An Economy for the Common Good | Full Text

Building, enabling and maintaining good governance, self-sufficiency and freedom for all people and our communities

The Greek Stoic Philosopher Epictetus said “It is not possible to learn what you think you already know.” 

Today, one of the greatest challenges that humanity faces is the reality that almost every one of us believes that we already understand how the world works and subsequently believe that how it works today will always continue to provide the basis of how the world will work tomorrow.

With even the most educated academics and experienced experts suffering from what can be argued as a situational bias, where virtually nobody can picture a way of living where the fundamental factors like money and the economic system that we have today aren’t exactly the same, it seems that we have just as easily slipped into the tragic and passive acceptance that the things that we want to be changed, either cannot or will not be changed. For no better reason that we refuse to give up the things that those changes will necessitate, that we still believe to profit or benefit us personally in some way.

For any speaker or writer who dares venture into the realms of sharing even just one or two layers of the massively multilayered truths that underpin the workings of today’s world using a lens or microscope to focus upon one area of life, government or business, the complexities quickly become too hard for others to believe and the label or badge of being a conspiracy theorist or perhaps worse fits just as easily whilst serving the purposes of those who ride the ‘blissful ignorance’ of the masses ridiculously well.

The truth that even the many who do accept that change has now become more than necessary cannot deal with, is that neither the majority nor the critical mass of people required to initiate meaningful levels of societal change can be reached whilst we remain ‘bought in’ to the current paradigm at any level.

Indeed, the change that our lucid moments allow us to recognise as being the only possible direction for a just, fair and balanced society and culture, will not be accepted and certainly not embraced, until enough of us have felt the real pain that the way mankind lives today will inevitably inflict upon us all. For as long as money and material wealth rule the day.

A HAPPY WORLD isn’t coin operated

The world could not only work as well as it does today. But it would actually work much better. IF everyone did what they did, without being tied into the shared belief that everything has monetary value.

Yet it doesn’t take much for any one of us to build a wall against this truth when we will almost inevitably fall into the trap of believing that whilst we might personally be able to accept a different system of values, we believe that nobody else will. Because they are selfish and coin operated. And that as such, the world will always be destined to work the same way.

What I will say to you now is that the world does not and has never needed to be coin operated or run by money. And it can no longer continue to operate in this same way.

The way that the world works today is a manmade construct. One that has fear – not happiness, peace or love at its heart.

What is more, each of us may well have had the free will to choose fear as our motivation and our guide in times past.

But when the impact and consequences of that motivation on the part of any one of us leads to a situation where the free will to choose between fear and the alternative is no longer available for others to decide, the imbalance that is created is one that will  inevitably lead to inescapable pain and impoverished circumstances for those others from which it will be impossible for the world itself to hide.

The contradictory belief that unsustainable living is sustainable, because the narrative says so

Fanciful as it may sound, the reality we all face is that the unsustainable ways in which we have all been living have already gone too far.

The decisions that legislators and leaders make do not reflect what is in the best interests of humanity and everything they now do is progressively making a very bad situation even worse.

We do not and have never needed the world to work as it does now.

The benefits of a whole world and everything within it being twisted and manipulated to serve the interests of just a few, are worth nothing and do nothing but cause pain and harm to the masses.

This is an incalculable level of tragedy when we realise that the fundamental basis of everything we need, is being able to or having the ability to live a good life.

A Good Life cannot be bought

A good life isn’t created or achieved on the basis of what we have, what we accumulate or what other people think.

A good life is a state of mind.

And it is a state of mind that allows each and every one of us the opportunity to open the door and rediscover who we really are.

Those committed to the current paradigm will certainly argue that only wealth, influence, power and control can provide the circumstances where this kind of peace can be achieved.

Yet there is nothing peaceful, beneficial and certainly not spiritual about living a life that may be perceived as being good. But can only be achieved where at least one and potentially many others are having to pay some kind of cost.

Just like our bodies are an ecosystem that work to their very best when they are looked after, our communities and localities are all that groups of us need to survive and thrive, whilst showing and maintaining that same respect for all others and sharing between all of us the things that different communities can do that we cannot and vice versa, with the express belief and understanding that cooperation and collaboration rather than control are all any of us need to have very good lives.

Our Future is Local

Plenty has been said and written about the virtues of looking within ourselves rather than continually looking outside for all of the answers, truths and directions that we expect to make our lives work.

Indeed, the purpose of this work isn’t to focus upon the benefits of self-awareness and levels of self-knowing that reach way beyond any basic understanding of self-help fashions such as mindfulness which can be found in seemingly endless numbers online and on channels such as YouTube and TikTok. As that is a journey for each of us to pursue and conclude upon personally.

However, the circumstances and situations that lend themselves to that journey of personal learning and progress are a different matter altogether.

In very basic terms, the most  productive and beneficial way for us to live our lives, to experience a good life and to live a life where we will know that we will genuinely succeed, is to live locally, or in ways where everything to which we attribute real value is experienced as first hand, through people we meet face to face and through life experiences which are fully lived and not accessed at  any level through the equivalent of a screen.

To experience the human condition and human relationships, it is necessary to have relationships directly with other humans that will condition us to understand how and why other humans behave the way they do and how they think.

Living any other way immediately adds unnecessary levels of complexity in which the behaviours and choices that harm others can easily hide, that just like any other lie, require many other lies and layers of lies in order to protect the original lie.

Despite many convincing narratives that suggest otherwise, progress doesn’t only travel one way. Just like technology doesn’t automatically mean the redundancy and erasure of methodologies that came before it. And it certainly doesn’t mean that advances of any kind that benefit those who control them, should ever come at the cost, hardship, loss or pain of those who would have been involved in any accepted practice that came before it.

In fact, technology driven by the correct motives and the desire to improve life, rather than replace it, is representative of genuine progress, whereas technology used to replace and impoverish people so that those who own and control it can profit is most certainly not representative of any kind of progress.

Just because jobs can be replaced by technology doesn’t mean that they either need to be, or that they should be. And if money wasn’t the only real consideration that was being involved, neither would anyone believe that there would be any need to be either.

Indeed, if money were not in the equation, the need for big companies or big anything, wouldn’t even exist.

The only businesses or organisations that we would need at any level, would be those that have the structures necessary to provide for all our essential needs and the goods and services that make a genuinely good life work.

These aren’t big businesses. Because they aren’t driven by the suggestion that costs can be lowered so that more profit can be made or one business can undercut another that does the same thing, because it can do the same things more cheaply in some way.

These are businesses that exist to provide the best at what they do and provide the best experience that they can for the people that they serve.

These are businesses that are local, that are part  of a local supply chain and work within a local circular economy in its truest sense, that have no need to be bigger or biggest, because the one set of values that we all share is built around the belief  that every one of us is worth and has value that is exactly the same.

Our Local Future

The default setting that most of us have from the way that our lives and understanding of life has been conditioned will tell even the most learned and intelligent of us that money centric living will always be the way and that everything we are working through here is little more than some kind of utopian dream that is wholly impractical and will never come true.

Yet unsustainable living is by its very nature unsustainable at every level, at that means that to live and believe that it is sustainable is itself untrue.

Those who are looking more closely at the narratives and the truths that they hide will know that life is going to change in one way or another. It is not a question of if, but when, and the only real question that none of us can accurately answer – even though it is easy to speculate, is what event or series of events will be responsible for setting off what we can almost be sure will be a process of change, if we are not already now within it?

Because we tend to be obsessed over the journey and who has decision making control over the next step(s), rather than the outcomes of everything we do, we use outcomes in the sense of what they mean only to us as the basis of any argument over what should come next – in real terms, whose ideas and suggestions should come first.

From this perspective and the conflict that we can see as soon as we begin to be open to how everything works, it can easily feel impossible to visualise an outcome or range of outcomes that could be achievable after having gained buy-in from everyone and the pathways they are demanding, so that the result is meaningful to all as well as being something that actually works.

The paradox is of course that without being able to visualise the destination and what that destination will actually feel like, what it will be to experience it and what being there will actually mean, we don’t have a collective cat in hells chance of ever getting there or doing anything that will actually succeed.

Minded of this, I wrote Our Local Future and took the leap to create a vision or picture of what a world that works for us all would actually look like, feel like and work like. And you can read and work through the structure of Our Local Future and download a copy of the book by visiting HERE.

Putting the first steps towards tomorrow’s world in today’s terms

Whereas Our Local Future may provide the reader with a picture of what a fully functioning just, fair and balanced locality-based world would look like, whether they agree with that vision or not, it does not and will not provide a guide or map that includes all the different steps that we will collectively need to get there. For no better reason than dogmatically sticking to any plan will create more problems than it will ever solve and that in a world of complexity and contradictions like the one we are experiencing today, plans can never replace the choices made by decision makers who make the right decision in the moment, and ultimately will not work.

However, what is not only possible, but is also required with the outlook that we tend to share, is an example of the stepping off point; a signpost in the direction of travel, or rather an outline of the first steps that we could and that we arguably should be taking now. So that what we are doing to ourselves today is no longer destined to be our end, but can be the point from which we make a conscious decision to take each step, and then keep moving and changing step by step, to transform from a world that doesn’t work for everyone, into a world that works for us all, as it always  should.

Who does this is not something we should worry about, unless we remain captured by that idea that the next step and who controls it is more important than the outcome or destination itself. And without recognising this, it continues to be unlikely that we will ever agree on how we will recognise that outcome, because the outcome and destination will never have become the topic of our discussion or debate.

From this perspective, I would rather have my work taken apart so that it can be improved upon by all those who can improve upon it, than for the work to have never started at all. And with this in mind, I have created and committed to digital pages An Economy for the Common Good, as a model for how we could all come together as communities and within our localities work together to make a start.

The Glos Community Project

I began this work or project in the summer of 2023, and at that point simply intended to turn an idea in to a practical or turnkey model of how a group of well-intended and appropriately motivated volunteers could begin creating a structure that would lead to a fully functioning and localised economy, that would lead to outcomes that would place localism, circular economy, sustainability and sustainable living, awakened forms of governance and therefore real democracy at its heart.

Because the whole point is about our own communities and where we live and work, I created this model around the areas in which I have lived and live today, so that it would be as realistic as it can be from the very start.

The model is called The Glos Community Project and follows in the next section of this book as a structured and self-explanatory plan that goes as far as to provide the basic adverts and job specs for the social entrepreneurs and community volunteers who are envisaged as being the leaders and pioneers of building An Economy for the Common Good.

The Glos Community Project model is only a guide, providing that first step that I have already alluded to, and one that I hope will invite every reader to think about how our world can and will operate very differently, once we have accepted and are ready to embrace that we must place people, community and the environment we live in at its heart.

The content that follows has been structured in the form of a website that can be found HERE, where comments can be added at the bottom of each page.

If you would like to make suggestions about the subjects raised, please share them there or do get in touch by email at acommunityroute@gmail.com if you would prefer not to share your thoughts publicly.

Please note that I will be happy to publish anything that is well intended and clearly shared with the intention of achieving the best outcome(s) for all, even where such an example directly improves upon the work that has been shared.

Thank you for reading and for your interest in creating An Economy for the Common Good.

Adam Tugwell

February 2025

The Glos Community Project

Introduction

Hello there!

I’m Adam and Gloucestershire is my home. Gloucestershire is the County where I was born and where my family live. It’s where I went to school, where I first worked in farming, where I first trained as a manager for an international company, where I first ran and developed projects for a charity and where I set up my first business. Gloucestershire is also where I was an elected Councillor and Member of three of Gloucestershire’s Local Authorities.

As you can already see, I have a very strong affiliation with Gloucestershire, and with Cheltenham, Cirencester, Tewkesbury and Winchcombe in particular. However, all these places are important to me, not just because of the role and part they have already played in my life. But especially so, because they are all parts of the same community and local communities of which I am or have also been a part.

Community can mean a lot of things and could easily be considered to be different, depending on who you talk to. However, to me a community is the group of people who you share all of the important things in life with, rather than being the people who you share the same things with that are important in your own life.

Community is People and Place

The Community and what the community can do has never been as important as it is becoming and as it will soon become. Given all of the turbulence and difficulties that are beginning to affect everyone in some way, right across the world.

Yes, the world is itself a community. And it would certainly be a much happier, healthier, safe and secure place, if world leaders could cast their own agendas aside, and put the benefits of what they do for the People and the communities they should be serving first.

It’s no excuse, but at the level of world or even national leadership, it’s very easy to lose sight of how important every other person’s life experience is.

That’s why when we think about the basic or essential food, goods and services that each and every one of us needs to live and have self-sufficient lives every day, it is locality, localism and keeping every part of day-to-day life as local as possible, that is going to become the key ingredient to ensuring that everyone has a balanced, fair, just and above all, meaningful life.

Recognising that The System today, isn’t about ‘us’; BUT the Future will be

The Establishment no longer works for any of us, even though the amount that we pay in taxes means that on average, we work until May or June each year and ‘Tax Freedom Day’, when any of the money we earn thereafter is actually ours to spend as if it were our own.

One way or another, the help that we now need doesn’t and will not come from those who we should be able to expect to provide it.

Necessity now requires that whatever help we and our communities now or will need, we will all have to step up and do whatever we can to help ourselves, the people who are in our lives and the way of life and everything within it in the localities that surround us.

Our power lies wherever we focus it

Asking people to help themselves or even making the suggestion that public policy is very much ours to influence and change for the better, is something that many – perhaps even you – will feel some immediate resistance to.

We are, after all, living through a period of our own, if not world history, where we have been conditioned to feel helpless and that solving problems that affect us all is something that somebody, somewhere else is responsible for and always does.

Learned helplessness is a human disaster in the making. Simply because it encourages everyone who believes they are powerless to stand still.

In the circumstances we are experiencing, standing still is like going backwards. Because those who have power are abusing it to take everything that we understand forward, in to a future, in ways that only benefit them and their kind.

However, life isn’t something that happens out there, somewhere.

Life is happening right here, right now, in your mind and in the space or spaces around you that you walk in, talk in, feel in, touch in, eat in, wash in and experience every part of life in – each and every day.

Life isn’t happening remotely in a device somewhere.

But the picture that devices give us of someone else’s life can certainly make it feel like whatever is important in the digital world, is relevant and all-encompassing within our own.

It’s not. And the most painful lesson that we all have to learn, understand and accept in real terms, is that life doesn’t work as it should for more and more of us, because we aren’t living real lives.

Our lives are being dictated by people who are completely out of touch with us and who we are. But have a pedestal, lectern and platform in front of us, just because they are on a digital screen.

The current economic model and system of power doesn’t work for us

There isn’t much that needs to be said to anyone, no matter who you are, where you come from or what you do, for us to reach agreement that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way that everything works.

Whatever your relationship with money, the chances are that you are also concerned by the creeping feeling that less and less of the aspects of your life that you used to feel in charge of, still remain within your control.

In simple terms, it works this way and will continue to get worse in this way, as every decision that’s having an impact on the value of everything we have is being made by people who we are unlikely to ever meet.

The challenge that we all face today, is that the rules that allow all the things that are going wrong for us – no matter what they are – have been created or adapted to serve the purposes of those same people, and these are the people who we have not only trusted, but also put in charge.

Out of sight is out of mind for most.

And people who have power, influence and control by the truckload, are very dangerous when they have no integrity or respect for the responsibilities they have to others.

Localism or Going Local

I’ve written a whole series of books that focus on localism and how the focus of power must be brought back to local communities and for decisions that affect our daily lives to be made as close to us as possible and by people who we know and can trust.

However, the problem that I have faced throughout, is that when talking about anything in a broader or national sense, it quickly becomes as abstract as national politics and national news streams are, even though that’s how we often judge important things to be.

The problem is, real life and what is important to us isn’t abstract.

In fact, the real things that are important and all the things that can have the biggest impact upon everything that is happening to us is not abstract and is very specific indeed.

But we have somehow allowed the abstract, or what is outside of us, to influence all of our specific choices.

With AI and technologies now forcing their way into our digital lives, with consequences that will make real life feel so much easier, whilst teaching us to forget how making decisions for ourselves and even learning new things, the choice between being led by an abstract world where the real influences are never seen or understood, or taking back control and regaining conscious choice in everything we do has never appeared to be such an easy one that is actually so very hard.

Awakening to the reality that hides in plain sight

The damage of centralisation, globalisation and of allowing decisions that affect everyone to be taken by people who are unlikely to ever visit or have reason to understand the things that are happening in our streets and neighbourhoods are very easy for us to see in the news every night.

People who have zero understanding of the consequences and impact on the policies they write for every reason other than those that they should, are condemning increasing numbers of people to harder and more challenging lives, and then blaming them for the problems that they themselves have through their own incompetence caused.

It can only work for us, if we can reach out and touch it

A genuinely self-sufficient and fully localised system of public services and the governance that underpins the systems and processes that affect and impact daily lives would not be in danger of being abused or mismanaged in this way.

Indeed, the only way that we will be able to create a genuinely level playing field of opportunity and a public or community sector that works in the way that it should will be for the full balance of power, influence and decision making to be brought back to the People and local communities and administered openly, transparently and without any bias in the way that it always should.

Real Localism is what Authentic Governance looks like and what it would be.

Localism in its real sense

The most simple way to explain the change of focus from where it is today (Global, Central, European etc.) to where it should be (Local, Community etc.), is to think of it as being a switch from a values set based on money, profit and the accumulation of power and wealth, to the alternative values set which is focused on People, humanity and what we genuinely need for everyone to be happy, healthy, secure and safe.

Real localism isn’t rocket science.

But real localism certainly meets with a lot of resistance when the true depth and scope of what it means are openly discussed, because for many who do so well out of exploiting others (whether they are aware of it or not), localism represents what they believe to be a loss.

Sadly, because the Establishment know and understand that local communities are where the power of the people and everything that supports us should be, they frequently pay lip service to the principle of ‘localism’.

But as in the case of New Labour’s ‘Devolution’ from the 1997 General Election on, and then the Cameron Conservatives ‘Localism’ in the years that have followed since 2010, the type of localism and the return of power to local people that politicians from all sides having been selling us, all add up to no such thing.

Politicians today are desperately promoting what they call localism or any one of a number of similar things, which is Regional Centralisation by another name.

We face a challenging, but achievable course of action, that requires us, our communities, charities and businesses to by-pass the Establishment and begin putting localism into everything we do and are motivated by, if we genuinely want to solve all of the societal problems that not only our communities, but the Country and the whole world faces.

We need a new Economic Model that evolves itself from the community up

If you want to learn about economics, the last person you should ask is an economist.

History – albeit history that is used as a model and translated for the contemporary age, is another thing entirely.

We do not need to return to the dark ages or some kind of feudal system to see that life worked much better for everyone when everything that was needed for day-to-day life was available locally and provided by people that everyone knew.

Simple living is far more intelligent than the ‘connected’ world that we live in where relationships are being dehumanised and we have all become little more than a number or code to every company or organisation that we have any reason to buy something from or to do business with.

We will bypass and reject the heartless and inhumane way of living we experience today by

  1. Prioritising local growing, processing, manufacture and supply.

We will improve life for everyone dramatically by rejecting the money-based value system by

  • Putting People First.

We will change the world for the better by rejecting the hierarchical structures and system of governance by

  • Bringing power back to the most local level within our communities – creating a clean, authentic form of democracy that has never been allowed by the power hungry to exist before.

The new enlightenment that we are told we are experiencing is only enlightening for those who believe that they are in control.

People who don’t have any reason to even acknowledge the realities that many of the people whose lives they influence now face, because technology insulates them from all the pain that they cause.

PLEASE Remember: Just because technology can do so many ‘amazing’ things, it doesn’t mean that we are obliged to use it, or that we have no choice when it comes to doing so.

Priority 1: Local, Local, Local

Life isn’t a theory.

Yet we have life dictated to us as if it is.

The only way that things can really work in the best way possible for us all, is for whole supply chains, the route of food from farm to fork and how business works and money or currencies flow to be in circles that are as local as it is possible for them to be.

Forget any ideas, philosophies or narratives that identify with localism purely as ‘circular’ or ‘doughnut’ economics.

Whilst they may be well intended, these are theories that are based upon the current money-centric system continuing to be prevalent across all areas of life.

They are NOT what real localised economies are really about.

Localism and Locality Economics are about everything in life and the business streams that support life, people, communities and the environment, working locally and in a very localised way.

Priority 2: People First

Money isn’t everything. But people, our relationships and the world we live in really are.

People or human based values are in short supply, so the most effective way to change everything is to put People and our communities first.

We don’t need to make massive profits to experience happy, healthy, safe and secure lives. But we do need to have faith that changing minds – beginning with our own, is the most important step to changing the world to one that is just, fair and balanced for all – and that social enterprises that help everyone without charging more than anyone involved genuinely needs within local communities is the best place to begin.

Priority 3: Local Governance from local Communities and the grassroots up

We may have learned helplessness, but we have the ability to change things right now, by-passing the assumed behaviour that the Establishment expects and by making the system work for us and taking power back, rather than engaging in actions we have been brought up to expect which just continues to funnel power at people who abuse it and use it only to benefit themselves.

In the recent book Officially NONE OF THE ABOVE, we discussed the need for us all to act and take part so that the focus of political power is brought back to people we know and the decisions that affect us daily are made by people who have genuine skin in the game when it comes to knowing and understanding what we are experience, how we feel, and how we think.

No, we don’t need a revolution and the destruction of the current electoral system to do this. But we do all need to take part. However, in the long term, we must work towards the removal of any parts of the electoral system or system of democracy that can allow specific interests and the agendas of particular groups of people to manipulate and play the system, as is the case right now.

Social Enterprise and Community Enterprises | Bringing not-for-profit and key local businesses together to work as one

Putting People First isn’t just the long-term aim. Putting People First is the most important stepping off point in the series of practical steps that have the power to influence and deliver large scale change, even without the Establishment giving it its blessing, a green light or any kind of consent.

The way that we can do this is by creating a series of social enterprises that can immediately begin to tackle the issues that are being most acutely felt by what we today recognise as growing wealth inequality and the cost of living crisis, but in reality is a direct result of the broken economic model that the Establishment remains committed to, even though it is continuing to deliver increasing  levels of harm to People from all areas and across the whole spectrum of society.

It is certainly true that many will not have even considered the realities that many of the people they pass on the street daily are facing from the growing problems that are a direct result of this broken economic model. Of those that do or are open to the existence of a problem, even more cannot see an alternative way of running a 21st century model of society where money doesn’t have its current role.

Many People genuinely believe that creating a model of society that functions around what everyone needs, rather than what the reducing few just want, cannot deliver happiness, health, security and safety in any way. This is because of the genuine belief that money always has a role to play.

But money or rather inflated prices, excess prices and the greed and profiteering that sits behind it doesn’t have a role to play in any fair, balanced and just society. The only way to demonstrate this is to show the people that need to be convinced, and that’s why those who can see and understand this truth need to be the pioneers when it comes to taking action, as well as having and maintaining a lot of faith.

We can deliver different outcomes and with them, a different life experience for people across our communities very quickly, just by making a start

That start will be social enterprises that follow similar development and growth models in every local area, along with a very small number of new multimodal charity units that provide services for those in very specific cases of need, who have no way to pay.

By passing the Establishment and organisations profiting from essential goods and services that everyone needs

There is no point in attempting to reinvent the wheel. There are already some magnificent social enterprises and not for profit organisations operating in many areas that are doing the very best to help people on a cost-related or free basis already. The Glos Community Project will not seek to replicate or replace any of these within their tangible area of operation, and where or when possible, will also seek to redirect support that might become available to them.

However, The Glos Community Project will operate in any area where we have the volunteers/social business leaders, support and resources, where no such organisation already exists.

The Establishment has had plenty of opportunity to demonstrate that it can reform and get things right. Those involved no longer have the right to demand that we keep waiting for them to get things right, or to expect that we will continue to trust them, just because of the job title or responsibility that they supposedly hold.

This time and the future are ours to decide. They have had their chance and have cast what’s good for everyone rather than just them aside.

In time, many of those from within the current Establishment will accept that there was always a better way and that they made the decision not to exercise the responsibility that they held on our behalf, to do what is right.

We cannot trust anyone from within the Establishment today, to do what is right, until they can see and accept that putting People First is the new paradigm and how everything is going to run.

Who are The Establishment?

We have mentioned the Establishment and the reality that obtaining meaningful change will require bypassing the establishment at the very least.

Knowing who the Establishment are is therefore very important.

As a rule, anyone involved with or directly employed by any of the following will represent the establishment. There are exceptions right across the board, but for the purpose of excluding as much of the risk that comes from those who are invested in obstructing change as possible, in the first instances and until there is definite evidence to support otherwise, we will not trust or knowingly engage with any of the following:

The Establishment includes (but is not limited to):

  • The Civil Service
  • Town Councils
  • Parish Councils
  • Borough Councils
  • District Councils
  • County Councils
  • Unitary Authorities
  • Schools
  • Colleges
  • Universities
  • Social Services
  • Public Services of all kinds
  • Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) e.g. The Highways Agency / Highways England, The Environment Agency
  • National Charities that are well-funded and in the public eye
  • Elected Councillors
  • Elected Mayors
  • Members of Parliament
  • Police & Crime Commissioners
  • Mainstream Media
  • Media Companies
  • Corporate Businesses
  • Most Celebrities
  • The Military

Why | The Glos Community Project

Right now, even on the rare occasion that politics does something positive for People, it comes and works its way through the system at a pace that is simply too slow to help and benefit people who genuinely need help in their real lives.

Gloucestershire is no different. And whilst there are at least a few politicians on the seats of local Parish, Town, The Borough and Districts and the County Council who are still genuine in their aim of putting the needs of People first, the reality is that many of them don’t even understand just how little influence they – and therefore the People who elected them – have, over the things that we are expecting them to deal with on our behalf, each and every day.

The elephant trap that we can easily fall into is to think that bitching about any of this or that following, liking and supporting people who are saying all the things that we want to hear will somehow result in change.

It won’t. And that’s why I am here – as just another person from the community we share, who loves Gloucestershire and everything about it, with the aim of connecting like-minded people and taking the very practical steps that we can by working together, to help other members of our community and take the first leaps towards making the Towns, Villages and the Countryside that we love, a much better place and one that reflects the aims, values and aspirations of us all.

We really can change things for the better by doing the things that we can, rather than losing faith because the problems look too big and we believe that we can’t.

HP | The opportunity for change will be what WE make it | The Glos Community Project

You may have already heard of something called social enterprise, businesses that are run on a not-for-profit basis, or businesses that are set up not with the aim of making money, but creating some benefit to the community in some way.

The Glos Community Project is here to explore the opportunities that already exists and that are yet to be identified that will benefit the wider community through the services or products that they provide, whilst providing opportunities for budding social entrepreneurs and practical change activists, along with work opportunities for anyone and everyone – and especially those who might feel that the world has been passing them by.

Right now, I am looking for people who want to be the pioneers of social change within Gloucestershire’s communities. Individuals who are ideally looking for the opportunity to lead and to learn, but are driven by working collaboratively and for the benefit of everyone, rather than long or short term, about what they themselves can earn.

These are voluntary opportunities in the first instance, with the only immediate cost being the time and commitment that it will take, along with the determination that any successful entrepreneur would need to set up a business from scratch – but with the benefit of having the support and guidance of someone who has seen and experienced all of the ups and downs of creating, launching and managing businesses before.

Theres nothing good about global, but local builds love for others every time

Many of us struggle with understanding and identifying the difference between the things we need in life, and the things that we want in our life.

Don’t worry, there will be no judgement coming from me or anyone else who is closely involved in what we are doing if this does or has ever applied to you. The whole system is skewed and the messaging and advertising that is being constantly pumped at all of us has helped blurred the lines so much between need and want, that unless you are awake to anything being wrong with all of this, the two have merged and become one.

In my recent Book Levelling Level, we focused on identifying the difference between basic or essential needs and what many consider to be essential – but are actually just what those people want. We also focused on the reality that with the Establishment having worked tirelessly on behalf of specific interests to make just about every supply chain you could imagine operate to make excessive profits by delivering what everyone who can afford to buy it, wants, the same people who have been responsible have also destroyed the ability of communities and even our whole Country to provide just the basic or essential foods, goods and services that we all need.

Even talking about supply chains and terms like self-sufficiency will sound like gobbledygook or some kind of esoteric language to some. One of the many challenges we face is that this is intentional too. And the myth that we have been conditioned to believe is that everything costs less for us this way, that it is a better, healthier and more enlightened way of living, and that making us all dependent upon people that we have nothing in common with, will get rid of any problems because we all think the same way.

Regrettably, the same way or same thinking is based on nothing more than shared greed, profiteering and a complete lack of care for the human cost, such as loss of local jobs, overuse and unnecessary use of natural resources, exploitation of people and less developed cultures, and the enslavement to debt that is quickly overtaking populations across the world.

Target Business areas | Foods, Goods & Services that are ESSENTIAL to life

The Glos Community Project is all about the basics. The essentials that everyone needs to be able to access each and every day, so that they can lead happy, healthy, safe and secure lives within a fair, balanced and just environment.

Humans don’t get addicted to anything that they need. But the humanity in everyone is quickly destroyed by having too much of what they want.

Whilst the aims of The Glos Community Project will have many points of controversy, depending upon who you are, it’s the definition between what we need and what is essential to life, rather that what we want that will probably get the most backs up, whilst the world is able to continue in the way that it has been.

For the sake of repeating a lot of information that is available in my other books, the basics or the essentials for everyday living look very similar to this:

Food:

  • Fruits and vegetables that can be grown locally, either on farms, allotments or at home
  • Bread made using local flour with minimal processing that can be completed by hand or traditional milling methods.
  • Dairy products including Milk, Cheeses and Yoghurts that are made locally using traditional methods and without chemical additives, extensive processing or refinement
  • Meats that are farmed, prepared, stored, dressed and retailed locally, without unnecessary miles to heavily and unnecessarily bureaucratised abattoirs and processing facilities.
  • Fish and seafoods, either farmed inland, or transported from the nearest UK seaport.

Goods:

  • Clothing (basic)
  • Cleaning (To keep homes and anything for personal use clean and hygienic)
  • Kitchen (to cook, prepare and store food and drink)
  • Laundry (to wash and prepare clothing)
  • Health & Hygiene (Essential medicines, and goods used to keep clean and healthy such as toothbrushes, toothpaste, sanitary products etc.)
  • Transport (Bikes, Cars) – Only where regular transport cannot be provided in another or shared way

Services:

  • Clothing repairs
  • Vehicle repairs & maintenance where vehicles are owned
  • Building repairs and construction
  • Electricity
  • Water
  • Gas
  • Communication (mobile phone, broadband)
  • Unpaid apps
  • Entertainment (Free channels)
  • Transport (where vehicles are not owned or available for essential or irregular journeys)
  • Banking & Currency (outside of Establishment control)

The More People involved, the more local The Glos Community Project will become

In the first instance, it is difficult to estimate how much interest there will be and which social enterprises will be the most popular, even though I have a good idea what these will be.

If one person per social enterprise model were to come forward for each of them, we would certainly begin by opening up the first of each operation to the widest number of People that it would be possible for us to do so.

However, as interest grows, covering these same areas might be difficult and result in the level of service offered being reduced because there are too many people for one business unit to serve.

When this happens, the area will be divided up, so that every service that The Glos Community Project provides will be offered to the most local area possible.

The growth of The Glos Community Project will be a pathway of decentralization in every sense, focusing on improving accessibility and transparency at each and every step of the way.

Theres nothing about The Glos Community Project that can’t be done. The voices that say otherwise are from people who just have selfish reasons not to do it

No matter how you came to discover The Glos Community Project, there is a good chance that unless you have been searching for other like-minded people to do the things that you have already been thinking about, you will read through the list of social businesses that we want to see available to every community – just to begin with, and that you will think that this is something that cannot be done.

If you have an open mind, please ask yourself the question what makes you believe that, and then follow up by asking yourself why.

Everything listed on this site is achievable. Not only that. As more People from our communities sign up, commit to our aims and provide us with whatever support they can, more and more of us will understand that putting people first is a very good, mutually beneficial and happy way to live, where the results will speak for themselves.

Whilst it will be challenging to get the first few of each social business model planned, where necessary funded, launched and then running, we will very quickly have turnkey frameworks or plans available for every new area, that only then have to be tailored to ensure that whatever is being offered, will meet that specific community’s needs.

Areas outside of Gloucestershire

I will be as happy to hear from you if you are outside of Gloucestershire as I will be if you get in touch with me from any of the communities and local areas within.

We might need to take a different approach, depending on what you are able to do, but The Glos Community Project is just a model or incubator where we can all learn, and we must aspire to a much wider roll-out if community or grassroots power is to have the revival that it now can.

If you are from outside Gloucestershire, please consider all the opportunities that have been listed on this site and then get in touch.

I will be happy to arrange a one-to-one meeting via Zoom, WhatsApp, Facetime or Teams. Or if you have a question or questions that would be helpful for others too, I will be happy to post a blog or a video to explain or discuss what we can do.

Area Organisers – Other areas

If you have been reading The Glos Community Project and feel that you might have what it would take to get the ball rolling with a like-for-like Project in your own County or Region, I would really like to hear from you.

Please e-mail me and provide me with whatever information you would want to know about me, if you were already set up in your area and were thinking about inviting me to work alongside you to set up over here in Gloucestershire right now.

Funding Opportunities

We are actively searching for philanthropic support for specific projects or to support them all.

If you would like to provide support through a donation, through sponsorship or through a grant of some kind, we would be very pleased to hear from you at the earliest opportunity.

We are aware that many substantial grants are offered on the basis of meeting very specific aims. Where possible, we will build the services offered in ways that will meet those aims, as long as doing so will not compromise the key principles and aims of The Glos Community Project.

Regrettably, we cannot accept support that would be allocated in support of any political agendas other than bringing back power to communities themselves, through the creation and development of Community Meetings.

If you would like to discuss your idea, please get in touch with Adam for a chat. 

Every penny counts and if you are supportive of what we are trying to achieve, but can only afford to make a small donation, we will appreciate and value your support just the same. Please find our Crowdfunder HERE.

About You | Social Entrepreneur

The most important thing about you won’t be anything to do with how creative, innovative or entrepreneurial you are or can be. These are all words that get misused and there are lots of people who genuinely believe myths such as being self-employed means that you are an entrepreneur.

The most important fact or truth about you will be that you are driven by helping others, by genuine social change (no matter how challenging that might appear to be) and that you have accepted that change of the kind that we all need will not come from anyone that most people are expecting it to come from.

I’m not keen on bullet points for something like this, so please treat the following as a framework only, and if there are things that resonate but you are not sure about anything else, please just get in touch and we can have a chat.

You Should

  • Be motivated by helping others
  • See everyone as an equal, no matter who or what society suggests that they are
  • Be open to learning new things
  • Be able to see everything objectively and be aware of how your feelings might influence this when and if anything leaves you emotionally ‘triggered’.
  • Think critically – no matter the situation
  • See a crisis as an opportunity
  • Able to work in the moment, without a plan or guide to help you
  • Be sure that you can see commitments and agreements through, even if you are not being watched or monitored
  • Have a genuine passion for the type of social business(es) that you are interested in and know that you will gain a sense of achievement from being successful within it.
  • Be open to learning and carrying out any of the jobs or tasks that will be required to make this business run and be successful
  • Be comfortable with talking to people, to journalists and anyone who has a genuine interest in what you are doing
  • Have experience working with different social groups, either professionally or voluntarily
  • Be aiming to earn a wage which relates only to the genuine cost of living at the time
  • Understand that volunteers are not paid employees and will only do their best for you, if they enjoy and see a benefit to them or what they believe in from doing whatever you ask them to do
  • Be happy to sign and keep to the terms of a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA)

These Opportunities are unlikely to be for you if you:

  • Believe that someone else will solve all of society’s problems
  • Knowingly hold prejudices of any kind about other people
  • Are aiming to own your own commercial company or business
  • Are motivated only by the potential of what you could earn
  • Have any hang ups about doing any kind of job
  • Believe that you must be qualified to do anything
  • Make excuses or tell lies to cover up mistakes, problems or any issues that are outside of your control
  • Are already committed to any political or social agenda – no matter how good or beneficial you might consider it to be (This includes any political party, green or climate focused movements, groups with a spiritual ‘agenda’, ‘alt’ movements or anything that promotes ideologies built on ‘us vs them’ thinking at any level or of any kind.

Opportunities for Social Entrepreneurs in Gloucestershire

There are a number of different opportunities for people who would like to lead the development of a social business across Gloucestershire.

These will include:

  • Local News
  • Clothing Hire & Resale
  • Car and Bike Loan Hubs
  • Local Food Circuits
  • Allotments & Home Growing
  • Local Exchange Platforms
  • Local Currency
  • Homeless Hubs
  • Community Pubs
  • Community Brewing
  • Community Marketplace
  • Mend & Make Do Repair Centres
  • Community Meetings
  • Skills for Life Courses
  • Community Helpers
  • Farm Direct Cooperatives
  • Community Bakeries

Opportunities will be local community specific, with the aim that there will be at least one of every business type listed within walking distance of homes in suburban or town areas, or available and shared between no more than 4 to 6 villages in remote areas.

We will not seek to establish any new social business where a community-focused social business of the same kind, or offering a service of the same kind exists, unless it is being delivered as part of an Establishment agenda.

Opportunities for Volunteers in Gloucestershire

We are also looking for specialist project and management support

  • Web & Software Developers
  • Social Media Creation & Support
  • App Developers
  • Fundraisers
  • Citizen Journalists

Areas of Gloucestershire where you might be | The Glos Community Project

Forest of Dean

  • Coleford
  • Cinderford
  • Newent
  • Longhope & Mitcheldean
  • Newnham on Severn

Cotswold (South)

  • Cirencester
  • Tetbury
  • Northleach
  • Fairford
  • Lechlade

North Cotswold

  • Bourton on the Water
  • Stow on the Wold
  • Moreton in Marsh

Cheltenham

  • Town
  • Prestbury
  • Leckhampton
  • Hatherley

Tewkesbury (North)

  • Town
  • Winchcombe
  • Bishops Cleeve & Woodmancote

Tewkesbury (South)

  • Churchdown
  • Brockworth
  • Hucclecote
  • Highnam
  • Innsworth

Gloucester

  • City
  • Quedgeley
  • Longlevens
  • Barnwood
  • Tuffley

Stroud

  • Town
  • Stonehouse
  • Wotton under Edge
  • Dursley
  • Painswick
  • Berkeley & Sharpness

What you will need to provide | Social Entrepreneur

Your time and commitment are the most important requirement.

There is no requirement for you to pay any type of joining or membership fee as a The Glos Community Project Volunteer. You just need to be confident in what you are doing and be prepared to put your name on your project right from the moment you start.

Together we will build the platform that will be required to attract support and any necessary funding to get your social business started.

It is very easy for anyone considering going into business for the first time to believe that they have to buy everything new and have new everything. You don’t.

My aim is to minimalise the risk to everyone who joins The Glos Community Project in whatever role, and to build every new service and the organisation that supports it with the absolute minimum financial cost to those who get involved (i.e. you may need to pay for fuel to travel, use your phone etc.)

Local News

The news ‘industry’ has undergone a massive transformation within the past two decades.

The national news or mainstream media and regional news or what we once referred to as the ‘local papers’ – or what’s left of them all, are completely under the spell or influence of their owners, who pays them or both, and the only losers have been the general public and the people who read, watch or listen to anything that branded media companies produce.

Sadly, local news was one of the biggest casualties of the internet’s arrival, when the ‘cash cow that once was classified advertising’ dried up overnight, pushing the evening paper that everyone went to for everything online, with the outcome very quickly giving the lie to the idea that the local paper was actually about news.

Stories that are important about local life don’t get the coverage that they should do. And the absence of real-life stories from the next village or the school on the other side of the town have only served to fuel the idea that news in the mainstream is representative of real life, and that what comes from outside of our communities is the only news that there is.

Unfortunately, with most of the national or branded news, and much of the stories that come from well-known names and personalities online all being little better than opinion, people have very quickly lost touch with what real life really is.

We need to change this. And we need to make the news interesting to everyone again, without there being any kind of agenda at work.

The Opportunity to set up and contribute to new local community news platforms

We would like to set up news services in every local area, using all of the media options that are available to us to focus on all the stories that are genuine news, rather than being about what someone else wants us all to think.

Focusing on the opportunity to harness citizen journalism at its very best, I am looking for social media, tech and internet-savvy people with the ability to research and write genuine news stories objectively, and where commentary is required, to do so in ways that cover all relevant points of view.

The ability to edit other people’s work will be important, as one of the aims of these local news platforms will be to give people across our communities the opportunity to tell the stories they have that will help and inspire others.

If you are already visualising what you could do with this opportunity, it could very well be one for you.

If you are interested in this opportunity, please e-mail me and include:

  • Your name, contact and social media details
  • A copy of your current CV (If you have one)
  • How much time you have available to commit to The Glos Community Project
  • A short note explaining why local news provision is interesting to you, what your priorities would be if you were leading the development of this social business in your local area, and how you would get started.
  • Links to any examples of articles you have written or any media you have created that is available online.

Clothing Hire, Repair, Recycling & Resale

Everyone needs clothing. But fashion itself is one of the most obvious ‘wants’ that the age of consumerism has encouraged us to have, with very small differences existing between clothes carrying or not carrying a name, but that brand itself means that cost itself is one of the key issues when it comes to what clothes any one of us can have.

The media age creates the perceived need, whilst the banks and financiers now provide the credit that is building a time bomb of debt that only exists because of greed. Worse still, the real cost to our communities through the loss of jobs and to the planet from clothing being needlessly made thousands of miles away on the cheap, where working rules don’t exist and costs are cheap so that profit margins can be exponentially increased, really gives the lie to what globalism has really been about.

The more expensive the clothing, the less likely we are to regularly wear or even wear it. Recent data suggests that a significant percentage of new clothing is either never sold or never even worn.

Recycling clothing through apps such as Vinted is already becoming popular and clothing libraries are being tried in some places too. But we could do a lot more and with the long-term aim of returning sustainable clothing manufacture and production to the UK and our communities, we need to make good affordable clothing available to everyone for all occasions – and without the need for anyone to go into debt, whether they can afford it or not.

The opportunity to set up Clothing Libraries and Resale, Recycling and Repair hubs

We would like to set up Clothing hubs in all areas, leveraging the technology that is available, to make Recycling, Repair and Reuse of good clothing a part of normal life once again. 

Focusing on creating local stores that are accessible to all, whilst using apps and the internet to make services and sales available online, I am looking for entrepreneurial leaders with a passion for clothes and the drive to make thrifty wardrobes fashionable, to help create a service that will have the ability to help people from all backgrounds in a multitude of ways.

Ideally, you will already have the ability to mend repairable clothing and be comfortable using the existing resale apps and platforms as a start. However, this is certainly one of the social business models that could easily be developed not just by one community-focused individual, but perhaps a few.

If ideas are already flowing through your mind about how clothing libraries, clothing hire and clothing recycling and repair could work even better than what people already know, this could certainly be the opportunity that is reaching out to you.

If you are interested in this opportunity, please e-mail me and include:

  • Your name, contact and social media details
  • A copy of your current CV (If you have one)
  • How much time you have available to commit to The Glos Community Project
  • If not already included in your CV, an addendum that covers any skills and experience you already have that would help you to make a clothing hub in your area to thrive
  • Pictures or links to anything that you have done
  • A short overview of what appeals to you about the concept of Community Clothing Hubs and what you believe the priorities would be at the beginning and during the stages of the early roll-out.

Community Vehicle Lending Hubs | Car and Bike Loans

Sadly, because of the impractical and tyrannical way that Green Policy, Climate Change and ridiculous Policies such as Net Zero have been rolled out and are being adopted by local authorities through polices such as the switch to EPVs, ULEZ and 15 Minute Cities, the practical reality that we don’t need 4-car households and shouldn’t be wasting money that we cannot afford on journeys that we simply don’t need to make are being overlooked and are in danger of being passed by.

We don’t need cars that sit in car parks all day and on driveways or by the sides of roads during holidays, weekends and overnight. But we do need to have access to the most appropriate forms of transport for the journeys that we need to make, as and when we need to make them, and we need a localised system that makes this happen – and happen well, for us all.

The opportunity to set up Community Vehicle Lending Hubs

I am looking for people with an interest in cars, motorbikes, epvs and emerging transport technology to help create and build local vehicle lending hubs that make shared vehicle use both normal and respectable, and in a way that means consistent quality of experience for users, with the minimization of vehicle abuse.

Whilst experience in things like fleet management, repairs, vehicle hire and areas of work like that would clearly be very helpful, starting with a clean sheet and no experience of these areas is likely to be just as helpful, as we really do need to get this offering right to create the buy-in that we need from members of our communities from the start.

If you are interested in this opportunity, please e-mail me and include:

  • Your name, contact and social media details
  • A copy of your current CV (If you have one)
  • How much time you have available to commit to The Glos Community Project
  • If not already included in your CV, an addendum that covers any skills and experience you already have that would help you to make a Community Vehicle Lending Hub in your area to thrive
  • A short overview of what appeals to you about the concept of Community Vehicle Lending Hubs and what you believe the priorities would be that will encourage People to trust and rely on borrowing vehicles in your local area, rather than falling back on ones that they own

Community Public Transport

Yes, we already have a large number of community transport organisations and providers such as Dial-a-rides. However, many of these are now driven by and focused upon contracts and provision that has been identified by County Councils and Government Agencies in ways that make them subservient to the Establishment, creating the perception that they are just there for ‘old people’ or children with special educational needs.

On the other hand, the ‘public transport’ that we have, which includes both buses and trains, stopped being public in the genuine sense, the moment that the operating companies, transport providers, and infrastructure companies were privatised and became tools in profit-making hands.

Yes, they provide services that are accessible to the public. But they are not in any way focused on the need for genuine public transport to be universally accessible, and they never will be for as long as private shareholder interest and earnings or dividends being paid to owners remains involved.

In the absence of any will on the part of the Establishment to take back and maintain public transport services without the involvement of privately owned companies or the influence of unions who by holding any organisation to ransom are in effect doing exactly the same thing, we must work to create a Community Public Transport Service that begins by ensuring that transport provision exists within local communities where any services that can be provided by Community Vehicle Lending Hubs ends.

The opportunity to set up a Community Public Transport Hub in your area

The big focus for developing Community Public Transport Hubs is understanding local need, creativity and innovation when it comes to meeting that need, and a very open and positive approach to working with customers from within the local community, as well as being able to engage with and build good working relationships with the stakeholders who will be unavoidably involved.

Unlike the majority of the social entrepreneur roles and opportunities listed with The Glos Community Project, this one does require that those interested already have a Full, preferably clean Driving License which will ideally include minibus driving (up to 17 seats) – NOT for Hire or Reward.

There may also be a requirement for those running or contributing to the management of our Community Public Transport services to hold or qualify for a Certificate of Professional Competence (CPC) in bus service operations, and/or that they can apply for and hold a Private Hire License, which will require a basic DBS check and no previous driving disqualifications or other forms of conviction that will exclude them from applying to or being registered by the Licensing Department at the local District or Borough Council.

If you have any past convictions or problems with your driving license, you should be able to check the Licensing Policy for Private Hire & Hackney Taxi Licenses online. Please note that we will check every existing local policy before beginning work on any new hub.

If you are interested in this opportunity, please e-mail me and include:

  • Your name, contact and social media details
  • A copy of your current CV (If you have one)
  • How much time you have available to commit to The Glos Community Project
  • If not already included in your CV, an addendum that covers any skills and experience you already have that would help you to build a very successful Community Public Transport Service within your local community area
  • A short overview of what appeals to you about the concept of universal transport provision and Community Public Transport, and what you believe will be necessary for People to experience daily, so that the service genuinely works.

Food Supply

By far the most important areas of the social or community businesses that The Glos Community Project is aiming to focus on is the growing, harvesting, preparation, production and supply of basic or essential foods within the shortest and most reliable supply chains possible.

Sadly, we take for granted that food will always be available either online or at the local supermarket. Even though there were some minor shortages during the Covid Pandemic and some supplies of vegetables were temporarily out of stock or in reduced supply earlier in 2023, the reality is that none of us have yet experienced the shortages and changes to the food supply that are now almost certain to come in the months and years ahead.

Globalisation, centralization and the economics of big business have made our communities and the whole of the UK itself dependent upon the supply of basic and essential foods that we could easily grow ourselves. For the sake of somebody somewhere making bigger and bigger profits, whilst power has been taken further and further away from the people so that it can be concentrated in the hands of the few, we have been sold the lie that it’s better for all of us if food comes to us across whole continents, and that it’s also better for us and will make us all happier if it comes to us in increasingly processed or ultra processed forms.

Many don’t even  realize that we have become dependent on foods that are not in any way healthy for us, whilst our agricultural and growing sectors have themselves surrendered or given up the ability to grow and provide a range of food stuffs for local supply, whilst the politics of money and globalism have made farmers reliant upon incomes they have little or no influence over, whilst growing fewer and fewer things.

Farm shops are not a luxury or non-essential choice. But it serves the current economic model for us to see them that way

Many of us visit farm shops – where they are available, and do so with the belief that to do so is a luxury or a treat, because we can be fairly sure that whatever they sell to us will cost more than what we would pay for it at a supermarket – even though the levels of quality and the provenance are nowhere near being the same.

Farm shops and any retail business that sells locally made, perhaps organic, high-quality foods with the absolute minimum of processing involved seem expensive, because the way that most foods are mass produced and massively processed has made them that way. It is quite literally the economics of scale that not only appear to make food cheaper, but also guarantee that the marketplace is controlled by very few hands, and that the people involved make ridiculous profits from whatever they do.

Whilst we need affordable basic or essential foods more than ever, we do not need any part of the process that only appears to benefit us by lowering the purchase price, but then goes on to cost us in every other possible sense – including the increasing risks to our health and our lives.

If the whole of the UK Farming, Growing and Fishing Industries were reformed and restructured so that their priority and focus was always on local supply – through complete supply chains that are as local as it is possible for them to be, the price of all essential and basic foods of a much higher quality and standard would quickly come down and be accessible to everyone too.

Our Farmers are struggling because the Establishment is failing them too

One of the most regrettable parts of the Food Supply Question today is the reality that Farmers are already acutely aware that the self-sufficiency or food security of the whole of the UK is now at very high risk.

Sadly, although Farmers are some of the most creative, resourceful and entrepreneurial people you could ever meet or know, the Industry and its leaders like the National Farmers Union, is still very much committed to the misplaced belief that the Establishment will come to the rescue and provide the support they all want for whatever they currently envision as being the necessary change.

For those from the farming community who read this, it is time to realise, understand and accept that there are many different agendas at work within and beyond the Establishment, but none of them place a priority on anything like the traditional model of farming even in the way that we currently know or believe it to be.

Like so many other areas of business and life, we must now take a very practical approach and different view of food production, and continue to do so for as long as the current Establishment is able to maintain its hold.

We must bypass the Establishment food strategies and incentive plans, and point all farming and food producing businesses back to community focused production using up to date methodology and thinking, but in a very traditional, perhaps even shops-around-the-village-green kind of way.

On the current trajectory, more and more farmers will lose or have to give up farms, whilst communities will be pushed further and further away from being able to sustain themselves as we unnecessary lose more and more productive land.

Local Food Circuits

The Glos Community Project aims to work with farmers, and all locally aligned businesses to champion and recreate localised Community Food Chains that keep the growing, production, necessary processing and preparation, transport and supply of all basic and essential foods as local and as self-sufficient as possible, so that local communities can quite literally fend for themselves.

This is an ambitious task. Not least of all, because many will see the return of fully localised markets as a regressive or backwards step, simply because of the way that certain interests and the focus upon profit always being the key priority has conditioned them to think.

However, farmers, aligned business leaders and members of the wider community coming together to discuss a mutually beneficial strategy will quickly open up doors and a dialogue that very few would currently consider to be viable – but that is quickly going to make a massive amount of sense in what are very turbulent and changing times.

The Opportunity to Facilitate and Coordinate Farm Direct Cooperatives

I am actively looking for a number of social entrepreneurs who have the people skills, the ability and the motivation to knock on doors, open up and build new relationships with a range of very different people who are very worried about the future, but are at least initially likely to be very resistant to considering stepping away from the business model where the establishment makes all the rules and only they can offer any help.

You may be from the Farming or Rural Community or from outside of them. But you will have both fluency and understanding not only what farmers and growers have the ability to do, as well as what might be their needs, along with a very innovative and entrepreneurial view and understanding of what it is likely to take to get the right people, businesses and agencies together, to make robust local food supply chains work, so that the self-sufficiency and food security of local communities can be guaranteed.

It is very important to accept that the really exciting part of this social or community business platform will be just how much knowledge already exists within all of businesses that would gain from being involved and that the success of this part of The Glos Community Project will depend on getting everyone who could contribute and benefit from this, not only to open up and share their ideas, but to also commit to becoming actively involved.

If you are interested in this opportunity, please e-mail me and include:

  • Your name, contact and social media details
  • A copy of your current CV (If you have one)
  • How much time you have available to commit to The Glos Community Project
  • If not already included in your CV, an addendum that covers any skills and experience you already have that would help you to open doors within the farming community and with business leaders within the community who will all need to be inspired by the story that makes real the truth that there is another way.
  • A short overview of why you believe that Local Food Circuits will provide food security and what you believe the common USP will be that will engage, create buy-in and get everyone important on board

Allotments & Home Growing

Whilst farmers and the Grower community have the ability to change their working practices and to create and employ new infrastructure quickly, the industry wide change that will be needed may not happen as quickly as we might all like – once the need for this massive change really begins to hit home.

To help and support the creation, development and implementation of Local Food Circuits, there is a part that the majority of us can play in helping ourselves and contributing to the local community effort, if we are prepared to ‘Home Grow’ any foods that we can.

There are a range of ways that Home Growing from the smallest scale up to a level where you might be able to supply certain fruits or vegetables to your whole area could be possible, depending on what resources you already have access to. These might include a garden, a deep window sill, an allotment, or an area within your home where you could set up a hydroponics system.

Today, Home Growing is seen as being quirky or excentric by many. Yet it could be a very easy and quick way for everyone who is able, to ensure that they have ongoing or regular access to a source of the vital nutrition that everyone genuinely needs.

The opportunity to Facilitate and Coordinate Home Growing Hubs

To support Local Food Circuits and also feed into our new Community Marketplace, it is an aim of The Glos Community Project to support homeowners to utlise the space and resources that they have available for Home Growing, and to identify land and develop the availability of allotments so that Home Grown fruits or vegetables of one kind or another are available to everyone.

I am looking for social entrepreneurs who can either set up and run, or coordinate others to provide the following:

  • Purchase, sale and supply of gardening equipment
  • Purchase, sale and supply of hydroponics equipment
  • Rental, purchase, preparation and letting of allotments
  • Developing an online signposting service to quickly identify anything that will help
  • Work with our Skills for Life facilitators to provide online, classroom and one-to-one training

Like Farm Direct Facilitators and Coordinators, the ability and desire to collaborate with others who have knowledge and skills that will help is vital to the success of this role, as if having a very open mind and the ability to inspire people across the community to think about the meaning of self-sufficiency in a very different way.

If you are interested in this opportunity, please e-mail me and include:

  • Your name, contact and social media details
  • A copy of your current CV (If you have one)
  • How much time you have available to commit to The Glos Community Project
  • If not already included in your CV, an addendum that covers any skills and experience you already have that would help to demonstrate the kind of approach you would have to getting people to commit to and stay committed to Home Growing.
  • A short overview of what appeals to you about Home Growing and the role you see that it will play in providing food security at the most local level.

Building Local Economies

‘But we already have a local economy?’ I hear you think.

Yes, we do. But they are very much part of the national and international economy and the real question you might want to ask yourself is how does the economic system that we have really benefit or work for you?

Unless you are a) a billionaire b) a massive corporate shareholder c) playing the markets in some way or d) working for one or someone very similar to all of the above, the economic and monetary system that we have is not working for you or benefiting you in any way – whatever the common, constructed or urban myths tell you.

In my book Levelling Level, we discussed the certain reality that Money isn’t worth anything other than what any of us believe it to be. But that doesn’t stop a great many people who are otherwise probably very sensible from attributing great value to it and letting the accumulation and manipulation of it takeover their lives – all without even a second thought for the cost to everyone else.

Regrettably, the journey that the Establishment is now pushing us along toward the extinction of cash and the use of central digital bank currencies (CDBC) or government derived cryptocurrencies isn’t one that will end well for anyone whose interests aren’t closely aligned with whatever the narrative of the Establishment might be.

The immense power that will be held by people we will never meet, because they can see where every penny of our money has come from and how it is then spent is only surpassed in terms of the danger to our freedom to do whatever we legally want to, by the reality that just because they might disagree with something we have said or whatever we might believe in, they would have the power to switch our money off and prevent us from accessing it whenever they might like.

You only need to think about the political figures who are already having their banking facilities closed down and are being denied access to alternatives to see an illustration of how this will all work. It doesn’t matter whether you agree with their politics or not today, this type of action will become a growing threat to the entire population if the management of money remains in the hands of the Establishment – and that’s before we even get to the discussion about the damage a financial system where the Establishment can just create money as and when it feels like it is doing and has done to our lives already – before thinking about what absolute control and tracking of money will allow them to make it become.

Making money and currencies nothing more than a unit of exchange, once again

The value of money dictates everything today. And the value of money is in the hands of the establishment and very greedy and profit hungry people who have zero understanding and no care about the consequences that come from what they do, as long as the system continues to benefit them.

Whilst a return to the gold standard and pegged or anchored economies would be a sensible step, the reality is that the system is now so rotten and influenced by speculation and private interests that are on the make, that the governance that exists is unlikely to ever deliver a monetary or economic system that genuinely works in the best interest of us all.

We have no choice but to start the money system all over again.

People, their presence and their value and input into the economy is the method that should be the basis for all financial value, not how much anything and everything costs us, or when we possess it, it can then be considered to be worth.

Through The Glos Community Project, the long term aim will be to create a system of new, localised currencies that will be available in a cash equivalent and cryptocurrency or digital form, but will be administered locally and be geographically specific, with the national level currency only being used for transactions between areas or as the baseline that maintains a fixed value between what the basic unit of each currency is worth.

In the short term, the creation of local economies will be focused on allowing people to trade anything they want to, including their labour, their knowledge and their skills, in a way that will quickly become insulated against greed and stupidity driven forms of inflation that are quite literally on the verge of collapsing the existing financial system or ‘bringing down the bank’.

We have no choice but to go back to basics and reject a monetary system that is destroying lives whilst it manipulates all of us and abuses our trust.

Bartering and Fair Exchange

Nobody other than the individual themselves, should be able to define and police a system of values that can exclude or disenfranchise them, based on issues that are outside of their own influence.

With increasing numbers of people missing meals or being forced to make the conscious decision between what essentials they can or can no longer afford, the return to a system where everything can be traded openly and fairly has never been needed by so many as it is right now.

The Glos Community Project is  focusing upon bartering and exchange of new and used goods, basic and essential foods and the services that People genuinely need so that anything and everything that any person has or is able to legally able to offer for sale or for exchange can be traded for something that they need, or for a monetary or currency value that is based solely on what the trading parties agree that the specific item or offering is worth.

Community Marketplaces & Local Exchanges

The New Local Economy is built around Local Exchanges, where all goods and services are available and accessible to all, whether they are provided by a business or an individual.

Membership is open to everyone from within the area of the community and trading is available both at a Local Exchange Hub and online with any costs being covered by a membership and/or access fee on a not-for-profit basis.

Local Currency

The ultimate aim is that each local community will have its own currency that will be available in both a cash equivalent and digital or cryptocurrency form.

The local currency will be fixed in value so that outside influences are then unable to profit from trading the currency or damage the stability of the Local Economy by either crashing or over inflating the total value of the money that is in circulation, held by any person or business and in use.

Local currencies will be the normal method of exchange within the community, but will be interchangeable with the national currency.

The only circumstances where the value of the currency will be negotiable would be within the circumstances of essential international trade

Building The Community Marketplace

Increasing numbers of People are unable to afford to buy the basic food, essential goods and services that they need, just to remain healthy, safe and secure.

Communities must take the steps necessary to help everyone who needs to turn the food they grow, the goods they make or no longer want, or the spare time that they have into whatever they need most, without middle men or profit-making businesses inflating the costs of anything and everything they touch.

The Glos Community Project is building a Community Marketplace that will pivot around a Local Exchange that is both physical and online, and will be supported by a fixed value local currency that will be available in both cash and digital forms.

The opportunity to Facilitate and Coordinate the Community Marketplace

I am looking for social entrepreneurs who already have a good practical understanding of the real economy, as well as the basic theories that underpin both classical and neoclassical economics in the sense that they relate to how the world works today.

However, that in itself is not enough. Being visionary in your outlook, you must be able to look beyond a world where money is the common factor in everything, and replace it with a much happier and healthier one where people and humanity are the common factor instead.

Stepping through and navigating between the world as most people see it today, and how it’s going to be, you will become a key collaborator, helping to develop the Community Marketplace person by person and business by business, as we complete the design and planning of the Local Exchanges and Currencies that will provide the necessary infrastructure, and then roll the whole system out.

Able to work as easily with the abstract as well as the practical, whilst making allowances for how others may not easily be able to do the same, any knowledge of cryptocurrencies, software and app design as well as existing trading and auction sites online will all be a great help.

Above all, like all the roles working with others within The Glos Community Project, it’s the relationship with people and understanding how others think and what influences them to do so that will help you most of all.

If you are interested in this opportunity, please e-mail me and include:

  • Your name, contact and social media details
  • A copy of your current CV (If you have one)
  • How much time you have available to commit to The Glos Community Project
  • If not already included in your CV, an addendum that covers any skills and experience you already have that would help show your fluency in economics and money management,
  • A short overview of what appeals to you about Community Marketplaces whilst demonstrating that you not only grasp but are fully committed to the principle of building community tools that put People First too.

Mend & Make Do | Repair Centres

Recycle, Reuse, Repair, Restore, Refurbish, Reclaim, Revitalise are all words that our current throw-away culture has taught us to look down on, unless you are either trying to make some kind of statement about your values, or you already have no choice but to recognise the value that remains within all sorts of goods that we use every day, but would otherwise just replace.

Those who still have the luxury of being able to afford and access goods that in many cases have deliberately been created with planned obsolescence or the ongoing need for them to be replaced in mind, rarely consider the reality that the option of recycling, reusing and repairing exists. Yet beyond the waste of money that every new purchase that could have been avoided really is, these are too often the same people that tell us they are the champions of green and ethical issues that run completely contrary to the profit driven exploitation and overuse of natural resources that their buying habits have legitimized, and that the greater percentage of all purchases made today are for goods that they want, but don’t actually need.

Theres nothing wrong with making maximum use of everything that we need. Ultimately, we must embrace a new view of standards for all goods so that quality will ensure longevity, and ongoing reuse, so that industry only delivers the goods that we need them too, and returns to both a size, standard and locality that works for our communities and our country as it should.

The Glos Community Project aims to promote the Make Do and Mend or Mend and Make do mindset, that successfully got British People through the very challenging period that surrounded the Second World War, but also demonstrated that there is nothing wrong with making the best of everything that we have – and that the problems only arise when narratives change or the messages that are shared publicly suggest that this isn’t a healthy way to think.

We want anyone and everyone who has goods, clothes or equipment that they have previously thrown away to start thinking again, and to start thinking recycle, repair, reuse, even if they don’t need them for their own use and then sell or exchange them, so that those items can then make someone else happy elsewhere.

The Opportunity to Coordinate and facilitate Local Repair & Refurbishment Hubs

These are roles that will work closely with the Facilitators & Coordinators of our Local Market Exchanges and Clothing Libraries and depending upon the skills and background of the applicant, they could oversee the development and management of both.

For stand-alone operations, I am looking for socially entrepreneurial people who have a background as a professional, voluntarily or even as a hobby, in repairing furniture, bikes, electrical goods and general household items to a very high standard – and to meet legislative requirements where necessary.

Repair Hubs are likely to run better with a number of people pooling their different skills and experience together, and it is therefore likely that applicants can expect to be collaborating with others very closely, from very early on.

If you are interested in this opportunity, please e-mail me and include:

  • Your name, contact and social media details
  • A copy of your current CV (If you have one)
  • How much time you have available to commit to The Glos Community Project
  • If not already included in your CV, an addendum that covers any skills and experience you already have that makes clear any technical training, experience and time served that you have.
  • A short overview of what appeals to you about being a champion of ‘Make Do and Mend’ thinking, and how making a social business out of the processes involved is a very exciting prospect for you.

Skills for Life Courses

Regrettably, education has lost sight of the relationship between being able to live a good, healthy and self-sufficient life, and what political and academic idealism currently dictates that it should be.

The problems that many people face throughout their lifetimes, just because a one-size-fits-all model has been imposed on a significant part of the population that either has a very different learning style, or for reasons outside of conscious control aren’t engaged with schooling in the way they are currently expected, do not fit a modern society that champions equality in all things.

In the longer term, the consequences of not having an education system that genuinely respects the reality that all young people of school age are generally either heads or hands, will be addressed by forms of government that actually do what public representation says it will on the box.

Until then we need to create new ways to help not only young people, but people of all ages to learn skills for life that the education system failed to give them, or doesn’t even offer any of us as standard anyway.

Life skills are predominantly practical or about the way that we perceive the world or think about it. So, unless the objectivity of academically trained or qualified teachers is clearly demonstrated, using ‘teachers’ to ‘teach’ anyone these skills or guide them to achieve this kind of understanding isn’t likely to be the best way.

The Glos Community Project aims to create an experientially led syllabus of skills and ideas that can be accessed and delivered locally within the community, by people from that community who genuinely have things that will be of use to others to share.

Courses are planned and will include:

  • Politics and how Politics and Government works
  • Basic Economics and how the current economy works
  • Critical Thinking and the dangers of Groupthink
  • Living without being influenced by AI
  • Surviving Social Media
  • Growing your own Food
  • Planning your own work-from-home business
  • Spiritual & Religious Independence

The Opportunity to Coordinate and Facilitate Community Skills for Life Hubs

I am looking for socially entrepreneurial people who have an understanding of education, but also see the value in providing learning opportunities in a more tailored form.

Openly bypassing the Establishment education offering for young people and adults of all ages and abilities, you will be able to speak credibly and create learning tools that are objective and give an accurate view of the areas you specialise in.

Where necessary, you will have a technical understanding that can be demonstrated by qualifications, by experience or both. But whatever background you have, you will be committed to The Glos Community Project principles of freedom of the person and freedom of thought.

If you are interested in this opportunity, please e-mail me and include:

  • Your name, contact and social media details
  • A copy of your current CV (If you have one)
  • How much time you have available to commit to The Glos Community Project
  • If not already included in your CV, an addendum that covers any skills and experience you already have that makes clear you have skills and experience that will be of great value to others when shared (If  you’ve read this far and sharing your learning with others is what interests you, please don’t be put off if this question makes you feel like you might not be qualified. Just tell me what you thought of when the question came to you ‘what can you share?’

Other Opportunities

If you don’t feel able or wouldn’t have the time to take on a facilitation or coordination role, we are also seeking people from all backgrounds to share their experience with others.

The list of planned Course above is also by no means exhaustive. So, if you have recognised the need for some kind of training that can be shared and will be genuinely beneficial for everyone within your community – without any kind of aim to influence the way that they think in some way, please get in touch.

Other Project Services The Glos Community Project is working on

As you will already realise, having read this far, we are very motivated by the prospect of what people within our communities coming together have the power to deliver and to do.

We have lots of ideas that we would like to consider, discuss and flesh out with the input of anyone and everyone who feels they can bring useful ideas, knowledge and understanding to the table, so that we can go on to achieve all the things that we would like to.

The list below only represents what we are going to begin looking more carefully at next.

If you have ideas about any of these, or are already considering or working on a social enterprise or charity project in Gloucestershire that sounds like it might overlap with any of these in some way, please get in touch and lets have a chat about how we might be able to help or collaborate so that together, we can achieve our mutual aims.

  • Community Helpers
  • Homeless Hubs
  • Community Pubs
  • Community Brewing
  • Community Supermarket
  • Community Bakery

And there will be more…

Community Meetings | Building a Real Democracy

Politics is the subject that we love to hate and we hate politics for all of the reasons that have made the way that politics is being done across the UK so very wrong.

Whilst it has not been publicly recognised, a very different way of doing politics in the UK exists right now, that has the ability to deliver very different outcomes for us all – just by working together from within our communities, to ensure that when elections are called, we have proper community representatives on the ballot paper, rather than someone or some organisations self-interested choice.

For those who want to see real political change and for us to have public representatives who actually represent the public, once they have been elected, there are opportunities across every community to set up and facilitate Community Meetings where communities can select and appoint candidates for all elections, who are qualified and endorsed as the community choice.

The whole process is covered in my recent book Officially NONE OF THE ABOVE, which is available as a book for Kindle on Amazon, or can be read without cost if you would like to visit my Blog, HERE.

I will be very happy to offer the same kind of help and support to anyone who has read through the whole book and feels that the process tabled is one that they can commit to and follow.

Please get in touch, if you would like to discuss the book and the opportunity to collaborate on this very exciting community building project.

How we will create and develop each social enterprise

The really exciting part for anyone joining The Glos Community Project as a social entrepreneur, is we will step off and into this journey in the same way that you would have to alone, if you were about to set up a business of your own from scratch.

The difference is that I will be there as a mentor, advisor, sounding board and strategic guide to help in every possible way.

Yes, there are many different things that we will need to look at very closely and consider. But we will go through the process of researching and writing the business plan that your specific local community will need and this will be there to help us as we get to work and build the relationships that we need to, as well as being a formal document, presentation and application tool for us to use in gaining any specific kinds of support such as grants and licenses that might be needed, to make sure that everything will work as it should, and that everything is done the right way from the start.

You will be required to play a significant part in this process and you must be ready to apply a very open mind to every experience that creating a new business in these circumstances is likely to throw your way.

This is a prospect that should excite you, rather than intimidate you. Getting it right will be fantastic for you and as the ideas and the effort that you contribute begin to make this new social business take shape, the only thing that will feel better than recognising your own success and the outcome from the work you have done, will be seeing the benefits to so many others make a difference to other People’s lives.

Aims

Immediate Aim 1

To address poverty and the growing shortages of basic essentials with practical solutions delivered for the community by members of the community

Immediate Aim 2

To counter the narrative that only the Establishment can help and overcome learned helplessness by demonstrating that the help we need will come from us ourselves

Immediate Aim 3

To begin the process of creating New Local Economies, championing self-sufficiency, food security and the relocalisation of all supply chains that meet the basic and essential needs of life

Immediate Aim 4

To engage everyone in the process of taking back political decision making from centralised government, focusing the centre of power to the most localised and people-centric form

Principles

Local buy, Local supply

No speculation, agents or middle men

People First

Money or Currency is a unit of exchange and doesn’t vary in value

Technology is there to support roles, not to replace them

Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should

The lowest paid should be able to support themselves fully and provide all the basic essentials for life that they need on the equivalent of the basic or minimum weekly wage, without going into debt or requiring third party support of any kind.

Power must be as local to the people and the community in which they live and contribute as much as possible

Collaborate and make it even better

If any part of all of The Glos Community Project proposal is ringing bells or making sense to you and you can see a way we can improve on what you can see, or extend into a service offering that you are currently unable to see, please get in touch and share your thoughts.

We are not precious about the offer we are making. It’s a beginning and certainly not the end. So, by the time we are really off and running and in the business of delivering real change, we appreciate and value the input that will inevitably come from many different people and sources.

You really don’t have to join as a social entrepreneur or volunteer a specific set of skills to be able to help. The only thing we will insist on is that you really can live by and embrace the approach that whoever we are and wherever we are from, we are all 100% in this together, and that any advice, support or direction is given freely and without any form of direction or conditions attached.

Can we help you with a project that has similar aims?

If you are already working on a project serving your community that is aligned with The Glos Community Project offering in any way, we would be very happy to consider supporting you and collaborating with you wherever you are.

Regrettably, we cannot support projects or work where specific agendas or political motives are involved – no matter how good or harmless you may consider them to be.

More Reading

An Economy for the Common Good and The Glos Community Project were not written in isolation and are part of a series of books that I began writing about three years ago in early 2022.

Each of the following list of Books is a variation on a theme, but works very much under the principle that it is not only possible but actually healthy to be able to understand, value and even hold different views or perspectives of the same situation or set of circumstances at the same time, whether that be in the Past, Present or Future tense.

Equally, it is also important to be able to consider different pathways for the future that sit beyond what many consider to be the obvious, simply because the obvious itself is usually inextricably linked with what has already been done and what sits in the past.

All of the following titles are available to purchase as complete eBooks for Kindle from Amazon using the links provided.

Where indicated, titles may also be available to download FREE as PDF Copies from my Blogsite in different forms, using the links provided.

If you would like to discuss any of the works listed, please get in touch.

Levelling Level (30 Mar 2022)

Amazon

From Here to There Through Now (3 Oct 2022)

Amazon

The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government (3 Dec 2022)

Amazon

A Community Route (28 Mar 2023)

Amazon

The Grassroots Manifesto (18 Apr 2023)

Amazon

Officially None of the Above (18 May 2023)

Amazon

Actions Speak Louder than Digital Words (8 Jun 2023)

Amazon

PDF Download

One Rule Changes Everything (23 Dec 2023)

Amazon

PDF Download

Food From Farms Guaranteed (3G) (15 Feb 2024)

Amazon

PDF Download

Days of Ends and New Beginnings (7 Apr 2024)

Amazon

The Basic Living Standard (14 Apr 2024)

Amazon

Our Local Future (18 Aug 2024)

Amazon

PDF Download

Who Controls Our Food Controls Our Future (14 Nov 2024)

Amazon

PDF Download

Your Beliefs Today create Everyone’s Experiences Tomorrow (11 Jan 2025)

Amazon

Manifesto for a Good Dictator (26 Jan 2025)

Amazon

Back Page

When we hear the word ‘economics’ or ‘economy’, what does it make us think?

Money, business, growth, commerce, profit, wealth, trade are all likely to be terms that will spring to mind.

But what if the way we think about economics and what an economy or the economy really are is completely wrong?

What if a genuine economy were not about money or any type of material gain and instead had people, community, the environment, living good happy lives and the common good at its heart?

An Economy for the Common Good opens the door to thinking differently about the role of money, finance and economics in our lives and provides examples of the steps that we could take at any time to begin the creation of a new localised economic system that will lead to us all having much better experiences of everything in our lives.

To download a FREE to read PDF copy of An Economy for the Common Good, please follow the link immediately below. If you would like to download a copy for Kindle for the price of £1.99 (UK – correct at time of publication), please follow the link to Amazon at the bottom.

The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government | Full Text

Introduction

It is reasonably safe to assume that if you have found your way to reading this page, you will be aware that we are facing massive societal and economic problems, locally, nationally and internationally too.

The chances are, however, that you will already have an idea or ideas of your own that anchor to what you have concluded yourself or that you agree with others to be the cause.

Common causes for problems like the Cost-of-Living Crisis, Inflation, National and Personal Debt, Energy Prices, Strikes and others too are identified as events such as Brexit, The Covid Pandemic, The War in Ukraine, or placed directly at the feet of The Government, a previous government, any one of The Political Parties or one or more of the Politicians involved.

However, it is not the events that the Country and the World has faced which are the cause of our problems themselves.

It is not the Political Party, the Group or Individual itself that can be identified as the cause.

Yes, the way that our Governments, Politicians and anyone with influence or responsibility for the response and measures taken to mitigate against or implement solutions to, or even see them through to conclusion, are certainly a more informed way to think about these events, rather than it being all about the events themselves.

But even the response or way that those with power have responded isn’t the real cause of our problems.

Our problems are caused by the way that we, and more importantly the way that our Politicians and anyone with influence or responsibility that can affect our lives in some way thinks, acts and behaves.

It is thoughts, actions and behaviour that cause everything. This is what really matters when it comes to the effects of every decision taken that affects Public Policy of any kind, and then finds its way to us.

The crisis that we face and the problems ahead were not deliberate. But they weren’t created by accident either

The UK and the world are sleepwalking towards disaster. Chaos that could have been avoided if the people who lead us – Our Politicians, had taken a very different approach to the way that they think, act and behave when it comes to the decisions they make.

Contrary to accepted thought or to any common or accepted narrative, the people who we currently elect to be Politicians are rarely the best fit to fulfil the role of being a public representative.

Poor Public Representatives make decisions subjectively, in an isolated or myopic way, and do so without due care and attention to the broad range of factors and considerations that the Public should be able to expect and already assume will inform the process of how objectively based Public Policy – which all of it should be – is made.

It is because we have been electing people who are not suitable to be Politicians for so long, that the negative impact from having poor decisions made repeatedly to solve that problems that previous poor decisions made by other unsuitable Politicians have created, that the effect on everything has been cumulative, getting steadily but unconsciously worse.

Bit by bit, ‘The System’ that we have has become increasingly skewed away from and in many ways proactively geared against balance, fairness and what we might call being just in about every conceivable sense possible, when it comes to the different life experiences that we all have.

What is ‘The System’?

For the purposes of making sense of Awakened Politics, ‘The System’ is the structure or framework that makes everything work (or not work) in the way that you and I experience life from the moment we look outside our inner being, live, interact with businesses, organisations, and basically everything beyond personal relationships that lie outside of ourselves and outside of our homes.

For many, indeed for most, ‘The System’ only touches life or the experience of life in a number of very specific ways.

The ways that ‘The System’ touches our lives specifically can be defined by location, lifestyle, career, demographic, education and just about everything that can be used to define or identify a difference of some kind between each of us and anyone else.

‘The System’, for us, is usually a lot of very different things that we have going on continually within our awareness – whether we are physically asleep or awake, added to an even greater list of things going on outside of our awareness that we may not even become or need to become aware of if we were to live a full life and exceed an age beyond 100 years old.

Whether we are aware of ‘The System’ or even parts of it or not, any system or what might be called an ecosystem has its own set of rules that make it work and keep it working.

The rules of ‘The System’ are defined, created, reviewed and maintained by a process that we understand as ‘Democracy’.

We elect Public Representatives or ‘Politicians’ to think about, research, consider and make all the decisions about ‘The System’ – which will ultimately affect us all, even when we are unaware that any or all of these decisions are affecting or touching our lives in some way.

The role of Politics in ‘The System’

To reach agreement, compromise and then conclusion on the rules of ‘The System’, a process of review, discussion, debate and regrettably even argument has historically taken place, based on alternative ideas, or sadly ‘whose idea is best’.

It is rarely, if not ever conducted on the basis of discussion to find agreement on what outcome will be best for everyone concerned.

This process of debate and everything that surrounds it is what we know as politics.

The people we elect as Politicians have responsibility for the rules that govern the thinking, the actions and the behaviour in everything beyond ourselves and our personal lives.

However, if the power entrusted to Politicians is misused or abused, rules can easily become law that mean the thinking, actions and behaviour of others can become unnecessarily, avoidably and unjustly detrimental towards us all. Whether it be us as individuals, as communities or even as a seemingly silent majority.

When we have entrusted Public Representatives to make decisions that are in the best interests of everyone, we are less likely to question the validity of those decisions because it immediately brings into question whether the decisions made by the majority in selecting them are actually sound.

We will not therefore easily accept that ‘The System’ and that The Electorate could be the victims of abuse.

Why do we need Politics?

Let’s start with a question: How do you know what you need at any moment or for any reason or any purpose?

When you’ve thought about it, your answer is likely to be ‘from experience’ or rather, what you have learned from experience so far.

So, what do we do when we don’t have the experience to provide that answer?

The chances are your answer will be to look for and to find the solution – probably by tapping a question into a search engine like Bing or Google, or rather to learn it in some other way.

But what happens when decisions need to be made concerning the services like schools and the NHS, or the infrastructure like parks and roads that are common to us all, that we share, but are not under our direct influence or control?

Whether they are ‘services’ in the strictest sense, or infrastructure that is managed by a service of some kind, all these things that exist for the common good – because we will all typically need them or need access to them at some point or for some reason in life – must be managed with decisions made for us all, on our behalf, for that same common good.

Politics, in its strictest sense, is the debate or discussion that surrounds the management of these ‘public services’ and the system or procedure of decision making that creates, reviews and oversees the implementation of the management strategy for all of these things.

It’s what happens beyond this basic need for the exchange of ideas and discourse – where decisions should always be made in a fair balanced and just way – where the problems really start to begin.

Why do we need Government?

For the purposes of understanding Awakened Politics, it is important to recognise that the terms ‘Government’, ‘Public Sector’ and ‘Public Services’ are all interchangeable terms.

They stand alone as terms to different people, depending on the perspective or experience of the individual.

In some ways they are arguably the same thing and in others they are very different. They are not in any way mutually exclusive.

In relation to Awakened Politics, Government itself is the decision-making body or if you like, the board of directors. It is the top of the management structure that makes the strategic decisions that the executive managers, administrative and technical staff (that make up the Public Sector and provide Public Services) then carry out.

We need and should be able to rely on government to ensure that decisions on our behalf are taken when they should be, and that their implementation into delivery and material form are then completed or continued in the way that they should be.

Who is The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government for?

Awakened Politics has been written with the UK Political, Government and Electoral Systems primarily in mind.

Whilst The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government is the fourth book in a series following ‘Levelling Level’, ‘The Basic Living Standard’ and ‘From Here to There Through Now’ that were also written and published in 2022, it could just as easily be the unexpected or unanticipated prequal, building on the way of thinking or methodology that was presented in the 2018 book ‘How to Get Elected’ too.

The fundamental basis of the idea or proposal made here is built upon an alternative ‘grassroots up’ system to the outwardly 4-Tier system of Government that we currently have in the UK.

However, the model of constructing Government or rather the way of selecting and appointing Politicians or Public Representatives suggested later could be applied to and implemented within different existing political spaces, if it were collectively decided to pursue The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government within the constituency or constituencies involved.

If you are reading this book, the chances are that you will either a) wish to see a system embracing Awakened Politics fully implemented where you are located, or b) Will be resistant to any process that will deliver it and a system of government or governance that will reflect it.

The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government has been written for people who are awakened to the need for all decisions on Public Policy to be made by others who are fully conscious or awakened to the realities of how life works.

Awakened Politics can only genuinely exist if we have Public Representatives who not only can but will translate and legislate in a way which makes sense of that understanding – and most importantly the realities of human nature – to ensure that we have governance that works responsively and proactively in a balanced, fair and just way for all.

Awakened Politics is for everyone and everything.

Part 1: Where we are today

Problems always begin with the way that we think

You may only be aware that there is something wrong with the world beyond our doors.

If the problems outside haven’t walked directly into your life and touched you yet, the chances are that your experience will tell you that whatever might be wrong, those kinds of problems will always get sorted out. That everything will ultimately be fine, and things as you know them, or what you have consider to be normal, will just carry on as they always have before.

It is certainly true that the UK and the World has been in a mess many times before. However, what we face now is likely to be different to anything that anyone has experienced in living memory. It has the potential to be far worse than anything that the history books that we have seen can tell us. We are now in the first stages of what will be inevitable change.

Contrary to the accepted or common view, the reasons for this change and the combination of problems that will lead to and be part of it, are not the events that happen that cause the real problems.

It is the way that we think, act and behave – and more importantly the way that our decision makers think, act and behave towards all events that have an impact upon all or a number of us, that really count.

Poor thinking, actions and behaviour in decision making leads to poor experiences of life.

Today’s Politicians are unconscious, unaware and asleep at the wheel. This means everything is out of control

The problems that we are facing today have been created little by little and step by step over a very long period of time.

Yes, you will read and hear many well-known public figures and people such as journalists attributing blame for everything to an existing Political Party like The Conservatives, Liberal Democrats or Labour; to events such as Brexit, The Covid Pandemic or even The War in Ukraine.

But the reality underpinning all of the problems that we have, the way that these Political Parties behave and the way that events such as Brexit, Covid and Ukraine have been dealt with too, is it has been the thinking, mindset, values, motives, integrity and understanding of the decision makers – The Politicians – when each and every decision has been made, that has led the UK and the World to be where we all are today.

Believe it or not, the pivot point between Politicians making good decisions on Public Policy or making poor decisions on our behalf comes down to their understanding of the difference between what’s right for them subjectively and what’s right for everyone objectively.

The problem with Politicians today is they either don’t understand the difference between what’s right for them vs what’s right for everyone, or they deliberately fail to discern between the two.

Either way, the result is very much the same. In the most basic of terms: Politicians are not making decisions based upon being fully aware and in full consideration of everything that is relevant to each decision.

Politicians make poor decisions and continue to make poor decisions because they believe that the methods of thinking, acting and behaving they have adopted culturally are acceptable, proper and therefore ok.

Politics will not change or even deviate away from this until Politicians change the way that they think, or we change the way that we think and elect Politicians who think differently.

Because decisions are not being made in the best interests of everyone, Politicians have and are still creating life experiences for increasing numbers of people – and potentially for us all – that are out of control.

Real people, living real lives and having real life experiences just like you and I are on the sharp end of this right now.

Politicians are unaware of the impact of the decisions they make, because they have no understanding of the lives that the majority of the population live

The reality of how the UK Political System and how British Politics is broken, can be more than adequately explained in the difference between having Politicians who are effectively unconscious or ‘asleep at the wheel’ as they are today, and the very distinct alternative of having Politicians who are fully conscious of the reasons for and the implications of everything they do.

It cannot be emphasised strongly enough, just how real the different consequences are and will be between what we already have and what we could have and should have in terms of decision making in the best interests of everyone and everything.

These differences will continue to exist for as long as we fail to embrace the necessary process of change, rather than continue to seek what look like easy alternatives.

All of the Public Policy decisions being made today and the decisions that have been made for decades have been made with highly subjective aims.

The aims or desired outcomes that led to these decisions may have been to appeal to the Voters who typically support the Political Party in or seeking power. They may have been to keep the Banks, The Markets and Big Business happy. They may have been to maintain or gain favour with the EU or the Government of a Country such as the USA. They may have been based upon what the government of the day decided that ‘they’ could afford (£).

Whatever the motives or drivers behind the decisions may have been, those motives have become preferential influences or biases.

This means that the decisions have been made without consideration of all the facts, impacts and consequences in mind – as they always should be.

Poor decisions made by Politicians, influenced by biases or fears that favour one thing or the aims or wants of certain people always disadvantage something else or other people in some way.

There is no in-between – irrespective of whether the result is publicly seen or unseen.

The impact of poor politics, poor Politicians & poor decisions in all areas of Public Policy: We have inequality, imbalance, injustice and unfairness creating winners and losers in life

The impact of Poor Politics or poor decision making, undertaken without due care and consideration of all the facts, consequences and what is balanced, fair and just, is what you see and experience when you look outward into the world in any way today.

If your own life and experience has not been touched in a way that is discernable to you personally so far, please do be grateful.

If your eyes are open to see beyond the narratives, you will witness problems, pain and suffering being visited upon innocent people and entire communities.

If you really want to see how Unconscious Politics and the Unconscious System of Government and Governance that we have is affecting people, you will not need to look very far.

The majority of the problems that people, communities and entire Countries face are unnecessary and could be avoided.

The UK ‘System’ of Governance and Public Services is now broken beyond repair

As is the case with most money-based or money-obsessed systems and their countries around the world, the UK ‘System’ is now broken beyond repair.

Along with the USA, the UK may soon prove to be just a little further ahead in the race towards the bottom and a final collapse.

But in real terms, the reality of having every government across the world led by sleepwalking Politicians and with Unconscious Politics will soon add up to the same thing. What we will personally experience in the form of massive change and a period of painful challenges lies ominously ahead.

Whilst the downward line of trajectory that successive UK Governments have subjected the UK to has been the same since the FIAT monetary system and unhindered globalism was arguably fully embraced in 1971, there have been many, if not countless opportunities when Politicians could have taken steps to lead and run ‘The System’ in a very different way.

As the thinking that the money-based order that the UK sits within has successfully reached everyone and everything, the belief in money as a thing, rather than money being just a means of exchange has moved the emphasis of modern life away from humanity and values to measuring and qualifying everything in terms of what you earn, what you can accumulate and what you can own.

We have now reached a point where the prioritisation of money, greed and the accumulation of wealth with easy living is so obsessive and the sickness about money and the role it plays in life so profound, we have reached and passed the point where ‘The System’ itself as we know it could be repaired.

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 problems win 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.

Noise isn’t action. Just because a problem is talked about, it doesn’t mean anything is being done

Because of the way that media, social media, the internet and the dissemination of information works today, our attention is all too easily distracted and diverted away from many of the things that we should really have much greater care for.

Meanwhile, the way that we have become conditioned to interact with the flow of information coming at us from the world outside of us or outside of our life bubbles also has the ability to add additional weight to events and to the influence of celebrity and people with public platforms in a disproportionate and therefore highly misleading way.

Regrettably, this has become an ingrained cultural problem to the point where many people believe that it is normal.

In respect of the issues that we really should be considering as important to us personally as well as communally, the result is that unless we are actually looking properly and not taking everything as read or at face value, we are missing the news, or when it reaches us, it comes with a wrapping of opinion that far exceeds its genuine value.

Unfortunately, we easily fall into the trap of believing that what we don’t hear about or what we don’t see doesn’t matter, and take for granted that when we do hear about anything, the fact that the information has come to us in some way means that solutions are already being found and that whatever is necessary is already being done.

Sadly, for all of us, this simply isn’t the case.

Money can only put the effects of problems on hold. It never addresses the cause

Because Political and Executive Decision Makers in the Public Realm either avoid or are ignorant of the complexity and interconnectedness of the issues and problems that they face on our behalf, it has become very easy to suggest and create the narrative that money and more of it is the answer to all things.

The problem with this approach isn’t only that money isn’t real – as we are all in the increasingly painful process of finding out.

It is that when the money lie is working, providing more of it just has the effect of putting the problems – or rather the causes of the problems – on hold.

Money itself never addresses the causes of problems, as even when money is apparently short, the question still remains ‘What was the cause of money being short?’

What is real, never changes in value.

Missing the point: The Devil is in the Detail

We are all guilty of having allowed ‘The System’ to degenerate and for things to have become as bad as they are. Because as a majority, we take it for granted that the way that everything works is as straightforward as we believe and think.

Politicians are the same as the majority of us. Before they are elected or appointed, the majority of them have been looking at and interacting with life in exactly the same ways.

There is nothing different about most of them that makes them better able to deal with Public Policy and managing the things that are important to all of us in any different way.

What Politicians, senior executives in the Civil Service and in Local Government fail to recognise, because they have no experience, acceptance nor understanding of the wider picture, is how the services, creation and running of infrastructure or anything to do with the Public Sector interconnects with not only so many other areas of Public Policy, but has a direct impact on so many different areas of life for so many different people, businesses and organisations too.

Public Policy is made today, as it has been for a very long time, based on dealing with the effects of issues or problems.

Decision makers are either unaware of or deliberately avoid dealing with the cause.

The complexities and interconnectedness of Public Policy & Governance require a way of thinking and an outlook on life that today’s Politicians just don’t have

Regrettably, the way that culture and society work today with the messages, narratives and programming that it provides, has left or is encouraging everyone not only to believe that they know and understand everything, but that armed with this seemingly ubiquitous knowledge they are being told that they have, they can then do or be whatever they want, without fear of consequence and without any kind of cost.

Thinking is not ‘joined up’. There is no recognition of the relationship between work, effort, commitment and integrity.

The journey or process takes place from start to finish without any kind of meaning to the result for anyone and least of all the individual.

The ease with which things appear at the click of a link or push of a button compounds this lack of awareness into the failure to appreciate the complexity of the systems and the procedures that make everything work around us and just how many different roles or contributions can and are being made in order that what seem to be the most basic of products or services are accessible to us or reach us on what we have learned to regard as throw away terms.

Public Policy and the system of governance that we have is no different.

In fact, what we fail to realise and appreciate far beyond the complexity of the relationship between input and reward and ease of accessibility of all things, is everything that seems to be so easy has come to be taken for granted in these ways because decision makers are either blind to or are deliberately ignoring the real costs of living life unsustainably.

The self interest and greed that has influenced the decision makers is allowed to permeate the whole public narrative, because our decision makers believe that they will benefit even more if they acquiesce with an approach that apparently comes without any cost to them, but with every benefit too.

Few of us will willingly recognise or accept the costs of unsustainable living, until such time as those costs reach us directly or have an effect on us in some way where we accept that the perceived disadvantages outweigh the perceived benefits in a meaningful way.

There are consequences to every decision made in the Public Realm.

Each Public Policy affects other Public Policies, is or will be affected by other Public Polices in some way.

Public Policies that govern the way that businesses and organisations behave and conduct their business, as well as how each of us as individuals think, have the power to have either positive or very negative implications for us all.

Everything our Politicians do has a cost, implication or consequence in some way. Especially when they surrender the power that the Electorate or that Voters have given them, to people, to ideas or to 3rd party organisations that are or have their own agenda, and therefore subjectively influence them.

Our Politicians are making a mockery of the democratic system. Many of them are willfully blind to the consequences of their actions. But whether their actions are deliberate or borne of ignorance, the fact is that they have taken roles that require awareness of everything that Public Policy does and that it touches, and that when they fail one of us, they fail all of us just the same.

Can the problems we have with Government & Politics be solved?

Yes. All of the problems that we have with Government and with Politics can be solved.

The question really should be whether the majority of people want those problems to be solved or whether they will accept and where possible embrace the changes to everything that we know today that would allow for all of the problems that we collectively share to be solved.

Part 2: The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government

We can solve all shared problems if we have Good Government

A system of Awakened Politics, leading to the implementation and continuance of Good Government will allow for all societal or problems shared across the community, where The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government is fully implemented and comprehensively or universally responsible to be solved.

However, it is important to understand that the solutions to today’s problems that The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government offers will not be to everyone’s liking.

Some, perhaps those we currently recognise as just the few, have much to gain from maintaining a system which continues to benefit only some at the expense of all others and mitigates this in very inhuman ways.

In terms of Awakened Politics and Good Government, what does Awakened mean?

In terms of Awakened Politics and Good Government, to be Awakened quite literally means to be fully aware, considerate of and making allowance for the impact and consequences of the choices or the decisions that are about to be made for everyone and not just those who appear to be the only ones that decision will affect.

It is important to understand that intelligence, education, position or anything else that ‘defines’ anyone as being different does not make anyone ‘Awake’, fully ‘Conscious’, or enlightened, and this is particularly so in the case of the Politicians we have today.

How is Awakened or Conscious Politics different when we are all awake or conscious anyway?

Medically or physiologically speaking, yes, if you are reading this page, you are ‘conscious’. Also, in these same ‘literal’ terms, you are likely to be physically ‘awake’ too.

What some people may not realise, or indeed, what many of the people around them may not realise is that what they currently understand to be conscious or to be awake is only partially so.

In terms of absolutes, people may not be ‘Conscious’ or ‘Awake’ at all, if there are things going on in the world around them or that are contributing to the experience that they are having that they are neither conscious of or aware of in any way.

That absence or lack of awareness most often exists in terms of peoples understanding of themselves. Why they feel the way they do about things. Why they react the way that they do. Why they are motivated in the way that they are. And how experiences they have themselves affect and influence them in their future – usually without them giving the matter any thought.

If a person is not fully aware of or can make consideration of, or allowance for everything that is going on in a situation over which they are making some kind of judgement or a decision, they are not ‘Awake’ to or ‘Conscious’ of everything that is going on. They will therefore be making that decision or judgement unconsciously.

Politicians are not and have not been making decisions consciously. If they were and had been, the world today and the experience that we are all having of it would be very different in just about every conceivable way.

What is Awakened Politics?

Awakened Politics is the assessment, creation, proposal and pursuit of new and improved Public Policy and Community or Social solutions that are based upon, built and evolved from the point of decision-making taking place under a condition of full awareness and consideration for all factors involved, driven by the unequivocal pursuit of fairness, balance and justice, and what is in the best interests of all members of the relevant constituency involved.

As a minimum, the attributes, experience and qualities of any Awakened Politician will include their ability, commitment and will (and in no order of prioritisation):

  • To be fully self-aware.
  • To be human and to prioritise humanity, conscious thinking, actions, behaviour and life above all ‘things’.
  • To treat all other human beings as equals, in thought, in word and in deed.
  • To be able to see, understand and value all sides of an argument or dispute and undertake to always access all the information necessary and from enough sources to make a fully reasoned judgement, even when circumstances are fraught or pressurised.
  • To take all decisions on Public Policy based upon what is known to be at that moment, not on the basis of what could be, what might be or what if?
  • To make decisions that run contrary to public and media opinion or subjective narratives, even when they might appear to reflect the zeitgeist or common view.
  • To recognise and discern the needs, impacts upon of the person or upon persons they are least likely to identify with and treat them the same as if they were themselves that same person and have nothing in life to support them beyond the person that they are.
  • To not be intimidated by the perceived power and the different circumstances of any other.
  • To be able and willing to ask questions which lead to understanding of impact, motives, circumstances and likely outcome from all perspectives.
  • To understand and respect the realities of human nature in all things and in all circumstances.
  • To see, volunteer for, promote and live the role of being a Public Representative as a calling or as a vocation. Not as a job or a career.
  • To recognise the role of money, currency and all systems of payment as a method only and not as being a ‘thing’ in any sense.
  • To be the voice and reasoning of the third parties who are not present or represented, or are not ‘in the room’.
  • To be able to empathise without being emotionally compromised or without becoming emotionally entrenched, or to recognise and act accordingly when they are.
  • To have a rudimentary understanding of how business, organisations, economics and the regulations and regulatory system that governs the activities of them all work.
  • To have practical experience of working with and leading a range of different people in different working environments and circumstances.
  • Understand, question and asses the motives for something being proposed
  • To uphold the correct decision, even when it may not be popular to do so.
  • Understand and make allowances for their own biases, aims and desires
  • Understand the practical implications in terms of desired outcome (advantages) and the undesired outcomes (disadvantages)
  • Be able and prepared to reject proposals and solutions that create imbalances that are not essential for the greater good
  • To see their role through impartially at all times, particularly when under pressure from subjective influences that seek to compromise the objective nature of any decision-making process
  • To practice the Principle of Charity in every conceivable and valid way.
  • To be able to be a leader, even when being led.
  • To understand or make allowances for the positive and negative behavioural effects of a decision
  • To understand the impact of circumstance and relativity to conditions for people in all circumstances and situations.
  • To be able to consider and visualise the impact and consequences of Public Policy decisions up to as many times removed as necessary, upon people, upon businesses, upon orgnisations, upon existing Public Policies and upon the relationship between us all and with all others.
  • To be able to make arguments based upon being constructive, improving proposals or suggestions already made, or making clear the flaws in such proposals or suggestions that may not be apparent to whoever initially made them
  • To be able to determine exhaustively the difference between wrong and right based on the freedom of the individual to be, in relation to the freedom of all others to be, set against the needs of the community to provide public services and support that is accessible to everyone in the same way, when required, on a universal basis and no more.
  • To be able to assess and understand the process of conditioning that creates innate or unconscious prejudices as well as those which the person is aware of, and how these influence behaviour and impact society when that person has an influential role. They will be particularly aware and conscious of any such prejudices within themselves.
  • To be able to look beyond the detrimental behaviour of any individual group and consider their needs impartially, as they would do any other individual or group
  • To be committed to localisation, deglobalisation and the priority of the community, our communities and our Country, from the grassroots up.
  • To be committed to working collaboratively with all other nation states for reason of mutual benefit without relinquishing or surrendering political control to any person, organisation or government of any type that would have the ability to create, impose or police governance of any kind upon people, businesses, organisations or public bodies of any kind that they themselves are responsible to and have been elected to represent.
  • To see and treat Government, Governance and The Public Sector as tools of facilitation to be used on behalf of The Public for the Public and Greater Good, and that they are not and should not ever be treated or considered to be an entity that can prioritise itself or its existence in any way or at any time.
  • To never surrender the power to decide on behalf of the relevant constituency that has been entrusted to them to any Political Party, Ideology, Social or Demographic Group, subjective interest or bias of any kind, for the full period of their elected or appointed term, or until the moment they have chosen to relinquish that responsibility and formally stepped down.

And more.

What is Good Government?

Good Government is the creation, implementation and review of governance systems and public policy with impartiality, balance, fairness and consideration to the implications for all, from the creation of strategy to individual policy and ongoing at the point of operational delivery.

The approach of those working as Public Servants (Civil Servants, Local Government Officers, Public Sector Workers) of every kind as a part of Good Government will always as a minimum include:

  • Treating every Member of the Public as an equal and value them as being exactly the same when it comes to the service, solutions and outcomes that they offer or provide.
  • Being minded that the function of Government and the Public Sector is to serve the best interests of the Public and the relevant community above all things
  • Being minded that the organisation, department, or service that they are employed by is not an entity in its own right and that the priorities of that organisation, department, service or of their own, must never be placed before the best interests of the public and the communities they serve.
  • Being self-aware enough to know and to step away from prioritising their own needs, fears, desires or aims in relation to the role that they have, when they have the ability or function that will allow them to do otherwise

The reform of The Public Sector and of Public Services that was already necessary before we entered the current period of crisis MUST begin with the reform of Public Policy via Awakened Politics. Then and only then can the structure, working practices and cultural models of what will constitute Good Government and the delivery of Public Services in the most appropriate and relevant ways be able to begin.

How does Good Government work?

Good Government requires that all policy makers, legislators, executives and officers at every level and of every kind fulfill the requirements and expectations of their role and/or responsibility with awareness and understanding of the impact and consequences of their decisions and actions both directly and indirectly, no matter how many times removed.

The consideration given will always be reflective of the level of responsibility involved. For instance, an MP or government minister should always have fluency in understanding the impact of public policy on all end users, whether their role be personal, professionally representative or pecuniary in a practical and/or material sense.

Beliefs or emotional well being – which could also be considered to be taste or appearance is always specific and therefore subjective to the individual concerned, can only be addressed effectively at the individual level itself and Good Government will always therefore allow for catering for specific requirements at the one-to-one level, where decisions made by officers can and will only impact upon the individual concerned. 

It is the framework or overriding commonality of structural policy which is the most essential element of Good Government.

The whole principle of Good Government and its overlap with Awakened Politics is that it should never be argued for, created or delivered on the basis that someone is this or because someone is that.

Awakened Politics and Good Government succeeds by delivering on the basis that it treats everyone equally and exactly the same, or supports this same principle by excluding the circumstances where this principle can be compromised.

Any policy which does or could play to alternative thinking is self-serving in some way – even if it appears to positively discriminate in favour of a particular group.

Isn’t The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government just being idealistic?

No, Awakened Politics isn’t just being idealistic.

Although many people would argue that it is idealistic to think that everyone could think, act and behave ‘Consciously’ or in an ‘Awakened’ or enlightened manner all the time.

The thing to always bear in mind about The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government, is that it is the thoughts, actions and behaviour of decision makers, legislators, executives, administrators and technical staff of all kinds that will deliver a Fair, Balanced and Just system for all.

The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government is not dependent upon each and every one of us thinking, acting and behaving in an Awakened, Conscious or enlightened manner all of the time.

The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government requires that those who have taken up a role that is publicly responsible on our behalf are not only able, but will think, act and behave Consciously and in an Awakened way in everything that they do when they are fulfilling the responsibilities of that publicly related role.

Can Awakened Politics exist within the current political system?

Yes, Awakened Politics can exist within the current Political System.

In fact, to a very small degree you can be sure that it does. Even now there are a few Politicians who really do think, act and behave as a fully Awakened Political system would require that each and every one of them would do so.

However, acting either alone or in isolation means that when any Public Policy is delivered and implemented in a way that genuinely ends up being for the genuine greater good, the outcome is down to pure luck, a lack of interest on the part of other Politicians, or because those other Politicians believe that to support such a Policy will help or enrich them or some subjective interest in some way.

The foundations of Awakened Politics are self-awareness, awareness of others, values, integrity and humanity

It seems incredible that the concept and existence of an alternative values-driven world to the one we currently live and believe in must be explained. But this is where the world is and where we really are today.

The fundamental basis of Awakened Politics and therefore Good Government, is always doing the right thing for everyone, even when they are not present and represented, or it would appear that they will not be affected by whatever our Politicians are about to do.

Awakened Politics and Good Government is about valuing People or the Person, and the experience they are having, more than what is outside all of us, or what we might know as ‘things’.

When we can care and understand about ourselves, we can care and understand about others – or choose not to do so, if that should be our own genuine choice.

Politics and Government by its very nature and purpose is the care, service to and consideration of all others and the governance of all things that are external to or outside of them.

This care, service and consideration must always be provided by people who are thinking, acting and behaving in a Fully Conscious way when taking or enacting that responsibility for others.

There is and can be no in between. Or somebody, somewhere will always be failed.

The Golden Rule: Good Government is a method of facilitation and delivery. It is not an entity in itself

One thing that will always be important to remember and bear in mind is that no matter how powerful any Council, Parliament, Assembly, Non-Government Organisation (NGO) or related Public Service Provider might be, that body, organisation or department is and only ever will be a tool, device or service for action and delivery on behalf of the Public for the genuine greater good.

These Public-serving organisations will never be an entity in their own right.

Public-serving bodies and organisations must never be allowed to be able to make their own policies or set strategies of any kind that prioritise their own existence or that of their staff or members above or before the interests of the Public and therefore the People they have been created to serve.

Whilst todays Politicians are either ignorant of, deliberately avoid or are therefore Unconscious of the truth, much of the problems with Public Services of all kinds today are reflective of this golden rule about the existence of Government and the services it provides to the Public in some way.

Good Government is a question of priorities

In the most basic of human terms, we can either prioritise what is inside of us or who we really are, or we can prioritise what is outside of us and what we appear to be or have means to everyone else.

Good Government will always prioritise the Person and humanity first and in all things.

It’s what a politician thinks of and does for the person they least identify with that really matters for Fairness, Balance and Justice in Government to exist

Diversity, alternative Political Philosophies and differences in Politics don’t promote or guarantee fairness and balance.

Anyone appointed to a position of influence and authority because of the physical, material or ideological difference they have with others is more likely to prioritise those who they most closely identify with – or for want of a better term, prioritise the interests of ‘those of their own kind’.

The benchmark of any system of government and the political system that facilitates or leads it being truly representative, Fair, Balanced and Just, is what the politician or political decision maker does on behalf of the person they know least about, have least in common with or are least likely to understand.

A system of government cannot and will not work in the best interests of all, if it doesn’t consider and treat fairly, justly and without bias of any kind, even the very people we might consider that we have every reason want excluded in some way or to despise.

If you have read this and immediately think of someone or some group of people that you feel to be undeserving of the same care and consideration that you for yourself would like, you can now use that feeling and emotion to understand how any system of governance and politics will quickly be undone.

Good Politicians MUST be Judged by the results of their actions. NOT by their words, what they appear to do, or how they might look

It is easy to see why Political Parties now fall over themselves to secure Candidates for Elections who already have a name, such as celebrities or people who have for some reason been publicly recognised as a champion of some specific cause or in some other way.

‘They are this’, ‘They are that’, are the words or the thinking that accompanies the thought processes of today’s Politicians and Political Parties when they select and appoint their Candidates – often for ‘Seats’ that they already consider to be theirs to allocate and that they therefore ‘Own’.

What the Political Parties today don’t think or worry about, is what the Politicians they effectively appoint would actually do, or indeed, what they have actually already done.

Words are just words. Whether spoken, written or even typed up or presented to the public through a screen, on a page or through a public meeting somewhere.

If we really want an idea of what any Politician can offer us or what they will bring, we must think differently about the way that they have been appointed, and the pathway that has delivered them into a publicly representative role.

What politicians have already done, rather than what it looks like what they have done or what they or someone else tell us they have done, is the best indication of what they will do.

Real research doesn’t stop at a title or at a headline. It takes time. But when one person must be trusted to think, behave and act Consciously for so many, it is essential that we too made that selection Consciously and being Conscious of all the facts and realities that underpin who they really are. Not how they or anyone else would like us to think.

People will always tell you who they are. They will also do so very quickly, as long as you make the effort to hear as well as listen.

Awakened Politics tackles today’s problems today and is mindful of the future. But it leaves the past behind

It may surprise many that most of the decisions made in Public Policy are based on what Politicians want the world to look like in the future using what’s already happened in the past as their guide.

Because the past triggers what we know as guilt, whilst the future triggers what we know as anxiety too, Politics and Politicians today are fueled by emotions.

When emotions are in charge of decision making, no form of Awakened, Conscious or Enlightened thinking and the genuine care that comes with it has any hope of shining through.

Yes, lip service can and will always be paid to ‘good thinking’ in a world where what everything looks like is firmly in control. But the end results will never turn out as anyone intended, simply by design.

Emotions don’t dwell in the moment itself. They are the sirens of another time and place, which is irrelevant to the moment in which we make the decision to act.

For Good Government to do its work beneficially for everyone, the decision making of Awakened Politics will always be conducted in the here and now.

Yes, there are those of us who will always respond to this by proclaiming ‘There has to be a plan!’. But it is because we have become so obsessed with ‘plans’ and trying to control the future, that we have completely lost control of what is happening around us and around the world right now.

The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government will solve our problems

When all Public Policy decisions are made impartiality, with integrity, with respect to the laws of cause and effect, and with what is in the best interests of everyone in mind, in the moment and without trying to second guess or prevent certain outcomes of any kind, those decisions will always be right.

Doing the right thing is not always easy, especially when there may appear to be simpler, more cost effective or even more reliable or proven ways. The cost of doing the right thing in everything never creates problems or comes at a price that isn’t just or is unfair, whilst failing to do so will always cost someone, somewhere and more often than not, that cost to others will become cumulative in many different (unforeseen) ways.

Just as one lie requires many more to cover its path, poor decisions in politics require many more to cover them up.

The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government would mean that everything will be done the right way at the right moment in time. Doing so shines light on what also needs to be changed for the better, rather than requiring more and unnecessary action to cover bad policy up.

The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government is a method, way or direction. It is not a manifesto, strategy or fixed agenda in itself

The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government is not and cannot be a political philosophy or a set of specific objectives or aims in itself.

Like being awake or being conscious in itself, The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government is a way or state of being, or method that can and will be applied to Politics and Government in a comprehensive or universal sense.

Compromise isn’t necessary when everyone does the right thing for everyone

Perhaps the acid test or most accurate way to confirm if Public Policy is being created or revised through Awakened Politics by Awakened Politicians.

Anyone who has been active within Politics at any level or employed in any role or profession allied to Politics or Government of any kind, who believe the way that it all functions is ‘normal’, will certainly scoff at or ridicule the idea that compromise isn’t necessary in order for everything to work.

The point is being missed by them, and by anyone who believes that anything about ‘The System’ works as it should, that compromise is nothing more than ‘the middle ground’ and an agreement to disagree.

Any matter of Public Policy that is determined by Awakened Politicians would not require a middle way.

By its very nature, bias against the shared aims of Balance, Fairness and Justice for All, founded on the principle of humanity and life first, doesn’t exist. If and when it does, it indicates the presence of thinking and a way of being that functions in a different way.

Part 3: The bridges we must cross to reach Awakened Politics

The biggest obstacle on The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government is our own unconscious thinking

Changing from a system of government that doesn’t work in everyone’s best interests to one that does should be very easy. Don’t we all look after our own best interests after all?

However, without an external event or series of external events taking place that really forces the majority people to stop and think and awaken, a course of voluntary change will take a very long time.

People who see, experience and believe there is nothing bad about the unconscious System that we have will not willingly embrace an Awakened System of Governance that they will inevitably see as likely to cost them or create a loss for them in some material or money-based way.

People are so intoxicated with the current system that revolves around Money and self-interest, there is very little understanding, acceptance or appreciation of how the values set that we have culturally adopted hurts us all as individuals.

Awakened Politics & Good Government cannot exist where other influences are at work

For Politics and Government to be fully Awake, it is absolutely essential that the sanctity of the relationship between Voters and Public Representatives is uncorrupted and remains incorruptible.

The greatest travesty that exists within our so-called democracies today is the role and influence of Big Business, ‘The Markets’, Banks and ‘The Financial Sector’.

It has become very clear through the chronology of political events in the UK during the Autumn of 2022 alone, that our Politicians are actively prioritising ‘what the markets want’, above doing whatever is in the best interests of everyone else.

The reality that this action effectively rubbishes or gives the lie to The UK being a democratic Country aside, this evidence does in itself spell out that care and consideration for the impact of decisions are only being made on purely a financial or rather monetary policy basis.

Government decisions are not being made on a public policy basis. This means that issues created by the very real ‘cost of living crisis’ are being treated as nothing more than an afterthought at best, if they are really being thought about by Politicians in any meaningful way at all.

Awakened Politics isn’t fully Conscious or Enlightened if any bias or subjective influence is present or at work, either for the individual Politician, for any Political Group or Grouping to which they may belong, or indeed within the Council, Parliament or Assembly of whatever kind it might be, to which each and every elected Politician once elected belongs.

The relationship between Voter and Public Representative (Politician) will always be ultimately based upon trust. But that doesn’t mean we cannot or shouldn’t have a political and electoral system that reduces the instances where corruption of any kind cannot be limited to a point where it will not be easy to hide and where it can be readily detected or seen.

The UKs broken Political System: Straight to the top must stop

No, of course the Prime Minister of this Country doesn’t just end one day as a normal person and find themselves PM the next day. But the pool of politicians that every British Prime Minister is drawn from – that’s currently the 650 Constituency Members of Parliament (MPs) pretty much can.

MPs literally are at the top of the UKs political tree and its certainly not unknown for MPs to be elected in their 20’s, with very little experience of life and the only experience of working has been in organisations which are closely aligned or feed into the political system in the UK as it is and has for a long time been.

Age itself is certainly no guarantee of what any MP can offer and the very regrettable truth is that many older and supposedly better informed or experienced new MPs offer a very myopic or subjective view of life, are also driven by politics being ‘a career’, and have no real understanding or experience of life that has enabled them to ‘step into someone else’s shoes’, when it comes to making judgments over policy decisions which will inevitably have a profound impact on life for many people in a way they are simply unequipped to visualise, empathise with or even constructively think about.

You cannot provide Conscious Government or even have functioning Conscious Politics if the politicians or representatives involved in any public debate cannot or choose not to relate to the reality that people, communities and organisations already face and what they will face as a result of whatever decision that is about to be made.

Money related bribes are not the only kind corruption that exists

One of the flaws of the English Language and the way that it has evolved, is the manner in which we freely attribute different meanings to the same word. People then fall into the trap of failing to recognise the different uses and then see others as being wrong when they have used that word in what we see as an incorrect way, or more likely they have used that word in a way that their experience tells them is correct, but which ours then tells us is wrong.

There are many examples. The meaning of one word in particular that can create such a misunderstanding and become one of the barriers we face to understanding why we have an urgent need for Awakened Politics and Good Government, is corruption.

In the Western world, we generally consider the word corruption to equate to illegal or unofficial financial payments, backhanders, the exchange of brown envelopes or what we most commonly know as bribes; all using money or a resulting financial payment or pecuniary benefit of some kind.

Corruption isn’t just about money. In fact, any act which is undertaken by a decision maker or person with influence or responsibility of a public or legally recognisable kind, that aims to secure a result or outcome that favours themselves or the interests of someone or something they favour, is itself corrupt.

In terms of or in comparison to so-called Third World Countries, ‘banana republics’, other less ‘developed’ economies and even globally known group organisations where bribes using money are regrettably all too recognisably widespread, Western Countries and their governance may not outwardly appear to be in any way the same.

However, decision making that favours a specific group, a specific interest, a specific Political Party, a specific idea or indeed a specific or subjective outcome of any kind – right down to something such as career advancement or the job security of the individual, is arguably even worse.

This form of sanitized, prejudicial corruption is rampant throughout the Western world today. But its impact and ramifications are even less likely to be detected or openly seen – even though they are arguably often far worse. Beyond the obvious, prejudicial corruption creates injustice at the quality-of-life level for those on an honest path, that defy logic and sense.

Making others wrong, doesn’t make anyone right

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to Awakened Politics, beyond the cultural obsession with money itself, is the underlying and emotional need and driven desire on the part of so many people to make others wrong, in the misplaced belief that it somehow then makes them right.

Just because we can look better, sound better, communicate better, influence 3rd parties more effectively, or do anything that can ‘win’ the argument, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the argument, proposal or solution that we have made is right.

Winning an argument or debate in this way certainly doesn’t confirm that the outcome or consequences will be in the best interests of everyone that it then becomes the route that everyone involved then takes, or that it becomes the policy or agenda that is then adopted.

We are the sum of our experiences. And from the perspective of every individual, our view of the world is based on our past – whether we are Conscious of this or any part of this fact.

In the subjective environment of a debate, discussion or argument, we may well reach the conclusion or even agree that one of us is right. But that doesn’t make the other party wrong.

Objectively and to step into the way of Awakened Politics, Conscious Politics or even Enlightened Politics, each of us – and especially our Politicians, must be humble enough to accept that we do not know everything, no matter how confident of the credibility and value of the experience that we already have, and which has made us who we are.

There is nothing worse than people being so sure of what they do know, that they have no idea of what they don’t.

Power and influence doesn’t automatically make someone right either, even though it will certainly help those who do not value the responsibility they have to others that comes with that power and influence to convince many other that they most certainly are.

Why is Awakened Politics not active and flourishing as it should be within Government today?

Awakened Politics and Good Government doesn’t exist within ‘The System’ today, because ‘The System’ itself is skewed too far towards indulging and pandering to the biases of anyone or anything that is able to influence the leaders and Politicians that we currently have.

Yes, there are certainly a few Politicians around who ‘are in it’ for all the right reasons – i.e., they are thinking about and wish to fight for what is good and what is right for everyone. But Awakened Politicians are certainly few and far between, right now.

There is certainly a much greater number of people that arrive in the entrance hall of todays Political System with good intentions. They join the Political Parties and become Candidates in elections at all levels of Government.

Regrettably and more often than not, they discover the realities of just how broken and undemocratic ‘The System’ just as soon as they are elected and have experienced the very tip of the iceberg from within. They are all too easily corrupted by the realities that Politics today isn’t about achieving what’s best for all and that you have to submit to the unconscious and corrupt nature of ‘The System’ if you want to progress and fit in.

Sadly, the reality is that the rot and chaos caused by so much unconscious thinking within the decision making and governance processes over such a prolonged period of time, has made it seem or feel all but impossible for anyone who looks objectively at the problem, its causes and effects, to believe that life can be lived in any other way.

However, all that is wrong with ‘The System’ is based on just that – belief.

So, if belief and thinking can be changed or is changed and reaches a critical mass that transforms ‘The System’ so that it works and operates in a completely different way, the power of groupthink will certainly do its magic. Only this time, it will be for the good and benefit of us all.

Good Government vs what we have today = People & Life vs Money & self-interest

For as long as the majority of people unconsciously or without thinking believe that they continue to benefit from the way that the world works today, and that those benefits outweigh what they understand to be any disadvantages for them, we all remain condemned to a world and future that will be increasingly unfair, unjust, imbalanced and a champion of pain and hatred in places where such darkness has now natural right to be or to even be seen.

That is the world today. This is where we really are. And if you cannot feel, see or experience the unfairness yourself, that quite literally means that you continue to unconsciously believe that it is ok for someone else to be disadvantaged, for them to suffer, or for you to even store up disastrous consequences for yourself that are ‘out of sight and out of mind’.

Many of us neither see, nor realise that the way we have all been living for decades and beyond is not sustainable and never has been.

We have been living unsustainably without any apparent, perceptible cost for so long, that we have all fallen into the trap of thinking that this is normal, and this is how things will always be.

The current System, mindset and way of thinking is based on feeding a manufactured or created desire for pleasure. Not happiness.

The world System functions to keep as many of us as possible blinded to our reality by providing us with a constant flow of instant hits.

Yet the cost to us all, of this money and self-interest-based system or order has and will increasingly be the compromise and destruction of our physical, mental and spiritual health.

We are quite literally living and existing within lives which run completely contrary to who we are and who we should continually be striving to be, just because of our relationship with two things:

MONEY & SELF-INTEREST

If you are able, take a moment to reflect upon how money and its bedfellow’s wealth, greed, material gain and self-interest itself have an influence or an effect on just about everything in life that is outside or external to ourselves.

Then reflect on the reality, that this thinking touches everything outside of us in just about every way, and it does so and can only do so, because we have allowed our thinking to be taken over so that everything could become this way.

Yes, you, I and everyone else has surrendered their power to this material driven world and continue to do so each and every day in even the very smallest of ways.

But we have the ability to take that power back. We can reject the desire that we have for instant gratification or pleasure that is only touches us momentarily from outside, but is nonetheless used against us by the system that is supposed to serve us, but is in fact taking everything from us in every possible way.

Happiness is a state of being that cannot be influenced, created or installed by something that is outside of us. It is by being fully Conscious or self-aware of ourselves, that The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government will begin.

By being Conscious of ourselves, we then have the ability to be Conscious of the experience of life for others. We then have the ability to create and maintain a system of Awakened Politics and therefore Good Government too.

Good Government will work in the best possible way for everyone, because it will provide either the services, the rules & laws and the opportunities that everyone needs, rather than what each individual wants.

Could Awakened Politics work in the current structure?

Yes, Conscious Politics could work within the current political structure.

But for Politics to be fully Conscious, it would require everyone operating or functioning with the current political structure to change the way they think. To change the way they behave. To change the way they interact. To change their experience (and therefore step aside to allow people who are better suited to Conscious Politics to take over). To basically change everything that they are and currently do.

Existing Politicians and the Political Parties they are a part of will not step aside or change. They are unconscious of the impact of their presence and what the real cause of all the problems are that they are failing to address.

Wouldn’t politicians have to be ‘Spiritual’ for Awakened Politics to work?

The answer is NO.

Politicians do not need to be ‘Spiritual’ to be ‘Conscious’ and Good Public Representatives.

The term ‘Spiritual’ is massively overused. It is used inappropriately in many cases and within the circumstances to which and to the behaviour of those to whom it is applied.

Awakened Politicians cannot be qualified by the group they belong to, by their affiliations, by the qualifications or type of experience that they have.

Awakened Politics is not about what Politicians say. Awakened Politics is all about what Politicians actually do and how they do it too.

Being a good person in the most meaningful way is not something that is within the gift of any other person, group or organisation to qualify in another, in any way.

Being ‘Conscious’ or ‘Awakened’ is not about being better than anyone else. It’s about being the best we can be. About seeing everything as it really is and responding and then acting in the best ways that it is possible for us all to do so.

Nobody has to be part of anything or be qualified in some way by anybody or anything else to be the best that they can be in every possible sense.

Good Government can only be fully Conscious if it is both aware of and able to act upon every issue at the most local, community or individual level possible

We’ve all heard terms such as ‘Localism’ and ‘Devolution’ being used by todays Politicians.

Regrettably, the way that Politicians use these terms is misleading. The meaning Politicians use is intended to suggest that the Public Policies that they relate to are bringing Political Influence and Power back to local Communities, thereby giving people like you and I more of a say and therefore a bigger role.

What Localism and Devolution have really meant in reality, is the centralisation of power and influenced carved up differently or in an even less meaningful way than the attribution of Political Power and influence over the way that we are governed today, through the Government Tiers as they already are.

We don’t need Mayors, Police & Crime Commissioners or Regional Bodies or Boards of any kind. Especially not when the pretense suggests misleadingly that their presence somehow results in the Public, The Electorate or Voters being more involved or able to influence the decision-making process.

The Tiers of Government already exist in many areas across the UK that would be more than sufficient for power to be devolved in a very meaningful way. To a level where people could and would have a much greater level of influence and have a genuine say on day-to-day and real-life solutions to the issues that affect them.

The reason that Politicians in Westminster will not devolve power back towards the people using the existing framework of Government* is that everything they do is always about maintaining or increasing their level of control.

Awakened Politics and Good Government is based upon the decisions that affect us communally being made where it is best and most fitting for that decision making to be.

*There are currently up to four Tiers of Government in the UK. Beyond the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assemblies in Mainland UK, these are Parish & Town Councils, District Level Authorities (Borough and District Councils), County Councils and Parliament.

Having Political Awareness, a Political Conscience, being Politically Conscious or Politically Aware is not Awakened Politics, Conscious Politics or Enlightened Politics

Because of the way that we regularly attribute different meanings to the same words, it is important to be clear about the differences between Awakened Politics, Conscious Politics, Enlightened Politics and what are arguably similar everyday terms such as to be ‘Politically Aware’ and have ‘Political Awareness’ or to be Politically Conscious or anything like that.

If you are ‘Politically Aware’ or ‘Politically Conscious’, you are thinking about, considering, observing and may even be involved in politics and are very likely to have your own ideas about what politics itself should achieve.

However, being ‘Politically Aware’ or Politically Conscious’ doesn’t mean that your involvement in Politics – in whatever way that might be or mean – is being conducted in an Awakened, fully Conscious or Enlightened way.

Wokeness and Woke Politics

Wokeness and being Woke in any related way is just being idealistic in a heightened or dangerously myopic way.

Woke idealism seeks to impose a specific and subjective value set on others unconsciously, as it pays no regard to alternative life experiences, practical reality and human nature in any meaningful way.

Wokeness is the promotion of the view that an idealistic narrative can be imposed upon everyone and then become the view accepted and ‘lived’ by everyone, making the objective the subjective and the subjective the objective for all.

Being Awakened, fully Conscious or Enlightened is knowing about, understanding, making allowance for and having a reasoned relationship with everything and everyone. It is not about excluding, erasing or destroying the things that make us uncomfortable or that we do not like.

Part 4: How do we make Awakened Politics a reality?

How do we make Politics truly representative of everyone?

If we really want Politics to be truly or genuinely representative of everyone, everyone must feel they are being represented genuinely and that their own truth is the place where the journey to the creation, review and change of public policy begins.

Anyone who pours scorn on the idea that you can or even should involve everyone in politics in some way beyond programming people or telling them what to do, is part of the problem we are moving away from.

They will not accept the validity or functionality of The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government as a worthy or legitimate cause.

For The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government to work effectively and as it should, it is essential that the people effected by decisions are able to access and interact with the people making the policy decisions.

In the limited cases where policy decisions being made affect people at an inter or intra community level (Regional, National etc.), those same people or others just like them should always have been directly involved in appointing the politicians upon whose shoulders that collective responsibility will be shoulders and the decisions made.

Cause & Effect: Awakened Politics leads to Good Government

If you require a very quick run through the technicalities and mechanics of why the majority of solutions to existing problems presented by politicians don’t work today, the mechanics of the travesty are quite simple.

Politicians today are not aware of, do not have a meaningful understanding of or are resistant in some way, to the relationship between cause and effect.

Everything Politicians do today is focused on dealing with the effects of a problem.

For example, when it comes to there being a shortage of people to fill low-paid jobs, some Politicians argue that the UK should allow more immigration of low skilled workers.

Yes, it sounds like a reasonable and sensible solution. But none of our Politicians outwardly ask the question or want to even begin dealing with the reality that there are already millions of people in the UK who could work, but are not working. People who might otherwise be able to fill some, if not all of these jobs.

We cannot and will not have solutions to the problems that we face together or communally – whether we are aware of them or not – if we do not have Politicians who not only understand the complex nature of creating and maintaining effective and balanced Public Policy, but are also prepared to have the difficult conversations and debates that will certainly offend those who would benefit from the current way of doing things to be maintained.

When the Political System itself becomes Conscious, it will lead to Good Government in every sense.

The process begins with us all being Conscious and making Conscious decisions about who Represents us Publicly and therefore is all about who we choose to elect.

How do we get from here to Good Government?

Good Government will come as a direct result of fully Awakened Politics.

Awakened Politics is only possible when the Politicians that we have can, will and do think, behave and act fully Consciously in everything that they think and do when they are representing others.

The most challenging obstacle to Awakened Politics today, isn’t changing the mind of individual politicians. Indeed, some ‘Awakened Politicians’ will already exist. But their number is very few.

The most challenging obstacle to Awakened Politics today is ‘The System’ itself.

‘The System’ is overwhelmingly focused and driven on the ‘money, wealth and self-interest’ motives.

When a system is so overwhelmingly skewed to work in such a twisted and selfish way, it literally means that everything within that system – whether it be procedures, rules, laws, cultural thinking or working practices – is built, created or has been adapted to promote that same way of thinking for everyone.

A skewed system makes it very difficult for anyone to operate or act differently, even if the thoughts of the individual are not aligned with the practice itself.

Whilst it is always possible that everyone within ‘The System’ could change their mind and approach at the very same moment in time and embrace Conscious Thinking, behaviour and actions in every meaningful sense from there onwards, the reality is that not everyone will change their mind about everything they share or experience with others communally, unless something has happened which changes everything for everyone and makes them of the same mind.

Awakened Politics & Good Government will not work for everyone until every public representative works for Awakened Politics & Good Government

For every one of us that changes our way of thinking about how the world works and then embraces that change in every way we possibly can, humanity has already taken a giant leap forward.

However, for a society to exist that is Fair, Balanced and Just in every sense possible, and that has a System of governance which reflects that, it is essential that we have a Political System that is fully ‘Conscious’.

For our Political System to be ‘Fully Awake’, it necessarily follows that all of the Public Representatives, decision makers, legislators or Politicians within it must think, act and behave Consciously and in an Awakened manner too.

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.

Awakened Politics is beyond any need for Political Parties

By its very nature the pursuit of a political, economic or other kind of ‘ideal’ or ‘philosophy’ by any group, whether political or not, is in the interests of that group or what they specifically share in common. It is not in the ‘best interests of all’, because it prioritises outcomes that are aligned with those beliefs, aims or the philosophies that are shared by that group, or that group and its affiliates alone.

Doing the right thing for everyone, and by necessity using the benchmark of care for the people a politician will have the least in common with, doesn’t require any ideal or philosophy other than doing the right thing by and on behalf of everyone in the most Balanced, Fair and Just way.

Awakened Politics supersedes the biases and innate prejudices that flourish and take over within politically motivated groups that see outcomes being all about the routes or journeys to get there, rather than the right result being the most important thing.

If Politics is undertaken Consciously, Political Parties are therefore no longer necessary.

Awakened Politicians do not need to leverage ideals or philosophies to ‘do the right thing’.

Wouldn’t we just be better off with a Dictator taking the decisions that affect us all?

In the situation the UK and many Countries around the world are facing, there will already be many who would find the idea of a ‘no messing around’ dictator or authoritarian character ‘who gets things done’, to be highly attractive.

Indeed, during periods of world history where similarities exist between different times and what we are now experiencing within our own, people have found themselves very receptive and open to the idea of charismatic leaders who deliver a strong and compelling message that suggests that they and only they have the magic formula and the ability to put everything right.

When life gets really shit for a lot of people – as things are very likely to do so for the majority of us all very soon, it can be very easy to fall into the trap of believing what’s right for them is right for us too – or rather what looks like a win-win, will actually turn out to be a win-lose

Is it possible to have a ‘Good Dictator’?

The idea of a good, benevolent dictator can be as intoxicating as the most compelling political messaging, soundbites and propaganda. Particularly when the process of looking closely at the problems with our broken Political System will quickly demonstrate that meaningful decisions rarely happen by design, because individual politicians and Political Parties are always putting their election hopes and other forms of self-interest first.

However, like most things in Politics, Government and life generally, the realities of decision making are multilayered and nuanced to say the least. I.e., just because you can streamline the process of decision making, it still doesn’t guarantee that the person or in this case, the dictator will be making Conscious decisions which are good for us all.

Whether we begin The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government via the ‘Voluntary’ or are compelled to do so via the ‘Sudden Impact’ route, the practical reality is that at least temporarily and for a period of time, somebody – either an individual, or a very small group of individuals, will have to make and oversee the implementation of all of the key Public Policies that will make Awakened Politics and Good Government work, as it should.

By necessity, this is likely to require that we place our trust in someone to do this all for us.

To do otherwise will take significantly longer and may open the door to alternative forms of leadership and societal control that we really will not want or enjoy in any way.

As with the selection of Awakened Politicians for the future, this selection or choice will all boil down to one thing; the question of who and what will really work.

It will be by necessity the case that alongside the prevailing question of who we can trust not only to do the right things and to see them through, that they will also hand over power, once their tenure has ended and the fundamental basis of a Good Government System in in place.

Part 5: WE ARE ALL RESPONSIBLE AND HAVE A ROLE TO PLAY. Awakened Politics and Good Government will only come from us – not someone else doing it for us

We ALL have a role to play in The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government

For Awakened Politics not only to work, but to keep working and for it to lead to Good Government too, it is essential that we all play a very conscious part in selecting and appointing the Public Representatives or Politicians who will make decisions on our collective behalf.

It doesn’t matter how any of us may be different or may even be perceived as being different to others.

For Awakened Politics to work and function fully and effectively, we must see everyone as being fundamentally the same and being equal where the role of Government, of Governance and of the Public Sector itself is concerned.

Whilst the people we select, appoint or elect to be Politicians may be relatively small, it is essential that we create and maintain a structure of Government and an Electoral Process that feeds into it that ensures that Public Representatives are not only in touch with real life, but that the real-life experiences of all that need to feed into Public Policy are heard and valued as they should be.

To be able to view the people we elect differently and in a fully conscious way, we must begin by being fully conscious of ourselves and think differently about the relationship we have with our communities too.

The personal benefits of Awakened, Conscious & Enlightened Thinking

Few of us understand that seeking a never-ending line of temporary hits from the pleasures that the world will give us in the form of ‘things’ and as experiences, comes at significant personal cost.

In exchange for fleeting, temporary and transitory pleasures, we are surrendering our thinking, our humanity and ourselves.

Moments of pleasure will never replace a constant state of happiness and the peace that we can and will attain, if and when we put humanity and life first.

When we have attained a relationship with everything and everyone outside of ourselves, based on what’s Fair, what’s Just, what’s Balanced and what’s basically good for everyone in the situation, because it’s how we would all like to be treated in that situation – whichever of the roles we might play, we will all have very good lives and live life in a very good way.

It may appear to be materially poor in some ways in comparison to what we take for granted and consider to come without cost right now. But it will be a life and way of being that is both mentally and spiritually enriched. It can and will provide a level of wellbeing that no form of material wealth will ever afford.

Self-Awareness leads to Awareness of others

Most of us at some point in life will fall into the trap of believing that everyone else thinks like us. That in the same circumstances, they would choose to do and then do exactly the same things that we would do too.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

We are the sum of our experiences. And if we have not understood and learned from all the things that we have experienced, we are very likely to repeat any mistakes or poor decisions that we have made over and perhaps over again.

Self-awareness is achieved by taking the time and making the effort to ask why things happen, how they happen, what role we played in making them happen and asking all the questions about events which feel meaningful or create an emotional response for us.

The process of becoming self-aware is the way in which we equip ourselves to reach a place of understanding of life around us that steps beyond the simple process of attributing blame.

It sounds like a lot of work. But like most skills we learn and assimilate as we grow, once we have mastered the basic process, it is a skill that can very quickly become akin to muscle memory and help us in the very smallest, yet the most significant of ways.

For us to live, experience life and to survive, the reality is that we don’t need to be fully conscious or self-aware in terms of our metal being.

Indeed, many people have lived entire lifetimes and good lives too, without thinking deeply about anything they experience and without feeling any need to do so.

There’s nothing wrong with living a life with limited self-awareness, if the individual concerned isn’t making decisions or isn’t taking responsibility for the lives, experience and wellbeing of others. Especially when those others are going through experiences in life that those who have accepted responsibility for them do not properly understand.

Self-Awareness & Critical Thinking

Once we have learned to be or have become ‘self-aware’, in the sense of learning to ask the ‘How’, ‘Why’, ‘Who’, ‘What’ type questions of ourselves and the experiences that we have had and that have made us who we really are, we become much better equipped or enabled to look on the world outside of us in a much healthier and productive way.

Being self-aware is much more than just being ‘present in the moment’, being ‘mindful’ or practicing ‘mindfulness’*.

Self-awareness is about understanding who we really are, why we are that way, how we function and operate, and what we need to do or to improve to be the best person that we can possibly be.

The reality is that as Voters, we don’t need to practice self-awareness for The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government to exist, work and be maintained. But we do have a responsibility to ourselves and to anyone that we care about to ensure that anyone and everyone who has influence over our lives is thinking, acting and behaving in the way that they should be.

For a Fair, Balanced and Just System to exist, we must all contribute to the process that ensures that the decisions that affect us all and therefore the people them on our behalf, are making from a place where they are fully self-aware and have the integrity, diligence and commitment that follows and goes with it to be able to make Public Policy decisions that are in touch with and considerate of all of our very different lives.

To be able to engage in this process in a fully Awakened way, we must be able to observe, accumulate information and think critically too, as this is the way that we filter the information that comes to us, and how we ensure that the gaps in our knowledge are filled, if for any reason we do not then fully understand.

* Like most things of the self-help genre that are usually far more complex and require practical experience that goes way beyond intellectual understanding today, mindfulness has been packaged and repackaged many times over, so that personal growth can be sold as being easy. In reality, it is anything but.

Critical Thinking

Critical Thinking is the process we undertake to decern between what information is genuinely helpful to us to know, and what is not.

We take for granted that the sources of news and information that we follow are providing us with facts, when in many cases – particularly in respect of what we believe to be legitimate or ‘mainstream’ sources, the information they provide is anything but.

When you are able to ask the ‘Who’, ‘How’, ‘What’, ‘When’ and ‘Why’ type questions of yourself, and see the benefits to yourself of why it is always good for us to do so, you can then apply this way of thinking to the process of filtering all the information that comes to you in a much more reliable way.

For example, try watching, listening to or reading the same news story from a number of sources and pay attention to what comes into your view. ‘What’ are they telling you; is it fact, opinion, subjective or objective? ‘Why’ are they telling you this; ‘Who’ will benefit from you accepting what they say without question? ‘Who’ and ‘What’ is hidden from view? ‘How does someone gain or how have they been incentivised by any of this’? ‘Who’ will be disadvantaged by this; ‘How’ and in ‘What’ way?

As you begin the process of repeatedly knocking on this same door, it is just as important to view the secondary and tertiary and however many sources of news and information that you visit in the same way, and that you do not simply trust a source like the government or an apparently reputable brand just because of who they are. It is regrettably the case that they expect the majority of us to be asleep and will often exploit that fact – which makes what they are doing even worse.

When we approach the selection and appointment of Public Representatives with self-awareness and think critically about the information that greets us within that process, it will be much easier to discern between false prophets and pretenders and those who once elected, will deliver decisions on our behalf for Public Policy which is Fair, Balanced, Just and always done right.

REMEMBER: We all have a vital role to play in our systems of governance

If we have not engaged with and contributed meaningfully to the process of selecting the People who become our Public Representatives and Politicians, we have no genuine right of regress when the decisions that these same people have taken, or the responsibilities they have to us are neglected, and everything goes wrong.

Part 6: How The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government will happen

We could change to a system of Conscious Politics and Conscious Government right now, IF everyone of us were to change how we think about life and our relationship with everything and everyone outside of ourselves, in what we see as the world.

As you’ve probably already realised by reading this far, that’s very unlikely, given the way that the world works today.

In a reality where even now, as ‘The System’ we know is in the process of collapsing, so many people are not awake to the reality of what is going on around them because it hasn’t directly affected them yet, there are only two pathways that could put us on The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government.

The First Pathway

The first or preferred pathway, is the voluntary or step-by-step route. This revolves around each and every one of us rejecting the legitimacy and benefit of ‘The System’. Then asking all of the right questions and doing all the right things that we either can or feel able to, to provide others with the opportunity to walk through this door voluntarily through a process of free will, and somewhat sooner than they might otherwise do so.

The Second Pathway

The second or unavoidable pathway, is the sudden impact route. It’s the process of being jump started from our slumber by an external event or changes to our circumstances that have the immediate impact of making us aware in a meaningful way. Basically, a shock that hits and tells us that the way everything has been working and the role that we have ourselves been playing within it, simply isn’t right.

The Voluntary Pathway to The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government

The good news for you if you are reading this, is that you are already on your way to Conscious Politics and Conscious Government – hopefully via a journey of exploration, rather than because events in the world have already created the emergency that will force the majority of us to look at life in a very different way.

The Voluntary Pathway is about discovering who we really are, how the world outside of us really works, what our relationship with the world outside of us really is and how the world influences all of us.

When we begin to understand all of this and the role that we personally must play to bring about change, we can also begin to understand how and why other people behave the way they do – even when they remain unconscious of the real reasons.

By waking up to ourselves – much in the same way as it has been said that you cannot love others if you do not love yourself first – we can then really begin to understand just how difficult and challenging the role of being a Public Representative should genuinely be.

In turn, we can then appreciate just how well equipped, experienced and motivated all of our Politicians need to be.

The Sudden Impact Pathway to The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government

We are fools to take for granted the apparent peace, security and seemingly good lives that we believe we have today.

Very few of us believe that our experiences of daily life will really change. Even though the majority of us lived through the Lockdowns of the Covid Pandemic (so far) and have recent memories of just how contrary our thinking vs reality can actually be.

We still don’t believe it possible that things could change completely from the way that they already are.

Through the books ‘Levelling Level’, ‘The People First Economy & The Basic Living Standard’ and ‘From Here to There Through Now’, which have all been published before ‘The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government’ during 2022, we have already talked about the position that the UK and the wider World is in today.

We have covered events and the process of events that are likely to unfold in the coming months and years. Events that are already unfolding in many ways that the reader may not currently be fully Aware of.

The upshot of this series of books is that things will change, whether we are Conscious of them or not.

For the majority of us who are not insulated from everything that happens in the world (in the way that very few could possibly still be), this change will require us not only to look deeply at ourselves, but to then change our way of thinking, our way of being and our way of living to then live and interact with each other and the world outside of us in very different ways to what our experience has been up until now.

The impact of national and world events may be very sudden. Perhaps a war, natural disaster or like event.

Or they may be cumulative. Perhaps the ongoing collapse of The Financial Markets, Currencies and The Money Based System itself. All as greed and ineptitude of those with power and influence steps further and further away from humanity, sense and control.

Ironically, the ‘Sudden Impact’ route and the ‘Voluntary Route’ not only have the outcome of The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government in common.

They also have a point of ‘critical mass’ or point of change, where the scales of balance literally tip from the existence of ‘The System’ to the next system in common too.

This critical mass will be much easier to define via the ‘Sudden Impact’ route. As the collapse of The System – in whichever way it might come, will ultimately affect the majority of us at the same time, and force our hand when it comes to changing our thinking and then embracing the changes that will equip and help us in what some call the ‘New Earth’ to come.

Part 7: Steps necessary for The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government

The solution to every problem begins with the selection and election of Politicians who are fully Awake and committed to Balance, Fairness and Justice for all

Anyone would be forgiven for having little interest or confidence in the Politicians that we have running the Country today.

However, there is a vicious circle at work.

We have poor Politicians making poor decisions that affect us all poorly, because we are collectively making poor decisions when we Vote to elect our Politicians.

Sometimes we are not even bothering to Vote at all.

It has been said that we get the Politicians that we deserve. And in this sense, it is arguably very true.

We don’t all need to live our lives consciously the whole time and there is no obligation for us to do so. If our way of living and the decisions that we are making don’t put others or anything else in harm’s way.

However, what we should all be taking very seriously and what we should all see as the role in Politics that each and every one of us are obliged to play, is in selecting people as Public Representatives or Politicians.

Our own meaningful engagement in the selection and election of our Politicians is the only way that they can be trusted and relied upon to engage in Awakened Politics and in a fully Conscious and Enlightened way, as Public Representatives, on behalf of us all.

Just like securing the best of everything that we can do for our families and the people we love to keep them happy, secure and safe, selecting the right Politicians to make the right decisions on behalf of us all is very much a process of engaging in and seeing through our responsibility to ourselves and to others in the same way.

How do we identify and select ‘Awakened Politicians’?

The only way that we can be sure that any Politician will act and behave Consciously and with the integrity that we should all be able to expect of them at the highest levels of government and Public Representation, is to require that they prove themselves at the level which is nearest and most transparent to the locality or the community first.

It stands to reason that Politicians who lead any system, should have a Conscious understanding of the way that the entire system works first. And that for us to rely on them thinking, acting and behaving Consciously in leadership of other Public Representatives, they should have demonstrated their ability beyond question as a Public Representative at all levels leading to that role first.

It is always better to have been offered than to have asked.

How do we maintain Conscious Government once we have it?

If we identify, select and continue to identify and select people who will be Awakened Politicians, and do so with an Electoral System that prioritises grassroots-up, the system and decision-making process will itself become self-governing.

It cannot therefore be emphasised strongly enough just how vital it now is that we all take the steps necessary to engage in The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government as individuals and as communities at the grassroots level, to ensure that every Public Representative is the right choice.

With Awakened Politics, the way we Vote doesn’t matter, as long as it allows genuine choice

Within the unconscious way that our Politicians, Political Parties and the Political System works now, the recognition that there is something wrong on goes so far as to encourage the misplaced belief that the problem lies within the way that The Electorate Votes.

The point that those Politicians and people with an interest and influence on Politics today are missing, is that it isn’t the way that people are asked to vote that matters, if the people who are then elected as Politicians and Public Representatives don’t think, act and behave in a fully Awakened way.

The ongoing debate over ‘First Past The Post’ and ‘Proportional Representation’ or any voting system like it is little more than a straw man argument or the promotion of an alternative system that is a white elephant.

Poor Government, Poor Governance and Poor Public Services are directly related to Poor Politics and the Poor Politicians that exist and masquerade as Public Representatives within it. Nothing else.

Why is there any need so many different politicians, if those at the top are fully Awake?

If all Public Policy decisions are or were always made on the basis of doing what is right, in the moment and without consideration for any ‘what ifs’ or ‘what could be’s’, we wouldn’t need masses of politicians, political groups or political parties in anything like or what we would recognise today.

However, human nature is such that any one of us can become unconscious of the biases that come from experiences of all kinds and the massive power of even the smallest and most passive of influences that can creep into our being.

It is therefore essential that there is always a Council, Assembly, Meeting or Parliament that is formed that consists of independent Conscious minds, that mean anything other than decision making conducted in the best interests of all is flagged, called out and no longer continue whether innocently or under the gaze of the willfully blind.

The New Electoral Process: The influence of the Voter must be and remain ongoing. It cannot just be meaningful on the day of an Election or Vote itself

The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government will require that every Voter is able to access and influence the Political process in a meaningful way, continually.

Under the current Government Tier and Electoral System that we have, this is simply not possible. It must change.

With The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government, Voters at the grassroots or most localised community level will always be able to vote for Public Representatives that they know, are able to get to know and who they know and understand all about.

Tier 1

These local representatives should then collectively make up grassroots or local community level councils, meetings or assemblies where all decisions that concern only that community will exclusively be made. This would be Tier 1.

Tier 2

The next level of decision making will be made at a level or Tier of community (perhaps what we might know as a region or Counties today) where the next level of collective decision making is most relevant and to where as much as possible has been devolved or decentralised away from what we today recognise as central government. This would be Tier 2.

The Public Representatives in Tier 2 would already be or have been Public Representatives in Tier 1 and therefore selected and elected by people or by communities at the grassroots level.

Tier 3

The next level – what might be Tier 3, might well be at the levels we recognise today as England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, or at Westminster or UK Parliament level, which of course could be Tier 4.

Again, Public Representatives at each and every Tier must be serving or have served in all the Tiers below and the emphasis on the whole system is that the responsibility for every decision is devolved exhaustively to the Tier which is nearest to the Voter and that it is practical and therefore possible for it to go.

The importance of the role of Young People in Awakened Politics

Whilst Awakened Politics indicates a grassroots-up restructuring of Government, of Governance and how the Public Sector is managed and run, it is easy to assume that even then, the voices and influences will focus on older people of all kinds and backgrounds, who have more experience of life. Thereby taking away value and consideration of the very relevant views and input that must be considered from the Young.

The inexperience of the idealistic young blinds them to practicality, whilst practicality blinds the old to aspiration and the pursuit of something better for all.

Better outcomes for all are encapsulated by the idealism and energy of the Young. That idealism must be moulded and redirected, but not stopped or prevented by the experience of the old.

The relationship between the direction of idealism and the practical journey that takes us there must be defined and formalised so that Young People who can offer better aims and objectives within the realm of Public Policy, Governance and how everything works can and will influence change where it is in the best interests of all to adopt.

The Young who are engaged should always have the benefit of a learning opportunity that goes way beyond ridicule or being told ‘you are wrong’, when there are genuinely good reasons – that can be explained – for those with more experience saying no to whatever the Young might want everyone to do.

It is certainly not impossible for Young People interested in Public Representation to be able to contribute a fully Awakened approach and understanding to Politics and Government. But they will regrettably be few.

We must embrace the process of looking carefully and considerately at idealism without allowing idealistic outcomes to be imposed in any way that can affect others, without care for practicality and human nature.

A way to do this will be to convene shadow local Councils, Assemblies or Meetings that all locally elected Public Representatives must attend. And that some way for such panels of Young People to influence the selection, appointment and election of Politicians at the most local level in a meaningful way should be a required part of that process.

The Helping Hand that we will need to engage everyone in The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government

It cannot be understated how challenging it will be for many to picture that way that we do Politics, Government and Governance any differently to how it is done now, given that to one degree or another, most of us still believe that we have an overwhelmingly beneficial interest in things continuing as they are.

It is certainly true that more and more people are Awakening to the deeper and unseen realities of the way that the world around us works, each day. Whether that understanding is based on a personal or spiritual type of revelation, or it is about waking up to how decisions that affect us all are really being made and who they are really being made for.

Even the most Awakened, Conscious or Enlightened amongst us do not know everything.

The danger we face as we set about the unenviable task of changing how the whole world thinks, is that change of this kind can and will only begin in the abstract, because of the way that the world works today.

To make a meaningful start, we need a practical foundation or jumpstart that makes sense of or provides an unyielding reference point that guides the transition between the money and material wealth obsessed earth that we are spinning around on today, and the people and life focused ‘new earth’ that we will find real happiness upon, if we refuse to let unconscious and unenlightened thinking, actions and behaviour in Politics and Government get in the way.

The Helping Hand is The Basic Living Standard, or cultural recognition that society has an obligation to create, monitor, maintain and implement such rules and regulations across government, the public sector, charities and business to ensure that the focus, motivation, aims and priorities are to observe the value and freedoms of each individual person first, and that as a minimum or benchmark, everyone can afford all of the basic essentials in life and to live in a sustainable, happy and healthy way, without need for support or intervention of any kind, whilst in receipt of the equivalent of the basic weekly wage or the equivalent thereof.

The Basic Living Standard is effectively the lighthouse that will guide people of every kind to think, act and behave differently in their interactions with the world around them.

Adopting what appears to be such a radically different baseline for our values set may seem difficult to imagine. But the reality is that with the focus flipped from material wealth to people and life, everything else and every problem that must be solved will begin the journey towards the best outcomes for everyone, with the right option becoming ever clearer to decision makers and to us all, as we collectively travel further along The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government.

You can download a FREE copy of the PDF Version of The Way of Awakened Politics for Good Government immediately below and copies of Adam’s other Books which are currently available to download FREE can be found HERE. The link to download the Book for Kindle version from Amazon (£1.99 UK Price at time of publishing) can be found at the bottom.

Why we need a Good Dictator, and our phoney democracy should take a rest

In the immediate run up to the December 2019 General Election, I wrote and published The Makeshift Manifesto, here online and as an e-book that’s available on Amazon.

Even though the political terrain was different, from the point of view that the British Electorate were days away from trusting Boris Johnson with an Election Result that very few saw coming because the Conservatives promised to get Brexit done, the truth of the matter was that many areas of the UKs public policy had already gone massively wrong.

Regrettably, it had been doing so for a time that has spanned many different governments, led by different political parties, before.

Within months, we were all subjected to the stupidity and poor leadership that manifested itself in the form of both the Government and the wider political response to Covid 19 and the Covid Pandemic.

We are unlikely to have experienced all the fall-out and consequences of such levels of incompetence and political delinquency that were set in motion, even now.

However, back in early December 2019, I decided to commit all the things a ‘good’ government would actually do to paper. I then shared it with the world.

Since then, The Makeshift Manifesto seems to have been a popular read. So, earlier this year, as I contemplated the run up to the coming General Election, I began to question whether I should revisit the book and update it to reflect what has changed and where the further problems with Public Policy have developed over the 4+ years of time since the first edition was published.

With the original work set up on a screen and being sat ready to dive straight in, it didn’t take many moments for me to realise that if ‘good’ policy was no more than a wish list at the time of the last General Election, because of the quality  of the politicians we had back then, the uncomfortable fact is that with the political options we have available today, such suggestions would be pretty much impossible to deliver through the current structure of government, in any meaningful way.

I’d written about the concept of and asked the question ‘Is it possible to have a Good Dictator’ before.

But at this point I realised, that without people being open to the change that is possible now and which I covered in the book Officially None Of The Above, or there being some kind of Black Swan event that has the power to change everyone’s minds, the only way that meaningful change could be delivered throughout government, the public sector and within every area of Public Policy itself, would be with pure single-mindedness. The kind that could only be achieved if it was driven and directed by one person with the power necessary to command and dictate that massive scale of change.

I worked this thorough as briefly as it was possible to do so.

Leaning on different books that I have written and published over the past two years that included A Community Route and The Grassroots Manifesto, I also added a policy wish list that would be good for everyone, but that in today’s reality, it would only be possible for Good Dictator to deliver and achieve.

There remains a very big question about whether the individual exists who:

  1. Would have the knowledge and experience necessary to change such a massively broken system for the better
  2. Has the desire, drive, motivation and public spiritedness to see it through
  3. Possesses the ethics, morality and principles to stay true to the public cause, when there would be so much temptation to cast what’s in the best interests of others aside

After completing and publishing the book, I concluded that in times as we face today, where politicians and those who aspire to be politicians don’t see any route other than their own, and the public itself has surrendered to the idea that all ‘public’ problems are the responsibility of someone, somewhere else, if nothing else should change in the way we view the importance of the things that are common to us all, the solution of having a Good Dictator, might end up being the only way forward for us all.

The stupidity of our politicians and the void of leadership they created has opened the door to a very dark reality. Will it step in?

We were once free to ignore or mock the presence of voices such as Katie Hopkins and Tommy Robinson. We jumped on the let’s-call-it-extremism bandwagon that the mainstream narrative afforded us, regrettably at the expense of precluding different opinions that could have done us a lot of good, if we had the good sense to listen and hear them long before now.

We don’t have that luxury anymore. Anyone would be a fool to ignore the danger of some ‘new’ movement quickly being fashioned across the restless and frustrated corners of our society, that will be more than happy up step into the void that has been created by the absence of genuine political leadership for such a long time.

The decision of our politicians not to listen, rather than using public office to do whatever the hell they and their political party’s want hasn’t come without a heavy, steadily accumulating cost.

The ignorance of a brewing undercurrent of very normal people who are sick and tired of being the butt end of every public policy our politicians now deliver, whilst policies that run contrary to what would be good for everyone are relentlessly pursued, means that we may soon reach a tipping point when everyday British people will simply say ‘no more’.

Whilst it has become popular to blame racism for any view or thought which can be considered contra-narrative, the problems caused by the failure of the progressive multicultural project are only part of a much bigger, quickly growing problem.

It has become a cultural norm for politicians to engage in what is probably best called political gaslighting, where the mainstream media adeptly help them create the idea in our minds that anyone who suffers from any one of the growing injustices of our time is suffering alone and that everything is rosy for everyone else.

However, the victims of useless politicians are not alone. People are realising this in ever greater numbers and those responsible are on a fast track to being found out.

Even more of us are going to realise that the cost of living crisis, explosive inflation of the prices of the essentials and basics that everyone needs, the collapse of public services, and everything that real people believe to be wrong, but the narrative tells us is right, are definitely wrong and have been created deliberately, through someone else’s incompetence or design.

These things didn’t just happen to any of us in a way that politicians suggest. These are wrongs that weren’t unavoidable. And even the merest hint that we brought it all upon ourselves is not only unjust; it is an outright lie.

As more and more realise this, people are going to join the groups and movements that some very angry people lead, with consequences that could quickly be disastrous for us all.

Not least of all, because there isn’t currently any kind of sensible or reasoned choice that actually represents anything different to what we have already got.

Regrettably, it would take much bigger politicians than the ones we have already got, to recognise their own folly and for them all to step aside so that they can be replaced by genuine public representatives. Good politicians and leaders who genuinely understand, accept and are motivated by the reality that we elect politicians to make decisions which will have outcomes that are always in the best interests of us all.

It’s anyone’s guess how long we have got and what event or issue will prove to be the last straw.

However, change is coming. And when push comes to shove, we can only hope that Lady Luck is shining, and we have leaders available who will step in and do their best for us, rather than doing only what is best for themselves.

Image created with Microsoft Designer

A New Democracy for the People that is no longer Top-Down, but Grassroots-Up | The Grassroots Revolution | The Grassroots Manifesto

The key step in the process of meaningful change that will benefit everyone in a balanced, fair and just way will be the rejection and end of the existing Democratic System, Electoral System and System of Government that exists.

With the system of Governance that we have working only for itself, for those within it and those who inappropriately benefit from it, the system has passed any point of good it could reach.

The existing system has proven to be too easily corrupted by too many different influences for it to be able to provide the assurance of impartiality that will ensure a truly balanced, fair and just system of Governance can be fully accessible to all, and for it to then maintained.

It is with ownership and the control of all decision making and legislative processes within government that our power and the right to determine our future lies.

However, the point that so many people, from ‘outside’, who want change continue to miss, is that by continuing to focus on the political system that we have, rather than the one that we want, we are continuing to play by all the rules set by an Establishment that can only exist within a hierarchical and deferential structure that is Top-Down.

Whoever frames the argument and the debate will usually win it.

They may not be playing fairly, and they may have the mainstream media to pump out propaganda for them, but that’s the reality that underpins why the Establishment and however they continue to move the deckchairs on the deck of their very own Titanic is still and will continue to win.

So, step back, take a good look at yourself and the people you have around you. Then remember that it’s what we all as ‘outsiders’ have in common, rather than what at first impression we see, that provides the pathway to where finding unity, working together and then claiming back our power will be.

This Blog relates to Part 1 of The Grassroots Manifesto, which proposes the creation of a new Democratic system for elections and government, where the balance of power is taken back and restored to local communities, and kept away from people you will never have the chance to meet or even see.