Fresh Food is the foundation of a happy, healthy and productive life. So why would anyone think humanity can survive by leaving the basic building blocks of good living behind?

There is nothing in life that everyone shares the same need for, whilst having such individual, specific or idiosyncratic approaches to, as food and what we eat.

Minded that to be healthy, we should all have access to at least 2 nutritious meals per day, it is amazing that so many of us think so little about the food that we eat. Where it comes from. What it consists of. And whether the food we are eating is actually benefiting or harming us, despite the fact that eating continues to be a socially shared activity, and what we put in our mouths is just as important as the air that we breathe.

The lack of interest or ‘taking food for granted’ of those who aren’t really thinking about the food that they eat, regrettably makes the issues that surround food and how it can be used to further the interests of those who are aware of that disconnect, very easy to exploit.

In times like those we are experiencing and with the very uncertain future that we currently have, this means we are quite literally in a situation where food cannot only be used to control us. Food can also be used as a way to hurt us both physically and emotionally, whilst Food Security and access to the supply of food is and can continue to become less safe, as it is progressively taken away from us as consumers and from the people who grow and produce it.

Food Complacency

On the face of it, too many of us are happy to accept the idea that if we have eaten and therefore, we are not hungry, it doesn’t matter what we actually eat.

Take that one step forward again. Many have an increasingly restricted choice about what they eat, because the priority of what they eat isn’t based on a decision between what might be on offer. It is based solely upon what the person or family can afford.

Whilst there are many who would happily debate the questions of whether food is a fundamental right or whether food is a public good, the fact is that we are only in a position where we can even have such a debate or that it is possible for these questions to exist, because there are other cultural, legal, ethical and many other manmade ‘rights’ that place some of us in a position where we can control what anyone or indeed any living thing on the planet can have access to.

Meanwhile, the questions that we should be asking but are not is whether it is right and proper within any part of Food Production and the supply chains around food, that any parts of it can or should be privately owned, and where they are, what those interests should allow them to do to food and how we access it.

The absence of ethics in profit-driven Food Production and Supply

Food is a basic requirement for life that we all share. Yet the processes, issues of ownership and what food can be used to achieve for anyone with the power to do so, have now become all that food is really about.

The entire food supply now revolves a global system that quickly moved way beyond improved methods for feeding larger numbers of people and became all about the money that can be made by those who are in control instead.

The creation of large food chains, where so little can be seen has meant that the real truths that have increasingly underpinned all parts of food production for so long can easily be hidden.

When so much of the food chain processes has been hidden and maximised for the profit that it can provide to vested interests, the next step for those who are driven by greed is to then manipulate and change the content of food so that every bit of profit that it contains from every ingredient that can be added, can then be exploited and profited from just the same.

Food in its most basic or natural forms is the healthiest for all of us that it is possible for it to be

Whilst basic processes such as milling, pasteurisation, cheesemaking, baking, hanging, smoking and all those things that are ancestors have been doing to store, preserve and create meals from basic, natural ingredients have done for centuries, it stands to reason that adding anything to food that isn’t readily available to us in some natural or hand-processed way, isn’t going to help anyone who eats it, because our digestion is designed to work naturally with foods that we eat in natural forms.

It’s an equation that doesn’t require us to understand science for us to make sense of. Because it really is common sense that we all eat food in its most basic or unadulterated forms.

The Taste Trap

Before reaching any conclusions, it’s also important to understand the role that sugar and salt, and more recently, anything that appears to improve the taste or feeling that we have from eating food that contains it has had, and the genuine take-away that we should be having from it.

It is thought that sugar was first recognised for its sweet properties around 8000 years ago. However, sugar didn’t come to Western attention until the time of The Crusades in the 11^th century, and even then was a luxury until at least the 16^th century when the first industrialised sugar processing began.

Although it ultimately comes from natural source, Sugar must be processed to be used in the way that we use it as a food ingredient and in the refined forms that we add it to drinks like coffee and tea.

Sugar in its modified or rather in its changed form is highly addictive. And if you understand the role that excess sugar plays in health-related conditions such as diabetes and obesity, it is also much easier to see the relationship that exists between eating any kind of food or ingredient that doesn’t resemble its original or natural form, and the impact that it can have on the human body.

The body is effectively tricked by unnatural ingredients and responds in what often end up being very destructive ways when those harmful ingredients are consumed regularly or in quantities that are simply too much for the very clever system that our bodies have to deal with.

In these modified forms, these artificial ingredients are no better than being a poison that becomes more and more dangerous in its cumulative forms.

In respect of the ingredients that are added to foods to enhance the taste and hide many other ingredients within processed foods and the UPFs that we wouldn’t otherwise consider eating, the line in the Savage Garden hit song ‘Affirmation’ – “junk food tastes so good, because it’s bad for you” is absolutely correct.

We are being conned into eating foods that we shouldn’t, so that those who make and sell them can continue to make a profit – with the true cost always being at the expense of our own health and wellbeing.

Whether we like it or not; whether we believe we have a choice of what we eat or not, as a nation, the UK is addicted to foods that are actually harming and, in some respects, killing us.

The people who are pushing us in this direction and want us to become even more reliant on manufactured food, rather than the fresh food that can only come from a local garden, field or farm, are very happy to exploit that addiction so that they can keep benefitting. Whilst the whole process is doing each of us and the whole of the UK more and more harm.

The Ethics of Food are about Taste all the same

The odd thing about taste is that it manifests as both a physical sensation and also in the way that we think. That’s how addictions generally work, after all.

So, when anyone becomes obsessed by a particular way of eating, because of the way that they think, the rules of addiction – and the need to force others to join us in that same addiction so that they can share that particular form of guilt, inevitably also play out, no matter how clever or compelling their arguments might be.

When people are at peace with their eating habits or indeed anything else that defines them as the person or the individual that they are, they will not experience any need to force their own approach into the lives of anyone else, no matter what the habits of those other people are, or indeed, what it might be that they eat.

It really shouldn’t matter what anyone else eats. The only thing that we should all be concerned with is that each and every one of us has access to natural, healthy and fresh food in an adequate quantity from which we can then exercise any health-related, ethical or other form of choice that doesn’t impact upon the choices of anyone else.

The Food Hangover is just one way we know that the food we eat isn’t good for us

Whilst few who drink alcohol would relate their drinking habits to being an addiction at any level, it is unlikely that anyone who has ever had more than a few sips and done so on a regular basis, hasn’t had a hangover at some point afterwards. Before they find themselves back in a place where they feel physically the same as they did previously.

Headaches, sickness, insomnia, feeling ‘groggy or lethargic’ or generally not feeling anything like ourselves, are typical post-alcohol reactions that we class as hangovers – because we have been drinking ethanol, which is a poison.

When we have been eating foods that are processed and are filled with many additives and manufactured ingredients, the results for any of us taking note, can be similar if not exactly the same.

Food that is natural or in forms that we can recognise in their original form when we eat them very rarely make us feel unwell. Unless we eat too much of them, or they haven’t been prepared in a way that removes any bacteria or anything else that can harm our bodies in some way.

The direction of UK Farming and Food Production is all about a greed-driven reliance upon manufactured food

It is at this point that it is time to recognise just how important the problem that UK Farmers are facing really is, for us all.

There isn’t some great conspiracy at work in the way that conspiracy theorists are increasingly presenting it.

However, there are people who for one reason or another have gained significant power and responsibility over the lives of others. They see it as being imperative that the whole world is changed so that everyone behaves in ways that they have decided that the world can sustain, which at the same time will coincidentally ensure that those same elites can continue making obscene profits, being quite literally ‘baked in’.

Everyone making money out of the masses eating manipulated ingredients that will cause increasing levels of health problems and in all probability lead to early deaths, isn’t worried about the nutritional value of the food that people eat.

The most important thing to all of them is ensuring that the masses can never make the argument that they are going hungry. In that way, no matter how bad the food may be for anyone, if its tasty and available, the elites will always remain in control.

Today, UK Farmers still have choices over what they grow and how they grow it. Even though many are tied into contracts that are ultimately controlled by a very small number of companies who control the food supply and whose longer-term profit-making interests will benefit if independent Farmers go out of business, so that they can control even more of the food supply.

Those with roles that are there to help, don’t help anyone at all

The useful idiots that we now have in government and running policy and services across the public sector don’t help matters at all.

Whilst very few can accept this truth at first glance, the reality is that decades of farm and food production related subsidies have only served to move more and more of the power that our Farmers and Food Producers once had towards the big companies that incentivise and control politicians.

Meanwhile, Agriculture has become more and more dependent upon the political lead. Whilst local infrastructure and everything that supports local and independent food production has been progressively destroyed, either legislatively or in direct physical form.

If we can accept this – and that’s by no means an easy thing to do, we can also then accept that UK Farming and Food Production needs to go in the completely opposite direction, embracing much more traditional methods of food production and returning Farms, Farming and Food Production so that they are providing everyone with the basic, natural, healthy, nutritious and fresh forms of foods that we all actually need.

For us all to have and benefit from this, means that Agriculture and growing food must be right at the heart of our communities once more.

Mindful eating

The battle to save natural food production in the UK (and in other areas of the world too), only exists today, because so many of us take for granted the lives that we have and the continued access to food and everything else that makes life seem so easy. All without being conscious of the real cost to us, or without recognising that we do have a choice.

Greedy profiteering companies only produce foods that can harm us on the scale that they do so, because we keep on buying and eating them, without ever giving any thought to anything that these companies and the people behind them are doing.

If we all began looking at the ingredients of foods and take note of where the food or where the ingredients actually come from, we would very quickly see the difference between ‘natural’ food that we can recognise because it usually resembles its original form, and everything else which doesn’t look like or resemble anything that we could recognise in nature.

This is a very quick and effective way of being able to tell if eating or drinking anything, is likely to end up harming us in some way.

Changing the way we eat is how we keep our freedom to be who we are

The harsh truth that we all need to face:

The control of food is power and the power behind food is a way that those dependent on someone else’s food supply be controlled.

Whilst the UK Farming and Food Producing communities now have a massive fight on their hands to regain control of their own destiny – not least of all within that community, the fact remains that we can all help change the direction of UK (and World) Food Production by changing the way that we approach the food that we eat.

By doing so, we will ultimately help ourselves.

The smallest steps are the biggest when it comes to change of this kind. And if we all start to do what we can to reject processed foods and UPFs wherever and in any way that we find them or that they come into our lives, the impact that we can collectively have upon the food chain and the way that food is produced would become meaningful in no time at all.

Changing the eating habits that we have is not easy for anyone. Not least of all, because our habits are the truth we have chosen to believe.

However, the truths that we believe about food today are not truths that we can call or should be prepared to accept as our own.

Good, healthy, nutritious, locally produced fresh food IS a public good and we all deserve to be able to access enough of it every day and at prices that we can all easily afford.

We can only make this possible if each and every one of us exercises what still remains of our freedom of choice to change the world for the better, one choice at a time.

It’s what a politician thinks of and does for the person they least identify with that really matters for Fairness, Balance and Justice in Government to exist

Diversity, alternative Political Philosophies and differences in Politics don’t promote or guarantee fairness and balance.

Anyone appointed to a position of influence and authority because of the physical, material or ideological difference they have with others is more likely to prioritise those who they most closely identify with – or for want of a better term, prioritise the interests of ‘those of their own kind’.

The benchmark of any system of government and the political system that facilitates or leads it being truly representative, Fair, Balanced and Just, is what the politician or political decision maker does on behalf of the person they know least about, have least in common with or are least likely to understand.

A system of government cannot and will not work in the best interests of all, if it doesn’t consider and treat fairly, justly and without bias of any kind, even the very people we might consider that we have every reason want excluded in some way or to despise.

If you have read this and immediately think of someone or some group of people that you feel to be undeserving of the same care and consideration that you for yourself would like, you can now use that feeling and emotion to understand how any system of governance and politics will quickly be undone.

This Blog is part of the e-book ‘The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government’.

The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government | Full Text

Its what a politician thinks of and does 8Dec22 PDF_Vers2_11Jul26 Download

The introduction of Price controls on foods, goods and services may become essential as this cost-of-living crisis develops. We would be fools to rule out rationing becoming necessary too

Yes, it does feel a bit like being the voice of doom and gloom as I write and produce videos about all the things that are going on and talk about what we can realistically expect as being likely to happen next.

The point is, that if someone like me can see what is happening and what is likely to happen next, the people we have elected as MPs have absolutely no excuse not to do so too.

In fact, our public representatives should be well ahead of the curve in both their horizon scanning and thinking than most.

Regrettably, they are not.

To be fair, the complexity of the growing problems and how each and every one of them interacts with the others is mind bogglingly scary to say the least.

Yet it is the culture of ‘let’s always take the easy option’ that exists, top to bottom within the British Political System, that has made the difficulties that are only just starting for us, significantly worse.

There are many people in this Country today who cannot afford to feed themselves, home themselves, clothe themselves, transport themselves or function normally in any way on the wages or income they have, without debt or benefits – or what is really a subsidy from the Government and therefore everyone else in some way.

Prices of the foods, goods and services that provide the basic essentials for life are spiralling out of control. Living at the standard we are experiencing even today, will soon become unaffordable for most.

Yet the complexities I mentioned above, all come back to just one thing: That the economic system we have today has been developed to benefit the self-interests of the few. That those driving it have continued to push prices up in the pursuit of ever-growing profits for as long as our stupid politicians have printed money and kept handing it out. When instead good politicians would have faced up to reality and dealt with the problems for wider society that have been caused by that same greedy few.

The Covid Pandemic has caused out of touch politicians and greedy business and financial leaders to overplay their hand.

In fact, the inflationary spiral they have created together is now out of reach of any form of control they possess. Indeed, the only actions our politicians have to address the issues are only serving to make the whole problem worse.

Events, or a coming chronology of them – which will have been caused by so many different profit-driven people with influence behaving in the same way, will combine to make basic food unaffordable where it is available. It will be absent from the supermarket and shop shelves where it would otherwise be not.

Food riots, as the system collapses and the old order makes way for a new one that will work for all will settle the mind of many. Especially the politicians that we have for the time that their waning power remains.

Greed, hoarding and any kind of self-driven prioritisation will have to go out of the window.

That will mean supermarket rationing as we experienced during the early Lockdowns. There will be an immediate need for Government to step in and fix prices along the entire food and essential goods supply chain, so that nobody can use this time of crisis to profit off the backs of us all.

Some of the more economically minded will baulk at the idea of any kind of price fixing, price regulation or price controls, because of its non-capitalist and non-market-friendly nature.

But the reality is that the epoch of easy money and making massive profits by exploiting the many to benefit the already bloated few, is now reaching its end.

A new system will emerge that will be fair to all. But it will not resemble anything that we’ve seen or experienced before.

As we walk the pathway to get there, it will be necessary to ensure that what we still have available – which will plenty for all of us without the influence or intervention of ongoing greed – will be made available fairly to all.

Money as we know it is likely to become only one of many different ways to make payment as change takes place. And it is therefore just as likely that rationing of the essentials that are available will also be necessary for everyone.

The times ahead may prove to be painful. But it’s the future which is possible for everyone once the change has been completed that we should look forward to.

The opportunities for a fair and just way of living, where everyone and everything matters are not just a pipe dream. They really exist and are there for us all.

After the pain, we have much happier times in store.

Foods We Can Trust: A Blueprint for Food Security and Community Resilience in the UK |Online Text

Local Planning for Food Shortages: A Guide to Local Support and Preparedness | Full Text

Iran and the Prospect of Food Shortages: Ask the Farmers – Go Local

Grow Your Own or ‘Home Growing’

Foods We Can Farm, Catch, Harvest and Grow Locally in and around the UK

The Basic Living Standard Explained

The Local Economy & Governance System | Online Text

The introduction of Price controls on foods 8Feb22 PDF_Vers2_24Aug26

Qualified academically or not, we are all capable of greatness or of being complete and utter fools

Qualified academically or not, we are all capable of greatness or of being complete and utter fools

As humans, we love difference. We love it so much that we use it as a way to qualify other people by colour, gender, sexual orientation, financial and material wealth, social background, taste, appearance and in many other ways too.

Many of the benchmarks we carry within our own personal make‑up, as we attribute value to others, are unconscious or, to the world outside us, completely hidden.

The fact that we make these judgements behind closed doors means that no matter how hard do‑gooders attempt to legislate or control our behaviour, controlling other people’s thinking at a personal or private level is a battle that even the most politically correct amongst us will never win.

The obsession with qualifying others

We have become obsessed with legitimising our qualification of others when it suits us. Society provides markers intended to help, yet we use them to create differences that stand far outside their original purpose.

For a long time, academic qualification has increasingly been used as the preferred way to distinguish ability, attitude, application, intelligence and countless other traits. To the audience, these markers become a convenient way to judge whether someone is “qualified” or not.

By bypassing the cold, hard reality that academic qualifications – whether GCSEs, A Levels, Degrees, Masters or PhDs – are simply benchmarks created in someone’s (usually an academic’s) thoughts, the elephants of our society have fallen head over heels into the trap of believing that academic standards portray the genuine quality or value of every individual. They do not.

Angela Rayner and the cruelty of perception

Yesterday, we witnessed these maleficent social anchors at their worst, when Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner was ridiculed for having what are considered to be four very poor GCSEs and, academically speaking, no more.

Whilst Labour and their principal spokesperson for Education demonstrate little credibility in terms of the policies they have been putting forward with an eye on the upcoming General Election at their Party Conference this week, there are few of us outside Westminster who could list on one hand the number of politicians from any Party who we could hand‑on‑heart consider credible in fulfilling their roles properly and representing the people well.

Perception is everything – particularly when it comes to the influences on our thinking and lives played out on social media and TV.

Just because an MP or politician looks good on camera, comes across as confident, sounds competent or can boast an academic CV that includes Eton, Oxford or wherever it may be, the reality may be – and in many cases is – that they are not “qualified” by being any such thing.

The lost value of real‑world experience

We have learned, and increasingly been conditioned against, the value of life experience and the practical understanding of people, business, community, and the views that time in the real world brings.

We have reached a stage where we look for things that make high‑profile people stand out for all the wrong reasons, mistakenly thinking those reasons are right.

There is rich irony in the fact that it was the Labour Government of 1997–2010 that pushed qualification bias to its extreme by suggesting that everyone should have a degree.

This malignant and ill‑conceived step has contributed to the biggest shift in perception about what qualifies a person. It has pushed us further away from regarding each individual as equal and the same.

The consequences of commercialised Higher Education

The meddling of Angela Rayner’s political predecessors bears much responsibility for the commercialisation of Higher Education. The rancid truth is that many young people have been condemned to financial servitude by a past Labour Government, encouraged to take degrees that nobody in industry values.

Others are being left behind simply because they are excluded by a system that frowns upon anyone not academically inclined, or because they know that a lifetime of debt is not something they can realistically afford.

Education, in its real sense, is only partially academic. No matter how any person is educated, they are equally capable of greatness or of behaving like fools. The suggestion that people are only capable of anything great if they have good academic qualifications is fundamentally flawed.

A better way forward

When we finally have a Government led by politicians who are responsible and not so easily led, the hard decisions over how we educate and support our young people will be addressed properly.

The focus will return to the basic reality that as teenagers, we are pretty much all either “heads” or “hands”. Once we value the fact that not everyone in their early teens is ready or able to spend another seven years in books, we can get back to providing real parallel educational – not academic – pathways.

Developed properly with business, and with the opportunities that Leaving the EU will give us, rewarding lives for people – whatever their background or birth – will, for many more of them, be fully assured.

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Degree level entry for all Police Officers is a retrograde step which will push a common sense approach to policing even further away down the bureaucratic queue

With everything happening across the political and public sector world feeling so very uncertain already, it will have come as a surprise to many that the Government has allowed the College of Policing to announce that candidates wishing to become Police Officers will be required to have Degrees from 2020.

The reasoning cited behind this move is the increasing level of activity within the role including the research which Police Officers are required to undertake online. But is this itself really justification enough to raise the bar to an occupation and public service which in recent years has been a key target to become a lighthouse of diversity?

Information Technology and ‘web fluency’ levels are arguably highest within the generation now reaching the workplace at 16 and above – irrespective of the level of formal education they have attained, simply because use of smartphones and PCs to access the web has now reached a point of social permeation where children are culturally conditioned in their use. To suggest otherwise would arguably demonstrate just how seriously out of touch our policy makers have now become.

Cyber-crime has become increasingly prevalent. But it has not in any way superseded the need for real-world policing, which has itself become painfully absent in recent years as a mix of bureaucracy and the public sector funding crisis have hit the Police Service very hard indeed. The widespread perception exists that the physical presence of our Police forces have now dwindled to a point where it would logical for us to ask if our communities are really safe.

The concept that more can be delivered using less is one that is now followed in every sector. In some cases there are significant efficiencies that can be made within organisations of all descriptions, particularly when new technology can reduce the workload or requirement of staff numbers. However, this is not without consequence as the current raft of strikes in the UK have arguably displayed. There is also a significant question to be addressed regarding these economies being made when the financial benefit has become the priority over the experience of the customer or members of the public.

Like many, I grew up with a respect for the Police which is increasingly hard to justify, given the level and type of interaction which Police Officers and Police Community Support Officers now have within the community. The focus on a system of delivery where you once felt that a Police Constable really did have autonomy as they enforced and represented the Law appears to have long since left the building. It appears to have been replaced with a bureaucratic nightmare where Officers now have to look over their shoulders before they decide either to engage or to act.

It may seem romantic, but an age where a Police Officer didn’t have to resort to making arrests or presenting Court Summons to achieve a real-life result with ‘petty crime’ was not so long in the past. Yes, these Officers of the Law did not have to chase their quarry online, but they also engaged with would-be criminals in a much more meaningful way. One which was adapted to the specific circumstances they were addressing and did not result in so many young people being tarred by acts of stupidity which with the arrival of the net itself, have become far too accessible to the people looking for controversy who need no degree to go searching for any mud that can easily be used to stick.

Most of those less senior Officers had very little formal education. But what they did have was life experience and common sense by the bag load; the essential ingredient for constructive interaction with people of all levels and of all kinds.

Being ‘streetwise’ isn’t something that can be taught from a text book. One of the simple facts that the College of Policing may be seriously overlooking, is that degree level students want to earn their money straight away. University leavers will not have the world view or wherewithal that the public should be able to expect any Police Officer to have, whilst waiting for the graduates who would make ideal police officers to gain experience in other occupations first may prove to be a fruitless exercise given that they will probably stay in other safer, more lucrative and perhaps even more rewarding careers if they have by then already found them.

Police Officers in the UK already undergo extensive training to support them in their roles, and extra modules to support non-specialist officers to fit their IT skills to the purposes of our Law enforcement regime would be no quantum leap for those who have qualified for entry by today’s terms.

Sadly, this move towards elitism within the Police Service has all the hallmarks of taking one very large step in the progress of bureaucracy too far and risks disenfranchising communities from those in power beyond that too.

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