To some, Food Security would be the radio tags that supermarkets now attach to high value or vulnerable food items in stores where they are regularly taken without payment.

That it has become normal to focus on the overtly criminal act of theft, rather than the realities of a cost-of-living crisis where many people cannot afford to eat well, today, is bad enough.

But to overlook the reality that Food Security is the biggest, most pressing and bizarrely unspoken question that surrounds the UK’s dwindling self-sufficiency is in a different league all together.

The travesty doesn’t stop there. The farmers see it and are doing what they believe they need to.

But like everyone who believes that change happens when you convince the government and politicians that your argument is right, the farming industry is failing to reflect on experiences that make it clear that we have all been here with the political classes before.

Food security is the UKs ability to feed itself. It’s the condition, the reliability and the robustness of our own circular supply chain at local and national level that includes the foods that we grow, process, prepare and provide for ourselves or our own people.

Food Security represents the food-supply that the UK provides itself with, without any other country, international supply chain or other third party being involved. And what the reader may not realise is that current figures suggest that the amount of the food we eat in this country that is produced in this way through our own UK supply chains may now be as low as 50%.

All well and good, and there’s nothing to worry about if you can rely on the food that comes not only from Europe, but from across the world always being available and arriving on our supermarket shelves and at our doorsteps just in time.

But we can’t.

The fragility of global supply chains was laid bare for all to see by the government response to the Covid Pandemic and the paradoxical situation where politicians shut everyone up in their houses and still expected everything else to work as normal.

Those who are so heavily invested in globalisation and the monetary and economic system that they have profited from, are literally throwing everything they have at keeping the economic wheels turning to the point where the catastrophic damage that decades of financial mismanagement have caused is now plain to see, but everything appears to keep running while fuelling the expectation that they always will.

The explosively excessive printing of money should have imploded our economic system long before now. Anyone prepared to take a closer look at what is really going on, will soon see that economic and monetary stability is already hanging by a thread.

Those printing the cash could easily continue to keep flooding the economy with more and more monopoly money, until the hyperinflation that we can now expect kicks in.

However, the whole demise of this crooked way of managing and interfering with every part of our lives so that the few can continue to get rich may be about to hear the final bell called. If, as expected, the BRICS Nations launch their own gold-backed currency in just under two weeks’ time and FIAT Money such as the US Dollar, The Euro and our very own British Pound go into freefall, making the cost of everything – IF we can even get it – go into orbit.

Like the majority of us, Farmers do not have the true depth of our political talent weighed up for what it genuinely is. Just as they don’t understand how the public sector and everything that the tentacles of public policy and government touches, actually works.

Indeed, the ideas or expectations Farmers have of what politicians and public servants are in office for is quite correct in terms of what they should do. The now critical problem for us all, is that the Politicians, and those who would enthusiastically replace them, do not do as they should.

For now, that’s as much as it is worth saying on how we got here, and where ‘here’ really is.

Calling our Food Security or our Food Supply situation a ticking time bomb sounds dramatic. But it may well turn out to be far worse than it already sounds.

The stark reality we face is that even with the UK producing as much as 60% of our food – with much of that production currently geared to supplying large-scale food production and processing, rather than the production and supply of the daily essentials that each and every one of us need to live – the fragility of our food supply should be red faced and screaming at any politician who is genuinely there to represent the public good, telling them all they need to know about what will happen if an event should occur that effectively pulls the international food supply chain plug – or rather the rug, from under us.

Either way, on the current trajectory, we will reach this unspeakable destination, just through the progress that accompanies time.

Because we don’t have politicians who see any of this, accept this, and are prepared to act to deal with this, the UK is now dangerously exposed and vulnerable to critical food shortages.

With these same people in charge, as we have experienced with their response to the covid pandemic before, it is a safe bet that when the food crisis reaches our front doors, our decision makers will be primed to make a potentially catastrophic situation exponentially worse.

Today’s politicians don’t solve problems with the right solutions. They hide them with the easy ones.

If the UK’s external food supply collapses, the SPADS, advisors and civil servants in Westminster will take one look at the threat of hungry people taking to the streets and will conclude that UK self-sufficiency isn’t viable because nothing is in place. That it would take too long, will be too hard and will therefore be too risky to trust farmers and people to grow food for themselves, and that they will just have to pay someone else and prostitute the UK to outside interests. Rather than dig in and get everyone to start doing their bit for home production – just as our grandparents and great grandparents did without getting in a flap, when everyone had to before.

Farmers are some of the most creative and successful entrepreneurs that exist. There is no reason to doubt that if they were minded to do so, farmers, growers, fisheries and all their allied sectors across the UK could quickly reach and then go beyond a subsistence supply level for the whole Country, based on very local and highly transparent supply chains.

However, farmers are also some of the most damaged victims of the mind games, propaganda and deliberate measures taken to destroy the UKs self-sufficiency and industrial output that was forced upon us through the offshoot of globalisation that we have come to know as the EU.

Decades of subsidies, quotas and micromanagement rules ruined hundreds if not thousands of viable farming and growing businesses. They have conditioned today’s up and coming farming generations to believe that hand-outs accompanied by specific directives are ‘normal’ and are all that they can expect.

However we look at it, the Farming industry and its representatives still believe that the government and our politicians will eventually respond to the Food Security crisis that lies in front of us, in the way that they themselves see it. And that Westminster will come running with the public chequebook when they do.

But they wont.

And that isn’t going to change whilst we have the politicians that we have and know as the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats or indeed any of the pretenders who are outside of Parliament awaiting their chance – but think and behave just like all the rest.

The solution isn’t going to come from any politician.

The solution to the UK Food Supply and Food Security problem must come from within.

It’s our farmers that have to break through the perceptual barriers that currently encage them. They must do what they are best at, get on with the job that already waiting to go, and let the political classes catch up probably long after they begin.

I’ve written a whole series of books that focus on localism and how the focus of power must be brought back to local communities and for decisions that affect our daily lives to be made as close to us as possible and by people who we know and can trust.

The problem that I have faced throughout, is that when talking about anything in a broader or national sense, it quickly becomes as abstract as national politics and national news streams are, even though that’s how we often judge important things to be.

The problem is real life and what is important to us isn’t abstract. In fact, the real things that are important and all the things that can have the biggest impact upon everything that is happening to us are not abstract and very specific indeed. But we have somehow allowed the abstract to influence all of our specific choices.

With AI and technologies now forcing their way into our digital lives, with consequences that will make real life feel so much easier, whilst teaching us to forget how making decisions for ourselves and even learning new things, the choice between being led by an abstract world where the real influences are never seen or understood, or taking back control and regaining conscious choice in everything that we do has never been such an easy one, whilst also being impossibly hard.

Yet the damage of centralisation, globalisation and of allowing decisions that affect everyone to be made by people who are unlikely to ever visit the Towns and Villages in which we live, or have reason to understand the things that are happening in our streets and neighbourhoods, are very easy for us to see in the news every night.

People who have zero understanding of the consequences and impact of the policies they write, for every reason other than those that they should be, are condemning increasing numbers of People to harder and more challenging lives. They then go on to blame the People whose lives they are wrecking for the problems that their own ignorance and incompetence have caused.

A genuinely self-sufficient and fully localised system of public services and the governance that underpins the systems and processes that affect and impact daily lives, would not be in danger of being abused or mismanaged in this way.

Indeed, the only way that we will be able to create a genuinely level playing field of opportunity and a public or community sector that works in the way that it should for everyone, will be for the full balance of power, influence and decision making to be brought back to the People and local communities.

Power must be administered openly, transparently and without any bias in the way that it always should. This can only be achivieved within a circuit or within the dynamics of a relationship where everyone playing a part is both accessible and known.

The most simple way to explain the change of focus from where it is today (Global, Central, European etc) to where it should be (Local, Community etc), is to think of it as being a switch from a values set based on money, profit and the accumulation of power and wealth, to the alternative values set which is focused on People, humanity and what we genuinely need for everyone to be happy, healthy, secure and safe.

Localism isn’t rocket science. But it certainly meets with a lot of resistance when the true depth and scope of what it means are openly discussed. Because for many who do so well out of exploiting others (whether they are aware of it or not), localism represents what they believe to be a loss.

Sadly, because the Establishment know and understand that local communities are where the power of the people and everything that supports us should be, they frequently pay lip service to the principle, but as in the case of New Labour’s ‘Devolution’ from the 1997 General Election on, and then the Cameron Conservatives ‘Localism’ in the years that have followed since 2010, the type of localism and the return of power to local people that politicians from all sides having been selling us, all add up to no such thing.

We face a challenging, but achievable course of action, that requires us, our communities, charities and businesses to by-pass the Establishment and begin putting localism into everything we do and are motivated by, if we genuinely want to solve all of the societal problems that not only our communities, but the Country and the whole world faces.

Every one of us has a choice. We can take control of our lives. Or we can let life be something that happens to us.

Right now, the chances are that you believe you are in control of your life. But who decides how everything in your life is valued? Who decides what is wrong and what is right? Who decides if your life will be something that you can still afford – perhaps in just a few short months?

You get the picture and I do not need to spell out the obvious.

All I need to say is that when any decision or action is taken that influences any of the things that will have a direct effect on your life, not only today but for the foreseeable future, you can rest assured that it will not be happening with what’s best for you, for your friends, family and the people you love in mind.

Shouting about the injustice of all this won’t change anything. Things will just continue as they have been, whether it’s you speaking out or the people that you follow and are likely to believe in too.

Change is only possible if we concentrate and focus our energy and everything that we can influence at the things that are within our power to change.

We don’t need to wait for the Establishment to provide for anyone’s needs. Let’s face it, we can already see that they are slow to act, and increasingly don’t. It is within our power to begin the process of offering the services that people genuinely need, and to take the steps necessary to ensure that local businesses will be able to provide all the basic and essential foods, goods and services that people like you, and I will always need.

We don’t need to keep voting for the candidates in elections that the Establishment and those who aspire to be like them keep giving us. Elections are open and as a community, we can qualify and appoint the candidates so that we can vote for genuine public representatives that we and our communities choose.

To begin the process of change, we only need to take the first steps and have a plan or direction of travel that is there to show us all how.

Today, the political decisions that affect us all are being made by a government given its power by 43.6% of those of us who voted during a 15-hour period on Thursday 12^th December 2019.

On a voter turnout of 67.3%, this actually means that the government was elected by around 29.3% of the people of this Country – which in this sense is significantly less that one third of the population.

Few will need anyone to walk them through the list of events and changes that we have faced throughout the period of time since. But the reality is that despite one or two By Elections, we are still being governed by the same government that is responsible in no small part for many of the problems that we have today, as well as many that are yet to come.

We may still be over 20 months away from the opportunity to have a say within the same system, and vote for what will only appear to be different – for changes sake.

Many of you who read this blog will have backed one of the three main political parties in the General Election of December 2019. Of those, there will be those who will happily focus upon what are, to many, the deliberately confusing figures and facts that surround how our so-called democracy works, so long as they favour their own ‘tribe’ and political affiliations – and therefore who either is now, or who they next wish to be in power.

Bizarrely, the greatest travesty of all this goes beyond the ridiculousness of a situation where over 70% of us are not being represented by a majority vote.

Election Manifestos are little more than a glossy brochure that invite us, the punter, to back a horse in just one election race that normally runs only once, every 4 – 5 years. If it wins, that horse will then have to win or get placed in race after race amongst other horses wearing the same colours for the duration of the next parliament. These are votes that we have absolutely no say or influence over – and that’s only if enough of the horses with ‘our colours’ won against all the others in the first round too. Everyone else, is usually just left out in the cold…

The way that our ‘democracy’ works isn’t the easiest thing to explain. And regrettably, the confusion that it causes even the politicians, really only helps those with an interest in democracy and power in this Country in maintaining what is basically a complete sham. Those people are the ones we know as ‘the few’.

If we are VERY lucky, the MPs that we have representing us in the Westminster Parliament today, will have grown up and have at least some understanding of the area in which we live. Regrettably, this is not always the case.

The reality is that today, with the majority of us tending to identify as being Conservative, Labour or Liberal, we have all played a part in allowing and fuelling a system to exist where the decision over who represents us in Government, isn’t made by whoever we vote for on Polling Day. It’s made by people who are members of these political parties, with whatever rules they decide upon for selecting the candidates who will then turn up with a Blue, Red or Yellow rosette, when it’s time for us to vote.

At this point, it’s only fair to acknowledge the debate and proposition for change to the electoral system, to one of ‘Proportional Representation’ (PR) – as is used in some of the local level election processes.

The argument has been made that seats to any government being awarded proportionally will be much fairer. Because PR represents the true picture, rather than what we have with the current First Past The Post system – which on this basis of the above, few of us would be able to argue against the idea that the result is massively skewed.

PR would indeed be a great fix for the situation that we are in today, if fixing the mechanics of the electoral system were truly to be the only point.

Yet there are many more issues that are far more important. These not only include the problems with the need for constant compromise that mean none of us are likely to ever see anything happen that we want. Also the fact that even though we only pay lip service to it now, we would never again be voting directly for one named candidate. Also, the fact that no government will ever work properly if politicians aren’t in-touch and putting voters needs first. Finally, and worst of all, that to make sense of the way that PR actually works, the catchment area for each vote we took part in would become much larger than what are todays recognisable Parliamentary Constituencies and would create even greater distance between voters and the already out-of-touch politicians that we vote for.

The reality is that the democratic system that we have does not work democratically. It doesn’t work democratically because it has been played by the self interest of politicians from all sides over decades or an even longer period of time, in which everything has been changed, replaced or manipulated to make the system we have now resemble something like a closed shop.

Indeed, the democracy we all believe we are a part of and take part in by voting to select our public representatives is little more than an elaborate lie.

Furthermore, within the number of ‘public representatives’ that we supposedly elect to take decisions on our behalf, it is only a very small and potentially unique number of those politicians – at the top of their own hierarchies and internal trees – that have any real influence, power or sway.

Our so-called democracy is to all intents and purposes an autocracy. All the evidence anyone will ever need for this will be the disastrous and wholly unnecessary behaviour on the part of this conservative government in response to the Covid Pandemic, and pretty much everything that has happened next.

If none of this had any meaning for the rest of us, it really wouldn’t matter who we have elected to sit and rule over us at the top.

Indeed, one of the reasons why we only experience typically around 66% or approximately two thirds of those who are eligible to vote then turning out at a General Election, is because those that haven’t bothered to vote have become detached or disenfranchised from the system. And in many cases, they really don’t believe it matters whether or not they vote.

The problem, for us all, is that it really does. Or rather, it would do, if there was any meaning to what we could all agree upon being or constituting a genuine majority vote.

We will not achieve a genuine majority vote for a national government or the decisions that it makes, with the system, the politicians, the parties and the way that they are driven and motivated now.

Decision making is too far away from people – and needlessly so – for it to be engaging for non-political people.

The decision-making structure that we have today has not been created because it’s the best way for it to work. It’s been created and maintained as it is, because it’s the most effective way for just a few to make the decisions that affect us all, and above all, for them and those like them, to take and keep control.

***

Although we are experiencing tough and challenging times that may well get much worse before they can get better, the opportunities for change of a kind that will be genuinely beneficial to all have never been as good as they are now, and will become. However, nothing is guaranteed. Everyone needs to play their part as well as working with others who they may not yet even identify with.

Over the past 12 months, I have published 5 books that cover the reasons we are here, why we need to change, how we can change, and what we will need to do to achieve it. The two e-books that relate to what I have written about in the blog above can be found and downloaded from Amazon for Kindle. Here are the links: