Why we need a Good Dictator, and our phoney democracy should take a rest

In the immediate run up to the December 2019 General Election, I wrote and published The Makeshift Manifesto, here online and as an e-book that’s available on Amazon.

Even though the political terrain was different, from the point of view that the British Electorate were days away from trusting Boris Johnson with an Election Result that very few saw coming because the Conservatives promised to get Brexit done, the truth of the matter was that many areas of the UKs public policy had already gone massively wrong.

Regrettably, it had been doing so for a time that has spanned many different governments, led by different political parties, before.

Within months, we were all subjected to the stupidity and poor leadership that manifested itself in the form of both the Government and the wider political response to Covid 19 and the Covid Pandemic.

We are unlikely to have experienced all the fall-out and consequences of such levels of incompetence and political delinquency that were set in motion, even now.

However, back in early December 2019, I decided to commit all the things a ‘good’ government would actually do to paper. I then shared it with the world.

Since then, The Makeshift Manifesto seems to have been a popular read. So, earlier this year, as I contemplated the run up to the coming General Election, I began to question whether I should revisit the book and update it to reflect what has changed and where the further problems with Public Policy have developed over the 4+ years of time since the first edition was published.

With the original work set up on a screen and being sat ready to dive straight in, it didn’t take many moments for me to realise that if ‘good’ policy was no more than a wish list at the time of the last General Election, because of the quality of the politicians we had back then, the uncomfortable fact is that with the political options we have available today, such suggestions would be pretty much impossible to deliver through the current structure of government, in any meaningful way.

I’d written about the concept of and asked the question ‘Is it possible to have a Good Dictator’ before.

But at this point I realised, that without people being open to the change that is possible now and which I covered in the book Officially None Of The Above, or there being some kind of Black Swan event that has the power to change everyone’s minds, the only way that meaningful change could be delivered throughout government, the public sector and within every area of Public Policy itself, would be with pure single-mindedness. The kind that could only be achieved if it was driven and directed by one person with the power necessary to command and dictate that massive scale of change.

I worked this thorough as briefly as it was possible to do so.

Leaning on different books that I have written and published over the past two years that included A Community Route and The Grassroots Manifesto, I also added a policy wish list that would be good for everyone, but that in today’s reality, it would only be possible for Good Dictator to deliver and achieve.

There remains a very big question about whether the individual exists who:

Would have the knowledge and experience necessary to change such a massively broken system for the better
Has the desire, drive, motivation and public spiritedness to see it through
Possesses the ethics, morality and principles to stay true to the public cause, when there would be so much temptation to cast what’s in the best interests of others aside

After completing and publishing the book, I concluded that in times as we face today, where politicians and those who aspire to be politicians don’t see any route other than their own, and the public itself has surrendered to the idea that all ‘public’ problems are the responsibility of someone, somewhere else, if nothing else should change in the way we view the importance of the things that are common to us all, the solution of having a Good Dictator, might end up being the only way forward for us all.

Universal Basic Income won’t genuinely help anyone, least of all our Farmers

There’s no such thing as a free lunch. So, when it comes to giving away money, anyone who thinks that a Universal Basic Income is going to help anyone and in particular our farmers, either has an agenda they aren’t sharing, or they don’t have any real understanding of the true cost of making UBI work.

UBI is certainly well intended. A lot of research and thinking has gone into the trials and projects where a localised equivalent of a guaranteed basic income has been tried.

The problem is UBI is a solution that uses the creation or printing of money to enable it to work.

Money creation or printing is an essential part of the FIAT monetary system that we have today. The same system that is the root cause of all the money related and inflationary problems that we and our farmers are facing.

It is ironic that giving cash handouts to farmers would only build upon the culture of dependency that now exists, where the conditioned over reliance on subsidies and guaranteed contracts have made farmers vulnerable to the greed underpinning big money and profiteering retailers. Corporate interests that are not only taking all the profit that would be available from the food chain if it were accurately priced, but they are also using their market positions to inflate prices even further so that they can continue to take even more, without giving a damn about the impact and consequences for us all.

Minded that every one of us needs food every day in pretty much the same way that we need water and the air that we breathe, it defies sense or logic that British Farmers should be in a situation where they cannot have a secure, financially sound and fair-income-paying business, in return for providing a service which really should be considered a public good.

That farmers cannot survive and there are now organisations suggesting that UBI is the answer makes very clear that the working model or operational platform for British Agriculture is broken.

This reality is all the more alarming given the fact that in a time of growing world crisis, we only grow the equivalent of around 52% of our own food in the U.K.

Regrettably, the farming problem isn’t one that good politicians would be able to fix in isolation. Because the issues farmers are facing are interconnected with many other areas of public policy that are breaking down today. All for no bigger reason than we have now had decades of politicians and the political parties they represent that have become increasingly poor.

If good politicians were representing us all as they should be today, the focus on farming would be to use legislation to immediately end the profiteering, price manipulation and speculation taking place that keeps taking money from the food chain without adding any form of value.

The next step would likely be to provide financial support and other legislation to help farmers transform food production and the pathway to retail to a system which is a contemporary version of what we had historically, where food was produced and consumed locally and in much more original, unprocessed and therefore healthier forms.

However, we don’t have good politicians and when the eagerly anticipated General Election comes, we will not have the option of good politicians to choose from even then.

This leaves farmers with a very difficult choice. To remain at the mercy of poor politicians who say lots but do very little. Or step back from conformity with the current broken system, take the risk of funding change themselves and then taking the lead and working closely with consumers who are the other key stakeholders in the food chain, so that food security, healthy nutritious food, and viable food producing businesses supplying every one of our local communities are brought back.

No Farmers No Food may be a wasted opportunity for UK Farming in its current form. But personal attacks on those leading it are no better than any one of us shooting at our own hand

A few days ago, I wrote and published a blog where I outlined why No Farmers No Food (NFNF) campaign will achieve nothing, whilst it could also end up doing UK Farming and Food Production considerable harm.

To do so meant mentioning the founder, James Melville. I don’t know James personally, but because of my ongoing interest in politics and the true depth of the problems that the U.K. is facing, I have been aware of him since he first appeared as a growing voice in what I’ll call the anti-lockdown ‘movement’ that appeared in the summer of 2020 following the first lockdowns.

Whilst I have discussed my reasoning that NFNF will not be able to achieve anything more than the range of existing organisations that are already working on the issues UK farming faces or have tried to do so before, it is also important to recognise what this new campaign is doing differently: NFNF has reached a much wider audience and has captured the imagination of people in ways that many of the existing lobbyist organisations supporting UK Farming have not done, so far.

The impact of NFNF is down to marketing and online campaigning. Or rather, making the best of the communication mediums that are currently available to anyone or any organisation that wants to change anything in the public realm, and isn’t already in a position where they have a platform where they could have the same effect just by opening their mouths.

The people who could do that – who arguably should already be doing that on behalf of UK Agriculture, are the people who are already in power. The people who we have elected and the people with roles in the establishment, who aren’t getting the things that they should be right. Because they are putting what’s important to them or what’s important to the people who are important to them, first.

Having the exposure that James has generated repeatedly since he emerged online, or being one of those people with public responsibility who isn’t using it as they should be, all adds up to the same outcome, IF there is no understanding or appreciation of the cause of the problems beyond an obsession with their effects, along with an appreciation of how everything in government, politics and the establishment really works today. Which genuinely isn’t anything like what most of us expect – even some of those within it.

Appearing to have a platform, with growing support and ‘breakthrough’ messages that give the immediate belief that those behind it can achieve things, will bring many different people and interests out of the woodwork who want to use that exposure for themselves. Usually because they aren’t getting the level of success with their own approaches, that they can see that new platform has.

It’s this visually-derived focus that brings groups like Together, climate deniers, right-wingers, anti-Brexiteers, and all sorts of different people with badges those who disagree with their priorities have given them, who identify with the issues that UK Farmers face tom banners like NFNF.

They see a vehicle that could be the answer to whatever problem they see as the priority, believing that their ‘fix’ will be the one that fixes everything for everyone else too.

The biggest obstacle to a successful outcome or resolution to all the common issues that Farmers share, is what we are now seeing unfolding in the disagreements about NFNF.

Different groups and individuals are attacking each other or piling in on individuals who have said something they don’t like about their take on what NFNF are going to do, and using links, affiliations and everything but the issues around what will actually work, when the point is being missed that in its current form, with the current mentality and the current lack of genuine engagement of a kind that social media simply cannot give, there will be nothing meaningful that NFNF can achieve.

The truth is that there is a massive range of people with different skills, experiences and talents that need to be involved in any movement that is going to succeed in delivering change for UK Farmers and Food Producers, where so many have already failed or been bought off with meaningless compromises before.

The parallels between this new campaign and how entry to the current political system works are frightening. Success in one area of business, obtaining a platform or just getting yourself elected doesn’t equip anyone with the understanding that it takes to do anything and certainly not where the realms of public policy interconnect and interacting with a completely broken system are concerned.

We shouldn’t doubt the good intent behind NFNF. But it’s been said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions and a large number of rightly angry, desperate and frustrated people are getting carried away by an idea that presents a good story, that in reality will end up a very long way from what it now seems.

We cannot have all the things that we want. That much is clear from the reality that we are all living through.

We need to focus upon the things that we genuinely need.

What we have the power to do is recognise the key things or rather the aims that we have in common. Such as saving U.K. Farming and making sure that everyone in the U.K. has everyday access to good, healthy, natural and farm-grown food.

It’s easy to dismiss workable solutions on the basis that they don’t appear to deliver the solutions that we want. But that’s really the most important point.

If we work together to deliver what’s right for everyone and not just what we want, what we want is likely to be delivered or will become a lot nearer by doing so.

We will then be winning multiple times over. Rather than fighting each other for no good purpose and not delivering anything to help anyone at all.

Sustainable Agriculture is part of the pathway to UK Food Security. But it wont work well for anyone until it works for everyone in the same way

My focus on Agri politics and the mass of issues that surround UK Food Security, Sustainable Agriculture and the growing problem of Food Poverty in the UK has made the past few months and my time at the Royal Agricultural University highly beneficial. Especially as I have began to look further and further outside my own social and professional circles to see if the troubling patterns that I already recognised, were evident in the same way elsewhere.

I have to be blunt and say that nothing I have experienced has given me any comfort. In all honesty, everything that I have seen has made me realise that the UKs Food Security and self-sustainability issues are significantly worse than I’d already concluded, and they are getting worse the whole time.

As you will have already read, Sustainability and Sustainable Agriculture are issues that are important to what I wish to share. However, the English language, the way that we multipurpose words and the obsession with subtext that most of us have, make communicating difficult issues that need to easily be grasped very difficult. Especially when alternative terms and their meanings can be used as a barrier that allow emotional ties to get in the way of progress and constructive dialogue.

There are very important distinctions to be made about Sustainable Farming in the context of what sustainability really is. Given that terms such as Regenerative Agriculture, Conservation Agriculture and Rewilding have been pushing their way into the Rural, Green, Environmental and Agricultural lexicon. As despite what should be very distinctive threads of commonality running throughout all of them, the differences between them and more importantly what everyone believes to be the most important priorities of each of them, are endlessly getting in the way.

Misunderstanding, misinterpreting and misrepresenting key benefits and issues is preventing everyone coming together to build upon shared commonality to identify and implement ways of working for the future that are meaningful and beneficial for everyone involved.

To add to the complication of addressing these issues, there is also a need to focus on methods and thinking that are likely to seem counterintuitive in a way that requires many of the most logical and business minded people that we could meet, to think about a future that looks very different to how it does today. A comfort zone we are resistant to leaving where every system, policy and story we encounter tell us all that the basics of everything that we accept without thinking, are always set to remain the same.

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