Month: August 2024

The UKs Public Smoking Cloud: The desperate need to feed confirmation biases and the unacknowledged reality that few non-smokers enjoy being forced to passively smoke

Since the UK General Election in early July, there has been a marked change in the way people are using social media and the messages they are sharing.

Don’t get me wrong. The questions over social media and the damage that its misuse and mismanagement has and continues to do is long held and there is much to be resolved.

It just seems to be the case that many if not all of what seemed to be ‘credible’ speakers across the political spectrum, have now got completely wrapped up in their own rhetoric and become sucked down by one or other of the many rabbit holes that seem to be giving so many some weird form of sanctuary whilst the world seems to be suffering from a madness storm.

The point is illustrated uncomfortably by the massive onslaught that is now underway in the UK against the proposals by the quickly aging Labour Government to impose smoking bans in pub gardens and many other public areas.

Following hot on the heels of the age-based smoking ban that the disastrous Sunak Conservative Government didn’t bring into being before their wipeout in July, the hypocrisy coming from the political right is as troubling as the countless ‘voices for reason’, who are now obsessively attempting to use everything the establishment does as evidence that confirms that George Orwell’s 1984 is as good as done and dusted, and is already taking over every part of life in just about every possible form.

If we look hard enough for evidence of anything, the chances are that we will find it. Not because it’s necessarily there. But because that’s the way that human nature works if you give it a green light to do so.

There is much to be concerned about by the way the establishment, the elites and the governing classes behave and how they approach the responsibilities that they no longer seem to accept they have to all others. However, the behaviour that they exhibit comes from much the same place and is founded upon their own biases, ignorance and an intoxication with power that few would be able to avoid. If they too were to suddenly find themselves in the same place.

Banning smoking in public places is not an attack on freedom. That is unless we are happy to agree that public policy should be based on the damaging belief that governance is about pandering to the minority, rather than doing what’s best for all. Or what the more sensible amongst us might recognise as being ‘The Common Good’.

The most recent figures from The Office of National Statistics tell us that 12.9% of the UK Population are smokers, which is roughly about 1 in 8 of us.

So why should those of us who do not smoke have no option but to inhale tobacco fumes, vape clouds or any kind of smoke that someone who smokes or vapes anything has chosen to discharge in any public place?

Whilst it is unquestionably a personal freedom of choice and should certainly remain so that anyone can smoke or vape if they so choose, it is also incumbent upon them not to do so in any way that compromises the freedom of others to make the alternative choice.

Like many, I enjoy a drink at a pub. And in the summer months like nothing more than to sit outside and enjoy the British Summer as I do so. If and when it decides to turn up.

However, what I don’t enjoy – also like so many others, is having that experience spoiled by anyone smoking or vaping, who clearly believes that simply being outside is the only thing they need to consider where the impact of their actions is concerned.

Dreadful as the Labour Government might be in so many respects, this is one rule that will probably have a lot more support than many would believe. Rather perversely, because once again, it’s the silent majority that are otherwise being forced to suffer because a noisy minority have no awareness of the impact of choices which are regrettably, all about them.

Food is as important as the air we breathe and water we drink. So why can’t we talk openly about the real threat to Food Supplies?

Regrettably, I long since realised that whilst many of us talk about change, kick and scream about the need for change, and talk about how we’re going to get those in power to facilitate change, very few of us are actually prepared to do what it would take to embrace and create the kind of change that all of us actually need.

This leaves writers, bloggers, commentators and thinkers either massively frustrated and in some cases falling into the trap of sensationalising their messages to get attention. Or like me, just accepting that people aren’t yet ready to accept that an unsustainable situation can no longer be sustained.

My back catalogue therefore quietly grows. The upside is I can at least say that through the 29 Books and the material now published and available to read on the Internet, I’m pretty sure I’ve covered all the bases when it comes to shining light on everything that’s wrong; what needs to change; what is preventing change; what will create change and of course what change might actually look like. Which is where I have just left the desktop, now.

I’ve been busy over recent weeks writing Our Local Future. Published both as a free-to-read website and as a book for Kindle which is now available to buy.

The reason change isn’t happening, isn’t because we don’t have the ideas, energy, guts, commitment and values present across our society to bring about significant change.

It’s because we are too busy arguing over the first step; who’s right; who’s wrong and who should be in charge.

Because of this, I felt it was time to leap into the future and commit to writing what the world would need to look like, feel like, and how it would need to function, IF we were to open ourselves to a way of living that genuinely works for the greater good and is beneficial to us all.

But doing so means dealing with some very uncomfortable truths, and those aren’t east to convey without being open about where things really are today.

Our Local Future is in the abstract. Because there’s so much about the world we live in today that we must leave much of it behind, including things that we thing are good but are actually hurting us. Rather than simply expecting that we can keep all the things we like and just leave the crap that it causes behind.

We leave the crap in our wake each and every day. And it’s the problems that wider society and the environment we live in now face that are manifesting as a result.

What we fail to see is that taking everything for granted and as entitled as we have increasingly become, means that the Basic Essentials of life are now at significant risk.

The issue of Food Security and the growing risk that the U.K. population could go hungry or experience serious Food Shortages are what concern me as a former politician and community leader myself.

So much so that I attended and completed a postgraduate course in Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security at a well-known UK university earlier this year.

Acknowledging the role of so many stakeholders in the Food Security problem remains important. But it’s not enough, as almost without exception, everyone on the problem end of everything still believes that the usual suspects will have a lucid moment of realisation, then change their approach.

The truth is simpler, and I believe it correct to be open about the reality that the empty shelves we experienced during the covid lockdowns could very quickly become normal in times ahead. Especially so when it comes to our level of access to Basic and Essential types of Food.

Never mind the heavily processed and unhealthy stuff that many of us mistake as being just that.

In publishing www.ourlocalfuture.com, I have lent heavily on the opportunity to use an AI Image Generator, and after publishing nearly 100 created images to accompany every published page, I was alarmed to discover that no matter how I instructed the software to create an image, there was no way that the programme would produce anything to illustrate what empty supermarket shelves would look like.

The words and title used were clearly also ringing algorithmic alarm bells somewhere in the Clous, as Facebook then also rejected the post after I had adopted a different approach to the imagery. Within seconds of publication telling me that I had committed a community violation and that the post had immediately been deleted.

We can only speculate upon why there is a refusal to allow open and honest discussion about the genuine risk to U.K. Food Security and how it is increasingly likely to affect the UK Population.

The harsh reality we face is that the Food Supply and Food Production is quickly becoming a key method of societal control.

Increasingly so, as British Agriculture – the industry that provides it – seems to be in what can only be described as a form of terminal decline that looks remarkably deliberate. Even to the untrained eye.

Many who still trust The System may well ask the question, ‘How could it possibly the case that someone wants to control access to what we eat, when food is as important as the air that we breathe and the water that we drink?’

To visit Our Local Future click HERE:

We need a new party in British Politics, yesterday. But it won’t be another that’s only been Reformed

One of the greatest ills of not for profits, charities and the workings of government, is that it is ridiculously rare that organisations, projects and services stop, are wound down or brought to their end, if and when they have achieved whatever it was they were designed, set up or launched for.

An excuse to repurpose such entities and vehicles is rarely hard to find and those involved then have no reason to go in search of a new purpose, agenda or job.

The story of the political parties, all playing their part in the downfall of the today’s UK is very much the same.

The Conservatives know and understand so little about what it is to conserve anything, and have progressively overseen a 14 year gateway of what resembles irreversible societal damage and ill-considered cultural change.

The only discernible legacy of this sorry period are circumstances where an incoming Labour government has shown the true colour of its hidden ideologies, its incompetence and the quantum leap it has jumped from the days when the working class and truly beneficial change was their purpose ‘to be’, much before most of those who watch these things more closely would have bravely suggested.

The most surprising part of the uncloaking of Labour isn’t that it has happened or that it has happened quickly. It’s that Labours uncloaking has happened as quickly as it has.

The Liberals have evolved many times in the century since they were known to be a party of power. Using the gift of being within the misperceived and misplaced leftist peripheries of the centre ground to regurgitate and nudge policies that sound great to the idealistic. But have very painful consequences for anyone when their plans meet the practicalities of normal life experience as they hit the road.

Whilst the outcome now is as predictable as the general unwillingness to accept that everyone has a role to play in genuine change, the reality the UK faces is that we are now in a perfect storm of many factors and ingredients, that none of the politicians we currently have understand or are equipped in every way necessary to disperse and therefore solve.

The begrudging growth of an awareness that the UK really is now in deep shit is leading to increasing numbers of those who voted against the Conservatives in the July General Election, wondering how the Electorate can rid itself of a new government in less than 2 months. A system of below par management dressed as leadership that is already proving itself significantly worse than the desperate experience we have just had, rather than being anything like the anticipated change that was somehow considered worth embracing, because there was simply no way that different politicians could be anywhere near as bad.

Only the Tories themselves have failed to realise that people are not going to vote for them just because they are the alternative, or because they are the Conservative Party anymore. For no better reason than even those of us with minds that couldn’t be further away from politics than it would be possible to be, already intrinsically know and understand that it will take something akin to a revolution just to get the U.K. back to anywhere near where everything was when the last period of inept and self-serving leadership kicked on the understanding that they would conserve and therefore know how to preserve.

With the Greens, Lib Dems and all other players at the table likely to say and continue to do whatever is most likely to win them votes, seats and power, a politically-fatigued population is certainly entertaining the idea that the noises in the media suggesting that Reform could be a party of power in 2029 may not be as far-fetched as previously thought.

Yet this same party appeared as The Anti-Federalist League, as UKIP, as The Brexit Party and now, as what is being described as the ‘new party’, but is parading the real truth from its name, ‘Reform’.

Like the other UK political parties of today, the core essence of what Reform was all about has long since ceased to be the purpose that it once so genuinely was.

Or was for at least some of those who rallied behind or supported the anti-European Union Membership movement when it was distilled into its own recognisable forms.

The purpose behind Reform died when the European Referendum was ‘won’ and Brexit was born. And no matter how much of a mess the establishment has made for all the wrong reasons ever since, the People had their vote and decided.

The intransigence of the governing classes ever since has just exposed a whole other raft of issues that really does require a very different form of activism to address it.

A workable solution can only be a movement built around the genuine grassroots that functions from the grassroots-up. Rather than what Reform now appear to be embarking upon, which is yet another variation on the theme that has created all the problems we have: The current system where everything functions around hierarchies and the decisions that matter – whether seen or unseen, are always made and enacted from the Top-Down.

That the EU as we know it may be ending, but isn’t yet over, gives the false pretense that Reform and all those aligned with it still have unfinished business and therefore a genuine purpose. All in ways that are being carefully communicated to suggest that the Party is different than the others we have. Because it’s rolling out viable policies that will touch other important areas of life and that they really do represent reform.

They don’t. And whilst the debate over the missed opportunity that a reform of everything that The Anti-Federalist League, UKIP and The Brexit Party can actually deliver may be a long one, it only serves to create a potentially highly damaging delay.

In the case of Reform – as its seems to be with everything else, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Instead of changing the way that they do politics – as any party or movement serious about societal change will really need to, Reform are instead busy Re-Ukipping themselves and calling what they are doing ‘new’.

So many of us fail to recognise that the solution to our political, public policy and therefore our social problems MUST come from outside of the way we have always done politics.

The solution MUST be created in its very own original form and can only come by engaging and including people who have been drawn from and been supporters of all the parties and movements across the whole of today’s political Smorgasbord.

However, there can be no option for any of them to bring whatever has failed us along with them for yet another try.

It’s only through the genesis and roll out of something very new, that everything in the UK that needs to change for the better, can genuinely and meaningfully be reformed.

Do you believe that AI is about ‘Progress’? Think Profit. Think Greed. Then Think again.

The absence of both the rules and regulations that will make Artificial Intelligence (AI) as we know it, safe; and the information flow and conversation that speaks openly and honestly about what AI really is and what currently drives it, make the AI we already have and what we are told is yet to come potentially the biggest danger to mankind that the world has ever known.

The biggest danger to mankind is mankind itself.

Simply because whether it’s war or the pursuit of self at the cost, exploitation and complete lack of care and love for others, there is nothing so destructive for humanity than when a few of us obtain a level of power that we have no respect for and then leave all the basic essentials of reason and care for the laws of consequence behind.

The power of the AI that we already have access to is phenomenal in itself.

Whilst the presence and use of algorithms and what their presence really tells us about how programmes are already making decisions, which have been having dubious impacts upon our lives, for many years, the narratives and the predictions from ‘experts’ and ‘industry insiders’ we are hearing, and almost mystical speed with which this software on our digital devices can work, makes the story of an inevitable AI takeover and the pathway to Sentient AI seem all but guaranteed. All perhaps within much less than the decade to come.

However, Sentient AI in the sense that we think of human consciousness for machines is certainly not inevitable and most unlikely, with the current motives and influences that drive it.

The concept of Fully Independent Machine Intelligence is not something that the world elites, those who stand to benefit from the lies and myths being propagated about today’s AI, nor the governing classes would consciously consider allowing to happen.

Because if they allowed self-aware and self-governing AI, they would no longer have control. And that would mean there would no longer be any guaranteed profit to be made.

The genius in the whole AI story of today is the same sleight of hand or smoke and mirrors approach that the worlds greatest magicians have used for centuries. One where the audience is distracted by what seems to be the most obvious, whilst the real truth of what is happening has been carefully concealed and hidden in plain sight, by the action that was so obvious.

AI may well be able to learn and even adapt within current and soon to be launched forms. But the learning is always based on information that is either historically available through the internet, or right up to the present moment in the sense of information about events, actions and any form of digital information that AI can access and ‘read’, right up to that very moment in time.

Programmes and programming drive every part of this ‘Artificial Intelligence’ process. And no matter how incredibly quick or original any AI-driven machine can come up with a creation, solution or answer to what ever the command or question may be, with AI in its current ‘under command’ or arguably enslaved forms, there will always be someone or some interest somewhere, hidden in the background, who is in charge or at the very least influencing whatever the real motives or aims that may be at play.

It serves the purpose of the elites, the profiteering and the governing classes for us all to believe that these evolving generations of machines can or will think fit themselves. As they can then peddle the narrative that they have no responsibility for what happens next in any way.

However, they do.

And it is greed, profiteering and an absolute lack of care for the human impact of their actions and desires that is driving forms of AI that are set to put potentially millions of people out of work, and perhaps worse.

Fully Independent Machine Intelligence is a totally different concept altogether.

Anyone who really begins to think about this will realise and understand why there is nothing beneficial to the interests of the few in having even 1 completely independent intelligent and potentially therefore sentient machine in existence. Because the presence of anything machine-based with complete autonomy would immediately expose and blow open the lies that surround what the implementation of AI currently is and what it has really been all about.

The opportunities for improvement to life, for People, Community and The Environment for the future that come from embracing and utilising AI for all the right reasons are phenomenal.

But the drivers behind the adoption, implementation and roll out of any form of AI MUST be about People.

We MUST leave the greed and profiteering drivers and influences of AI behind.

Created Intelligence of a kind that is manifested as autonomous or Fully Independent Machine Intelligence, that could in time present genuine questions over sentience itself, are a different matter altogether.

We need to be very careful of the risk that comes from the use of manipulative black magic, that engenders any belief that machines are some kind of abstract wise being, with the objectivity to make decisions over human lives, whilst very specific interests are sat behind them all the time.

Profit and greed are the only drivers behind AI and any planned AI takeover or narrative.

The obsession with money will soon kill everything. IF we don’t leave this madness behind.

Artificial Intelligence has human masters and must be regulated and controlled.

Fully Independent Machine Intelligence and the creation of any kind of self-sufficient machine capable of replicate what a human being is capable of alone in terms of consciousness, isn’t something that Humanity is ready for – Whether there is a profit to be made or Created Intelligence can be accepted as part of a combined effort working for the Common or Public Good.

We MUST recognise that there are clear boundaries that protect People from the selfishness and self-serving agendas that have hidden themselves behind machines and have a range of Basic Rules for the use of AI.

The future is abstract. Because Today’s way of Life is the root cause of Our problems and We will only have a Tomorrow if we leave it behind

On Monday, I published ‘Our Local Future’, a new booklet that is free to read, broken down into page-based topics online, or downloadable as a Book for Kindle for less than the price of a coffee in one of today’s UK high street branded shops.

I’ve already had a number of conversations about Our Local Future.

Feedback from people on all the subjects I have been writing about, discussing and that I have continued to explore is always interesting.

Not because framing those conversations this way wraps up disagreement in some kind of polite and therefore palatable way.

But because by far the most common response – and a very quick one too, is for something to come back that says ‘This sounds like’, or perhaps, ‘I watched a video that mentioned that’, or ‘Isn’t that the same thing as’.

I went through a similar experience when I joined a postgraduate course at a British University last year so that I could look more closely at the mechanics of the UK Food Security issues and the many parts of life that the issues of Food Production and access to the Basic Essentials in Life really does reflect or touch.

In many ways, I was gobsmacked by how closed-down to anything other than existing work, publications or reference points the part of ‘The System’ where the thinking is supposed to be happening really is.

But I was, most importantly, deeply concerned, by how thinkers and visionaries seem able only to visualise the future of our world and how everything works or rather will work, in terms of what we already know and accept.

It’s a situation that is not unlike the whole of the post-European Referendum stages of the Brexit debacle that were handled so badly. Fundamentally because the stepping-off point was considered to be where the UK was or had been, rather than where it would actually be, whenever the genuine point of the UKs departure from Membership of the EU would come.

Nobody in government stepped outside of the accepted, backwards-looking paradigm and began to consider that you cannot have a new way of being, if you don’t leave the old one behind.

Perhaps they did. And that’s an important point for us all to consider too.

Having a future System for life that has solved all the problems that we have today; that runs effectively in the ways that it should and most importantly which creates and maintains an experience of life and living which is Balanced, Fair and Just for all, has very little in common with what we have and what we are experiencing in this ‘Old World’, today.

A Future that works for all is an abstract concept in todays terms. Not least of all, because experiencing the level of change needed, that will benefit everyone, AND taking the stuff from today that so may want to keep because they think its special and benefits them, are mutually exclusive pathways.

These are journeys that lead to two very different destinations, that will in every sense deliver alternative outcomes that are worlds apart.

The future is about empowerment, re-enfranchisement, sovereignty and the restoration of accountability and respect for everyone at the individual or personal level, all within the local community and environmental sense itself.

It is alarming, because Fairness, Balance, Justice and a world that gives everyone the ability to be Happy, Healthy, Safe and Secure does not resemble anything that the masses are genuinely experiencing beyond all the carefully crafted narratives, now.

Those who are ‘high on The System’ that we have in this ‘Old World’ immediately visualise such suggestions as being a threat to what they ‘have’ today.

And they guard what they have jealously too. Because they believe it is their right to have more and to be able to have even more.

So much of what is wrong for so many of us today is itself the direct, indirect and often many times removed impact of some having lives that work disproportionately well for them. Whilst the often-unseen consequence is very little that is good across all areas of an otherwise unnecessarily hard life for so many more of us.

We MUST put People at the heart of everything and leave all that is bad from today’s Old World Moneyocracy behind.

We cannot and will not achieve this, if those who have more than they need today, will not accept that everyone can have a great life, IF we all have unhindered access to all that we need too.

The Future that will work for us all, is about us all.

The Future will work for each of us in very different ways to how we see and experience the whole thing now.

The question is how we disentangle ourselves or what will happen that will disentangle us all from everything that is wrong with the world today, and stop us manifesting everything bad that will keep us in the darkest parts of the past.