Overtaxed, Overburdened, Overpowered: The role of the UK State has become all bread and no jam for too many of us, and we are fast approaching a place called stop

Each of us see the problems this country is facing from different points of view.

Whilst conversations about the crisis now unfolding with a range of different people would almost certainly deliver a range of common themes, the emphasis, value or meaning of each of them will almost certainly be different.

However, the one commonality, which isn’t about anything that we all have in common at all, would be the solutions that almost all of us will have based on our own world view, that in the bigger scheme of things, may be in no way similar at all.

Ironically, because so many of us have so many interpretations of the whys, hows and whats that have got us all here, and share them with what will be a relative few, we spend next to no time – if indeed any time at all, thinking about any of the common problems that we all really do share.

We certainly don’t think about the ways we can work together to create a better way of life for everyone and then how we get the leaders and mechanisms in place that will actually get us there.

The devil is in the detail

It really is no accident that the UK is in the kind of mess that it is. Because life has become so very complicated – and deliberately so.

The more detail, the more distracting and the more impossible a solution to just about anything might seem. Even to those amongst us who really can see that the status quo cannot continue and that no matter how bought into the things we like about the way we live – which we want to keep but don’t recognise that they are actually the part of the problem that’s making everything so impossible to fix – we really do need to snap out of the fixation with noise that’s doing none of us any good.

We must recognise that the things that work well for everyone and will work even better for everyone are much simpler than what we have been convinced we need.

It is inevitable that we will keep tripping ourselves up each and every time we think of the next step as being only about putting our own self-interest first.

Unfair, Unjust and Unworkable living, demonstrated best by Tax

Perhaps the best example of how we get lost and misdirected by the detail of what needs to change for us, rather than focusing on what needs to change so that it works for everyone, relates to the question of tax, taxation and everything else that means people like you and I are stumping up cash that we could often do with being able to spend, just so we can live without debt or in some cases rely on handouts or even food banks.

Yes, even framing the ‘tax issue’ this way will make some prickly – and that really is the point.

The UK Tax code is today thought to be over 21,000 pages and 10 million words long, giving everyone the distinct impression that the subject of how the bill for government action and delivery gets paid for (ostensibly on our behalf), needs to be tailored specially to everyone as if bespoke governance is the only kind of governance that’s really fair to everyone.

Have you heard of Tax Freedom Day?

This is ‘The day when Britons stop paying tax and start putting their earnings into their own pocket’. Or alternatively, the final day of the year when every penny we’ve earned goes to the government – if we start counting on January 1^st, which was this year (2025) calculated as being June 11^th by the Adam Smith Institute.

The reason I’m using this figure isn’t to piss anyone off by drawing attention to the fact that as an average, we arguably all work for no other reason than to keep the wheels of government turning every year for at least 5 months.

I’m doing so because it may be the only way to look at the relationship all taxpayers have with the government in the same way. Given how easy it is to get sidetracked by the question of what everyone earns!

June 11^th 2025 was the 162^nd day of the year (as 2025 is not a leap year), and with 365 days in 2025, this means that in comparative terms, people are giving over 44% of their earnings (162 days divided by 365 days), before they can even begin to think about what they need to spend money on, in turn before anything that they might actually want.

For a moment, let’s forget the amount anyone is actually earning for themselves, as we know that some have considerably more than others, whilst many just don’t have anywhere near what it takes to live without struggling to make ends meet, and then take it as read that everyone is giving up 44 Pence in every Pound they earn (£0.44).

After realising just how much of everything we do have taken from wages and then what we pay for that includes some form of tax, it doesn’t take much to realise that government or rather the model of government that we have is simply unaffordable, unsustainable and that we must do everything we can to find a different and much better way to pay for the things that we share.

Regrettably, the complexity of rules and regulations supposedly there to benefit and protect us don’t stop at taxation.

One of the reasons that every part of life, that doesn’t already relate to the question of financial affordability in some way, seems so difficult or restricted, is because our freedoms and therefore our independence from the system and government are already being actively controlled in many different silent rules that have deliberately been put there using the excuses like health and safety, and protecting us or someone in some way.

Even if we aren’t actively being followed around by a police officer all the time the fact that we are aware of and abiding by these rules usually adds up to being the same.

Government isn’t what it should or was ever supposed to be

Whilst many would actually like to see the wealthiest in our society directly paying at least 44% of their income to the government to help run everything outside of our front doors, we still need to keep some perspective when it comes to the obvious question we will come back to in a moment about who pays and begin with the question, ‘Does government actually work?’

Government certainly functions. Even the deepest or most vocally critical of what government in the UK does will find it difficult to argue otherwise.

Because no matter the organisation or service that comes under the rather large umbrella of government, they all continue to do something. Even if they are not delivering what we might agree to be the correct results. And that’s the only reason it can be argued that it all works.

However, functioning and succeeding are not the same thing.

The time is long overdue that we all took a very hard and questioning look at every part of government and decided what, if anything, public services should or could be; just exactly where the scope and reach of government should end, and then and only then, what many believe to be the most important question of all, ‘How whatever government and the public sector does is paid for and by whom’.

Whilst it remains the case that there are services, infrastructure and even public facing roles that every modern society needs to be provided by the community, so that everyone can have universal experiences and opportunities which will always be the same, no matter who, where or what you are, the practical approach to not-for-profit service delivery – which this really should in almost all cases be, is not the same as the public sector and system of governance that we have today.

Every part of government and the public sector that we have today is focused on delivering (political) and therefore biased agendas which will inevitably advantage some people more than others in some way. Or is all about the jobs, terms and conditions for whoever the incumbent employees are who currently have the jobs.

There have always been politicians, officers and suppliers who for many reasons have chosen to advantage themselves in some way, if and where they failed to have the integrity to exercise their roles properly. And regrettably, it’s the position of trust we gave them all that enabled them to behave in such questionable ways.

Yet even more shocking reality that we all face today is that the whole public sector and everything that runs within it is now dysfunctional in terms of delivery in some of the most critical ways.

It has only been able to become this way because decisions have either been made (or not made) at the very top by people who really should have known better, and whose actions have allowed or facilitated everything that serves the public unwinding in this way.

Money before People

Regrettably, like so many areas of life today, the role of money – which stretches far beyond the scope of the tax question that we’ve already considered – is also the key element within the dysfunctionality of government and public services across the UK. Because the poor leaders that we have are obsessed with the idea that the only way any problem can and will be fixed is by having enough money to spend – no matter where it comes from, which is itself is these days even better for some politicians who dare not do anything which could restrict what they are already committed to spend.

Idealism and agendas cost a lot of money. Because their implementation requires the creation of systems, rules and infrastructure somebody wants but nobody needs.

The very perverse outcome from decades of government and the public sector serving itself, its people and whoever or whatever influences them, is that the changes that have been made in every way imaginable to support this are now costing too much for either the Taxpayer or government itself to sustain.

We have a VERY BIG problem. Because nobody in government or who wishes to form one either can or will be honest about the true depth and breadth of the mess that the UK is now in.

With Tax rises thought to be well on their way this coming Autumn, the reality that too many of us face is the 44% (or probably much more) that we are already contributing to this public sector black hole through so many of the things that we buy, pay for or earn, are set to keep going up.

All to cover the exploding costs of incompetence, waste and the furtherance of playing up to what are very dangerous egos. Because somewhere in amongst all of this the point has been lost that government does not and never did have the right to exist over the people that it was created to represent.

For any kind of government to be unrepresentative of the people it represents, would by its very nature and intended purpose mean that it represents someone or something else.

Money: The drug wrecking everything to enrich and empower the few

The way that money actually works, how it is controlled and worst but not least, how it is actually created at will, is the truth that sits behind everything bad, that few of us will willingly believe.

It’s much easier to believe that it is all good rather than even having the potential to be bad – even when almost everyone can see the destruction that money or the lack of it is causing to everyone in some way or form.

At the heart of the money tree and its root and branch system sits the mechanisms that supposedly fund government, but actually do so by doing everything to help grow the volume of money that is in circulation, so that the public spending – and the only way that politicians know how to get themselves out of trouble, can leverage ‘growth’ so that the entire shitshow can be hid.

Unfortunately for all of us, the exponential growth of the ‘money’ that has entered circulation, particularly since the responses of government to the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 and the Covid Pandemic of 2020, has wildly contributed to the inflationary spiral that accompanies such an expansion of available cash.

The creation of money that doesn’t relate to anything else like productivity or output devalues the money and incomes that normal people already have, as well as what they have the ability to earn.

It does so at breakneck speed whilst the real value of everything is funnelled towards those who control and benefit from what is a fully legal, legitimised but nevertheless completely corrupt system that appears real, because they have typically become millionaires and billionaires in the process.

Put simply, the lowest paid and most vulnerable now have zero chance of ever being able to earn enough to live independently of benefits, charity, debt or worse.

For as long as the money madness continues, the bubble containing all of those who are branded as being a drain on the system will rapidly continue to expand.

The leadership void or black hole

When a country has such shit, incompetent leadership, and has done for the period of time that the UK has, it wouldn’t be unfair for any of us to be asking, ‘How did we get them?’ and ‘How did they get to where they are?’.

However, as we all need to realise, very few of us do ask these questions or indeed any questions that are like them. And because we don’t, each time an election takes place locally or nationally, we are, as a majority, making the same mistakes over and over again.

We are chewing at the very same shit sandwich with the bits just wrapped differently with words, rosettes and faces – all hiding the same miserable self-interested and dangerously incompetent content that always delivers outcomes that are the same.

Because we have a very bad, self-destructive habit of going along with the idea that the political fairies come along and give us all a genuine choice at election time – as all good democracies surely would, we have not only accepted that government after government and council after council has worked on all of our behalf. We have also jumped into an elephant trap of our own making that tells us these same fairies will deliver the politicians to choose from at the next election, who will sort out and solve the very same mess that they and their own kind created (with a little help from their friends) in the first place.

Sadly, there are no exceptions to the reality that we must face that there are no real leaders in politics today.

The so-called leadership we see, and what the people we identify as leaders say, is much more likely to be aligned with us hearing and seeing whatever we need to fuel our own confirmation biases than it either is or ever will be about the solutions and outcomes that we might not be ready to hear about, but nonetheless actually need.

Victim or Victimiser: There is no longer an in between

As a society and culture, we are collectively suffering what might be the worst type of addiction of all. Simply because it is majority of us are addicted rather than the few.

Meaning that that same majority is completely out of touch with the realities of what that addiction does and will remain so, until the supply runs out – which is where all those who cannot afford to live independently within the current system have or are beginning to find out.

Money, or rather the way that money is used by those who control the system – and that means government and politicians, who are very much under their control too, has become the key factor in every equation and consideration in our lives.

The role of money and its reach has dehumanised everything to the point where money and the power, influence and control it is perceived to give at every level of life has become more important than the value of life and community itself.

Few realise just how their lives are completely at the mercy of the ability to spend, borrow and achieve the momentary of transitory hit that this money centric, Moneyocracy we inhabit demands of everyone and which is enforced by the barrage of non stop marketing and remote, typical digital pressure which comes at us constantly and demands that we all conform.

Money; what it does, what it can do and what it says about you is the qualification and gatekeeper that runs through every part of functional life and if you are in, you are in and if you are out, you really are all the way out and fully at the mercy of those who continue to be ‘in’.

The tragedy of the system is the ruthless and methodical way that human behaviour has been used against the masses by the few and the experts they pay who understand it.

The sweeties and trinkets that have been flowing towards for decades have only been bettered by what has appeared to be the endless ability to secure more and more credit to buy it with, all the time becoming more and more essential to secure as real earnings and wealth have been stripped by the printing of all this extra ‘pretend’ or non existent money that even relatively wealthy people have no chance of keeping up with.

The irony is that those of us who continue to believe we benefit from what the establishment is doing and therefore acquiesce or go along with it are – through our actions – making those who cannot the victims.

All for no better reason than this whole situation could not exist without the elites treating the masses as a resource that is not real. But is instead just like oil, coal, precious metals, forests, farms, land and even animals – and just something else for those who ‘own them’ to exploit.

We all need to contribute to what we share in life. But real life cannot continue if we are required to contribute everything we have

Whilst we must all accept it is correct for everyone to contribute to the upkeep and maintenance of the systems and infrastructure that serve us all, from the moment we step onto the pavement or road outside of our homes, what we share is not and never should become more important than the right to have a fully independent, functioning and self supported life experience.

The system that we have discussed is at breaking point and cannot continue as it has, or as it is today.

Those in charge don’t know how to do anything other than borrow or tax us. And as the system can no longer sustain the borrowing that idealism and agendas have made necessary, the current government are now looking at everything they can tax beyond everything they already do.

One way or another, the system is going to collapse. Because we are all living unsustainably in a system that itself is unsustainable and at the centre of which is a plague which is the absence of real leadership, replaced with what is instead no better than incompetent management that makes it the most unsustainable part of it all.

Real life and a money-centric economy are mutually exclusive outcomes

Government already costs us way too much – even at 44%.

That’s before we even begin to consider the work and additional value to public service that charities and other nonprofit organisations bring, that we are all in one way or another contributing to too.

The whole model of economics needs to be restructured and redeveloped so that it supports life, rather than feeding off it like the giant parasite that the financial system and the role that government plays in it now is.

A realistic level for everyone to contribute to ‘the community’ would be around 10% – without any form of exception for anyone.

We should also be considering the added requirement that everyone able to work also contributes the equivalent of 10% of their working time and the skills and experience they offer, to help make our communities, their governance and infrastructure work.

Thereby creating real buy-in and ownership for what we all share, whilst drastically cutting the scope and influence of an out-of-control sector, and the ballooning costs that are actually paying for lots of agendas snd idealistic ideas, but very little that is actually about people and certainly nothing that’s doing everyone equally any good.

The identity, qualification and process of finding good leaders

Good public leaders, public representatives and public servants, would not facilitate or contribute to the creation, implementation and furtherance of agendas, ideologies and idealism that doesn’t serve the genuine best interests of those who they have been elected, appointed or recruited to serve.

Yet we have been experiencing decades of exactly that. And we have no hope that this will change if we continue to rely on a system that needs to change giving us the leaders who will then do the right thing when it comes to the delivery of that change.

Contrary to accepted thought, we do not need money to play the role across society that it has been deliberately engineered to do.

Power and control are certainly not a gift that should be secured within the hands of a distant, faceless, unanswerable few who we will never meet and whether intended or not, are treating humanity as a resource and no better than a numbers game that they can do with as they like. All as if they are now, as the result of decades of manipulating the system and bending it to their will, the new gods of everything with everyone else’s destiny theirs and only theirs to decide.

The truth that few see is that the centralisation and push for remote control of everything that globalisation and everything that walks alongside it has been, has been the active and complete restructuring of our society and culture, so that nothing can or will work without the say so and direction of those who make all the decisions.

None of this was accidental. Locality, local relationships, local businesses, local supply chains, local decision making and everything that goes with it promotes sovereignty and independence. It encourages and grows a living environment and cultural model that is good for everyone other than those who want to advantage themselves and be in power or control.

Meanwhile, the downsides of centralisation and everything that goes with it are the for every one of us to see.

However, despite the various attempts, compelling rhetoric and highly credible narratives that work so well when playing up to the addiction for material living that we currently have, there is an alternative and much better alternative to running life and everything that we and our communities need. And the real upside of this real alternative is that it centres completely around putting normal people and our local communities back in control.

The fact that generations of political leaders and those they favour or are influenced by have misused and abused their position to create a system with faux legitimacy – simply by legalising immorality to make it appear moral and therefore unquestionable, doesn’t make it right. And it certainly doesn’t become right, just because those in power today continue to insist and behave as if it is so.

We have a legitimate right to hold power and control over our own destiny.

The power of collective decision making should sit as part of a new structure of governance within our communities, amongst people and representatives who we ourselves select and know we can trust.

A moral obligation arguably also exists to reset the entire system and the various devices such as money and the tools of governance the existing system uses, so that we once again bring the focus of everything in life back to people, to humanity and to creating the best kind of environment that we can to ensure that every person has the life experience that everyone – and not just a selective few should have.

However, nobody else will step up or step in to do this for us – no matter how compelling or necessary this might seem.

Whether addicted or not, the choice and the steps necessary to return power to people and to our communities, and with it the creation of a genuine democracy we can all trust and believe in, are ours and only ours to take.

Nobody in the public sphere today can or will do this. None of them will give us back the influence that is rightly ours. Because they all imagine themselves as leaders who can only lead by having absolute control over everyone and everything else.

We don’t have a roadmap agreed for the future.

But there are plenty of ideas we can share about the outcomes that will serve all of us equally well and in a balanced, fair and just way.

This is where the conversation should start.

The one thing we can be sure of is that real leaders do actually lead. But also know that it is real equality, balance, fairness and justice that applies equally to everyone where the pathway to everything good for everyone really starts.

Links:

Our Local Future | FULL TEXT

Our Communities are the only place that a workable political solution can begin

Demystifying the Money Myth: How the Monetary System Devalues Your Wealth

Future Economics must be tied only to people, their contribution, what is important to sustain good, fair and balanced lives, and legal currency must never again be open to speculation and manipulation

Overtaxed Overburdened Overpowered PDF_Vers1_20Aug25 Download

Grow Your Own or ‘Home Growing’

This blog was originally published on my Foods We Can Trust website on 13 June 2025

Writing and publishing the pages of Foods We Can Trust as I go, does mean that I have had the opportunity to reflect upon and even mention relevant topics from the news as I go.

A few days ago, at the end of May, it was pleasing to see The Times report that former President of the National Farmers Union Minette Batters (Who has taken the step of working for the government, now that she is in the Lords) suggested that future housing developments should include Allotments.

Sadly, comments that followed on social media branded this as ‘Everythingism’; a term that like many others that is now being used to dismiss anything with deeper meaning or a point that runs contrary to common or ‘accepted’ thought.

Allotments, or rather the Allotments that are available for people to rent today are popular. This point was proven well when I did a search as I have been writing and found that the Local District Level Authority where I live, Cheltenham Borough Council has a waiting list for the Allotments under its control that can extend from a matter of weeks to a couple of years.

Contrary to what some might immediately think, I am not criticizing CBC or any Local Authority in any way for not having Allotments immediately available today – as it’s great that they are there and can be available. Popularity does of course vary and the last thing that many people think about today when it comes to Food, is Growing Your Own.

The need for us to contribute to Food Security

If you’ve read the page ‘What is Food Security’, you will now have a better idea of what it means to be ‘Food Secure’ and why we really aren’t Food Secure, anywhere in the UK today.

Unfortunately, finding a way to help enough people understand that we are all taking a massive risk by trusting that the Food we eat everyday will always be available and that as if by magic, the Food Chain will keep on doing what it does today, isn’t easy.

Especially as everything that the Government is currently doing is reinforcing the message that the UK doesn’t need Farms and that the Food of the Future will be manufactured in warehouses and factories – sadly without any regard for what that will really mean for us all in terms of not being able to eat Foods We Can Trust.

If we continue to wait until there is a real problem with the UK Food Supply, before we begin taking steps to ensure that we always have enough Food available and ready to Feed everyone across the UK, we are all likely to experience Food Shortages quickly. And as time goes by, following the arrival of a serious Food Supply Shortage, more and more of us may even be forced to go without.

Food Shortages are not a problem that any of us should be taking lightly. But neither should any of us – and particularly our politicians – be taking it for granted that enough Food of any kind will always be available for everyone – as is clearly the case, right now.

Perhaps the most challenging aspect of understanding the risk to UK Food Security and then considering the steps that need to be taken to ensure that we will always have enough Food, is this:

The UK Food Chain is currently unable to Feed the UK Population without considerable supplies being imported from Overseas.

If that’s difficult enough to accept, the next point we need to understand is this:

If Overseas Food Imports were stopped, UK Farms and Food Producers would be able to provide significantly less than the 54-58% of ‘self-produced’ or ‘UK-Produced’ Food that UK People would immediately need. Because the Food Supply and Logistics Chain isn’t set up to prioritise British Consumers today, and very few of the Farms the UK has would be able to supply Food that is ready to be prepared to eat, direct.

To add some further perspective, we must then accept that:

The Farms across the UK that are geared up and have the systems in place to provide Food to us direct are likely to already being doing so. They are what we already know and use as our Local Farm Shops and Food Businesses that are selling us the Food that we already know to be coming from Local Farms, Harbours and Fisheries before being turned into Dairy Products, Breads or any of the Foods that are available to us through recognizable Local Suppliers or direct delivery services.

The question of the Food We Eat, is now Food for Thought.

Waking up to Our Food Supply Reality

A Report by the Countryside and Community Research Institute in May 2024 suggested that the amount of Food that comes to us direct from Farms is about 11% of what the UK Population needs to eat.

In real terms, that means that if the Border around the UK (That’s transport by Air, Sea or the Channel Tunnel) closed for any prolonged period, there would only be the equivalent of enough Food available for 1 in 9 People – in relative terms.

And that’s before we think about cost, accessibility and all the things that Foods We Can Trust is about.

Whilst I will always champion UK Farmers as some of the most entrepreneurial and creative People I have the pleasure to know, the time it would take to transform and restructure the UK Food Chain so that it works as it arguably always should – in our best interests and for us all, following a crisis or breakdown in the Food Supply – would probably be a period of months, before everyone was being supplied with at least some Foods that we should all have available to us, right now.

We will not have the luxury of time for the Food Chain to change, if we wait for Food Shortages before we begin

Whilst it would be beneficial for the majority of Our Farmers to begin restructuring their businesses to work towards Local Food Chains and UK Food Security through self-sufficiency today – for themselves as well as the UK Population, many remain tied to the way that the Food Chain in the UK has been evolved by the Global Model (Most strikingly, through the UK relationship with the EU).

Many UK Farmers still believe that a change of government or the politicians themselves, will be all it will take for them to get paid more or to be subsidized further for what they do, so that they receive a higher, or more appropriate income than they do now.

However, Farmers and existing Food Growing Businesses are not going to survive, if they do not adapt their businesses to operate independently as part of Local Food Chains.

Because the economic system we have today doesn’t value independence in the Food Chain and is already actively working to remove it.

At some point, probably sooner rather than later, UK Farms will be called upon to make this necessary change.

Sadly, as things stand today, this is likely to be when the UK is already in crisis – as it will only be when we are in the middle of a Food Crisis, where everyone is experiencing the problem themselves, that the real meaning and need for genuine UK Food Security is going to make sense.

However, that doesn’t mean that we cannot do something to help, right now, if we can see that hope and waiting for tomorrow is very unlikely to save the day.

Growing Your Own is the most trustworthy way to source Food

Whilst talking about the role we all have to play in the UKs future Food Security might feel like a deviation from the direction of Foods We Can Trust, it is important enough for us to be aware of and to understand the real benefits from having and developing access to home grown, community grown and Food that comes direct from Local Farms and Growers, today.

Just having Food to Eat is important. But prioritising Food Chains that supply the Foods We can Trust is essential.

There is no better way to be sure that we are eating Foods We Can Trust than if we Grow Our Own Food. Whether it be at home, within community allotments or gardens or other shared spaces, where we can be sure of everything used to Grow Our Food, as well as the continuation and availability of the supply.

Grow Your Own Foods We Can Trust

As we have discussed above, there are two very good reasons to Grow Your Own:

Growing Our Own Food will at least increase the Food we have available, and
Growing Our Own Food is the surest way to know we are eating Foods We Can Trust

There are other advantages to Growing Your Own Food too, such as producing Food that we can all share with others, or exchange for different types of Food or other essentials that we might need in a crisis.

However, one of the biggest, and probably best reasons to Grow Your Own (beyond having a supply of our own Food to Eat) is that the process of growing, harvesting, cultivating and handling Home Grown Food can be very good for our mental health or sense of wellbeing, as well as the activity required to do so contributing positively to our physical health.

Foods We Can Grow Ourselves

Understanding and being open to the idea of DIY Food Growing is where the whole idea of Grow Your Own can become even more interesting and exciting, as the list of the different Foods We Can Grow Ourselves is extensive!

In fact, what We Can Grow Ourselves may only be limited by the space and resources that we have available we have.

To illustrate just how broad the list of Foods We Can Grow Ourselves and the different ways that we can Grow Our Own Food really is, we will now share lists of the different Fruits, Vegetables, Herbs and Animals that we can grow ourselves, along with suggestions of the different ways that we can grow them.

The following list IS NOT exhaustive and there may be many more!

Please note that links to organisations, businesses and groups that are added anywhere on these Pages about Grow Your Own are for information sharing purposes only. They are not recommendations and certainly not endorsements of any other organisation, product or the advice and suggestions that they provide.

Vegetables that can be Grown at Home

Growing Vegetables at home probably feels like the most obvious type of Food to grow when it comes to Growing Your Own.

However, did you know just how many types of different Vegetables there are that we can Grow Ourselves in the UK?

List of Grow Your Own Vegetables in the UK:

Aubergines

Asparagus

Beans

Beetroot

Broad Beans

Broccoli

Brussels Sprouts

Cabbages

Carrots

Cauliflower

Calabrese

Celeriac

Celery

Chard

Chicory

Chilli Peppers

Chinese Broccoli

Chinese Cabbage

Courgettes

Cucumbers

Endive

Florence Fennel

French Beans

Garlic

Globe Artichokes

Jerusalem Artichokes

Kale

Kohl Rabi

Leeks

Lettuce

Marrows

Mizuna & Mibuna

Okra

Onions

Pak Choi

Parsnips

Peas

Peppers

Potatoes

Pumpkins

Radishes

Rhubarb

Rocket

Runner Beans

Salad Leaves

Salad Onions

Salsify

Shallots

Soya Beans

Spinach

Squash

Swedes

Sweetcorn

Sweet Potatoes

Tomatoes

Turnips

Please note that I will cover the different methods that can be used to Grow Your Own, depending upon the resources and space that you have available once I have finished listing what you can grow.

Herbs that can be Grown at Home

There are lots of Vegetables that we can Grow Ourselves. But the list doesn’t stop there, as we can also Grow Herbs – which will of course help to add flavour to the other Foods that we Grow Ourselves when we have them available.

List of Grow Your Own Herbs in the UK:

Basil

Bay

Chamomile

Chervil

Chives

Coriander

Dill

Fennel

Horseradish

Lemon Balm

Lemongrass

Lovage

Marjoram

Mint

Oregano

Parsley

Rosemary

Sage

Savory

Sorrel

Tarragon

Thyme

Fruits that can be Grown at Home

Vegetables and Herbs are likely to be the easiest and, in many cases, the quickest Foods that we can Grow at home.

However, if you have access to the space and resources necessary, there is a surprisingly long list of Fruits that we can Grow Ourselves in the UK too!

List of Grow Your Own Fruits in the UK:

Apples

Apricots

Blackberries

Blackcurrants

Blueberries

Cherries

Citrus

Damsons

Figs

Gages

Gooseberries

Grapes

Kiwi Fruit

Medlars

Melons

Mulberries

Nectarines

Olives

Peaches

Pears

Plums

Quinces

Raspberries

Redcurrants

Strawberries

White Currants

5 Of the Easiest Fruits and Veg to Grow in Your Home | Ecoscape

Top 10 Easy to Grow Fruit Trees & Plants | Thompson & Morgan

Animals that we can keep for Food at Home

Some will be surprised to learn that it is possible to keep some kinds of animals for Food at home.

In fact, historically, it was quite normal to keep some animals as a source of Food for domestic consumption.

Perhaps the most obvious animals to keep at Home for Food would be Chickens. Not necessarily as a source of fresh meat. But as a source of fresh eggs. Which anyone who has had home grown eggs or eggs straight from a local Farm will know often taste much better than those we buy in supermarkets or online!

Other types of poultry, rabbits and fish are different animals that can more easily be kept as a source of Food at home.

However, it is important to be aware that these and other animals that are sometimes kept at home for Food such as pigs, goats and anything else that you might have space for, may need to be registered or cared for under licenses that it may be difficult for a normal home to hold.

As such, it may be better left to a local farm or community small holding to keep them.

Like pets, any animals kept for Food require time, commitment and unavoidable expense which may mean that keeping them is simply impractical.

Methods for Growing Vegetables, Fruit and Herbs Ourselves

Learning to Grow Your Own doesn’t have to be boring and certainly doesn’t have to follow any kind of rigid model or set plan.

In fact, like all of our homes, the resources we have and the time we have available will be different. So, Growing Our Own Food doesn’t need to be the same as what anyone else does, even if we are growing the same Foods!

Yes, having some ground available in a garden, allotment or open space is of course a fantastic place to begin. But we don’t need a garden to Grow Our Own Food and there are ways that we can grow all sorts of different things simply by making better use of the space that we have already got.

Here are the different ways that we can Grow Our Own Food, either alone or in collaboration with neighbours or members of our local communities:

Grow Bags

Perhaps the simplest, quickest and most cost-friendly way to get started with Growing Your Own Food will be to use Grow Bags.

Garden Centres, Farm Shops, Country Stores and at certain times of the year, even supermarkets will have Grow Bags available to buy.

Grow Bags can be a fun, efficient and low-cost way to learn about growing Food, without making significant commitments with resources, money and time.

The range of Vegetables and Herbs that can be grown using Grow Bags may not be as extensive as it would be with other spaces and resources to use. But there is still plenty that you can try!

List of Grow Your Own Foods for Grow Bags:

Celery

Chillies

Courgettes

Herbs

Lettuce

Radishes

Rocket

Salad Leaves

Spinach

Spring Onions

Sweet Peppers

Tomatoes

Window Boxes

Space for growing any type of Food at home can be a challenge, and I’m certainly not taking it for granted that you have a garden or space available inside.

If you don’t have space outside or inside near a patio window or perhaps a conservatory area, growing Food using a Window Box may be another way to get started:

List of Grow Your Own Foods for Window Boxes:

Baby Carrots
Basil
Beets
Bush Beans
Celery
Chamomile
Chives
Dwarf Peppers
Garlic
Green Onions
Lettuce
Microgreens
Oregano
Parsnips
Parsley
Patio Tomatoes
Radishes
Spinach

Containers

By this point it may be becoming clearer that Growing Your Own Food can be much easier to begin than we might have assumed!

Now that we’ve covered Grow Bags and Window Boxes, it might also be helpful to consider that Food can grow very well in containers of all sorts of descriptions.

This includes old buckets, watering cans and even dustbins (that have been cleaned out!).

List of Grow Your Own Foods for Containers:

Beetroot

Broad Beans

Carrots

Chillies

Dwarf French Beans

Herbs

Peas

Potatoes

Radishes

Rocket

Runner Beans

Peppers

Salad Leaves

Salad Onions

Salad Turnips

Tomatoes

Hydroponics

If you have limited space where there is access to daylight in your Home and you enjoy a little DIY with technology, perhaps you could give Hydroponics a try.

Hydroponics – or what is known by some as Aquaculture, is the process of growing Food using water-based systems that provide nutrients and whatever the plant-based Foods you are growing through the water itself, which can be circulated around even a very small system that might even be small and compact enough to sit on a shelf.

Hydroponics supplies are now widely available, and it would be well worth doing an online search for them if you are interested in giving this form of Grow Your Own a try!

List of Grow Your Own Foods for Hydroponics:

Arugula

Basil

Butterhead

Collard Greens

Celery

Cilantro

Cucumbers

Fennel

Green and Red Oak

Kale

Mustard Greens

Oregano

Peppermint

Peppers

Rainbow Chard

Romaine

Rosemary

Snap Peas

Spinach

Strawberries

Thyme

Tomatoes

Greenhouses

Some of us may already have Greenhouses or have space where one could easily be erected.

Greenhouses or glass boxes of any size or kind aren’t a small or low-value purchase – so please be prepared for this if you are going to research further after reading this section.

Greenhouses of any size are a great way to Grow Your Own, because they can be used to provide an environment that can be managed to be consistently the same for longer periods throughout the year.

List of Grow Your Own Foods for a Greenhouse:

Asparagus

Aubergines

Bean Sprouts

Beets

Broccoli

Carrots

Celery

Cherries

Chillies

Cucumbers

Garlic

Grapes

Herbs

Kale

Lemons

Lettuce

Onions

Peppers

Radishes

Raspberries

Spinach

Squash

Strawberries

Tomatoes

Turnips

Like each of the sections covering ways to Grow Your Own, researching Greenhouses further will be a great idea before ruling the idea in or out – not least of all because of the wider range of Grow Your Own options and what could be year-round ability they offer to Grow different Foods.

Here are a few links to help, but please do take time for a wider online search if you can!

Allotments, Gardens and Vegetable Patches

If you have access to a Garden or an Allotment, there is a large variety of Vegetables, Fruits and Herbs that can be grown – subject to seasonality and the amount of space you have available.

Like all of the different ways to Grow Your Own, researching the best options for you will be a great place to start and it may also be useful to search online to see what other people are growing on their Vegetable Patches, Allotments and in their Gardens in the area you live in – bearing in mind that the climate across the UK can vary!

List of Grow Your Own Foods for Allotments and Gardens:

Beetroot

Broad Beans

Brussels Sprouts

Cabbage

Calabrese

Carrots

Cauliflowers

Celeriac

Celery

Courgettes

French Beans

Garlic

Herbs

Leeks

Lettuce

Mangetout Peas

Melons

Mixed Salad Leaves

Onions

Parsnips

Peas

Potatoes (Not early varieties)

Pumpkins

Purple/White Sprouting Broccoli

Radishes

Rhubarb

Runner Beans

Salad Onions

Shallots

Soft Fruits

Squash

Swedes

Sweet Potatoes

Tomatoes

Turnips

Citizen Farmers – Working together with other members of Your Community to Grow Your Own

Whilst these pages on Grow Your Own are primarily intended to raise awareness for People who may be open to growing their own Food at home – whatever space and resources they might have available, there is a different, more community-orientated approach to Growing Your Own Food that is available to many of us too.

Where there are enough People ready to work together as a community or on behalf of the community they live in to grow and supply Food, there are different approaches that can be used to develop and manage the cultivation, growing and harvesting of all sorts of different Foods locally, working collaboratively, together with like-minded People, who live close by.

Whilst it may conjure up all sorts of different ideas and responses, putting the ideologies, agendas a bias that get in the way of us all having unfettered access to Food We Can Trust aside could easily lead to the age of the Citizen Farmer. Where everyone, young and old contributes to and plays a vital role in Local Food Production – recognising that even with U.K. Farming and Food Production infrastructure realigned, meeting our nutritional needs year-round and with Food being prioritised in the way that it should be, is likely to mean everyone playing their part.

People and Groups are already growing Food together, but an undercurrent in thinking still exists where whatever the stated aims and agendas might be, a big issue with ‘us vs them’ remains.

However, times are changing and changing quickly. The role of Citizen Farmer, whether it’s through Grow Your Own and then sharing, exchanging or bartering anything they don’t need, whole communities helping to grow fruit, vegetables and animals on shared farms or helping farmers to get their crops in, will be what True Citizen Farming is all about.

The options for Collaborative Food Growing that already exist include:

Community Gardens
Share Farming and/or Cooperative Farming

Community Gardens

Earlier in this topic, I mentioned what Minette Batters said about the inclusion of Allotments in future Housing Developments.

As you will probably guess, I agree with Minette and believe that this is a valuable suggestion. Not least of all because there are good and growing reasons to believe that whilst Growing Your Own may only be considered a hobby by many today, it could easily become a need for many of us, in no time at all.

Green spaces, green lungs and park areas are of course required to be considered in appropriately sized Developments already. And a time of emergency or prolonged Food Shortages, it would not be unreasonable to consider using some of these spaces – where appropriate – to begin growing Food.

Green spaces and parks, like homes and business premises have their own Planning Restrictions too, so at any other time, thinking about creating a community space or area for growing Food may need to consider areas of land that may not be immediately obvious, or perhaps even renting a field or some land from a local farmer that can be used in this way.

If you should find yourself amongst a group of local people or a community that has agreed that there is a need for such a space and there are enough people committed to the idea to make it work either through self-funding or by seeking some funding support, it will be worth getting in touch with your local Parish/Town and/or Borough/District Council to ask for their help and guidance.

In my experience of working with Council Officers of all kinds, it has always been far more productive to ask for that help and guidance before beginning. And it’s advantageous as it’s the quickest way to find out what you can and cannot do!

The big upside of speaking to the local Council(s) is that you may also be guided in the direction of other people and organisations that can help – and perhaps even be signposted to sources of funding and help for groups of people working together that you may not have thought of along the way.

At the very least, knowing what steps to avoid locally is good for everyone. It will save time, good will and perhaps even money too – and that has to be something that’s good for everyone!

Share Farming and/or Cooperative Farming (Social Enterprise)

Whilst the key aim of these pages on Grow Your Own are really about encouraging us as individuals to think about the opportunity to Grow Foods We Can Trust in our own homes or using the resources that we already have available, it will also be useful to think about and be open to the idea of working with other People in our communities to provide Foods We Can Trust, for everyone in the community.

Surprisingly, this isn’t just an idea for a rainy day (or when there are real problems with the Food Supply) and People, Groups and Communities are already working together to produce, share and sell a wide range of Foods to benefit their Groups and the Communities in which they operate.

Most shared farming or community farming projects that exist today are relatively small. They service or supplement the Food Needs of what we would probably agree are a small number of People who are usually members of a charity, cooperative or social enterprise that has been set up as a way to manage a project that benefits all those involved, mutually.

If you research projects like this great one called Stroud Community Agriculture, based in Gloucestershire (UK), near to where I live, it’s easy to fall into the trap of believing that community farming isn’t scalable and that it is more like a shared version of hobby farming.

However, projects like this one are already learning invaluable lessons. They are helping to create the models for re-learning the practical skills, knowledge and understanding that are needed for a much more hands-on approach to Food Production that itself has the ability to create, contribute to and provide Food Security, built around Local Food Chains.

For those of you thinking more carefully about shared farming and community farming, it might be helpful to consider that the model of Farming most likely to work best for everyone will sit somewhere between groups of what we recognise as typical small commercial or family farms today and the community farming models that we can already see in action like this one in Stroud today.

When you consider all the different Foods and the quantities that can be produced across a range of farms, and then add local processing and retail (like abattoirs, butchery, milling, bakery, dairies, fishmongers, greengrocers) – which will quickly make a lot more sense in a time of Food Shortages, it is much easier to visualise how Local Food Chains can not only work, but will begin to restore Food and Food Production to being a central part of our communities and life.

Food: The heart of Communities of the Future

These pages on Grow Your Own have turned out to be much more extensive than I had expected when I began writing over the Whitsun Bank Holiday weekend.

I hope that by reaching this point and having had the opportunity to consider all of the options and aspects there are to Home Growing and Growing Food with the Community, you may have begun to see how Food and Food Production can bring People together, as well as Growing Our Own being a very important part of creating access for us all to Foods We Can Trust.

Whether we Grow Our Own at Home, or contribute to a Community effort in whatever form that might be, there is good reason to believe that even if not all of our Food is grown and brought to us this way, a significant amount of it will be, IF we really want to be sure that we are eating Foods We Can Trust, whilst also having an economic system that not only includes everyone, but is also balanced, fair and just for all.

If you would like to read more of my work on this important area of new thinking, please visit and take a look at my previous works which you will find on my Blog.

Cost

I am very mindful of the additional cost or ‘start-up’ costs for anyone who would like to Grow Food at Home with limited resources.

Like most things today, prices of any of the equipment required will always vary and it is always advisable to shop around.

However, the links of suppliers and organisations that are listed as we have covered the different methods to Grow Your Own and the Foods that you can grow too will certainly help with online searches for better prices – if the prices that some of them offer aren’t as competitive as they could be themselves.

I’m not kidding when I say that some of the people who could benefit most from Growing Their Own Food today are also those who simply don’t have the spare cash to invest in any of the things that they would need to continue alone.

For anyone experiencing that kind of difficulty, or for those who would prefer to work with others and perhaps get the social benefits of doing so, there is good reason to believe that looking for local gardening clubs or similar organisations could easily open up opportunities to collaborate, work together and pool existing resources, so that the initial outlay and costs associated with getting Your Home Growing started can be shared in different ways.

Online searches that use the name and location of the place that you live will always be a good place to begin. For example, search ‘gardening clubs in (place I live)’, or ‘gardening clubs near to where I live’.

Sharing Your Knowledge on Home Growing

With it being likely that many of us will need to embrace Growing Our Own Food, I am keen to link and collaborate with people, groups and organisations who are open to sharing their knowledge, experience, tips and stories that can help anyone who wants to consider Growing their Own Food using whatever resources they have or may be able to secure.

If you can share information, downloads or would perhaps like to record a tutorial or interview, please get in touch.

Thoughts on Grow Your Own

Writing this section of Foods We Can Trust has so far taken the longest time to complete.

Grow Your Own offers an opportunity for us all to reconnect with sustainable living and demonstrates that the opportunities to return to DIY living or to make an active contribution to ways of providing the things that are essential for us all to live are not something that can only happen out of sight, out of mind or behind the screen of some digital box.

Honestly, I was amazed by how much information, resources and advice is available for anyone thinking about Grow Your Own.

The list and variety of the Foods that we can grow at home, whether it’s in a container, grow bag, window box, greenhouse, garden, allotment or using hydroponics is simply staggering.

Yes, there are some very good reasons for as many of us as possible taking up Growing Our Own Food, but the benefits are much bigger than just adding a source of Food alone.

I hope that after reading through these pages, you will feel the same!

Grow Your Own_PDF_Vers1_13Jun25 Download

Future Economics must be tied only to people, their contribution, what is important to sustain good, fair and balanced lives, and legal currency must never again be open to speculation and manipulation

You don’t need to be a trained economist to know that the model of economics the world uses and the way economics is revered like work of the gods today is wrong.

In fact, it is probably better if you aren’t, and that you aren’t involved in economics, banking or corporate wealth creation either. As you are much more likely to be objective and untainted by ‘being in the tent’ in some way.

The misplaced ingenuity of the economic system and how it works has made it as complex as it is mind boggling. But that doesn’t give any surety or guarantee that how it works and what it achieves is in any way good.

For those actually thinking about why money is the common factor in everything across the world that is now going wrong, the complexity of the economic system is being exposed to light as the smokescreen that it is giving the hallucination of credibility to all the darkness and malevolence that has been so cleverly hidden within.

How can something so clever and complex not be real, is a question that many would employ as a riposte to counter the suggestion that there is absolutely no legitimacy to the FIAT monetary system, MMT, Free Markets, Globalisation and Neoliberal Orthodoxy that we have been subjected to for 5 decades or more.

But isn’t it the case that any good game that feels good to play is only good for those playing, because of the complexities and therefore levels for ‘the players’ that are involved?

How many carrots does it cost to buy a wheel?

To really understand why the world now has got the relationship with money so wrong – even though it was deliberately made this way by corrupt interests who have changed the laws so that their crimes have been legitimised and wiped clean – we really do need to stop for a moment, count to ten and think about what money is, or rather was really intended for.

In so far as the accepted narrative of human history goes, the whole pathway of our development has been progress that moved towards today in a linear fashion, stepping off from very primitive times when man couldn’t even speak, let alone farm for food.

The point here is not to argue whether or not any accepted version of the evolution of man is true. But to set the first picture back at a point when everything was considerably more simple. Long before more and more of those complex ideas or complexities became involved in how people trade.

Then, as now; different people did different things and produced different foods, goods and services to others as the direct result of whatever it was that they did.

For the purposes of this explanation, let’s assume that there are already fishers, farmers, growers, millers, bakers, saddlers, farriers, blacksmiths, cheese and butter makers, butchers, water carriers and pretty much someone or some small business providing all the different forms of foods, goods and services that we need to provide for life, from around a village green.

Some days a baker doesn’t want fish and a fisher certainly doesn’t want a saddle or leather goods daily. Even though they probably need something made to protect them against the elements from time to time.

However, everyone needs something regularly. Whether it’s for their own consumption, or it’s there to help them complete and provide output or goods from their own work.

Bartering and exchange, or swapping goods or even hours of work are of course a very straightforward and sensible way for two parties to make a transaction when one has something available that the other needs.

But the real benefit of bartering and exchange comes from being localised. And its weakness soon showed when the transactions were required to take place over distance, or for items – like that saddle or something equally special – which in day-to-day terms, are rather obscure.

Money, or coins of some kind used at first, created a transactional value, or to be more accurate, a medium of exchange.

The creation of a medium of exchange meant that one person’s goods or efforts could be exchanged for coins that could then be exchanged for whatever that person wanted themselves. All without there being any excessive delays or the need for a very complex or convoluted chain of different transactions to be involved.

The beauty of the system, at that point, was that the money in use could only relate to the agreed value of the transaction.

It would have been good for everyone, once the related practicalities involved were ironed out, if that system had continued without further ‘progress’. The relationship we all have with money could then have remained the same in relative terms – as that unit of exchange and nothing more.

Unfortunately for mankind, progress very quickly created wealth disparity or what we call wealth inequality today.

This imbalance was itself made progressively worse by the inter-generational transfer of property and wealth (and the power it buys) which has snowballed over time. Quite literally meaning that people can be advantaged or disadvantaged by birth, even before any one of the many other factors that skew life opportunities can come into view.

One of the most unfortunate elements of the human condition is the innate desire to always possess and accumulate more. For no better reason than the basic fear we all have of experiencing lack. With the rather perverse dimension that those who have more guard it more jealously than others, probably because they believe they have much more to lose.

The power and influence that money has given people who really weren’t fit to have the responsibility they had over the lives of others, has only got worse over time.

As industry and technology has improved and made it easier and easier to avoid genuine consideration for the consequences of their actions upon others, the human cost has become increasingly irrelevant, whenever the opportunity to make more profit was involved.

When promissory notes or what we know as cash came into being, a giant leap forward was taken towards the system that we have now, where the accepted wisdom is that the value of the money – or what we are agreeing to exchange as being representative of money – is being exchanged under a mutual understanding of trust, that is shared across society, and not just between the people where the specific transactions are involved.

Trust is of course belief. And as those with power and influence at the centre of the banking system realised that having currencies pinned or anchored to anything meant that they could only ever use or suggest they were able to use the money or sensible multiples of the money that they knew they either held, were owed or could earn within a certain time frame, they knew that they would have to create a new system that would release these chains. So that in terms of the money that they could create and use in the future, the only restraints would be dictated by them.

We should be under no illusion that this process of creating an economic system that could lead to limitless wealth and the control of everything for those who controlled it, wasn’t a plan that developed overnight.

The economic system that we have today was created and implemented over decades and carefully constructed so that it would make life much easier for the interests and in particular the politicians who needed to be bought. So that the useful idiots who gained power under the illusion of democracy would obligingly pave the way with system changes that have legitimised this otherwise criminal system at every step of the way therein.

When everything is about money, the answers to every question can only be found in monetary terms.

The money we have today and the way that it comes to and is taken from us – the economy – is the direct result and design of this massive, corrupt and inhuman game that the worlds wealthy, powerful and influential – the elites, decided to play.

The money we have in our pockets, bank accounts and have the ability to earn changes value quickly at the will or as a result of the actions of others.

Meanwhile, the direction of travel for the general population has always been that we are and always would become increasingly poor, as the value of the money which is typically what the poorest in society have only been able to hold, decreases faster than the rate at which our skills and experience develop or there is any chance to earn more so that we can keep up with or counteract the fall.

It was always intended to be this way. As those with wealth always knew that the real wealth was the control of assets and anything and everything that could then rented out to everyone. All as the world became increasingly poorer and their ability to grow control and rent out everything the money they created had bought them gave them even more.

It is ironic that billionaires now have so many zeros on their balance sheets. As everyone who has been a victim of what is probably mankind’s greatest con is now beginning to realise that they have been left with zero. Or if they are lucky, a diminishing amount of liquid capital that isn’t worth a lot more.

I would like to add at this stage that this essay is not an attack on any individual for whatever it is that they may believe they possess, control or have influence over today. Many of those with excessive wealth, power and influence today have just played along with the rules of a very clever game. One that has removed the balance, Justice and morality from every part of life and has done it so successfully that the poison it has replaced values with is embedded across cultures and normal life to the point that even the academics and leaders in finance and economics believe in the legitimacy and correctness of an entire system which is bewilderingly anti-human at its very core.

In simple terms

The simplicity of the mechanics of an economic system and more specifically a monetary system that revolves around private banks creating money from nothing – a process which is carefully hidden from view – so that government always looks like it is borrowing or rather selling bonds to private interests to finance everything, whilst those banks also lend money that doesn’t exist to us through loans, finance, credit cards and even pay day loans, really do make it horrendously difficult to accept that this is one massive confidence scam. Especially as everything is hidden in plain sight by little more than the disinterest that we typically have in anything that goes beyond having our perceived needs met.

However, let’s think about it as if we were reading a story about two friends at the start of their working lives; one with the motivation to work hard and deliver through their own industry, whilst the other has had life easy and just wants to find another easy way to get more, and we can then perhaps see how this gargantuan scam rolls out when exposed to light.

The diligent and easy living friends talk one day, looking at property that they would both like to own.

The diligent friend commits to working hard and earning the money to buy what they would like to own and leaves, promising to catch up when this outcome has been achieved.

Meanwhile, the easy living friend knows that he has the contacts and ideas necessary to go away and print enough of the money he needs to buy that same property today. And that he can do this from nothing, which will work out well for him but not his friend, so long as he doesn’t speak openly about what he’s doing. Uses his contacts to change a few rules so that what he’s doing is legal. And he doesn’t keep printing more money to buy everything else so that it becomes obvious what he’s been doing all along. Afterall, nobody will know if he uses the money he then earns from renting out that property to pay all that money back…

The money that the easy living friend has created, has just increased the amount of money that exists.

This means that because there isn’t actually any more property, production or anything else with ‘real’ value that corresponds to the increasing pool of money, all of the money that’s available is now worth much less than it was.

The real world impact of this fantasy being made reality is that the diligent friend will have to worker harder, longer or both, to pay for the property that the easy living friend has just taken without effort.

What is more, the easy living friend is now offering to rent the property he’s bought to the diligent friend who now realises that he may never be able to afford to buy it.

If you can see and understand the basic mechanics of how this situation works, you only need scale up the same principles to understand how the massive, growing amount of money – and the ridiculous inflation and the growing cost of living problem we are all facing, has been created and is now growing at a ridiculous rate.

It is an unavoidable, inescapable fact that if one person or set of people are able to buy real, tangible things that have value to us – whatever those things might be – with money that doesn’t actually exist, they can take lawful possession of those things and do with them whatever they so choose – as any legitimate owner would be able to do so.

However, the illegitimate creation of the money and the legitimised theft of assets, businesses, infrastructure and everything else imaginable that it has financed means what they have been doing is just one part of a multifaceted crime against everyone else.

The crimes that follow the created money pathways include the impoverishment of the masses.

Yet they become even worse when we consider that public services and infrastructure such as utility companies have been bought up with fake money.

Entire business sectors like the pub trade and small, local shops have also all become unviable because fake money has financed industry expansion of big retail and all their centralised supply chains, that would not otherwise have been possible.

To cap that all off, markets and the practices of big business and finance have been deregulated through the drive for ‘Free Markets’. So that those making money can make more and more, because the rules that once protected us all and small independent businesses have been removed, whilst regulations that cost us, exclude us and disqualify us from our own independence and from taking part have instead been imposed under the pretence that they help and protect us.

The whole pathway of illegitimate money creation using the FIAT system leads or rather has led to the doorstep of nothing less than worldwide system control.

The only thing that now gives us the opportunity to save ourselves from a very challenging fate is the reality that those with their hands in the till have already broken too many of the rules of their own game.

The whole system is starting to collapse before the great reset or imposition of the next new world order has conclusively been imposed.

The Future of Money

I could stop there. But in lifting the stone or exposing what lies beneath it to light I am certainly not alone.

Before continuing further, I would encourage anyone who has read this far to do their own research and use as many different sources and mediums as they can to uncover and draw their own conclusions about all of this and what is really going on.

My real interest and passion is what happens next for us and for our future. Once we have got through this horrid time and whatever turbulence and challenges that we now face, once we have got to the other side and left them all behind.

Whilst I have written extensively about what a good working model for our future society would look like in Our Local Future, I have also spent time sharing thoughts and ideas about the way money and commerce would work, in books from Levelling Level, to An Economy for the Common Good and The Basic Living Standard too.

What we should perhaps all be able to conclude – once we have dealt with our own addictions and attachment to the way that endless money supposedly works for us all now – is that money should never hold its own value. Should never be speculated upon, and the power of its creation and policing should never be under private control.

What is more, the value of legal currency should never be pinned to anything that can itself vary in value, especially when whatever that currency is pinned to is in short supply or can be controlled manipulatively or otherwise at will.

People are the only legitimate economic constant

If everyone did what they do, only took what they need and were happy to share or exchange what they didn’t with whoever needed it in return for something they did in return, there would never be need of money of any kind, ever again.

Whilst I can see that to many the idea that everyone just does what they do today for nothing and that in return, they get just enough of what they need of everything else in return might seem fanciful, this suggestion does nonetheless make a very important point about everyone only taking or expecting to have access to what they actually need.

Need is NOT the same thing as want.

Too much want is what has led to a situation where there are people right across the world today who don’t have access just to the things that they need.

An economy – a legitimate economy – will function only to provide for the needs of people within it.

There isn’t an argument that can counter this legitimately. Any argument made against this, no matter how compelling or well elucidated, is inevitably built upon one person being able to obtain or accumulate more things than others. Because the alternative system favours their interests more.

These are the fundamental basics of greed.

Locality based economies and economics

Everyone who can, should play their part or contribute to the function of a legitimate economy, in whatever role they are able. So that everyone who is active, then comes together to become the sum of all the parts – with the sum of those parts being the community, which because of what members can do together collaboratively, will be greater than what everyone would be able to do by working alone.

The value of a legitimate economy should therefore be based upon the number of people who are active within it and include what they input or contribute to that economy individually and therefore collectively.

If every member of the community does what they should be doing, and the needs of everyone being met are always prioritised and planned for or budgeted for as they should be, the whole system will move closely towards self-containment, with the amount of money in circulation always being closely related to the number of heads within the population.

A localised and online local market exchange system that focuses on bartering and exchange for foods, goods, services and work being made universally available alongside cash and digitally transferable money, should also exist so that everything works in a circular fashion and everyone’s particular needs are always met in ways that favour everyone.

The needs for public service, infrastructure, community activities and everything beyond should be met by everyone who is able to work volunteering the equivalent of 1/10 of their working week and their skills or experience to the community. Thereby meeting whatever needs and community income generation requirement there may then be.

Excess goods produced, surplus service capacity and over production which is specialist to the community would also be traded with other communities and traded where any additional requirements beyond the scope of community production exist.

The blight of greed-driven thinking

The only reason that an economic system that will work like this, which promotes freedom and financial independence of the masses, would not work, is because those who would no longer be able to define themselves as being different to others through the accumulation of additional and unnecessary wealth will argue that it isn’t practical and cannot work.

Even within a genuinely egalitarian approach to economics based along these lines, it is a fact that some could always do better, because they choose to do so through their own industry. Whilst many others – and the majority at that, would be happy to just make the contribution that was absolutely necessary, knowing that they would be happy, healthy, safe and secure because all of their basic and essential needs were being met.

It is part of the capitalist myth that entrepreneurialism and creativity in commerce cannot exist when the ability to earn or rather profit is capped.

The real truth of the matter is that everyone will be productive and make a valuable contribution when anything that goes beyond what it takes to look after themselves and those who depend on them is a choice and the ability to just live a normal life without dependency on anything beyond themselves hasn’t been denied by the actions of others.

Nobody has the right to take or have more than they need and certainly not when it can only come to them through the exploitation and infliction of pain and suffering of any kind upon others.

The power behind Everything vital to the functions of life and supporting people to live must be restored to the people and communities living those lives themselves

Whilst so-called socialists and capitalists alike will continue to argue that their destination would have been different, until whoever is in power takes the rap for destroying everything at the time – and then the other tries desperately to convince everyone that there’s still time for them, just to be sure, the very perverse and somewhat disturbing truth that is now coming into our view of reality is that the direction of both left and right political thinking takes humanity to exactly the same place.

What all these ‘philosophies’ – the ideas of academics, thinkers, economists, industrialists, tech moguls, agitators, the aggrieved, life’s bitter victims, entitled shirkers, greedy and selfish bastards – have in common, is the centralisation of power into the hands of one or just a select few – who for whatever purpose intended – control everything, so that they can enjoy their own lives and positions more than anyone they see as different to themselves and therefore as being a threat.

Verging on enlightened thinking, as many will surely argue their heroes and inspirations to have written these works will have been, enlightenment doesn’t revolve around creating environments that centre purely on a beneficial vacancy at the top. Which the design of these solutions surely was the intention, resulting from whatever experiences the authors had themselves experienced up until the time of writing.

None of these accepted visionaries were wrong. Or at least they were not wrong in the sense that we all are the sum of our experiences and our position looking upon or perception of life in any given moment will be correct, for us personally, in terms of what those experiences have taught us and what we have therefore concluded that they should be, right up to that same moment in time.

Let’s face it. The world is a very shitty place to be. Whether you have nothing and cannot escape poverty because of the boot that rides rough-shod over you; or at the other extreme you are as financially wealthy as it is possible to be and all you quietly worry about is protecting yourself, your wealth and how you are going to accumulate even more.

The pain that hides behind our eyes hasn’t changed over decades and centuries in human time.

Yes, the surroundings, clothes, transport, technology and everything else may seem different. But the nature of the experiences we are all having on our different pathways are in relative terms very much the same.

Wherever we may sit across this spectrum, 200 or more years ago at the dawning of the Industrial Revolution or right now as we are being prepared for the AI takeover, we all have an idea of what the perfect world for us would be.

It is regrettable that only some of us find ourselves able to share those ideas and thoughts and have them taken seriously by enough others for them to be seen to matter – which itself doesn’t mean they are genuinely enlightened or of benefit to greater humankind.

It’s simply the case that even when complete idiots or utterly selfish bastards are heard, their thoughts and views are swallowed up like nectar by people who themselves have a back catalogue of difficult experiences that identify with what they read or hear.

They pick those ideas – those philosophies – up and run with them, no matter how twisted or damaging in the longer term they might be. Leaving ideas behind in the dirt that the chaos they unleash leaves behind to fester for years and possibly centuries, that would otherwise deliver for the good of everyone when implemented.

We must be clear that all the ideas and philosophies for the world, whether they fall under the socialist or capitalist umbrellas or not, are without fail just ideas and suggestions.

Whether well intended or not, these philosophies were all packaged with the pretense that they were the ingredients, nuts and bolts or technicalities of a model of the perfect working world, for all people.

As history has demonstrated only too well, the actions of those underneath these umbrellas lead to both the imprisonment and oppression of the masses under the yoke of world elites.

We are fooled into believing there is a difference in outcomes because one system gets straight to work by enforcing its ideologies on people and the systems of the world as it tightens its grip and pushes those who are left into the cage. Meanwhile, the other drugs everyone with every conceivable high that they believe they like, creating mass addiction to ways of living that mean there is little hope of sobriety for anyone who has bought in and become addicted, until the very heavy jail cell door will have already slammed shut behind us all.

Centralisation is the flaw in all of these philosophies. Because it is impossible to centralise every part of life, for every single person across every country and across the entire world, without life, values, happiness, health, wellbeing and all the mechanics of essential function and civic society collapsing in their wake.

The clever tools and devices used by capitalists, globalists and neoliberals are ultimately no different to the level-playing-fields, street revolutions and guns employed by communists and socialists to enforce and police their point.

The painful outcomes that these forms of idealistic thinking inflict upon the masses always have agendas behind them, and none of those paying the real cost of these ideological-turned-material crimes ever agreed to the world being run this way.

The elites and those behind all of this have of course been aided by technological advances and the many different ways that the world has opened up and the distances between us all have been bridged.

Yet the point has always and pretty much systematically been missed that humanity and our morality based values system do not need and never needed to change to keep up with the material changes in the world, which have always been about the things that appear to be important beyond and outside of people.

Indeed, the changes that have been made to our frameworks for behaviour have always been made to suit those in power, with influence and who are directly benefitting from those changes. Those who perceive that the only way they can benefit more is for the old ways or ways that benefit others with fairness and balance must be left behind. Because they will otherwise get in the way.

So, was there ever a point in history where humanity genuinely got the whole thing right?

There is good reason to believe not. Or that if that moment of genuine balance has ever existed so far, it was momentary and could only really have been so, because the opportunity didn’t actually then exist to end the self-interest, anger, frustration, greed and every other dark part of the human condition that drives generation after generation to ingeniously, creatively and ignorantly to exactly the same things over and over again.

We may not see it, nor appreciate nor even find value in the suggestion. But a centuries-long pathway of humanity being led and controlled by interests that are not in any way genuinely shared, has led us all to a place where those who have benefited from that control and the generations following behind them, can no longer maintain that control. Because the whole pathway is about to have gone too far, before that door can be slammed shut and the final adjustments to the oppressed fate of humankind can be made.

The intention underlying of all these ideologies was that everything and everyone would be controlled throughout the journey, until that control was necessary no more.

Yet the systems we have been conditioned into accepting, like the out of control value of money, the rules that are supposedly there to protect and help whilst they disadvantage us, and the process of making very intelligent people doubt themselves or force them to believe and support ideas which run contrary to common sense or that are completely untrue, have all contributed to a situation where many already know the world is out of balance. People know that whatever is behind all of this has gone too far.

Natural, universal, unspoken rules have always existed that require each and every one of us to have the freedom to learn, to grow and to develop if we so choose to do so.

Because of the persistent actions of these patriarchal few and those who have followed them, that freedom for everyone to learn grow and develop, no matter their background or position in life, no longer exists. Because the way the system of the world has been developed now means that many no longer have the opportunity to experience the personal sovereignty to which every man is entitled. No matter how, where or to whom they were born.

A collapse is coming. That collapse is already underway. We are all within it and experiencing it at subjective levels that keep us from the objectivity that would make it much easier to define.

The critical point that is now approaching will be the moment that something happens, that could be civil unrest, financial collapse, the extension of foreign wars, civil war or something else, when each and every one of us realises and accepts that we have a Choice. And that we no longer have to be passengers or passively accept whatever someone else has engineered to be our fate.

The curse of overcentralisation is the never-ending desire of those who are at the centre of that centralisation process to centralise even more. Simply because of the greater rewards and control that they believe it will bring.

The outcome of the overcentralisation is that nobody ever has enough of any of the things they really need. When in a world and time when we have so much available to everyone, this has become a first-hand tragedy for us all to experience indeed.

The only centre that we need and that we should ever seek is the community, locality and to share responsibility for everything amongst the people we see face to face and interact with each day.

This is real life that doesn’t come to us through media channels, digital technology or through rules that have been made by some name without a face.

This system is the only resource and ecosystem that we need to sustain us, that we need contribute to and that can be relied upon to create frameworks and governance for life that will always be in our best interests.

It is the only system that will provide and leave us with the genuine freedom necessary to enjoy every aspect of a good life, as the majority of us would want and like to experience.

The decision to make this change and embrace the power to do so is ours already, if we actually want it.

But we all do need to make The Choice.

There is no need for hierarchies, for top-down systems and procedures, for political parties, financial markets and devices, globalised business and supply chains, or anything else that makes life cheaper. When life being cheapened any further is the very last thing that any of us need.

Local communities that are genuinely local and locality driven, and the ecosystems and self contained economies that they will create, offer us everything that we will need to have to experience valuable lives, where the basics and essentials are always in place.

Locality driven communities offer a system of governance meaning that no matter the life choices any one of us makes, we can all live independently of help – and therefore will not experience the forms of lack that are responsible for so many of societies social problems as their root cause.

The value of every one of us is exactly the same and nothing can change this.

No matter what we do, wear, what we have or how we are seen to be, not one of us should be positioned to advantage ourselves by disadvantaging others.

This is where the fundamental basis and genesis of a new world philosophy must be able to begin. One that is designed by us all for everyone rather than by a few who want everything controlled and for that control to be in the hands of one.

***

Over the past 3 years, I have been writing about the different aspects of what is happening; what is likely to happen and how we can all get from here to a much better place.

Whilst the rules and frameworks that govern a new world that will genuinely be of benefit to everyone, must be designed and agreed freely by us all, we still need an idea or vision of the outcomes that we can expect.

Our Local Future is a model for future life that I believe to capture this, which I would invite you to consider. Before someone else has considered and though out an alternative, that when the time has come to make the choice that is genuinely good for us, will instead steal that opportunity and take its place.

Whatever you do next, please remember to beware the many false prophets who are shouting the attractiveness of populism and anarchy now.

Don’t listen to those who tell you they are putting people first.

Keep watching for those who are doing so.

The only centre we need is within our communities themselves. Everything will make sense when everything important throughout our lives revolves around everything we can experience daily at first hand in this way.

Our Local Future | FULL TEXT

The Choice – A Waking Up Story | Full Text

Our Communities are the only place that a workable political solution can begin

A Community Route | Full Text

The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government | Full Text

An Economy for the Common Good | Full Text

Manifesto for a Good Dictator | Full Text

Community is the only centre we need 24Jul25 PDF_Vers5_2Nov25 Download

The real implications of the UKs Food Strategy 2025

I have very mixed feelings about government strategies and reports.

Experience has proven that the real story usually lies hidden in how they say what they do say, what they actually say and why they say they’ve said it.

So, it’s only by carefully reading the political double speak, seeing what’s been missed or is merely present so it’s seen to be there, and then capturing what they really mean, that even people with real-life roles in the UK Food Chain have any chance of working out what’s really going on.

The use and misuse of There, Their and They’re perhaps offer a very quick analogical likeness of how different words, whole phrases and sentences that look and sound exactly the same are used by government to mean different things to us as opposed to what they mean to them.

Deliberately, with the intention to manipulatively mislead in ways that can later be used to suggest we were aware all along, relevant topics such as the intended use or application of technology are very carefully presented to us by those who supposedly serve the public, in the knowledge that anyone reading these carefully crafted messages, who isn’t pretty much fluent in the underlying language, will very quickly misread and therefore misunderstand the intentions, direction and desired outcomes.

The fact that a Food Strategy arrives on the Internet in polished form without anyone I or probably you would know from our daily lives and the communities around us having ever been asked or given the opportunity to genuinely engage, is a good indicator that what anyone on the receiving end of the policies in question thinks really doesn’t matter to whoever is driving their implementation.

When we begin to read about the consulting organisations and see that it appears at least some of them are newly created with the intent that they will do their bit at a time and place to be determined up ahead, we get a real feel for what the context of this policy direction instrument is likely to be. Given that food production is a subject that is deliberately played down politically – even though it should – as the intended backdrop of this document suggests – be a key issue of our time.

Rather than just provide a general commentary on the Food Strategy, for the purposes of this post, I have opted instead to pick out the points that are most important and then explain why they impact in that way.

Before anything else, you can read A UK Food Strategy For England HERE and I will be very happy for you to comment on what I’ve written or what you’ve taken away from this page or from the Food Strategy itself.

Direction and the Outcomes Sought

“Food is a big part of life in the United Kingdom. It gives us energy, brings us joy, and helps us feel connected to our communities.”

The Food Strategy opens with this statement. And to be fair, it really does sound like the point is nailed immediately.

However, it’s important to think about that opening line and what it says much more carefully. After all, these are the words or statement that most readers will pay attention to before they glaze over – which is often the plan.

This first line tells us much about the real direction of travel and what this Food Strategy is really about. And it’s not about all the different things that are carefully included throughout this and the adjoining documents that are linked in the way we are intended to think.

So before breaking it down, let’s be clear about the message that should be jumping out in the first blast of the Ministerial Foreword instead:

Food isn’t just a big part of life; Food IS life and without it, we simply don’t have one.

Food is so much more than something that gives us energy and joy – which are the only real issues that the establishment are focused on when it comes to keeping public opinion on side.

After all, in their minds, as long as the food we eat means we don’t experience hunger and we are all are happy after eating, that’s all they need worry about.

Food – and Foods We Can Trust require a different approach and values set entirely and none of this is that in any real sense at all.

In so far as talking about the links to communities and the mentions of the word community are concerned, the concept of community is very important when it comes to the future of our Food Supply and Food Security.

But the use of community in this Strategy is just for the purposes of making it sound like the establishment is aligned with where the priorities of food and food production should be. Which as discussed within my recent works ‘What is Food Security’ and ‘Our Local Future’ is very much about locality in every sense and not just a badge that suggests politicians and government officers are reliable and ‘on side’ – just because they’ve again used words that say what they believe we want to hear.

The Food System

“With the right leadership, we can become a world leader in sustainable healthy food production – tackling climate change, boosting resilience and securing our food future”

This statement really sums up the political position of the establishment and what might be best called the ‘accepted narrative’.

This statement is the collection of key phrases that relate to the priorities that the establishment has in mind when it is thinking about Food, and what they want it to mean to the public.

Once again, the statement sounds like its targeted in just the right way with talk of becoming a world leader in sustainable healthy food production.

But sustainable can mean many different things. And whilst the document refers to sustainable a number of times, the Food Strategy doesn’t directly talk about Sustainable Agriculture, growing or indeed any other forms of natural, farmed food production in the UK itself. And whilst even some farmers would currently disagree, it is only as part of a wholly Regenerative Farming or Traditional Farming approach being adopted throughout UK Farming will be the only way that genuine Sustainable Farming can be achieved in a way that makes the UK genuinely Food Secure.

Resilience is another word that at first glance makes it sound very much like this is a government that means what it says when it comes to our future experiences of Food. After all, who wouldn’t want us to have a resilient food supply?

The problem is that resilience said, and resilience done are two very different things.

As the influences at work on this Food Strategy such as the relationship with the EU come into play, the resilience that is being talked about assumes that resilience will always be based and assured upon the existence of the import and export dynamics that exist today. Yet in a very uncertain world, any good politician or government leader would be foolish to assume these will always remain in place.

The reality we face is that this supply chain could collapse at any time.

“We are committed to transforming the food system – making nutritious, locally grown British food more accessible and affordable for all”

I really like this statement. I would love for it to be true. But I don’t believe it for a second. Because these words simply do not correlate with the actions of the government that to date have been fully in view.

Most people reading these words will assume or take away the idea that the government and all the organisations supporting the Food Chain or Food Supply are going to gather or coalesce around a community-centric transformation of the existing system and do everything within their power to make this happen – in the best interests of all.

Unfortunately, it really doesn’t work that way and isn’t going to work that way with the massive range of profit and agenda led interests that already have very influential roles throughout the Food Chain and which I discussed in ‘Who Controls Our Food Controls Our Future’.

The key thing that we all need to be clear about and accept – is that the transformation must be funded by private money, as this Food Strategy makes clear the government is committed to through the statement; “Government has an important role to play in supporting and creating the right environment for investment, but the majority of investment will come from the private sector’.

Whilst I’m sure that my views have annoyed many from the farming community for whom I have great respect, there is no question that if UK Food Production systems are going to be transformed and lead to an outcome where UK Agriculture, Growers and the UK Fishing Industry are restored to their rightful and appropriate place, it will be the Farmers, Growers and Fishers (and the industries that are aligned with them) themselves that will have to ‘privately fund’ this change.

That should make us all very happy. Because that’s where we need to be.

However, it’s certainly not where we are.

The majority of Farmers are still expecting that government will put up the money for any required changes – even though this statement makes explicit that the direction of travel will be funded by private interests.

If Farmers, Growers and Fishers aren’t the private interests that pay for and therefore own the direction of change, the private interests that dictate the future of our Food will be the big corporations, banks and financiers.

If big money interests fund the future of UK Farming (as there is much evidence to confirm they have already started) the vision of what Community Food Systems are and will become, will look very different to what anyone from todays UK Farming industry will believe they should be.

Its clear here, in black and white, in this Food Strategy who and what is really driving everything.

Farmers, Growers and Fishers still have the power to turn this all around and reject the inevitability with which this Food Strategy has been presented.

However, everyone within the Farming, Growing and Fishing communities that wants to save UK Food Production really does have to start collaborating; wake up to the reality that underpins the mood music and the subtext that is already at play, which is fast becoming direct messaging – all as the establishment concludes that these traditional industries no longer really matter and are so confident in what they are doing that they openly behave like they couldn’t care less.

‘Established in the early 20^th century’

As the Food Strategy develops, it begins to make statements that have an estranged relationship with the truth at best. Like this one that talks about the existing Food System being established in the early 20^th Century.

Be under no illusion; this is what the establishment want everyone to think.

The suggestion paints the picture that this Food Strategy is now being created and will be implemented to ‘save’ us from an antiquated and out of date way of ‘doing food’, which is no longer fit for purpose.

Yes, the Food System and Food Chain that we have today really isn’t fit for purpose. But it’s not fit for purpose because it doesn’t deliver Foods We Can Trust.

Today’s UK Food Chain certainly doesn’t prioritise human food consumption in the way that we should be able to expect government to prioritise something as important to human beings as the consumption of water and air.

The Food System in the UK – and across the world – is vastly different to what it was and what it was like a century ago – which to be clear would be a quarter into the 20^th Century in 1925.

World War II made a significant impact on food production in the UK. As up until the outbreak of war, a similar complacency had taken hold of the food question, and the Country was left dangerously exposed by the reliance that we then had on imports from around the world.

The Battle of the Atlantic and considerable effort made by the German Navy to sink merchant shipping supplying the UK on all approaching trade routes helped pressure the strategy for domestic food production back towards self-sufficiency and a productionist or output-orientated approach that was then supported heavily by government once the war had ended.

Whilst the UK really has no excuse to not be self sufficient in the supply of essential food supplies, the change in post war financial dynamics, following the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944, soon meant that commercial priorities took over and the productionist or output-driven agenda was adopted both by business and the neoliberal orthodoxy which fed into the push for globalisation that really took over formally in 1971.

It was the obsession with output, aligned with what seemed like the unimportant transition of industrial processes that had been created and pushed towards arms production and then repurposed into fertilizer production that helped with the strategy to move away from traditional, sustainable and environmentally beneficial farming practices. Moving to easy fixes that certainly made all kinds of land seem highly profitable for a short time but then fell afoul of the EU (Common Market and Common Agricultural Policy) that heralded British Agriculture’s definitive decline upon arrival.

Farmers being re-educated to the point where they have forgotten to be creative and entrepreneurial and instead have become reliant upon subsidies and then the contracts that the removal of organisations like the Milk Marketing Board led Farmers becoming beholden to, have all contributed to the highly vulnerable situation that the industry faces across the UK today.

This deliberately engineered mess has led to a level of Food Insecurity in the UK that is critically dangerous, with around only 11% of the food we consume being immediately or directly available to the UK population today, if we were for any reason to experience a real crisis that shut down imports for any prolonged period of time.

It is the strategy and those behind it – including the big global and corporate businesses, that have dictated the way that the UK has been farming for at least the past half-century.

It is massively disingenuous of the government and the establishment to speak or make any policy moves that suggest the farming methods of a century ago are the same as they are now. And that the only way that the UK can have a sustainable, robust and secure Food Policy is to leave the natural-orientated, genuinely traditional forms of farming behind – whilst they are actually methods of producing Food that have not formed the real basis of the way British Agriculture has worked, for at least that amount of time.

‘As our largest agri food trade partner, how the EU approaches these challenges are particularly relevant’

The influence of the EU and the current governments push, not only to realign but to reintegrate Food Policy with them is massively troubling. Not least of all because every step taken is one backwards from a genuine democratic plebiscite where the majority of the UK voting population voted for the UK to leave the EU – which in reality, it never did anyway.

Ironically for all those who believe that the now crumbling EU was and always will be the very best place for the UK to be, the whole EU project is and always has been nothing less than a continental franchise of the globalisation project.

The political takeover of nation states and the creation of centralised world government is at its very heart, and this is regrettably best demonstrated by the close and beholden relationship that all those committed to the WEF (World Economic Forum) throughout politics have in turn with the EU.

These are all organisations that are historically shown to have been exceptionally good at buying support by appealing to the base instincts of voters. Meanwhile hiding deregulation that hands power to big business, and then regulating people and small independent businesses more and more by creating rules, regulations and systems that supposedly raise standards, encourage safety and promote high quality, but do in fact control, exclude and shut down independent businesses – particularly in all parts of the Food Chain, that when able to operate and function independently as and within localised ecosystems are a complete threat to centralised control.

Shortly after this statement, the Food Strategy suggests that the relationship will cut red tape, which is genuinely hilarious, bearing in mind that the red tape they are talking about being cut is only that which will be removed by the UK once again having those systems not just aligned with but under the control of the EU.

“The next key milestone will be the development of metrics, indicators and implementation plans for the food strategy outcomes.”

If the realities of this document already discussed were not concerning enough already, we then move on to the development of metrics (that’s measuring progress), indicators (so the things that show their plans are proving to be successful) and the implementation itself, which should probably be seen more as a rubber stamping of the latest actions, rather than anything that may or may not be left to chance in the future.

Yes, talk of something that has been called the Good Food Cycle sounds very good when taken at face value.

But we are in times when words and terms that politicians and government officials use are deliberately misleading (as we discussed earlier with There, their and They’re). And when this catchy term is put in its objective context, there is every chance that the Food we all end up with will not have anything within it that’s in any way good about it at all!

Ending mass dependence on emergency food parcels would of course be a truly fantastic outcome to have achieved. But only in relation to how things are working now and not in the context which this Strategy could all too easily mean.

Based upon the way government is now behaving, the way that this Food Strategy is written is almost certainly just another step in plans for every part of life that will lead to at least 2 tiers of society. A situation where the poorest, vulnerable and by then those engineered to be unemployed using the AI takeover will be fed in the same way with Foods that simply have no relationship with natural food production. Thereby complicating removing what’s left of the remaining but nonetheless real component of the majority of the Foods that are available to us at exploding prices now.

Alternative proteins

Alternative Proteins are mentioned at different points throughout the Food Strategy.

If you weren’t concerned enough already, this is where this already dark Food Strategy starts to go completely black. As Alternative Proteins is the accepted term for synthesised and artificially created foods, that this whole Strategy is laying the way for.

General Comment

My real concern about this Food Strategy is that so few who read it and consider how seemingly well put together it appears, will see the content and direction for what it all really is.

Legitimacy to this ‘work’ has been given by the participation and ‘contribution’ of advocacy organisations such as the NFU (National Farmers Union) who are providing exceptional membership services to the members who they face. But have not got any genuine ability to advocate through the fear they have of having the relationships with government and the public sector cancelled or burned.

The advocacy organisations pay lip service and certainly make much noise when it comes to the issues. But they fear being excluded from the process, much more than what the outcome of what that process actually will be.

Lines like ‘We need to restore pride in and build on our unique food heritage and cultures’ and then the reference to the production of Food being ‘Patriotic’ certainly play to the whims of the growing populist movement that is becoming a massive threat to both the government and the public sector, and of which the Starmer led government is massively afraid.

But they are in no way related to what this Strategy really is or is about.

Regrettably, the damage that could already have been done to what is left of the UKs ability to feed itself once more, by the time we have a new government actually capable of driving reversal, will have already gone too far and the chance of the UK becoming self-sufficient in food production and therefore Food Secure in the real sense will have been completely undone.

Links:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/a-uk-government-food-strategy-for-england/a-uk-government-food-strategy-for-england-considering-the-wider-uk-food-system

What is Food Security?

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Who controls Our Food controls Our Future (Full Text)

The need for a collaborative approach to the UK Farming and Food Security Problem

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Containers

Suggested further reading for this Section:

Hydroponics

Suggested further reading for this Section:

Greenhouses

Suggested further reading for this Section:

Allotments, Gardens and Vegetable Patches

Suggested further reading for this Section:

Citizen Farmers – Working together with other members of Your Community to Grow Your Own

Community Gardens

Share Farming and/or Cooperative Farming (Social Enterprise)

Food: The heart of Communities of the Future

Cost

Sharing Your Knowledge on Home Growing

Thoughts on Grow Your Own

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How many carrots does it cost to buy a wheel?

When everything is about money, the answers to every question can only be found in monetary terms.

In simple terms

The Future of Money

People are the only legitimate economic constant

Locality based economies and economics

The blight of greed-driven thinking

Further Reading (Updated 14/1/26):

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Direction and the Outcomes Sought

The Food System

General Comment

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