Whilst some of us will understand the concept, none of us alive today have known a world without hierarchies.
Yet hierarchies are one of the most effective tools that exist for the dehumanisation and distancing of humanity and human relationships.
Hierarchies are the reason that societies and industries ultimately fail.
The intrinsic reason for the failure of all hierarchies – which can take centuries to reach those at the top – is because they instantly make decision makers out-of-touch.
The system that is failing and collapsing around us today is a classic example of a hierarchy. It is a textbook example of a system that operates from the top-down.
Today’s system is so complex, that the tiers or levels of the hierarchy are not only top-down. The way that we have evolved culturally has meant that we have also extended these tiers or levels from side to side. This means that the responsibility for decisions that affect our daily lives are not only made by people and organisations or bodies that we will never have contact with. It also means that their role, responsibilities and influence are also heavily – and all too conveniently obscured from our view.
Leadership has become synonymous with hierarchy. Yet the interchangeability of the two words or terms does not and should not be considered as meaning the same thing.
We most certainly need leaders to shine and take responsibility for leading us. But leadership does not come by right. It does not appear through career progression. It certainly doesn’t come through position or assumed power – even though the elites want us to believe this – try as they might.
Poor leaders who have no appreciation of the mechanics of leadership, nor any understanding of what leadership genuinely is, usually surround themselves with leaders who are even weaker, who then do exactly the same thing when it comes to their turn to lead.
Likewise, the accumulation of wealth or apparent success with a certain kind of business is no guarantee of anyone’s ability, the ethics or the morality that would drive them if they should find themselves in a position where deference and the way that society works would enable them to take a lead.
Today, we have reached a position where everything we know in terms of governance and the way that the rules governing the way society, business and culture functions has such people at the top and intrinsically involved.
We must do away with these hierarchies. We must do away with everything that functions in the sense of decisions being made with power and influence that is remote and that we can identify in any way as being top-down.
Farmers are by nature, the most creative and entrepreneurial managers, engineers and technical workers that I know. They are, or rather they become these multitalented vocational giants by living lives that involve operational management, frequently calling them into action at any time, 24hrs a day, 365 days a year – pretty much from the day that they are born.
Farmers are, in effect, the complete antithesis of our Members of Parliament and the political class. And it’s because of the lack of understanding and respect for what British Farmers do, that the politicians we have – whether in Government or not, have allowed British Agriculture and all of the industries allied to and feeding into it, to reach the state that they are now in.
The problems that British Farmers face remain closely aligned to what their European counterparts are experiencing.
Indeed, whilst many from what in 2016 was the Remain camp are still pushing the narrative that leaving the EU and the whole Brexit vote was a gargantuan mistake, those same people are strangely silent when it comes to comment or discussion on what Farmers within in the EU Member nations are facing right now.
Across Europe, unelected bureaucrats and out of touch politicians are pushing an agenda which will see Nation States close down some of the very best food production in the world. All at a time when supply chains are already collapsing, there are growing food shortages and in no time at all it will not just be hungry people who are out of sight and out of mind that could be the ones who are about to starve or go without.
What underscores the futility and the madness of this perverse strategy, pursued by people who have never been at the hard end of an operational business in their life, is the reality that their grand plan mirrors the ridiculous decisions made by the political classes across Europe not only to shelve and mothball, but to destroy fossil fuel burning energy plants and sources. All coming under the ridiculous assumption that buying in supplies and services from elsewhere from across the World is not only safe, but can be sold to the public as being green and therefore alright.
Yes, you did read that correctly. The leading classes of Europe and the UK too, are and have for some time quite literally been shutting down, wilfully neglecting and even deliberately destroying our own national systems of production.
The politicians we have elected to look after our best interests have been making us all vulnerable to whoever they then do some kind of deal to buy replacement supplies and services from.
All of this is so that Politicians can pay lip service to fulfilling an impossibly idealistic promise of achieving Net Zero – or some other departure from reality based narrative they are pushing that isn’t just economic with the truth, but is an outright lie.
Why is the lie so important? The lie that the politicians tell is so important, because it’s just another lie to cover up the impact of another very big and very damaging lie about the benefits of globalisation and commercialisation – which is what the EU was always really about.
The irony should be lost on none of us that Globalisation and greed-based Commercialism are the real and genuine cause of all of the climate and environmental problems that we do genuinely have.
Equally, we should be under no illusion that the climate and environmental problems that we do genuinely have would go into free fall, in the direction of positive change, the moment that we stepped back from the money is god and a profit led existence, and allowed on-shoring, relocalisation and the protectionism that is now essential to the UKs future to be restored.
Whilst it will never be said about the European Union, even by many of the Brexiteers who never really understood this part of the EU Membership travesty themselves, the EU and everything about it has just been one disastrous exercise in globalisation and commercialisation.
The Common Market and everything that followed as part of the EU Project evolution was a self-serving spin off of the Globalisation myth, repackaged with the lie that with the overarching politicisation and centralisation of the European sub version, the issues that befall the removal of international barriers and the many risks it brings on a Global level, would never be our own.
As many of us can already see with just the Energy Crisis alone, this foolishness – however well intended, doesn’t work when so many differences of opinion, cultures and different ways of being are involved.
We can all see what has happened as a result of Western Governments responding as they have to the war in Ukraine, when the same politicians had destroyed our own self sufficiencies in order to ‘open up the doors’.
This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the impact of all the very poor decision making that got into full swing long before Brexit, Covid and Ukraine were ever in the frame.
Sadly, the system collapse that so many within the elites, the establishment and our own government are doing so much to hide, is already well underway.
It’s just the case that we are not all going over the cliff at the same moment in time. That’s why not all of us can see it. YET.
However, the fall of an entire industry that will affect all of us – our Farming Industry – is most definitely already underway. And we fail to realise, accept and understand this at our peril.
Yes, food is on the supermarket shelves. We can still get just about everything we could possibly want. So you are probably asking the question, ‘Why should we be worried about Farmers and British Agriculture now?
Sadly, we will not believe that life can be any different to what it is now, until it already is.
If you need an example that makes sense of this, cast your mind back to the beginning of 2020 when the first lockdown began and then life changed for us all in an instant.
We may have forgotten Social Distancing and Lockdowns for now. But many of the direct consequences of disastrously poor decision making on the part of our politicians is only just beginning to materialise now, nearly three years on.
Amongst all of the issues which are currently popular, the ability of the UK to feed itself is strangely absent from that list. Yet the UK Food supply is now at massive risk of collapse – That’s the supply of the food that we need to meet our basic needs and not the ridiculous variety of imported and mass processed items and ingredients that we have become used to.
Our Basic food supply is at risk for a number of reasons. These include the centralisation and globalisation of food supply chains which are going to collapse; the way that British Agriculture has been placed at the mercy of innumerable agents, resellers, speculators, traders and middle men who take massive profits whilst adding no value and push farm prices down, whilst pushing retail prices up; and decades of reconditioning under the auspices of EU membership that has led British Farmers to rely on subsidies that have taken away the incentive and freedom to compete.
There are many more.
The situation regarding our food supply is much more complicated and serious than it is possible to do real justice here.
The real tragedy and threat to us all, is that because our Politicians created or led the implementation of the market structures that are currently at work – even though they did so in no small part on behalf of the EU – everyone, and most importantly our Farmers, are expecting our politicians to ensure that every issue created by Brexit, along with the collapse of global supply chains and the fallout of other events such as the War in Ukraine, will be dealt with – as it is perfectly reasonable and logical for us to be able to expect.
They have not. They are not. They will not be addressed by the politicians we have.
The real problem that even these very credible sources cannot counter, is that our politicians are so out of touch and prioritise whatever they believe to be in their best interests.
It is not until you really begin to understand just how out of touch with reality our politicians actually are, that you can then start to consider and appreciate that the British People are heading for an extraordinary amount of pain, that would have been both unnecessary and avoidable IF we had politicians that fulfilled their responsibilities as they always should do.
Getting people and especially Farmers to realise and understand that the solutions will not come from this government or any new government that is formed from the political parties or groups that are known to us and that we have on offer to us today is challenging indeed. Especially as it means that the solutions we now need, through restructuring, onshoring and relocalising supply chains to a what we would recognise as being conversant with a much more traditional form, MUST be led with British Farmers and all of the related industries right out in front. Just as the political change that we all so desperately need must also come from the grassroots up.
I began writing this blog by making reference to the ingenuity and industriousness of our Farmers. This has already been well illustrated by the many ways that members of the Farming Community have already diversified their businesses, to become manufacturers, growers, producers and retailers of a very different kind, taking back control and managing every step of the process from farm to fork themselves, or working collaboratively on a very small localised scale, where it can quite literally be said that many hands make light work.
Whilst our Politicians will not accept this probably until it is too late to avert further harm, UK self sufficiency in food production, as well as the majority of the key things or basics that we are going to need, is not only now strategically key to our future. This is how world events and the UKs circumstances will soon dictate that they MUST be.
We cannot wait for the politicians to change their minds, or it wont just be the cost of living crisis, but shortages of basic foods that make British People hungry too.
Our existing politicians will always exhibit loyalty to the very system that has broken the back of British Farming for no other reasons than greed, profit and control. The existing Public Policies on Farming, Fisheries and Food have certainly never been for the purposes of benefiting UK Industries or British consumers – no matter the lies and the lies to cover up those lies that we have been continually told.
Please can we all wake up before its too late and there is nothing left to work with. We need a revolution in farming and we need it to happen now.
It will not come from the top and must run from the grassroots up. Farmers must be at the middle of local food supply – the way it should always have been.
One of the reasons that we should all feel confident that we can survive and thrive through the coming years and months, and that we can all play an active and positive part in creating the new system that is balanced and fair for all, is because much of the creative and innovative thinking is already out there that will build every part of it.
It is just the question of what, why and who people will be doing these things for that has to be settled before work on our new world and The True Economy can begin.
When money doesn’t work for the majority of people, we will have reached a point where things could go a number of ways.
Please look kindly on anyone who loses their shit in these circumstances. Desperation doesn’t excuse poor behaviour of any kind. But it does provide good incentive to organise anything and everything that we have available to our community and the people within it, as quickly as we can.
The first step to maintaining order, is to pool everything that the community has available and to be fully transparent about what the community has, and how it can and will be shared.
If it comes down to a situation where people are going hungry, transactions cannot be based on exchange, and must be based on the simple act of sharing what we have and don’t need for our own immediate requirements, and not on what others can ‘afford’.
The next step is to create a system of fair exchange, that functions on what everyone can give, or what they can trade or barter.
The principle value of this exchange system, or Local Market Exchange, will be based on the time, skills, experience and basic labour that it took to provide whatever the essential foods, goods or services being exchanged might be, or what it would be when the complete process of putting that food, those goods or services would be, when considering the process from end-to-end.
The creation and development of the Local Market Exchange will take place in two primary stages:
Bartering & Exchange of goods, supplies and services that the community already has available, or which it has the ability to grow, manufacture or provide, and
The creation of a new localised currency linking, anchoring or pinning transactional value of foods, goods and services directly to the number of people and/or the contributions (input to the system) that they make.
The Global Economy and Global Supply Chain have been based on this idea, aim or motivation:
That those who have the power and influence to do so, should take each and every step possible to maximise profit and the accumulation of wealth for all those who are intimately involved. And that the accumulation of wealth and power should be used to motivate those who work within and lead in support of the system.
Yet the calculations used in this equation were only ever based on the profit and the accumulation of wealth for the few who really benefited being involved.
There was never any factoring in for the loss of jobs, the loss of skills, the loss of communities or indeed any of the human costs that running a system based solely on greed and money have inevitably imposed.
The people responsible for all of this have quite literally had to create a monetary system that finds more and more innovative ways of funnelling money that doesn’t exist to the people who can’t earn enough – all through lending and often unpayable debt, so that the broken system they have built keeps running, and the flaws in the whole thing would not become exposed.
Be under no illusion. This is not a conspiracy. Its what happens when people without values or good moral fibre find themselves in possession of a lot of money, power and influence, and then do all that they can without care, to increase and keep increasing all that they have.
This is the Story [metaphor] of The Ring [money/power] and the influence it has on Gollum [Politicians/Big Business/The Elites] in its most real-world and hideous form. And all those corrupted by this system and what they believe it gives them, are completely blind to the true cost of their actions to us all.
The very challenging thing for everyone to accept as we look at the world we have been used to today, is that everything we have been taking for granted is going to change.
We will discuss other fundamental or building-block areas of change elsewhere. But in terms of the Global Supply Chain collapse that is underway, which has only been aided and abetted by the responses of Politicians to Brexit, The Covid Pandemic and the War in Ukraine, the massive change across the world that’s coming, will be felt by consumers and end users in terms of what goods we will be able to buy and what foods are readily available for us to eat.
The reality of this change will be the reconstruction of supply chains that focus on home and very localised production, processing, distribution and retailing, all of which have been progressively and aggressively dismantled as the shift from localised marketplaces to the so-called Global Economy has taken place.
The change and transition from Global to Local will be permanent. Globalisation is over. Our values and priorities are going to fundamentally change.
Yes. It was always intended by big business, politicians and the elites, that Global networks and systems they developed and sold as being beneficial to us would always be permanent. Unless or until they could find even more profitable ways to make even more money at even lower costs, without any consideration for the lives of everyone else apart from what money anyone else had to spend on the products that these increasingly nebulous systems brought to our doors.
But the Global System is no longer functional. The motivation and aims that created it are being exposed for what they are. This means there will be no going back to a greed-based economy.
A robust local economy is all about people and values, rather than money and wealth. There are benefits to our wellbeing from what lies ahead that money and marketing could never buy.
It’s time to think beyond just surviving The Great Reset to the light beyond and how we can then begin to really thrive.
If you read the papers, listen to or watch the news, or follow news on social media, you will be aware of a narrative that is increasingly anchoring supply chain issues and shortages of all sorts of things on the fallout from the Covid Pandemic, the Invasion of Ukraine and even Brexit.
It is because supply chain disruption has been involved with all of these events of what has followed them, that this very specific truth is being rolled out as the excuse for the systemic crash or ‘The Great Reset’ that is now underway.
After all. The greatest lies or marketing plans inevitably hinge on the tiniest of truths.
Sadly, We are all destined to wake up from the unreality of a world where everything has just appeared in our lives after a click or a short trip.
The Global Supply Chain has been built on greed and a convenient lie.
We have just accepted that it is cheaper to make and grow the things that we need on the other side of the world and then transport them to our front doors more cheaply than it would be for them to be made or grown and then sold to us at the end of our street. We believe that it has benefitted us to do so.
We have never though to ask the question, ‘Do we really need these things if they are coming to us from this far away?’
We have never asked the question, ‘How can it be possible for these things from far away to be cheaper than they would be home-made or home-grown?’
We have never asked the question. ‘What is the real cost to all of us?’
Perhaps the biggest cost of globalisation that has never been factored into the equation (or more likely it has deliberately been left out), has been the issue of what happens when a Country becomes dependent upon supplies of goods or services that come from another Country, or Countries that may not always have interests that are mutually aligned or have like for like benefits with the UK at their heart.
The best example of where dependency can compromise the security of a country or of the interests of that country is very current and comes in the form of the dependency that Germany has on Russia for its supplies of natural gas.
During the Ukraine crisis (late February 2022), Western Countries excluded Russia from the SWIFT International Banking System as a punishment (also known as a sanction) for invading Ukraine. Yet Germany had a special dispensation to not do so, as it would not have been able to continue paying the Russians for gas supplies, if it had continued to be involved.
Whilst Germany was most compromised by becoming dependent upon Russia for energy supplies, the reality is that as a Country, the UK is far too dependent upon other Countries for the supply of essential goods and services too.
For as long as this situation exists, and for as long as we have politicians in control of the UK who either cannot or will not take tough decisions on energy supplies or the supply of anything that is essential to us as a matter of course, we will remain at risk of high-level compromise with countries that supply us and can therefore bribe us, as our security as a Nation will remain exposed.
Covid set off the power within a latent chain reaction that anyone who understood the fragility of the global system was waiting for.
The reason the global supply chain hasn’t just stopped overnight – which to be quite fair is exactly what many onlookers would naturally expect – is because those who have a vested interest in it are doing all that they can to try and rescue it in order to make it work.
For those invested in it, the invasion of Ukraine came along at what they believe to be a very fortuitous time.
So obsessive has the motivation of greed for profit been, that those driving this way of doing business have come up with ever more creative ways to defy the practical realities of business and production.
These have included the development of ‘Just in Time’ methodologies and ‘Lean Manufacturing’, which are heralded as brilliant ways to manage profit driven commercial business. But pay very little heed to world events or what any kind of unforeseen circumstance might have in store.
The response of different governments around the world to the Covid Pandemic, quite literally brought many parts of the global supply chain to a halt.
The massive costs and margins of this ridiculously fragile system had been dependent on every part of it continuing to work endlessly – as it was always expected to do so – with only what we would consider to be the minimum of contingencies having been planned for.
So, when a worldwide virus that inept political leaders completely overreacted to and used fear to make populations think that it was much worse than it actually is became involved, the global supply chain was exposed in a way that was rather like the first of a squillion dominoes that had been set up to knock each other down being flicked.
And so has begun a process of destruction. Beginning slowly with those dominoes falling one by one.
Globalisation and the model of global business and supply chains that existed at the end of 2019 – before the Covid Pandemic hit us, no longer exists as it did then, in either functional or operational terms.
In the same way that our system of government and the political system that supposedly drives it has built itself by putting sticking plaster on top of sticking plaster when it comes to public policy and building it into the dysfunctional system that exists today, the way that industry and the global business system has been developed has also been without thought for the consequences or impact at even the closest degrees of separation.
What we have ended up with is a so-called ‘Global Economy’ that is in fact a house of cards that has little in terms of foundations and is already on the verge of collapse in many different ways.
Globalisation was seen to work because we have all been fed the story that it benefits our self-interest in some way.
Yet the only beneficiaries from the process of Globalisation were and always have been the people and corporate interests that have created, developed and directly profited from an unethical system that exploited everyone and everything in some way – and that includes even those directly involved at every part of the supply chain.
The true driver of Globalisation was always the increase in profits for every company that played or that plays a role in the supply chains that are involved.
But the true cost of Globalisation has been the loss of jobs, the loss of skills, the loss of training opportunities, the loss of businesses, the loss of communities, the loss of national self-sufficiency, the impact on the environment, the impact on quality of life. And yes, the list goes on extensively to cover all of the impacts and consequences related to every part of that list which have changed life for everyone – enriching the few, whilst making life poorer in every way conceivable for everyone else.
Sold as beneficial, because it makes everything we want ‘cheap’ to buy, ‘globalisation’ and the ‘global economy’ have always been a myth that only appeared to work out well for us because that was what we were being told by the people and companies that benefitted from us all believing so.
As the impact of employment and working rights created and pursued by the Left have hit harder and harder and impacted further and further on company bottom lines, closely followed by the piles of red tape that went into a different league when EU Membership became involved, many companies made the commercial choice to begin buying or producing goods of their own in Countries, and therefore environments, that provided conditions which were much more conducive to growing and extending profit margins.
Focused only on what the things we buy actually cost us, the only people to notice this massive industrial shift were those of us directly touched by the change. And in this case, it was always local British workers who immediately felt that pain.
No longer able to exploit British workers in the way that they wanted to do so, there was effectively a cheaper option to do so abroad. But what we were not told about this move was that the obsession with the bottom line that drove this change also meant that the companies would be exploiting much lower paid workers who this time didn’t – and in many cases still don’t have a voice.
It was a double whammy. Because the savings and benefits from paying ridiculously low wages that in some cases even offset the need to invest in newer cleaner technologies, was also consolidated by the reality that many of the countries that these companies had moved operations to, simply had few or no considerations on the impact on the environment that these industrial processes involved.
Fashion is of course a commercially driven concept that promotes the perception that it is important to obtain and use the latest versions of goods. We buy fashion that we envy in the possession of others or buy it to make others envious of us.
Buying clothes purely for the purpose of how they look is not a sustainable practice. The types of clothing that have made fashion possible in the very extensive way that it has reached will not be available to the few who may be able to afford it, without compromising the requirement to always address everyone’s needs too.
Rationing of the materials to make clothing is a clear possibility. Just as our forebears did during the Second World War, we are going to have to embrace a culture of Make do and Mend, where we are literally making the best of the clothing that we already possess through repair, reuse and recycling, enjoying the prospect of upcycling as we do.
Perhaps one of the most challenging areas covering basic needs provision will be that of the supply of affordable shoes and clothing.
If there is one area of industry that has been outsourced to other Countries more than any other, it will surely be the production of clothes and shoes.
Whilst many today look scornfully on shops such as Sports Direct, the reality is that retailers of this type are today providing goods at a price that keep people on low incomes clothed.
The irony is that whilst cheap and cheerful, the price reflects the quality of the materials and the manufacturing. It is not uncommon for such items to require regular replacement and over time, for the customer to have paid out much more on multiple purchases of the same items at a lower cost, than it would have done over the same period IF they had been able to afford a better-quality version of the same thing.
Whilst cotton will always be imported to the UK as a raw material, wool and other materials are not. There will be a need to redevelop the British Textiles industry with a primary focus on the materials that we have readily available from our own production, or which can be supplied without significant reliance on international supply chains from our traditional trading partners.
Perhaps the most critical dimension of writing Levelling Level, has been the challenge of putting on paper what some will read or perceive as being predictions at best and complete nonsense at its absolute worst.
However, all of the information and evidence that now makes Levelling Level necessary has been hiding in plain sight for as long as the decisions and actions creating the need for change have one-by-one, taken place. The direction of travel is very real indeed.
People are very comfortable with the way that the world has been working for a period of time that for many equates to the same thing as living memory.
Let’s face it. When things are good, why would you believe that they could ever change?
Of course, just like the enjoyment of alcohol and the massive influence that it holds on the lifestyles of so many of us, when we are enjoying something, we rarely think about or acknowledge the harms that it may also be doing us too. Yet these are real harms that far outweigh what are only the perceived benefits that we only believe to be making us happy, but are in fact storing up disasters for us in a myriad of other ways.
The obsession with material wealth and the use of money and finance as the benchmark of life that it has become, revolves around the very worst and self-serving aspects of capitalism.
Through the manipulation that underpins consumerism and fashion, unchecked capitalism has effectively taken control of our lives – even dictating the pain and punishment that arrives by default, at the doors of those who for whatever reason cannot afford to actively take part.
To many, this is just the way things are, or what some see as ‘Business as Usual’.
Yet what those of us are so heavily invested in this way of living and what we believe to be the benefits it gives us don’t yet accept or understand is that Business as usual is already over.
The collapse that will lead to this all changing is already underway.
Adam Tugwell 