Life is happening to people like you and I right now.
Our communities are in trouble. Crime is running out of the door from police control. People cannot afford to feed themselves or meet the basic costs to live. There is genuine discontent growing amongst us and fear that if there ever were any adults in politics, they have long since left the room and deserted us all.
Without good leadership and with no sign that we will ever have any again, we are wrestling with the reality that we are now on a doom loop of politically driven mayhem, that bears no relationship with what public representation and democracy was intended for.
Everything we are experiencing would seem desperate enough, even without the fear-driven narratives that seem set to create drama from the chaos that we are already in. Narratives that are being pushed by everyone with a platform – and not least of all, the politicians themselves.
Whilst talk for those politicians and activists without power or responsibility is certainly cheap – because they have the excuse of not being able to act, as the power to do so isn’t currently theirs, there is no longer a defining line between the words of those who can act or rather could if they wanted to, and those who don’t have any ability to’.
We have now reached the rather troubling point that anything that will be good for us, the People and that we might not only want and need, but should be able to expect our public representatives to do for us, automatically, will not get done.
Indeed, it seems to be the case that anything that would helps us, will not help them, nor do anything to get them out of the quickly deteriorating situation they are in, and which they caused themselves by playing their part in creating all of this mess in the first place.
The fact that we now have a government openly and contemptuously doing whatever it likes and whatever may serve its own purposes or that of whoever pulls their strings aside – and whenever it is not taking drastic measures to try and ward off the now inevitable collapse – is only worse than what we experienced under the Conservatives (and Lib Dems) over 14 years. And what was quietly inflicted upon us even before then, because they were at least covering up what they were doing – even if their actions were ultimately manipulative and hiding everything in plain sight.
The uncomfortable reality that awaits us all as we begin to wake up to the victimhood that so many of us are not yet even aware that we are within, is that the situation has now become so bleak, in terms of policy options that will actually benefit the British People, that politicians are now squabbling over little more than what they would do if the circumstances were different for them. All the time knowing, somewhere deep down, that the policies they are touting will be impossible to deliver now or after an election.
It simply will not matter who is elected and placed ‘in power’ – because there isn’t a political party, group or movement that we can see or hear from within the public sphere today, that has either the leadership capable or that has the motivation and ability to now do everything that will be necessary to do so, whilst all the time working with the very clear risk that what is necessary will mean they will not be elected again, next time.
Not unlike Labour, who we can be fairly sure had at least some MPs within its 397 sitting today who really would have liked to do all the things that they said on the doorsteps running up to 4 July 2024, any party or group that takes power at the next General Election – whenever that might be – will be faced with the same seemingly impossible quandary to address.
They will have to decide whether they either drop everything meaningful that they have promised and keep bobbing along, all the time hoping that everything doesn’t completely collapse before they leave. Or alternatively, face up to reality and get ready to lead, through the complete chaos and systemic collapse, that they will only temporarily succeed in putting off by wrecking everything anyway, and buckle down for what is going to become an exceptionally challenging ride for us all.
The reasons and excuses may well be different for every politician who is now hiding from the truth that we all face – or why they may be actively embracing or even facilitating it. But the best that they can now appear to do, is argue over the ideas for policy and change and who owns them, even though it is likely that these will be things that they will never actually be able to do, because they are all too afraid for themselves to do so.
One uncomfortable truth we should perhaps all be reflecting upon, is that if the politicians and those who would replace them were genuinely interested in doing whatever it may be that will be best for us and for the UK, they would not care nor consider who owns, enacts or leads any policy that is going to answer the questions and deliver the outcomes which are genuinely best for all of us. Indeed, they would actually be thrilled that any policy or action was being taken that would be in the best interests of us and the UK and be happy for whoever is in power to be using it. Wouldn’t they?
Another will surely be that this reality does indeed paint a picture that makes it very hard to question the increasingly obvious similarities between every party option that we have or will have available to us at the next election being fundamentally so similar, that in practical terms – and that means delivery and outcomes, all the political options that we currently have are basically all the same.
Yes, this means that the downward trajectory will not change.
Given everything else that we have to consider too, including the very establishment-esque support that Reform are now attracting – is the only change we will notice is that the speed of the collapse will increase, whilst the outcome of this massive leadership void may arrive much sooner (if it has not by then already done so).
Whilst it may be easy to understand and empathise with the desire and wish of so many and to believe that Reform – or indeed whoever or whatever comes next, will actually do whatever they say, there is little evidence to suggest that they or anyone who we could vote for at the next General Election actually will deliver on anything that will help those who need it.
Indeed, the track record that we can now see where Reform have been ‘running’ councils across the UK since May, suggests that in terms of what they will able to achieve and deliver, that isn’t just passed back into the hands of government officers, who are a big part of today’s problems, they are wholly out of touch with the reality they face at every level; have no real plan or understanding of what change will really take; and are therefore well and truly out of their depth.
The expertise and willingness to lead us and do everything necessary to get things done certainly exists amongst the population.
But even good leaders will need to take every step available to take everyone with them.
Amongst what we have available today, there is no politician or party doing one damn thing that has even a distant hope of achieving the kind of societal cohesiveness that will be required through what will be the very challenging times ahead.
Any good salesman or marketing specialist knows and understands that the critical element to any successful campaign is the inclusion of a truth that has the power to eclipse all the other factors that may otherwise create red flags or food for thought that the more discerning buyer will certainly want time to think about.
It doesn’t matter what the truth is and how extraordinarily small it might be. The truth they use only has to be the one that reaches in where other truths cannot, so that it can create emotional buy-in that can overcome logic, whilst painting a very clear picture of a highly desirable outcome that the audience simply must have.
Whilst it will be much easier to relate this process to something like buying a car and what must be acknowledged as the marketing brilliance which has resulted in perhaps millions of us parting with our cash or more likely getting credit to secure the new car that we felt we must have, the reality is that the dynamics of this selling equation and the creation of buy-in is something that actually plagues us all across every area of our lives too.
Before anything else, it is important to recognise that the truth; what the truth is to us; what the truth is to everyone;and then what the genuine, real or absolute truth is, beyond that, can all be very different things. Whilst at the same time for each of us as individuals, any of these can seem very real – and therefore very true indeed.
Truth at the personal level often becomes synonymous with what the individual considers to be right or correct.
What is right can for any of us can in turn be as simple as a desirable outcome that answers the question, solves the problem or breaks down the barrier that the individual or a group of them together have in mind.
Of course, the greatest salesman or marketer knows that the biggest pay days will inevitably come from creating a question to answer, the solution to a problem or a bulldozer to blitz a barrier that the buyer didn’t even realise or know was actually there and needing to be addressed in the first place – but suddenly became a life-changing necessity, in the very same moment that they found out all about it – with the help of their narrative or advert.
The story or stories and the role that created ‘need’ has played in so much and with such wild implications throughout the ages of commercialism, media channels and now the digital world, are certainly something that we should all deeply consider.
However, it is the role of these forms of deliberate manipulation that have and are increasingly being used to sway public opinion – both by those within and against the establishment – that should concern us most and they have enormous potential to harm everyone and push everything into a new type of world, created on fearful beliefs, where there is no way for anyone to step back.
Ironically, the establishment know that the real truth about most things in life, isn’t all that attractive to normal people.
Dangling carrots and carefully crafted stories of greener grass that suggest an easy grab or on open gate if you do or buy whatever they say will inevitably seem much more attractive to the alternative. Which at immediate glance may appear gloomy, require effort, or a leap of faith in some way.
The number of policies, products and outcomes that have been sold to generations of us in this way – whether that be together, in groups or as individuals, is mind boggling.
Yet it’s not just the establishment and their pet politicians who manipulate and yes – brain wash us in this way.
With the media age has come the phenomenon which is the influencer. Meaning that even the most vacuous of speakers can win over the captive audience, which is you or I, from the screen that’s right in front of us. Just because they have said or done something or belonged to something that we like; they are already popular and followed by ‘our group’; or we have just decided that we like them and therefore want to listen to or watch them – as this somehow brings them and more of what we like straight into our lives.
Contrary to the generally accepted view, influencers aren’t just beautiful people or the people who entertain and ‘connect’ with us from the digital universe.
Influencers are politicians, commentators, journalists and all the would-be politicians and people who have designs on being the next Prime Minister of the UK or President of the Universe too.
It is also not uncommon for accidental influencers to hit the sweet spot of a message that plays to someone or some groups ‘truth’ too. As the example of a tweet that I saw just this morning demonstrates rather well, where someone I have never heard of has flagged a government contract award for contingency planning as something needing to be questioned. It was then picked up and run with by others as an ‘obvious’ sign that there are plans afoot for dealing with future events that indicate a government engaging in forward planning must mean that it has already planned something very sinister for us all.
The ‘truth’ for some, in this particular instance, has quickly pole-vaulted straight over the reality that central government, local government and many of the statutory organisations paid for by the taxpayer, that we see and experience in our lives each and every day, have to make plans for managing all sorts of eventualities. Just in case the worst events imaginable but nonetheless feasible should suddenly come into view.
The problem here, which illustrates the situation well, is that although this is a very specific suggested plan on the part of those tweeting and interpreting the information this way, what they are referring to is indeed a fixed government plan. And the fact that the government are indeed planning ahead for an operation or activity that could fit a range of different possibilities, that could of course include the one suggested, does nonetheless create the presence of truth – no matter how partial, fractional or ultimately inaccurate it may or may not turn out to be.
Whilst I tackled the topic of the dangers from self-fulfilling prophecies and todays false prophets a few days ago, the agents of change and however they got into that position are not themselves the message, answer, nor the outcome they might either suggest or lead so many of us to conclude.
The problem that we now have with messaging and narratives is that our castles of reality are being built upon the moving sands of weed covered fictions that look real because they are being deliberately or accidently sprinkled with expansive truths from whichever source we have decided we can trust.
That problem would be easier to tackle if this bogus reality was one that we could all agree upon and the question was as simple as shining a light on what’s really going on in every direction, which to all intents and purposes might be better labelled as being everyone’s inconvenient truths.
Unfortunately, it’s not.
With the wide and growing range of different truths that are being created and shared by different sources in every direction that we now look, the biggest challenge that anyone or rather that we all face, if we want to get back to being adults and tackling the real issues that need to be solved so that its ok for us all to relax and genuinely enjoy life, is that solving the problem of just one mistruth doesn’t solve any problem at all. Because there is an equally truthful take on the problem or answer walking up the algorithmic pathway right behind the one that is already knocking on our information gateway door.
There is an answer. But it really is an inconvenient truth that a lot of us aren’t going to like.
Each of us see the problems this country is facing from different points of view.
Whilst conversations about the crisis now unfolding with a range of different people would almost certainly deliver a range of common themes, the emphasis, value or meaning of each of them will almost certainly be different.
However, the one commonality, which isn’t about anything that we all have in common at all, would be the solutions that almost all of us will have based on our own world view, that in the bigger scheme of things, may be in no way similar at all.
Ironically, because so many of us have so many interpretations of the whys, hows and whats that have got us all here, and share them with what will be a relative few, we spend next to no time – if indeed any time at all, thinking about any of the common problems that we all really do share.
We certainly don’t think about the ways we can work together to create a better way of life for everyone and then how we get the leaders and mechanisms in place that will actually get us there.
The devil is in the detail
It really is no accident that the UK is in the kind of mess that it is. Because life has become so very complicated – and deliberately so.
The more detail, the more distracting and the more impossible a solution to just about anything might seem. Even to those amongst us who really can see that the status quo cannot continue and that no matter how bought into the things we like about the way we live – which we want to keep but don’t recognise that they are actually the part of the problem that’s making everything so impossible to fix – we really do need to snap out of the fixation with noise that’s doing none of us any good.
We must recognise that the things that work well for everyone and will work even better for everyone are much simpler than what we have been convinced we need.
It is inevitable that we will keep tripping ourselves up each and every time we think of the next step as being only about putting our own self-interest first.
Unfair, Unjust and Unworkable living, demonstrated best by Tax
Perhaps the best example of how we get lost and misdirected by the detail of what needs to change for us, rather than focusing on what needs to change so that it works for everyone, relates to the question of tax, taxation and everything else that means people like you and I are stumping up cash that we could often do with being able to spend, just so we can live without debt or in some cases rely on handouts or even food banks.
Yes, even framing the ‘tax issue’ this way will make some prickly – and that really is the point.
The UK Tax code is today thought to be over 21,000 pages and 10 million words long, giving everyone the distinct impression that the subject of how the bill for government action and delivery gets paid for (ostensibly on our behalf), needs to be tailored specially to everyone as if bespoke governance is the only kind of governance that’s really fair to everyone.
This is ‘The day when Britons stop paying tax and start putting their earnings into their own pocket’. Or alternatively, the final day of the year when every penny we’ve earned goes to the government – if we start counting on January 1st, which was this year (2025) calculated as being June 11th by the Adam Smith Institute.
The reason I’m using this figure isn’t to piss anyone off by drawing attention to the fact that as an average, we arguably all work for no other reason than to keep the wheels of government turning every year for at least 5 months.
I’m doing so because it may be the only way to look at the relationship all taxpayers have with the government in the same way. Given how easy it is to get sidetracked by the question of what everyone earns!
June 11th 2025 was the 162nd day of the year (as 2025 is not a leap year), and with 365 days in 2025, this means that in comparative terms, people are giving over 44% of their earnings (162 days divided by 365 days), before they can even begin to think about what they need to spend money on, in turn before anything that they might actually want.
For a moment, let’s forget the amount anyone is actually earning for themselves, as we know that some have considerably more than others, whilst many just don’t have anywhere near what it takes to live without struggling to make ends meet, and then take it as read that everyone is giving up 44 Pence in every Pound they earn (£0.44).
After realising just how much of everything we do have taken from wages and then what we pay for that includes some form of tax, it doesn’t take much to realise that government or rather the model of government that we have is simply unaffordable, unsustainable and that we must do everything we can to find a different and much better way to pay for the things that we share.
Regrettably, the complexity of rules and regulations supposedly there to benefit and protect us don’t stop at taxation.
One of the reasons that every part of life, that doesn’t already relate to the question of financial affordability in some way, seems so difficult or restricted, is because our freedoms and therefore our independence from the system and government are already being actively controlled in many different silent rules that have deliberately been put there using the excuses like health and safety, and protecting us or someone in some way.
Even if we aren’t actively being followed around by a police officer all the time the fact that we are aware of and abiding by these rules usually adds up to being the same.
Government isn’t what it should or was ever supposed to be
Whilst many would actually like to see the wealthiest in our society directly paying at least 44% of their income to the government to help run everything outside of our front doors, we still need to keep some perspective when it comes to the obvious question we will come back to in a moment about who pays and begin with the question, ‘Does government actually work?’
Government certainly functions. Even the deepest or most vocally critical of what government in the UK does will find it difficult to argue otherwise.
Because no matter the organisation or service that comes under the rather large umbrella of government, they all continue to do something. Even if they are not delivering what we might agree to be the correct results. And that’s the only reason it can be argued that it all works.
However, functioning and succeeding are not the same thing.
The time is long overdue that we all took a very hard and questioning look at every part of government and decided what, if anything, public services should or could be; just exactly where the scope and reach of government should end, and then and only then, what many believe to be the most important question of all, ‘How whatever government and the public sector does is paid for and by whom’.
Whilst it remains the case that there are services, infrastructure and even public facing roles that every modern society needs to be provided by the community, so that everyone can have universal experiences and opportunities which will always be the same, no matter who, where or what you are, the practical approach to not-for-profit service delivery – which this really should in almost all cases be, is not the same as the public sector and system of governance that we have today.
Every part of government and the public sector that we have today is focused on delivering (political) and therefore biased agendas which will inevitably advantage some people more than others in some way. Or is all about the jobs, terms and conditions for whoever the incumbent employees are who currently have the jobs.
There have always been politicians, officers and suppliers who for many reasons have chosen to advantage themselves in some way, if and where they failed to have the integrity to exercise their roles properly. And regrettably, it’s the position of trust we gave them all that enabled them to behave in such questionable ways.
Yet even more shocking reality that we all face today is that the whole public sector and everything that runs within it is now dysfunctional in terms of delivery in some of the most critical ways.
It has only been able to become this way because decisions have either been made (or not made) at the very top by people who really should have known better, and whose actions have allowed or facilitated everything that serves the public unwinding in this way.
Money before People
Regrettably, like so many areas of life today, the role of money – which stretches far beyond the scope of the tax question that we’ve already considered – is also the key element within the dysfunctionality of government and public services across the UK. Because the poor leaders that we have are obsessed with the idea that the only way any problem can and will be fixed is by having enough money to spend – no matter where it comes from, which is itself is these days even better for some politicians who dare not do anything which could restrict what they are already committed to spend.
Idealism and agendas cost a lot of money. Because their implementation requires the creation of systems, rules and infrastructure somebody wants but nobody needs.
The very perverse outcome from decades of government and the public sector serving itself, its people and whoever or whatever influences them, is that the changes that have been made in every way imaginable to support this are now costing too much for either the Taxpayer or government itself to sustain.
We have a VERY BIG problem. Because nobody in government or who wishes to form one either can or will be honest about the true depth and breadth of the mess that the UK is now in.
With Tax rises thought to be well on their way this coming Autumn, the reality that too many of us face is the 44% (or probably much more) that we are already contributing to this public sector black hole through so many of the things that we buy, pay for or earn, are set to keep going up.
All to cover the exploding costs of incompetence, waste and the furtherance of playing up to what are very dangerous egos. Because somewhere in amongst all of this the point has been lost that government does not and never did have the right to exist over the people that it was created to represent.
For any kind of government to be unrepresentative of the people it represents, would by its very nature and intended purpose mean that it represents someone or something else.
Money: The drug wrecking everything to enrich and empower the few
The way that money actually works, how it is controlled and worst but not least, how it is actually created at will, is the truth that sits behind everything bad, that few of us will willingly believe.
It’s much easier to believe that it is all good rather than even having the potential to be bad – even when almost everyone can see the destruction that money or the lack of it is causing to everyone in some way or form.
At the heart of the money tree and its root and branch system sits the mechanisms that supposedly fund government, but actually do so by doing everything to help grow the volume of money that is in circulation, so that the public spending – and the only way that politicians know how to get themselves out of trouble, can leverage ‘growth’ so that the entire shitshow can be hid.
Unfortunately for all of us, the exponential growth of the ‘money’ that has entered circulation, particularly since the responses of government to the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 and the Covid Pandemic of 2020, has wildly contributed to the inflationary spiral that accompanies such an expansion of available cash.
The creation of money that doesn’t relate to anything else like productivity or output devalues the money and incomes that normal people already have, as well as what they have the ability to earn.
It does so at breakneck speed whilst the real value of everything is funnelled towards those who control and benefit from what is a fully legal, legitimised but nevertheless completely corrupt system that appears real, because they have typically become millionaires and billionaires in the process.
Put simply, the lowest paid and most vulnerable now have zero chance of ever being able to earn enough to live independently of benefits, charity, debt or worse.
For as long as the money madness continues, the bubble containing all of those who are branded as being a drain on the system will rapidly continue to expand.
The leadership void or black hole
When a country has such shit, incompetent leadership, and has done for the period of time that the UK has, it wouldn’t be unfair for any of us to be asking, ‘How did we get them?’ and ‘How did they get to where they are?’.
However, as we all need to realise, very few of us do ask these questions or indeed any questions that are like them. And because we don’t, each time an election takes place locally or nationally, we are, as a majority, making the same mistakes over and over again.
We are chewing at the very same shit sandwich with the bits just wrapped differently with words, rosettes and faces – all hiding the same miserable self-interested and dangerously incompetent content that always delivers outcomes that are the same.
Because we have a very bad, self-destructive habit of going along with the idea that the political fairies come along and give us all a genuine choice at election time – as all good democracies surely would, we have not only accepted that government after government and council after council has worked on all of our behalf. We have also jumped into an elephant trap of our own making that tells us these same fairies will deliver the politicians to choose from at the next election, who will sort out and solve the very same mess that they and their own kind created (with a little help from their friends) in the first place.
Sadly, there are no exceptions to the reality that we must face that there are no real leaders in politics today.
The so-called leadership we see, and what the people we identify as leaders say, is much more likely to be aligned with us hearing and seeing whatever we need to fuel our own confirmation biases than it either is or ever will be about the solutions and outcomes that we might not be ready to hear about, but nonetheless actually need.
Victim or Victimiser: There is no longer an in between
As a society and culture, we are collectively suffering what might be the worst type of addiction of all. Simply because it is majority of us are addicted rather than the few.
Meaning that that same majority is completely out of touch with the realities of what that addiction does and will remain so, until the supply runs out – which is where all those who cannot afford to live independently within the current system have or are beginning to find out.
Money, or rather the way that money is used by those who control the system – and that means government and politicians, who are very much under their control too, has become the key factor in every equation and consideration in our lives.
The role of money and its reach has dehumanised everything to the point where money and the power, influence and control it is perceived to give at every level of life has become more important than the value of life and community itself.
Few realise just how their lives are completely at the mercy of the ability to spend, borrow and achieve the momentary of transitory hit that this money centric, Moneyocracy we inhabit demands of everyone and which is enforced by the barrage of non stop marketing and remote, typical digital pressure which comes at us constantly and demands that we all conform.
Money; what it does, what it can do and what it says about you is the qualification and gatekeeper that runs through every part of functional life and if you are in, you are in and if you are out, you really are all the way out and fully at the mercy of those who continue to be ‘in’.
The tragedy of the system is the ruthless and methodical way that human behaviour has been used against the masses by the few and the experts they pay who understand it.
The sweeties and trinkets that have been flowing towards for decades have only been bettered by what has appeared to be the endless ability to secure more and more credit to buy it with, all the time becoming more and more essential to secure as real earnings and wealth have been stripped by the printing of all this extra ‘pretend’ or non existent money that even relatively wealthy people have no chance of keeping up with.
The irony is that those of us who continue to believe we benefit from what the establishment is doing and therefore acquiesce or go along with it are – through our actions – making those who cannot the victims.
All for no better reason than this whole situation could not exist without the elites treating the masses as a resource that is not real. But is instead just like oil, coal, precious metals, forests, farms, land and even animals – and just something else for those who ‘own them’ to exploit.
We all need to contribute to what we share in life. But real life cannot continue if we are required to contribute everything we have
Whilst we must all accept it is correct for everyone to contribute to the upkeep and maintenance of the systems and infrastructure that serve us all, from the moment we step onto the pavement or road outside of our homes, what we share is not and never should become more important than the right to have a fully independent, functioning and self supported life experience.
The system that we have discussed is at breaking point and cannot continue as it has, or as it is today.
Those in charge don’t know how to do anything other than borrow or tax us. And as the system can no longer sustain the borrowing that idealism and agendas have made necessary, the current government are now looking at everything they can tax beyond everything they already do.
One way or another, the system is going to collapse. Because we are all living unsustainably in a system that itself is unsustainable and at the centre of which is a plague which is the absence of real leadership, replaced with what is instead no better than incompetent management that makes it the most unsustainable part of it all.
Real life and a money-centric economy are mutually exclusive outcomes
Government already costs us way too much – even at 44%.
That’s before we even begin to consider the work and additional value to public service that charities and other nonprofit organisations bring, that we are all in one way or another contributing to too.
The whole model of economics needs to be restructured and redeveloped so that it supports life, rather than feeding off it like the giant parasite that the financial system and the role that government plays in it now is.
A realistic level for everyone to contribute to ‘the community’ would be around 10% – without any form of exception for anyone.
We should also be considering the added requirement that everyone able to work also contributes the equivalent of 10% of their working time and the skills and experience they offer, to help make our communities, their governance and infrastructure work.
Thereby creating real buy-in and ownership for what we all share, whilst drastically cutting the scope and influence of an out-of-control sector, and the ballooning costs that are actually paying for lots of agendas snd idealistic ideas, but very little that is actually about people and certainly nothing that’s doing everyone equally any good.
The identity, qualification and process of finding good leaders
Good public leaders, public representatives and public servants, would not facilitate or contribute to the creation, implementation and furtherance of agendas, ideologies and idealism that doesn’t serve the genuine best interests of those who they have been elected, appointed or recruited to serve.
Yet we have been experiencing decades of exactly that. And we have no hope that this will change if we continue to rely on a system that needs to change giving us the leaders who will then do the right thing when it comes to the delivery of that change.
Contrary to accepted thought, we do not need money to play the role across society that it has been deliberately engineered to do.
Power and control are certainly not a gift that should be secured within the hands of a distant, faceless, unanswerable few who we will never meet and whether intended or not, are treating humanity as a resource and no better than a numbers game that they can do with as they like. All as if they are now, as the result of decades of manipulating the system and bending it to their will, the new gods of everything with everyone else’s destiny theirs and only theirs to decide.
The truth that few see is that the centralisation and push for remote control of everything that globalisation and everything that walks alongside it has been, has been the active and complete restructuring of our society and culture, so that nothing can or will work without the say so and direction of those who make all the decisions.
None of this was accidental. Locality, local relationships, local businesses, local supply chains, local decision making and everything that goes with it promotes sovereignty and independence. It encourages and grows a living environment and cultural model that is good for everyone other than those who want to advantage themselves and be in power or control.
Meanwhile, the downsides of centralisation and everything that goes with it are the for every one of us to see.
However, despite the various attempts, compelling rhetoric and highly credible narratives that work so well when playing up to the addiction for material living that we currently have, there is an alternative and much better alternative to running life and everything that we and our communities need. And the real upside of this real alternative is that it centres completely around putting normal people and our local communities back in control.
The fact that generations of political leaders and those they favour or are influenced by have misused and abused their position to create a system with faux legitimacy – simply by legalising immorality to make it appear moral and therefore unquestionable, doesn’t make it right. And it certainly doesn’t become right, just because those in power today continue to insist and behave as if it is so.
We have a legitimate right to hold power and control over our own destiny.
The power of collective decision making should sit as part of a new structure of governance within our communities, amongst people and representatives who we ourselves select and know we can trust.
A moral obligation arguably also exists to reset the entire system and the various devices such as money and the tools of governance the existing system uses, so that we once again bring the focus of everything in life back to people, to humanity and to creating the best kind of environment that we can to ensure that every person has the life experience that everyone – and not just a selective few should have.
However, nobody else will step up or step in to do this for us – no matter how compelling or necessary this might seem.
Whether addicted or not, the choice and the steps necessary to return power to people and to our communities, and with it the creation of a genuine democracy we can all trust and believe in, are ours and only ours to take.
Nobody in the public sphere today can or will do this. None of them will give us back the influence that is rightly ours. Because they all imagine themselves as leaders who can only lead by having absolute control over everyone and everything else.
We don’t have a roadmap agreed for the future.
But there are plenty of ideas we can share about the outcomes that will serve all of us equally well and in a balanced, fair and just way.
This is where the conversation should start.
The one thing we can be sure of is that real leaders do actually lead. But also know that it is real equality, balance, fairness and justice that applies equally to everyone where the pathway to everything good for everyone really starts.
Watching the continuing bewilderment, frustration, fear and anger from so many across the UK farming community is not easy.
But the real difficulty for someone like me isn’t the wholly avoidable tragedies that are part of the much bigger engineered tragedy that is unfolding.
It is the reality that we cannot do a thing about what is happening, and why it is happening, until many more of us, and not least of all people from within farming and its related industries, begin to accept that what we are seeing, experiencing and increasingly becoming victims to, bears no relationship with our reasoned expectations of government and governance. But is instead being driven by a different set of truths that are very difficult to accept.
Whilst many within the farming industry may feel that you can only understand and relate to the turmoil that this one change in public policy has caused, if you are a farmer and have obvious skin in the game yourself, the action taken by the government and its failure to respond to months of concern, in any way which makes sense, is far from being isolated. Not least of all because the Tax that could be raised by the policy is in public spending terms trivial and was never what the change was really about.
Indeed, what appears to just be a nasty attack on ‘rich farmers’, was, is and will continue to be all about food and the independence that locally controlled food production gives us. It’s this that should be concerning us all more than anything.
It is vitally important for anyone who wants to address the real issues that UK food production faces to stop and look beyond the question of Farmers IHT itself.
To begin understanding how the bigger and deliberately complicated picture works, we all need to see how the IHT policy didn’t arrive in isolation. But was in fact just the next step in a long and calculated chain of policy changes and their implementation, which have been reforming, remodelling and slowly strangling, if not killing off all parts of UK food production for a period that now exceeds 50 years.
We should be under no illusion that the Farm Inheritance Tax Policy is part of a much bigger strategy and plan. One that places the end of independent farming and food production of all kinds across the UK at its very heart.
So those who wish to have control over everything – including people and how we are allowed to live and behave – want to secure complete control of the food chain. Simply because of the absolute control that it will shortly allow them to impose, if the status quo continues, unopposed.
The last thing an establishment already struggling to hide its totalitarian and authoritarian plans for the future wants, is for anyone or any business to exist that can provide any person or any community with the independence that could very quickly derail and wreck everything they aim to do.
Whilst this malfeasant but cleverly legitimised strategy is being slowly but very surely implemented across every area of life today to restrict freedoms, including just about every rule that’s meant to create safety and switch to digital and online alternatives to ‘real life’ that there is, there are none that have quite the same level of potential impact on all of us as food and the supply of it.
Many of those farming smaller, ‘family sized farms’ or rather farm businesses that lie outside of corporate control, understandably perceive a specialised business landscape that cannot exist without subsidies, commercial contracts and the revival of the golden egg – which is a fair income from whatever they produce.
However, contrary to the accepted narrative that tells us ‘This is just how things work’ or this is where ‘progress’ has taken food production in the 21st century, the truth that we all have to wrestle with a very serious paradox indeed, namely:
The only business sector that can genuinely provide UK Food Security, and with it the freshest, most nutritious, healthiest, most cost-effective food supply, that every person’s body across the UK needs at least twice daily is unable to provide the producers with a viable, unsupported or independent income.
Truly, the idea that growing the food that we genuinely need is not possible, can only begin to make sense when we accept that the whole problem has been created for farmers (and consumers), so that specific interests can be advantaged above others and that this was the deliberate choice of whoever has and is now controlling the levers of government.
Far from being the anachronism that many of today’s two-faced politicians would like voters to believe, small independent family farms are the future of food as a part of a great future for us and for our communities.
The relatively easy to solve problem for farmers and consumers that really is a very big concern of the establishment, is the threat that we will rediscover the legitimacy of food independence, whilst realising that we don’t need centralised power structures and business models to thrive and have much better life experiences on our own.
It’s this that the establishment really doesn’t like and is quietly terrified of.
All the rules that have slowly choked small farmers out of business, following policy change after policy change, heralded by Trojan horses like the Common Agricultural Policy, and bureaucratic initiatives that have cascaded down into practical business operations in ways that have made support industries like abattoirs unviable, through health, environmental and quality rules, have all been created with long term outcomes in mind.
Policy after policy has been created, changed and implemented that have at best been intended to redirect and at worst destroy businesses that could have and still could adapt to the needs that people genuinely have for food. Needs that could otherwise already be being fully met by functioning and supported UK food producers, rather than what is left of UK food producing industries being the victims of engineered circumstances that tell everyone they are unnecessary and are therefore done.
Whilst even now, many reading this essay may well scoff at what I am sharing, I’m afraid that the evidence of all this is now beginning to shout very loudly as it emerges into public view at breakneck speed.
To be fair, it certainly defies the logic and expectations of so many of us, who have always believed that we could trust public representatives to actually do what’s best for us.
Dealing with this problem should be as simple as getting politicians to change their minds. Perhaps do a U-turn. Or even waiting until the next government comes in behind just the latest in a long line who everyone believes to be solely responsible for wrecking everything today.
But it’s not as simple as that in any kind of way.
Government and politics no longer work anything like we expect them to. Or in any way as they should.
With many of the politicians we can publicly identify being incapable of leading as they should and they themselves being wholly reliant upon the advice and direction of many other people and influencers who are both considered to be ‘experts’ (in what?!) and who we are unlikely to ever know of, we have to begin to understand that what and why the politicians we have are doing what they are doing may actually be for reasons that may be very different to what we expect.
Even then, if we knew what the politicians honestly believe, the genuine purpose or truth behind what they are being advised or directed to do may not even then be something that they themselves would easily believe.
Regrettably and rather worryingly, the establishment and any political party, group or movement that is aligned with the establishment, rather than the people and what remain of al independent businesses themselves, will not change the direction of travel of any of this, until they either succeed or their plans are stopped.
This means that to reshape and redirect UK food production, farmers, growers and fishers must themselves voluntarily step away from the reliance and expectation historically placed upon the establishment as well as those who wish to become part of it.
Food producers must take all steps necessary to develop a new, direct relationship with the public and therefore go it alone.
Regrettably, the alternative is to keep shouting whilst continuing to accept the status quo, whilst in effect sitting back and watching as UK food production and everything that still remains able to provide us with genuine freedom is destroyed, right up to the point that traditional, ‘natural’ farming and food growing practices no longer exist, and people will never be able to function independently and away from the control of the establishment ever again.
Critical thinking – or perhaps the significant absence of it in a world that has been taken over by a constant barrage of data from information technology, is a skill for life that could easily have stopped us all from reaching the point the U.K. is now at – had we all been using it and continued to use it throughout our adult lives.
Yes, the simple act of asking questions about anything and everything that you don’t already know or genuinely trust to be true, instead of trusting any source that doesn’t actually have direct human interaction involved, has become a critical contributor to every problem that the Country has.
Pretty much none of us have been policing the opportunity to make decisions about our lives and the people who affect them which now come at us in a near ceaseless flow.
This isn’t to say or suggest that we aren’t using filters of our own. Indeed many of us are.
But the filters we use are created, shaped and modified based upon whatever it is that we at any particular moment believe.
It is these beliefs themselves, which are too often formed by the conclusions we make about the data we consume. Data that we rarely seem to bother checking, especially when it has come from a remote source that we have only found reason to agree with or like.
Coming to the place where we can understand or comprehend just how much power we genuinely have in everything we do, based upon the decision or choice to consider everything we are told, differently, to how we have done or currently do so, is no little thing.
What is more, the fact that so many of us already believe that we are thinking differently, when it is only our filters that have actually changed, means that the ‘awakening’ that so many believe to be now underway, is likely to be nothing of the sort. Just a different pathway that’s going to lead to much more of the same chaos, perhaps even more quickly than what we have already experienced before.
Acting on fear usually makes the outcome we fear more likely
Whilst the world runs upon fear at levels which some will spend entire lifetimes without feeling the need to contemplate, the irrationality of fear mongering through electronic and remote mediums that we fail to question, is disproportionate to what we would walk away with if the same stories could only come from sources or rather people that we interact with in our day to day lives.
People and news orgs with platforms, numbers of followers, subscribers and likes that give them the benefit of remote credibility are sensationalising everything more now than ever before, just to generate clicks that will lead to those numbers continually going up, when those numbers are what most of us look for when we make a cursory decision that lets us ‘know’ the source is something we can trust.
So when we willingly believe the sources online and unquestionably trust the information coming to us from whichever direction we have lowered our drawbridge, and then the only message that comes at us is one that promotes desperation and fear, we are all becoming increasingly susceptible to the creation of a self-fulfilling prophecy, because we are responding to a problem or level of problems that don’t actually exist.
The absence of real Leadership
People and public figures that we might previously have been able to trust are themselves very afraid and in many cases have no idea how to act.
This means that otherwise non-existent realities that those battling their own fears, following their own agendas and those of the platforms that share them, are spreading compelling narratives without any real understanding or cognisance of the implications or likely consequences of what they are doing, and what the fear that wouldn’t exist without them, is well on the way to delivering.
This is not to say that the UK isn’t in a very difficult place. Because it is.
But it is also vitally important to recognise that the UK is currently sat within a very dangerous situation that is getting progressively worse and will continue to do so, until we have leaders or lead ourselves through change which rejects the key pillars and shibboleths of this highly destructive status quo.
The Law of Unexpected Consequences is currently running everything
We are at a crossroads or fork where choices that we are making or refusing to make could end up taking us all towards outcomes that are poles apart.
The fear that all streams of media are now generating is causing many to want to run away. And when we are running – or thinking in that way, it means that we are indulging irrational fears, rather than questioning them or more importantly the validity of whatever is triggering them.
When we are running and hiding, we are not thinking, and we can and will only contribute to the growing mess.
Indeed, we may be about to condemn ourselves to unnecessarily experiencing a very dark place with implications for our own future – just because we took at face value whatever took us there in the first place.
It’s time to be objective
There is a very broad context to consider. However, the breadth is necessary because so many of us who see the world differently, believe different things and apply that understanding with very different filters.
We are all contributing to the growing mess that is building throughout all parts of society. Because we all believe that the positions that we currently have on everything are exclusively right.
Today, the left blames everything on the right and the right blames everything on the left in what seems like an endless focus on amplifying everything that’s either not-normal, or is massively wrong.
Meanwhile, there is not even the merest hint of acknowledging the real causes of all the problems, and certainly no time for leaders to actually try leading and begin suggesting what needs to change – no matter how hard it may be – so that we can all begin to experience a world where everything is going right for everyone and not just the few.
This is now a 360-degree problem
The political and therefore the leadership problem we are facing is that the alternatives to everything and everyone in politics that are already accepted as wrong are not alternatives at all.
We are literally plagued in every direction by False Prophets using fear to push everyone who isn’t questioning everything they say, and why they are saying it, towards their cause. No matter how similar and potentially worse than what we are already experiencing it might be.
To be clear, nothing is as it seems right now. This is an equation that works ALL ways.
Some problems, like the economic picture, the state of our political system and the motivations and influences on power are considerably worse than we might like to believe.
Whereas the realities that underpin so many of the things that we are fearful of are not anyway near as threatening as they appear.
They will only become so, if the responsibility for dealing with them is left either in the hands of those who are controlling them today, or under those who protest that they and only they have the solutions that will sort them all out – all too often presented with a very simplistic and therefore unexplained view of what they would actually do.
For as long as people refuse to take back the power they actually have, a very discombobulated reality we must also face is that any of the leaders and political parties that we currently have, could change direction and begin to do what’s genuinely good and right for all of us, at any time.
However, as time and opportunity has demonstrated time and again, they will not.
Until we accept responsibility and become accountable, we will be damned by every outcome
The uncomfortable truth that few will face up to is that the wrong choice and making the wrong choice, because it’s the only choice, is still the wrong choice – even when it may seem to be better than what we have to choose from or than whatever we have experienced before.
All of the political parties that we can choose from are completely under the sway and direction of establishment power and views, and will inevitably maintain the status quo, which is on a trajectory that can only see everything getting worse.
It will not take anyone who chooses to employ their own skill of critical thinking and the analysis that soon accompanies it to see that once the realities that accompany the rhetoric have been investigated, there is really very little to detect any difference between the motives and directions of all of our elected politicians or those who wish to be elected that will differentiate them to the degree that they are capable of delivering outcomes that are so markedly different that we will be able to tell them apart.
Yet there isn’t any problem the UK faces that cannot genuinely be solved, if there is the will and capability of leadership to do all that will be necessary to address the problems at their root or cause.
Unfortunately, instead of leaders, we have an entire political class filled with glory seeking middle managers who believe that success is measured only through the possession of power.
Adam Tugwell 