Category: Climate change

Going Green overnight to ease the conscience of the illiberal elite is not easy for anyone else. Environmental challenges can be met in ways that work for everyone, but it means legislators actually doing their jobs

Irony of ironies, after decades of maxing out and making the most they possibly can from globalisation whilst pretending that no such thing as a climate crisis exists, our elites have now suddenly grown a conscience – so it would seem.

Regrettably, as we have come to expect, instead of thinking about the consequences and the impact on everyone else from what they do, the Political Class have thrown themselves headlong into an idealistic and wholly impractical race to Net Zero. One that is starting to demand lifestyle and finance changes that are unaffordable and unsustainable for anyone but themselves.

This comedy of errors is playing out daily for all to see. It was illustrated only too well on page 4 of today’s Daily Mail, where one article talks about the poor having to ration their use of electricity at peak times. The article next to it discusses the closure of the fracking wells across the UK which were to be the first of many that could have helped keep energy prices low and sustainable for us all, whilst we find practical ways to go green.

There is no question that a climate crisis exists. But it is the greed and profligate exploitation of resources, travel on demand, shipping, low wage and undeveloped economies, as well as our throw away culture where products are literally designed to only last a limited time, that are already the biggest and most consistent offenders when it comes to the creation of this very troubling climate legacy which in many ways is set to last.

The way we have been living is unsustainable. But we have been led to believe that there are no consequences for low-cost, instantly available goods of all kinds, because our politicians, media and big businesses have told us so.

Unfortunately, the transition we face from the way we live now to the way that we need to be, is not one that it as simple as switching one way of being on or off, or just exchanging it momentarily for another, or passing overnight from A to B.

Yet this is exactly the expectation we are being told that we must accept when ways of producing energy cheaply are aggressively being switched off without methods of energy production being in place to replace them, that can be relied on, consistently at all times.

It is very easy for unthinking, self-interested people with influence and power to impose such changes on others who are living lives that they do not will not ever understand.

These elites are the people who, after all, will not be forced to switch off a power supply or moderate their use of energy at times of the day when it is perfectly normal for any one of us to expect those things to be switched on.

The elites are the ones who do not have to worry about buying expensive battery powered cars, and then charging them with all of the additional costs but that process will involve.

The reality is that the changes that we have to make can only become sustainable by changing the way that we think and the way that we live. We must change the way that we do business and accept that it is no longer going to work if we just expect everything we want to be available and to immediately arrive.

It is hideous that instead of facing up to the realities of the situation that they have contributed to and helped to create, or political leaders and the elites of the establishment believe that they can just continue with all of the dangerous processes and activities around the globe that are damaging our World. Just as long as they are seen to be forcing us to take steps that are completely  impractical, but can be seen publicly to demonstrate that they are doing their bit to alleviate the coming climate pain.

The decisions and the choices that the elites have made are the easy ones. They are not the decisions that require hard work. What our Politicians should be doing is looking those who have created this problem and who are profiting from its continuation in the eye and doing the things that need to be done to make them change so that what they do is ethical, and profit just becomes a consequence of industrial activity – not the primary aim as it is today.

Change is a process that cannot be achieved overnight. And whilst we moved towards a place where we can all live green, sustainably without avoidable and unnecessary levels of pain for those who cannot afford forced overnight change, there must be a commonsense approach to using the resources is an sources of power that we have available. One that may not be palatable to the green lobby itself, but will mean that a basic, practical and consistent standard of living remains accessible at all times of the day to us all.

It is simply unacceptable to fill the gap in energy provision with the lie that energy supplies can always be secured from foreign shores.

With war now likely in the Eastern European Country of Ukraine, the chances are that Russia will use energy supplies as a key bargaining token within a very manipulative strategic game.

The UK must become self sustaining in every way possible as soon as this outcome can be achieved.

Energy must be produced from the sources and resources that we have available to us and that can be generated within and on our own shores.

In an uncertain world we must move away from being reliant upon the delivery of goods services food or any other product that makes us vulnerable because we are out someone else’s beck and call.

Above all, we have an obligation to create and maintain a benchmark basic standard of living for the poor.

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A new ‘nationalisation’ of essential Public Services is necessary to help head off the Cost-of-Living Crisis. But Public Sector reform, removal of union influence and practical reality is essential too

Any service necessary for each every one of us to function in our daily activities and continue to be an active member of society should be shielded from the constraints and bias of private interests and maintained under impartial public or community control.

Yet this is not where we are in the UK today. The problems that having so many public facing services under the direct control or heavy influence of private, profit-making interests is now impacting our lives like never before.

First things first. My reason for writing about ‘Nationalisation’ today is of course related to the energy crisis being caused by escalating prices of natural gas supplies which are being brought in from Europe and beyond.

It is important to be clear here that the price of these supplies before they reach the UK wouldn’t matter whoever is in control of utility companies across the UK.

But the fact that we are in the situation that we now are says more about the way that Government has dealt with the energy question for a long time, and how successive governments have failed us strategically over and over again.

This is where I will refocus onto the rather pressing question of who controls public energy provision in the UK and therefore the ongoing cost.

The pathway to today’s mess

Privatisation was probably the most damaging legacy of the Thatcher years. Not because the many Public Companies that were sold off didn’t need to be run better or placed in more capable hands as they most certainly did.

Privatisation was inherently damaging because that ‘Conservative’ Government failed to recognise that any shareholder-led business will always put the value of their business and what they earn from it before anything else. When handed a virtual monopoly, the owners of private ‘industries’ will ultimately dictate the prices of everything so that their margins rise and are maintained first.

Yes, a public sell-off sold to us all under the premise that we could all become owners of the services that worked for us sounded like a great plan. And it might have been, if all those shares that started off in small tranches sat in the back pockets of welders, builders and secretaries hadn’t been sold off when the promise of a quick return quickly passed them all into large corporate and deep-pocketed hands.

On the face of it, it seems extraordinary that the so-called Party of Business could not have foreseen that with the wider changes that they were facilitating and contributing at the time, this is how things would soon be.

But as we are learning to our continuing and significant cost, foresight and thought for the impact of decisions and what will then happen when the chain of subsequent decisions are six or seven times

removed are in short supply when our current crop of politicians are involved.

The reality today is that the energy sector doesn’t exist to provide us all with light, heat, electricity with the purpose of serving the public in the best ways that it can.

The UK energy sector today exists to provide dividends and profit to shareholders with a level of power and influence that our politicians gave it, which guarantees that it can.

The fact that private interests can command profit levels which leave parents, families and people both old and young who live on their own, rationing their power and heat, is an absolute travesty.

With all the related personal harms that follow, such as anxiety, social issues, food poverty (where heat and power is prioritised), it is incredible that any government – Conservative, Labour or anything else – wouldn’t see and prioritise addressing this matter as a No.1 cause.

Re-Nationalisation & Cultural Reform of the Public Sector

But here we are.

We have to consider the other questions around returning to public ownership and the provision of energy in the UK today and tomorrow first.

The Labour Party is talking about Nationalisation again. And in terms of the principle of returning public services to public or community-focused ownership, I would certainly have to agree.

However, what would be as bad, if not worse than what we have and what people are experiencing today, would be for all of these companies, industries and sectors just to be returned to a situation where civil servants and union barons have control.

With the public sector in desperate need from the sclerotic, protectionist environment and culture that it now is, the last thing the UK public would need is for energy to be under the control of people who hide behind their job titles to excuse their ineptitude by being ‘public servants’. It is an entire sector living in fear of wokeism and everything that could lose them their comfortable salaries and pensions.

As such you can be certain that these re-nationalised services handed back to the Public Sector as it is would immediately capitulate to union control.

Let’s be quite fair about Unions. There was a time when they provided a great service to the low paid and to mistreated employees. The Union Movement certainly precipitated and even facilitated great and positive change.

But that was a Century ago, and with even a fraction of the rules and regulations around employment that now exist, Unions have long since become an archaic device that does nothing more than further the self interest of a few by pushing damaging industrial action. And just like with the banks and big company fat cats, it is the general public that ends up paying the inevitable price.

So whatever model of Nationalisation that were undertaken, it would be essential that public sector reform and the removal of union influence be right at the top of the policy change list, and that is where some of the biggest political controversies lie. Or at least they do at the current time.

The model would most certainly not work if it was anything near to being like the publicly owned model of service companies from the 1970’s and before. But there are ways that a good operational model that priorities service to the public first can be achieved and run on very commercial lines. Just as long as the governance and the people who are able to influence those systems of government are the right people with the right values to do that job.

Energy Provision must be practical today with idealism helping us do things better for tomorrow

Going around in what feels like a bit of a circle, we now come back to the issue at hand today.

Beyond the immediacy of the impending ‘energy crisis’ itself, the issue is UK energy self-sufficiency; How we maintain that self-sufficiency and how we meet the fluctuations of domestic and business demands night and day, seven days a week and 365 days of the year.

Right now, the UK isn’t achieving this. That is why small energy companies are going bust as they cannot supply energy to customers at the prices they have committed themselves to.

It’s why the monopolistic members of this exclusive utility club are piling pressure on Ofgem and the Government to be unleashed from the restraints of price caps that will allow them to charge whatever it costs them to buy wholesale energy – whilst maintaining or continuing to grow profits and dividend payments that will just extend the unnecessary and avoidable pain that is steadily affecting the lives of us all.

Whilst we have to wake up to the risk to us all that climate change has created, and accept that the ideas, habits and thinking behind them now have to change, we cannot allow impractical idealism rule over the process if we want to achieve aimed for result, without causing a lot more harm and pain.

Green Energy is expensive to the public, because it isn’t as efficient, reliable and doesn’t offer providers the same kind of returns as traditional sources of energy with technology and management in its current form.

Making Public Policy commitments and setting timelines to phase out technology that works now, is proven and is reliable on the basis of alternatives that are unproven, not evolved to a workable degree or haven’t even been developed yet is government and political foolishness in the extreme.

It is incredible that power stations have already been decommissioned that could have now still been in use. And before anyone one starts to argue about the need to stop using fossil fuels for this purpose – which most will readily agree must happen as soon as we can provide alternatives consistently that make sense to do so – please take a good look at what China and other Countries with significantly higher carbon footprints are doing right now.

One of those alternatives, at least for a realistic and continuing period of time, has to be a greater reliance on our own UK Nuclear Power production and the development of smaller reactors that may be easier to commission and put into service, making energy production localised as quickly as possible once more.

We are not safe from foreign or malign interest of any kind for as long as these services that are essential to our lives remain out of public hands.

It should now be the priority of government run by whoever in power it might be, to return the UK to full self sufficiency of energy production in whatever form necessary to achieve this in the shortest time.

Once we our energy self-sufficient and only when we are, the priority must then be to promote the development of the greenest alternatives possible, ensuring that they are always available, are reliable and that they make being green a voluntary and easy choice, rather than one which is imposed by law or default.

Insulate Britain are fronting up to a weak and stupid Government that will probably award itself draconian measures to stop them, then use those measures on all of us

Perhaps the biggest irony in the recent spate of road closures instigated by members of ‘Insulate Britain’, is that they share an impractically idealistic approach to changing environmental policy with the very same Government that they ultimately intend to antagonise.

Both the Government and the Protestors believe that by forcing change or imposing green policies unilaterally on the UK they can change the whole world without there being any consequences or impact for any of the population involved.

There is of course a regrettable element of truth to the group’s suggestion that the only way they can force government change is by causing us all pain. As a Country, we are now in the early stages of a massive crisis which will touch everything and everyone – yet none of us will accept that reality until the real impact of it literally hits our lives direct.

Unfortunately for Insulate Britain and for us all as we peer over a very steep cliff, the kind of pain that will change the way a whole Country and culture thinks will need to reach way beyond just a couple of issues and the inconvenience that closing a few roads or airports will bring. We are talking pain that touches numerous areas of our lives.

However, if you are one of those who believes there’s no such thing as climate change or has some agenda that flourishes by pushing that way of thinking upon others, it’s definitely time for you to start thinking again.

Climate change is real. Private, profit-making interests have been pushing a low-cost retail pricing myth for decades which is very lucrative for them but has imposed significant costs for the environment and for our planet. And that’s before we even get onto the subject of the damage this has all done to the way we think.

We are now a consumer led, retail obsessed, it-must-come-at-the-touch-of-a-button, increasingly entitled society.

On one hand, we will not give up those things we take for granted easily. Yet on the flipside, the way the system operates means that very few of us could actually afford to embrace change for the better, even if we were in a place where our thoughts had caught up with reality and made it clear that we should try.

We need to change the way we think, and we need to change our thinking quickly. But we also have to work with where thinking in the UK is now and the practicalities of a situation where the way our world works right now is anything but green.

But the world is already changing. Opportunities to do things a much better way will come. But not until we have lived through and dealt with a lot of pain.

Shortages are going to become more and more commonplace. Those shortages are set to increase across all parts of the supply chain as the months go by. Rationing of goods that reach far beyond diesel and petrol may not be very far away.

We are in the early stages of a massive period of crisis and change where a rebalancing of everything is underway. But no politician, activist or high-powered influencer can control any of it now in any way.

As things become increasingly difficult for us and each and every one of us experience our lives being touched by the challenges that lie ahead, we will become more and more open to new ways of thinking. We will see new ways of working together. New ways of living our lives are set to come.

It is when the challenges really start to hurt us and affect our own lives directly that the opportunities to change policy across government, the public sector and business sectors will present themselves in a very different and future-changing manner. They will allow us to move forward in a very different, thoughtful and considered way.

The timeline to all of this may well be incredibly short or may be years long. We really are at the thin end of a very thick wedge with empty shelves and driver shortages right now. And this compilation of different but equally serious crises is going to have major widespread impacts for sure.

Unfortunately, we have a Government, political class and establishment obsessed with maintaining a level of control that it doesn’t actually have.

The politicians involved have a track record of creating policy without thought and consideration for the wider consequences, and they do so as a knee jerk reaction to whatever is going on in the media.

On the face of it, there will be some who admire the way that ‘road closure’ protestors have applied themselves, not only with glue, but in the way but they are maintaining their protests, sometimes on a daily basis.

What Insulate Britain don’t realise is they’re running a risk of instigating a change which could have serious consequences for us all. Especially as everything else around us begins to deteriorate.

As the road-blocking protests go on and get more severe, the Government is increasingly likely to turn to legislation to help them deal with it in ways that will enable the police or perhaps even the military to stop protests like these.

Once the current problem is dealt with, this new legislation won’t be parked and put on a shelf. It is likely to be picked up applied and used on the people who are becoming increasingly frustrated, angry and upset about the way the Government is treating us all over their handling of Covid and the not so new, continually self-serving world that they are now trying to impose.

Never has the time existed when we have needed reasoned and considered dialogue between people on different sides of all the debates as we do right now.

Regrettably, as yet, people haven’t been affected seriously enough as yet to take part. They are not yet ready to talk to each other, communicate with each other and respect each other in the way that we all need to.

It is going to take the impact of the changes that are coming and the challenges that we face to touch all of our lives before we are collectively ready to embrace dialogue and change in a much more positive and forward looking way.

No matter what you’re passionate about or what motivates you in terms of the things that must change, the biggest risk to change is the fact that we are not even trying to come together today to overcome the very small number of things which divide us. We must focus on the things that we share in common that will allow us to deal with the problems we face tomorrow together and in a very different way.

No Politician can control the rebalancing process now underway. There is pain ahead and a decision for us all to make before we will get through this to where the UK needs to be

If you are looking for the reasons behind all the things that are now going wrong, whether it is staff shortages, petrol and diesel running out, empty supermarket shelves, escalating gas and electricity prices, the rapid rise of the cost of living or ‘real’ inflation that we will soon recognise as hyperinflation, or the motives behind vaccine passports, the first and most important thing you need to know and understand is that everything is linked.

No. Not by Brexit. In fact, Brexit was just another symptom of a much deeper set of problems that all began in the very same place.

Yes. Crazy as it might sound, all of the problems we know about and are yet to come don’t have logical explanations that some economist, financier or academic can explain – although they will almost certainly try. But the events we are talking about do all have a lot of common ground.

Before I go any further, I’d like to ask you if you think the world as you experience it is really fair? It doesn’t matter whether it’s the cost of the things you buy and the services you pay for, access to the opportunities that you or the people close to you are looking for, perhaps the provision of public services or local public policies and how that affects you. I’d like to bet that you have questions about one or more of these, and probably many more.

The question is important as we are all perhaps a little bit guilty of taking things that don’t seem all that important at face value. Regrettably, this means that when things happen that hurt us or our life experience in some way, we have a habit of behaving as if we are experiencing this event or difficulty alone, rather than taking the time to think about what might really be happening or how the same thing might be affecting other people who could also be involved.

The way that the media operates makes this rather strange situation even worse. They have a habit of channelling stories that make events that have a very low risk of ever happening to us seem very real to everyone. Meanwhile, the real tragedies that are unfolding in our own lives and around all of us are downplayed or not mentioned at all so that we continue with our lives thinking that we are perhaps being over dramatic or even reaching the conclusion that these real problems that people are facing simply don’t exist.

We aren’t doing anything wrong by not seeing what is happening but is being either innocently (on our part) or deliberately (on the part of media, government and the establishment) hidden in plain sight. But we do owe it to ourselves to ask the questions that need to be asked now that we are heading into a period of what is likely become prolonged crisis, so that we can do our part to ensure that the right people are in place to run the Country and put all of the problems right.

I’m drawing your attention to the question of who will run the Country, because it is the people who have been running the Country and those who are running the Country now who are at the root of the common part of all the problems that we are experiencing now and will soon face.

It is the greed, obsession with material wealth and culture of self interest that fuels this political culture and all the people and businesses that either support or influence them which has led them to making all of the destructive and damaging decisions that they have.

In many cases they are so absorbed with the furtherance of their own goals and the methods that they will use to achieve them, that they genuinely see their own cause as being ours.

They do not look at the policy decisions they are making through the eyes of people who have understanding, empathy for others, or who genuinely care. And the result is that one by one policies that affect the public have been created or changed to help the interests of the few, with an inevitable cost to the many, with follow up decisions to cover the problems they then create being made in exactly the same ways.

It is a vicious, negative spiral that has increasingly left a minefield of life-changing obstacles across the pathway of normal life, where the poorest members of society should be those who can choose to do and are able to do a basic job, because that’s all they need to support themselves without debt, and anything else they might choose to do is met with encouragement and open doors, rather than the barriers to entry that outright selfishness and stupidity in leadership has led to create.

The politicians and would-be ‘leaders’ that we have, really are stupid in the most self-orientated and collectively destructive sense. The only strategy they have is to make every decision based upon what is best for them and as such there really is no genuine public centric strategies in place. They have not brought us here by any means of genuine control, despite being under the illusion that what they do means that they are ‘in charge’, and as the public policy play book has less and less historical case history available to guide them in these unchartered waters that we now face, it will become increasingly and more rapidly clear that they are less and less in control of events until everything finally breaks.

Those ‘leading’ this Country today and sitting in the Parliament behind them are the politicians that we need to replace with real public representatives who have the wherewithal, motivation and experience that will be necessary to deal with all of the problems that having a broken political culture has helped to create.

Worse before better

So ingrained within the system of government and the public sector are these root causes of the problems we now have ahead of us, that the challenges we now face were already developing and progressing before the Covid Pandemic began. The Government handling of the Pandemic and its response to it only serving to worsen the problems and supercharging an already deteriorating situation by adding to the list and magnitude of the issues that we no longer have a choice to face.

Regrettably, this means that things are going to get significantly worse for us All before there is any chance that they can begin to get better. And to add to the pain that many of us will experiencing ahead, we are where we are because we have already run out of luck with the politicians that we have, and we will not be looked after properly at any point until they are removed from power and this rancid political culture is no longer involved.

As we awaken to the trouble that we are really in, it is important that we recognise that the role this political culture and all the Political Parties have played in the creation of the mess means that none of them can be trusted to steer us through what might be years of crisis. They are certainly not the people who we can expect to deliver solutions that will solve all the problems that all of them together have contributed to and made.

Never has there been a truism or quote more accurate than the words of Albert Einstein when he said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Difficult times require stability. In the past, we have been able to rely upon the stability of political leaders who knew how to lead and delegate to the right people, who understood the lives of others, were prepared to take considered risks and were able to put something much bigger than them before anything else – even at the most difficult and trying moments they had. The politicians we have today are simply not the same and to stick with them when all they want to do is defer to self interest and fear would be doing the same thing over again and would as such be completely insane.

A period of ‘natural’ Rebalancing

We do of course exist in a period of human history where everyone with power and influence really thinks that they are in control of the things that they do and that they can control just about everything that comes under the scope of their responsibility. Regrettably for them – and therefore for us, this simply isn’t true.

Whilst it might sound a little bit ‘Earth Mother’, the bigger picture to any situation where there is practical reality at work will be part of some kind of ecosystem. Ecosystems of all kinds develop around a point of natural balance and when something interferes with that balance, there will either come a point where the elasticity of the system is stretched too far and everything is pushed back, or the system itself will actually break. Yes, the system will adapt to and absorb very small changes. But there are laws at work which are ‘natural’ to any system, and simply ignoring them either through ignorance or by deliberate act will ultimately blow the whole thing apart.

The greed and self interest that this political culture has perpetuated and upheld for so long has reached the point where the wider ecosystem has stretched its elasticity to the point of no return.

The system will now break completely – if the political class and self-interest that feeds it is allowed to continue. The alternative is that things must return to a point of balance which is fair to all and to the environment – and that means having new leadership that is not obsessed with control, but with making each decision on its own merits, without relying on long term plans or strategies that in very uncertain times like we are now in – just like being in a war – are not going to work.

A New Party For All

We can no longer exist as we have been, in a situation where benefits to the few have come at significant and growing cost to us all.

The cost cannot be measured just in terms of the financial – although many will still think of it all being only in material terms that the world works.

The cost is also in terms of things like the really meaning, reach and existence of community and how that impacts upon every life, and most importantly, the way that relationships have been progressively dehumanised, and we are being culturally conditioned not to care about others, whilst never looking at ourselves when we have received a life lesson – instead always looking outwards and others for a target upon which to apportion blame.

People are increasingly talking about alternatives to the politicians that we have already got. But what many of them don’t realise is that although they might not be members of the same political parties, they are thinking in the same ways and in relative terms are doing just the same things. In fact, its pretty important to understand that if any of the Conservative, Labour or Liberal Democrat Parties were not already in Parliament and in the public eye and were started from scratch right now and faced a closed, monopolistic political system as we do, the way they operate and the policies they further as a cause would mean that they would not have a hope of gaining power – without embracing what for all of them would be very significant philosophical change.

We all must think differently about politics now and accept that we can no longer continue the way that we previously have.

We need a movement for change or A New Party For All that reaches out to, engages and works on behalf of and in the best interests of everyone. So that no matter how bad things get for us in the months and years ahead, we can be sure that the public representatives we have are always working on our behalf and will never fail to do the very best for us that they can.

We are heading into a new age when we will work only for our needs, not anyone’s greed

Watching the world slowly tearing itself apart, with the Covid Pandemic putting a bomb under the whole process and pushing government to behave even more madly than it already was and speeding the whole process up, it has been clear that we could have changed direction and taken a very different route to the one that we are now committed to at many different times.

I have made no secret of my mistrust and concerns about government and the quality of the politicians that we have not only at Westminster, but in our Cities and Towns and within the various Councils and Legislative Bodies that bring the same poor form of leadership into our lives in a much more localised form too.

Indeed, it would be very easy to say that every problem we have can be laid at the feet of the thousands of politicians that we have ‘running’ government across the UK. And to a degree this would be correct.

Politicians are, after all, the people who are making the decisions and writing the cheques, supposedly on our behalf, to ensure that Public Services are rolled out and provide exactly what they are supposed to do so.

Yet we are the people who elect those politicians.

We are the people who give these very stupid people the mandate to do the things that they do.

We are the same people who put Boris Johnson, a completely inept and incompetent career wannabe into No10 with an 80 Seat Parliamentary Majority in December 2019, blissfully unaware of the National crisis that was about to unfold just weeks into what could still be a five-year-term that ends in 2024.

Life has increasingly become all about the self. As voters, we are rarely interested in anything going on in the world outside our bubbles. That is until whatever those issues are reach into our bubble and affect us directly in some way.

Whilst it is reasonable to expect that the politicians we elect would have an entirely different, considered and appreciative understanding of the different lives we all live, they don’t.

In fact, the only difference between the outlook of people who are wrapped up in careers making money, getting likes on social media, getting a profile and our politicians today, is that the people who have selfishly seen politics and public representation as a career, have just chosen getting a seat in Parliament as their way to achieve pretty much the same things as everyone else, without any appreciation for what their roles are really for.

All of this is important. We must understand and also accept that everyone has a stake in the pathway that brought us here to where we are now and what comes next.

It doesn’t matter if you voted for someone who didn’t get elected, voted Remain or perhaps didn’t even vote. We are all in this together, just the same, even though we have been conditioned by our pre-Covid way of living to believe that it is us against the world (with a few special friendships and relationships thrown in) and thinking that any other way of living our lives simply will not work.

Money has become our god. Its influence runs like a fat, pumping vein through every part of life. We judge others on how much money they have, how much money they earn, how much money they spend. In many ways we literally judge their worth on the basis of how much they burn.

Over decades, the influence and desire for money and the status that we believe it brings us has changed the dynamic of how the world around us works and how we value our place within it. And in business and finance, the obsession with making sums so large that the amount accumulated could never be used by the person who earned it has become so commonplace, that it is now a contingent part of the mess that we are now in.

Have you ever stopped and asked yourself the question, ‘What do I actually require to live?’

Many of us have not. And as the search for wealth and riches has increased its pace, many businesses and providers of services have tailored their offerings to provide more and more expensive material items that aren’t actually required by anyone other than those who want to show the world what they believe they’ve got. These material items are just the things that someone with money to waste believes they need to be happy and to show that they are different, when none of us are different in any real way.

Sadly, the real cost of this process has been one that we can no longer afford. The obsessive behaviour by those in positions of influence to create an environment where banks and finance houses and the businesses they are closely aligned with can do exactly as they please just to make more and more money, has and is having an impact on everyone – apart from all those who are directly involved.

The obsession with money has conditioned us against valuing the things that really matter. Relationships, Community, self-respect, care for our environment, charity and the care of whoever may be vulnerable, social interaction and a genuine willingness just to take part have all been driven into the darkness of no meaning. Meanwhile, the self-styled masters of the universe who have created a ticking time bomb of money creation based on financial instruments that are deliberately complicated – just so we will not try to understand the simplicity of how they work – have been aided and abetted by a Chancellor, Prime Minister, Government and entire Parliament that is fully invested in the continuance of a system that doesn’t work for anyone other than themselves.

Books, videos and podcasts are available everywhere that can help you to better understand the complexities and the truths that underpin our current money-based reality, if you want to go in search of answers and knowledge as a personal choice. Read as many different sources as you can and don’t be put off by giving some of that time to sources that the establishment is doing its best to silence or devalue by bringing into question the propriety of the provider.

The reality is that the money and stock markets, the banking system as it works today, globalisation and many other terms that may touch your hearing or vision as you listen to or read the news are all part of a very elaborate con. One that has worked very successfully to keep making the rich and their kind even richer, whilst taking more and more of the intrinsic value that once existed for everyone living ‘normal lives’ in their ability to work, pay their way, stay out of debt, contribute to the community and simply have the kind of life that people who may seem materially poor but meaningfully rich can afford to live without getting into debt or being called upon by messages everywhere that tell them they must be something or do something in order to qualify as having value in the eyes of others.

The system has worked this way, continuing to damage lives, communities and even the environment for so long that it has become like an ecosystem in its own right. A system where nothing that works against it can be tolerated or allowed to exist.

Regrettably, this has extended itself into the political world. This is why it is rare to find politicians who haven’t been helped or elevated into their roles, when that role itself has any power or influence that can be interpreted as having some kind of value that is worth owning in some way by the political parties and the people who support and influence them in some way.

And it would have continued to be like this indefinitely too. That is until events that are out of the control of the politicians and the establishment take over and the whole thing is stopped, as it is being so now by the Covid Pandemic and specifically by the way that our politicians and the institutions behind them have responded to it and the measures that they have unthinkingly imposed.

As I am writing today in mid-August 2021, it does in many ways look as if the world is going to return to exactly the same way that it was. A big part of the reason for this is because the culture of interests that I have discussed above have a vested interest in things continuing just the same.

The media is heavily involved in maintaining this narrative too. That is why so many of the stories that appear are using previous statistics and values as benchmarks to tell us how well things are going, rather than bringing any serious kind of focus to the many smaller stories that are out there. Real stories that joined up would tell us all very clearly that the world is now a very different place to what it was in March 2020 and that things are going to change in ways that we could never have previously believed.

The narrative is quite literally based on ‘fake it ‘til you make it’. And the establishment really does believe that if they keep telling us that things are just going to go back to being ‘normal’, that is how they will eventually turn out to be.

Unfortunately, the tricks, the spin and the manipulation have been used upon us all one too many times. People are now rapidly awakening to the damage that has been done to the lives and wellbeing of people right across the UK by the inappropriate and misguided use of behavioural science to use fear to coerce and control people, just so that the ‘system’ can continue to work for those who benefit most from it.

The narrative must be maintained if it is to keep working. This is why we have found ourselves knocking on the door to the realms of the ridiculous with the coming implementation of vaccine passports and the talk of a ‘necessary’ booster programme for a population-wide vaccine roll-out using vaccines that don’t actually vaccinate, have very limited value in other ways, and as such, are vaccines don’t actually work.

But events are already out of government control. There are things happening in the UK and around the world that our government, no other government and even the feared World Economic Forum simply cannot control.

‘The System’ is going to collapse, taking all those so heavily invested in it down along with it too.

The lives that we have been conditioned to believe to be very easy – just because everything arrives quickly at the push of a button or the flick of a switch, will soon be a thing of the past.

Our ways of thinking will inevitably be forced to change because of the events that we are now destined to experience, and we are going to have to reassess and revalue all the things that are important to us – especially where money and everything it touches, or influences is involved.

This transition will feel hard to begin with. The process is going to include upheaval of a kind we are simply not used to and with it, suffering that we have not experienced before.

But through this unavoidable exposure to the realities of the consequences that follow repeated decisions being made by those in power that are not made in the best interests of all, we will find ourselves in a place where happiness and contentment find their way into our lives once more.

Of the difficulties we face, one of the biggest will be being able to see a better way to approach community, business and commerce in comparison to the way that everything seems to get done so beneficially for us as individuals right now.

Localism or the prioritisation of community and the places or even neighbourhoods where we live will be the basis upon which we will build our new way of thinking and of looking at the world.

This is not the kind of mealy-mouthed ‘localism’ that politicians have been using for years to sell the centralisation of political power and the strengthening of their political parties’ grip on power. It is localism in the genuine sense where all decisions and public-focused priorities are made with their real impacts not only in mind, but in full view by the people who make them, who themselves will be completely invested in the public representation and service that they provide.

Business and commerce will still be essential, but in a much more responsible and considered form.

One of the problems that has led to the place we find ourselves in has been the way that new technology has been harnessed not to improve products and the services on offer. It has been used ruthlessly and, in some cases, very inhumanely as a very brutal way to reduce the requirement for manpower and as a way to reduce costs. Those benefits have never been passed on to the customer or end user. In fact, the costs to us have continued to rise at every turn.

Just because we can do something or do things in a particular way, it does not necessarily follow that we should do so. Profit is not a good master of anything. The best master will always be the best interests and experience for all those involved.

Businesses will return their focus to the products and the services that they provide, rather than the profit they can make and the money that they can be ‘sweated’ to earn for the few.

There will be a conscious approach to continuing and even reemploying people to carry out jobs and functions where machines and information technology have taken over wherever there have been savings to be made.

Yes, owners and investors will be rewarded for the risks and the commitments that they make. But the days of pension funds driving once great businesses into the ground by stripping all of their qualitative or added value for the customer – where big industry is still required – are gone.

Money will return to its intrinsic value. The intrinsic value of money is nothing. Money is a medium of exchange and nothing more.

The mindset that experience will teach us to adopt and teach to others will be one that focuses on whatever we do for work being based only upon securing that which we require to meet our needs, the needs of those of who we care for, the needs of our communities and the businesses or organisations that we own or run. The days of our focus being only on what we want to make us financially or materially rich and therefore see ourselves as better than others, or more ‘qualified’ in the eyes of others – the days of greed – are done.

As value returns to every job, function and occupation and as we realise and accept the very important role in everyone’s lives that every role plays, the real value of small, cottage businesses and industries will be realised and appreciated once more.

Necessity will dictate that the world is going to seem much smaller. But we will see the value in all the things that are very close to us, and this will help us all to discover ourselves, or real priorities and what is really important about this lesson called life than ever before.

This new, people-centric way of living will have many positive consequences that can be directly linked to the way that we feel when we value ourselves and the role that we play in the lives of others and within our communities too.

Beyond the obvious benefits to mental health and physical well-being, the local, national and world environment will benefit too as we move from the age of ‘damn the consequences’ to one where everything we do will be considered in terms of the real and full costs. We are entering the age of consequence in more ways than one.

Of those who have read this far, some will be thinking these words and this view is just fanciful, But the reality is that this new way of living and the principles upon which our way of living will be based is no longer a choice.

The damage that has been done by lack of thought, lack of care and a complete disrespect for the lives of others over decades and possibly longer, carries with it a significant price that will have to be paid.

The establishment as it is today has literally driven us to the end of the road. Their actions have led to all that we will have to live through in the coming months and years. Meanwhile we will all fulfil our roles in the process of everything being reset and returned to the place where it should already have been.

As things change now and as they appear to get worse and worse, it is vital that we are not drawn in by the words of those whose words reach our ears or our eyes, simply because they have the platform of celebrity, fame or politics from the world as it has been and was before.

These are the people who are invested in keeping things the same as they have been. But they are also the sirens calling at the ship of change from very dangerous rocks that possess the power to sink everything. We must ignore what the messages they sing to us as the easy route back to all we knew, as the momentum from the sea of change will take us safely past without unnecessary effort on our part.

Listen to the words you hear or read. Follow the words that resonate. The messages that make sense to you, even when that sense cannot even be explained.

Trust your instinct in an unquestioning and committed way like you have never done so before.

The change that you desire is coming. You may not see it yet. But we have already passed the start.

Net Zero is not only possible, we MUST aim for it too. However, it is an objective that requires inspiration and true statesmanship to deliver and it’s foolish to believe it can simply be imposed

Probably one of the most unhelpful arguments being conducted, then pushed by the media is the question over climate change, global warming and who or what is to blame or at fault.

It’s a dead cat debate, doing considerably more harm than good, simply because it is preventing reasoned discussion and action being taken to alleviate the impact on us all from the changes to the weather that are already evident and plain for us to see.

I cannot disagree with the concerns and arguments about the approach of big business and the consequences for the environment and serious risk to our quality of life from industrialisation, mechanisation, globalisation and the driving forces of greed and the motivation for achieving profit whatever the true cost.

But before we can even begin to tackle that problem in a way that will prove to be meaningful for all, there has to be an epiphany in governments right across the world. With it the recognition that public policy and the responsibility of government sits at the heart of the entire environmental debate, and that there are few areas of public policy which do not touch or fail to be influenced by the green question and environmental issues in some way.

The UK itself is already facing a range of problems from the climate changes taking place. A very good example of how different policy areas overlink in ways that are very serious, whilst being overlooked by our MPs and politicians would be the increasing problems that we are experiencing with flooding. Here, a rather large blind eye is also being covered over too, simply because housebuilding has become the obvious answer to a housing crisis that our politicians will not deal with in more appropriate ways. In so doing. Our political class are condemning existing homes, the villages, communities and towns around them to what might soon be very serious flooding problems, when taking responsibility and doing things differently could make this in many cases much easier to avoid.

Building green policy on what looks good in the media, what wins votes and what is easy to do is no way to tackle a worldwide crisis. One that will reach an inescapable point where its impacts are going to become very serious for us all.

Government cannot avoid the way the world works and why people and businesses are invested so heavily in things remaining as they are.

Ironically, the behavioural science that has been so heavily relied upon to coerce people into doing what the government wanted them to do as part of the political response to the Covid Pandemic, could be put to much better and constructive use. It could be applied to providing ‘nudges’ that govern the way people are thinking about their own impact on the environment and what they can independently do to help us all to go green.

However, using policies to force people to change does not consider the practical realities such as affordability, accessibility and what other policies green policy itself will impact – bearing in mind that you can be certain that with each step taken, there will be practical and in many cases hard-hitting consequences for us all.

To hear the Government, the media, the activists and academics preach, you could easily conclude that the UK is one of the worst sinners of the World. But it is not.

Whilst Government may feel galvanised in its ability to ‘impose’ green solutions on us all by the ‘success’ it has ‘achieved’ in forcing the UK to indulge all the unnecessary and costly responses to the Covid Pandemic it has imposed, taking this stupidity even further into the imposition of green technologies will end up in a disaster for this Country. One that will arrive much quicker and be far more consequential for all of us than the alternative of starting to deal with climate change the hard way and the right way. Currently, they are taking the easy route, as control freaks inevitably always do, concluding that giving this date or that date and a reliance on technology that doesn’t even exist, that future change is safe to impose upon us all.

In terms of the environment and the wider green issues that are involved, it is important to remember that the idealist’s viewpoint is that the problem will be solved with unilateral solutions that only affect people and businesses based in the UK. Yet isolated action will only hurt us, whilst doing nothing to address a problem that is the worlds, not just the UKs to own.

The reality is that we will not influence anyone or any other Country in a way that will be helpful to anyone, if our politicians just force through legislation such as heat pumps for homes, that are wholly impractical and consider none of the impacts on anything other than the environment itself – just as the Johnson Government has been doing by undertaking all policy decisions in isolation where Covid has been involved.

One of the biggest obstacles to progress on environmental issues worldwide, is the sordid fact that money is always and inevitably involved.

Money motivates people deeply in an emotionally entrenched way. And people who have lots of it and want more of it will not let issues that don’t agree with their own narrative get in their way.

Corporate interests are a massive part of the climate change problem. They will continue to be so until those responsible can be convinced that the same or more profit can be achieved for them, by conducting their business in a very different and environmentally friendly way.

Sadly, like most things historically, the biggest profits and margins are to be made when whatever you are doing means that you are in a position to exploit.

Morality and ethics are at a rare premium in business these days. It is the same people who are accumulating this wealth who already possess the deep pockets that our politicians suck up to and treat as if they are sacred cows.

There is as such a dangerous inevitability about the level of damage that is going to be done, before that moment of reason land collectively, and everyone starts working together voluntarily to address the issues and work better – because they have come to the decision as an informed and unselfish choice.

The saving grace to all this – strange as it may sound, may turn out to be the Covid Pandemic itself and the decisions that poor politicians have made in response.

Covid has literally seen governments around the world take decision after decision that has exponentially speeded up every problem that poor leadership has created over decades.

It means that a point is approaching where going greener will simply become the way that we all start to do things, rather than us having to wait on people who are so far choosing not to make the green choice.

Globalisation is over and done with in the way that we have known it before. The media are making very little of what is happening with shipping, supply chains and the provision of goods from around the world. But goods are not going to be available as they were before, and as the coming financial crisis beds in for the long haul, the realities of genuine localism, food and the supply of essential daily items from within a very local area, if not the immediate community itself, is going to become prevalent once again.

However, to make the very best of the opportunities that will come from a very serious crisis, it is vital that we have the right people influencing and making all of the key decisions that will need to be made.

Whatever happens next, it is essential that the decisions being made are not aimed purely at an electoral echo chamber as they have been now for decades.

Every decision being taken from now onwards will have very serious consequences for us all.

#anewpartyforall