If you are looking for fiction, this is no story. But the snapshots, views and experiences that you are about to share will make you question much that you previously accepted as truth.
Everything you are about to read about the past, about what we are experiencing today and where the future could take us is certainly interconnected.
But the way that the world works suggests that every issue that has happened, that we are experiencing and that we will need to address in the future, sits in isolation in some way.
Until we see the relationship that exists between everything and the problems we face, then accept that we will only solve those problems by thinking differently, our future will continue to be written by interests that will never be aligned with our own.
Touching on everything that relates to the way this Country is run, from education to cryptocurrency, the true value of money, to growing food at home and rules for the internet and AI, Days of Ends and New Beginnings lifts the stone and shines light on many of the issues, motives and reasons for the problems society faces, that have until now been carefully hidden from view.
Repurposing the inevitable period of chaos and change we are now experiencing so the outcome is meaningful change that will benefit us all isn’t a certainty. But by considering what is likely to change, what positive change will look like, and how we can take steps to thrive and survive as we experience that change, the chances are that we can all become a positive influence on what our future will be.
If you are ready to embrace meaningful change, it’s time to look inside.
Forgive me if I am wrong. But I was under the impression that the run up to an election was the time for politicians to come up with the giveaways and promises that were designed to buy votes. Not turn potential voters away.
Yes, its cynical I know. But very few of us could honestly say that we expect anything from politicians of any of the political parties we know today.
Deep down, we all know, that the messages, soundbites and slogans are typically aimed at the many of us who aren’t really asking questions, in the hope that we will mindlessly walk to the Polling Station at some point in the coming months and hand our vote to politicians who really shouldn’t be anywhere near public responsibility of any kind.
However, without real alternatives, that’s exactly what the next General Election Day promises to be. The chance for us either to refuse to vote, because there’s no real public representation to vote for, or to vote for the Political Party that we currently believe is most likely to do us the least harm.
Yet Friday showed us all something different.
What we heard from the Prime Minister went way beyond the desperate words of someone leading a party that has been trusted with the responsibility of government for too long. Forlornly doing the best they can to limit the scope of the coming electoral disaster.
Rishi Sunak’s speech on Friday heralded a level of ignorance, cold-heartedness and outright hatred of others, who our politicians identify as not being the same as themselves, now being manifested in a way that we might not have seen in the UK since the Victorian era or perhaps even before.
Don’t be mistaken. The so-called attack on sick culture, those who supposedly live on benefits as a lifestyle choice and people with disabilities, whether they be physical or of the mental health kind, may indeed be a popular policy amongst those who are still earning enough to cover the unstoppable inflation of prices for every basic essential that every human being needs, to remain human.
But the number of those who have more than enough is dwindling all the time. And if they are not already, many who are already working full time jobs will soon be asking themselves how long it will be until they have to reach out to ask for benefits, charity from somewhere like a food bank, or most likely use a credit card or some other financial device like a loan and go into debt, just to pay the bills, have food on the table or sit on a winter evening with light and enough heat.
Creating the idea that nobody should take more than 12 months to get a job really would be quite an insulting suggestion – even if it were meant to be a joke.
But to suggest that the way to tackle the mental health issues that those claiming unemployment related benefits suffer is to push them into work, tells us all too clearly, either a) how ridiculously out of touch or b) how inhuman or actually evil, the people running the UK today really are.
Being in Poverty today
As someone who grew up in poverty, I experienced all the stereotypical issues that the majority of today’s politician’s actions would suggest qualifies someone like me for life’s dustbin.
Last Autumn I found myself at the end of a long journey, studying a postgraduate course in Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security and visiting a local Food Bank to undertake research and relate my own experiences from childhood in the 70’s and 80’s to what those with a comparable life experience have to deal with today.
What I found was extremely sobering, when put in the context of how poverty is considered by decision makers and those who formulate public policy.
Whilst a technical awareness and therefore systematic approach to provision for the poor has existed in some way for much longer than many realise, the dynamics of poverty are continually changing. Yet ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’.
The only way that any of us and especially those who should be making provision to help those in need could do so in a way that goes beyond basic giveaways or cash handouts – as is how the benefits system really operates right now, would be to gain a direct understanding of what it is really like to be at the mercy of the welfare and benefits system today. And for as long as the problem exists, to regularly revisit and keep tangibly in touch.
Everything that government and the public sector provides through welfare and the benefits system today is focused upon dealing with the effects of the problem. Rather than doing even the slightest thing to address the causes of the actual problem itself.
Taking benefits away without addressing this will not encourage anyone to help themselves. It will just remove some of the help that is already nowhere near enough and condemn countless more to worse than anything anyone in living memory has seen before.
Being out of touch is no excuse for any politician. Least of all a British Prime Minister
The underlying message that anyone paying close attention would have understood from Sunak’s speech on Friday was This is the fault of the people who are in this situation.
They are the guilty bastards here and helping them beyond what we can get away with means we are throwing money away that we could spend on something that will help us get elected again.
That a Prime Minister of the UK could be a former banker and billionaire who has never wanted for anything and has absolutely no idea of the hell that people on the breadline experience every day, whilst politicians and the media gaslight us with messages like ‘INFLATION IS GOING DOWN’ is bad enough.
But to stand there and tell the Country that there is no excuse for not working when people cannot support themselves when they do, is frankly beyond absurd.
The problem that politicians helped create and won’t tackle. But are happy to blame on anyone else
It should be obvious to the political classes that anyone who can work and earn a wage that covers their costs without them needing to claim benefits, call upon charity or go into debt is usually happy and unlikely to cause any form of social problem for anyone else.
It should be just as obvious that when a benefits system that does everything that it can to devalue those seeking support, to the degree that claiming benefits is a cause of mental health issues for many in itself, that switching from being fully dependent upon benefits and other help, to then being dependent upon benefits, other help AND working perhaps full time, doesn’t offer a genuine incentive for anyone who is already feeling like the world is against them.
Working full time in any job that doesn’t pay the employee enough to survive independently and without support may be considered legal by today’s politicians and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
We need leaders. Not morally bankrupt politicians who see the workings of the world in purely financial terms
The majority of those on benefits today and the increasing number who are set to join them, as technology like AI takes over jobs, are all victims of the current system of governance and leadership which is wholly money-centric and facilitates a public sector that is financially and materially self-obsessed.
People and the humanity that governs real life no longer matter.
Because money has become god and an increasingly dehumanised set of values has been inserted and taken its place across our culture and within daily life.
If we remain on the pathway and the trajectory that politicians have set us upon, the levels of poverty that we are experiencing today are set to get exponentially worse.
It doesn’t need to be this way. It never should have been
Every function of business, or government and any not-for-profit organisation has benefit or service to people or human beings at its core.
The function of every action taken in the world should therefore always be with people and the benefit to humanity in mind. Rather than being the upside-down system that it has become, where everything every decision or action is based purely and unequivocally on what profit can be made or carrying out any necessary task for the absolute minimum that those in charge believe they can afford.
This is why prices, and the cost of living, are out of control. Everything else we are told is just another excuse.
The reason that politicians will not even acknowledge this, is because the blow-back or retribution that would come from the businesses and the elites that fund them, that they look up to and whom they wish to emulate or be, would be ruthlessly destructive.
Fulfilling the role that we are correct to expect of our politicians could easily lead them to being the future benefits claimant they are so happy to make it so difficult to be today.
That’s why no matter what they say, nothing they do will ever lead to meaningful change.
The Basic Living Standard
People on low wages and benefits cannot afford to survive or function independently and without help today.
Because making a profit for those who control and influence the system has become far more important than ensuring that life for everyone within the system is something that each and every one of us can afford.
Yet that is exactly the message that we can all see and hear just as soon as we begin to understand how business, money and government really work.
Facts are facts. And if we were to change, transform, reform, renew or reset the whole system, so that we put the ability of the lowest paid to support themselves independently at the heart of everything and what everyone does, rather than funneling everything towards wealth accumulation in a system that only ever works out well for the few, the problems that society faces – that the rich caused and now want to punish us all for – would quickly disappear. Along with the majority of the other issues that are causing such deep division and unrest within these very turbulent times.
Making it a legal requirement that everyone working a full working week must be paid enough to cover the costs of all essentials and basics, without the need for benefits, charity or going into debt does of course sound impossible at first glance.
But that is because the system has now reached the point where it is so skewed, the messages in every direction are screaming at us that real life is no longer something that everyone can afford and that by creating a situation where others gain, you will inadvertently create circumstances where you will be losing yourself.
However,for some to be rich doesn’t mean that others must be poor, and we now need leadership that is prepared to put the needs of humanity first. Rather than continuing to suck up to and pay homage to those who are obsessed only with the bottom line.
None of the politicians we have to choose from today are even in the room with the changes that now need to be made.
It is unlikely that they even understand the realities of what needs to be done.
It is highly regrettable that we have reached a point in human history where it has become culturally acceptable, and it is therefore considered ‘normal’, for others to be poor and that we overlook or just accept this as long as we continue to be doing alright for ourselves.
That’s how our leaders view everything today and how every one of us who isn’t being touched by the realities of the cost-of-living crisis and the explosive inflation that the elites have created but tell us in the same breath doesn’t exist, still believe.
Would it be better for us all to care about each other and enjoy the benefits of what it is to be truly human? Or spend every minute that remains of our lives building layer after layer of protection around ourselves and the fake money that only we believe in, so that everyone else exists in misery and pays a very real, but nonetheless incalculable cost for our greed?
“The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.”
If you lost your job and had no savings or help from loved ones to fall back on, how would you feel if you took any job you could to find that you still couldn’t afford to live?
If benefits put you in the same position, would you take the job or conclude it would be better to just ‘sign on’?
Without enough money to pay every bill, to eat, to stay warm, to travel and do everything else you need to do for yourself, would you feel good about selling yourself to a prospective employer – especially as the worry of the debt you are in starts to mount up?
These are all real questions that increasing numbers of people are asking themselves today and every day.
The real travesty is that too many others have been asking these same questions for a very long time and without the cost-of-living crisis and runaway inflation problem, had previously been hidden from our view.
Our obsession with money and the accumulation of material wealth has meant leaving increasing numbers of people behind. Whilst a broken and privately controlled money system has steadily funneled the volume and value that we believe money to have towards a progressively smaller number of ‘the few’.
We have been conditioned to believe that for us to experience material wealth, abundance and to be financially rich, that others must have the experience of being vulnerable or poor.
It is an equation that works well. Until we find that we ourselves are the ones who need the help – as many of us living in this broken system regrettably now are.
Everything wrong with society that we see whether it’s price inflation, crime, crumbling public services or out of touch politicians, are all symptomatic of the same thing:
We don’t value each person as a human being, and we don’t value every person in the same way.
The key to a better life, better future and a better world for all, is a return to values and humanity that can only be achieved by shifting the focus of everything to locality and to ensuring that every person is able to sustain themselves financially, without the need for support.
Whilst the meanness can be maddening, the ongoing rune reading, hypocrisies and outright story telling on Twitter (X), from so many who really should know better, can certainly make you laugh.
Reading the tweets from across the political spectrum this morning about George Galloway’s win in Rochdale has certainly proved to be no different and anyone coming to social media for the first time would probably take one look and conclude that the Workers Party of Britain is about to win the next General Election (Which could literally be in just a couple of months’ time)
The fun bits of all this aside, Galloway’s return to Westminster probably has more to do with the trainwreck that turned out to be the Labour Party candidate selection, rather than it being suggestive that this next General Election will see a big rush towards dangerous forms of politics that would be new to the UK.
That said, the dynamics and possibilities for the coming Election are changing all the time. And whilst we can be reasonably certain that the next Government will look and behave in very similar ways to what we are experiencing right now, after the reality hits home that things will not get better and everything is set to remain the same, it would be anyone’s guess what will happen next.
The truth that few who live and breathe UK politics today are considering, is that the relationship between the electorate and the elected has already changed across the country.
People will increasingly vote differently or ‘off script’ as they have done in Rochdale, for candidates that don’t just talk about change. But who together with others, will actually have what it takes to deliver change too.
I wouldn’t want to bet on any of the political parties that are lining up to try and take seats in the next parliament right now. But if the parties and MPs we recognise don’t begin to change their approach to the relationship they have with voters very soon, there’s very good reason to believe that the change will start with many of them being changed for alternatives that we will start to see taking over their seats very soon.
The questions we should all be asking are ‘Who will those people be? What will they do? and What will they believe?’
Some of us are already unable to eat healthy meals, because heavily processes foods are all that we can access.
Others miss meals so they can feed other members of their families, whilst increasing numbers don’t eat because food is simply a luxury that they cannot afford.
It’s easy to dismiss the realities of other’s life experience when we’ve never had to go without a good healthy meal at any time in our life. But that doesn’t mean that any of us are safe or protected from the questions surrounding Food Security in the UK today. Questions that left unanswered may mean that we all have massive problems in store – potentially any day.
Politicians are treating UK Farming and Food Production as a political inconvenience; as if they will always be able to source the food that the UK needs from Europe or from other Countries abroad – Because politicians assume that imports will always be safe.
Meanwhile, the elites look upon the stories of food being grown in warehouses, created from ground up insects, from fungi or from processes that are even worse, and are very happy with the idea that this is how the masses will soon be fed. Because the true realities that underpin manufactured, processed and synthesized foods are not a problem that they believe could ever affect them.
Food is a basic essential of life.
Food is therefore a public good.
Yet generations of politicians have allowed commercial interests to take over almost every part of food production and supply across the UK.
Small numbers of very wealthy people and the companies they own make more and more money from addicting as many of us as possible to foods that taste nice and look good. And many genuinely believe that they are good for us, for no better reason than these highly attractive and fashionable foods appear to be a luxury that most people can afford.
The politicians and the narratives that the money behind this avoidable direction of UK Food Supply buys, deliberately tells us that Climate Change, the needs of Net Zero and with too many people to feed, the food of the future does not lie with farming or food production of any traditional kind.
But this is a constructed story that simply isn’t true and benefits only those who want continually growing profits and the control over everything that maintain it.
The narrative is all about destroying the ability that the UK currently has to feed our own population and creating a situation where the same people who are responsible for so many of our problems – just so they can make money, will be able to make even more. Because in time, their actions will make democratic forms of government redundant and will be able to assume absolute control.
This is no conspiracy. This is what the systematic destruction of UK Farming and the ability of UK Farmers and Food Producers to run viable businesses has been and is all about.
It is time to wake up to the reality that the future the establishment proposes for us all, because they know better, isn’t the healthy future that any of us need. Nor is it one that is necessary or inevitable for us to have.
However, without change, we will soon no longer have any choice.
The world has many problems. But it is the abuse and manipulation of money and how that affects every part of our lives that is the real problem underpinning them all.
Those who care only about money, don’t care about people.
That means they are not worried about what any one else eats. Especially if there are public health systems in place that will continue to address the problems they cause and that their friends with pharmaceutical companies can also continue to make profits from, by providing many different expensive treatments for.
Funny that they never create any cures.
Politicians will not address the issues that the World faces. Because it is not in the interests of their ‘careers’ and whatever they believe they have to gain in the future, by not going against these ‘interests’ and by otherwise not making decisions that are in the best interests of the people who elected them instead.
This is why when asked, politicians appear to understand the problem and talk about solutions. But nothing ever happens that addresses the real issues that they have facilitated and therefore caused.
Food is our Freedom. As long as the Food we eat remains under our control
What we eat is the foundation of everything that we do. It is the foundation of our future. It is the foundation of our lives.
If we surrender what is left of our ability to choose what we eat and where our food comes from, we will no longer be able to make choices about our health or the health of the people we care about.
The only way that we can maintain the little control we have over food and then increase it to where that control should be, is to ensure that the UK Produces all of its own food.
We must ensure that the food the UK Produces always comes from natural processes, growing and animal husbandry that takes place on local UK Farms.
It is no understatement to say that the food we eat, that makes other people very wealthy, is actively destroying our health. In growing numbers of cases, it is slowly killing us too.
We need to put Food Production and Supply back into the hands of people and business that we know and can trust.
Whilst we continue to be without politicians who will stand up for us and legislate for us all as they should, the best way that we can help to instigate the changes that we all so desperately need, is to buy as much basic or essential food that isn’t processed, from local farms or from small shops and businesses that source everything they sell from local farmers and suppliers.
Basic or essential food is food or food products that we buy in a form that is recognisable for being in its original form, or has undergone basic processing such as milling, pasteurisation, breadmaking or cheesemaking etc., that doesn’t involve the addition of manufactured ingredients or additives and could or traditionally would have been processed or prepared by hand.
The more we use small businesses, independent retailers who are committed to local food production, and farm shops and box schemes that are from identifiable sources too, the more accessible and affordable the food we should all be able to eat every day will become.
It’s a lot of responsibility for every one of us. But the people we elected to take that responsibility on our behalf are effectively refusing to do so.
It’s the actions of our politicians that we all need to watch, rather than just accepting their words.
Instead of leading us, it is the Politicians who need to be led.
The best way to lead our politicians is to demonstrate how change works without them. So that joining the growing momentum the People create will feel right to them, rather than making a choice which they currently believe would make them look like they are wrong.
Adam Tugwell 