The fact those with power and influence don’t understand what Poverty really is makes the ‘solutions’ they come up with potentially more harmful to those in need, rather than making the genuine difference that so many who have been left behind now need.
As someone who experienced poverty as a child, a research project for a Postgraduate Course project in late 2023 enabled Adam to compare the realities of living in Poverty in the UK today, to the experiences from the 70’s and 80’s that were his own.
In his own words, ‘The experience was sobering’ and the brief paper he wrote for assessment based on his question ‘Is Poverty invisible to those who don’t experience it’ is contained within this short Book.
Today, Adam often states: “You have to experience or be touched by Poverty to understand it.”
Thanks for following if you are a subscriber to my Blog and a very big welcome if you are a guest and have found me as you have been having a look on the net.
I’ve been writing blogs and publishing books for around 12 years now, since I was still sitting as a local councillor in Gloucestershire and started off writing about some of the issues that were important for my constituents near Tewkesbury. You can find these on their own Blog HERE.
As technology has moved on, anyone who writes regularly will have become increasingly aware that beyond the people who are already attuned and looking for whatever it may be that we have to offer, our potential audience is increasingly likely to prefer watching a video that shares our messages, rather than reading through our missives, no matter if it were easy for them to be found.
About 2 years ago, I picked up a DJI Mini camera to see if I could make the transition or rather expand my online offering to YouTube and video platforms beyond.
To be honest, it didn’t feel that easy and although I published a few films on another channel, it just seemed easier to keep writing – especially as my focus seemed to be driven by creating and publishing what has now become a long list of books.
Reaching the point where it felt like I have covered all the things that I didn’t originally realise that I had set out to say, I recently found myself going back and beginning to review my books.
Now any of you who self-publish and don’t have the luxury of editorial help or that second pair of eyes when you first publish will understand what a traumatic experience this can actually be! I am however comforted by the reality that anyone who is genuinely interested in the content will not be looking at grammar and long sentences – no matter how unforgiving the general inhabitants of the online universe can be!
Going through this process made me appreciate that the books are all well and good and once people want to understand the topics better – as I remain confident that in time they will, it might be time to dig out that rather cool DJI and see what a refocus of my creative and publishing efforts might make of it all now.
About a fortnight ago, I set up @TugsRamblings as a new YouTube channel and quickly got to work.
The idea being that as a rule, I will film a talk as I walk or ‘ramble’ in potentially more ways than one, and that the film will hopefully come across as if the viewer is walking alongside.
Not the easiest thing to imagine for me, when the best angle from the camera is looking down and I am 6’5”!!!
All the same grumbles quickly came back to the surface, ranging from ‘I ummmm too much’, to ‘What the hell do I do if people keep appearing and I have to stop and can’t edit the film?’ and of course, ‘Will I be able to remember all the things that I need to say?’
As I write this blog to share what I have been doing so far, I’ve just uploaded video number 14 and am hopeful that they are improving all the time.
The good thing about all of this is that video creation is a learning experience at every step of the way. I’ve already learned a lot more than I knew two weeks ago and I feel sure that my knowledge can only improve!
Please drop by and take a look. Your support with likes and subscribes would be greatly appreciated, as would any questions you might have where answers could help you or might help others in respect of the topics and issues that I generally cover.
Best wishes,
Adam ‘Tugs’ Tugwell
PS. Please find a link to my first video on @TugsRamblings below!
Within the narrative that has slowly but surely been tearing British culture apart, whilst giving just about every one of us an identity crisis as we try to fathom out the question of whether we should feel guilty for simply being the people that we really are and should be proud to be, there is a self-serving and self-propagating process at work.
Actually, it’s a rather large elephant that sits in this room, and it’s the reality that whenever we focus on any difference between anyone, we are highlighting or amplifying that difference, and creating division or further divisions between us or between members of society as we do.
We are all different to each other, whether those differences are physical or just in the way that we think. And the damage that wokeism and political correctness is doing only fails to be evident, because the success of this subversive culture is less than surface deep and championed only by sleepwalking groupthink.
When we have reached the point where money is the only thing that is important, it naturally follows that whoever controls money, the rules that govern money and the supply of money itself, will be the person or the people who are ultimately in charge of EVERYTHING – right down to what we do, think and say.
Because we revere money and wealth in the ways that we do today, the very democratic system that we believe to be in place to serve our best interests, doesn’t really exist.
Contrary to conspiracists talk and views, there is not some hidden world power that lies at the heart of everything and all public policy decision making, with someone sat in a bunker on a mountainside pulling every world leader’s strings.
Yes, a simple look at the way money rules everything, does make it seem logical that such a power exists. But the real power and influence that now lies in the hands of others who have or control money, and therefore have control over us all comes down to the way that we ALL think about money.
It is the way we think about money that surrenders our own power and control over life and everything else.
The so-called success of our politicians revolves around the use of soundbites.
It’s been a problem since the time of the Blairist New Labour Government of 1997-2010. There was an identifiable shift from politics being about the end result (when at least some of our politicians had the wherewithal to get things done themselves), to becoming all about the message itself.
So bewildered was the Conservative Party by the (New) Labour landslide victory of 1997, they decided the only way to beat them was to play them at their own game.
As power has shifted back from the Blairist years (1997-2010) of the left-wing wolf dressed in right wing clothing, to the Johnsonian Conservative Party of the right that today is even more left than the left, a new low in the meaninglessness of what our political classes do [to us] to retain their power in this Country has finally been reached.
As I write in early 2022, one such soundbite in daily use is that of ‘Levelling Up’.
Suspicions that Boris Johnson and the current crop of Parliamentary Tories are pushing the Levelling Up agenda just as one way to survive, the element of truth that makes the term feel valuable to anyone with ears to listen, is that our political classes do at least appear to know that there is a problem.
All the while, the Labour Left pursue an agenda and way of thinking that through the changes and implementation of public policy achieve nothing but levelling down.
Levelling Up or levelling down; it doesn’t matter. Unless there is balance and fairness in the form of a level playing field at the point where we all step off, there will always be too many of us who lose out, whilst the same old few will end up with a win.
Regrettably, the truth that sits beyond that knowledge, is that none of the MPs sitting on the green benches in our Parliament know or understand the breadth and depth of the problem, or how the problem actually works.
That is why they are playing around with a soundbite that suggests the problem can easily be fixed.
Adam Tugwell 