As both a dog walker and volunteer managing an online community picture and video journal for a local hill in Gloucestershire, one of my pet peeves is other dog owners picking up and bagging the poo from their pets, but then attaching the tied bags to a fence, tree branch or similar, or just tossing them on the ground and leaving them behind.

THERE IS NO POO BAG FAIRY!

We probably aren’t grateful enough that local council employees already empty dog bins that are often filled to overflowing.

But for some of us to then believe that our responsibility to clear up after our own pets in a public place or in the countryside stops as soon as it’s bagged and tied is as irresponsible as it is rude and inconsiderate to others and to the area.

Animals do pick these bags up and farmers have lost livestock that have eaten discarded poo bags in fields where they can reach and pick them up.  

As local authorities are only likely to pick up full poo bags as part of a litter pick on the rare occasion they have the resources to make these happen, it is left to community spirited walkers to pick these bags up and walk them to the nearest bin – as the owners should have done in the first place.

Because of the way that social media works, pictures are usually the best way to make a point.

Now that we have AI image generators, I thought I would give this one a try and see what happens.

I don’t know about you, but I think picturing the myth of the poo bag fairy turned out rather well!!!

Every societal problem that this country has, alludes to ways of being, to laws, regulations, public policies and the actions or activities of politicians who have either allowed or encouraged these problems to exist.

These problems are often just accepted as the causes of the problems that we face, in themselves.

Yet the problems that we see are in many cases only the effects of other problems and the real causes of those problems are hidden from view and treated as if they don’t even exist.

The solutions that politicians do come up with fail, because they rarely, if ever, address the real cause.

With the complexity of interconnectedness that exists between every area of public policy, the failure of politicians to address one problem because they’ve used nothing better than a sticky plaster to ‘fix’ it just leads to other problems developing, that successive parliaments and politicians then just attempt to fix in exactly the same way.

Imagine a big ball of used plasters that incompetent politicians just keep kicking down the road and you will have a good idea of what real problems mean to them.

We are in the mess that we are in now, because the effect of one problem has been addressed as if it’s the cause, leading to another problem or more effects of that problem which have then been treated the same. Meanwhile, all the time this has been happening, nobody has ever dealt with the real or root cause.

If we want things to change, we must elect public representatives who understand this and will take the risks necessary to fix all the causes of the problems that society faces – no matter who or what interests are involved, and how resistant they will be to changes that will be fair to all and ultimately benefit everyone.

Image created using Microsoft Designer

What is it that is common to all the things that are happening around us?

What is it that influences everything in life without most of us even being aware?

What is it that really sits outside of us that has fooled us into living our lives in a way that has been conditioned to benefit others, whilst making us all believe that the decisions, we make have always remained our own to define?

The commonality that flows between everything and everyone in this world today is money.

Everyone and everything is connected by the creation of money, its accumulation, its worship.

Life as we know it is run by a money-based system that has conditioned us all to believe that the value of everything in life can be determined by what somebody has, where somebody lives, what somebody earns, what somebody owns.

What few of us realise is that we have all been enslaved by a money-based system. A culture that has affected us all so deeply, it has even taken over the way that we all think.

Obsessed as we are with the money-focused world, even the most intelligent of our economists and academics will not accept that the world is able to function in any other way.

Even though many have already or will quietly admit that they cannot see where the growing crisis will end, the establishment still refuses to question the belief that whatever happens next or whatever the world may look like in the future, it will continue to be money-centric.

The alternative truth that even the greenest, socialist, new-worldish of our communities cannot reconcile is that an economy doesn’t have to be all about money or even based on money for that economy to be successful, or even to exist.

Money is the lifeblood of the system we have today. Because the value of money is the only way that anything is now valued and is therefore accepted as being relevant to everything.

This is how our belief system has been encouraged to work by people who benefit from us all thinking that way.

Our beliefs shape our priorities and form the basis upon which all our assumptions and our entire value set is constructed.

Changing that value set all begins very close to home.

Firstly, it’s about the way that we think and thinking the right way.

Secondly it is then about doing everything the right way in the world outside of ourselves that we can see and interact with, without digital or remote contact.

Meaningful change will therefore be about locality and community.

It’s just not all that easy to see, today.

Neoliberalism perpetrates the myth that egalitarian living will be achieved by letting the ‘knowing few’ running big businesses, banking, finance and the markets run riot with minimum restraint.

The biggest part of the lie is the suggestion that by allowing private interests to control everything through the removal of regulations, the creation of rules that help them, their own interpretation of any rules and the subsequent abuse of a broken legal system to enforce them, everyone and the public good will be truly well-served.

However, the truth that we are now experiencing is that by deregulating markets and financial activity to the extent that has already taken place, the power that should be in the hands of legislators and policy makers on behalf of us all, has been passed to private interests whose priority is greed, profit and not the public interest in any way.

They haven’t finished. The extension and growth of Neoliberalism is dependent upon reducing the reach and impact of government at every level.

It doesn’t matter what process is followed or becomes necessary for the Neoliberal outcome to be achieved.

Smaller government is a key Neoliberalist aim because the less government there is, the more power and influence will have been transferred into private hands.

The outcomes for the people who need good governance most of all can only get worse under the Neoliberal view of smaller government, as it will be impossible for even the status quo to be maintained.

This blog is an expcert from Days of Ends and New Beginnings, published on Amazon for Kindle, April 2024. Please click the link below for more details: