The Basic Living Standard is a foundational guarantee that ensures every individual earning the lowest legal weekly wage can afford all essential costs of living—without falling into debt, relying on welfare, or turning to charity.
It defines the minimum threshold of financial independence, where core needs—such as food, housing, utilities, healthcare, transport, clothing, communication, and modest social participation—are fully covered by earned income alone. It also includes provision for savings, unexpected costs, and fair contributions to society.
This standard is not aspirational—it is structural. It affirms that full-time work at the lowest wage must equate to full dignity, autonomy, and security.
***
No food banks. No emergency loans. No skipped prescriptions or unpaid bills. Just a life that’s livable, sustainable, and free from poverty.
But it will take something very special to clear up the mess they’ve created
I recently heard it said that politicians are all psychopaths. It may have been in the script of some comedy-based show or drama I was watching. But the sentiment and what it reminded me of from my own experience of being in politics and working with many different politicians really struck home.
Whilst we can be certain that not all politicians are psychopaths, the evidence of our own eyes certainly suggests that the Government is under the control of either psychopaths, people with psychopathic tendencies or people who certainly behave like them; for the simple reason that no matter what the messaging from government and the establishment may say, the impact and delivery of both governance and policy is not focused upon what’s good for the electorate and our communities in any kind of good or human way.
However, before running away with the conclusion that every well known name we hear on the news is a psycho, it might be a better idea to consider the reality that things are more likely to have turned to complete shit, because of the way that the politicians we have behave so badly, selfishly and inconsiderately, and because of the character flaws and traits they typically have in common between them, that are impacting what they do and therefore us, in so many different ways.
Who really wants to be a politician and why?
This is a question that we should all be asking ourselves, a lot more frequently than we do.
The answer – when we really think about this and consider the real mechanics of how the political system puts its people onto the list of candidates on our ballot papers at election time – will soon begin to reveal many of the answers, not only to this, but to many other pressing questions about the way the U.K. is being run, that we all need to know.
Before going further, I will insert the caveat, that in my own experience, many people put themselves forward to become political party candidates with what we might all agree as being the best of intentions.
But that’s as far as any default allowance should ever go.
As even the best intentions can only really be considered for what they are, once we look at each candidate and ask the question ‘The best of intentions for who?’
Who politicians really serve is also an important and very timely question. Because if the current polls and polling are to be believed, the benches of our parliament and councils up and down the UK will soon be filled with people who’ve never been politicians before.
People who have nonetheless stepped up and become candidates for some political party like Reform, armed only with what for many of them will be the sincere belief that they will be the person to break the downward trend of everything we know and once elected will get things done.
But what things will they get done? And the things they aim to achieve will be good for who?
Beliefs built without foundation quickly get blown away then replaced
Few of those who are newbies to politics realise that there is a whole new set of rules at work for anyone and everyone to follow and work with in frontline or elected politics, just as soon as they have walked through the electoral door to an electoral ‘seat’.
By newbies I mean anyone who hasn’t personally held an elected office of any kind, at any level – whether they’ve never been politically active before, been on a pathway, been a lobby journalist or even an activist or commentator of some kind who has racked up millions of likes and followers on YouTube, because their words connect with people in some way.
If any candidate ‘won’ a ‘seat’ by being on a party ticket – no matter which party ticket they aligned their name with to get there, they will be on their own, rejected and probably on their way straight back out of the door, if they don’t do whatever they are told and say yes to whoever seems to be running things, whether they agree with it or not, from the moment the euphoria of ‘their’ election has died down.
Yes, finding common ground with other newbies and giving themselves a group voice can and will give them influence over some things.
But those things won’t be anything that will really change the things that really need to be changed in the way most entrants to politics sincerely intended, before they walked through the ‘elected’ door.
Most newbies, if not all, will find themselves facing a rather stark and deflating reality. That they have the choice of becoming part of the machine. Or at best to annoy their so-called political colleagues by attempting to do what is actually the right thing for the people who elected them and use their own voice – as they were elected to do so. Leaving them with very little they can do, when as a public representative, they should have been able to do so much.
The choice is rarely one that’s thought through consciously by those who have ‘arrived’. And that’s where many of the real problems with this mess of a political system begin.
Politics today is addictive for those foolish enough to believe the spin
Do ask yourself how many elected politicians you see, at any level, who resign the party whip at any point in a council or parliamentary term, and don’t immediately ‘walk the floor’ to join another party.
The reality is that very few do. And of those that do, most will have themselves been pushed out or in all likelihood found themselves questioning the whole purpose of politics; the electoral system and what being there or being part of it is really for – once they have seen the truth of how things really work.
The people who stay or try to move to another party, aren’t people who are there to represent you or I.
Being ‘in it to win it’, ‘staying in the tent’, or anything along those lines is a self serving myth that gives unscrupulous and ambitious politicians the excuse that they are ‘keeping their powder dry’ until it’s the right time – or rather when they get to the top. By which time they will of course no longer recognise any such need.
We have a party political and electoral system that guarantees the top-down functionality that minimises our influence
Politics in the UK isn’t the place for people who have the skills, experience and ability to change the things that need to be changed in this Country, today.
The party and electoral system that we have currently combine to ensure we either don’t get the right people in the majority of elected roles. Or that they are rejected by the party that put them there when there is even the smallest hint that we do.
The reality that any politician joining parliament, a council or entering any elected government role faces, is that the only politicians who are making meaningful decisions – or getting in the way of those that could stop people being harmed in some way, are those who are right at the very top of the top-down hierarchy that keeps them insulated from what people like you and me need.
Some truths about U.K. politics and our Electoral system, today
We say we have a democracy in the UK. Many believe that we do.
But we don’t choose the candidates on a ballot paper that we choose from.
We don’t choose the politicians who take key jobs in councils, in parliament or those who become mayors.
When we’ve voted and the votes have been counted, that’s the last moment that anything we have to say about anything will count or have meaning for anyone. Right up until the moment that the next election is called.
The system works and is controlled by the political parties who are all running in very similar ways to each other, by people with the same motives and same wishes to make it big in politics and be seen to be ‘the one’ who is in charge.
The only people who become political candidates, get elected, then stay, acquiesce, take part and contribute to what is a supposedly democratic form of government today by doing exactly whatever they are told, are yes men and yes women.
People who do and can only do well because they are on message and turn a blind eye to the needs of the people who put them there.
These people aren’t leaders or capable of leadership.
They are fools who live in fear of losing the roles that once elected they quickly perceive as being rightfully theirs.
All the time they are blind and deaf to the true responsibilities of what being a public representative demands them to be.
A downward system that takes everything downward as it keeps going down
The so-called leaders that we believe we currently have are just the latest incumbents on an intergenerational chain of weak, yes-men/yes-women politicians who have continuously said yes until they have found themselves right at the top.
Yet they can only maintain the pretence of leadership by saying yes to any advisor or specialist who tells them what to do, because they are not used to saying, meaning and being prepared to risk everything for themselves by putting those they represent first by saying no.
These people should never possess the power and responsibility they have, as they continually harm others by obsessively running from anything they believe will cause harm to themselves and the roles they now have.
This is not how leadership works. This is not how real change gets done.
These people are out of their depth. They have little or no view of real life or how the world works beyond their own perspective.
The politicians we have today have typically been corrupted by the power and influence that comes from having a role where they confuse having a microphone or camera rammed in their face, from the moment they are elected, as being only because they have been elected. Rather than it being because they are just the latest person to have been elected by voters or appointed by their political piers to carry out a particular role which commands public and media interest, no matter who they are.
Control, feeling in control, being seen to be in control, demonstrating that they are in control. These are the only things that are important to the would-be leaders we have in politics who cannot lead even themselves in any way.
Everyone and everything are a risk or threat to their position, once they reach the top.
So, they surround themselves with politicians who are even weaker and more inept or incompetent than they are.
The even weaker versions of themselves take over from them when their moment in the sun is done.
Then the process of replacing the weak with the even weaker begins all over again.
Fear and Power are a very dangerous mix
These politicians are people just like you and me.
But instead of being different in the ways that their position would make many of us expect, they are fearful in ways that everyday people fail to understand.
The level of fear of loss today’s political class have for themselves also makes them vulnerable to the whims and influence of those they look up to.
Much like an orphan meeting the parent that they never believed it possible to have, being certain that they will be protected in ways that will make them invulnerable against anything bad that they feel might otherwise lay in store.
The reality of our ‘leaders’
Some of those who have stepped into politics and made it to the political equivalent of the C suite without being rejected, spat out, sidelined or becoming victim to the many temptations that befall so many who have found themselves in these positions, and fallen into the trap of believing it was something special about themselves, began the process by being genuine in their desire to do something good.
However, this certainly wasn’t the case with them all.
There are many who have ended up on this gravy train, that has made life so intolerably bad for people who we all pass by in the streets each and every day, for no better reason than they wanted the job and the glory they believed it would give them. Probably from an early age.
But they also had no concept of what political influence can and should enable good public representatives to do.
They therefore have no passion for the responsibility they have and they lack the talent, skill and ability that responsibility to others also requires; that politics done for all the right reason inevitably always involves.
People who could be good politicians and have the selflessness and sense of public service that change requires, are either put off by what they discern as being no better than a circus of egos. Or they soon find out once they have stepped inside the system, that politics in the UK is no better than a fun house at a run-down traveling fair creating irreparable damage to every bit of ground it stands on.
The people who enter and stay in politics today and the people who really think they and only they can make the difference that none of the people they have watched on TV have managed so far, are the fools that have made the UK political system a fool’s paradise where those within believe that they really do know better than anyone else, and that their actions have no real life consequences for us all, beyond the immediate focus of whatever they have been led to believe they are doing.
The truth is that anyone who can say yes, look and sound the part, and not think twice to do whatever is demanded of them, to gain whatever they have been promised as the reward, will fit right into the political machine that exists in the UK today.
The political party or apparent political leaning of whatever the group or movement out in front of everyone else might be called doesn’t matter in any way.
The people who thrive in this system, at the cost of everyone they are supposed to represent, are fundamentally the same.
Uk Politics today is a game for fools, run by fools, that benefits only fools, and treats everyone outside of politics as if they are the fools.
A Digital Takeover of the real world is already underway
It doesn’t matter who you are; whether you have an email account, a smart phone or even a computer sat on your desktop at home. If you are a British Citizen and the UK is your legal home, you already have a digital identity somewhere.
What is more, you probably already have more than just one.
Just like the constant push towards CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) that the narrative tells us will be required to make money digital, the most alarming part of the whole story about this sudden ‘need’ for everyone to have ‘Digital ID’, so that the government can tackle illegal immigration, is that there are still many of us who also believe we need a proper digital currency.
In fact, we not only have a digital currency already. But the digital currency we already have is linked up and able to pass through any digital terminal and even our phones when we have a banking app – at any moment in time!
Yet even this 5% of the population will have details and information stored about them with organisations like the NHS, with their Bank, and with any company or supplier. Perhaps like an Electricity, Gas or Water supplier, who will certainly hold details about them in digital form of some kind.
It is ironic that as we stare into the abyss that is a fully digitised world, those who aren’t connected, are still referred to as being disadvantaged by their lack of digital connection. When there is a compelling argument to suggest that in terms of what we are facing today, the 5% may already be having the last laugh.
Digital ID is already being used to our disadvantage
The 95% of us who are digitally connected today, are already being played by a system crossing government and big business alike.
A system that uses every bit of information that can be harvested from every one of our online activities to build a picture of what we do, what we like and basically how we run our lives.
If we go to a supermarket or shop online, we will almost certainly now have a customer card. And we are ‘rewarded’ with points, vouchers, offers and perhaps even cash back, in return for having registered with the company and then using our card, codes or app on our phone, each time that we shop.
The data about what we search online, no matter where it is, the services that we use and what protections like VPN we have put in place, all finds its way into the great online smorgasbord, through the monitoring of our social media accounts, email traffic and whatever we go onto a search engine or AI system to research.
It quickly then finds its way back to our timelines as a conclusive response, through information about products, holidays, cars or services that we have been thinking about, or even organisations we have applied for jobs with.
We and our Digital ID are already being used, exploited and tracked online
Nobody likes to admit that they are being used and manipulated, because of a decision that they haven’t really thought through or knowingly made.
But the reality we, as the 95% already face, is that as a consumer and potential source of income – if any up to date data about what we are thinking about now hasn’t automatically been sold as we search or instruct AI – our digital footprint and therefore our digital ID is already all over the internet and accessible by any government agency or company that has the ability to access it, in any form that they want.
This information – that we’ve given away for nothing more in return than access to a platform where we can chat to friends, post whatever content we produce or get what might be the equivalent of 1% of every Pound that we spend with Retailers who are already charging us way too much, is worth far more than we will ever get back.
The data that we are continually giving away with every online key stroke allows anyone who can use this data and the media channels that they have open to us, to persuade us to buy their products, eat their foods, and increasingly change our behaviour and way of living so that it suits whatever they want.
Although every government organisation and those businesses and retailers we shop with or buy products or services from can identify who we are and provide anyone with a legitimate reason for asking what we like using, when we use it and how long we like to use it for, the data that we are giving away – even as we read and scroll through this Essay – will allow someone or some organisation to monitor us along with specific aspects of our behaviour or obtain a giveaway snapshot of the habits that we have.
However, the recording of our data and the ability to identify who we are at any data monitoring point or rather digital device we use to go online, hasn’t yet become a genuinely overt tool of behaviour control that can or will be used to force us to do or more importantly not do things, that whoever controls and influences these systems will want.
Unfortunately, if Starmer and his government are successful, that will change.
The Turning Point
Regrettably, the digitisation of life has already extended to the point where it has become unhealthy and counterproductive for all of us.
Today, most of us already use the information that comes to us through the digital devices that we think we own as our go-to point of external reference.
We are all giving a ridiculous level of credibility to whatever we see, read, hear or listen to through these mediums, simply because the information and its sources are online.
We don’t see the danger of any of this. Because for most of us, we have interpreted the experience as being good, or better than the past alternative.
We have fast connectivity; we can video chat with friends and family on the other side of the world; we can get food and shopping delivered in minutes with just a few clicks; we can travel without buying a ticket and just swiping our debit or credit card and we can even get massive amounts of credit, set up years-long contract payments for goods and services, or even order a brand new car that we wont see until its sat outside of our house, online.
The arrival of the latest forms of AI that we knowingly interact with – rather than the forms of AI that use algorithms or the codes that have already been monitoring and being used to judge us like we aren’t human for years before – have just made the whole situation and experience we face, much worse.
Not least of all because when we hear the stories of the AI Takeover and there soon being no need for humans to do any jobs, we all fall into the trap of assuming that those who own, manage and run all this technology that gives them wealth, influence and control, will then use it to provide a utopian dream for everyone else where none of us lift a finger and we have a lifestyle that correlates with a level of easy that would once have only featured in our wildest dreams.
Yes, you read that correctly.
The Truth that we are all avoiding
The tech that we have welcomed into our lives and actually paid the companies that own, run and programme it, to have access to and to be able to use and seemingly benefit from it, are not using it to help us, but to help themselves.
The establishment and the elites are using the tech that we are willingly embracing and failing to question the need for and purpose of to remove the functional need and requirement for potentially many millions of us to even exist.
Regrettably, the point draws ever nearer, where everyday people like you and I will wake up to the reality that it’s not us that need all of this digital technology to have very good, meaningful and freedom-driven lives.
The Technical Revolution has instead only been designed and pushed upon us to meet the needs of the establishment, the tech moguls and whoever has the means to control all these systems. The few, who can only get all they want in terms of money, power and control if we keep believing that we cannot live without the world that they have designed.
Indeed, it has become vital, if not essential for the few that the digital tools and infrastructure surrounding us and touching our lives in every way are now used to remove the ability of the mass population to make good on any of the political or behavioural threats that different people across society are now beginning to make.
Why this is happening now
Digital ID of the kind that we are now discussing has always been an elite-driven plan.
It’s why former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair was always so keen on it, amongst so many other policies presented to us as being ‘progressive’ and ‘liberalising’ that have actually made life for everyone outside of politics and aligned with the establishment considerably worse.
The financial and economic systems that we have (Neoliberalism, FIAT money etc.) were also planned and then implemented with the aim that the money would enable the ‘legitimate’ take over of the ownership of everything that society needs to survive and be independent.
However, such a bogus money and the economic system that sits around it could only be created by using a system and approach that itself would eventually collapse whilst creating generations of victims – because it is basically a big con.
From the start, the architects of this legalised crime knew that there would need to be a system of tight and rigid societal control in place to stop the whole thing from unravelling, as soon as the money system was exposed for the lie that it is. Because normal people would not be happy to wake up to the reality that they have been misled and robbed in just about every conceivable material sense – in some cases, from the moment of their birth.
The inevitable collapse of the financial and economic system is happening right now.
The system is over. It just hasn’t ended yet. And that’s why there is desperation in government to implement controls over every freedom we have – before it is too late – for them to do so.
The Grand Plan – Reset or New World Order (The next one after the last…)
This specific kind of Digital ID has featured in the goals and agendas of ‘world body’ or pre-emptive ‘world government’ organisations such as the WEF and United Nations for a considerable period of time with it sitting prominently within what is called Agenda 2030.*
Whilst it cannot be understated just how slavish Keir Stamer’s ‘leadership’ has been towards the delivery of whatever the WEF and Davos set have wanted from him since Labour came to power in July 2024, it is just as correct to point out that the Tories before them had done just as much, if not more.
There has been no government in the UK since the beginning of the 1970’s that hasn’t been bending or helping to bend everything towards agendas that do not and were never intended to serve the best interests of the British People.
The difficulty for the current Prime Minister is that his behaviour has become so incongruent with even the appearance of what government activity is expected to be. And so Starmer has come under increasing pressure not only from the media, but also from his own party, who realise that he is on the verge of making Labour unelectable, with the conclusion that he needs to be brought down.
We will probably never know who exactly is behind it. But what appears to have been the corruption necessary to get such a poor prime minister elected – who appears willing to do whatever he is being told to – has recently began dripping into the limelight over what seems to be different cover-ups including a sizable question of expenses.
The PM basically needed a life line or world-changing level dead cat distraction to grab everyone’s attention, that would at least temporarily hide the whole story from view.
In real terms, the whole Digital ID thing was on its way anyway. But it has probably been pushed out quickly in the hope that Starmer’s premiership will somehow remain intact.
In so far as the debate about Digital ID and Digital Life Keys is concerned however, it is far from over. And there is a chance that pushing yet another agenda into the bearpit of public opinion before everything was in place to carry it over the line, may indeed very quickly blow up in the governments face.
*Please do research this subject further and in particular the history of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which have been evolving and regularly redesignated on record since at least 1992. The Goals themselves appear sensible and considerate of many of the problems that the world not only faces but really needs to address. The problem comes with the interpretations and application of the policies and solutions which these democratically unaccountable organisations are designing and pushing upon us through receptive governments and politicians like Starmer – to ensure that they are met.
The relationship with Immigration and what it’s really about
Even though we may not even be talking about it with each other, many of us can already see and are experiencing a massive disconnect between what the government and our politicians are saying and doing – or rather telling us is going on, and what we genuinely believe or trust to be the case.
Even if it is the case that we feel conflicted by the suggestion that we alone may be seeing the real picture differently to everyone else.
Immigration, illegal immigration or what is more widely identified as the immigration across the English Channel from France by boat, has become a massively nebulous topic that most people are terrified of mentioning, even though they are living in growing fear of what it will mean.
Normal, everyday, sensible, educated or otherwise intelligent British people fear the risk of being branded as racist or being cancelled in some way that could result in the loss of their income or job, or even worse. Even though very few of us have any problem with the idea of giving a helping hand to anyone who has a genuine need to move far away from their real home.
Many of us feel this way.
Not because there is anything wrong with not wanting to lose our culture. Not wanting to experience collapsing public services. Not wanting to live in fear of violence on public transport or the streets. Not wanting to see what are actually economic migrants rather than refugees with a genuine need get help before the growing number of British People who are going without or maybe even facing life on the streets. Certainly not because there is anything wrong with not wanting to have to give up even more of the money we earn when prices are already shooting up, just to pay for someone to do nothing whilst inviting all of their extended family along.
We feel this way because the approach that the government and the establishment is taking towards immigration and the insertion of cultures and behaviours into our communities and everyday life is completely at odds with our values and way of life.
The actions being taken simply does not make any logical sense.
Or at least, it wouldn’t if we had people running everything who are putting the needs of the UK and our own People first.
The way that government is effectively doing nothing to stop thousands of people entering the UK each and every week, who will never help or benefit the UK in any productive way, doesn’t make sense. Because it cannot and will not benefit the UK or our communities, as we have known them. And it never will make sense or correlate with anything that we can conceive as being positive for any of us, because that was never the plan.
The problem we really have is that we have people running the Country who are not fit to lead, and are doing whatever they are told to do that will keep them in power. No matter what the cost will be to the Country and the communities that they were elected to represent, and certainly not to the people who put them there.
Over a period of decades, the wrong politicians have changed everything that was arguably once good about the UK or Great Britian. So that what we have, what we do, and what our future holds can be dictated and directed by people that we don’t, or won’t ever elect.
Faceless or rudderless people who have been selected for the very reason that they will do exactly whatever they are told, and will not blink at saying anything, doing anything and imposing rules, regulations and laws that will change everything as we know it – no matter the ultimate human cost.
Immigration: Just one weapon being used to save useless politicians and destroy everything good about Britain that we know
Immigration has become a weapon used against the UK on two fronts.
Immigration as a weapon No. 1
The first as a way of keeping the dubious financial and economic system that we have in the UK (and across the world) going.
A system that has been a complete con and way to legalise corporate and elite level theft from the masses. Simply because they have manipulated money and the way it is created so that life is no longer a luxury that the average wage earner or anyone earning less can genuinely afford.
Immigrants need massive amounts of cash spent on them being ‘resettled’ – which is the ideal focus for public spending for the establishment, through the building of houses, which sets off a chain reaction of financial transactions.
Money changes hands between landowners, housebuilders, banks, builders, building suppliers, all their employees and the list goes on – and every pound that get’s created by private banks at the outset is counted over and over again to demonstrate ‘growth’, so that the real size of the public debt our useless politicians have accumulated can be cleverly hidden with an accounting trick that is hidden away by what we know as GDP.
This process is in itself beginning to implode and contributing towards the financial collapse. Because the UKs ability to be genuinely productive (Through genuine production, manufacturing and industry) has already been stripped to the bone by the same system.
UK productivity has been taken from British businesses and our communities and pushed overseas.
Meanwhile, so little genuine productivity exists in the UK (which is the engine of real growth rather than a bogus version of it) that the government can no longer find the excuses or justification to borrow enough money (or what we know as bond sales to the markets) to generate enough money to keep the size of the problem hidden.
A problem that not only this Labour government, but successive governments back until before the time of Thatcher have until now all played a very active role in hiding – even when many of the politicians voting everything through were not aware of what they were being commanded to push through.
Immigration as a weapon No. 2
The second and most serious weapon being used against the UK, is the destruction of our identity and culture – using Immigration like a trojan horse so the ‘change’ seems ‘normal’ – because its perceived to be coming from ‘within’.
When people work together and are able to rely on the people around them who are in their real, offline lives, they have the ability to work together and collaborate to do and act in ways that make the world around us work. Not just well. But better than anything like what we today consider to be normal.
However, in the reality we currently have, the narratives that we accept as normal are all about division and making us focus on the differences between all of us. So that we aren’t paying attention to the real forces and actions that have been making this whole shitshow work.
DEI, crushing freedom of speech, political correctness and equality that was always about positive prejudice and switching bias from one form to another have been the most effective tools to create this disharmony and feeling of isolation that so many of us have over a long period of time.
But as history has all too often shown, British people and our communities have always been very good at getting their shit together in a time of crisis. So that we can work collaboratively together, to achieve and secure whatever we collectively need.
This ability to face down trauma and crisis at community or national level will simply not be available to us, if there is no recognisable way for community coherence to actually exist.
This is perhaps the most troubling aspect of the treacherous influx of immigrants who have no love for the UK or any desire to respect or fit in with what our Nation is or ever has been, but are – as so many already suspect – part of a fully sanctioned and deliberate invasion, that is being aided and abetted by an establishment that sees the world, its future and the role of the masses within it, in a very different and regrettably troubling way.
The irony is that many of the people coming here are only ready and willing to do so, because of the impact and consequences that this dreadful criminal system has already had upon their Countries, their communities and all of them.
How many illegal Immigrants are there that the Government hasn’t already digitally recorded and identified?
To get some perspective on the reality of illegal immigration versus the immigration that the government knows about – and has therefore registered and identified the people concerned, in the year up to March 2025, there were 44,125 ‘irregular’ arrivals in the UK, of which 86% of these (44,125 x .86 = 37,948) arrived by boat.
This means the number of illegal immigrants that arrived during that year – of which many the government will also know about was (44,125 – 37,948) 6,177 at most or the equivalent of less than 0.0001% of the UK Population, if we work on the basis that there are 66 Million People here.
The real Agenda – a digital prison that the establishment will declare makes us safe and free
The principle of Digital ID, when fixed against the backdrop of what we already do with our data and the seeming ease with which we cand do almost anything online or with smart technology, without even having to think about it, makes all that Starmer and co are doing seem harmless enough.
And that’s the point really. Because there is nothing that the establishment and the government will do today in terms of significant policy change – particularly when it comes to freedom, control and what we are able to do now as opposed to what we soon will not be allowed to do – that they wont either hide and make seemingly irrelevant as part of another policy.
Everything a government of this kind does, where it’s real intentions are not made clear will be delivered in a series of different steps, over what might be a prolonged period of time. Where careful wording that sounds very harmless, will have given them the ability to make changes and introduce mechanisms or ways of working that would only have become necessary – perhaps for reasons of practicality, much later on and at a very different time, usually when we are expected to have forgotten what the original policy was supposedly for.
Look closely and you will see the game that is already afoot right now.
Industry ‘specialists’ and ‘experts’ are already making light of what this new form of Digital ID would mean. With the suggestions circulating, as I write, that the only time anyone would need to use an app or code that sits on our phones, will be when we start a new job.
But isn’t that what our National Insurance Numbers are already for?
Working with and understanding government, how government and the public sector works and how the system speaks and achieves its aims, is like learning an entirely new and very different language that few really get to grips with.
Just in the same way that we have a very dangerous habit of believing that because we all speak English, that US and UK culture are exactly the same.
Even experienced government officers and civil servants fall foul of the same system that they may have worked within for their entire career.
The Global World Agenda, with Starmer falling over himself to open the door
Starmer’s step towards ‘mandatory Digital ID’ is nothing less than a welcome mat to the takeover of every part of our lives.
The successful adoption of this policy and its implementation will be the creation of the requirement that each and every one of us must have and be able to present a universal Digital key, Digi-key, or Digital Life Key in everything that we do.
Indeed, the system may ultimately appear to work and operate seamlessly – especially if humans are eventually forced to be ‘chipped’ or ‘read’ by monitors and even drones that don’t interact with us.
But without that code being present and read at every point of required electronic contract at which we do something new or different each day, when our ‘Digital ID’ will need to be approved by the data that is held centrally on the system about us – everything for us will come to a very rapid and spotlighted stop.
Plans for 15 minute cities to stop us travelling far, moves to ensure we eat only what we are expected to eat, pointers to live wherever and however we are supposed to, rules that require we thing do what we are supposed to, and not to do anything that upsets or offends anyone – can and will be enforced, monitored and linked directly to our Digital ID, through a Social Credit system.
Within the social credit system that will soon follow without change, anything less than the number of points or social credits that we need to be able to do anything, will stop us from doing anything that those in charge don’t want us to, unless they have given us enough points to confirm that they approve.
Britcard is the stuff of nightmares. But communist China has been enforcing social credit for years
You only need look at and research social credit systems in China to see just how far reaching, intrusive and restrictive the systems that the establishment will have the scope to force into every part of our lives – if this dystopian and tyrannical policy should go ahead.
We must all understand that with the digital tools we already have in our pockets as well as those that are coming online, the ability of the establishment to police every one of us will be ridiculously easy for them, not least of all because of AI and the fact that everything they will need to do to control our behaviour wont need people to enforce it, because it can all be done with a computer remotely.
Once the new system of rules and regulations that govern our behaviour is in place – in all probability in response to either World War III or the coming collapse that we will later come to, where there will no doubt be a need for us to trade freedoms and things we used to take for granted, so that we can be ‘helped’ and ‘protected’ by those who rule from above, there will be nothing that we need to exist and to survive independently in life, that we will be able to access legally, without giving our phone, ID Card or chip a swipe – and having it approved.
Starmer’s Britcard or Digital ID is a system that will remove the freedom of the masses to be, do, or think independently and outside of whatever those who are in charge decide should be the rules, just so that anyone who isn’t registered – or disapproves, cannot survive.
This is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist and it’s not about solving an immigration problem at any level or of any kind.
Starmer and his Labour government are trying to open the door to a Digital Prison that will envelope us all, and that it will be almost impossible to step back from, once we have found ourselves within.
Life in the Digital Prison
If you are one of the many already self-policing what you say, when you say it and who you say it to, in order to avoid being accused of and then backlisted for doing or saying something that is wrong – when you actually know that there is nothing wrong or nothing bad intended through what you are doing in any way, you already have a clear idea of how a Key to a Digital controlled Life will make you and I do all the work for our future rulers.
If you think things are bad for us today, they will be much worse when we cannot get money, buy food, pay bills, get on a bus or train, apply for a job, get a qualification or anything that we all still take for granted as being openly available to us today.
Because when we haven’t followed their rules – which under a digital tyranny we will never be able to set – life as we know it is basically over and we will be well and truly stuffed.
The intent behind Digital ID in this ‘Britcard’ form is very sinister indeed. Because whoever has power over the system sets the rules.
Ideas like democracy and the freedom to choose will no longer exist. Because in this dystopian tyranny, somebody else – who you are unlikely to ever meet or know – will already have made all the choices that matter for you.
It won’t matter if those controlling this dystopian life are feeding us food or drink that will harm us; making us vulnerable to harmful situations; exploiting us for whatever purposes suit them; or even guiding us towards decisions about our end of life. Because once we are no longer useful and cannot financially justify our existence to their system, we are basically obstructing their view.
Starmer’s Digital ID is the welcome mat at the doorway of our very own digital prison.
Once we have crossed the threshold, we will quickly realise that all of the apparatus that has increasingly surrounded us as we have enthusiastically welcomed it into our lives, with all the devices that appear to have made everything so very easy, will give the establishment and all the companies and organisations who are on the inside of all this, the collective power to clamp down on everything we know very quickly. Whilst also sweeping aside any business or organisation that also chooses or is unable to comply.
Digital ID won’t stop Immigration, because it isn’t intended to
Whilst the reality we are awakening to may for many be the kind of story that we would associate with conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists, this perspective is yet another carefully crafted narrative that those behind this pathway to dystopia have intended all of us to believe and buy into.
If the government wanted to stop the boats tomorrow, it could and would find a way to do so. In just the same way as the Johnson Tory government was able to lock down the whole of the UK overnight and stop everything, simply because they decided that continuing normal life through the Covid ‘Pandemic’ wasn’t right.
The real twist or perhaps what we might even call the elephant in this digital jail cell is that for Starmer’s Digital ID or ‘Britcard’ to be able to identify anyone who isn’t supposed to be here – which wouldn’t include any illegal immigrant who has been processed already and rehomed anyway, and to then have the kind of impact where it would stop anyone from being able to function illegally in the UK anyway, all of the processes and procedures that police everyone and everything to ensure that we are doing whatever we are supposed to and not doing anything that we aren’t, would need to already be fully in place – including a CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency – that we will come back to again shortly).
At the current time, the technology for all of this exists; is available and could be inserted without our consent on our phones and could be rolled out using cards or chips. But the monitoring or registration points needed to ‘catch’ illegal immigrants and ‘exclude’ them (and therefore any of us who refuse to participate) are far enough away from being in place that the change wouldn’t be immediately apparent following the policy being implemented.
(It would be wise to ignore the suggestion that the government will wait until the whole system can be managed under the existing ‘Gov.UK One Login’ system, and that the timeline for this to be operational is at least 10 years – as this timeline itself removes the excuse for the urgency and 2029 timeline of this policy plan)
The legislation must be in place so that the legal infrastructure and requirement placed upon businesses, organisations (and in all likelihood phone airtime and data providers) to participate and act as agents of the state would make the next stages all but inevitable – if the purpose is as genuine as Starmer suggests.
All this to stop a number of people probably a lot less than 6,177 over the year to March, from having jobs?
The excuses suggesting that ‘Britcard’ is what it is being sold as will then very quickly disappear.
The role and evolution of big business to become agents of the state
If you were paying close attention to the dynamics of the government response to the Covid Pandemic, you will have noticed that it in the majority of cases, it was the big, tech-orientated and global-leaning corporate businesses that did very well out of the crisis.
Because the requirements of lockdowns and social distancing somehow turbocharged their business models and helped big businesses to thrive.
To be clear, these are the businesses that government and the wider establishment talk to when they say they are getting advice on what’s good for business and how business should work.
Yet how a genuinely good business works and what many of these companies do to conduct their business is not anywhere near to being on the same page, in the same chapter, the same book. It is certainly not the same thing.
These big businesses already have the technology on their websites and on their tills that will be able to identify you from a Digital Life Key or Digital ID app on your phone.
It will then be simple to refuse to sell you products, supply you with services or even serve you a coffee, if your social credit score doesn’t match. Because you haven’t ‘behaved’ and are tagged by the establishment to somehow be in the wrong.
Few understand that big business doesn’t care about any of us, beyond the money or profit that they can make from us.
Everything big businesses are doing and have been doing is all part of the same agenda and plan, to make the business of supplying everyone’s day to day needs as simple and as streamlined as its possible for it to be, with genuine competition removed from the marketplace, meaning that cost and effort are removed and the absolute minimum of human contact and communication involved.
Small businesses that offer alternatives and what is the remaining competition to this plan, have been or are being steadily and systematically removed – either by being bought out, overburdened by legislation or simply made unviable. Because the big businesses seem to be able to do so much more, so more cheaply, all at a time when we seem to have less and less to spend, each and every day.
What is left of small business after the Digital Life Key or Britcard role out will be unlikely to be able to survive. Primarily because small business owners who have any sense will refuse to become agents of the state by administering the new Digital Policing System first hand.
Or many small businesses simply will not be able to upgrade the technology and manpower that they have that will be necessary to make it work, against a backdrop where for most, any unforeseen expenses added to the critically fragile margins that exist due to what this system has already done will be all it will take to close them down.
The interconnectivity between Digital ID and CBDCs
Opening this very big can of worms alongside the agendas that have steadily wrecked the UK from its foundations up, wouldn’t be complete without touching on the ‘need’ for digital ID to come into being and to sit very snugly or interconnectedly alongside the Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) that no normal person or business needs.
The very painful truth about the way that our world works around us today is that money and the value of money now sit at the centre of every part of life.
The value of money and what it means has become more important than people, communities, the environment and basically human life (for all others) itself.
Those within the establishment that control everything to do with money, know exactly how much power over each one of us money now has.
If money is not only digitised, but becomes digitally linked to the individual who possesses that money or to whom it has been credited, using the blockchain technology that a CBDC would be built with, thereby making today’s digital money redundant, then the easiest way to get that person to do whatever the establishment wants them to do, is to create and maintain self-contained system that requires continual digital green-light for every conceivable transaction, where anything outside full compliance means that the supply or even access to the money that the person has, can immediately be switched off.
If you’ve been unlucky enough to have experienced a banking app crashing or going out of service, or the switch machines in a coffee shop or supermarket being out of action and there being no other way of paying for what you want, you will get your head around the reality of just how easy – with the right technology – this will be for a dystopian government to achieve.
Again, we already have a fully digital system that works very well – and that existing digital money system will always continue to improve if the banks, businesses and merchant service providers can see ways to save money (and make more of it) by taking steps to invest as they do.
A CBDC that is linked through a Digital ID like Britcard is about having a money system that makes the money that we have unique and links that money directly to us and how we behave.
The existence of this system and its technology make behavioural control not only likely but guarantees that money can be switched off and kept from us, if we do anything that questioned the establishments rules for control.
We will only need a Britcard or Key to Digital Life if our lives are going to be controlled and run digitally
Starmer’s Digital ID or Britcard is about the implementation of a system that links the establishment to every device and monitoring point that we come into contact with. Creating digital turnstiles across each and every part of normal life and activity where whoever or whatever manages that data point can be used – remotely – to create walls or gates to whatever we want to buy or want to do.
In practice, the false freedom we then have will operate on the basis of ‘computer says no’ – whilst the system can also pinpoint, record and monitor where we are at any specific moment in time.
We know from the way that everything digital has been working up until now, that the system we already have operates very well and beneficially so for all the businesses that hold our data.
The system we have works very well, without there being any need for either the systems that businesses and banks use, or our identification data to be coordinated and available at the centre of government, so that those in charge can use it to do whatever they like.
Those who aren’t registered and compliant with the system that Starmer wants to introduce cannot and will not be identifiable without the infrastructure that monitors and polices this type of Digital ID system being universally rolled out and active in every part of societal life.
The numbers of people who could be identified if this system were already functional and we were all registered and being monitored today would be very low. Because the number of people in the U.K. who are here and shouldn’t be, who have not already been in contact with and therefore registered with the system in some way and therefore have access to some form of registered identification is very small. (Once again, let’s not forget that everyone coming into the UK across the English Channel by boat is registered so that they can then be moved and rehomed)
Nobody can work without a National Insurance Number now, and anyone who has applied for a job at anytime recently will know just how stringent the process is for applicants to make their background and residency status known to prospective employers.
The whole ‘you will need this to work’ story is a massive red herring, and one that has an horrific level of dishonesty and malevolence at its heart.
The benefit of Starmer’s Digital ID or Britcard system isn’t and will not be ours.
Starmer’s Britcard or Digital ID represents nothing less than the transfer of freedom at every human level, to the control of a remotely operated policing regimen that will manifests itself not through an officer of the state following us around, but through our very own electronic devices.
Once everyone is within the system – and that means the businesses that supply all our essential and basic needs too, we will have no choice but to comply with anything and everything that those in control of the system want – no matter how dark or inhuman it might turn out to be for us.
The opportunity for change may be the biggest challenge that we face
At time of writing this Essay, it has been reported that Starmer’s government intend this Digital ID system to implemented and be in place or use no later than 2029 – which of course fits with the plans of those who are really setting the Labour agenda.
Many will be alarmed by the reality that this sounds very much like its roll out is intended to beat the expected date of the next General Election- which if on time, will be the same year.
There is a lot of water set to flow by before then. Not least of all because it is very unlikely that Starmer himself will still be Prime Minister by that time.
There is also much to suggest there are many within the Labour Party itself who will act to stop this madness as soon as they have the chance.
However, the chances that we are currently within and will see the end of a normal parliamentary cycle are limited to say the least.
In no small part due to the economically precarious circumstances the UK is now experiencing, where it has become possible that we will experience an economic collapse at any time. One that could easily see a change in government following closely along behind.
Put that alongside the increasingly likely escalation of the war rhetoric being pushed by the governments (including ours) that are aligned with the WEF and its local management in the form of the EU, and it seems just as likely that an event such as the intrusion of an EU country or nato member airspace could see a Russian plane shot down at any time. And in the hands of governments across the western world who are struggling to keep this broken system running, such an event could see us deliberately plunged into war at any time.
As many commentators and academics are also suggesting, civil war of a kind that doesn’t resemble military sides lining up against each other also seems increasingly likely. Simply because of how disillusioned and how disenfranchised from decision making most people are now feeling, and the reality that this massive undemocratic and unwanted tyrannical step on the part of the government, is likely make that bad feeling consistently worse.
Everything Local is the only good thing for you and for me
Unfortunately, many of the things that seem to make life so easy for us today only work that way because they serve somebody else’s purpose to do so.
All the things in life that seem to make everything seem so easy for us play up to all the negative parts of being human. Whilst steadily removing all of the values, systems and ways of doing everything that might not be glamorous, cheap and easy, but which ultimately creat and maintain a way of life that for everyone would be inherently healthy and good.
The real cost of fast and always accessible money, easy living, touch of a button culture – which has been developing around us as quickly as technological advances have allowed – is that we do not behave, think or even act independently of what’s externally remote to us anymore.
This is the real human tragedy of our times. Because our own greed, selfishness and absence of human values have been progressively used against us to create a situation where self sustainability and looking after ourselves, independently and on our own terms, is on the verge of becoming impossible, if not impossibly hard to do.
Centralisation and all of the tools that align with it such as globalisation, ‘big business’, the EU, World bodies (with the aim of World Government), the patriarchy, top-down hierarchies are the antithesis and polar opposite of everything and every way of life and working that is actually good for people, for communities, for the environment and mankind.
We don’t need everything to be big. We don’t need everything to relate to money. We don’t need everything available to us at the touch of a button. We certainly don’t need someone we will never know or meet to be dictating everything about our lives including what we are allowed to think.
The only way that we can stop the rot and halt this march towards digital tyranny, is to re-embrace the offline world that we are quickly forgetting; return to real life and have and enjoy a life that is built and developed around everything and everyone that we are able to interact with, communicate with or visit face to face, each and every day.
Yes, we have good reason to embrace the forms of new technology that have and are becoming available.
But their use should only ever be to improve the lives of everyone. Not to control, ruin and increasingly to replace the lives and the ability to live of everyone who those few in control no longer see any value in and dictate that the world no longer wants.
A healthy life that offers the environment and systems that everyone needs, so that nobody is ever immediately disadvantaged by factors that are outside of their control can only be offered by a system of governance that is local, community based, and operates independently of regional, national and international bodies in every conceivable way.
The only exception to the need for local governance and properly accountable decision making is where cooperation and collaboration is necessary between communities to achieve mutually agreed targets or goals which are themselves non-political and where there is no transfer of executive decision making or local powers involved.
Decision making and democracy
The only way that we will ever be certain that democracy cannot be abused and replaced by agendas that we may be told are in our best interests, but which are nothing of the sort, is for every decision that will effect the lives of the people within a community, to be made either by those people, or by representatives that those same people have chosen and appointed to represent them, themselves.
Localism in its genuine sense, based upon the return of power to people who we all know and can communicate with and question daily, is the only way that we can be sure that the people will have influence over every meaningful public policy decision, and ensure that we always have genuine public representatives – and not self-aggrandising patsies in control who have sold out to do someone else’s bidding.
And we need a completely new Establishment to run and deliver everything too
Your politics, religion, ideas, background, age, education or anything else that has, can or will be used to divide us, does not matter when it comes to recognising that for every one of us, there are parts of life that simply don’t work in the UK, anymore.
Whether we are being affected and impacted directly, or the problems we recognise are just something happening to other people or different communities that we can somehow see, we all know that things aren’t working as they should. And the horrible truth is that for some of us, nothing is working at all.
We could go down the rabbit hole of trying to identify, apportion blame and then demand that politicians and government change whatever we identify as needing to be changed. Or, that they step aside so that they can be replaced by whoever we believe will do whatever it is that they either cannot or are choosing not to do.
Indeed, many are doing just that, and already expect that all it will take is just a change in government. So that we have ‘the right people’ in charge.
It’s a nice idea and it’s appealing to many of us. Because this pathway also leaves the real work, commitment and doing whatever it will take to enact change, to someone else.
Unfortunately, we’ve been here before. And very recently too.
In fact, many of us genuinely believed that the downward chaos of all the Conservative governments between 2010 and 2014, which was aided and abetted by the Liberal Democrats between 2010 and 2015, would unquestionably be stopped by the election of Keir Starmer and The Labour Party in July 2024. Because Labour was supposedly offering something new and would know what to do, or in any case could never possibly be as bad as what we already had, could they…
It took just a few months to prove the point that the power of our vote can have consequences that are completely out of our control.
Whilst some seem prepared to make the very same mistakes all over again, the reality is that as things stand today, we can no longer trust anything that politicians promise or offer us as part of an election manifesto. Because they are without fail behaving the same as all the politicians we have ever known and will inevitably go on and do whatever they want to do once they hold the power, we trusted them with.
And once they are elected, they will do whatever they want to whilst telling us that it’s in our best interests, knowing there is nothing that we can do about it democratically until the time of the next election comes around, when we will hopefully by then have forgotten whatever they have done which might then be years before.
Whether we voted or not, millions of us made the mistake of electing yet another group of politicians who are out of touch with real life; are motivated by all the wrong things and above all, have no real control over the apparatus of government and the legislative devices that should be at their disposal. Either because they are too frightened; are being very badly advised or misled; are out of their depth and really have no idea what they are doing and what they could do; or a mixture of them all.
This page is not here to make excuses for this government, the Sunak government or indeed any one of many governments before them both that have harboured and given favour to the wrong politicians and what decades of poor, absent and self-serving non-leadership has given us, whilst we are somehow always the ones who are getting everything wrong.
This page is here to make clear that politicians and the political class that we have today, right across the tiers of government in the UK, are just a part of a much bigger problem. And they are the only part of problem that we cannot otherwise see.
If we need a divorce, we go to a lawyer. If we need our car fixed, we go to a mechanic. If we want and extension built, we go to a builder. If we want a load of bread, we go to a baker. If we want a beer we go to a brewer. But for decades, we have gone to the Polling Stations on election day and chosen who we vote for from a list of candidates that only Political Parties have offered up.
Specialist professionals and tradespeople like these that provide goods and services that we genuinely need, learn a very specific craft. And they get better at what they do, because they spend all their working time doing just that.
Yet when it comes to everything to do with government, governance and how every kind of public service and are systems of rules and regulations are managed and designed across the UK, we currently leave strategy, planning and everything important in the hands of a few people who are always there to represent what they Political Party wants first. So-called politicians who cannot possibly know or understand every part of life they are making decisions upon, and certainly don’t have the leadership skills, experience or awareness to listen, consider and then act appropriately on our behalf, only after referencing all the people that they really should be, whilst being sure that they are being impartial and working in the best interests of everyone at all times, too.
Anyone with a platform, the words and a great speaking voice can sound like a leader. But leadership is about the actions that genuine leaders take and in the case of politics, the actions they take when none of us are either looking or able to see what they are doing; where they are doing it and who they are doing it (for or) with.
In other words, to lead any Country properly, it takes integrity, purpose and a commitment to public service before Party or anything else.
The evidence from what we can see today, tells us that no politician or would be leader in the public eye has this purpose, spirit or a level of integrity that we can put our trust in that in power, they will always do the right thing – even when it might require that they step up and do some very difficult and perhaps unpopular things.
We can all see that genuine leadership and integrity don’t exist within UK politics today.
Unfortunately, both have been absent for so long that the whole system has been so corrupted and become self-serving that it must be completely replaced.
The system is so established with the way it works and operates that it continues appearing to function. Whilst the reality is that in whichever direction we turn and begin to look, every part of it is either dysfunctional or going completely wrong.
The illusion of effectiveness is only held in place by the reality that like everyone else, our politicians have fallen into the trap of believing that every problem can be solved with money. And that if politicians have enough public money available to spend, every problem for them can be addressed. No matter the problems their inability to lead and acts of avoidance using that money will and have meant that we and people in every UK community subsequently face as a direct result of their ineptitude and what they have(n’t) done.
This isn’t a problem that can be fixed with politics or politicians who are just about the politics.
Because politics has become all about the politics and who’s in charge of the political process. Rather than being anything to do with results, outcomes or whatever gets done.
Politics is now the biggest distraction of them all when it comes to the change and scale of change that we need. Because the way that elections and the electoral cycle work mean that we really are just going around in circles, whilst everything gets worse, and we keep waiting for the merry go round to come full circle so that the whole problematic rotation can begin all over again.
Being right does not automatically make anyone else wrong; even when you have the loudest voice
The Penny appears to finally be dropping amongst the masses that power does not necessarily mean virtue. And it’s certainly no guaranteed of integrity either.
Meanwhile, for the powerful, reality is also now dawning that position, influence and how loud they may be in public (or how many people hear them) doesn’t mean that they can do anything they want and that the power they seem to have will automatically make anything they do right.
The problem is, belief that position and being seen to have won the argument, got the result or controlled the narrative – often with words, deeds and actions that are morally apprehensible when it comes to political power, have not only convinced the political classes that ‘do as I say, not as I do’ is baked in.
Politicians really have reached the point where they believe they are right, no matter the consequences or real human cost from whatever they do or what they say.
All because they are the ones deciding what’s right and what’s wrong.
Wrong things shape our beliefs and make them feel right
It’s not only a problem that public policy that isn’t really about the public at all is damaging lives, people, communities, the environment around us and the businesses that we need to survive and thrive.
The fact that sanitised but nonetheless tyrannical behaviour is coming at us constantly through every channel and digital stream that most of us regrettably consider to be credible sources, mean that many people are becoming conditioned with the belief that behaviour that is reflective of what our so-called leaders are doing is not only correct, but good for one and all.
The Dehumanisation of Life through remote-controlled Techno-Tyranny
Regrettably, there is an urgent need for us all to recognise that the dehumanised way of life that is progressively taking over with each and every step taken towards the Tech and AI Takeover, where it seems that every need possible can be met through the tap of a finger on our phones, is feeding into the nightmarish version of an increasingly dystopian life and living environment for us all.
It’s sucking up lies from each direction, whilst simultaneously convincing us that we still have freedom and choice.
We’ve lost sight of the very principles and values that equip us to function, communicate and interact with other human beings face-to-face. All within a rapid, dehumanising transformation process, that is currently succeeding in convincing otherwise very sensible people that the only guides and directives necessary for a successful life come from a smart phone or online.
What is more, the whole process has already began removing and questioning ‘common sense’, taking everything in life backwards.
We find grown adults fighting over whether the basic tenets of life are either wrong, right, open to interpretation or that taking what should be obvious as read and thereby offending somebody over what only they might ever believe is itself enough to justify ruining the other persons life.
We are the sum of our experiences
It really doesn’t matter who we are. One thing that we can almost certainly be sure that we have in common, is that if you or I were to stop and reflect upon our current view of the world; what everything means and how we see it; we would both be right.
We would both be right, because as individuals that’s what all the experiences up until this moment have taught every one of us. Even when our experiences may have been harmful to us, been incorrect (because of what others have done) or because for whatever reason, they are basically skewed.
Experience is cumulative too. Whilst none of us may wish to admit that the understanding we have of anything can only be as much as layer-deep, or that we have only reached a certain level of knowledge about anything; such limitation of understanding can therefore mean that what we believe to be right isn’t completely right.
It can certainly be very disconcerting to reckon with the reality that reaching GCSE, then A-level, then degree level, then masters level, then doctorate level in the same very specific subject may well mean that whilst we may have a very good and correct subjective view; in objective terms, even then, as an ‘expert’ or with even a recognised level of qualification, we are still a very long way from getting it right.
Misplaced confidence based on our beliefs being ‘who we are’, when our beliefs come from those who influence us
Recognising the value that we give to others when they have been awarded academic qualifications is one thing.
Then there is also the phenomena which is the way that we give credibility to others simply because they have a role (like politicians or public officers) and most alarming today, to influencers (which can mean many things), based on nothing more than the reality that they have a platform of some kind, where the number of people watching, following, liking or subscribing gives them credibility that reaches beyond all other things.
Oddly, when anyone speaking or even writing doesn’t appear to have one or more of these status anchors, we seem to consider whatever they are sharing to not have the same legitimacy. No matter the content of what they say. And if what they say contradicts our own message and belief system in some way, there is all too often the chance that we will simply assume that whatever they offer has no value and that they are therefore ‘wrong’.
Misplaced confidence based on our beliefs being ‘who we are’, when our beliefs come from the establishment, religion and the shibboleths they impose
Perhaps more difficult to consider and accept is the role and influence that what we might otherwise call cultural or societal norms have on our beliefs and therefore behaviour. Because we can all too easily believe that these are just the things that ‘normal’ people do.
How we behave in public. How we consider some behaviour and actions to be acceptable whilst others are not. How we consider right and wrong. How we look up or look down upon others – in ways that would be called prejudices in any other terms. Increasingly how we stop and question actions and behaviours that we had previously not given a second thought to because we considered them to be normal, but now we stop and feel guilty because we thought them.
These are all based upon the belief systems that are set, adapted and increasingly forced into our lives by the organisations that we recognise as being the establishment. And for some more than others, from our religions which can become the most important source or framework for our behaviours and what we expect for ourselves and from others across our lives.
Whilst we must recognise that some of the rules and social codes that have come from our system of governance and our religions can be very good for us and for everyone in very specific contexts, we also need to understand, accept and therefore recognise that many of the rules and social cues that we live by were or have been created as forms of social control.
They have been created and are used to foster and promote fear of something that is apparently outside of our control, so that what we do have control over can in turn then be restricted and therefore controlled by someone else.
For instance, there is no need to question the existence of a God, Source, universal force or whatever we may each choose to call the focus of what we might ultimately believe in, to recognise that words and interpretations can change each time they are passed on.
We must recognise that ultimately, to further the scope, reach, influence and power of religions, the people who benefit from being in control of those religions have created compelling stories and interpretations of those stories and what they may or may not require of us. All based upon material that has itself been passed on potentially many times, each time by another person who was never actually there at the time whenever the chain of these stories first began or could be witnessed firsthand.
Genuine, voluntary and uncoerced faith in the system and faith in a religion can be the same or should be the same. In that they are most powerful, most compelling and most beneficial to us and to others, when they are left to us all to recognise what we believe to be true and in turn to then apply our understanding of everything in terms of what we know to be wrong or to be right.
There is no system in existence that seeks to control or compel others coercively that is also unquestionably right or correct
Doing anything because someone with authority or because a book says so isn’t voluntary belief or choice.
It is dogmatic servitude that excuses itself by insisting that slavish adherence to whatever it teaches, automatically makes it right – even when it is very clearly wrong.
We are indeed fortunate that what we might call the societal operating system of British Culture is based upon the secularisation that the evolution of a Christian system has allowed to develop, that was itself probably only possible because of The Reformation and the otherwise questionable parts of the reign of King Henry VIII.
However, the freedom of thought and expression that becoming unshackled from the Church has ultimately brought has also made us massively vulnerable to anyone who understands how narratives, group thinking and the tools that media offers can be used to introduce and make us subservient to contrary systems of belief.
Indeed, alien beliefs that run contrary that everything our society has been built on have been progressively introduced and are reshaping societal beliefs, leading to people questioning their own common sense, whilst others simply accept philosophies and agendas that are ultimately not offering anything that is good for anyone and least of all you or me.
Fear is today being used to disproportionately exaggerate societal problems, in ways that have created the risk that those problems may quickly become even bigger problems that we would never otherwise have experienced.
Whilst learning to stop, count to ten and then think about what is being said, who is saying it, why they are saying it and what is really happening would help every one of us to uncover the truths that are good for us all to believe.
Finding and creating beliefs that we can trust
There exists no person, no government, no establishment and no religion that has the right to insist that either you or I believe whatever they say or require of us, without question.
Such expectation is an abuse of the rights of whoever they are victimising or making a victim of. Whether that victim is aware or sees their relationship as being that of a victim under an oppressor or not.
This is not a question of those with responsibility hiding information from those under their care that would otherwise be harmful to them.
This is about those with responsibility for others abusing the trust that others have given and that has been assumed from anyone who is vulnerable and then either ignorantly or deliberately misusing that trust to abuse they very people they are there to protect from such abuse.
We are in troubling times
Regrettably, few institutions now exist where integrity can be assured from the actions, behaviour and decisions from anyone that we don’t personally know and have no good reason to belief that they are and always will be as good as their word.
The digitisation and mission creep of the online world has exacerbated this greatly and made the overall process of dehumanising everything progressively worse.
The reality we must face is that if we want to own our own beliefs and develop them using reliable and trustworthy sources, we can and must only use face-to-face relationships and the benefits of the social interactions that remain open and available to us without accessing anything that is only available to us online.
The only relationship that matters is the one that’s right in front of us
For all the benefits that we may be able to agree upon, the latest forms of digital technology and artificial intelligence are also introducing a much bigger and malevolent dark side into the world as we know it.
Almost every system that has and is being introduced into daily life for you and me, is either already or soon will be used as a tool of control.
And these tools can and only will work as effectively as they do, because we believe that what they bring or give to us is good for us in ways that make us forget or overlook the freedoms they have replaced and ultimately the non-financial price that we pay.
Yes, AI for medicine, AI for diagnostics, AI for workplace safety and purposes like these are and will always be good uses. Especially so when they are not about profit but about improving life and therefore the common good.
But AI in any form that appears to make life easier, quicker, or that replaces the need for us or any person to do anything are not and will not be good for anyone other than those who profit from it.
The AI and Tech-takeover really doesn’t offer the whole of humanity anything that any of us need in day-to-day life. But it is set to take away a massive amount from us that we do.
Of all the beliefs that we have been conditioned to have, the belief that whatever is outside of us is better than us and that it reduces our value in any way, is the worst one possible for any of us to have.
When we interact properly with others and use all of the senses and skills that we have to communicate and to read, listen to and understand communication in the circumstances that can and only will ever be offered through real one-to-ones, we will soon begin to remember or realise that these are some of the very best sources of learning – and therefore belief development that any of us could ever have.
Once you become a number, it won’t matter what you believe
Relationships – that’s real relationships, with real people, in real life, really matter.
Once all those relationships have been lost and we no longer have the ability to interact normally beyond familial or friend-based relationships in person and everything else is done without people with names online, our opinions, what makes us happy, what makes us healthy and what is actually good for us will no longer matter. Because the humanity in relationships and therefore the values that make us human will have successfully been cast aside.
The most concerning aspect of the process and steps that are now taking us towards this destination is just how quick and therefore soon we will arrive there.
Whilst most of us still don’t even question what we have unknowingly given up and that has been taken from us, because we have accepted the belief that what has been given to us or that we have often actually paid money for has been good or even better for us in some way.
Thinking for yourself isn’t about being right. It’s all about thinking the right way
Whilst we may not have used this term here until now, critical thinking is the key for all of us to unlocking the door to the pathway that leads to understanding what everything in life is all about.
Critical thinking isn’t just the magical formula that gives us back the power to define our own belief system.
Critical thinking is the golden gift that enables us to recognise and understand the value of all the experiences that have made us and therefore to self-define who we are, and who we will be.
A certain truth that we would all benefit from learning, understanding and living is that none of us are right or will be right until the time that we recognise we are all right and that being right is just the next step in learning what else is right, until we all agree that right is exactly the same thing.
Adam Tugwell 