rarely justified. The fact that establishment figures are discussing the possibility of conscription and ‘citizen armies’ when the only reason for any war today is so that the malfeasance of the world elites can be actively denied or covered up, is just about as inhumane and evil as throwing another human being towards an unnecessary and premature death could possibly be.

Hard as it is for many of us to accept, the West isn’t and hasn’t been the kind, benevolent and all-giving force for good that can always justify everything that it does.

Money, the pursuit of influence and the power that go with both have masqueraded as democracy and peace across the World. And this selfishly driven trojan horse has been used to persuade and manipulate many millions of us into believing that all our governments have done and is doing in other countries has been necessary and just.

The power that the West has assumed since the Second World War, much of it riding the shirt tails of the USA, has been all about controlling a new world order, based on greed and control, that has already existed for 80 years.

It is from this that countless wars, coups and takeovers of different nations have been initiated. And many of the politicians and decision makers we have in public offices are either too out-of-touch or simply too ambitious to even realise how they have acquiesced and facilitated nothing less than the takeover of democracy and democratic process, from within.

The illegal and mass immigration that is beginning to harm all of us is just one of the many costs that has come from allowing selfish, self-centred politicians and whoever influences them to impose war and violence on countries around the World. Conflicts that may appear on the news, but from which we have until now been insulated, because they have been very much out of sight and out of mind.

The culpability that we hold for not holding the politicians we have trusted and voted into office to account, certainly doesn’t justify the problems we face as a nation state or right down to the communities that we live in.

Misplaced trust certainly doesn’t justify us sending young people or indeed anyone into war just to bail these very silly and ignorant people out, or justify the lies they tell that with a pyrrhic victory will somehow be spun to confirm that they were in fact right.

Today, Russia may be a problem. Perhaps a rogue state run more like a mafia fiefdom than a country under democratic control. But it is not for us to pretend that it is OK for the people that lead us to talk up wars with the people and populations of other countries just so the corporate takeover of everything and with it the continuing enslavement and control of humanity can once again be wrapped up as some quasi-protective and beneficial narrative that allows the true purpose to continue to be denied.

Yes, the reality is that a profit and therefore greed-led form of governance has captured and already taken over every part of what we believe to be todays democratic world and we have long since passed the point when there was a credible choice between believing that those who we were taught to show deference to can be trusted or not.

There is no reason for anyone to sign up and fight for such foolishness. Unless that is, you truly believe that money and wealth and the influence that it creates is now our genuine and all powerful god.

Saying this doesn’t mean that I do not see any kind of threat from countries, people and their leaders who have values that are not aligned with our own. Nor that the risk of being driven to war as some kind of well-thought-out strategic project for these people would end the moment we believe we are free of them.

In fact, war may become the only way that the World can find a way forward and to rediscover the peace and stability that we should all already be able to enjoy. But which selfishness on the part of just a few who have abused their power and influence have inflicted or are in the process of inflicting upon us all.

Wokeness and the behaviour of the so-called snowflake generation may be worrying to those who wish to embrace the call of any war that isn’t necessary, but is likely to be imposed. But I have great faith that young people and upcoming generations would certainly know the difference and would step up to protect purposes that were justified and morally right, if genuinely and properly called.

As it stands, money is the only reason we are hearing the want for war.

Yet the topic of destruction and bullshit wars is the last thing that people fighting to survive their daily lives, either want or genuinely need.

It’s pretty certain that more or less everyone who at least tries to function and take part in ‘normal’ life is uncomfortable with the way that life and the things that affect us from the world outside are going. Even if that discomfort is merely a feeling or just a few questioning thoughts.

Yet the concerns that we all have are different and for the majority of us will relate only to the issues that are important to us, whether they are being able to afford food, the rapid rise in the prices of the things that we need, being paid more in the job that we have, being able  to find a new job easily, being able to access hospital or a doctors appointment, being able to keep a business going, or even being able to grow food and to at least break even on a farm that we own.

There’s nothing wrong with thinking this way. Because to do so is merely in consideration of the issues that are genuinely important to us.

However, when it comes to addressing any one or all of the vast range of the problems that all of us now face; to act, demand or even debate the problem that is most important to us, and do so without making allowance for every other person having issues that are just as important too, means that anyone and everyone focuses only upon whose issue is the biggest and most important, and therefore the problem that must be prioritised.

Meanwhile, we leave no genuine problem solved and a situation where more and more of us are now joining that line.

Because we have very poor leaders and politicians who think and look at the world in the same way as the majority of us who don’t have the responsibility to look at everything differently, they too fall straight into the trap of focusing only on what is most important to them.

That’s why the UK and much of the World is now in the mess that its in.

It doesn’t matter how right any of us know ourselves or the group we follow to be. If we cannot accept that every problem that everyone has is also important and that the priority has to be to focus first on the problems that are common to us all, none of the problems that are really serious for anyone are going to get fixed.

No, there’s nothing humane about putting ‘illegal’ immigrants on a plane and sending them straight to another Country for them to be settled. Especially after a treacherous Channel crossing, whether the UK Taxpayer is picking up what will surely be the very expensive tab or not.

However, to believe or argue that the rights or wrongs of the Government Rwanda policy is the only debate there is to be had about migrants crossing the English Channel is just as ridiculous.

Whatever excuse anyone can come up with to justify unrestricted immigration, the reality is that we are adding unproductive inhabitants to the total of UK Residents in such numbers, that the growth and strain that is being inflicted upon the UK – in practical terms, before we even touch on anything ideological, is simply too great to sustain.

No. This isn’t racist. It isn’t far right. It isn’t prejudiced in any way to say that the UK cannot continue embracing a fast-track to chaos and that anyone who arrives here as an economic migrant, rather than as a genuine refugee, should quickly be returned home, or returned to the first country they crossed into that could have offered them safety.

It makes perfect sense to have a reasoned outlook and be honest with ourselves, given the strain that is being placed on public services and our infrastructure. Especially so, given that we have UK residents who are homeless and dying on our streets who should be the priority in this case.

It’s all very well making the idealistic arguments that we should be doing all that we can for anyone and everyone who needs our help. Indeed, in principle, this is certainly true.

But this argument faces only one way. It’s based on beliefs that exist in isolation from other facts. It is blind to the real costs that are being placed upon resources that the UK doesn’t have enough of, for people who are already here.

It also pays zero consideration to the fact that the people who are joining us as UK Citizens are NOT coming to the UK because they value the opportunity to be British or to be just like us. But because they want to take every material advantage, without giving anything back. They then want to change the systems, our culture and the way that everyone around them is living, so that it resembles or reflects the cultures and the countries where they have just come from.

There isn’t any history that justifies the approach that politicians on all sides are taking. No matter how hard any politician, media outlet or influencer tries to manufacture guilt, they represent the same establishment that created the problem in the first place.

Any obligation that we have to help others, either as individuals or as a Nation State, should never be fulfilled to our own detriment and certainly not when the inevitable cost is self-destruction.

Few of us were even alive when many of the issues that have ultimately displaced so many people were set in motion. And as far as the decisions that have been made by the politicians, we have had for the past 30 or more years, who have contributed or acquiesced in the foreign policies of other countries that have done no good but created endless mess; Yes, we may have elected them. But whatever it is they have been working for, the one thing we can all be sure of is that it certainly hasn’t been about benefiting any of us.

Yes, we do have to acknowledge and wake up to the mechanics of the very wide range of issues that self-interest and an obsession with money have caused for us all, as the true motivation for those with their hands on the levers of state.

But that awareness is as much about the damage being done to our own Country, as it has been to anywhere abroad.

The solutions to all of our problems and not least of all the issue of cross-Channel Illegal Immigration are big and very complex indeed.

They require leadership that is comfortable with significant political risk.

That’s because the UK will be one of the easier countries to convince that we all need to think differently and adopt non-interventionist foreign policies for the long term. And that productive relationships can only be built and become resilient by helping all the countries that are unsafe or in trouble to function properly again, without anyone from the west continually looking to make money or aim to benefit privately in return for what should only be the one-way help that we should give.

We cannot help anyone else by hamstringing ourselves. Yet this is exactly what we are doing each and every time that we take on more and more people looking for UK taxpayers to underwrite them. When even in a low-paid job, they are still costing the Country more than they contribute.

Whilst you will probably need to be a financial anorak to have been watching this news unfold, the US SEC finally approved Bitcoin ETFs yesterday, leading to a range of wild claims about where the value of Bitcoin is now going. Some even suggesting that the financial establishment has now legitimised the previously decentralised digital currency after effectively opening the door to the market and letting the blockchain coin walk right on to the trading floor.

Like so many of the issues that we face today in this (deliberately) complex world of ours, the truth, or rather the truths about Bitcoin and what it will now mean for any digital currency to be traded as part of ETF financial packages can be viewed in many  different ways. However, the real story is set to be obscured by group think, the narratives that the establishment want us all to believe, and the  time that it will take for what will surely be, in the majority, a whole new tranche of lies to fall on their face and for the next new money myth to  come unstuck.

Identifying, understanding and yes, accepting the existence of the money myths is very important.

Money myths are at the very core of the problems that the world now faces, and why no matter which way any of us look, everything that we see now appears to be well and truly f***ed up.

Irrespective of whether you are in the ‘digital currency is financial freedom’ or ‘bitcoin was just created as another establishment ruse’ camp, the most compelling benefit of pre-January 10^th 2024 Bitcoin was its previously unchecked status of being a ‘finite’ currency or money source. Even though the base of its programming or the blockchain technology that its built upon would already have enabled each coin to have been divided an infinite number of times.

The ’fact’ that Bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies like it) couldn’t be printed off at will, as has been the case with the US Dollar, the UK Pound, the EU Euro and all other FIAT currencies, has made it a very compelling option for traders of all kinds. Many of whom have bought into the belief that a fixed amount of anything will mean that the value – and therefore the profit to be made, can only ever go up.

Regrettably, the false floor or elephant trap in the pro current digital currency argument is that like the FIAT ‘cash’ that Bitcoin was intended to replace, the true or intrinsic value of the ‘coin’ is zero.

Like any other form of money that is and only ever has genuinely been a medium of exchange, the value of Bitcoin is based purely on belief, and no matter how many people, countries or whether it’s an entire world believe in its value, the reality is that Bitcoin’s value isn’t anything more than zero at any time, and any value held against it in any moment is little more than the equivalent of a bet that can and will be lost, the moment that the secret is either out, or events have enacted their own terminal care.

That the (financial) establishment has taken so long to make any move that can be argued to legitimise the existence and value of Bitcoin should itself be raising many red flags. Rather than leading to any feeling for traders that now is the time to feel overjoyed.

The establishment operates on the basis that nothing is real until it creates or endorses the narrative that says it will be so.

So, the financial marketplace has become very nervous of having so little control over a form of independent currency being seen to be able to offer a financial refuge for traders, when FIAT ‘cash’ is about to collapse and they had no legitimate way to seize the alternative digital form of FIAT that growing numbers have argued is about to take its place.

Regrettably, it takes a very open mind and many hours of viewing or better still, book-based research, to understand the basic principles and yes, the sanitized forms of criminality that underpin the way that the worlds financial and monetary systems currently work.

It is only after challenging and dispelling the many shibboleths that surround the way money works, that a genuine understanding of how ridiculously dishonest the system of money creation and tools such as leverage really are. And that financial products that may be labelled as being one thing such as ETFs cannot be trusted or taken at face value as an indication of what assets, products or the value that genuinely exists within.

The GFC or Great Financial Crisis in 2008 should have proved to be the cautionary tale for everyone about what happens when laws are twisted so that financial traders are legally allowed to play what are potentially world-threatening games. Simply so that they can create and make more and more money – at the expense and to the detriment of everyone else.

Regrettably, our very stupid politicians bought into the idea that it would be in everyone’s interests for the public to bail the crooked bankers out.

After the noise and the dust clouds had at least began to settle down, for the banks and financial sector it was back to business as usual, exploiting everything that they possibly can with money involved and treating everyone – including the glory-seeking political set, as if we and not they are the miscreant clowns.

The lessons haven’t been learned. As FIAT ‘cash’ and its value heads quickly towards the scrap heap, it would appear that the SEC have now provided the opportunity for big money to legally capture and control the digital currency marketplace. Giving them the potential for them to sell – and therefore profit – many times over and exponentially so, from any perceived value that exists from the Bitcoin that any unwitting buyer has been told exists within each and every ETF that they may buy or obtain a part thereof.

Even gold and other precious metals have fallen foul of the dishonesty that exists within financial and market trades. The reality that each and every owner of these – like Bitcoin from now onwards face, is that unless you physically possess the asset or the product that you believe you own, the real value of whatever you think you have bought isn’t worth the paper that its written on, and yes, that will probably mean that it doesn’t even exist.