Tag: Conservatives

ALL OF THE ABOVE | The ‘Establishment’ Political Parties and Tribes

We are all being failed by the Public Representatives we have elected as representatives of Political Parties.

It is inevitable that ‘Party Politicians’ will always be expected to put the interests of their Political Party and the Establishment they are part of first, before doing anything that would be good for anyone else.

Any Public Policy that works out well for any of us today, is just a happy coincidence.

There is very little good that comes from Public Policy for People that was directly intended or put into being through a fully considered process and genuine choice.

The Establishment Political Parties and Tribes include:

  • The Conservative Party (Also known as The Tories or Tory Party)
  • The Liberal Democrats (Also known as The Lib Dems)
  • The Labour Party
  • The Scottish National Party (Also known as The SNP)
  • The Green Party
  • Plaid Cymru (Also Known as The Welsh National Party)

CLICK HERE FOR THE NEXT PAGE

Advertisement

What would a fully Awakened Electoral System look like?

It is or would be possible for the current electoral and political systems to function Consciously and for all of the Politicians and Political Parties within it to think, act and behave in an Awakened way.

However, Awakened Politics done properly would not require Political Parties or any kind of process based on competition – or what is in effect a race to decide whose ideas are best.

Equally, the existing Tiers within the UK Government System mean that it is quite literally the case that the people or Politicians making the most far-reaching or profound decisions that affect us all are likely to be the most difficult for us to reach, for us to know or for us to interact with.

For Awakened Politics and therefore Good Government to exist and then to work effectively, it is essential that none of our decision makers are insulated from different realities and the life experiences of the people they govern.

It is impossible for anyone make potentially life-changing decisions on behalf of The Public to be able to function or operate with a number of different people or levels of communication between them and Voters, effectively making them many times removed.

This Blog is part of the e-book ‘The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government’. Please do download a copy for your Kindle from Amazon, or alternatively, read the whole book FREE online once it is available at www.awakenedpolitics.com

Accepting second best and compromise as the only alternative to the Politicians we have today doesn’t work: It’s what we’ve tried doing for decades already

The giant step or quantum leap on the path of voluntary change is reaching the understanding and the acceptance that what we genuinely need from our Politicians and from Government now and for a better future will not simply be offered up to us on a plate.

There are plenty of wannabe politicians as well as existing politicians who can appeal to many of us as an alternative to what we already have right now.

Those who covet public roles, just like the Politicians in control today did so before they assumed power will use words, use the media, use social media platforms and even look a certain way that sounds like or gives the appearance that once elected they would be different, do different things and take governance of our Country in a very different and beneficial way.

Regrettably, the majority of these people are or would be no different to the Unconscious Politicians that we have already got and would deliver Public Policy with the same biases and being subject to the same kinds of self-serving motivations and influences as Politicians we see sat as Conservatives, Greens, Liberal Democrats, Labour and the SNP already are.

For example, as I write this in late November 2022, the Political Party or Group known as ‘Reform UK’ which doesn’t currently have any seats in the UK or Westminster Parliament, is promoting itself as an alternative to the current government on the basis that it says it will stop illegal immigration via France across the English Channel – simply by ‘stopping the boats’.

Single issues are by their very nature single issues. That’s not what General Elections are about.

The existing Political Parties and the Politicians who appear to have credible policies that suggest they will solve the widest number of problemswin General Elections, because their approach touches most areas of Public Policy.

However, the Parties that we have – even the ones we haven’t elected yet – do so Unconsciously.

The Political Parties and the Politicians we have whether elected or not, do not understand, consider, make allowance for or think about the consequences of everything they touch for everyone who can be touched by what they do.

They are false prophets. With messages that appeal because something or some part of it looks or sounds great to enough of us in some way.

The reality is that they are Unconscious and have no appreciation of what their piecemeal involvement in Public Policy and legislating will really do.

There is no meaningful exception to this rule.

This Blog is part of the e-book ‘The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government’. Please do download a copy for your Kindle from Amazon, or alternatively, read the whole book FREE online once it is available at www.awakenedpolitics.com

The best thing for everyone would be if every MP and Party we have stood down and agreed to never stand again. The problem is, big money would just replace them

There is a twisted hilarity to hearing the words come from your own mouth and almost watching them solidify as they cross the air, forming the sentence ‘Out of the two candidates running to be PM, Boris is by far the better choice’.

The problem for us all, is that when the choices you have from an entire Parliament and political system are so desperately bad, you at some point have to recognise that without a genuine alternative – rather than just another politician who looks and sounds different, and may well wear a different colored badge – we have actually reached the point in the downward spiral of this bolted-shut ecosystem where every change is just going to compound the problems and make everything worse.

Yes, the reality is that stark!

Whilst we cannot vote for a real Polternative, Boris and the entire muppet show or wannabes and out-of-touchies that surround him on all sides of the so-called political divide, are all that we can choose from. And this grim pool of self-servants will continue to block every seat to our Parliament until the disasters they are collectively responsible for have fully unfolded, and all of us outside of the Westminster bubble have woken up to reality and accepted that they no longer are the de facto choice.

We must wait, because they will not do the decent thing and walk away, as they ALL really now should. To do so would require them all to be very big and to have a level of self-awareness that is clearly absent, as the reality is that the UK would otherwise be nowhere near the situation that we now are in. Knocking on the door of a catastrophic downturn that may well signify the UKs role in the end of an entire world epoch, as we now arguably are.

However, this imaginary moment or lapse from their usual reason would be wasted if it were to happen today, as the big money that influences and controls everything that all of our standing politicians already do, would simply fill the void with other stooges who would do exactly whatever the money wanted them to do.

Sooner or later, we are all going to realise that the only way to break this seemingly perpetual cycle, where life is always dictated by how those in power, with influence or with great wealth believe it should be, will be to turn the entire top-down system on its head. To restore and rebuild our democracy with a focus on localism in its truest sense, from the grassroots up, and create a system of governance that puts human beings, life, the way we live, balance and fairness at the forefront of all public policy. You know; the way it should have always been!

Parallel Worlds

Never mind the reality that spending other people’s money to solve problems with solutions that only make sense to Tory strategist and politicians is a travesty of public representation in its most tragic sense.

With the Levelling Up Agenda, the Conservatives have quite literally banked on maintaining and consolidating votes that will keep them in power by using our own money to buy our communities gifts.

The Conservatives believe that they will achieve this and win the next General Election by building new roads, creating new tiers of government with new Mayors or by gifting deprived communities’ new sports centres, school buildings and swimming pools.

Yes, all these things look nice, and they sound great. But they don’t change any of the deep-seated issues that are really at work.

In fact, if anything, for those of us experiencing the problems within our society that should really matter to any politician, these hollow acts of abusing the power we have gifted to these so-called public representatives, in order to help us, just make our problems even worse.

Through the implementation of the Levelling Up plan, people without the lives we all deserve are being conditioned to think that everything is improving in the world around them.

But Levelling Up will leave them with the rather troubling question; Why is nothing really improving for us in life, or how we really feel about everything – despite what everyone is being told?

Levelling Up – The Myth that Money & Markets make everything right (for the Conservatives and the Right)

‘Levelling Up’ is a clever term – and it’s meant to be so.

For most of us, levelling up sounds very much like we are going to see everything we experience being pushed upwards. It suggests that the point of balance in our lives is somewhere higher than where our current experience actually is.

But what does ‘levelling up’ really mean?

Kier Starmer & Ed Davey are already taking their idea of securing change at the next Election seriously. So why isn’t anyone who wants real change in our political system doing the same?

Regrettably, a certain truth is that none of us will see or hear messages that we are not ready to see or hear, or that for some reason we want to avoid. This is especially so, when those messages are an uncomfortable truth that it suits our purposes to run away from.

No uncomfortable truth exists that is less uncomfortable for so many of us, than we have the idiots in politics and running the Country that we have, because we are the ones who made the choice to elect the politicians and all the political parties that we have already got.

Our memories are short. So short in fact, we have forgotten or overlooked that the political choices of the three mainstream parties or tribes that we have today are all the same. That these parties ultimately deliver the same thing. That it is only the branding, the words and the faces that actually change.

At election time, our interest in who the people really are who present themselves at our doorsteps promising this and promising that in exchange for our votes is breathtakingly short. As such, it has become all too easy to miss the reality that moving the cross that we mark on our ballot papers from one party or from one box to another, actually means that we are voting for the same things.

The same stories with the same unhappy endings for all of us are all wrapped differently and presented to us as change. But everything this political class does and believes is fundamentally the same – whether they are Conservative, Labour or Liberal Democrat in name.

Boris lies, they all lie. But when the time comes, will we opt to change anything?

If ever there was a time when more people are likely to become suspicious, it is during a period like now, when the experiences that we have been having at the hands of these charlatans over the past two years is leading to more and more of us to feel like we have started to wake up.

Those with power, sitting as MPs from all the Parties in our Parliament may well suspect that the tables are turning, even if they are too blind to understand why. They have much to lose if the system that feeds their self-interest collapses. They will do whatever they need to, to make sure that they can continue on behaving in exactly the same way.

So, when we see the news that Leader of the Labour Party Keir Starmer and Leader of the Liberal Democrats Ed Davey are working up a non-aggression pact for the next General Election, we should all be very concerned that the self-preservation powers of a dangerously self-serving political culture are already very hard at work.

Whatever Labour and the Liberal Democrats cook up between them in order to manipulate the outcome of any constituency vote when the next General Election comes, the outcome for us – whether Conservative, Labour, Lib Dem or any coalition government made up of the parties that we currently have, will inevitably be the same or even worse. That is, if they appear to be the only alternative to the Tory Government that we have currently got.

They will only appear to be the alternative to Johnson or whoever replaces him, if we don’t create the real alternative to all of them. Like Starmer and Davy are already doing – we need to be working on the creation and the development of that alternative RIGHT NOW!

Sadly, everyone who is out there and championing the fact that we need to have change, may well be one of those failing to understand that change will not just appear because we demand it.

Because with people in government today or at any time in the future who are fundamentally the same, with the same priorities and the same ways of manipulating everything at the level they are and have been doing blocking all the seats within our Parliament – the more things change, the more they stay the same.

You may not like to read or feel comfortable with what I am saying. But the chances are that you already know deep down that it is the truth.

The truth beyond that understanding of what the real problem with British Politics is now, is also that the kind of government that we need and that is worth having will not just arrive by chance. It will take a lot of very hard work.

The hard work that I am talking about is different. Different, because we are used to everything coming at us in politics from the top down.

This new politics must come from the grassroots and then go up. That is, if meaningful and beneficial change for us all is going to actually arrive at an election and then do all of its good work in the Parliamentary terms to come.

For as long as the narrative continues to be set by the same people that we have today, the same narrative will continue.

They may not be Johnson, Sunak, Truss or any other Tory buffoon. But Starmer, Davey and all of the politicians behind them are, think and stand for exactly the same – as well as a few well-known names leading other political groups and parties outside of parliament today too.

Because the shared rationale behind it all is built on self-interest, the direction of travel will be for things to become invariably worse, whatever happens next, without there being a genuine choice for change.

Every day that passes that the work to replace and provide a real alternative to all these clowns hasn’t begun, is a day nearer to us having up to five years more of the lack of understanding, the out of touch policies and a whole establishment regime that exists only to pursue what works only in its favour and best interests.

We need and we deserve a lot more. But the miracle won’t arrive until we have all done our bit to invite it into our lives and helped it start.

Your voice, your views, your experience are important.

Be part of the debate. Be part of the solution. Be part of what needs to start now.

Visit www.anewpartyforall.org

Removing Plan B is one thing. Doing away with Border Checks is another

Polarised thinking and its accompanying actions being the measure that they are, for lack of thought, understanding, and generally being open to the idea that none of us either know or are aware of everything, often shows itself rather obtusely in the knee jerk reactions that our current crop of politicians use.

It’s not a good look. And with Boris Johnson still apparently unaware that he is in the middle of the fight for his political life over draconian lockdown measures he imposed that he was not prepared to adhere to himself, it is more than alarming that as we say goodbye to Plan B Restrictions on Thursday, the Transport Secretary is removing all Border Covid Testing as well.

Whilst the Government’s Covid Response, the Covid Measures that it imposed and the behaviour of all of our MPs throughout the Pandemic has been fear-driven and without objectivity, the existence of the Covid Virus has never been in question (even if its origins are).

We should never doubt the trouble that variants of Covid can and will continue to cause until fear has been replaced with practical reality and acceptance, and the illness Covid can cause is treated rationally and proportionally – as it always should have been. For a start, we are not helping ourselves by allowing the treatments, suppressants and interventions that we are being coercively given to be called vaccines when their use is neither stopping the spread of infection or eradicating Covid in any form.

There is a euphoria at work today, being fuelled by our ever-irresponsible mainstream media. One that in its fervour for a return to ‘freedom’ is denying the continued risk from variants coming into our communities from outside of the UK, where it is very easy to believe that the position we are in today with Covid and the variants that we know are in the UK are the same everywhere else.

Things are not the same with Covid everywhere else. And the headlong rush that politicians are now in to get ahead of the tide in public opinion that is turning against them just to save their seats in a future election, is putting the stability that has been hard won through the unnecessary repression of the British People at serious risk.

There was nothing rational about the way the Government responded to Covid, as Boris’ behaviour behind ‘closed doors’ suggests they quickly found out. But neither is there anything rational about trying to pretend that the Pandemic and the consequences from the way that it has been handled are over, and that we can just switch all of it off and skip blithely along the other way.

The damage done by the immoral use of behavioural science to control the general population of our Country by politicians who were themselves driven by fear is very deep indeed.

The mental anguish for individuals and the harm that permeates out from it will continue for a very long time. Indeed, without the arrival of events that touch lives in a way that puts all of the Covid nonsense in practical perspective, we now find ourselves at the whim of potential mass hysteria, each and every time a new variant is found in the UK and then defined.

The uncomfortable truth for many, is that even though our leadership panicked and imposed ‘Plan B’ before Christmas, we were very lucky this time.

We should not therefore, be taking for granted the situation as it currently is. We should be taking every step possible to provide a practical level of security and protection against the external introduction of new variants.

Checking the Covid Status of people entering or returning across our borders from outside the UK is therefore a very small price to pay.

It is very likely that we will live to regret the Tories jump from one polar approach to dealing with Covid to the other extreme – only with the aim of saving their own political necks.

Freedom is hard won and must be protected. The day-to-day freedoms everyone who lives in the UK may be reliant on restricting freedoms that may currently be open but only used by choice and by some of us, so that life can really be returned to ‘normal’ in the majority of other ways.

Poverty and hunger will not be addressed in the UK until politics is the means to solve our problems rather being accepted as the end

Balancing news input has become an unwitting challenge for a great many, simply because of how polarised and partisan the mainstream media has become. Whether it be to champion the right, the left or to further the destructive and forceful narrative of wokeness, there is very little that really encapsulates all or does a good job of sitting in between.

The environment that a world of echo chambers creates wouldn’t be quite as problematic in terms of societal problem solving and the legacy that it bequeaths if it were not for the seemingly population-wide absence today of critical thinking skills. The troubling truth is that we are navigating a phase of our history where real life problems are elevated or suffer scorn within the public view, depending on where the story was broken and the following assumption that the readership will be voting one way or another depending on who’s who.

Over the weekend, I read the article written by Jack Monroe in The Observer / The Guardian ‘Were pricing the poor out of food’ (which I cannot link at the time of writing as it appears to have disappeared). Beyond the timeline and list of things that Jack has arguably achieved by drawing attention to the realities of what it costs to eat when you are either temporarily or long-term poor, it was striking just how obvious that for the past decade, a failure to gain real traction in the fight against food poverty in the UK is in no small part because it is a subject championed only by the left.

That this Conservative Government has been out of touch with the uncomfortable realities that people right across the UK face is a given. Not because the Tories are consciously cruel. But because in the minds of the people who write their policies – who are unlikely to have had a free school meal, hand-me-down clothes or even experienced the joys of playing outside in a housing estate street – they genuinely believe that poverty and unemployment are one and the same thing – and the wannabe yes-men that follow them do not have the integrity to question what they are told.

This reality is borne out in the news even now. Public figures such as Chancellor Rishi Sunak champion the number of new jobs created and the number of people back at work, whilst forgetting to mention that the non-jobs that have been created pay the absolute minimum. That the ‘work’ is in all likelihood part-time or similar. Worst of all, that in many cases securing a ‘job’ just creates a minefield for those who were beguiled into signing up as self-employed only to find that overtly reasonable pay also includes all of their expenses and that the real hourly rate is a lot less than anyone can or should be expected to afford.

It’s a brutal reality that the people leading this Country are in a shocking state of denial about the circumstances and experiences of the poor. Their lack of appreciation is bolstered by the self-righteousness they fool themselves with as their head hits the pillow each night, hiding behind measures such as the minimum or living wage; all the time believing that this is as far as the legislative powers of the legislators need to extend in order to make life affordable for all.

At this point, it might be easy to read this Blog as a left-leaning. Labour and all of the left-wing pretenders such as the Liberal Democrats talk a good story about poverty and hunger and the unfolding cost of living crisis too. But their words – and actions – when their time in power has allowed, also shower them with something a lot less shiny than glory and that leaves behind a very redolent cloud.

The solutions the left offer, based on money and levelling down, don’t actually solve or even begin to address many of the wider issues that their own impractical and ideological approach to policy making have created. And this issue today has never been more relevant as we collectively stare into an abyss of what could genuinely become a financial Armageddon where throwing money at all of these problems will not be something that even a new Labour-led government elected in the coming months or years could now afford to do.

The problems which leave people unable to afford the food to feed their children – even if they starve themselves are massively complex in nature.

The cold, hard reality is that giving people more benefits or throwing money at charities such as the Trussell Trust – which really shouldn’t have to exist in 21st Century UK, is no better than coming up with creative schemes and misleading headlines that suggest everything is alright if you are ‘officially’ classified as having a job.

Wilful blindness on the part of our entire political class has contributed to a situation where politics is no longer the means to solve societal problems. Politics is now the end in itself.

The evidence that any good politician needs as the basis to start building the list of questions, the arguments and the recognition of how many areas of public policy are actually involved just to begin the process of dealing with these problems is there for all to see.

Hiding ominously in plain sight is the truth that no one with a public voice speaks and no one with the public gaze upon them will dare open their eyes to see.

We need politicians to be dealing with the questions that arise when people earning the basic wage that they have championed can only afford to live if the public purse continues to subsidise them.

How did this happen?

Why is it continuing?

Who is responsible?

How much do people need to earn to be able to support themselves without help?

When production is now arguably more efficient than it has ever been, why is any food on a supermarket shelf a luxury that one person earning a full-time wage cannot afford?

The truth is that the politicians we have would not like any of the answers to just these few questions and many, many more. That’s why they don’t listen. Its why they don’t look. Its whey they look for quick fixes and highly disingenuous soundbites that are there only to mislead and to hoodwink the very people that they should be helping into thinking that it is a problem of their own making.

Yet the reality is that the people who should and could be dealing with these problems are not.

These are problems that we have elected people to deal with. People who have taken our votes and our trust that they fulfil their responsibilities to us and always put them before their own.

They are there to find and deliver the solutions to the difficulties in life that we cannot do so ourselves – such as making sure that we all have the basics that we need available.

Instead, we have the wrong politicians. Politicians who are in politics for politics sake. And because they are completely unsuited to what they do, we have a situation where the fat and bloated are getting richer and richer, whilst everyone else has less and less whilst even having their status devalued as those in power play games with what it means to be poor.

The Government won’t change until WE change the Government

It’s very sad to read the same messages, the same comments and the same rhetoric pumping out across social media following the latest Government measures in response to the newest Covid ‘Omicron’ variant. Few will disagree that they look very much like the first step down the slippery slope to the next Lockdown that we are all dreading.

It’s sad, because the voices are the same. The words come from people with public platforms that give them more influence than even they might recognise. But those same people are continuing to reason that giving a voice to our frustration, anger and incredulity at the Government and Establishment narrative will be enough to instigate change.

Regrettably it will not. Neither will be threatening marches, civil unrest or even seeing these steps through to the point where even the final flakes of democratic paint fall from the façade of a political culture which now has tyranny embedded at its heart.

It was not until the Summer of 2020 that many of these voices began to really emerge. We cannot be sure if it is because they were giving the Government the benefit of the doubt or just believed everything that they were being told up until that point.

Yet the realities underpinning the massive mistakes that the Government were making then established the narrative that led to where we are right now. They have always been there for everyone who looks closely enough to see.

Keir Starmer had already reshuffled his front bench, making the seemingly unelectable Labour Party electable to at least some of the media commentators again. Now, with the lie that covered the ‘them and us’ mentality of this whole political culture fractured and oozing daylight for all to see, there is a real risk that people will elect the only alternative that we have when the next General Election comes. An election that could be only months away where the alternative could be even worse than what we already have and is as such no alternative for us at all.

The point should not be lost on any of us, that when the next General Election is called, the only options that the majority of people will put a cross against on their ballot paper will be for a Conservative, Labour or Liberal Democrat candidate. As such, the people of this Country can only vote for more of the same. Today there is no such thing as a genuine democratic choice for the next government of the UK.

It is increasingly difficult to criticise those who are buying into the suggestion that there is a conspiracy at work behind everything that is happening at any level. With much of what we are now experiencing defying explanation and the absence or void of leadership that communicates both authentically AND genuinely in a very transparent and uncalculated way, people are looking to make sense it. And without those in authority fulfilling the responsibilities that they have in the ways that they should, those same people are going to keep listening to what anyone they believe to be credible has to say whilst growing in number too.

Unfortunately, what the conspiracies and big words don’t allow for are the reasons that everything that is happening as it is. They don’t discuss what has really happened and why. There is no reasoned suggestion of what will happen next in so many respects, and why it will be so.

It all boils down to being about the people who are in charge. The people who run this Country. Why those people are there. How they got there. What is happening that prevents good leaders and public representatives from taking these roles and why they are not there for us to vote for at election time, speaking and connecting with us all in a way that makes sense.

The Politics won’t change until WE change politics. The Politicians won’t change until WE change the Politicians. The Government won’t change until WE change the Government.

No matter what anyone thinks or believes today, the problems we already face and that we will face in the near- and longer-term future will not be solved by someone else appearing from out of nowhere. Just as they won’t be solved by any of the would-be political groups that are busy telling everyone that they are the next best thing. They are at best built around single-issues or are just a load more wannabes who look at the Boris Johnsons of the World and have concluded they would be better at doing exactly the same things.

WE MUST BE THE CHANGE – IF CHANGE IS WHAT WE ACTUALLY WANT.

It will be counterintuitive to many to suggest that the politicians who can provide the solution to the problems we face today are not even elected or sat in our Parliament yet. We must literally create the political party and movement that will get them there. This is the only way.

The talking up of dissent is just that. Its talk. Nothing more. Talk that may lead to protests, arrests, prison sentences and potentially even deaths. But it is talk that will not lead to real change.

This Government, this political class and the establishment around them currently see no threat to themselves, their narrative or what they are doing.

Until they see a threat to everything they take for granted, they will continue to behave and make decisions that work only for themselves in just the same way they are now and have been doing so for far too long.

The real, far-reaching and meaningful change that we need will only be achieved by changing the Government for one that is completely new and untainted by the cesspit of selfishness that British Politics has become.

We must prepare and do everything that it will take to achieve this at a General Election. But as soon as we begin that work together and a credible alternative begins to emerge across the Country, the behaviour of those in control of our lives today will at the very least begin to be moderated.

The political system only tolerates those it doesn’t see as a threat. Those who believe they are on course to being the next big thing would do well to consider this when they think about how and why people vote, and where the real power across the UK lies.

All it takes is to begin a conversation to which everyone who is invested in change is invited. A dialogue that is respectful and inclusive of the thoughts and experiences of us all, wherever in the Country we may be.

We must begin work to create, build and connect each other to A NEW PARTY FOR ALL. That work needs to begin right now.

#anewpartyforall

Why the Tory sleaze crisis is important for us all

Whichever direction you face today you are likely to end up reading a story about Tory sleaze.

Whether it’s the Prime Minister Boris Johnson himself, Geoffrey Cox or anyone of a number of not so well-known MPs such as Laurence Robertson who represents the constituency where I live, it’s looking more and more like each and every one of the Conservative Members of Parliament have got their heads buried up to the neck in the trough.

As we observe what appears to be a quickly changing political environment with the Labour Party now leading the Tories by six points in the polls, it would be very easy to believe that sleaze and corruption is a problem which only affects this Government.

But it’s not. In fact, this whole sorry tale is an horrific indictment of just how rotten and sick the British political system and the people masquerading as public representatives within it have become.

If you’ve been following the development of this story since the vote in Parliament, Johnson’s epic U-Turn and the subsequent resignation of Owen Paterson, the MP for North Shropshire, you will no doubt have heard many MPs making the argument that having second jobs enriches the experience and therefore the ability of MPs to do their job.

The problem is, being a Member of Parliament is not a job.

Being a Member of Parliament is a responsibility. It is a vocation. A calling.

Becoming a Member of Parliament is an opportunity for public spirited leaders to do something selfless and important on behalf of others. People who either cannot represent themselves publicly or choose not to do so themselves.

Man can only have one master. And in a world where we have become obsessed with money and material wealth to the point where it is now treated like it is a God, it has never been so important that our public representatives have not been elected or taken the responsibility of public office simply to prioritise benefits or opportunities for themselves.

Contrary to what Labour Members of Parliament would like us to believe, they are no better themselves. The point being made only too clearly by the additional earnings that Labour leader Keir Starmer has accumulated in his secondary role as a Barrister since he was first elected to Parliament.

We simply have the wrong people sitting in Parliament. We have the wrong people sitting in Parliament because the system is skewed in such a way that it prevents other more publicly minded people from taking up seats at Westminster where they could actually do some good for us all.

It will not matter which of the existing Political Parties achieve a majority or take part in a coalition government following the next General Election. All of our MPs are fundamentally the same.

Until such time as we create a new political movement with MPs, Councillors, Mayors, Police & Crime Commissioners and politicians of all kinds that do everything they tell us they will do, rather than making promises that they never keep, we will continue to be condemned as a Country with all tiers of government filled up with politicians who are simply unfit to lead.

Motivation will never be an issue for politicians who get elected to their public roles for the right reasons with the intent to only do the right things.

£82,000 a year Plus expenses and the opportunity to live in London for most of the time represents a standard of living and life experience that many normal people in the UK would not even dare to dream of. Yet our MPs believe that they should be entitled to even more. All at a time when it is becoming ever clearer that our political class is simply not fulfilling the responsibilities and requirements of their roles.

If we want change, we have to create it.

If we want change, we have to be that change ourselves.

If we want change, we have to change the way that we think and accept that the way we get our public representatives to behave differently is to begin by changing the way that we behave ourselves.

Keir Starmer: Another Gutless Shitwizard who believes Opposition is just a waiting room for power

Right now, I, like many others, would love for there to be a fully functioning Opposition to this Government. A spectre haunting every movement they make and taking apart everything the Johnson Government has done.

It wouldn’t matter what the Opposition politics or background were. Just to have someone, some people, some politicians who are in precisely the right place, at the right time to ask the right questions and hinder the Government over everything that they have done. It would mean that we had an Opposition that were being everything that the British People need Her Majesties Opposition – and specifically, their Leader to be.

But there is no opposition. It simply isn’t there. The Official Leader of the Opposition is little more than an empty chair.

At the time when someone with a legal mind and professional background as a barrister should be using the very specific set of career skills and the experience that we do know Keir Starmer has, he should be eviscerating each and every one of the Government’s Covid Policies. Yet instead of a voice of reason and an inspirational passion for all of the people that we are repeatedly told the Labour Party stand for, a meaningful form of Opposition leadership is simply nowhere to be seen.

What we have instead is an Opposition that is making up the numbers. Under Starmer, Labour is providing an insurance plan that underwrites the Johnson Government’s wayward Covid Policies – all of them being whimsically led by what will surely prove to be one of the most defective Prime Ministerial terms the UK has ever had.

After the chaos and quantum leap backwards, engineered by Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure, it has been easy for commentators to suggest that Labour is in the middle of an existential crisis.

There was a belief that Keir Starmer was the safest pair of hands that the Party had. But that doesn’t account for the disturbing reality that the whole of the British Political System is itself going through an existential Crisis. One so bad that it should not be difficult for any political leader who can connect with people and understand them to pull their own Party – and potentially the whole British Political System through to daylight the other side.

Keir Starmer’s trademark policy has instead to prop up a dangerous buffoon. And as I anticipated in the blog I published in May 2020 Keir Starmer has proven not to be the man for all seasons that we now so desperately need.

In fact, his tenure is far worse than I could have imagined 14 months ago. Starmer has instead driven Boris to do his absolute worst with Covid Policies that our Parliament and all the 650 MPs within it should never ever have approved.

The latest let down in Starmers idea of public representation is Starmers open support for Vaccine Passports; a form of divisive draconian social policing that there is simply no logic or legitimacy to any argument of support.

In terms of the so-called ‘progressive’ causes that the Labour left have championed for so long, this move to support a Policy that is set to legitimise prejudice and division between people who once relied on for help, tells us that what is left of the Labour Party is now playing a very different kind of tune.

It is a long time since anyone at the top level of British Politics was there for anyone or anything other than their own self-interested cause. Sadly, we all have a habit of looking upon those who seek election to the office of MP and unwittingly buy into the conditioned lie that all MPs are super human, super gifted and super ethical – as they would all like us to believe them to be.

We have now had a series of Governments, with different Political Parties governing and with different Leaders leading us as our PM, who have basically bluffed their way along, doing very little of value to us in terms of making life better for any of us in the ways that they should be committed to doing for everyone. The vacuous, empty-vessel nature of all their leaders had only failed to be found out because there have been no national or world events that required any of them – until Brexit – and then Covid – to bring demonstrable leadership skills to the fore.

Theresa May, and then Boris Johnson both failed the tests of leadership that fate has thrown at them.

May was removed by an act of Tory Regicide, with only the framework of her Brexit Withdrawal Agreement handed on in the form of a minefield as her legacy to Boris. Boris then treated the entente cordiale with the EU as something to be unsparingly driven over with a reinforced challenger tank, doing infinitely more damage than real leadership would.

Boris’ real legacy and the damage it is still doing to our Country and to us all is something that can and will only be reconciled once every event linked to his and his Government’s decisions have taken place, and we have all had the benefit of time to look back.

The decades old assumption that political power keeps going around in circles, being passed between the two main parties over periods of time did of course lead ambitious MPs like Keir Starmer and Ed Miliband before him to believe that all they needed to really do as leader of the Opposition, was play the game. Their opportunity to be called to Buckingham Palace would simply then arrive in good time.

All the leaders and would be leaders and the great many unhealthily ambitious MPs who believe that the role of PM will just find its way to them if they work slavishly and unquestionably for their party machines, really do believe that being a backbench MP, junior minister, shadow minister or Leader of the Opposition is just some kind of elementary waiting room. A place where they just sit quietly, say nothing that will hurt their progress and bide their time on the way to power. The problem then comes when they get the star role they coveted and are then required by unforeseen events to lead with responsibility for lives of millions of others that they did not.

It is simply ridiculous and disingenuous at best for any MP not to lead from the roles that they have got at a time when the whole Country has been put to a massively challenging test – caused more by the way that it has been handled, rather than the Covid Virus itself.

Keir Starmer not only could but should have been putting the minds of millions of people at rest by showing us that we could expect a very different type of leadership from a Labour-led Government, if and when the Johnson Government collapses, and that they are heirs apparent to step in and fill the void.

Instead, all that we have seen is given what might be a make-or-break opportunity for the whole Country, Starmer plans not only to do the same as Boris Johnson and the Conservatives have done before him; both he, the Labour Party and whoever falls in behind them to save their necks (again) will do exactly the same. But under his leadership, they will do it with aplomb.

Like all the other MPs who are sitting and have missed every opportunity to face danger or any threat to their seats or positions since the Covid Pandemic was born, Starmer is just another gutless shitwizard sitting tight in the waiting room, thinking he doesn’t need to do or say anything meaningful, until his time to be in power comes along.

The Government will now lock us down for any reason that it can. Resistance doesn’t matter when they have an 80-seat majority, so beating them at the next General Election is the only way we can

Yes, Yes YES, I hear all of you who are shouting out loudly that the Government is wrong to be doing all that it is doing. But they are in power. They have an 80-Seat Majority. And they’re going to do whatever they want now – simply because they can.

No. It’s not right. And whilst they may be doing all that they are legally, it certainly doesn’t mean that any of it is morally right.

Watching headlines is an interesting sport. In terms of predictions, the mainstream news channels and papers have become more reliable than any clairvoyant could ever be in predicting what is going to happen at some point very soon.

Even this is deliberate. It is a way to soften us up against disappointment by putting an idea that the government already knows is a firmed-up plan into the mainstream, just so we are used to the idea, and it comes as no shock when it actually lands.

The latest addition to what seems to be an infinite list of preemptive announcements is the warning that the government is now expecting 60000 Flu deaths this coming winter – ironically because the population has been locked down for so long.

Regrettably, all this notice shouts out loudly that there are more Lockdowns heading our way in the Autumn. And they are coming whether they are imposed on us with Covid as the excuse or using some other innocuous illness where the propaganda is much more deadly than the disease itself will ever be, and things we used to accept as part of lives everyday risks are suddenly elevated to cult ‘death-is-now-imminent’ status – just like Covid-19 has been.

The Government is possessively guarding its control over us by stretching the Covid narrative as far as it possibly can. If they back down or change direction, the act of doing so will shine alight on all the holes and their stupidity will be exposed.

There is no willingness on the part of the Johnson Government to face up to the truth that getting the country heading in the direction of normality means upsetting the very vocal few who are going to blame him for everything that hurts them, whilst they remain blind to the massive hurt being inflicted by all this on everybody else. The media will help them to do it too.

Meanwhile the majority who have equally distressing life stories that don’t push people’s buttons and therefor don’t sell news, will be allowed to swing. All this so Boris can continue to do all he believes it will take to guarantee that winning the next General Election for his beloved Conservative Party is assured.

To this political culture – who believe they are modelling their decision making on decisions made by political titans they never met or knew, who led at a very different time and in very different circumstances – they really do believe that this is how Leadership during this crisis and time is done.

We cannot continue to live like this. However, living with it is exactly what we are going to have to do. That is until the cycle of Elections or events that the Government cannot control comes around and allows for the politicians we have in power today and the self-interested specialists around them to be removed.

The problem with waiting for events and elections to catch up is that we have to be patient and not sit still. We have got to do our part to make sure that this is not a battle, but a war that we can win.

You cannot win the lottery without making the effort to buy a ticket. Our lottery win will be the successful removal of this rancid political culture and all the politicians and political parties that enable it.

We can only realistically achieve this at the next General Election. It is unlikely that anything like favourable circumstances for democratic change will come into being before.

So, it can only be done at the next General Election and the effort we must make to buy that ticket is to set up a new Political Party for all.

We need to do this right here and right now. It must reach out, address all the issues that are affecting life and not just Covid – and provide the alternative on the ballot paper we need when Election time comes around again and ensures that we get that win.

It will not matter how much we complain. How justified, right or overwhelmingly accurate our arguments will continue to be. These are politicians who prize their power and control over us above everything. And with that 80-Seat Majority in Parliament, this is not something they intend to give up or give back to the us anytime soon.

Let us use our energy and motivation wisely from now on. If we get a New Party for all started, launched and talking to all of the disconnected in the ways that only it can, you will begin to see the results and the impact of an alternative arriving on the political landscape straight away.

If events that the Government cannot control take over – as many expect they will, and that makes a General Election inevitable much sooner, with a New Party for All up and running, we will then be ready to face what comes next and not miss the opportunity to create change for everyone that works for all, for our mutual Benefit and is in every sense what we need and is above all right for ALL.

Wake up call: Chesham & Amersham shows us that ALL these political parties can be beaten, whilst reminding us they are fundamentally the same

Perhaps the biggest problem that exists in and because of the media age, is the perceived need on the part of those who see themselves as having a platform, to keep talking at their followers, even when for the majority of time their text, comments and conversation have the residual value of hot, rancid air.

In an age where critical thinking is at a premium, simply because what should be a media age life skill isn’t taught in schools, the vacuous bullshit that is constantly presented as an authority view certainly plays with the minds of the vulnerable. There’s as much of it as there is grass and when it exists at every turn what is there not to believe?

This isn’t just about the ‘woke enlightenment’. The oft unconscious and hollow philosophy that opinion supersedes fact dwells omnipresent amongst the realms of the mainstream pundits. The very same commentators and pollsters who have this week been falling over themselves to outdo each other with their predictions for the fate of the Conservative Party, based purely on their ‘loss’ of the Chesham & Amersham parliamentary seat to the Liberal Democrats in talk of red and blue walls.

The suggestion that this By Election result can foretell what will happen next is both laughable and dangerous. Both the political class and the commentariat facilitating them is completely divorced from reality.

Normal people are far too busy trying to make the best of lives that this system of Government and the stupidity that drives it to focus on what the politicians really do. The establishment has turned living for many into nothing less than a life, death or penury-inducing obstacle course, where the temptation of escape by committing crime is thrown in just to pile the pressure on a population which is being set up to fail by its leaders. There simply isn’t the time, nor the motive to even attempt to appreciate just how little the establishment really understands about real life, what real inequality looks like and how an inept political class fuels it to exist.

The devil is quite literally in the detail and the amount of detail that ‘experts’ and ‘specialists’ are throw at us. They call it ‘science’, but science is itself only as up to date and reliable as accepted contemporary thought.

The pundit-induced complexity of the result in Chesham & Amersham, the voting swing and the shock of the result makes it all seem very real. Yet all this result proves is that even the safest of parliamentary seats can be lost, depending only upon what the people of that constituency feel and think on the day when the polls are open and electors consider how or if they will even vote.

People will always vote through the lens of their own experience, whether they are looking outward to the world or inward towards their own bubble when they do so. Whilst the political class may do everything in its power to manipulate what the people outside of the Westminster bubble see and understand, politicians have little or no control over anything the public thinks. It is more often than not little more than a happy coincidence that with the creation of so many different narratives, there will be a glimmer of truth somewhere amongst them that resonates with real life and the base fears that drive it in some way close enough way to give one set of politicians the edge over what any of the others say or do.

It would be easy to throw political and electoral history on to the table and present it as conclusive evidence that the thoughts of people can be controlled even when they don’t want to be controlled. Yet the truth is that ‘it’s not what you say, it’s what people hear’ and even the lowliest pleb or member of the lowest classes that the establishment look down upon has the capacity and ability as an elector to choose based on what they know about the world and how they see it.

Whilst they may be glad-handing themselves, knocking elbows and smashing down toy walls made of blue bricks to celebrate ‘their’ success, the Liberal Democrats are not offering anything different to the Conservatives or any of the other current selection of Political Parties that they want to replace. But the different wrapping and their way of speaking was different enough to look like an alternative when it came to last Thursday when it was time for the people who really matter in Chesham & Amersham to make their choice.

For lockdown sceptics and the increasing number amongst us all who are aware that the real fallout from the last 18 months is yet to hit us from what this whole political class have done, the Chesham & Amersham result should be taken as evidence that with the right approach, motivation and support, the next general election result is by no means in anyway certain. A genuine alternative to the political clowns that we have in charge now would gain the support of the wider electorate very quickly. And if it did so, after the next General Election, it would have the ability to turn all of this mess around.

Regrettably many people think that change is as simple as changing other people’s minds about what they think. Yet the Chesham & Amersham By Election result is a textbook example that shows this is all the current crop of out-of-touch politicians does.

People want to live and experience their own truth. Not one created only to benefit others. All an alternative party or group needs to do to be taken seriously is focus on shining the light of truth across enough areas of life to create the emotional feeling that is commonality and a shared purpose. One that makes sense of what’s happened but dares to inspire a belief that things can be better only by embracing change at a personal, community and national level. The workable and considerate alternative to what we have now and will continue to receive from all of these Political Parties based on the mantra that life is too complex for normal people to be trusted to understand,  that politicians are the only adults, what’s best for them is best for everyone, and that it is not only ok but now necessary for them to use fear as the way to remain in control.

The Government is forcing us to fear life as if it were the same thing as death

img_5361Friday was a very dark day for this Country.

Journalists, activists and supporters cheered on Boris Johnson as he effectively closed down life for any other purpose than to facilitate work that cannot be carried out from home, or for making what has become a futile attempt in recent days for many of us as we attempt to service basic human needs.

Meanwhile, the Chancellor succeeded in convincing the party faithful that a half-hearted attempt at addressing the financial problems people now face would be beneficial to everyone. In fact it prioritises only the needs of some without coming anywhere close to answering the real questions for them or anyone else.

Many others were simply bypassed by the big words of this written-on-a-fag-packet strategy altogether, when what could and more importantly should have been a working plan to treat everyone the same and as an equitable cause was simply not considered at all.

What many of us are missing as we watch the endless streams of news and what has quickly become the media-driven 24hr Coronavirus Show, is that these Politicians are not in charge of what they are doing, nor are they successfully meeting their real obligations to the people who elected them and put them in office in any thought-through way.

Whilst they would like us to believe otherwise, the Politicians making the decisions today are human beings who like most people outside of Westminster are actually very afraid.

The problem with this form of leadership is that fear is no leader when what is called for to genuinely help others is the ability for them to be strong.

Our leaders are not leading. They are being led by fear themselves, and that fear is leading them to make decisions that have already or soon will become an overkill that really hurts a lot more people across this Country than it could ever really help.

The Government and the people advising them are more afraid of getting a few very specific things with healthcare wrong, when they should be a lot more afraid of not getting everything else about this Crisis right.

There are some cold and harsh realities that we all must face about the Coronavirus itself and what the reaction of the Politicians, the State and the so-called specialists working alongside them is going to do.

None of them are particularly nice.

Key in peoples minds will be the tragedy unfolding in a very personal way for the people who have and will continue to die. It’s horrible, but the media focusing on individual cases non-stop as they are doing is making the whole experience for everyone else unnecessarily much worse.

Next will be the toll that dealing non-stop with Coronavirus in our hospitals will be and what the exposure to that will mean for the longer term mental health of those who were already working on or have volunteered to join the front line. This is the job that they have trained and committed to doing and keeping this in the forefront of wider perspective is what will keep the wheels turning.

However, the one reality that we should all wake up to, be most concerned with and understand today is the one that nobody is talking about. The one that unlike Coronavirus does not have the capacity to go away. The one where the Government is prioritising the fight to prevent the most vulnerable in society from possibly dying prematurely at what is the disproportionate cost of denying everyone else the ability to have and maintain any kind of normal life.

Yes, we are hearing horror stories from Italy and from other places around the World about infection rates and the related number of deaths.

But we have no guarantee that the potential for any of that to happen here will be mitigated by shutting down the country just to facilitate what could be a delay.

What none of the medical people, specialists and experts can tell or rather guarantee any of us, is how long Coronoavirus will be here and how long social distancing will remain their only solution in what will surely be an ongoing and what will soon feel like a permanent process of temporary delay after temporary delay.

Indeed, on the basis of what they are telling us, the duration of this social lockdown will actually need to go on for as long as it will take to exhaust the spread of the virus throughout the entire population, or alternatively to create a vaccine, test it, produce it and then vaccinate everyone, or which ever will be possible to achieve first place without any further or unseen delay.

None of this advice being given is based upon real numerical facts. Even if it was, that advice would be or is subjective, is based only on the management of critical health care and does not take into consideration any of the wide-ranging impacts, consequences and knock-on effects for people, businesses and society as a whole that an unmitigated focus on being able to provide ventilators at the time that everyone might need them has already began to cause.

We already know that our leaders are thinking the time their policy of social distancing will take to keep the need on any day for these resources, managed by the pathway of time, is likely to run into many months. As such, it could easily become a period of years.

Meanwhile, the Country is set to fall apart on nothing more the basis that because Coronavirus is new and has a name, it is somehow more important and therefore must be treated differently than the significant number of deaths we have in this country each and every day or every winter when the figures for deaths from existing conditions such as seasonal flu alone are typically already much worse.

The reality that we all must face once we have been conditioned to it and matured is that this life ends for every one of us in some way, some day.

This whole crisis and the decisions that Politicians, Advisors and government officers are taking right now are already affecting and are about to take over our lives both today and for the future.

They will do so based only on the premise that we should listen to somebody with a title without question, whilst they are themselves motivated by fear of something even they don’t fully understand, and are taking little more than a guess about how only the things they are responsible for in isolation might turn out.

What is more, the number of people that this unproven and best process of guesswork might save from an early death is likely to turn out significantly smaller than all the hype being peddled by our irresponsible media would suggest.

The consequences of shutting down this Country, the economy and all of our lives simply as a strategy so the NHS can cope will inadvertently kill, destroy lives and create a level of hardship for a number of people that will go way beyond – if not actually totally eclipse the number that this fear-driven escapade on the part of people driven by their fragile egos will ever save.

Yet the deaths, the suicides, the life-long mental health issues, poverty, hardship, the destruction of relationships, safeguarding issues and many other forms of malaise and negative knock on effects for individuals and families that the choices the Johnson Government is going to create by shutting down businesses, our lives, our incomes and our ability to pay the debts that they have done nothing to keep at bay, will never get mentioned or championed by these same Politicians in any way.

Yes, Coronavirus kills. But death is an inevitable end to this life and other diseases, conditions and factors will always kill more.

The fear of our Politicians and the stupidy and self-serving nature of the media that leads them has turned a drama into a crisis, simply because they have been able to give the fear that they thrive on a name and through their words and actions have given it the power of being like a flip side celebrity cause.

The misery that their ineptitude, ignorance and incompetence will cause to many more than will ever die from Coronavirus is an uncomfortable subject that the establishment will wilfully fail to recognise when any individual brings a story of real life misery to their door that might uncover the horrid truth about how those in power operate whilst exposing their many flaws.

The real fear for us should not be Coronavirus.

Our real fear should be our politicians and the people advising them because they are out of their depth.

Through the actions of shutting down our lives and making us dependent upon everything they say and do, we are together and collectively being coerced into behaving and therefore believing that it has become normal to fear living in the same way that we are conditioned to fear death.

Leaders who are afraid of their own shadow will not easily relinquish the control which their fears have motivated them to take at a time when they were trusted because they believe they will continue to keep them safe.

In the weeks to come and as the inequity and self-serving nature of their thinking becomes more apparent and as it becomes clear how their inept plans are going to turn out for everyone, people are going to realise just how over the top the dysfunction of this wholly avoidable shutdown of our lives really is.

As things like the parts run out to keep the lorries and ambulances running that they are telling us will keep us all safe whilst everyone is shut down, and the flawed concept of social distancing remains the only political parable that exists, people are going to realise just how draconian and out of touch with the hard-hitting realities of the wider and wholly avoidable Crisis they are creating alongside Coronavirus that our current Government and the thinking of the MPs around them really is.

None of us really wants anyone else to suffer.

We certainly don’t want anyone to prematurely lose their life.

But the reality is that we are all being forced to sacrifice our lives and peace of mind for little more than a cause that has value because it has been a name and therefore a face.

The response of the Government and the specialists to Coronavirus is going to damage and destroy much more for us, our Country and our future indirectly than it is ever directly going to save.

We ALL need bills & interest put on hold and enough money to eat and be clean. Government bullshit about Subsidies, Loans and Grants helping us now or in the long term is simply f**ktarded

It doesn’t matter if it’s electricity, gas, water, credit card, a loan, a lease, rent, a mortgage, phone, broadband, TV streaming, contract subscriptions of any other kind, or anything else. It is the ceaseless demands of the private, profit-making interests in this Country being allowed to continue sucking money from our pockets that is the real problem people are facing now and will continue to do so long after Coronavirus has been put in its place.

Subsidies, Loans and Grants from the Government make great headlines when politicians are obsessed with how things look. But these hollow actions are giving legitimacy to the continuance of profiteering and endless money making on the part of commercial interests and what we have come to know as ‘the few’. All at a time when there is no longer any excuse for the people we elected to provide opportunities for the usual suspects to carry on making money at our expense, whilst we cannot earn, and as if they are entitled to act, behave and continue doing so like gods.

By allowing the economy to unravel, pretending it can be propped up by giving people the means to pay bills that could otherwise be put on hold so that everyone is in the same position, whilst pushing many people and businesses into what will quickly become unserviceable debt, the Government is initiating a downward spiral for this Country and what should be a robust economy.

The outcomes of this political ineptitude will be far worse for real people and for businesses over the long term than the outcome from the temporary hit that the Government should be taking on our behalf right now.

The pathway that the Chancellor has taken so far indicates that the Johnson Government is either incompetent and doesn’t understand the reality that people like small business owners, Deliveroo riders, people on zero hours contracts and those simply laid off from jobs in cafes and bars face, or they are intentionally using a crisis to assist in shackling all of these people and many more into forms of debt and the emotional bondage that accompanies it, simply so the friends and supporters of the Government can look at the piles of cash that they already have and smile as they start making even more.

Whether deliberate or created by stupidity and ignorance on the part of politicians who should always know better, the situation that this Government is now facilitating for us all will quickly become little more than profiteering from the misery of the many, simply to line the pockets of the few.

No matter what anyone says – whether they are an MP, so-called ‘expert’ or specialist, journalist or anyone else who has fashioned themselves as part of the ‘celebrity cause’, the solutions that the Government are now offering up do not go far enough in just about every way.

The PM, the Chancellor he appointed, the Government and the Politicians around him have the power and therefore the means to do whatever is necessary to help all of us and keep the Country in the best position going forward as it is possible to do so. But that is not going to happen if politicians are misguided by the self-interests and biases of the people and influences around them, rather than the Public at large – which should always be any Governments one and only cause.

Extraordinary times require extraordinary measures on the part of the people that we have elected to lead us.

This means they must step up, read the situation for what it is in reality for everyone – rather than what they think it might be or what their advisers are telling them – and adopt a much bigger, realistic and worldly view.

Economic thinking is just another set of ideas that become real simply because it is the line that people choose to believe.

Current economic theory is one founded upon the idea that money must be kept flowing at all times, just as if it is a blood supply that cannot ever be stopped. It works and operates on the basis that money and the systems that support its generation and movement are the only important thing.

They are not.

What economists and the people who have been influenced into thinking this way are failing to consider, is there is something far more important than money. That is the people and the communities that we live in. Beyond the thinking and the ideas that the ‘money men’ and their supporters choose to accept, there is most definitely another and very clear way to approach this crisis which is an option.

As such our decision makers are currently making a choice. One that is all about profit or all about them.

It should be people first. Money only when its sensible to return to it thereafter.

To deal effectively with the Coronavirus Crisis and without long term fallout for the many, the economy as it stands can be and should be shut down and stopped from operating in its current form.

Interest accumulation should be halted, and a payment or repayment holiday imposed on everything – whether it is for domestic use or for business – so that EVERYONE is being treated fairly and just the same.

The Government should temporarily renationalise all essential utilities and services – that’s the ones that were sold off and should be in the hands of non-profit making management and ownership anyway – and simply take the steps necessary to underwrite supply to ensure that the essential services the public need are simply provided for the duration of the Crisis without the need for anyone to worry about how they continue to pay.

For the people who have been laid off, have had to stop trading, have had their hours zeroed out or have had their incomes stopped by the Coronavirus Crisis in any way, there should be a basic income provided to cover the costs of food and essential items so that everyone is able to function in their homes and remain clean and healthy in every other way.

To do so would ensure that the people who have been left completely vulnerable and at the mercy of circumstances that they had no part in creating, are able to standstill and most importantly survive at the very least, without anything changing. They will therefore placed in the best situation possible to pick up and return their own lives to normality alongside those of everyone when the Coronavirus Crisis is accepted as being over and what will then become life as usual is once again ready to begin.

For the businesses and the workers who are able to continue working throughout the Crisis, the payment holiday that they will then all inadvertently receive will itself be a bonus and for many of them thanks enough.

Yes, the Government could and should now be doing this.

MPs, Politicians, Government Officers and Advisors must start thinking outside of their very tunnelled and out-of-tune Westminster box.

Just to begin with, these are preventative steps the Government should now take:

  • Ditch the £Multi-Billion plan for Grants, Subsidies, and underwriting Loans
  • Stop Interest payments and accumulation of any kind
  • Stop Loan Repayments 
  • Stop Mortgage Repayments
  • Stop Rent Payments
  • Stop Leasing Payments
  • Stop Utility Bill Payments
  • Stop Phone Payments
  • Stop Broadband Payments
  • Stop TV Streaming Payments
  • Stop Insurance Payments without penalty for any function not in use whilst maintaining ongoing cover for capital value without charge
  • Stop any other form of contract subscription which is non-essential in any form

And a here are some proactive steps that the Government should also begin by taking:

  • Provide a Basic Income to cover the cost of food and essential items for everyone, their dependents, and the people they care for, who has lost their income as a result of the Crisis 
  • Provide a top-up for anyone, their dependents, and the people they care for who’s income has been reduced to a level below that which matches that above
  • Take all former public services that were privatised back into temporary Government control
  • Provide gas, electricity, and water to every household for the duration of the crisis without charge
  • Create legislation that outlaws profiteering or price gauging of any kind, with companies, their directors or the individuals fined heavily or jailed when charged
  • Create legislation that prevents any commercial or private interest seeking compensation or interest of any kind from anyone or any business who has not paid them for the duration of the crisis, in the future at any time.

Setting any of us up to fail in the long term as a result of implementing policies during a time of crisis that have not been through will not be in the best interests of anyone. Least of all the Politicians who are failing us by coming up with such stupidity or lack of foresight in the first place.

Fundamentally, the approach currently being taken is morally as well as practically wrong.

This National Crisis and the future of this Country of ours simply demands thinking from them that is new.

Q. Why are the Polls changing? – A. Because nothing else in politics is

Nine days to go until the first December General Election in nearly a Century, and nobody can be sure how the votes on a week this Thursday will actually land.

You can’t say that the Political Parties haven’t tried.

Stop Brexit. Free Broadband. 20,000 new Police Officers. 33% reduction in Rail Fares. Get Brexit Done.

These are all one-liners that have quickly stuck in the mind.

The problem with all of these sound bites and carefully constructed calls to action is that they are being and have been created by a whole System and the Political Parties within it that continue to be all about the very same things as they for too long have already been.

Winning power. Keeping power. Stopping anyone else from gaining the power that they want.

With the closed political system that we currently have in this Country preventing any form of meaningful change, what we once knew as tribalism has now gone pretty much right out of the window.

People are thinking about politics and the details like never before.

The trouble for our Politicians is that normal, everyday People have never looked closely at what politicians are now doing and what they have done – in no small part because of the intransigence of MPs over Brexit that has forced them to do so.

People now understand that there is nothing about any of this – the Tories thinking its all about getting anything through that will pass for Brexit, Labour believing that its all about how much they can spend, the Liberal Democrats calculating that its about being brazen enough to openly admit that Democracy is dead – that actually makes real sense.

They have concluded that we as a Nation are trapped with the Politicians that we have got.

It appears that there is no mechanism or way to bring about that meaningful change that most rational People now know the UK needs.

Meanwhile the political classes are still treating us all like its business as usual.

Politicians believe that nobody outside of Westminster is truly aware of what they are doing.

Yet no matter what we are told the politicians achieve or plan to do, we somehow People end up going to bed every night looking at life in this County and feeling that nothing has changed and that everything remains exactly the same.

Anyone who studies all of this closely and brings to it an open mind will see and surely conclude that there is very little to be hopeful about, no matter who gets Elected in the General Election this time.

Labour will bring chaos to this Country, even as a minority government at the head of a coalition.

A coalition headed by Boris Johnson will pretty much ensure that the stalemate that we have had for over two years in Parliament will be back and ever present on the benches at Westminster with government unable to function as it has been all over again.

And if the Toris should win their long-coveted majority, Boris may well be able to stand up at the end of January and shout at us that he has delivered Brexit.

But when the dust settles and he realises that he has hamstrung himself into yet another trap of the EUs making, we could well find ourselves with the clean, no-deal Brexit that we should always have been given within 12 months. But it will come without Leadership able to address all the challenges, difficulties, knock-on effects and issues that will blow up in their faces overnight as a result.

For too long, politicians have been behaving as if politics – and therefore making decisions that impact everyone – is something very simple and can be carried out on the hop.

We no longer have titans or big beasts in politics.

Politicians and MPs come through a carefully calibrated Party system that removes free thinking and the people with any useful life experience or beneficial understanding of the depth of problems that a complex society such as ours has and the solutions that it really needs.

Candidates are lined up in the tick boxes at elections with Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, Brexit Party, SNP, Green or Plaid Cymru printed by their name. But they are all now inevitably cast in a very similar image and that is why things will keep on ending up the same.

So when there are problems that this Country needs to face – like solving the Brexit Divide – and the moment when real leadership is needed to come to the fore, we now have a distinct absence of anything or anyone who can garner the level of respect from everyone and across the board, simply because they know and are prepared to do what is necessary to get the right result for everyone and are not just obsessed with what other people think or how they look.

It is important for us all now to understand that when the wheels fall off all of the issues that these self-serving and incompetent politicians have created, and the problems that many of us can now see developing become real – as it is now becoming almost certain that they will do – the solutions and answers will not come from within this political system or anything that closely resembles it in its current form.

This election was a golden opportunity for any or all of the existing political parties to go a different way, to do politics differently and they could have done so without it necessarily being in another form.

Instead, they have put their own futures forward as their only real cause and we all now wait for the 12th of December, wondering what will happen in the days and months beyond.

Until there is a real choice at any election, the polls will always be fluid and the result itself will never feel right.

And for now, the reality will be that the decision for many voters on the day of an election or when they put their tick in the box won’t based on what they see as being anything like a real opportunity, but simply about taking a punt on what they see as being the best of a very bad bunch.

The rot in politics that it seems cannot be removed is why everything feels, looks like and is steadily now going wrong.

The log jam that is all that Party Politics in this Country has become is not what the principle of democracy was created for.

Still not voting…

GE2019

At the beginning of the Month, I wrote ‘No, I will not vote in an Election where there isn’t an option for change. Why would I?‘

With three weeks gone and two more to go until the Election on Thursday 12th December, I have to say that I feel very much the same.

It’s not that there hasn’t been any change. There has.

But the change that has happened has been peripheral or aesthetic at best.

The good that might come from the adjustments within the political landscape that have taken place within this Campaign will not have come about not by design or intention, but rather by default.

With 15 days to go, the biggest issue on everyone’s mind today, is the Interview that Jeremy Corbyn gave to Andrew Neil last night. It followed a day where Labour’s choreographed plan for a day focused on their ‘ambitious Race and Faith Manifesto’ was utterly destroyed by the article written by the Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis and published in yesterday’s Times, explaining exactly why people should redirect their vote.

The Interview itself simply evolved a terrible day into a complete nightmare for the Labour Leader as he effectively refused to apologise for the anti-Semitism within the Labour Party and what the Party has done in response.

The Tories are riding high. And with the latest polls now suggesting that the gap between the Conservatives and Labour is closing, the fall out from this debacle is almost certain to ensure that the polling will quickly start to go the other way.

Or at least that is until Boris sits in front of AF Neil himself whenever that might be agreed and then be.

The big problem is that the Conservatives are riding a wave that doesn’t have defining Public Policy as its root cause.

Labour’s downward trajectory and overkill with its great electoral giveaway of 2019 aside, the biggest boon to Boris Johnson’s position has been the decision from Nigel Farage to remove so many of the Brexit Party’s Candidates from competing against Tory Candidates in Seats where the Conservatives won in the 2017 Campaign.

On the face of it, Farage did this to avoid the risk of Jeremy Corbyn walking into No10.

Yet his hybrid approach of standing Brexit Party Candidates pretty much everywhere else does have the distinctive whiff of the whole effort the Brexit Party is making being not about Brexit itself, but about gaining at least a foothold of control.

The lie itself is given by Farage’s suggestion during the Press Conference at the time that Boris had done enough with the pledges he had made about Brexit in the video that had been released the day before.

To some, it will come as little surprise that recent days have brought stories to the fore, that Farage has no plans to go anywhere. That his next mission will be to rebrand the Brexit Party and transform it into a political vehicle that will drive political reform.

The problem for Farage with this is that apart from the reality he has to now face that as a figurehead and leader he is no longer likely to be trusted, any Party that can be identified as being about nothing else other than Leaving the EU itself is likely to be as divisive as Jo Swinson and the Liberal Democrats have been by rejecting the need to find a pathway that will bring all sides together and committing themselves to cancel Brexit and promise that under their influence the UK will categorically Remain.

To its credit, the Brexit Party has demonstrated that it is possible to bring people, politicians and pubic figures from all political backgrounds together to work as one.

But the ‘Contract’ that they have published instead of a manifesto for this General Election tells us that the leadership of the Party is still thinking about politics in exactly the same way as the leadership of all of the other Political Parties who have contributed to the political crisis that we are experiencing and not least of all the Brexit Divide.

We now look two weeks ahead to an Election Result where Boris is still likely one-way-or-another to be our PM.

But being PM with a majority that is likely to lead to a clean, no deal Brexit by default within 12 months is a lot different to the situation that Boris will face if he is returned as Prime Minister with similar numbers of MPs in Parliament to what we have experienced since 2017 – where the majority present is most likely to still be pushing for further delays, obfuscation and what they will only accept as being a very open form of Remain.

The chaos that follows any of the scenarios that appear to be likely and unfolding from this vantage point in time will not improve things. It is likely to only make things a whole lot worse.

Whilst I and many others would like to see reason for hope that any of the Political Parties we have today and running in this Election could become the catalyst for wide-ranging change, once we have brought everyone back together again by really getting Brexit done, I’m afraid that paying lip service to the change that the UK desperately now needs simply isn’t enough for me to vote for any Candidate or Political Party that is involved.

No, we don’t get the Brexit we Voted for if the Brexit Party steps aside. It’s up to Boris to compromise and then we can all win – not just him

Farage

One of the most difficult aspects of the UK’s relationship with the EU to communicate to anyone, is the insidious nature of the way the EU and it’s supporters manipulate people into supporting their cause – most often with tools that seem to have absolutely no link or anything to do with the EU.

Right now there is a significant narrative taking shape in this Election Campaign that comes in different forms but has the same aim: Removing the Brexit Party from the choice before we put our Vote in the Ballot Box.

In today’s Daily Mail, a campaign is underway to influence the decision of the Brexit Party by targeting individual Candidates to step aside and do the right thing. The right thing in this case being to prevent Corbyn from reaching No10 on the basis that this can only happen if the Brexit Party splits the Vote.

Whilst nobody who understands the true reality of what is likely to follow an outright Labour Election Victory, wants Corbyn to win, suggesting that the Brexit Party is the only thing that can make this happen would sound very sensible indeed, were it not the case that removing the Brexit Party from its position of influence right now will all but guarantee that the UK is set to Remain in the EU.

Boris’ deal is not Brexit. It’s Brino. Even if it looks to many as if it’s the right thing.

And whilst it is absolutely true that the Brexit Party might not win any Parliamentary Seats during this Election, those who focus and indulge their fear of a Corbyn Government – which is agreeably very real – are completely missing the point:

Boris is under NO obligation to see his deal through, now that a General Election has been called.

Boris can do the right thing without people who have been committed to UK Sovereignty and Independence for thirty years or more being required by political-fly-by-nights to step aside.

For real Brexiteers to step aside now and in this manner would in effect help the Remain Establishment to achieve that which is against democracy and actually wrong and certainly not the real Brexit that the British Electorate Voted for in 2016.

To expect Nigel Farage to step aside now without Boris’ commitment to a clean, no deal Brexit is to misunderstand the real objectives of the Anti-EU Movement, it’s history and the commitment that has underpinned it right from the start.

The media likes to portray Robert Kilroy-Silk as the ‘father of Brexit’. But this sweeps aside the existence of many others who have quietly worked over many years to keep the truth that underpins the ‘European Project’ in full and open view.

Today the Anti-EU Movement is most widely manifested as the Brexit Party. Before the EU Referendum it was UKIP. Until the period around the Maastricht Treaty it was the Anti-Federalist League.

Kilroy-Silk was prevalent in only one of them – UKIP. Farage has been around during the time of all three.

Before Farage there was UKIP and AFL Founder Professor Alan Sked. And before him there were many Groups and prominent individuals who had kept the debate over what really is genuinely best for the UK alive right from the time that the whole sorry tragedy and sell-out to our European Neighbours began.

To them, in terms of what we risk by remaining tied to the diktats of the EU, the Corbyn threat is pretty much a side show – yes a very scary one – but a side show nonetheless.

Boris’ commitment to anything meaningful appears to be increasingly wafer thin.

And what is clear from all that he has done during his time as PM is that he will do and say whatever is necessary to ensure that he alone – that Boris wins.

Boris’ most successful act to date has been to convince so many that what will become Remain is actually an immediate Brexit.

But it’s not and now it is he, not Farage who faces the real choice:

Drop the deal and do what’s best for us all by compromising and working with Brexiteers one and all. Or stick to the plan where only Boris can be right and somehow we all end up being wronged.

Be under no illusion that if things stay as they are; if the Brexit Party runs against Conservatives and Corbyn or a coalition led by him wins, it won’t be Farage’s responsibility for it happening. Not one bit.

Of the two different Party Leaders, Farage is the one who is being true to the same principles and goals now, just as he always has been.

It’s Boris who today has the real and potentially defining choice.

Drop the deal, form an Electoral Pact with the Brexit Party and unite Brexiteers behimd only one genuine choice.

#dropthedeal

image thanks to unknown

Corbyn had a bad day yesterday. But the truth will be no friend to the Conservatives as a result

1b1adc77-5377-4d68-a64f-9ec227c66d16Wow. What a day that was.

Within the space of less than 24 hours, Tom Watson, the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party stood down, The Jewish Chronicle outs its view of the Labour Party under Corbyn on its front page and Ian Watson, a Labour Minister under Gordon Brown interviews on National Television stating that the current Labour Leader isn’t fit to rule and that People should vote for Boris Johnson instead.

But what difference will it all really make?

The answer the Conservatives will not want to hear is probably not a lot.

During normal times, an individual of Jeremy Corbyn’s nature, background and ideals would not be Leader of the Opposition, let alone be less than 5 weeks away from the possibility of being UK Prime Minister and walking straight into No10.

But the times we live in are far from normal. And the reality that disillusioned Labour MPs may well have nominated and voted Corbyn into the Labour Leadership in 2015 for little more than a laugh will make no difference in the hindsight of history.

Indeed, we will surely look back on the Electorate’s 6-week interview and assessment of Marxism as an applicant for the job of driving the direction of the next government in the final months of 2019 as just being a sign of the times.

The politicians we have today bear a significant amount of the responsibility for the rise and presence of what we call fake news.

In fact, we have been on the receiving end of decades of spin. And whilst the Establishment continually tries to make us believe that fake news is only the preserve of those outside the mainstream, of extremists and of the Russians or perhaps the Chinese, the past three years since the European Referendum has been a master class from Politicians and the mainstream media in this Country of how to push nothing but opinion – and have it passed off successfully as being the truth.

Fake news now flows through every media channel to the point where for a growing number of people no difference actually exists between falsehood and truth.

For many, reality in politics has become all about what resonates best, what makes sense or what suits or most closely fits the listeners experience and view of the world.

Then there are the young, who inexperienced in the dark ways of the world and therefore idealist by nature, don’t look beyond the instant hit that comes from a sound bite or a picture that is painted with impractical idealism and represents what they sincerely believe can be achieved and is therefore what they would like to see.

They don’t consider the detail.

They don’t have any idea what delivering these ideas and manifesting them in reality would actually involve.

They certainly don’t anticipate or understand the consequences of what they might be calling for and the pain that waving a magic policy wand in isolation will almost certainly cause.

But then why should young people be expected to know and understand any of this when the narrative from politicians other than those like Corbyn tell them that Conservatives and those like them look on young people as being of little value, that they have nothing to bring to the party, and that they should shut up and do whatever they are told.

Against this backdrop, the narrative that Corbyn peddles is intoxicating to many of the People in this Country who are already politically disenfranchised and to an even greater proportion of the young.

The truth of what Jeremy Corbyn is, what he represents and what he might soon have the power to inflict upon us all is someone else’s news, someone else’s truth.

It has no currency to those who have no reason to trust the Establishment. Especially when the solution that Corbyn is selling offers an instant high with absolutely none of the disadvantages or responsibilities that following out-of-touch old people, boomers, gammon or the elite would involve.

So whilst the Tories might be looking at the papers and the news feeds today and thinking that this Election Campaign is quickly becoming little more than a slam-dunk, they should perhaps take a step back and consider the fact that they have helped to create the environment in the UK today. A place where People right across the Electoral spectrum will be weighing up the pros and cons of all the Political Parties and all the Candidates without anything like the normal rationality that Conservative Politicians assume will always be involved.

The funny thing is that the outcome of this Election is most likely to materialise simply by default.

Nothing that any of these politicians are saying or doing stands out as being any different  to what We have heard in the past or is encouraging voters – whether young or old – to vote in any way differently to what it would, in the circumstances, be logical to expect.

If Boris Johnson and the Tories really want the truth to matter in the future elections that they might still be able to fight, they need to start talking to, interacting with and considering everyone beyond their own kind differently.

But first and before they do that, they should really take a good hard look at themselves.